Mashups

This morning as I stumbled sleepily through my house thoughts ran wild while my body creeped along. I pulled two eggs out and opened the freezer to find vegan bacon lying next to the jumbo shrimp. I glanced at the tile floor and wondered if I had made a mistake not getting the luxury vinyl. I thought that option might be awfully pretty. In the deafening silence I decided that the tile was awfully pretty after all. This was no working holiday, so I moved on, even though I felt like an uninvited guest in the middle of a holy war.

My next thought took me back to the days when my kids were young and the watched a show that featured a segment called, “one of these things is not like the other.” I couldn’t remember if the feature was on Sesame Street, Nickelodeon or the Electric Company but I was suddenly aware that we now live in a world defined by the oxymoronic. From “honest politician” to “whole piece of cake” we have created a mash up world where mutually exclusive ideas are slammed together in a way that seems – but is not-meaningful. Life has become a symphony interrupted by rap or country music. The simple, declarative sentence in which subject and object agree and information is correctly delivered is no more. Meaning has died an ugly death.

What is a “virtual reality?” Something or someplace that is almost real? I am in the oxymoron known as a “small crowd” that decries our tendency to mash our language at the expense of making sense. No doubt this discomfort proves that I have become an old poop who loves the simplicity of fact bearing locutions. I do not know what an “original copy” is and I probably never will. Yet, I still wish other humans well. Maybe I agree with Edna St. Vincent Millay who quipped, “I hate people but I love gatherings.” I generally believe that all people should have an easy life.

Damn ! There it is again.