Even The Goddamned Computer Screen

Found the meme above on Facebook.  

There were around 130 likes and some near dozen comments, all to the Pro-King.

And why not?  Who doesn't love Stephen King?  And memes suffice as the new Little Golden Books for adults, for our rapidly dwindling capacity to process the daily, the second-by-second torrent.  

I'm a dick.  For a lot of reasons.  

But in this instance --

A) Not to give the Donald a pass, but every male most people know is a sexual predator in one form or another.  The difference between active and inactive sexual predators are varying responses to opportunity and the capacity for keeping that conscience clean.  

In part it's genetic.  Even though most dudes wisely keep their seed to their nether regions, they are on a constant lookout.  In a world infiltrated by yoga tights and with Google's image search feature within constant reach, it's The Eye Candy Store, 24/7.  Any guy who claims he isn't looking is lying.  

B)  People need to shut the fuck up about the electoral college.  I'm old.  I recall folks losing it over the 2000 election.  If it was such a big deal then, if it's such a big deal now, interested parties would converge and join forces a la the X-men and Avengers and Fantastic Four, and fuck it, even the Great Lakes Avengers, too, and kick the proverbial power cord out from the wall outlet, and then Yes!, the whole Presidential dealie-bob would be decided by the popular vote. 

16 years transpired between Bush/Gore and Trump/Clinton. This MoveOn petition stands ready and waiting for launch somewhere into the great and powerful cloud likely to do-fuck-all who knows how much effective reorganizing of our collective voting DNA.

Meme-text out of the way, here's my deal.  Evidence of how far off the reservation I've wandered at this point.  

That leather jacket Steve's got on.  I look at the meme and all I see is the leather jacket.  

Everybody else looks at it, reads the fist pump worthy salvo, processes the world's best selling author looking tight and fight-trim as any 70-year-old can possibly appear...And I'm wondering how many goddamned cows lost their lives for the sake of Grandpa Horror Story's ump-billionth professional photoshoot.  

Jim Harrison has a poem -- God help me I don't recall the title -- but a couple lines deal with dogs -- just regular lovable, dumb old pooches -- ripping open the belly of a pregnant housecat.  

Every time I feed the cats, clean their food bowls, wash out used cat food tins, I say -- aloud -- "Thank you for feeding these cats."  

I don't say grace before my meals.  But I speak a kind of grace around the rituals of filling the tummies of little sociopaths.  And I know it's weird to do it.  It doesn't change the short, brutal lives of the critters that got pulverized into Mr. Whisker's latest gnosh but it seems necessary anymore.  Acknowledging the lost.  The processed.

I can't call myself 'vegan.'  It still sounds too much like a race of aliens the Enterprise encountered and not TOS, but that animated shit die-hards insist counts for canon.  

The problem with planting any flag is wearing the right armor.  I don't wear armor.  I don't plant flags because I know I don't do the due diligence-thing very well.  

For instance, like a dummy, I hadn't considered the fact that book bindings include animal products.  From Wikipedia:

Rabbit-skin glue is more flexible when dry than typical hide glues...It also is used in bookbinding and as the adhesive component of some recipes for gesso and compo.

But horror-upon-horror, going the e-route is no safe route to a blame-free conscience either:

Liquid crystals found in screens on TVs, computers and cell phones may be based on cholesterol taken from animals.

So, blood more or less on my hands, why piss and moan about one lousy leather jacket?  At this moment I'm surrounded by books and I'm composing a text upon a screen containing the by-product of some life/lives lived likely not very well.  

I think it gets to me because it doesn't get to other people.  Because I know all of life orbits consumption but I can't let go of the fact that human beings bear a responsibility to treat the lowest of the low so much better than our current subpar output.  

2020, electoral is going to swing it true.  2020, I'm going to be checking out women half my age.  2020, I'll still own books bound by bunny rabbit-skin...Depending on my distance from the reservation.  Squinting, I can still see some outbuildings.  I can't guarantee they won't soon resemble specks on a horizon.