changeover

i cant remember where i heard it first but ive always remembered this description of how folks boil up frogs. or maybe it was lobsters, i dont know, something awful but what i remember is that if you turn up the heat slowly, starting with tepid water, and then let it come to a boil, they dont realize theyre being boiled until its too late.

thats how it has felt in a country so dependent on the media for truth and reality. or even just information.


(photo by alfred eisenstaedt, 1945)

i was reading something in the austin chronicle today about a film thats getting premiered at the film segment at south by. the editorial description, or the film bio that got submitted and reprinted, was about the town of crawford. it was a sleepy town, until bush moved there and then it began to enjoy a wakeup or something. but then when bush became unpopular "sometime after the invasion of iraq"- excuse me?

at what point does anyone fact check the revision of history? esp recent history? bush wasnt unpopular after the invasion of iraq. in fact, i heard nothing but reports of popularity polls up until a few minutes ago (ok a year, or around the time when someone else was introduced out of nowhere as a hopeful for the next election and he wasnt called a quack or had his family examined and he had apparently really deep pockets to run an unprecedented campaign in the most expensive competion yet-but who am i?)), when it became clear that a change was happening and then the mediamind got cleverer. really, like a cockroach.

do you remember when travel changed into what it is now, where you do everything but a pole dance to get through security? and anyone talking about what was happening looked fearful that theyd be considered unamerican? does anyone remember those tiny little dvds that were supposed to be the next big thing and if you just bought a dvd player in the bigger size well just forget it, you were goin to have to replace it and all your movie library? (just asking, that was just an alzeimer's quiz ;)

this happens with every changeup as far as i can see: a change is looming and the wheel that before was spinning endless popularity reports and cnn special editions of bush defending himself now instead find a way to absorb itself into an acceptable format in order to co-opt it and take it over.

did anyone else notice that suddenly the entire internet was owned by barack obama the week of primaries? who knew he had the cash? oh yeah, he didnt. so who did? im not even faulting obama; maybe his choice of who he does business with, but its damned sinister. and now to read that bush was unpopular after the invasion is really intolerable- like, um, hello?

if no one remembers what just happened, and we move quickly off into next things at this rate, nothing ever really happened or ever will. its all just fancy. reversible. collective fantasy. actually its a kind of drug to induce a pacifying stupor in place of thinking, which, if i were a cockroach, id patent.