There’s Nuthin’ On

I went to a Tom Waits concert a while ago and after he was done playing and he had left the stage the audience wouldn’t stop clapping and cheering for an encore. It was an older theatre that had curtains on the stage and after a considerable amount of cheering the curtains began to slowly open. The stage was dark. A spotlight came on and there was Tom, sitting on a lawn chair beside a worn-out end table with a lamp on it, and at his feet, there was a table with an old TV on it. He was holding a beer and was dressed in a bathrobe. The TV had nothing but static. He turned to the audience after they had quieted down and said, “There’s nuthin’ on.” Then the curtains closed. There is nothing on now except the usual litany of disasters, political malfeasance, war, and societal breakdown. It’s getting kind of like an old vinyl record that has a skip and it keeps playing the same few bars over and over. Sometimes I want to scream, “I’m awake already so quit shouting in my ear.” I’m not sure what the concept is called but a friend of mine that used to work at a magazine said that they could recycle articles every six months to a year because there was a certain amount of attrition. Old subscribers would drop off and new subscribers would take their place. Doomers who have been around for a few years have heard and accepted most of the news but it keeps coming. Maybe the onslaught is an attempt to lure in some new subscribers. I keep looking each day to see what events have rocked the world recently but it’s always a little like an exaggerated version of yesterday’s horrors.More wars, more refugees, more violent protests, more starvation, more destruction of the natural world, more hatred, more persecution, more insanity, more inhumanity, more ugliness: Quelle surprise. One of my friends was widely known in our circle as the single most well-informed member of the group. I asked him once how he managed to keep so current and he looked at…

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