Cursed by Wisdom
So, I fell out of bed today, and my head throbbed like I'd finished a liter of Tennessee Jack all to myself. I took a look at the time on my phone, and I was surprised the alarm hadn't gone off yet. (Time...time?...time! What's the point, really? It's only another way of enslaving humans in their routine! How much has the concept of time caused us unnecessary pain? Wait...why am I even thinking about this?) I cursed as I noticed ten messages on my phone. I held the phone up to my ear, and was instantly soured by the content of the texts.
"Hey Mike, this is Jim, and Pete. We were wondering what your doing. We're really bored, and tired of playing Call of Duty. Wanna go to the bar?"
"Hi Mike, this is Rachel. I know it's late, but I thought if your not doing nothing we could Netflix and chill?"
"Hey, this is Tim your cable installer. I just wanted you to know that you can get an upgrade on your premium channels if you only pay an additional fee of 12.95 a month...etc."
"Hello sir, this is Lisa, I just wanted to let you know about the Caribbean Cruise you've just won! Please give us a call, and have your credit card ready, so we can identify you as our winner!"
All idiots, and so invasive! Were these people really friends and acquaintances that I gabbed with day in/day out? It seemed so impossible, and the need for my 'smart-phone' seemed to tirelessly evade me. What was the point if this damned gadget allowed time wasting games like 'FarmVille'? I ran downstairs, and out onto my back porch where I angrily began to smash my phone to pieces on the unyielding floor of polished stone. I didn't even realize that my roommate Nick was there, observing me while he puffed his cigarette.
"Why the Hell did you do that, Mike?," Nick asked with a shock.
"Oh, hey, didn't realize you were here. My phone just seems so irritating today, I can't understand why I've had the damn thing for so long."
I stated all this rather stoically, while on hands and knees I continued to smash the device methodically until there was absolutely no hope for it's recovery. After thoroughly disabling the piece of garbage, I brushed my slacks off, and stood up.
"Don't you got to go to work? I thought you had to open Jet's Pizza today."
*
On the way to the awful grind that Nick so aptly reminded me of, I was struck by all the nauseating eye-sores on the highway. The sheer magnitude of these billboards was such, that I had to pull off to the side of the road, almost hitting an old lady driver in the process. Why should mankind always have these mountainous ads for products leering at him/her while on the way to work? It just seemed deeply depressing, these smug faces that nobody knows trying to sell a person things in order for them to achieve the superficial happiness that's portrayed by an overtly cheery actor.
As I returned to the road, another colossal hamburger ad whizzed by, and I found myself similarly distracted by the presets of radio stations I had selected. I suddenly had a hankering for something different, and tried desperately to surf through the flood of over-excited, misogynist shock-jock bile, and neoconservative brainwash, (not to mention liberal PC culture that was just as harmful to society as was the evangelical christians who planned with glee to revel in the corpse of a destroyed world as long as it got them to heaven faster!) to find an oasis of classical music that my mother once played for me in my youth. I never liked it then, and I couldn't understand what drew me to it now. Here I was, a diehard fan of 'Free Beer and Hot Wings', blasting Vivaldi and Bach like it was my bread and butter! In my reverie I didn't realize that I had missed all the exits that would bring me swiftly to Jet's in time to open for the day.
When the fog of contemplation finally wore off, I realized that I was parked on top of a parking lot bumper, with a magnificent view of the lake. I stared at it's placid beauty, and felt very alone in the world. I wondered why I was experiencing so many changes of heart in just one day. How was a man with so many differing points of view from his own society expected to live in that society? I felt like I would need a lobotomy to enjoy what I once had reveled in so readily like a rutting pig.
Continuing to engage these darkly disturbing thoughts, and gazing out at the liquid, I was suddenly distracted by a loud whistle. It was my friend Terrance, and he had spotted me at the park. He strolled over to my car, and popped his fro inside.
"Hey, Mike, you going to the kegger tonight? What the hell you doing outta work today, anyway?"
"Thinking, Ter...I'm just thinking. Hey, have you ever noticed all those ugly endorsements out on the highway?"
"Not really. But whenever I see them Arby's commercials, I get hungry as Hell....Haha! 'We got the meats'...Love that shit!"
"Yeah, um, I was just thinking about something you talked about in the past. You still do those graffiti runs late at night where you tag buildings with that name you came up with...what was it?...Ghostkilla?...or was it something else?...whatever the case, do you still crawl on top of buildings, and scale fences and billboards just to get your message out there?..."
"Yea, yea. So what?," Terrance was leaning up against a tree near the car now. He had a blunt lit, and offered it to me after a long inhalation. I took a quick drag, and then continued.
"...Yea, so this world is intolerable with all the expectations it puts on us. To tell you the truth, I'm tired of only being a passive consumer. I'd like to fight back like you do, and subvert the oppressive media regime."
It was then for the first time that Terrance's face lit up. I must admit, I couldn't tell if it was from the delightful OG Kush, or my proposition. After what seemed like a lifetime, he turned from his casual pose by the tree, and handed me the roach with a smile.
"I'm down."
Since this momentous agreement, it's just been Terrance, and me, fearlessly mounted atop various placards, ads, and billboards that gaze brutally down on drivers each night during twilight hours. I'm poor as shit, and I barely find ways to feed and clothe myself, but I'm doing what comes natural. It has become Terrance's, and my aim to topple, and deprave every incorporated headline, and blatant form of product placement in this dried out burg of ours. I want to give the freedom back to the people, and so far making fun of the billboards, and using the power of comedy is the only way I can attempt to do so. Perhaps I have been 'cursed by wisdom', but I'm going to try to find benefit from this freak occurrence for as long as it so plagues me.
The End