I was going to write about the above — and perhaps I shall still. Certainly, it involves a bitch of the redheaded (bottle) and old (truly) variety. A quality moment to be sure and worthy of filing under “no good deed goes unpunished.” We have a delivery, two dames, and a what would be viewed as a crime only by the paranoid.

Okay, maybe we’ll do it like this; a paragraph on the nonsense and a little about life back on the planet, which I regret to see as I write this on a beautiful Sunday morning on the last day of May, is not looking too well. Nature is happy for the respite, but mankind is losing its collective mind. America is drowning and burning and I can’t help but think this is a deliberate evil plan orchestrated by monsters.

Perhaps this is where these two seemingly unrelated topics intersect. The redhead, a neighbor, let’s call her Mary since that’s her name and we only protect the innocent. She (and what happened) is a microcosm of the present situation. She is a monster. And like all good monsters, she doesn’t look like one. The old lady thing is a genius cover. She’s aggressive, bullying, insincere, devoid of empathy, a liar: like her larger counterparts who make the news.

This morning brings more footage of protests and strife in major cities. There is a great deal of assigning of blame and righteous anger. I get it. I also can’t help but wonder if this is precisely what “they” want — to have us at each other’s throats, to start a civil war in the midst of a “horrific pandemic” that winnows people out. I pray to God that was not part of the plan…

To return to Micro Mary: she utilizes the same methods – blame, pitting people against each other, dining on the drama of other people’s pain. What happened was that I, by accident, received her delivery of groceries, which I returned to her once it was sussed out whose they were. Here we can bring in a giant of industry: Jeff Bezos who owns Amazon and Whole Foods. The groceries, inside and out, had nothing to indicate whose they were. There was just the Amazon “smile” and the Whole Foods logo. Top secret. I opened the bags to see if there was a receipt with somebody’s…anybody’s name on it. Not even a number for Amazon/Whole Foods. Oh, I forgot…we should have that memorized or on us at all times. Anyway, who cares right? I certainly didn’t. The deadly delivery was sorted out in minutes.

Yet, in this sad pokey grocery order were — wait for it — pantyliners! Again, I don’t care. But I do think it was these pantyliners and the sad pokiness of Mary’s things that revealed too much of her miserable self to me, which is what led to her lashing out a day later. For monsters, controlling the narrative is of the utmost importance. By the way, the resemblance to Pennywise is not much of an exaggeration.

The secrets, lies, the fragile ego under all the brash — sound familiar? Seems like just another day in America. And, having the goods on people. I don’t mean merely a Twitter storm; I mean the real goods. Can’t appear weak — God only knows what would happen. People might think you’re human. So, these crafty monsters deflect and maneuver.

The next morning, before I began remotely working, Mary calls me. I have to say framing the accusation by positing a hypothesis was quite skillful. She begins by saying that she was up all night wondering about the grocery affair. People are dying all around us — terrible painful deaths — and this is what keeps her up at night. I won’t bore you with the details but she indirectly accuses/blames me. I ask her what she’s getting at because I want her to come out and say it. Coward. Did I mention that characteristic of all of these monsters? She says, “You take care.” Which I know is, “Fuck you.” Fine.

As we are spoon-fed propaganda and bread and circus, those in power don’t seem to care too much about the death toll, the hate, the anger and destruction. I noticed yesterday afternoon that they launched a rocket. Courtesy of Elon Musk who is another very important monster from another planet. The timing is interesting, isn’t it? Good way to distract people, if only temporarily, from the fighting in the streets to watch money go up into space. And it worked. SpaceX it’s called. For a soi-disant genius that’s not the cleverest name for whatever all this is.

Regarding Mary and the other big fish: I swing from fury, resignation, and disgust. A dear friend tells me to write it down — but just the facts. Don’t editorialize. My brain has a hard time with that one.

Here goes nothing. We’re being duped, and while being duped we are dying, our society is crumbling, monsters are stealing us blind, the very rich are getting richer…but I do believe we can rehabilitate the world and ourselves. However, that’s a lot more work than tearing it down.

Mary, well she’s a malevolent c*&t.

And that’s a fact — Jack!

Clare

Images: Laura, Mad Max franchise, Gretel and Hansel, Stephen King’s It, and Mickey Spillane’s pulp crime novels.