Spot of Catch Up and a Metaphor in Book Five: Working Through the Maze 2018

Well… how’s that.

Yesterday, after leaving work early, I took my car to Ames in hopes that it can be repaired. Then went with Wife back to DM. No sexy times, not much of anything really, except for one moment where Wife very genuinely said that she was glad that we found each other and that she can’t imagine a version of us where we aren’t at least extremely good friends. So… there’s that, I guess?

This morning, Wife dropped me off at the Government Summit. The Summit itself was rather predictable. The four wealthiest counties had done all manner of research on Mental Health and Corrections: Solutions for Safer Patients and some such. Which… I mean… great. It is good to know that with an incredibly large budget, there’s no shortage of services we can offer. But for the rest of us? We can maybe barely afford about 8% of what was discussed. So… not much help. And it was nice to hear even the Republicans in the room discuss how severely fucked Mental Health Care had become in Iowa. But… like way too damned many people that won’t actually translate to them voting for a Democrat. Because while the Republicans in office may have completely fucked Mental Health Care, Medicaid, the Budget, Public Schools, and the environment? “Oh, we’re not Republican because of all that. We’re Republican because of marriage rights, abortion, and the 2nd Amendment.” You. fucking. idiots. Yes, please continue to sell out your future and your children’s futures over three minuscule FEDERAL level issues, you giant ass burgers.

Funny story… in a perfect world (meaning one where Republicans were ACTUALLY Republicans; ie Fought for State’s Rights) I would vote Republican on a Federal Level and Democrat on a Local Level. Because I believe a smaller, local, more connected government should make the ideas (traditional Republican belief) but I want that smaller, local, more connected government to make policy on behalf of all citizens regardless of income. Thus… Fed Rep, Local Dem… except the Republican Party has become a dark, twisted, mirror-verse horror-parody of itself.

Anyway, after the summit… went to Best Buy with Wife, then to Petsmart (so she could play with a kitty), then to Jared’s (so she could get her ring inspected), then to Hot Topic (so she could pick up the Ready Player One shirt she wanted). Then back to the apartment to load her car up with some boxes before I absconded with her car back to MTown. Safe drive, this time, no deer.

I unloaded the car and realized… I am in no shape to move into a house! Like… physically. I need to train. So I’m going to use some of the heavy boxes I brought with me tonight to do that during the next week and a half. After unloading the car, I had to do an hour of work (catching up on e-mails, calendaring cases that were set for trial, etc). THEN cook dinner. So… while 8:00 dinner is fairly common for my Wife… this is probably the latest I’ve eaten in MTown in a very long while.

NOW… as I drove a Metaphor struck me that I want to write out here as best as I can to subject it to scrutiny.

Scenario: Life, the world itself, is like a rundown local bar with an old fashioned jukebox for atmosphere.
Question: What if the jukebox just plays one song over and over and over?
Answer: Let’s look through history starting around 1890-

In the American South, the jukebox just kept playing “Dixieland Jazz” over and over and over again. A white person would go up, push a button, and play it… no need to even put money into it. From time to time, a black person would stand up intending to play a different song on the jukebox. Well, the American Southern White would just sit that person right back down in their booth or, if that didn’t work, would use violence to prevent that individual from getting to the jukebox. Now after some time, surprisingly, some of the White People started playing Elvis. This upset many of the white people in the bar because that was extraordinarily inappropriate music to be playing! Dixieland or nothing, THANK YOU! That was enough to discourage some but not all. SO now the bar would play hours and hours of Dixieland, but you’d still hear plenty of Elvis songs, even if over objection. Then a group of black people decided that they had QUITE ENOUGH of Dixieland after all of those damned years. People like Medger Evers, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr, and Malcolm X decided that it was time for ALL of them to stand up and march over to that jukebox. The battle was fierce. Medger was killed almost as soon as he had left his booth. Rosa got pushed down, hard, and kept from getting back up. Malcolm X, like a scene from Road House, just started fighting as hard as he could and stopped making progress towards the jukebox at all. Only MLK- beaten, battered, bloody, and bruised- reached the jukebox. He poured every cent he had into that machine and started selecting songs at random. “Georgia On My Mind,” “Beautiful World,” Miles Davis… just an abundance of new songs. He was killed anyway. After selecting his songs, he was shot and didn’t live to hear a single note of that new music.

But it got the ball rolling. No more were people content with letting “Dixieland” be the only song played. Everyone started selecting songs. The bar could go from Dixieland one song to Lil Wayne the next then to Elton John then to Phish. The music eccentricity could be a cacophony if you weren’t prepared for it. And lots of people were upset. Dixieland was still getting played from time to time, which upset a lot of people who had gotten damned sick of listening to it after so many years. But conversely, a lot of people were just plain sick of the different songs. They wanted either an all Jazz jukebox or an all Rock and Roll Jukebox or an all Folk Jukebox… this “all music, one box” thing seemed a little out of hand.

Then several years ago, the Bar Elected a “Jukebox President” that… instead of setting the price at 25 cents for everyone and making sure everyone got a turn (as had been the Jukebox President’s previous job) it seemed like THIS President had created two lines of access to the Jukebox. Elvis and Dixieland got to be in one line; but people requesting Phish, Miles Davis, Lilith Fair, Salsa, and Elton John got a different line. And, to the Elvis and Dixieland line, it seemed like the other line got to play 10 songs to every 1 of theirs. Now, they were intentionally ignoring the years and years when the only thing the jukebox played WAS Dixieland and Elvis… because they weren’t around then. So even though Elvis and Dixieland were old records that were getting worn out; the line requesting them thought that it should be a one to one. For every salsa song, Dixieland; for every Miles Davis song, Elvis. They got mad.

SO when they had the opportunity to bring in a new Jukebox President, they made damned sure to hire the guy that kept saying the ONLY thing he listened to was Dixieland and Elvis. When he got elected, he promised to flip the lines. He promised that for every person requesting something that WASN’T Dixieland or Elvis; he’d play a Dixieland or Elvis song. But that isn’t what he did. Not exactly. FIRST, he changed the pricing structure. Before, everything had been 25 cents. NOW the President raised Dixieland to 30 cents, Elvis to 65 cents and everything else was a dollar. People didn’t know that this Jukebox President was very close friends with the Jukebox Company that profited from the Jukebox spending. Meanwhile, the Dixieland and Elvis folks are momentarily miffed at the raised prices; but quickly console themselves because “Our guy punished those people who were cheating under the last guy! Yeah!! Our guy rules!!” After doing THAT, then the Jukebox President kept his promise to “reverse the lines.” So as for line preference, Dixieland got first dibs, then Elvis, then someone from the other line, then back to Dixieland. Except with the raised prices, what tended to happen most was Dixieland, Elvis, Dixieland, Dixieland, Dixieland, Dixieland, Elvis, Miles Davis. Slowly and slowly it seemed like Dixieland once again became the majority of what one would hear during an hour.

Here’s the scary part
That record is old and it is wearing down. Some people are looking to replace it with a Remix or an update; but so far… they’re just playing the same record and Jukebox President knows that sooner or later, that record is going to stop working. But he doesn’t have a plan to fix things, he certainly didn’t think to bring another copy of the record with him. So right now (yes, this VERY INSTANT) Jukebox President is going to all of the people who voted for him saying, “Those people in the other line? They’re super upset! Do you hear that kind of slowing on the record? How some notes are lower or held longer? That’s because THOSE PEOPLE are attacking the Jukebox. They’re trying to destroy the whole machine just so that they don’t have to hear Dixieland anymore! Are you going to let them do that?!”

And that’s where we are. Either people wake up and realize that Jukebox President is lying, trying to cause trouble, and fleecing even the people who like him… or Dixieland and Elvis join forces against the rest of the bar. I’m… a little scared to find out which one it’ll be.