The Illusion of Speed

Face the Machine and then you can face yourself. - UK Subs

Do we really live in sped up times? Everybody says so, so we probably are not. I was thinking about that for three reasons.

Firstly, this summer sure has come and gone in a fucking hurry. Just like summers did when the two months of trouble called summer vacation I enjoyed as a boy came to an end. One day you are Free as a wild horse, the next you are back in the day prison of your be true to your motherfucking school.

Every year but one of my Septembers before I became a sawmill hand has become one compressed memory. Everybody went back to school where we would look like hopeful dogs out the window (schools still had a lot of windows to smash then) at the sunsplash beer guzzling mountains in the distance and wish we were there, wish we were anywhere but between the bells of doom that replace the chimes of Freedom once Labour Day is finished with.

Secondly, is it just me or does Gordon Campbell's recently announced appointment to the Order of British Columbia seem just a tad rushed? Around the sawmill Gordon Campbell is what we would call a cocksucker. One of those people you see walking around with their mouth wide open waiting for the fucking boss to come by and shit in it so they can tell him how good it tastes. Gordon Campbell ought to reflect on the wisdom of Groucho Marx before he gets his pat on the head from the Lieutenant Governor: "I don't want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member."

Thirdly, some people think Dick Cheney should not be writing about confidential discussions to bomb the fuck out of Syria so soon after leaving office. It has only been about five years since those discussions took place. Used to be everybody involved in such a murderous discussion would be long dead before it got written about in a history book that damn few people would read. Cheney does not give a fuck. He will be dead soon enough anyway. It is everyone else who is going to be looking over their shoulder for a hash-stoked Syrian assassin the rest of their lives, not him.

Some people say five years is a long time in our sped up rebel century. Maybe they are right. It does seem like one fuck of a long time since George Bush was the American President. It does seem like a lifetime ago I was watching the second plane smash into the World Trade Center. It does seem like a century since the cod stocks dried up off the Newfoundland coast. It seems like it was several lifetimes ago that I was taught in school that the forests of British Columbia were endless.

In the end, however, I do not believe we live in a sped up world at all. The only thing that has been sped up is the Machine that has been feeding us bullshit faster and faster - so fast we sometimes have a hard time thinking for ourselves. An overused Machine that is having a hard time keeping up and just might be breaking down when the Machine's owners need it the most.