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There you go again, taking the easy way out and blaming the drugs and the alcohol. 

I was just sitting around by myself and wondering why no-one comes into the office on Holidays anymore. I remember the camradery of the good old days, when fear of the big MF really meant something. Oh, and all decisions were informed with at least a passing nod to, if not complete foundation upon, the question of whether this decision was the one that was going to get you fired or not.  

Well I wasn't sitting around completely alone. The janitor was here somewhere, meandering with a broom or mop as if he was some river in search of it's banks, or perhaps a near-blind old fellow padding around in silent in search of his lost sight. He mustta had a happy childhood, or at least a mis-spent youth. But there you go again, taking the easy way out and blaming the drugs and the alcohol. What about yourself - your youth certainly wasn't a living re-run of the Brady Bunch family. 

"And are you that much dumber than you were in (and just after) high school?" I asked myself. The only difference I notice in myself is a slight decrease in enthusiasmabolic function - a potential side effect clearly outlined in Life's warning label. [Kids, don't ask your parents, because (and speaking as a parent) I can honestly say that they don't know. Oh yeah, they are smiling, but they're not listening. Love and patience are the only things they can truly offer you. My advise to kids is to take them for what they are worth and forget about the rest.] 

And that's a little like the advice the bigMF gave us recently, when he said "...learn to treat every day as a kind of 'routine' wonder." Another way of saying it is to have a daily sense of appreciation that never quite escalates into radicalism or zealotry.  Keep working. Pay your taxes. And never, never forget how lucky you are.  The very plot of some post-war, existential,  modernist horror story doesn't seem that bad anymore, now that it is already here... now that it has become 'news' or 'commentary' and not the doomful prophesy it was originally meant to be. Like global warming.  (We always said it was too cold in Minnesota.) 

And so lies the fate of the revolution as well. Crowded out by the success of the theory of consumption. Gone, not with a bang but with a whimper. And the only soldiers left 'fighting for the cause' are the silent revolutionaries who have withdrawn from this life as we have created it. That has to be it. What I mean is that, if anyone deserves to have had his mind blown through a mis-spent youth it was certainly myself. These others that are clearly gone - they must be the only protesters left.  A mass -(but widely dispersed)- protest demanding that the world acknowledge their claim that 'This World Is Not For Everyone!'  

Now I've always had a healthy relationship with drugs and alcohol. Take alcohol for example, why do you think alcohol is so bitter. That's because it's saying to you "I don't want to do this to you bud, but I have to." It's a kind of 'tough love.'  It's the kind of love that they show between guys on beer commercials - the kind that really lasts.  Also, why do you think whiskey tastes so bad right after you brush your teeth? It's because it is trying to have a conversation with you, man, but your not listening!  That's how much it cares.   

Well, I've got a performance review coming up so I better get back to work. I wanna look my best so I'm doing a little review of the Employee Handbook over the long holiday weekend. (Just in case it comes up in conversation and I can quote a section or two.) 

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