During the current local and worldwide battles of political, religious, ideological, philosophical, industrial, disaffected, unreal chaos, this newspaper has printed a basic, down-to-earth and to-hell-with-mushroom-cloud-threats real person's battle with cancer [see, "Walking down the cancer road," April 25].
I've been thinking of this while I've been watching CH 9 KCTS' account of the battles and burnings-alive attendant to the translations and interpretations of the Bible in the 1400s and 1500s in England and Germany.
I'm not sure I can tie all this together at this point, so it may never be completed. But I want to make comparisons, if I can, between mankind's real dangers and real enemies and the fantasies, superstitions, ignorance, fear, and aggressive behaviors that make us kill each other over horse apples.
A recent local newspaper article revealed that the more secure, better-educated children of Mercer Island have notably more behavior problems than the young people in communities of lesser advantages. What's going on?
And the media are still trying to explain the whacko murder-suicides at the University of Washington and Virginia Tech. They're also trying to explain the Seattle Jewish Center murders and the murder accusations against U.S. soldiers operating in the ruins of Iraq.
And then, to my shock and awe, news reports say our biggest U.S. money crop is marijuana - and it isn't even taxed because of our modern prohibition. Forget mushroom clouds; let's have clouds of mushrooms!
One of Seattle's big daily newspapers employs a female professional business success counselor, with a title half a paragraph long, to write about the television show The Apprentice. This expert uses it as a teaching reference for her on-the-make students. What the hell kind of sense does it make to model oneself on the preening, hair-challenged oaf Donald Trump? Is this why so many of our business leaders are being indicted and jailed and why so many more should be?
Did that Virginia Tech killer get some of his derangement from watching these money-hungry noodniks sucking up to this rich huckster?
While our real person was writing his cancer account for this paper, unreality continued to be rampant: Deal or No Deal contestants, selected for their potential to act out hysteria; American Idol hopefuls willing to take abuse from creepy celebrity panelists; and the half-baked Medium show turning clairvoyance into big ad revenues and corporate profits. And don't get me started on the female stereotypes on television portraying cops, lawyers and profets: titillations swallowed by our clueless population.
And at the same time, the movies gave us such spoofs as Grindhouse: zombies, gratuitous violence, pus, and plague... as if real disease isn't enough. It's all highlighted by the almost instantaneous recovery of a leg amputation followed with the installation of a giant machine gun on the remaining stump, and the appearance of the film's creator, Quentin Tarantino doesn't help: he looks like a zombie/suicide murderer without makeup. The only good thing about this childish garbage was that I left after the first half, not knowing there was a second-half ordeal to come.
Fantasy, pretense and denial: a few humans have made magic for the rest of us in science and technology and learning, but most of us remain in the dark.
Now, out of the dark comes this newspaper's Matthew Wilemski: a real person in a real life in a real battle. Yay! Win! Matthew Wilemski!
Rainier Beach writer and artist Gordon Anderson may be reached at this link.
