Thursday, April 21, 2011

Clown Country


I am in the process of reading The Post-petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook by Albert Batès. There's a lot of interesting stuff in there, even if I don't agree with the author's vision of the World that I find a bit simplistic. But hey, I don't have half his credentials so who am I to judge?

I couldn't resit sharing this quote I found in the book: 


The United States is the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, yet its inhabitants are strikingly unhappy. Accordingly, we present to the rest of mankind, on a planet rife with suffering and tragedy, the spectacle of a clown civilization. Sustained on a clown diet rich in sugar and fat, we have developed a clown physignomy. We dress like clowns. We move about a landscape filled with cartoon buildings in clown-mobiles, absorbed in clownish activities. We fill our idle hours enjoying the canned antics of professional clowns. We perceive God to be an elderly comedian. Death, when we acknowledge it, is just another pratfall on the boob tube. “Bang! You’re dead!” – James Howard Kunstler, 2005

Oh, and for my fellow Canadians always looking for ways to laugh at the Americans (little kids always bitch about big boys - usually behind their backs), we're not  that better here than in the States.  




No comments: