Happy Birthday

by Ed Sofield

Due to some unavoidable technical problems (i.e. – technically I’m fucking broke and cannot pay for Net access), you’ll notice there has been no new column from yours truly.

I have to be honest in saying that since my birthday (July the 4th, happy birthday America, land of the free and home of the filthy rich) absolutely nothing has popped into what passes for my mind to, in turn, pass on to you – my Constant Reader.

But – maybe, just maybe…….I can pull something out for ya. Just this once.

Anger is something beautiful (to start out prosaically). Love seems to have been filtered down into “Love Connection,” and any other number of emotions – happiness, sorrow, etc, on and on – are likewise manipulated by ‘The Man’ to boost ratings for TV shows and their dumb-ass summer blockbuster movies. But anger, I feel, is one of the last truly unpredictable things left in the human animal.

It can come about for no good reason – one day, you just wake up on the wrong side of the bed, so to speak. And on other occassions, we know damn well what starts the nuclear chain reaction in our stomachs (BTW – that’s where anger comes from, the stomach; love comes from the heart….and fear comes from the bowels). That first domino to fall could be anything – someone you see on the way to work, the weather outside during your lunch, that really bad date you just got done with and would like to do over just once so you could end it sooner the second time around. Or, as in my case, the first bit of anger could come from trying to drown out a stupid goddamned Fat-Necked Britany Spears/*NSUCK TV commercial while breaking down to you guys…….sorry. I’ll be alright. Call it Anger Management.

As an advanced technological society (which we have been for roughly a century or more), we tend to lose sight of simple little things like emotions and such…….but let’s give ourselves another hundred years…..if we don’t blow ourselves up first.