It is National Clown week again. Every year I collect more images of these frightening clowns because they are such a metaphor of LIES that clowns are HAPPY, HAPPY, HAPPY. Even the seemingly happy clowns may well be so on the outside and yet still be hateful on the inside. We can thank literature, films, cartoons and the advertising industry for creating this phenomenon. It brings out the rant in me.
Once I started this particular post I realized I’d gotten into something that was so unpleasant, so disgusting I wanted to quit. It was funny, but I don’t want these hideous creatures around me. I don’t’ want this ugliness, hate and fear to poison what I am trying to say. If I write something beautiful (it could happen), it would be difficult to separate the words from these images.
And THAT became yet another layer of my reality – of our world – to address, to focus my attention. There are associations galore for me in this truth, humor, joy, beauty beneath the corruption and decay – AND visa versa. From the most intimate (my inner voice) to global politics. All around me I see consumerist cultural things that are supposed to represent fun, health, good, nourishment, entertainment, etc. – yet they might be carriers of poisons, toxicities, environmental degradation, slave labor, drug dependency, allergies, empty calories, wildlife destruction, human rights violations and death.- fast food
- cheap goods
- big cars
- convenience food
- cleaning products
- diet products
- cosmetics
- pesticides
- chocolate
- diamonds
- put down humor
- exploitation entertainment
- disney empire
- credit cards
- golf fucking courses
- cigarettes
- guns
- botox injections
Each of the items in the above list isn’t ‘bad’ on its face. The ugliness potential exists in each of these items in factual, verifiable ways. These things have gone past the point. Like chocolate. Nothing wrong with chocolate, but I have found out how corporate greed has enslaved children to harvest cocoa. And unhealthy additives and substitution are corrupting chocolate. Thankfully there is not one item in the above list that is in any way vital to life. I no longer want to be an apologist for the sake of seeming agreeable. I don’t buy the arguments of letting the market decide or this is a response to what people demand. Our nation’s well being, our children’s lives are at stake. We choose to live in a civil, healthy society or bring in the clowns. The hypocrisy of not allowing hemp to be grown or used in this country while spending trillions of dollars to shove transfats down our children’s throats and then screaming they are obese and need diet programs, that is scary. Note: I don’t advocate banning all things because they are “bad” for you, just regulating and truth about danger.
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