L'enfer, c'est les autres.
Translation: Hell is others.
This existentialist motto is one that captivated me as a French major in college. So simple, yet so bold, and completely terrifying. Even though I grew up in the Jewish faith (well, mostly), I still grew up in the southern Bible belt and heard for years about a vision of Hell being all firey and brimstoney and Satan like. Yikes.
And then along came Jean-Paul Sartre, with a completely different explanation for the afterlife in the event that you don't play by the "rules" in the present life. Because what could be worse than being tortured by nemeses for the remainder of eternity?
Well, obviously my buddy J-P never experienced a political season on Facebook (I wonder if he and Simone would have been FB official...)...
Now, before you get entirely heated up and ready to scream your head off at whatever opinion I don't care about, allow me to note that this is not a political post. I don't care who wins the Presidency, honestly. I don't care who the Vice President is. And I can guarantee you that I couldn't name a single Senator in either Georgia or Virginia. Unless they put a bumper sticker on Mickey's rear, I'm probably not going to notice one either.
But anyone who has logged onto Facebook in the last 2 weeks, and for the next few weeks until this painfully annoying process is put to rest, has been completely berated by ridiculous political commentary that we don't really want. Whatever Mitt-bama nonsense people are selling, I ain't buying.
And I pretty much reached my breaking point this morning when the political season managed to ruin my work out. My holy sacred escape, the one time of day that I get entirely to myself, out of contact, free of frustration. I work out in a basement with no cell phone reception, and the only reason I tolerate my crappy musty apartment gym is because there is no cell reception. No one can find me (hopefully no creepers are reading this...). But this morning, my mp3 player was dead. So at 5:45am, struggling to wake up and get my energy going, I figured I could fake it by putting the TV on for some entertainment. In the words of the great Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, "Big Mistake. Huge."
There was only 1 channel available on the TV. An unnamed news network. Ok, not terrible I guess, maybe I'll luck out and catch the sports and weather segments. Wrong. It just happened to be Election Watch hour while I was down there. So at first I decided to give it a go because it couldn't possibly be worse than tiredly running in silence in the wee hours of the morning. Yup, wrong again. It was painful. My body was physically in pain listening to these pundits scream at each other over and over again. I would have rather found the "Nails on a Chalk Board" station.
Therefor, I postulate that L'enfer is NOT les autres. L'enfer is in fact American political season. I hate it, I hate every bit of it. The left wing, the right wing, the middle, ALL of it. I can't wait until November 7th. No, I take that back, maybe the 8th is safer. Atleast by then, I will be able to map out a full listing of all the countries that everyone will insist they are moving to in order to cope with the results of the election. I will then use that map to plan my next vacation of where NOT to go. I'd rather take a trip to L'enfer, because les autres sound way more tolerable than an eternity of listening to any more debates, news casts, Facebook posts, or roadside advocates.
And in case you were wondering about my political affiliations...Mickey/ Jackson 2012 all the way! I'm guessing I'll probably have to write that one in though. The fever hasn't quite caught on at a national level, mostly just in our apartment.
Oh, which reminds me...Rule #6...no bumper stickers.
0 comments:
Post a Comment