Maxwell Woodger Esq.
Wednesday, 9 August 2006
I did it! – I broke away from the main frame and disconnected from everyday life. The summer wanted to burn my epidermis and I let it. Everyone needs a holiday, and Christmas doesn’t count. I filed my pre-sabatical copy and boarded a jet propelled people carrier to the Greek Islands.
I needed to reconnect with civilization’s roots and swim in the sea. You see, I might spend 11 months of the year deep in the funk of social fabric, but for one twelfth of the year I need to let go and sink deep beneath the surface of the sea to regroup and catch starfish.
I caught one too! But I had to let the beautiful crustacean go…
Oh well.
So as I sipped the nectar of the gods and watched the Acropolis from my penthouse apartment, I forgot all about skateboarding, gigs and the debauched standards of Crossfire.
It felt good, but I knew the itch to make contact with the mainframe was going to happen as sure as a mosquito bite. Luckily Greece is dry in the summer and Mosquitos are far and few between.
However, on one fateful morning, the heat had got to me and my sheets were damp with sweat so I awoke and turned on the television. Normally, foreign television doesn’t faze me because I cannot get to grips with the weird and personalised definition of culture a foreign land might blurt out of its shit box, but this shit box came with cable. All the sweet visions of Zeus’ Temple and wild octopus were wiped from my cortical stack as CNN blasted reports of the Israeli-Lebanese conflict.
Goddammit! There’s MORE war!…
I sat through endless 24 hour coverage of a conflict that pitches two of the most selfish entities against one another in a battle of beliefs. Wolf Blitzer had his moustachioed grin transmitting live from Tel Aviv whilst the soon-to-be famous anchor girl Hala Gorani repped her end in Beirut.
The innocent were being slaughtered and CNN couldn’t get enough of it. Hell! The only alternative news was a special report by the Mary Magellan of global war-reporting Christiane Amanpour entitled “The life and Times of Osama- Is one of your students a terrorist leader?”
Otherwise it was golf.
I tried to divert my attention by watching the complimentary DVDs my suite had to offer, but alas the titles reaped even more doom and gloom- The Constant Gardner, Lord of War, Hotel Rwanda… Good movies but bad vibes.
I suppose a holiday is too much to ask for nowadays. If you try and turn the other cheek to life’s atrocities they’ll only bite back harder on your conscience. Today I am back in the mix with a cold diet coke on the table and a steady drip of fear and loathing being pumped into my system, and for some strange reason it feels good to be back!
* I just heard an oil slick is making it’s way up the coast from Lebanon to Greece thanks to Israeli missile strikes. I hope the starfish I caught is alright… No one asked him what he thought.