Odd Is The Loneliest Number
April 18, 2012 Leave a comment
Odd. That describes me in a nutshell.
Flannery O’Connor, the great Catholic writer, was once quoted as saying “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.” So be it. I am in good company then.
Now that I am older and wiser (at least according to the aphorism) I am less jostled by every wind of fashion, less captivated by got-cha type of thinking typical of the penny-ante journalists so in vogue today. In more ways than one I have let odd take over.
Some odd thoughts:
A wise old preacher once told me “If it’s new it ain’t true. If it’s true it ain’t new.”
Truth has historical record. Lies, cheap novelty as in “Hope and Change.”
I agree with Wolcott’s assessment (see James Wolcott’s Vanity Fair article “Prime Time’s Graduation”)about the state of today’s movies being rather boorish and sophomoric and that television/cable TV is far outpacing movies with its much higher quality of writing and directing and a greater depth of characters. Yet, I despair of any good thing coming out of either.
Truly, I cannot remember the last time I rented a movie. I don’t remember the title of the movie, either. I haven’t been to theatre in well over two years. For what reason I did attend is forgotten.
TV: I don’t watch The Living Dead, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Real Housewives of Chicago’s North Side or all manner of well-written, well-crafted dramatic episodes or all manner of crime investigations, all manner of (fill-in-the-blank) “finely textured” serial programming that Hollywood cranks out. Though superbly crafted these often prurient programs hold nothing of interest or value to me. I am happily odd without them in my head.
You can believe me when I say that I don’t care about dead people who hang around unwanted or that Don Draper is losing himself in his work and the next untapped babe or that Walt is a terminally living drug producer and seller (Breaking Bad, like many cable shows in fact outrage me. That anything like this can of trash is available on TV for kids and adults to view is unthinkably criminal. I’m a mature adult. I don’t care about the show’s supposedly ‘mature themes.” I think the show is substantive abuse.)
Look around. We consume comparison: commercials, magazines, TV programs, the Shahs of Sunset. I could easily imagine that Obama’s class warfare rhetoric would quickly lose its teleprompter zip if our culture didn’t keep promoting keeping up with the Shahs of Sunset and the like.
Contentment has been dislodged from the human psyche and has gone missing. Ubiquitous high-profile bling now holds court. Disparity is highlighted daily. And, as a result, charity (in the form of higher taxes) is demanded in order to make all things equal. Somehow, this equates to social justice.
These days low-income people can dwell on income disparity 24/7. Many now have big screen TVs and microwaves. And, before them now on the big hi-def screen are the ostentatious rich: The Real Housewives of Atlanta. It would be easy for anyone watching to say “The Grass IS greener…” Envy and covetousness are in your face, especially when the bas-relief is provided by HDTV.
Beside this, BHO and other talking heads of the liberal media are telling them that the rich need to do their part. This demand is ludicrous.
With his bully pulpit BHO promotes class warfare. He tells us that the answer to your problems is to take money from someone else! Isn’t this the mentality typically found among Chicago street gang members but is now code-named Social Justice? (BTW: What we need is not a single payer health care system. What we need is single payer taxpayers where every single person does their part and not just 50 % of the nation. Everyone should be invested in our country.)
Am I human? Upon occasion:
I have been known to watch Guy Fieri (I think he’s cute.) on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives hamming it up with restaurant owners. And, sometimes when I’m in a really grisly mood I watch Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations (Anthony, Paula Deen can cook for me anytime, your blackballing of her cooking style notwithstanding).
Speaking of food, I don’t own a Blackberry, iPhone or other hand-held electronic device which could bleep in a restaurant and interrupt a Crème brûlée with a dear friend. This even though I work in a technical industry and could easily finger pointed barbs with the best of them. I am old school. Pen and paper work well. Spitballs, too. And, if the world is going to end I am prepared. I won’t need an iPad telling me that I’m going to be with the Lord – that’s already been documented.
Without the gizmos I don’t tweet. I don’t send 140 character snippets of pithy self-brined revelation out to chomping-at-the-bit (or byte) followers. Come to think of it I don’t think I have any followers! (This post has enough characters to choke a gaggle of hand-held devices and their indentured slaves.)
‘What does she do?”
I mostly read, talk to myself when no one is around, go to church, dance wildly to the Romantics’ What I Like About You, annoy my family and routinely infuriate people I don’t know on the internet.
How odd. But with a name like Sally Paradise how could I not be the odd woman out or the 
.
Cindy Wity 