http://lyndsaycambridge.com/wp-content/themes/dropdown.php This morning I was starting my fire with bits of newspaper, and it so happened that a copy of The New York Times from some months ago contributed to these pyrogenics. No headlines are quite so interesting as old headlines – I sometimes find that it takes me a few extra minutes to get the fire started just because something catches my eye from my paper-stack. But what I found made me alternate between disgust and wonder, that there could be a society somewhere, far away from Wildcat Mountain, of such moral decrepitude and intellectual vapidity that it had news articles like these (and this was just on ONE PAGE of this newspaper):
Nawābshāh One article was called “You Are What You Stack,” about buying coffee table books. “In the aspirational space known as the living room,” this article preached at me, “coffee table books tell the world what kind of person you want to be.” (Now if only I had a coffee table. (Or a living room.))
Another was called “If A Picasso Had Buttons.” The article was about the growing industry storing clothing for the uber-rich. Their clothing gets treated very well, apparently, cleaned with all kinds of chemicals (which also can show the world what kind of person you want to be, apparently – organic, heavy-duty, gluten-free, whatever), individually wrapped and placed in expensive storage buildings with advanced climate-control systems. “Like treasured works of art, the clothing of the rich is not just stored but pampered.” I was actually kind of glad this article was run, just because it confirmed me in my plan to write a letter to Pope Francis asking him to reopen the cases for canonizing Robespierre and Madame DeFarge. I mean really, talk about fattening yourselves for the day of slaughter.
Then there was “Roll Over? Fat Chance.” It was about gyms and special diets for dogs. “More than half the dogs in America are overweight, giving rise to new diet and exercise programs.”
I had to write these words down, they were such a satire, before crumpling up this single sheet of paper and putting it in the stove. What is alive today, tomorrow is cast into the furnace.
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