sound and fury (signifying nothing)

There’s a line from a song by Sugarland: I fell in love out of college/a good man but a bad year.

Never have I been one to define my life with snippets of popular songs (who am I kidding?), but this one seems to ring especially true of late. A lot has been going on recently, and not much of it’s good.

• Andrew lost his job. Actually, that makes it sound like he misplaced it somewhere, or overslept and decided, “fuck it, I don’t need to work.” What happened was that he was cut by the greedy corporate assbastards at Clear Channel Communications. Thanks to the economy’s current state of shittiness, he’s been having trouble getting another one, even one that pays minimum wage and only offers part-time hours.
• I have a job, but it’s a) 20 miles away and b) more different from my previous one than I’d thought. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad to have it. And plasma “donation” and blood donation are cousins, but they’re more like the children of estranged siblings that live on opposite sides of the country. And that’s all I have to say about that.
• My car died. The little old Neon that could decided it just didn’t feel like it anymore. I was on my way to work one morning, not even out of Kernersville yet, when the temperature gauge spiked. Upon further examination, Jeff determined that the water pump blew. Of course, given that it’s a Neon, everything about it blows, but I had the stupid water pump replaced three years ago. Is that the shelf life on one of those things? Anyway, by random chance we happened to find a potential buyer, a guy who saw the car with the hood up at the gas station and gave us his card. He wanted it for parts for his kid’s Neon and was going to give me $400 for it. Then, when he came over and actually examined the car (which we’d asked him to do at first anyway), he decided it was only worth $150. Then he got in his Jaguar, drove off to Bible study (I am not making any of this up) and disappeared. Andrew called some salvage yards to see what we could get for it, but they all said they’d have to look at it and see. Problem is, you can’t drive the damn thing more than 2 miles without it overheating. We live 5 miles out in the country.
• My phone is gone, man, gone. And it’s really unlike me to lose things, especially those of value. But that little Nokia that’s been through so much (two screen deaths/resurrections, an overheating mishap in eastern Arkansas) apparently fell out of my possession at some point. Luckily I had an extra SIM card from the backup phone I bought the first time it died, and an old Blackberry. Given that I had to go with the el cheapo prepaid plan, though, I don’t think I’m gonna be having any quality conversations anytime soon.
• The Grand Prix blew a tire. Again, luck was on our side, even though he didn’t have a spare (still doesn’t): he was only a couple miles from home and right in front of a school. Plus, as I know from my many forays into Tire Changing Land, used rubber is one of the more inexpensive fixes for a car. However, it’s apparently im-fucking-possible to find in Kernersville, which blew me away. Of course, I hadn’t needed any tires (yet), but shit, there’s been a used tire place up the street just about any place I remember living, and Kernersville is the same size as Van Buren. However, we came up empty: a tire place that only sold new ones (and wanted $95), a tire place that didn’t “do” tires anymore, and, on a whim, a tire distributor/warehouse of some sort. Actually, that last was sort of serendipitous, because the woman in the front office possibly smelled our desperation and hock-shop stench (having just pawned Andrew’s guitar and our DVD players for money to get a tire and a tank of gas) and called half a dozen places in search of what we needed. The final place said “yeah, we have [whatever size tire it is Andrew's car takes], $25 installed”. When we got there (on the far side of Greensboro, and in the shady neighborhood where we got bad vibes from the Tolstoy selling the Acura), they checked their stock and said, “no, we don’t have that size.” Fortunately, though, they sent us to a little shack a couple blocks up, where they had at least half a dozen of them.

Now, I’m not so myopic that I’m going to cry and wring my hands and bemoan my fate. In fact, I’ve been counting my blessings lately that things aren’t worse: we’re both in reasonably good health (although he has no insurance, so if he gets sick, we’re fucked); I have a way to get to work (but, again, that’s all I have to say about that, at least for the time being – plausible deniability FTW); we live in a nice place with reasonable rent (here’s hoping the foreclosure bug doesn’t decide to bite Jeff in the arse).

It’s just an interesting contrast from when I first got here: even though I was pretty broke and didn’t yet have work, I had relatively few worries. In fact, looking back at it, it seemed nearly utopian, although I know I’m peering through the startlingly rosy glasses of hindsight. Just proves the Wisdom of Biggie: more money, more problems.

Music: Ryan Adams – The Sun Also Sets

Cancer sucks.

I’m kind of a cynical old bird. Well, I like to think I am, because if I didn’t wear such a veneer, I’d be raw and exposed to the harsh elements of life on a constant basis. And then, I suppose, I would become tough and cynical. Or I’d retreat into a world of my own creation and refuse to acknowledge reality. Or I’d die.

Reality is something I’ll doff my cap to. And the reality of the situation is this: life isn’t fair, but the fair only comes to town once a year. However, it’s all kinds of fucked up when a kid gets cancer.

I have enough problems in my life. In fact, these days I’m prone to crying at the slightest provocation. But I have a job. I have my health. I have a place to live and food to eat. I’m not being persecuted and I have the freedom to rail against injustices like the one I see before me, handle toward my hand.

And I’m trying not to politicize it, believe me. I’m trying to be impartial. But I can’t, see, because I have this thing called a soul. I have a sense of empathy, and I’m really starting to think that basic human compassion and American politics are mutually exclusive. I said it before, I’ll say it again: I know that this is America©, and that we have to let the Free Market© work things out, and we can’t let a Socialist Nanny State© coddle everyone from cradle to grave. But have we no decency? 

It’s actually sort of hypocritical, when you think about it. I’m talking about a kid who has cancer. He will die if he isn’t able to raise enough money for treatment. Yet it’s the same people who scream “think of the children!” for every conceivable offense, the same people who claim that they believe in a “culture of life*” who would say that the government shouldn’t interfere in this child’s case. 

What would these people say should be done about Brett? That Brett’s family should pull themselves up by their bootstraps? That his parents should have had money in savings to cover the costs? That the community should step up and contribute to help the family out?

That last I can agree with, even though I think it’s a damn shame that in our country we value money more than human life.

See, Brett is a kid with cancer. And I can’t think of anything that makes me hurt more than a kid with cancer. 

He has a rare form of cancer, what is basically equivalent to a melanoma on the tissue covering his brain. It breaks my heart that anyone would have to go through this, but a nine-year-old? For what purpose?

Anyway, the only reason I know about any of this is because Brett’s dad, Joe, is a Farker. I spend way too much time on that site, given that it’s a haven of trolls, flamewars, and pictures of cats with words on them. But you know what? As big a bunch of random weirdos as we are, we can make things happen when we make a collaborative effort. As is said whenever a small-town paper’s server buckles under our weight, as is said when we manage to make a child-star in a clown sweater a fashion icon, “behold the power of Fark”.

Members of this silly little community have sent, at present, over $15,000 to help pay for Brett’s treatment. The total money brought in by posting on different web forums amounts to over $30,000. Some Farkers have sent appeals to their local media to cover the story; this comes from MidnightSkulker:

Editor,

We hear too often of the cruel, inhumane, and unfair acts of people against their fellow man. Daily, we read about hate, murder, theft, exploitation, and cruelty. It is easy to forget that, as people, we are capable of far greater acts of decency than horror.

For four years, I have been a member of a sardonic, rude, crude, snarky group of people known as Farkers. We are the members of Fark.com, a user-submitted news collection site that usually takes a cynical view of the goings on of the world. There are verbal flamewars on religion, politics, and beer on a regular basis. But today, I am proud to be a member of this website, because it is a family.

I urge Islanders to visit www.carepages.com/carepages/brettjackson and consider donating to help Brett, or at least pass it on to those you know may help. Many of us here on PEI don’t have a whole lot of extra, but we will never have to see our children die because we can’t pay for medical treatment. Humanity is capable of great things. I have seen it and been a part of it, and now ask those of you who are capable to help as well. 

Still others, like Testiclaw, have contacted such influential and generous folks as Oprah Winfrey:

Dear Oprah,

I’m not that good at writing letters, and it’s tough to try to put into words the pain I feel for a family I hardly know.

Joe Jackson has a son, 9 year-old Brett, who is suffering from brain cancer. The good news is that he qualified to receive experimental drugs to treat his cancer. Unfortunately, Joe cannot afford the $100,000 bill that comes along with the drugs and hospital care.

I thank you for your time, and for your consideration. Just one kid, in one family, trying to live the rest of his life. Let’s get behind this 9 year-old and give his cancer something to worry about.

Bravo to them, to everyone who has dug into their wallets and given up their lunches and gone without their TotalFark subscriptions. While it’s incredibly sad that it has to be done in the first place, it makes me proud to be a Farkette.

*Yes, I know that’s just a catchphrase to rally the idiots who go to the polls only to vote based on the issue of abortion.