Bizarroland Interlude: Normaler and Normaler

8 January 2011, ca. 12:45pm

Four people confirmed dead. On the other side of town, the phone keeps ringing, my mother’s ear glued to the receiver. Meanwhile, the wife and I sit in front of the television with our MacBooks. Equipped with layers of audiovisual devices, we try to make sense out of non-sense.

I keep thinking about Dad, about what his reaction would have been. I can hear his apocalyptic declarations.

“It’s like we live in Israel now. This kind of shit happens in the Middle East.”

“This country is completely fucked up.”

“This state is a political disaster.”

“There’s gonna be a riot in this city.”

“This is what you get in a gun-crazy state.”

And he’s right. I’m so convinced that I know him well enough to imagine his reaction that I feel like it is him speaking through me. And I suppose I’m glad for him that he isn’t around to witness this, because I know it would disappoint him. Upset him. Possibly break his heart.

            The paranoia abounds now. The theories pile up. Mom, Beth and I bounce bits of information off each other – Jesse Kelly’s M-16 rally of this past fall, Palin’s “Take Back the 20” campaign that held Giffords in the crosshairs. The paranoia. Assurances to family and friends that we will stay inside today. Half-hearted thoughts of attending a peace rally, a pacifist vigil of some sort – these impulses checked by doubt, by a self-preservation instinct that wells up like a bilious lump of stomach putty.

            The press gives conflicting reports. Giffords has been assassinated. Giffords remains alive and in surgery at Tucson Medical Center. More paranoia at the Tucson homestead: perhaps the media is covering up her death. Perhaps at this very moment, Giffords lies dead among the others killed, while the news gives placating reports of her continued existence in surgery, while the Tucson PD, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department, the FBI, the CIA, the Secret Service, the National Guard prepare for bedlam.

ca. 7:20pm

            Now Tucson is in the throes of a paranoia attack. The TPD is investigating a “suspicious package” near Giffords’ headquarters. A vigil for Giffords was being held near her office. The bomb squad is apparently “rendering the package inert,” KOLD news tells us. A reporter talks about hearing explosions and smelling acrid odors of bomb chemicals. I wonder if the city has itself exploded into mass fear – a latter-day version of the classic Twilight Zone episode “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.” What will the coming days bring in Tucson? In Arizona? In the United States? Will the histrionics and suspicion of the days following the 9/11 attacks return full force? Will we have another wave of what Art Spiegelman termed the “new normal”? Is now the time for the dawn of a Newer Normal in the Southwest?

            When traumatic events go public, when they become part of mass consciousness, infinitely mediatized until people begin to absorb them and incorporate them into a new normality, do we become more normal? Is each “new” normal also an increase in normalcy? In a sick inversion of supposed logic, is it the case that the more we see, the more jaded we become, the more normal we become?

            “Every day and in every way, we are getting normaler and normaler.” Maybe this is what all the news coverage is secretly telling us. As a growing chorus of voices chants that “We are horrified by these tragic events” and that “Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families,” I begin to wonder if they are trying to convince not only us watching out there, but if they are trying to convince themselves, if in convincing us they might then reabsorb the normalcy themselves. Or maybe the mantra should go another way: “Every hour and in every way, we are seeing how demented Jared Loughner is and we are getting normaler and normaler.”

           

9 January 2011, ca. 10:50am

And what will become of Jared Loughner in the near future? Besides whatever judicial punishment may or may not lie ahead, will he become a new cultural scapegoat? I watch an expert on CNN emphasize that Loughner is not a “lone gunman,” that he is a visible iteration of a systemic cultural disease (though the expert didn’t quite use those words), but I wonder what other contortions the US media will put the cultural figure of Loughner through…

"Things Are Crazy"

[WARNING: Ranting ahead]

I'd like to propose an indefinite moratorium on the following phrase, and all synonymous variations: 

"Things are crazy."

Last week a beloved friend inadvertently woke a sleeping giant when he included this phrase in an email to me. Said friend, who is an adept writer and talker, inspired me to finally compile and present my thoughts on the matter of the above phrase.
Initially I want to address the ambiguity of the phrase "things are crazy." It is a simple enough grammatical structure, a three-word sentence in the indicative mood; the speaker is saying that it is a current reality that things are crazy. But already things (not the "things" of the phrase, though) are becoming vague. Is this an observation of a general condition of existence? Are things always crazy? To remedy this ambiguity, people often modify the core phrase as follows: 

"Things are crazy right now."

"Things are crazy these days."

"Things have been crazy this week."

Here we already are considering some of the synonymic variations I refer to above. So it could be an observation about how these "things are" at a specific point in time, or during a specific period.

But what of these things? What is their nature, beside an apparently volatile mental condition? To alleviate my annoyance at hearing the phrase, I often amuse myself by imagining the "things" in question. When someone tells me that "things are crazy," I pciture his or her living space filled with small creatures, of reptilian or perhaps amphibian type, who are causing havoc. These small things might resemble gremlins or imps, running around the house, knocking things over, spilling liquids, and generally causing a ruckus. Perhaps they have behavioral problems. Possibly they experience hallucinations and hold deluded views of reality. 

You see, not only do I lack knowledge about the nature of the "things," I also don't know in what way they are "crazy." Do they suffer from recognized mental conditions such as sociopathy or schizophrenia? Or are they just plain old fuck-ups and hence projecting their fucked-upness onto the poor human's life? 

More likely than not, the speaker of the phrase "things are crazy" does not intend it to be a statement about monstrous creatures who have intruded into their lives and torment them. He or she probably doesn't even mean to be making a statement about the way of the world, or the human condition. The actual scope of the statement - what the person is really talking about - is usually much more limited. 

"Things are crazy for me."

And I'll give folks the credit they're due - I often do hear or read this particular variation. Though unfortunately the observation far too often remains unqualified by any pronoun. It is often qualified by reference to a location, or a specific situation. 

The family of phrases I'm grouping under the general archetype of "things are crazy" is a favorite utterance of academics: "It's a crazy time of the semester" which leads to common variations like "It's a busy time of semester," "It's a rough time of the semester" - all of which I have heard employed during the first week of classes, right after midterms, or during finals week - basically any time of semester can be a crazy time and can cause those things to get all hot and bothered. 

So let's take stock of the taxonomy we have so far. There's the ur-phrase:

"Things are crazy."

There are the time-specific variations:

"Things are crazy right now."

"Things are crazy today."

"Things have been crazy this week."

"Things have been crazy for months."

Then there are substitutions and variables on "crazy":

"Things are hectic."

"Things have been all over the place."

"Things are busy this week."

Sometimes folks even remove the "things":

"This week has been nuts."

When most people utter the phrase, I hear a strange echo, a kind of veiled sonic afterglow. It usually goes something like this:

"Things have been just crazy the past week." [pause of a few seconds...] I've got a lot going on in my life....

That's the secret message there in italics. When a person tells me "things are crazy" this person is usually also indicating how busy s/he is, how rich his/her life is, how many endeavors/projects/tasks/ongoing-something-or-others s/he has got his/her hand in. (This is an observation that go-getter types, into which category most academics fit, really like to make about themselves.)

But I'd really like to acknowledge that the phrase-type "things are crazy" belongs to the rhetorical category of bullshit - that is, a statement without truth value, one which can be proven neither true nor false. The usefulness of the phrase-type "things are crazy" lies not in its observatory power. No, the power of the phrase lies in its application, and in how it communicates what it does. When we say "things are crazy" (and yes, of course I have used it too...unfortunately), we are exculpating ourselves. A more truthful transformation of the phrase would go something like this: 

"I know I was supposed to do [insert task here]. I'm sorry I haven't done it; I just did not get around to it. I have no excuse, but I'm asking your understanding, since we have all been in this position at some point."

But when we say "things are crazy" we displace our own inability to do the things we should be doing outward and turn our own temporary lack of organization or irresponsibility into an external and general condition of reality. 

So once again I propose an indefinite moratorium on the phrase-type "things are crazy." For my part, I will make a concerted effort to admit openly when I have not been able to look at someone's email/call someone back/get something done when I said I would. I will not talk about those pesky apparitions we call "things." Because let's be honest, 

when aren't things crazy?