"Saturday Night is the Loneliest Night in the Week." [View All]

[Cyrano]

Earlier this evening, an old acquaintance of mine plugged in his ancient recorder and put on a record from a different era. It was a Frank Sinatra record: "Saturday Night is the Loneliest Night of the Week." And somewhere in the recesses of my mind, I remembered hearing it before.

My guess is that, once upon a time, if you didn't have what was then called a "date" on Saturday night, you were a loser living with your own misery. Sinatra was great and the music was beautiful. Yet I came away thinking that, in the current environment, every night, day, or moment was the loneliest when you couldn't conceive of a way to put an end to the grotesque nightmare that those of us cursed with awareness have been subjected to for a long, unending six years now.

We post, we argue, we throw out theories and half-baked ideas, we curse, we hate, we hope, we might even pray. Yet the nightmare is still there the next morning.

At times, I visualize Cheney as the ultimate villain who would make Ming the Merciless, or Vlad the Impaler look like saints. He sits there, biting the heads off of Islamo-fascist babies while he chuckles and smears his bloody claws on the console in front of him. The one which he uses to control Junior's every move and thought. But then, that's only if you care to imagine that a hollow creature like George W. Bush, drunk on power and self-importance, could actually have what other human beings might call a thought -- not to mention a soul.

But this Saturday night actually is a very lonely one. Tomorrow may be different, but for the moment, I've abandoned hope. Hope that the upcoming election won't be stolen. Hope that we can once again be what we always believed ourselves to be. Hope that, somehow, a supreme entity, whose existence I don't even believe in, will take a hand and make the world right.

Perhaps I'm feeling the effects of the new dark ages in the same way felt by those who endured the original dark ages. But then it occurs to me that they didn't have refrigerators, TVs, computers, cars, or even a way with which to share their thoughts while satisfying their hunger or easing their misery.

At this moment, we exist at the mercy of our enemies. We can't stop the torture, murder, injustices, or anything else that they care to do on a whim. And tonight I feel helpless and hopeless. This too shall pass, but for the moment, I'm contemptuous of the human species as well as my own inability to make a difference.

Well, hasn't this been an unworthy little exercise in self pity. I guess the real lesson here is to just accept the fact that "Saturday Night is the Loneliest Night of the Week," shut the fuck up, and regroup in the morning.

But one thought that never, ever leaves my mind is that we must somehow, someway find the key to defeating the modern day barbarians who are destroying our lives and our hopes for progress -- progress, the one inevitability we always believed couldn't be halted.

I'm not a fan of "Gone With the Wind," but as Scarlett said, "Tomorrow is another day." And hopefully a better one.I promise to answer any comments, observations, criticims, or words of wisdom tomorrow. And if there are no replies, I promise to keep thoughts of this nature to myself from now on.