It's just a matter of time.....

It seems that Amy Winehouse managed to make herself dead over the weekend in a turn of events that was admittedly sad, but also eminently predictable. Doctors seldom prescribe a diet of whiskey and heroin – although senior citizen, Keith Richards, seems to be doing OK on this regimen – so it’s not as though her death came as a surprise to anyone. If you’d never heard of her before this weekend, her death didn’t register. If you had heard of her, you’d already seen the pictures of her wandering around London, barefoot and bloody with gobs of snot-moistened white powder dangling from her nose. This is why, in the wake of her death, reporters and journalists and celebrities (George Michael is apparently very broken up) have leapt at the chance to say, write, or tweet that, “It was just a matter of time.”

That sentence is actually what I want to discuss. Of course it’s sad when young, talented people die, but Amy Winehouse wasn’t my close personal friend; I’m not choking back tears or having an unusual amount of trouble focusing at work. What’s gnawing at me is mankind’s blatant propensity to spew out meaningless drivel that we erroneously think makes us sound thoughtful, caring, wise, considerate, profound, or some combination thereof. Obviously it was “just a matter of time” before Amy Winehouse died. It’s also just a matter of time before I die; before you die; before everyone you know dies. Yes, the woman who chugs a bottle of vodka before embarking on yet another stint in rehab is probably closer to death than me or you or anyone you know, but if you want to be all fatalistic about it, each and every one of us is a ticking time bomb.

So let’s not make “drugs and alcohol are bad” the moral of the story. We adults know a poor life choice when we see one. Smoking crack is a poor life choice. Putting a shot of vodka in your morning coffee is a poor life choice. Let’s take a different lesson from this tragedy, and solemnly swear to consider the words we intend to speak before letting loose. Is what you’re about to say worth saying? Does it have any meaning whatsoever? Is it just fucking stupid? If, after careful deliberation, the answers are no, no, and yes, don’t pollute the world with your inanity. Appoint Mark Twain your life coach, and abide by his sagest pronouncement: “It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.”

Here we go again.....

There is something innately American about shoving your head up your ass, and charging in the wrong direction. We don’t excel at a lot of things anymore, but in this capacity we rule.

This obviously isn’t a new phenomenon, nor is it exclusively American; humans have been making terrible decisions for at least as long as we’ve been bipedal. It’s just that this whole recession has really highlighted Americans’ lovely propensity to leap headfirst into a shark tank simply because some huckster told us it would be OK. Also our propensity to, having just barely made it out alive, leap right back in because the same huckster has somehow convinced us that the best cure for a shark attack is another shark attack.

I am speaking, as you may or may not have gathered, about financial regulation. Our economy disintegrates because Wall Street is like a less-prudent Las Vegas, and our response is to reimburse the criminals – sorry, “bankers” – who presided over the catastrophe a few hundred billion dollars, no strings attached. Huh? In the spirit of things, I’ve dreamed up a few “solutions” to some of this country’s non-financial problems…

Prison Overcrowding
Rather than locking up serial killers, let’s just fill their basements with children and expectant mothers and kittens, and see what happens. There’s no way this laissez-faire approach could backfire.

Drunk Driving
Drunk drivers should not only retain their licenses – and not be fined for their transgressions, since everyone already knows that governmental adoption of austerity measures obviates the need for revenue of any kind – but should also have their backseats filled with cases of their drink of choice.

The War on Drugs
The drug war should certainly not be declared a failure at this juncture. Instead, we should continue to spend unthinkably large sums of money on futile attempts to eradicate narcotics through means that have been proven ineffective in every respect over the last half century. We should also lengthen drug offenders’ prison sentences since there’s extra room now that the serial killers are loose.

Education
We should clearly retain our focus on standardized testing in schools, because that’s a solid idea. We should clearly not elevate the status of the teaching profession – and its pay – to a point where intelligent, competent, patient individuals are more motivated to enter the field. If we hone the tests and get them juuuuuuust right, it won’t matter that lots of teachers are narcissistic halfwits. *Disclaimer* I’m not suggesting that all teachers are dumb and self-important, just that we presently don’t demand that they not be.

Racism
We have a black president, ergo racism is dead. Affirmative action, institutionalized racism, blah, blah, blah. These debates are mere relics of a bygone age.

I guess the moral of the story is, if at first you don’t succeed, keep trying the same thing over and over. It’s bound to work someday, and if it doesn’t, vociferous denial is a punchy plan B. You’re welcome.