Colonel Kurtz in a Van

By Nathan Payne | pablosmoglives | 21 Oct 2022

“I was perplexed as to what the usefulness of any of the arts might be, with the possible exception of interior decoration. The most positive notion I could come up with was what I call the canary-in-the-coal-mine theory of the arts. This theory argues that artists are useful to society because they are so sensitive. They are supersensitive. They keel over like canaries in coal mines filled with poison gas, long before more robust types realize that any danger is there.” Kurt Vonnegut

TRIGGER WARNING: If you have berated the dead canary on the floor of the cage for being lazy, instead of heeding the warning (you realize you're berating a corpse, right?)... If you're now freaking out about the loss of your livelihood after years of maligning people who work in trades you have perceived as unworthy of reasonable compensation, and are completely unaware that these haughty chickens are coming home to roost, as per your own request (however unwitting), then you do not have the fortitude, or even intellectual and spiritual consistency, to read this message. You have no business here. Withdraw your conditional support any time you like. Get off my lawn.

For everybody else....

I think my family wants me to die down here.

The GoFundMe saved me from being homeless in the van w/ my cat, but it wasn't enough to....... do what?

I'm not going to finish the thought. The thought has been sitting polished in my intellectual driveway for years, maybe decades. You can find it if you want to. But it wasn't enough to get back to the States.

And anyway, is there anything to go back to?

I think my family wants me to die down here. At best, they don't care.

Maybe it's time to go full Colonel Kurtz. Kurtz in a van. With a cat. Colonel Kurtz, except with less to lose. I'm not throwing anything away. A career? A house? A family? You can't throw away things that have been stolen from you.

If I say, "call in the airstrike," upon whom will the airstrike fall? The indigent? The transient? People living in the streets? The trees? The broken and abused?

Or maybe a culture of people who have... chosen?... to remain as omniblivious as possible about the dead canaries lying at their feet, who have gone soft with positivity to the point that reality is now perceived as negative, half of whom sound like rich kids whining about the fact that their father bought them a BMW instead of the Jaguar they wanted, to the point that they light the BMW on fire, in "protest" of this spoiled, ridiculous injustice?

The thumbnail on the video below was one of the default suggestions by YouTube, and it clearly says, "RETORNO."

Turn around.

Go back.

Proceed no further.

Stay out of the strike zone.

Maybe it's time to go full Colonel Kurtz. Native in the wilderness. Impossible to contact. Far away and gone forever.

It's not my place to call in the airstrike. That would be evil. Wicked, hateful, and wrathful. But if you're one of the cool rich kids, not the working middle class of any stripe, blue collar, white collar, anything, but the kind of people who spend $25 on breakfast and think you're broke because you can't afford your club fees anymore (or if you know any of them),

Help a brother out.

Like the homeless guy sings at the end of the video below, "Which side are you on, man? We're dying here!"

I know there are many people who merely find the story interesting, and are watching with amusement from afar. Whatever. Maybe they even like the music. I appreciate it. Thanks.

Say goodbye to it, but thanks.

There are also those who are watching from on high. Monitors, control freaks, self-condoomned demoniacs who revel in the hateful pleasures of watching others drown.

If that's you, it's your funeral. I am the canary in the coal mine. Continue to watch him flailing around in the poison gas of your own sanctimonious design, if you like. But get ready for the airstrike.

It's coming.