Miami Surgery

Sitting on a motel bed with 40 television channels at my beck and call I find myself amazed, like a Martian first encountering life on earth as filtered through the lense of the T.V. Worse than a Martian I feel like a peasant, a quasi-local, trying to understand my fellow humans. I don't understand why anyone would want this intrusion in their homes; worse yet why did I ever have it in mine? Why did I wonder if I would miss it? Then I gawp at frenzied advertising and fail to imagine how it can even be so effective. It looks crazy to me, smiling people sucking down drugs (legal ones) and driving cars that are clearly powered beyond their abilities, and acting crazy cheerful in ways that in real life would frighten shoppers away. Buy buy buy.Then the delightful "news" programs which were like advertising only worse. Most "news" is thinly disguised advertising and the highbrow stories come and go rapidly and without explanation or rational discussion. Historical perspective? What's that? Why does one even need that? Middle East leaders, looking ponderous and serious were filmed walking seven times around a rock, an effort to bring Peace, they say. Which behavior must explain why Peace is so unattainable. Perhaps if leaders talked to each other instead of engaging in empty gestures, something might change. Case in point: Paris. We were treated to the US Secretary of State kissing the leader of half of Palestine, Abu Mazen, on not one but both cheeks. Wow! So European! Talking? No, kissing! I think its past time we killed our televisions and instead the people in charge want us to spend even more money buying new improved high definition televisions. And people will, amazingly enough people will line up to buy HD TV.I went to buy a couple of bagels for lunch after the post-op doctor's visit and the clerk (team member? associate?) in Einstein's sighed when I couldn't figure out how I wanted the turkey and cheese bagel. There are hundreds of possible variants it seems. I knew I wanted the whatever flavored bagel toasted but that never happened. And the other barrista got flustered when it turns out my Visa card (I was out of cash what can I say?) doesn't have a chip and still needs to be swiped. I personally can't wait for the day I have a chip under my skin and we can dispense with all this plastic nonsense. Don't laugh its coming. Out on the streets of Miami people reflect their leaders and are crazy. Drivers push and shove even in places where shoving accomplishes nothing. On stretches of open road they slow down. Changing lanes is a life altering, or ending experience. One black man with gold teeth got out at a traffic light and threatened me for changing lanes. He got back in when I smiled and licked my lips at him. Never take on a loony who actually appears to enjoy physical violence. Had he called my bluff I might be the second member of my family with a broken wrist. My aching wife got vaguely annoyed at my confrontational behavior but those drugs are keeping her quite comatose, luckily for me.

The longer I live in the Keys the less capable I am of functioning in mainstream America. I dislike not making eye contact, I dislike walking among people who are hunched and afraid ( with reason as my little confrontation proves), I dislike the thoughtless nastiness of modern urban life. Its a pretty short sliver of land I live on, the rest of the continent (with all its marvelous medical facilities!) weighs heavily on my island and on my mind.

Normal cheerful programming will be resumed when I get over all this ridiculous surgery stress. She seems less stressed than I am. I need my Bonneville.