What In the World Is Going On?

What in the world is going on? Have you ever considered that question? I mean, really considered it? Most people ask it as a cliché when they are wondering why a given occurrence has happened in their window of perception. They hope for a specific answer pertaining to why there is house paint in the bread maker while soggy Alpha-Bits sludge down the wall spelling out the word “moribund” and there is a slight persistent flame coating the kitchen table. If you were to answer, “somebody in Mongolia just fell off a dromedary and landed on a yurt”, you may have correctly answered the question, but it wouldn’t be the answer the wonderer was looking for. Then xe scorns you for being a smart ass, even though it was xe’s fault for asking such a broad question without intending to accept all possible answers. But if you were to tell xe the truth, “you weren’t here so we decided to fuck some shit up”, xe’d be just as angry. When you flippantly ask that question, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment no matter what answer you get. You need to ask it seriously and expect all possible answers, which is what I do.

The fact is, at any moment, there are trillions of things going on in the world, most of which we don’t know about and will never know about. There may be even more going on than that, especially if you consider events on the microscopic level. And why wouldn’t you? What are you, some kind of scopist?

A mosquito just flew up a boar’s ass somewhere. Did you know that? If you did, consider yourself lucky. Most of us didn’t. Wait a minute, a Taco Bell employee in Encino just loogied into the refried beans – and we missed it. When I consider the breadth of the question, “what in the world is going on?”, my mind quakes, and the bellboy in Alesund, Norway who just received a hundred krone tip from a guest who had those krones in his mouth prior to tipping knows nothing about it. Nor does he know he will soon have mononucleosis.

Nobody knows what is really going on. There is too much to comprehend and not enough people there to record it. Even if we tried to record it, it would take all of us to do so. Then all that would be going on would be billions of people sitting around recording other people recording stuff. That’s not much of a life for anybody, probably even worse than the life that is ahead for Anna Nicole’s bastard baby. Of course, I’m referring to Anna Nicole Jansen, who resorted to the “crapshoot” jar of semen at the Fulton County Sperm Bank because they would not accept her out-of-date “Free Upgrade To Known Donors” coupon she found stuck to a wayward nail on a park bench while she was crawling around looking for unchewed, discarded sunflower seeds. We can only hope that all worldly events are being recorded in the fabric of space-time, waiting for Ron Popeil to invent the pocket space-time fabric viewer. Until then, we must remain ignorant to most happenings.

Sure, we have news agencies that tell us stuff. Some of it may even be interesting. Some of it may even be true. But none of it comes close to representing all that is going on. I guess those news agencies choose the “important” events to tell us about so we don’t need to be concerned with the girl in Honduras who is crying herself to sleep because she thinks the boy she likes doesn’t like her because he ignored her chicken today. It is more important that we know that Drew Barrymore has been chosen People magazine’s most beautiful person. That is the kind of information we can use. It is in this manner information that is significant to all of us can be shared and…just a second here…is that really true? Drew Barrymore? Really? The MOST beautiful? I don’t buy it. I mean, she’s cute and all, but there are plenty of more beautiful people out there. What about that one chick who compulsively scratches her nails on the pew at St. James American Episcopal Church, Via B. Rucellai 9 in Florence, Italy each Sunday? She’s pretty hot. Much hotter than Drew. I wonder if the People editors even considered her. She must not have a movie coming out that needs publicity. That’s why I finished only 3,698,400,324th on their 100 Most Beautiful list. That damn Al Gore just had to cut my carbon dioxide quelling performance art segment (where I dress up as a fallen tree and mime my inability to convert carbon dioxide into fresh oxygen while playing The Way We Were on one of those giant keyboard things they used in the movie Big) from his next global warming documentary, Is It Getting Hot In Here Or Am I Extinct? Stupid Al Gore.

Take some time to consider the full brunt of the question “what in the world is going on?” Don’t limit this thought exercise to what is important to you. Luckily, we always know what Oprah is up to. But what about the lonely glow worm in the Glow Worm caves of New Zealand who loses a leg that gets stuck in a tiny crag? The lonely glow worm chooses to sacrifice its leg in order to catch an elusive passing mayfly so it can grow to become a pupa at the top of the cave where it will glow intermittently until it becomes an adult only to find that it is unable to feed and starves to death. How do we live with a clear mind without knowing about this? And what about that rock at the floor of Death Valley that just sits there waiting for something to happen to it, but nothing ever does, except for the occasional slight breeze of scorching hot air that reminds it nothing is happening to it, just like aspiring hopefuls in our society that don’t know that you have to make your own happenings, so they sit there and watch Oprah and dream of what will never be because we are all rocks on the floor of Death Valley until we do something to make us not be that. This is the kind of fun shit you will realize when fully considering this amazing question. Soon, you will realize how much life you are missing and demand more out of it. Our world, with everything going on in it, will be a better place. Who knew that ice cream bar, slapped out of a young boy's hand by his mom because he flicked a crusty dragon at her, melting on a sewer grate in downtown London would make such a difference? I did, that’s who.