How’s everybody’s 2021 going so far? Mine’s been pretty cool; I got a new organizer for my silverware drawer. Amazon even managed to get it to me on time: next day delivery! On Wednesday, January 6th, 2021! As thousands of radicalized Trump supporters invaded the US Capitol building with restraints, tactical gear, and bombs! I spent my afternoon watching what was very nearly the death of democracy in this country as I slowly sorted my spoons by size. Which, of course, got me to thinking: maybe fascism is good, actually. Am I so different, with my strict drawer caste system? I impose my iron will upon the glassware in my cabinet to keep it from taking up more space than I deem necessary. I force my pot lids out of their natural habitat of an utterly unbalanced stack in a cabinet that falls onto my head every time I open it and instead into a door mounted rack. What makes me better than the people committing various forms of sedition and treason and other federal crimes?
Oh, right. It’s the fact that I’m not doing any of that. Yeah, that’s probably it huh?
This might be a bold stance to take, but it seems like making decisions about whether a utensil is more important to my day-to-day kitchen experience is sort of a lower stakes proposition than the people who do that kind of calculus about real human beings. But then again, they’re the ones taking over the seat of power of the whole country and I’m the one doing bits about my anxieties on a website, so I guess I’m in no position to judge who’s right here.
Wait a minute, yes I am. Fuck them.
Having something as deeply mundane as kitchen organization gear be delivered to my front door by an ultra-massive corporation that most Americans trust more than their own government while simultaneously watching real, honest to god fascists storm the Capitol has undoubtedly caused something fundamental inside my brain to break. Taking a breather from sorting through my various measuring cup sets to check whether anyone else had been murdered during the coup attempt is a pretty surreal experience, so it’s not tough to imagine that it probably had some kind of a permanent impact on me. We’ll just have to wait to see in what terrible ways it manifests!
This post is going up on January 20, Inauguration Day, and it’s no coincidence that in WNV’s prolific 15 year history, this one thing is the least absolutely radioactive with toxic irony that we have ever made. We’re all feeling pretty anxious over here! The end of Bad Year 2020 and start of a new year is a completely arbitrary distinction and it’s always been silly at best to think that things would somehow immediately start getting better when the calendar flipped over, but god damn. Oof. We’re 20 days into this one and it’s feeling pretty dark already.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty to be hopeful about in our near future; the full WNV staff hasn’t yet overdosed on the blackpill (although one of us has been googling strychnine a concerning amount because he “needs something stronger than caffeine” and “relishes life on the razor’s edge”). As a society/civilization/species/bunch of horny apes, we’ve still got time to pull up out of any number of the many nosedives we’re collectively in, and we hope that’s what happens! But it’s a weird time to be alive, so that calls for a weird post. What exactly was the point of this? Offering solidarity to anyone else who’s feeling Kinda Bad™ about the general state of the world in the hopes that it keeps even one person from sinking too deep into the darkness to try to keep moving towards better things? Eh, maybe. Or maybe it’s our website and we don’t gotta answer to you. Eat shit, fucko.
Next week we’ll get back to really overwrought dick jokes, we promise.