ONE MONTH AGO, we posted a list of potential characters for a proposed little fictional corner of the site.
Due to your underwhelming response, we (the characters and I) have spent a lot of time in behind-the-scenes retooling of the whole concept.
Herewith, the pilot episode of our ongoing commentary-with-character:
THE SCENE OPENS in our quasi-friendly local coffee shop with Kirsten the sullen barista complaining about the recent election results to anyone who'll listen and everyone who won't.
"No matter which jerk ends up on top, we're just gonna get four more years of the same old corporate crap," she says while "mistakenly" preparing a decaf beverage for a customer from the dot-com office next door. "Sometimes I wonder why I even bother to vote."
"But you don't vote," interjects Janis, Kirsten's middle-aged punk friend. "Every year you say the same thing, that there's never been a politician worthy of your attention. Migawd Kirsten, it's just picking a guy for public office. You're not fucking him."
"Yeah, but they're fucking us."
"Still, Kirsten, you've gotta admit this time's been a lot of fun. It's out of control! The world's only fuckin' superpower, with nobody in real control!
The dot-commer, whom Kirsten has nicknamed Benny Bucks, takes his drink, triple-checks to make sure the lid's really on, and heads off in his $300 shoes, his facelifted eyebrows buried in the stock pages, mumbling his hopes for a post-election market bounce. As soon as the door closes, Kirsten suggests aloud that Benny Bucks "probably voted for Bush."
Janis quickly adds in, "But I bet he wished the race wasn't so close so he could have voted for his real heroes, the Libertarians. You know, the guys who think big business still doesn't have enough power."
"I wouldn't worry too much about any of that," Kirsten interjects. "Whoever the new guy is is gonna do everything to make politics even more corporate than it already is. He'll say we've gotta make sure this messy democracy thing doesn't get this crazy ever again, so we've gotta have more big money in campaigns, more central control, stop those pesky third parties..."
Janis bellows back, "But it's so much more fun this way. I mean, look at it. The future course of all life on Earth depends on the margin of a few hundred people in fuckin' Florida! The guy who plays Goofy! Some old couple running a little Bible theme park. Maybe some alligator poachers and drug runners and old Jewish widows and Castro-haters and gay boys in Miami and lap-dancers in Tampa and retired circus freaks. Sweetie Kirsten, this is what America's supposed to be all about!"
Janis then says she knows she and Kirsten would love to spend the rest of the day enjoying one another's misery, but there's a big day going on outside the warm confines of the coffee shop. Janis's daughter Anais is desiging her costume today for her very first unsanctioned anti-Thanksgiving pageant in school.
Anais, Janis relates, can't decide whether to be one of the generous Indians or one of the ungrateful, genocidal Pilgrims.
"The eternal dilemma," Kirsten mutters aloud. "Whether to
figuratively absorb a half-millennium of victimhood for one's own, or to parade one's descent from the Oppressor Race like the proverbial scarlet letter."
"Kirsten," Janis says as she rises and gathers her slightly-cracking leather jacket, "you could make heaven itself sound like a miserable experience. That's what I like about you."
As usual, Kirsten doesn't know whether to feel complimented or insulted. So she just responds with a polite stare.
TOMORROW: Why people write book reviews; why people read book reviews.
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