A friend admonished me for whingeing on and on about everybody being corrupt and selling their souls for money, assuring me most people were hardworking and honest and only 'a few rotten apples spoiled the barrel'. I do agree, tho that other cliche about 'power corrupts...' tells me that given a world where money is the true one god, anybody given the chance, the power, would somehow wangle the moollah their way, including me. Not that I'd do the crimes some idiots commit, as told by the Daily Terror, like killing their mothers for the inheritance, or those air hostesses who tried smuggling in ICE under their armpits, and, shock/horror, the Orhthodox priest who took a bribe and lied for crims to get them out of community service. While I think only one in 7 people are truly mean father-f#*ers, only one in 7 are truly cool souls who would liberally give a break to a stranger/misfit like me.
Another friend also collared me for damming "junkies", telling me how in every media report of trouble and mayhem, (such as those reported at Northcott Suicide Towers), right-wing Gronks always point at the drug-users to put the blame on, whipping up vigilante fervor to run "those junkies" out of town. Poor, pathetic 'junkies' are indeed such easy targets, their toothless ugliness so suitable for antipathy, and the world's politics, the class-ridden differences and injustices, are thus easily overlooked. Still, a lot of social mayhem IS caused by substance-abuse zombies, mostly alcohol-drenched thugs, and I was quick to point out to her I was lambasting all zombies, no matter the substance, for in full stoned or drunk flight they are shocking pains in the collective arsehole, and that the vigilante groups themselves are most likely fueled by alcohol, the rednecks' drug of choice.
This particular friend has an affinity with opiates and works for various health groups trying to alleviate the "junkies" sufferings, and so has much inbuilt sympathy for them. She is in town for some kind of syringe-swapping conference and was being put up in a tawdry 3 star hotel on Bondi Beach. She asked me to come down to Bondi and meet her, and as I love her very much I hung about the beach as the sun set, shivering in the cold, waiting for her. She was an hour late and I was so pissed off I tried to flee on a bus only my dam mobile called me back, she was arriving soon, so I stomped on a crowd of tourist's toes to scramble back off the bus. Still she kept me waiting, and I suspect she had to have a shot first before coming down onto the esplanade to fetch me.
We went up to the hideous chi chi hotel room where other of her conference-buddies were lounging about, quite stoned on some kind of head-banger drug, and all drifting in and out of raves on druggies vs. non-druggies, and everybody's soap-opera excuses for living. We then decamped to the spa-pool on the roof and continued the yammering amid much fluffy sludge, me marveling at the wonderful strangeness of life where one can be riding a pushbike in the gutter one moment and lounging in a guilt-edged spa the next.
My friend told me the tale of how her top boss in the junkie counseling trade did very little work, stayed at home to mind her kids because she didn't believe in childcare, and delegated all the work to her underlings, all the while collecting a hefty pay-packet and mouthing off Christian platitudes about the helpless, deadbeat druggies needing her all-seeing God-fearing eye. We agreed that there are worse conservative types than redneck Gronks, the wage-slaves slogging it out in the burbs. There are their overlords, straight-acting, mealy-mouthed hierarchy-climbers who know how to put up a squeaky clean front while ripping off the system and blaming others. Plus we're both furious at the bullshit "war on drugs" mostly encouraged by lobby groups for the alcohol industry. In a true democracy people should have the right to choose whatever substances they want to get high. It's obvious that because alcohol is the fat, purple-nosed politicians drug of choice all other substances get demonized and outlawed.
For all my friend's predilection for "back to the womb" opiates, she's a caring, progressive soul and not a bureaucratic bottom-feeder/system sucker like those Machiavellian types who crawl to the top of the shit-heap in govt. departments. (I'm especially thinking of politicians!) Anyway, I've never taken opiates and am long over my pot habit, but I enjoyed the rave in the mounds of soap suds and, with my skin flaking off, I rushed home to get my nightly hit of TV and chocolate biscuits. All the world's a drug addict, the worst are those addicted to power and fame.
