The Trouble With Tunnel Vision

Originally run on 13 April 2009. Art by me!

The Trouble With Tunnel Vision:
Donut Seem Strange

I don't know if it's something the air or if it's a change in the electro-magnetic fields or if it's just the heat, but this past week I have seen a lot of cleavage. Now, besides the obvious fact that it has gotten a bit warmer, I imagine that there's could be another motive to wearing a revealing top: To show what the Lord has blessed you with. For better or worse, this is an accepted aspect of human nature. People gawk. Now I don't say this just to write an opinion on boobs (I am pro-breasts) and I don't say this as I warning (but, heads up, men are scum). I say this because it's the perfect example of a a social contract, an unspoken one, one that our society requires to function. It's a delicate peace that if we ignore and peel back the layers nobody wins.

This brings me to donut shops. The 24 hour ones. There's Bartha's on Ximeno, there's the one by the Hole Mole which always seems to be full of perfect specimens of rambling tramps, and there's the one on 2nd Street across from Shorehouse which looks like it's either being built up or torn down. Now, I'm not saying that these are money laundering operations, but they're probably money laundering operations. There's also one two blocks west of where I live, where on a nightly basis a drug deal goes down.

Realistically, I draw 90% of my information on the drug trade from HBO TV shows so I might not be an expert. With that said I am pretty sure that when an Explorer with mirrored windows parks with its engine running at 2am in Long Beach, I am certain that it is for nefarious purposes. But, I ignore it, because it's easier to do that than to tip-off the narcos (my lease ends in two months, what do I care?). Are the drug deals and the donuts connected? Who knows. We should probably get a wire up, though.

Theses things we ignore for the sake of society isn't always titties and donuts, either, sometimes it's our parents. We tell ourselves that, despite them being alive during the 1960's, in no way did they ever learned how to pack a bowl and in no way did they ever engage in a menage a trois with a Finnish guy named Merja. We also tell ourselves that they still don't do this stuff, too.

If we accept these things as part of our canon, this leads to a whole slew of problems. We have to rethink how the very basics of our relationship with society works. It leads to chaos. We would start vomting and never stop, doors would kicked in, there'd be no donuts after a hard night of drinking, and no more plunging v-necks. These probably aren't the best examples of the lynch pins of civilization, but a lot of things like this require us looking the other way. The benefits of willful ignorance probably isn't the best moral to pull away from this story, but as I've been told from behind an empty stein time and time again: Admitting that you have a problem is the first step to recovery. So, maybe it isn't accepting these social contracts, but being aware of them and going from there. I say this with more than a mite of trepidation, though, because if we have low-neck lines taken away from us, that would be too heavy a burden for my soul to bear.