We’re living through the ultimate plot twist.
As the impeachment proceedings raged on and on, there were established expectations among all of us for what was to come amid the dismal reality of the circumstances.
Would Trump get re-elected after all this?
Would the rift start to close if he didn’t get re-elected?
Would elections devolve into yet another cluster-fuck rife with political espionage and corruption?
And then…
The plot twist…
A global goddamned pandemic.
One which, despite the sobering reality of the situation, politicians still quibbled over. It was called a hoax, by some, but many simply refused to acknowledge it even was a pandemic.
News channels had to literally lay out the definition of the word “pandemic” for a week and a half before politicians finally relented, and that may still have only been because of ample evidence the contagion was spreading unchecked.
Quibbling. Motherfucking quibbling.
Quibbling is, by my definition, when two sides wrestle back and forth over a minor point of contention.
“That chair is light blue.”
No, that chair is motherfucking cyan.”
A three ton elephant was standing in the room, farting and shitting on the floor, while the powers that be quibbled over the classification of a quickly escalating crisis.
Time lost. Live lost.
It isn’t to say that, by any means, that I’m some superhuman and know the answer to every dilemma.
Just last night I dropped a cheese stick in the bath as I ate. I had to fish it out from underneath my naked body, then sadly set it aside uneaten. There are levels of food related depravity to which even I will not stoop. I’m not saying the cheese was tainted by the bathwater, per se… but it seemed, well, prudent not to consume food coated with it.
Cheese fiasco aside, I can see the writing on the motherfucking wall when it’s right in front of me.
And that, I feel, is becoming less and less common in an age where news sources are owned by big business, and news anchors are the fleshy puppet-things to wage their wars.
At least a dozen times now, I’ve heard the same sentiment voiced from different people:
“We’re living through strange times.”
“These are strange times.”
“What strange times these are.”
On and on.
But, don’t forget what I said: this is also the ultimate plot twist.
The most extreme plot twist I’ve ever seen in cinematic form was in a movie from 1999: Magnolia.
The movie had so many poignant moments, structured so carefully, and so artfully. It was one of those long movies that embraced the notion of throwing not one, but many characters into the spotlight and giving them fairly equal screen time to weave an elaborate knot of social ties and bonds.
Quiz Kid Donnie Smith, though, was my favorite, with his backstory of being a famed child prodigy and gaining notoriety on a kid’s trivia show. I’ve always stood in awe of people who have a mental ‘buffer’ they can store huge chunks of data into. Personally, I can draw anything, sculpt anything, and I can bring to life anything that pops into my head; but I have never been able to read a paragraph once and then recite it verbatim.
Some can.
As the movie progresses, you get a feel for what the character’s motivations are, bit by bit, slowly but surely.
And you get to witness Donnie Smith’s awkward attempt to rob a closed store at night.
And then frogs start raining down from the sky.
Hundreds of thousands of them. Just fucking falling from the sky like raindrops.
Why?
Stuff like that happens. In nature, it can happen.
But in the context of that movie, it was a plot twist…. and to pull it off convincingly a dozen interns likely had to stand on some scaffolding and dump barrels of dead frogs onto the actors and the stage.
I did not expect that the greatest plot twist I would ever witness would be in real life. Because, while the frogs fell on a city in that movie, this pandemic spread throughout the entire world.
In our case, in the case of the United States, this pandemic followed directly after a vicious round of legal proceedings that were carried specifically because it was felt the president of the United States was not fit for office.
But he was acquitted, mind you.
The elections came into focus.
Then, COVOID-19.
The timing of all this is… well… mind-boggling. Frankly, it’s a level beyond Hollywood-ish cinematic timing.
So, when people look to me and ask my thoughts, I haven’t echoed the usual sentiment.
I just feel like I’m on stage, and my answer is already in a script somewhere.
I feel like, if I look up, I’ll see a dozen interns clutching buckets full of something stranger even than frogs.
Despite that, there’s still a smile on my face.
Life is just so unpredictable.