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    Notes from the Singing Chicken: Essays on the Nature of Modern Madness
    Notes from the Singing Chicken: Essays on the Nature of Modern Madness
    Notes from the Singing Chicken: Essays on the Nature of Modern Madness
    Ebook58 pages46 minutes

    Notes from the Singing Chicken: Essays on the Nature of Modern Madness

    By Julian Wise

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    About this ebook

    Acollection of comic essays, exploring education, religion, the self-help movement, political correctness, the obesity epidemic, the War on Drugs, and other topics that highlight the growing chasm between sanity and modern society. The Manifesto is a long-overdue tribute to our most precious and endangered national resource- Common Sense.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAuthorHouse
    Release dateDec 16, 2011
    ISBN9781463438999
    Notes from the Singing Chicken: Essays on the Nature of Modern Madness
    Author

    Julian Wise

    Julian Wise has written extensively for the award-winning newspapers The Martha's Vineyard Times and The Martha's Vineyard Gazette. He is a contributing editor for the book "Martha's Vineyard Remembers JAWS," the definitive chronicle of the legendary film. He specializes in writing about art, music, film, education and health. He lives on Martha's Vineyard with his wife and four children.

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      Book preview

      Notes from the Singing Chicken - Julian Wise

      Contents

      Preface

      CHAPTER ONE:

      CHAPTER TWO:

      CHAPTER THREE:

      CHAPTER FOUR:

      CHAPTER FIVE:

      CHAPTER SIX:

      CHAPTER SEVEN:

      CHAPTER EIGHT:

      CHAPTER NINE:

      CHAPTER TEN:

      POSTSCRIPT:

      DEDICATIONS

      For Stacy, my sweet saint of tolerance.

      This book is dedicated to the loving memory of Ernestina, who brought immeasurable joy to my life.

      Preface

      My friend Bill recently earned a doctorate in Irish history. He spent a decade studying and conducting research, often rising at 4am to write before heading off to a full-time job with the federal government. As he was preparing to defend his dissertation, I told him I admired his drive and tenacity. He replied that I shouldn’t make a big deal out of it; he had difficulty making sense of modern life and preferred to focus on 19th century Ireland instead.

      From time to time I ask an elderly person if, in the context of their life, things are stranger now than they have been in previous decades. Each replies Yes without hesitation. Perhaps this is a tendency of aging, and an elderly person in 1950 would have said the same after witnessing the carnage of WWII and the rise of the Atomic Era. Yet I suspect they’re right about today; the tides of insanity seem to be rising at an accelerating pace.

      CHAPTER ONE:

      What The Hell Is Going On?

      By several key barometers, modern life is phenomenal. Health care, nutrition, and clean drinking water allow us to evade mortality potholes that felled millions a century ago. People living in poverty in America enjoy basic amenities (indoor plumbing, electricity, television) that were upper class luxuries several generations ago. Information technology puts the knowledge of the ages on a cell phone. Yet, amidst all this, people are going nuts. Observe how many people around you are shrill, flaky, anxious, inept, belligerent, and idiotic. How many of your friends, family, co-workers and neighbors are imbalanced? Or, to quote Steve Martin in the film All of Me, Is everyone here bananas?

      All of this begs the question; what the hell is going on?

      Pose this question in a public forum and people will rush forth with pet theories about the dismal state of modern mental health—violent video games, processed foods, environmental toxins, undiagnosed Lyme disease, cell phone radiation, etc.

      While none of these factors are doing us any favors, I suspect they are grossly exaggerated. You can convolute things or slice them to simplicity with Ockham’s razor—people are acting like asses. As a result, modern life grinds, groans, and bumps along—families feud, co-workers bicker and fume at each other, and the government wastes our money while larding itself with inefficient, benefit-rich hacks. Meanwhile, innocent beings get the short end of the stick—kids raised by incompetent parents, animals abused by cretinous owners, and people denied economic opportunities because government policies have muffled the business climate.

      Lest this sound like the cranky rant of a city cab driver, let me inject a dose of humility into the discussion. I’m no Buckminster Fuller, endowed with visionary prescriptions for the society of the future. Nor am I a finger-shaking shrew eager to pinpoint the shortcomings of my fellow man.

      In fact, let’s get the obvious question out of the way—who am I to take the podium and expound on any of this?

      I reply with two quotations: Emily Dickinson’s I’m nobody. Who are you? and Saturday Night Live’s I’m Chevy Chase….and you’re not.

      I cite Dickinson because I have no credentials to lecture anyone about anything. I quote Chase because I had the wherewithal to sit down and write this nonsense and you were naïve enough to pick it up– so here we are. If you need a mental picture, I am a middle aged male, 5’11", brown hair, thin, a married homeowner with 4 children, 6 cats and a Chihuahua. To keep one step ahead of the bill

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