Signals?

From this morning's report on NPR:

1.   Regarding the death of the musician Kurt Cobain, which was mentioned in a "preview" of some broadcast scheduled for today: A sound bite from someone who knew him (and I am paraphrasing): "I remember, I woke up the next morning and I said to myself, 'I'm waking up, and ... he's not. Wow.'"

Not exactly "In Memoriam A.H.H." But a common type of expression of the profundity of things in general, these days. We're still slightly above the level of grunting; but the progression towards monosyllabic verbalization of our understanding of life, the universe, and everything proceeds apace. We used to parody the stoned hippie's "Oh, wow!" as the height of his expressive ability; nowadays, such expressions get you on NPR.

2. Libyan rebels celebrated the news (premature, as it turned out) of the capture of Sirit, Qaddafi's hometown, with wild demonstrations of joy, principally involving the firing of automatic weapons into the air.

The use of machine guns as roman candles, of course, is a familiar sight, particularly, it seems, in Arab lands. But this does not speak well for the organization, professionalism, or even sense of purpose of the Libyan rebels. Rather, it marks them as what they are more or less acknowledged to be: ragtag assemblies of angry young men without any particular structure to their effort.

This does not bode well, either for their success, or, should they succeed, for their long-term prospects as organizers of a new government. This is particularly true given the report that followed, which focused on their ability to resupply and stated that they will, quite possibly, run out of weapons and ammunition.

If this is who we (sorry, I mean the "coalition") are sponsoring, we may come to regret it. It would appear that the Taliban are models of discipline by comparison.


Both these items are emblems of the deterioration of things in the world, as if entropy is reminding us of its inevitable triumph. Or maybe I am just an old guy who longs for President Eisenhower or something.