Today I witnessed someone I believe was muttering - I’m as mad as hell, and I am not going to take this anymore!

Peter Finch first uttered those words while he was playing Howard Beale in the 1976 movie “Network”, the satirical film about a fictional television network. I did not realize that he won the Oscar posthumously for that role. Here is a bit of the dialog leading up to that line. “I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's work, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad. You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, Goddamnit! My life has VALUE!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE! Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it, I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"

Kinda timely and ironic when I read those words to explain the quote. Now I am not sure if we need to worry about “punks are running wild in the streets” or the “Russians” anymore but boy doesn’t some of that fit, 33 years after that movie debuted. So after all that I almost forgot why I started this blog. Today on my way home from work I witnessed something that I was almost afraid to turn around to see if I saw what I thought I saw. Much to the chagrin of Bride, I do that, turn around and go look at things again to see if I did see what I thought I saw. Everything from flowers and lawns to Bogo’s on the Blue bell to a view of the sunrise or sunset that caught my eye from a certain perspective. Anyway today I saw a well dressed man crossing the parking lot of a strip mall towards the Dollar Store, he was walking like Buford Pusser might while tracking the bad guys. The whole scene was incongruent, a suit and tie wearing man, walking away from a Lincoln, looking like someone had just wronged him and everyone he knew. Oh yeah by the way he was carrying a baseball bat. I am pretty sure he was mad as hell and I was positive he was not going to take it anymore. I have learned the hard way to not mess with a pissed off man with a ball bat, although in my altercation the dude was not wearing a suit but the important thing was the bat. I drove on not really wanting to know who or what he was pissed off at.

As I drove home I could not help but wonder what it was. I was pretty sure he was headed to the Dollar Store so that got me to thinking what wrong could be perpetrated against a man in the Dollar Store? At first I thought maybe it had to do with the very bat he was toting back, was it not exactly as advertised? Was it possibly not the correct weight and maybe his son got kicked off the team for cheating because the bat was to heavy or maybe too light? I decided that could be it but it was more likely that it was something else, I am not sure why but I did. I wondered, maybe it could be he realized that the rolls of toilet paper had only 178 sheets per roll instead of 200 like the ones sold in the grocery stores. What if it was his wife found that the shampoo made her hair fall out because it was made in China and they found there to be some oddball chemical in there that ruined her follicles. Nothing worse than a follicly challenged wife to deal with, especially because his dumb ass bought the Prell knock off trying to save a few bucks, talk about something that would keep a man in the dog house. I am just saying! I wonder if by chance that the clerk had actually been rude to his wife, who did the initial shopping and he was going to make the unspeakable wrong committed against his wife right again. Could it be that the pair of size 9 shoes he bought were actually not even both the same size, I mean improperly fitting footwear can sure put me in a bad mood. I am not sure what the transgression was and when I related the story to Bride upon my arrival home she said we have to watch the 5 o’clock news, we may find out the answers to all my questions.

Well it was not to be, no story about a madman at the Dollar Store, I had mixed emotions really – I was glad no one was injured but sad that I will never know what the real story was. I guess it doesn’t matter because my possible stories are probably way better than the real one anyway. Like the original dialog from the movie, I too feel that I am mad as hell and not sure if I want to take it anymore. It is not the punks or the Russians I am worried about, sadly it is our own governments out of control antics that scare me the most. The inability to have a dialog that is working towards problem resolution is going to become more and more problematic as they seemly continue to bicker about inconsequential bullshit that revolves around party lines and political alliances and we seem to be the ones getting spun while we sit. So this is what I want you to do, I want you to get mad - All I know is that first you've got to get mad. You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, Goddamnit! My life has VALUE!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!

There was no story at 11 about the madman I saw with the ball bat so maybe it was just a benign sighting that I blew out of proportion.

if you need an explanation about what a Bogo on the Blue Bell is here it is
http://mroatmealsoratories.blogspot.com/2009/08/so-this-oratory-is-going-to-explain.html