~H. Westchop

I am, as they say, bushwacked.  The perils of the modern world weigh on my shoulders like some insidious creature latched to my back, its horrifying proboscis slowly siphoning my soul and mind.  We live a reprehensible life in a series of Kafka-esque institutions concerned only with surface and vagueness, a mucilaginous stuff that clings to my every action to the point where I feel as if I am walking through a swamp. The dear reader will have observed my crippling nostalgia for a simpler time: I know, of course, that those colonial eras were filled with prejudice and racism, horrifying tragedies in which the noble savage was unfairly maligned and savagely beaten. I, Hiller M. Westchop, will readily admit this (breathless with surprise, oh reader?), yet that it is equally clear that that racism was a cost worth paying for the beauty, the sensual simplicity of Good and Evil, of White Man’s Burden, of glorious binary oppositions! A simpler world! Surely Eastwood would agree that as we learn more the world inexorably turns grey, both in issue and in spirit.  Stark Black and White, simplicity of mind, a feeling of security in place and position in moral space is all I wish for.  Surely, the colonial price was a bargain! For we all (you and I, dear reader, and the rest of the world) live in this godless swamp, this furious ocean that threatens to swallow us whole and drown us.  Our damned societies and their moral ambiguities are a torrent that will paralyze us to inaction. No! No No No! I will gladly stand on the shoulders of others in order to thrust my head above that water line, to breathe fresh air and to struggle against the darkness that will consume us all! Should we all die, should we all disappear into the uncaring grey, or should some sacrifice themselves for the good of the rest?  Of course, we who survive are living a lie, the grey will always dull, the men and women whose shoulders we stand on, who we subvert and colonize, will soon crumble beneath our feet and expose us to those elements, but at least a lucky few will live a majestic and guilt-free life!  Progress! Progress! I spit on progress!

As I mentioned before, there are new commentators coming on board (I am, as I said, bushwacked by the weight of it all!). They are all fools, and, of course, their writing style is deplorable in comparison to mine (no doubt in your mind, I’m sure) but they are, at the least, able-bodied and industrious.  The enigmatic “potherbs,” whose real name I do not know and do not particularly care to find out, will be the first to post.  I personally believe him to be a clay-brained miscreant, a misappropriated green-thumb, a vegetable, a purveyor of low-hanging fruit, but we are all beggars, and never choosers, so I desperately try to make something out of sour and rotten lemons.