There'd be no telling what's really bugging us, second-to-second, without all the constant, helpful reminders from our talking-head gadgets, sound sources, headline services, downloaders, and assorted cultural pulse-takers.

The media does our thinking for us, so we can continue our sleepwalking, and our sleepdriving, and our sleepworking, and our sleepeating, and our sleepsleeping, in uninterrupted bliss.

It is now possible, for example, to go from coast to coast in this country, one of outlandishly enormous land mass and huge distances, and never once hear any local programming on the radio.  Instead, we can hear just one, long, steady drone, not unlike the long, steady drone heard just before an actual drone drops from the sky, a split second before the sky itself drops out of the sky, and right onto you.

Or your wedding party.  Or someone soon to be identified as The Wrong Person(s), in grudging news reports, which will then, Rube Goldberg-style, cause the U.S. government a nanosecond's spasm, and trigger a defensive need to offer those who remain upright (aka Blast-Deafened Survivors) compensation.  This financial offer is in lieu of simply not killing anyone with drones in the first place, in places where military (or other) intelligence is nonexistent, but in spots which might-maybe-could be used as terrorist hideouts.

... In other news, Yoosa (TM), the country formerly known as The United States of America, Amuhrikuh, 'Merica, 'Murricuh, and so on, was sold today to the highest bidder.

Never you mind who.  It's none of your business.

Please report to the Reassignment Station in your neighborhood.  Your new overlords want to give you a thorough looking-over, before they decide on an appropriate wholesale price for your ass.

Tune in every day at this time, on this device, for important news on your updated citizenship category status, family reassignment area by gender and age, food and sleep center assignment, voting recommendations, New World Service School announcements, and for information regarding your own zone-address of personal service and master's name, minimum length of service period, your brick-shitting quotas, and so forth.

The ability to learn is Nature's way of keeping us from dying from the same thing, over and over again.  Except that it works only for the species, not individuals, and only some of the time at that.  Individuals are as free as ever, Nature says, to perish or be punished by almost any lame-brained, bone-headed thing we'd care to do.

The ability to learn may be fickle, appearing to pick and choose its candidates by invisible lot, or by some other means we mortals cannot detect.  However much we ponder, mull over, and squint, in mid-thought, Nature still retains the ability to surprise.

Baseball, for example:  For the first time, during opening day, an umpire's call was challenged, and then actually reversed, after a check with the demigod of lightning's offspring with electrolysis, known as Instant Replay.

This marks a profound moment in the annals of learning.  It proves people can change, even when there's an out at stake and a crush of tradition in place. This is no small thing.

* * * * *

(Speaking of normally slow learners:  During my time in uniformed service, we used to sometimes jest that we were serving in an organization with a proud history -- 200 years of tradition, completely unhampered by progress. This sort of remark used to come up when we were dealing with two of the other most common experiences, aside from brushes with, and close escapes from, Unhampered Progress:  hurrying up, only to wait in place, and speculating on the nature of the SNAFU of the day.

The civilian version of the former, which some of us adopted for a while after discharge, was I got no time for patience -- I gotta hurry up and relax! The latter scenario, SNAFU of the Day, was with more questionable ingredients, and the immersion of many elements, sometimes us, in very deep, and very hot, water.)

* * * * *

We've become a nation of fleeting snits and hissy fits.

We nurse along so many hurt feelings that we all get emergency Red Cross parcels, plus the thanks from a grateful nation, for our extensive enmity-nursing skills.  Our spending on pets last year was $61 billion -- and that's not even counting what we're willing to pay to keep our pet peeves alive.  We have so many kinds of hairy grudges, it's surprising none of them ever showed up in Dr. Suess books, all raspberry and lime.

But, none of these petty issues includes the stuff that really ignites us in some way, really toasts our scalps, like we've just grabbed hold of some stripped-bare 220 cables long enough to have Tilt or Free Game show up on our foreheads, or to start spitting little lightning bolts, in a sudden show of Looney Tunes solidarity.

We've pretty much painted ourselves into the corner in this society, and now, as adults, we're going to have to sleep in it.  Or on it. Something. The point is: We create constant distractions and attention-snaggers.  Some are cream puffs that melt on the tongue.  Others have hooks and barbs that feel like bottom dredgers scraping heavy equipment around on the floor of your skull.  Inside these raging jags?  Most are only single-burst fireworks, then flame out, once the phosphorous has scorched through a gross of tandem-stacked I-beams.