Mainstream - Uneasy

There's something wrong, and I can't put my finger on it.
It's not that George Bush is president again, because, let's be honest, it doesn't make all that much difference to most of us, not even those of us in the USA, long-term.

In the grand scheme of things, you can crash planes into buildings, you can invade countries, you can murder your neighbour and bury them under your granny annex, you can bring your child up on a meal of stale bread and make them sleep under the stairs, and the sad and glorious fact of life is that tomorrow, things won't have changed all that much.

In a hundred years time, it won't even be a matter of note that you spent every night between your twelfth and twentieth birthday masturbating raw to fantasies about your cute younger cousin, or that you cheated on your husband with the next-door neighbour's dog, let alone that you were kind to old people, or were a supportive, loving and generous parent.

Tragedy at it's most genuine is a thing with a very tight and intimate boundary... the only people who are really going to be taking the death of Diana to their deathbed are the people who knew her well, and anyone who claims otherwise is a fucking liar. The same goes for people bombed out of their houses, or the families of those killed in action... there will never be any shortage of people thousands of relationships distant ready to cry on tv for the victims of such situations, but ultimately if you're free to go about your normal daily life unmolested after something like that, then it hasn't REALLY affected you in any lasting, definitive way, if you're honest about it.
So it's not that.
It's not that Colin Powell has resigned... Although don't get me started on how annoyed I am with his wife and her insistence that he not run for president 4 years ago, because he might be a target for assassination. How different would things have been now, for everyone, with him as president of the US for the last few years?

Besides which, it seems that beyond his colleagues in the current administration and some neo-nazi nutball rednecks in the states, everyone likes him, and if the CIA, FBI and Military like you, I imagine you're actually pretty safe from harm as a prospective prez. It only becomes difficult to protec' your neck when one of those groups isn't watching your ass as close as they could be.

And anyway, as long as Keifer Sutherland was on the case, no-one'd stand a chance of killing the dude. TV has taught me that.
So it's not that, or the fact that it's obviously all a woman's fault, naturally.
And it's not that I'm tired and depressed at home and work. In some ways, being tired and depressed at home and work is the natural order of things, if you're not some crazy over-zealous religious type, or some scarily optimistic chemically aided head-case. I defy anyone to argue with me on this, not least because if you don't see my point, and you don't think you are one of the two above groups, I will crush you with the catch-all argument that you are deluded, over-compensating for deep-rooted emotional problems, and in denial.
It's not that we're almost finished the first series of 24 on DVD, and I just know the next series isn't going to be as good.
It's not that I have two short comic scripts almost fully formed in my head, and yet can't seem to get started on actually typing the damn things up.

All after years of bitching internally that if people on creative writing groups have so much trouble being creative, then maybe they shouldn't be trying so hard.

The irony is hateful, and annoying, and fully deserved.
It's not even that our lovely puppy Herbie still requires rest and recuperation from his hernia and subsequent operation, and that means that we've got him for even longer, which means it'll be even more of a wrench when he goes.
It's not these things. I don't think it's even that the days are already shorter, and darker, and oppressive, and grim.
It's not these things, it's something else. And whatever it is, I've got a nasty feeling it's just around the corner.