The Prodigal Sun

Ain't seen the sun in 66 days...
-Ice Cube, "Natural Born Killaz"

Ah, and what of the days when quoting Ice Cube wasn't followed by a block of qualifiers?

They were good days - back when Cube called the LA riots, when his threat of shooting Sergeant Coon in the face was taken seriously, when he could rhyme "POW!" with "style"...before he became a latter-day Fresh-Prince of Bel-Air with an estimated worth of $145 million.

"66 days" actually feels more like eleven months; I've been predominantly solar-powered for as long as I can remember, and this unending lack of sunshiny-goodness has contributed greatly to my less than stellar mood of late...sure, I could move to the tropics, as some have suggested, enjoying the sun year-round like a black-headed python, but then I'd lose out on the anticipation; I'll petulantly stomp through the irritating snow and infuriating cold if I've got a summertime's worth of glee coming my way.

Still, as much as I like complaining, even Ice Cube himself would be appalled at how much I've written about racism this year; growing up, I looked at "racism" the same way that I looked at religion: as a silly relic of a much more foolish time. Imagine how surprised I was, after removing my head from my ass, when I found that churches still pack 'em in on Sundays, and that lethargy had become epidemic.

There are, like, twelve different reasons to hate any given person...why use racism?

So lazy.

I'm willing to bet nickels to Neanderthals that even a bigot would hold open a door for humans of a different make and model on the first truly sunny day of the year - call me idiotically-optimistic if you must, but I can’t be the only person who feels like literally rolling around on the grass in the warm sunshine, can I?

Well, maybe so...but what of it? Surely people have seen a full-grown man standing in a gas-station’s centremost area pointing at the sky in some preposterous euphoria, getting beeped at by impatient SUVs, their zoot-suited drivers yelling as though I was blocking their path to Shangri-la, which I most certainly was...especially if Heaven is the rush-hour traffic of North-Hammertown.

No? Too bad.

Though it does explain why religion still exists - some people need instructions for everything.