The Shining

Alone. Empty building. Many rooms. Only your immediate family to victimize.

Writer’s block. I am bored. I am bored. I am bored.

This will soon happen to this family in Florida spanking new building, who is asked to be refugees to Tower II.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090801/ap_on_re_us/us_lonely_highrise

The only sound they hear is “going up” (automated recording in the elevator).

Oh my !

Modern life and its disenchantment. Dream turns nightmare ! Expectation = disappointment (and an enduring one).

When you end up living in a situation not to your liking and expectations, it’s Hell on Earth. Period.

Besides having the four walls and the roof to keep us dry, warm/cool , and clean, we expect a little more. The family in the story was even promised private Cinema, pool side “babes” views (Miami you know).

Instead of being deep in the pool, they are deep in the Recession. And their building came to symbolize it. Being Home Alone, they are now famous, by default. (not on their mortgage though, which is essential to the story).

That is why we need a cure for the “boiling frog” syndrome (slowly raises the temperature to anesthetize our reflex).

Modern life carries with it the seed of destruction and discontent (I happen to get in line to return a DVD at Red Box.

The previous person screw up the vending machine somehow, and we had no live person to turn to. I am sitting here with my overdue DVD  after trying to return it on time).

Frederick Taylor was ridiculed by Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times. But he was embraced by Henry Ford and his disciples (breaking down each task to minute details, eliminating wasted motion, and thereby maximize efficiency in a closed spectrum) .It’s an engineering approach, not integrative (as opposed to have a group of anthropologists, marketers, psychologists and technicians/mathematicians to collaborate and seek optimal solutions).

President Obama believes in the ingenuity of the American people. I do too. But we need more Bill Maars types who

can look at the “drama” and give us our prophetic insights. They might be “politically incorrect” , but necessary.

Somebody has to take a step back, to look at the “system”, or else, we will just live out our “ant-like” fate of being a number, a case, or a tenant.

After all, the family did move in the spanking new building. Maybe there was a trash bin at the end of the hallway. But system wide, they are socially isolated. The worst type of incarceration: they are afraid to come home.

“going up!” My ……… I am so bored. I am so bored. I am so bored. (Especially when the writer was played by one of the Born-to-be-wild actor. He wears sun glasses on the eve of the Oscar night. You know who I am talking about?)