Dream of Waking

I was driving home at lunchtime last week on a very busy main road. It’s spring, which is roadkill season in TN, so it’s not strange to see something dead on the side of the road. This time, however, it was a dog. Some fucking asshole hit somebody’s dog. It was in an area where it was nice and clear all around so it’s pretty obvious that the driver either wasn’t paying attention or it was intentional. It wasn’t completely mutilated either, it looked like a dog on it’s back, but it was clearly dead. I went home and was kind of sad and wondered who the fuck hits a dog and how long it’d be till the owner noticed.

After my class I was on the same route going home. The dog, which was almost off the road it was so far next to the curb, had been hit again. So now there was a half crushed roadkill dog right next to the curb. Fucking awesome, that’s exactly what I want to see. So now that there’s a mess, it’s only a matter to time before the city comes along to clean it up, right? Or the owner finally notices and does something about it themselves? I mean, as hard as it is to think of such things, I wouldn’t want any of my pets lying dead in the street.

The weekend goes by. It rains, hard, several times. It’s more than a week since I first saw it. What’s left of the dog is still there. A flat, unrecognizable mash of fur, bones, and dried entrails. The blood has been washed away by the rain.

Somebody killed someone else’s pet and no one gives a shit. The driver didn’t give a shit. The owner doesn’t give a shit. The city doesn’t give a shit. That piece of roadkill that (I estimate) hundreds of people, if not a couple thousand, see a day is going to sit there until it decomposes itself into nothing.

This is how this whole town operates. Clarksville, TN. No one gives a fuck. I’ve never seen such apathy in my life. If someone’s car breaks here, they just ditch it on the side of the road. It’ll sit there until the city decides to move it. I was driving home on the same ultra-busy thoroughfare on my lunch hour when I found myself in the middle of a street race. In broad daylight. Some fuckheads want to show off and swerve through traffic at 80mph in a 45mph zone. They can do this because the police don’t give a fuck. When Chester got bit by a loose dog in the neighborhood and I tracked down the owner, he didn’t give a fuck.

It is one hundred percent obvious to me that in this city, you are absolutely on your own and the solution is always get a bigger stick than the next guy. Clarksville, TN is an apathetic shithole.

ABC News: Gates Announces End to Army Stop-Loss

This is easily the best news I’ve read since President Obama took office. Though the article says stop-loss will be phased out over the span of two years, this gives me a huge amount of hope that I won’t be stuck on the next bullet train to hell. Stop-loss is a despicable practice that turns volunteers into conscripts and I am undescribably happy to know it will finally end a nightmare that has affected countless lives.