oniony

why hello, onion rag-stand. i didn't expect to see you there. i didn't expect to see anything there. at all. a potted plant stand wouldn't have been alarming, but you, staring back at me from across the road; you were unexpected.

you look lonely, onion. who could blame you. you've been left in the most inconvenient of places. the median between the UT stadium and the music building is far out of most student's walking ranges. but i'd bet that lack of foot traffic isn't the only thing making you so stoic and solitaire.

let's be honest onion. no one really cares to pay you much attention nowadays. you were hot stuff, way back when the dow was at 130000 points and there was a full out white house party to mock, all-day and all-night.

you've lost all that now, even us, your accomplices of those hey-days. the recycling rhetoric and inherent laziness of the species causes us to avoid most unnecessary, disposable, physical objects. especially those objects that manifest themselves as collections of hand-blackening paper. once picked up, our moral obligations oblige us to assume the responsibility of ensuring that you and all your skins are disposed of in a non-ecosystem disruptive manner.

and let's face it. you're no longer necessary. your rhetorical niche has been lost. who needs parody of the system, when the system, in the most responsible manner of all, does its own parodying? Fox News parodies News. CNN parodies an unbiased perspective. Liberals parody a liberal application of self-understanding and inclusiveness. Republicans parody a party of unbiased racists, protectors of all lifeforms (particularly those of the unborn), and, what may be their most farcical to date, representatives of the common man.

i understand, onion. it's hard to see what layers there are left to unwrap.

you stand naked, unskinned. eyeing me, vacantly, agenda-less, neither compelling me to read your attempts at repackaged cultural refuse nor attempting to disconcert me with an accusatory gaze. you're beyond cajoling, beyond blame: you've lost all hope. you've given up on your self.

now, you watch me.

you watch and wait to see, where i'll go, what i'll do. you've no self interest left in the game. you tried so hard to be something, that you've, at last, nothing to do but watch a someone, a person, a real entity without parody, without pretend, without grandstanding, without politicking... just be.

so i am.