"Anger Management"

by Dom B.
2001.08.27

Hello, hello, it has been a while. I know, I missed me too. I feel slightly askew, writing these is some of the best therapy out there, and I missed last week's appointment. I bottled up more stress than I should have, and my other pressure valves weren't working either. I am a person of the new millennium, as we all are, and I share the same illness that we all have: Rage.

So many types of rage these days. Road Rage. Air Rage. Apparently there's such a thing as Shopping Rage, which manifests around the holidays. I can make up some names for other types of rage, and maybe you can act as vectors and spread the word to everyone else out there, and names for new types of rage will burrow their way into the cultural collective. How about Tech Rage, when the whirring plastic god who gives you your games and your email and your porno decides to give you blue screens and freezes up, no matter how many times you hit restart. There could be Time Rage, whenever the forty billion things you need to get done in one weekend can't get finished. Maybe we could have Prime Time Rage, when the only thing on TV is 'Will and Grace' reruns and there aren't any 'When Animals Attack' episodes on. Then, the evil Career Rage. This is when your job sucks your life away but you can't quit because your credit cards need to be paid off and your worried what people will think of you.

Rage, people. Rage carries the connotation of action, of violence. If it isn't violence at another person, it's violence inside of you, years of Career Rage or Relationship Rage or Underpaid Rage slowly eating your stomach lining. Yes indeed, Rage is all the rage these days.

What's next? What will be the next big affliction? Depression, I think. Something that's been around as long as rage, and that could use a few new names, a nice little overhaul for these times. Shopping Depression, when the three hundred bucks you just spent fail to make you happy for more than a week. Road Depression, when you figure out how many hours of your life you wasted sitting on your ass staring at the rear end of another car. Air Depression, when, in flight, you realize you'll have to head back to what you left behind, or you'll realize you won't be heading back to what you left behind. Time Depression, when you just don't know where all that time went, but you know you'll never get it back.

I'll try to end this on a lighter note. Please, pick your head up off your desk. It's okay. It isn't that bad. Take lunch early today. You deserve it.

I get Jolie Depression, and sometimes Jolie Rage. It's when I realize that no matter how hot Angelina Jolie is, Tomb Raider was one awful movie.