Strangely Familiar -OR- Deja Poo

(ed. note)I really have to start using labels on this stuff.

FTTT, I offer glimpses into what it means to live, collectively, in a small inner-ring suburb of Chicago, Crook County, Proviso Twp., Illinois. Where, as Driftglass so stunningly nails it, it is: "A place of two rules. Rule #1, There is a club. Rule #2, You ain't in it."

Yet, as a resident, you get to pay for it all. In spades. Well, you certainly don't want to appear cheap now do ya? Well? Do ya?

It's really more like a high school. There are tons of clubs. All with their own cliques, secret passwords and catering options. All carving out their slice of pie.
All convinced of their own importance in the grander scheme of things.

It is in this, the importance, where it all turns to slime and taints everything. There just isn't enough pie to go around. Consolidation is not an option because the reason there are so many clubs is that they do not play well together. In fact, they exist in such numbers because at sometime in the past, a "member" felt slighted and started their own club. overandoverandover again.

The village I live in was formed by being kicked out of a club. It was our drinking that rankled the rest of the club. They didn't like the image of beer halls and taverns, so they drafted some new rules, drew some new lines leaving their hood liquor free. People who lived there still drank here, but they didn't have to be otherwise associated with demon alcohol. For almost 100 years, they didn't like us, so we didn't like them. Anything they could do, we could do too, just not together.
Then of course, the battle over which was "better".

But I digress, the point is that schisms happen. The problem arises when they fight over funding. No sharing. No pooling of resources. No even splits. No tag-backs. No Cootie Shots. Those kicked to the curb have to claw and scratch their way to fill the cracks left behind.

It's at this point that is gets childish. Playground rules. Lord of the Flies, Animal Farm- ish.

Dead on your feet, you won't get far. If you keep on sticking your hand in the medicine jar.

Lyrics penned by Jimmy McCulloch of Wings. Good advice. Not heeded. Jimmy died of a heroin overdose.

We're not suffering due to a lack of funding. We're suffering because of how our funds are divvied up. Micro to Macro we need serious psychotherapy and cleansing enemas. It hardly helps that most of our club presidents seems to fall into the sociopathic spectrum, with delusional tendencies.