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We are living in an age of crazy, wondrous products. 

We’re also living in an age of crazy, wondrous claims about products.

And, the ability for these claims to saturate the media ecology surrounding all of us. better than the Sony wireless, noise canceling headphones I’m wearing right now.

A day between projects. Some projects just completed and some lingering a little offshore right now in the calm harbor with no creative winds blowing.

The national news was getting worse each day with inflation continuing to rise and the war in the Ukraine continuing on with mass shootings all over the country. The president gets increasingly incoherent. I didn’t need to spend it catching up on more depressing news. It was one of those days you found yourself wondering somewhat mindlessly around the landscape of the Internet with no real destination in mind. Going down rabbit holes as they say. It’s somewhat like walking down the midway of a carnival with carnie barkers on both sides shouting at you to try their ride or play their game. Bright colored lights and images appear all over the computer screen, inviting attention, beckoning for it. Promising value and great rewards for just clicking a link entrance to another rabbit hole.

But the links are like false fronts of movie sets with nothing behind them. It doesn’t matter as I spend a few hours chasing rabbits down various rabbit holes on the Internet. Chasing rabbits down rabbit holes becomes the de facto term for mindlessly following ideas on the Internet. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines “rabbit hole” as “a complexly bizarre or difficult state or situation conceived of as a hole into which one falls or descends or one in which the pursuit of something (such as an answer or solution) leads to other questions, problems, or pursuits.” A good example is provided on the dictionary definition by Edith Zimmerman who writes “While trying to find the picture again on Google, I fell down the Cosmo rabbit hole, scrolling through a gallery of swimwear, then through “How to Be Sexier-Instantly” and then through all 23 slides of “Sexy Ideas for Long Hair.”

One writer wonders how “rabbit hole” – which started as a conduit to a fantastical land – evolved into a metaphor for extreme distraction on the Internet. But there’s little wondering about rabbit holes today because they always arrive within an ecology of distraction that blocks out any wondering about them.

* * *

It is the middle of July in the summer of 2022. the nation continues to swirl downward like a great bird shot out of the sky. The great bird is really the American symbol in the Bald Eagle. The great eagle that once soared over all the others in the world now slowly falls to earth. Put in the highest place in the sky. Overall, the other symbols out there. The Bald Eagle has always been the symbol for the nation. The greatest and proudest of all birds. Something that always flies high above the earth. A bird that soars greater than any other bird. The rightful owner of the sky.

I wasn’t thinking of my eventual topic of finding a magical, crazy product when I started falling down rabbit holes today. For the most part I posted to my Facebook and website and then checked in with my emails. Responding takes an hour or so. 

Nothing really to write about today. I’m on hold between the ideas. The great ideas linger offshore, becalmed by my creative winds. These winds are calm today.  Although the great Bald Eagle – symbol of America – had been shot out of its highest position of any creature on earth. Now it seems, the great Bald Eagle of America is falling to earth in the background of any attempt to tell set a story today. I used to be more optimistic. But I’ve become more pessimistic when I’ve realize the true power of the other side in this whole battle today.

This falling, seems done in slow motion during this attempt to tell a story today. Many might say this is fantasy. Yet it is the way I see things. The falling of America’s great symbol, the Golden Eagle, a slow falling of the great symbol, to earth. Every faction possible aiming at the grand creature of the sky to take it down.

The falling eagle creates a particular media ecology that forms the context of our world today. All our politics, popular culture, media and government attempt to distract citizens away from the grand fall of the Bald Eagle symbol of America. In many ways, it is a battle of the two words “I” and “We.” As I’ve said before, a battle between the two, paradoxical founding symbols of America in the symbol of freedom and individuality and the symbol of equality and community. They continue to do battle in our two-party system. 

Symbols define the dynamics of life than the everyday comings and going of imposes distractions. To see the world in this perspective, or even begin to see it in this perspective, changes everything in life. It is the grand perspective about life. The type of perspective the Bald Eagle has looking down on the world from high in the sky. The context or medium of life.

After finishing up on daily tasks of email and text communication, I started surfing around the Internet. I had KCSM, the Bay Area’s great jazz station on my Sony noise-cancelling, wireless earbuds. Sounding incredible on this day in the middle of July 2022. I was listening to a lot of Miles Davis from my own music library today and then switching back to KCSM to hear their live streaming broadcast. 

The music in my earbuds while searching things down on the Internet. Often, going off into crazy directions, ending up in crazy digital places. Nothing symbolizes this process more than the words “rabbit hole” and its modern meaning. It’s modern meaning has been investigated in a few excellent articles.  

Now, I wasn’t interested in articles, however excellent they might be. I didn’t need to read another article today. I just needed to surf around the Internet bumping into things and bouncing off of them, leading to related things and then related things. Perhaps a direction in all of this but a direction I can’t see.

* * *

I bounce from various links and sites like an electric bumper car in a carnival. In the background, the the great American Bald Eagle, falling to earth, swirling slowly downward, creating a particular color in the sky like the strange color before a great storm.

My search history is long and wide today. Somewhere along the way, I arrive at a product on Amazon called John The Conqueror’s Oil. I have little idea how I arrived here but its an interesting page with a product promising magic abilities.

Presented here is a product at the bottom of one of the rabbit holes I fell into today and one customer’s comment about its magical effects. The first comment of over 1,700 almost five star reviews. The product – High John The Conqueror Oil – was the product existing at the bottom of one of the rabbit holes I feel into today. The review tells a story of its wondrous effects by providing a bus ride home to a a mother and her child. After the buses had stopped running. The copy could have been written by a top advertising copywriter.

Maybe one should see for themselves if it works. Read other reviews about its magical effects. Order it on Amazon and try it for yourself. It’s only $7.99. Worth spending a few dollars to see if magic still exists in the world. We could certainly use some of it these days. It might have powers greater than just summoning a bus ride late at night. Maybe one can even waive it upwards, towards the sky, at the falling Bald Eagle to stop – or just slow down – its’ fall to earth.