It’s on the YEG police scanner online. Read the reader’s comments and postings in relation to the non-stop 24/7 crime reports. In one example, the scanner reports a guy with an axe going through garbage who is finally collected by the cops. Then, in response, a reader posts a color cartoon of Donald Duck chopping at a tree!
We’ve long arrived at a point in which Theatre of the Absurd exceeds the chaos and bizarreness of general reality. Writers certainly need not make up absurdist literature anymore. Reality, which has always been absurd anyway, can now be shared live with anyone, anywhere in real time with its weird and wild juxtapositions as in the case of this online scanner.
And the ironies and juxtapositions, like naked people running thru the busy streets of Edmonton, play out quite comically much like the old Theatre of the Absurd dramas. These crazy, grotesque, meaningless narratives are acted out by a never-ending parade of pathetic, ridiculous, clearly imbalanced characters.
The scanner also reveals the stupidity, ignorance, and craziness of human beings played out against the surface background of a ‘dull’ prairie city and its unsuspecting, largely unknowing denizens who are, for the most part, largely unaware of the kind of underbelly nuttiness running amuck in their neighborhoods hither and yon.
Clearly, Theatre of the Absurd has met social media and is now enjoying a major hybrid exposure/comeback in our burgh.