If Dostoevsky wrote city of San Marcos civic briefs

Ah, San Marcos—where the drudgery of civic life is dressed in tinsel and pretense, as if the weight of bureaucracy could be concealed beneath the lure of food trucks and twinkling lights.

Yes, the city will host a so-called “gourmet” food truck festival alongside Santa’s Magical Village, an event ostensibly designed to distract us from the existential void. From 3 to 8 p.m. on Saturday, December 3, and again on Sunday morning, December 4, the Civic Center will transform into a cacophony of shallow entertainment. Trucks with names like “Mangia, Mangia” and “Bitchin’ Burgers” will peddle their wares—international cuisine meant to pacify our discontented souls. Pierogis and pizzas, tokens of a world indifferent to our suffering, will be sold, not shared.

For the children, there will be trinkets to make—ornaments, candles, sand art—because heaven forbid the little ones realize the bleakness of existence too soon. The charade crescendos with the holiday tree lighting at 6:30 p.m., as Santa Claus himself ascends the tree, a grim spectacle of fabricated joy, to illuminate thousands of tiny lights. Entertainment, they promise, as if such a thing could fill the aching void.

Meanwhile, the city’s draft general plan and environmental impact report languish in obscurity, their dry, lifeless prose a stark reminder of the machinery grinding beneath this facade of festivity. These documents—monuments to endless deliberation—are available for public review, as if anyone possessed the energy to care. Comments will be accepted through January 5, 2012, not that they’ll matter in the end. Send them, if you must, to Garth Koller, c/o Lisa Kiss, at the Planning Division. It’s all so wonderfully futile.

And then there are the commissions, those bastions of civic duty where residents are invited to make a difference. The Community Services Commission, Planning Commission, and so on—each a cog in the endless grind of governance. They beg for applicants, dangling the illusion of power and purpose before an indifferent populace. Traffic safety, student relations, economic development—matters that could hardly interest the weary, yet they persist in their pleas. Applications are due November 21, 2011, at precisely 5:30 p.m., because order, after all, must be maintained.

Call the City Clerk at (760) 744-1050, ext. 3145, if you wish to participate in this Sisyphean task. Or don’t. The machine will churn on regardless, its gears indifferent to your presence.