Edit ~ I was sleep-deprived and slightly inebriated when this came spewing out, speaking volumes to the danger of that combination. I think I was wrong, but I'm leaving this post up for posterity, or something like that.
My family was watching the old TV show "The Fugitive" together, on the computer I'm currently staring at. My dad got it on DVD. When we'd finished the episode we were watching, my sister happily announced that she was done with musical theater.
Surely, she meant that she was finished with some specific musical-related obligation. She didn't mean she was giving up on her dream of many years, a dream spoken of in the music I constantly heard her listening to and singing around the house. At this point, you've probably realized that, in fact, she meant just that.
I don't remember much of what happened next. There was something about it being cutthroat, bringing out a side of her that she didn't like, stress and general misery, the line "I just don't want it badly enough to put myself through that," and my lip being vigorously bitten. No, I seem to recall mentioning, it wasn't that I disagreed with her decision.
The next thing I knew, I was crying outside. I heard my name called, and fled to the side of the garage. Thinking my sister was coming for me, I snuck around the back, and peeked back at the house, to see that she in fact wasn't. I shot hoops, and thought about the fact that I had never dreamed of being a basketball star, or ever had any interest in playing the game other than for fun.
I have also never dreamed about doing steroids, stabbing my friends in the back, making myself miserable, taking ADD meds before a test, becoming a consultant for the state-side lobbying group of an authoritarian state, sucking up, dying of heat exhaustion, using secret video footage to decipher the opposing team's hand signals, or becoming an inspirational speaker. I have daydreamed about punching one in the neck.
My sister's announcement was happy. It signified the end of a period in her life in which she was subjected to the savageries of a dog-eat-dog line of work. (This is where I bit my lip.) It was a decision she'd already made, with the melodrama behind her, or at least behind her relieved face. And I wasn't lying when I said I didn't disagree with her decision.
I have this unfortunate tendency to imagine things as they couldn't be - to imagine a world where we didn't commodify people, or at least one where my sister didn't think she was too fat to deserve happiness. ("Doesn't she know better?" Of course she fucking knows better, and it doesn't help.) I also have this unfortunate tendency to, after writing "cynical" things like that, imagine assholes telling me "That's an ignorant, self-defeating conceit."
The conceit is the inspirational poster placed to improve productivity. The conceit is in human interest news; in the miraculous recovery of the Major League Baseball player addicted to drugs. While a stadium worships him for his strength, millions die alone with bitter final thoughts and no happy ending. Other millions wish to death that they could be that MLB player, and would do anything to be there. These wishes are something we're proud of; the burning desire something we glorify. I'd say we've forgotten what "would do anything" really means, but I don't think that we've forgotten.
No, I'm not an expert on musical theater. Yes, I'm a child of privilege. No, it isn't the end of the world for my sister, who isn't even in college yet. Yes, I understand that I don't know everything, and that I'm inexperienced. And finally, no, I don't pretend that I'm innocent of all the things I criticize our values for. I'm a human being, too; specifically an American human being.
There's something strange about the words "cynical" and "optimistic." They sometimes seem to imply that the people they describe don't believe in objective truth, which is somehow magically in the middle; cynics and optimists are deluding themselves. That makes no sense to me. It makes no sense to me when a "cynic" or "optimist" uses such a word self-referentially, as though they themselves are saying "I warp the truth in a particular direction." Don't they believe what they believe?
I'm not looking at the glass and saying "It's half empty." I'm looking at a glass that doesn't have enough fucking water for all the people who need it - perhaps because "that's the way it is," or perhaps because someone took more than their fair share. Either way, I think I'm allowed to be upset by this - especially after being lied to about it.
I don't claim to know everything, and I guess there's some hope in that I could have things wrong. Maybe it's just as simple as me being really angry.
24 July 2008
Thanks for the Confusion, Pop Psychology
Extra Bonus Game Time!
Which of these statements are positive, and which are negative?
a) "You did a bad job."
b) "You didn't do a good job."
c) "You did a good job."
d) "You didn't do a bad job."
If you're confused, don't worry. I am too.
Which of these statements are positive, and which are negative?
a) "You did a bad job."
b) "You didn't do a good job."
c) "You did a good job."
d) "You didn't do a bad job."
If you're confused, don't worry. I am too.
17 July 2008
Blowing It Out My Blowhole
As some may have noticed, I'm on a serious Electric Six kick.
"Now you see, the unavoidable is hard to avoid. Wake up in your own drool to find that your future is destroyed."
After that, he talks about minds being lost. And this is the part where I earn a gold star next to my name on the list of suspected terrorists.
I think I've got a new version of American History:
1) David slings Goliath in the face. The peasants rejoice.
2) David decides that next time, his enemy will probably have a forehead-protector. David does steroids.
3) David develops rippling muscles and small non-manly boobs.
4) David sheds all pretension to innocence and pulls a Robert Mugabe.
5) David, now a big mean tyrant, is almost killed when a small shepherd hits him in the face with a rock. The steroids made him susceptible to injury, but fortunately this shepherd had smoked too much of the hashish that David had given him, and couldn't hit hard enough for a killing blow.
6) David gets a forehead-protector, and doses up on medication that offsets his higher-risk-of-injury from steroids. (Side effects include losing his last shred of humanity.)
7) David returns to the shepherd that tried to hit him, bends him over, rapes him, decapitates him, and puts his head on a pike as a warning to other shepherds.
8) Bored, David goes around stabbing people who refuse to buy his steroids (or, if they have their own steroids, who refuse to give them to David for free).
9) Hearing that there are fellow-Judeans in China (true story!), David heads east and meets some Chinese people. When they seem to have some steroids of their own to sell, a confrontation develops.
Which asshole will win? Tune in next century for the exciting next chapter (and possible conclusion?) of American history!
Now, let me be absolutely clear here. This is not a story of an innocent tyrant-slayer turning into the same thing he once hated. This is a story of an out-of-work tyrant getting a job.
Our founding fathers had more than just "small character flaws," such as having slaves. They had huge character flaws, such as having slaves. They were Englishmen in an era of English Imperialism. They figured "We can do this empire bit better, so let's pull some shit about 'freedom' out of our asses, only give it to white male land-owners who aren't whiny pinkos, and get down to the business of killing brown/red people and taking all their stuff."
Sound like anti-American propaganda? I ask you: who can tell a story of himself and not be biased? "David" told us all his version of these events, and that's the only version we're raised to see as credible. "If you don't like it, you can blow it out your blowhole," like I'm doing.
By the by, I never said that I hated my own country. I don't. How can you hate the place whose people are most similar to you? How can I hate people who were essentially raised in the same way I was, in the same place and speaking the same language? Neither "My country, right or wrong" nor "My country, always wrong" are really going to get the job done for you. If you can't see the difference between what I'm saying here and what I've said previously in this post, scrutinize it more carefully.
"Now you see, the unavoidable is hard to avoid. Wake up in your own drool to find that your future is destroyed."
After that, he talks about minds being lost. And this is the part where I earn a gold star next to my name on the list of suspected terrorists.
I think I've got a new version of American History:
1) David slings Goliath in the face. The peasants rejoice.
2) David decides that next time, his enemy will probably have a forehead-protector. David does steroids.
3) David develops rippling muscles and small non-manly boobs.
4) David sheds all pretension to innocence and pulls a Robert Mugabe.
5) David, now a big mean tyrant, is almost killed when a small shepherd hits him in the face with a rock. The steroids made him susceptible to injury, but fortunately this shepherd had smoked too much of the hashish that David had given him, and couldn't hit hard enough for a killing blow.
6) David gets a forehead-protector, and doses up on medication that offsets his higher-risk-of-injury from steroids. (Side effects include losing his last shred of humanity.)
7) David returns to the shepherd that tried to hit him, bends him over, rapes him, decapitates him, and puts his head on a pike as a warning to other shepherds.
8) Bored, David goes around stabbing people who refuse to buy his steroids (or, if they have their own steroids, who refuse to give them to David for free).
9) Hearing that there are fellow-Judeans in China (true story!), David heads east and meets some Chinese people. When they seem to have some steroids of their own to sell, a confrontation develops.
Which asshole will win? Tune in next century for the exciting next chapter (and possible conclusion?) of American history!
Now, let me be absolutely clear here. This is not a story of an innocent tyrant-slayer turning into the same thing he once hated. This is a story of an out-of-work tyrant getting a job.
Our founding fathers had more than just "small character flaws," such as having slaves. They had huge character flaws, such as having slaves. They were Englishmen in an era of English Imperialism. They figured "We can do this empire bit better, so let's pull some shit about 'freedom' out of our asses, only give it to white male land-owners who aren't whiny pinkos, and get down to the business of killing brown/red people and taking all their stuff."
Sound like anti-American propaganda? I ask you: who can tell a story of himself and not be biased? "David" told us all his version of these events, and that's the only version we're raised to see as credible. "If you don't like it, you can blow it out your blowhole," like I'm doing.
By the by, I never said that I hated my own country. I don't. How can you hate the place whose people are most similar to you? How can I hate people who were essentially raised in the same way I was, in the same place and speaking the same language? Neither "My country, right or wrong" nor "My country, always wrong" are really going to get the job done for you. If you can't see the difference between what I'm saying here and what I've said previously in this post, scrutinize it more carefully.
15 July 2008
French Underground
Well! The Daily Show has leapfrogged The Huffington Post in my imaginary list of favorite political commentators.
Unlike the Huffington Post (take a first glance here, here, here, here, and in the minority opinion, here), they had the balls to ask: should we be mad at the New Yorker, or every other American south of the Mason-Dixie line? The kind of people who produce and buy these?
I wonder if they ever got around to suing that schmuck?
"Norman acknowledged the imagery's Jim Crow roots but said he sees nothing wrong with depicting a prominent African-American as a monkey.
'We're not living in the (19)40's', he said. 'Look at him . . . the hairline, the ears -- he looks just like Curious George.'"
Extra Special Bonus Game Time - Some people say things like "I thought George Bush was depicted as Curious George several years ago. Was that a racist statement too?"
Ah, those silly ignorant liberal hypocrites. Always so selective with the truth! Always making such harsh generalizations about the south! I daresay they're racist against white people. Shit, I know I am.
Frankly, it's a question of sports. Replacing hockey with NASCAR is enough for me to judge you as a people. And I do.
In keeping with my status as a racist liberal, I'll say "Many of my friends are from the south! Don't worry!" Shoot, I even have an aunt from Texas. But guess where she doesn't live any more? (Admittedly, it's not because she hated it there at all; she's quite proud of her home, and all this silliness aside, I say good for her.)
Let's talk about hate crimes. My good friend, a deliverer of pizzas, was locked in high-speed car-to-car battle with a gentlemen who had a "Don't Mess with Texas" bumper sticker. My friend triumphed when he tossed a burrito, Anchorman-style, through two open car windows straight at the guy's face. He even preceded it with a one-liner: "Hey Tex - Mess with This!" His only regret is that he didn't speed away screaming "AWWWW, SKEET SKEET SKEET MOTHERFUCKER."
Sounds like a hate crime to me. (Why did he get pissed, you ask? Our friend the Texan opted to drive slowly in front of him, put on his turn signal and slow down at every turn, only to continue going straight. Our hypothesis is that he knew a pizza delivery boy was behind him by his incredible powers of deduction - there's a "Mr. Pizza/Burrito Joint" sign on top of my friend's car - and was from Texas.)
Meanwhile, I oppressed college conservatives. There was a poster on a bathroom door, placed there by two conservative professors (one of them the sponsor of MSU's YAF, a group whose leader wears a ten-gallon cowboy hat the size of his entire body, and which opted to use music from the video game "Command and Conquer" for one of their videos) who felt that conservative voices on campus are unfairly silenced. They were half right, as I tore off the poster and took a long, satisfying dump on it.
I'm really not ashamed. To paraphrase a conservative argument, when someone declares war on you, you don't just sit back and respect their free speech. You shit on their posters. Yes, I understand that cooperation provides a much better chance for progress, and no, I don't think that culture war polemics will help our situation. The difference is, I recognize that "You can play your electric guitar, but it ain't gonna change the wo-h-h-horld."
I don't know about you, but I'm going down fighting.
Unlike the Huffington Post (take a first glance here, here, here, here, and in the minority opinion, here), they had the balls to ask: should we be mad at the New Yorker, or every other American south of the Mason-Dixie line? The kind of people who produce and buy these?
I wonder if they ever got around to suing that schmuck?
"Norman acknowledged the imagery's Jim Crow roots but said he sees nothing wrong with depicting a prominent African-American as a monkey.
'We're not living in the (19)40's', he said. 'Look at him . . . the hairline, the ears -- he looks just like Curious George.'"
Extra Special Bonus Game Time - Some people say things like "I thought George Bush was depicted as Curious George several years ago. Was that a racist statement too?"
Ah, those silly ignorant liberal hypocrites. Always so selective with the truth! Always making such harsh generalizations about the south! I daresay they're racist against white people. Shit, I know I am.
Frankly, it's a question of sports. Replacing hockey with NASCAR is enough for me to judge you as a people. And I do.
In keeping with my status as a racist liberal, I'll say "Many of my friends are from the south! Don't worry!" Shoot, I even have an aunt from Texas. But guess where she doesn't live any more? (Admittedly, it's not because she hated it there at all; she's quite proud of her home, and all this silliness aside, I say good for her.)
Let's talk about hate crimes. My good friend, a deliverer of pizzas, was locked in high-speed car-to-car battle with a gentlemen who had a "Don't Mess with Texas" bumper sticker. My friend triumphed when he tossed a burrito, Anchorman-style, through two open car windows straight at the guy's face. He even preceded it with a one-liner: "Hey Tex - Mess with This!" His only regret is that he didn't speed away screaming "AWWWW, SKEET SKEET SKEET MOTHERFUCKER."
Sounds like a hate crime to me. (Why did he get pissed, you ask? Our friend the Texan opted to drive slowly in front of him, put on his turn signal and slow down at every turn, only to continue going straight. Our hypothesis is that he knew a pizza delivery boy was behind him by his incredible powers of deduction - there's a "Mr. Pizza/Burrito Joint" sign on top of my friend's car - and was from Texas.)
Meanwhile, I oppressed college conservatives. There was a poster on a bathroom door, placed there by two conservative professors (one of them the sponsor of MSU's YAF, a group whose leader wears a ten-gallon cowboy hat the size of his entire body, and which opted to use music from the video game "Command and Conquer" for one of their videos) who felt that conservative voices on campus are unfairly silenced. They were half right, as I tore off the poster and took a long, satisfying dump on it.
I'm really not ashamed. To paraphrase a conservative argument, when someone declares war on you, you don't just sit back and respect their free speech. You shit on their posters. Yes, I understand that cooperation provides a much better chance for progress, and no, I don't think that culture war polemics will help our situation. The difference is, I recognize that "You can play your electric guitar, but it ain't gonna change the wo-h-h-horld."
I don't know about you, but I'm going down fighting.
13 July 2008
It's Not Flip-Flopping if You Never Flipped Before You Flopped
After night comes mourning.
My friend attended a mourning, in which the chauvanist bitches and womanizing cunts in his family were too good for diners. He was heartened to see a "Coexist" bumper sticker, which in fact turned out to be an ad for a car dealership.
What's the difference between a Fleetwood and a Denny's? My friend says Denny's is more upscale. I say, Barack Obama is more liberal. (That's not a reference to Denny's infamous history with racism.)
Yes, that's the thing on our minds. I wonder if his supporters find something symbolic in the etymology of his first name? Google produces answers to my question.
I also found some answers here. The post about "chimerical," criticizing Clinton, caught my eye. Are not these same criticisms leveled against dreamers and idealists? With that in mind, we can at least note that the post about "chimerical" isn't hypocritical.
My friend attended a mourning, in which the chauvanist bitches and womanizing cunts in his family were too good for diners. He was heartened to see a "Coexist" bumper sticker, which in fact turned out to be an ad for a car dealership.
What's the difference between a Fleetwood and a Denny's? My friend says Denny's is more upscale. I say, Barack Obama is more liberal. (That's not a reference to Denny's infamous history with racism.)
Yes, that's the thing on our minds. I wonder if his supporters find something symbolic in the etymology of his first name? Google produces answers to my question.
I also found some answers here. The post about "chimerical," criticizing Clinton, caught my eye. Are not these same criticisms leveled against dreamers and idealists? With that in mind, we can at least note that the post about "chimerical" isn't hypocritical.
12 July 2008
Dead-End Machine
At the outset, I lied and said that I understood how funny it all was. You would too, if you were me. But now, I think I really get the joke. Maybe.
When it got really bad, I used to scream my lungs out. I don't any more.
I used to deceive myself. I don't any more.
I used to cycle. I don't any more.
I used to eat pancakes for dinner. I don't any more.
I used to sit for the national anthem. Now I stand.
I used to look forward to things; now I live in the present.
I used to like every movie I saw. I don't any more. (Blame formulaic father-son movies.)
I used to think my youth was in the past. I don't any more.
I used myself up.
Perhaps that judgement is arrogant, ignorant and hasty - but there it is. When I was little I used to try to convince my mom that I was stupid; she kept saying I was wrong, and I countered that if I was wrong, wasn't I stupid? I guess that was arrogant, ignorant and hasty.
Yes, I see the irony. Maybe.
When it got really bad, I used to scream my lungs out. I don't any more.
I used to deceive myself. I don't any more.
I used to cycle. I don't any more.
I used to eat pancakes for dinner. I don't any more.
I used to sit for the national anthem. Now I stand.
I used to look forward to things; now I live in the present.
I used to like every movie I saw. I don't any more. (Blame formulaic father-son movies.)
I used to think my youth was in the past. I don't any more.
I used myself up.
Perhaps that judgement is arrogant, ignorant and hasty - but there it is. When I was little I used to try to convince my mom that I was stupid; she kept saying I was wrong, and I countered that if I was wrong, wasn't I stupid? I guess that was arrogant, ignorant and hasty.
Yes, I see the irony. Maybe.
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