Knees were weak and I was already getting pugnacious with a cute butch over the coffee pitcher. Just another Sunday morning, paying others to cook food that is no better than what your lazy entitled ass could have done in your own kitchen. But fuck it, this is America, and we’ve learned how to not be so hard on ourselves.
After eating like a starving raccoon, I steered our conversation in the direction of an interesting article I recently read, titled; “Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization”
To quickly sum up this article, I’d say: Hipsters are kids who hate everyone for being just like them (this happens in all scenes). But, the Hipster is the first “counter culture” that will not acknowledge themselves. The word Hipster is only used with disdain or in a self-deprecating manor. They will deny belonging to such a group, but at the same time wearing clearly stereotypical fashion elements of a Hipster. This “counter-culture” is a dead end because the Hipster’s “self-involved and isolated maintenance does nothing to feed cultural evolution.”
This article raises a lot of great points, and I started conjuring up my own questions: How long can you define yourself by somebody else’s art? Is tattoo removal the new rebellious thing to do? Cause, it’s definitely no-longer rebellious to get them. How long can you go out on the scene dressed like an ironic jack-ass, before you eventually become that jack-ass? Did our parents really raise us to put fashion over food? Whatever happened to color-coordination? Why isn’t it cool to be a Hipster?
Wait a minute. Oh shit I can see it now. If nobody wants to be a Hipster, then why couldn’t I be “King of the Hipsters”? It’s perfect. Here is this group of people that could be doing something more creative than taking terabytes of crappy digital pictures of each other, but no one will stand up and take the reins. I could take the crown unchallenged. Who would dare fight me?
The kicker here is that your true hipsters would never join me. They’d scoff and have another cigarette and scoff/cough some more, inside secretly despising me and this burst of brilliance.
I may not have the best credentials for the job. I actually grew up on a farm. I’ve been a part of the working class. I have true Hill-Billy in my blood. My parents haven’t paid for anything since high school. And I can’t stand those shitty sunglasses, or those fucking bandannas (Go rob a train!).
Jesus, calm down. You’ll never win over the constituent if you belittle them like that. Maybe these stray cats could be herded with high voltage cattle prods and a trail of cheap sunglasses. What would I do with such a following??
Hold on. Back up the tape.
If the true hipsters would never join me, then how could I be the true King of the Hipsters? There is a paradox here. If one of the core elements of being a true hipster requires that you cannot acknowledge that you are a hipster, but then you are in fact a true hipster. So if I claim to be the King of the Hipsters, would I no longer be a TRUE hipster? Would anyone that follows me as king, just be a hipster poser? Would there be some horrible rip in fashion-space-time continuum that gives everyone terrible haircuts from the 80s and pubic hair from the 50’s? Messing around with paradoxes can bring all sorts of trouble. Trouble I don’t need with a hangover like this.
Wait, I see the angle now. This is like a tax loophole. Sure, by proclaiming to be King of the Hipsters, you automatically are exempt from being judged as a true hipster by the powers that be. At the same time, you can continue doing the hipster clichés you enjoy, since you publically and proudly carry yourself as King of the Hipsters. That’s the American spirit!
So that means I can still upload party pictures to Facebook and expand my social network with the patriotic mentality of quantity over quality. Yes, I can keep adding more friends, whose last names I never knew anyway. So much to do and so little time, I better get to work.
Right … just a minute. I haven’t checked MySpace in a week.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Monday, October 20, 2008
Old Man Logic needs to shut his mouth, and go watch Wheel of Fortune!
The following is a selected excerpt from my correspondence.
Ah, the ever familiar battle between the Head and the Heart. Old Man Logic and the beast called Emotion. Like Palestine and Israel, it will never end. This sounds like a thick pill to swallow, but there are hopeful options: Peace Treaties.
I'm starting to learn that neither side is good or bad, wrong or right. But, the two of them both reside in this head of mine, and they have to learn to work together before they end up killing each other and possibly my body as a whole.
After my divorce, I think I became a bit afraid of how strong my emotions were for someone who constantly shat on my self esteem. After about a year on group therapy, I finally started to feel like I was figuring it all out. Essentially I didn't trust those rotton emotions, and I would start to rely on Old Man Logic to guide my decisions. Well that's all fine and dandy until that Goddamn bastard LOVE jumps on your back after a couple months of dating and digging a lovely new lady friend.
LOVE starts to whisper sweet nothings in your ear, making you perform all kinds of inefficient subtleties for this other human being. Opening doors, back rubs, listening to stories about work drama, giving advice about work drama (then learning to never give advice about work drama ever again), small gifts when you are out of town, kisses on the top of the head, back scratching, spooning, prolonged gazes, fingers through hair, notes on windshields, surprise Chinese carryout, and buying an extra toothbrush. And hopefully the LOVE whispering in his/her ear will start telling them just as many inefficient subtleties that they Must perform for you.
None of these things are logical, if you think about it. There is no reason to run my fingers through the back on my girlfriend's hair while she is driving, or rubbing her knee for a brief moment while I futz with the radio. But, I feel compelled to do these things from time to time. I'm not doing this because I'm clingy, but I also don't do it because I feel obligated to. I just feel it. It feels good to convey that emotional bond and connection with another human being. I can't explain it with cold logic, because it just seems absurd when you really try.
Take for instance the scientific view that we mate and pair up as a way to best raise our future generations of children with the support of a family system and local community. Sure, these seem like logical reasons to explain why we form intimate relationships with others, and some people may actually take some of these things into consideration when choosing a mate. But this is not LOVE!
LOVE is stupid, chipper, whimsical, electric, smitten, chaotic, engrossing, magnetic, and other adjectives as well. It's an emotion, and we can't waste too much time trying to explain it with a mortal's logic.
So it's just an emotion, but we both know how strong those little bastards can be at times. Instead of fighting with the emotion, just acknowledge it. In a way, this disarms the ticking time bomb. If you start to feel yourself slipping, just say to yourself, "Oh, yeah that's depression creeping in. What up depression? Make yourself at home." Go to your room, or do whatever you like to do when you are sad. Fully embrace the melancholy, the grief, the sorrow, the pain, and just let the tears fall where they may.
This may be a bit intense the first couple times. I cried a lot my first time. I cried, and cried, and cried some more. Probably some old tears that were never fully ringed out from years ago. I just, let go. The key for this to be effective, is that you have to ignore logic, because it is anything but. You can't beat yourself up. You have to learn, to enjoy crying.
Once we stop trying to always apply logic to explain emotion, then we can deal with the two of them as different camps that will never understand one another. But they can help each other, so long as they both stop trying to jokey for position in a race to the Final Answer, which we never end up getting to in the end anyway (but that's a whole other rant).
Ah, the ever familiar battle between the Head and the Heart. Old Man Logic and the beast called Emotion. Like Palestine and Israel, it will never end. This sounds like a thick pill to swallow, but there are hopeful options: Peace Treaties.
I'm starting to learn that neither side is good or bad, wrong or right. But, the two of them both reside in this head of mine, and they have to learn to work together before they end up killing each other and possibly my body as a whole.
After my divorce, I think I became a bit afraid of how strong my emotions were for someone who constantly shat on my self esteem. After about a year on group therapy, I finally started to feel like I was figuring it all out. Essentially I didn't trust those rotton emotions, and I would start to rely on Old Man Logic to guide my decisions. Well that's all fine and dandy until that Goddamn bastard LOVE jumps on your back after a couple months of dating and digging a lovely new lady friend.
LOVE starts to whisper sweet nothings in your ear, making you perform all kinds of inefficient subtleties for this other human being. Opening doors, back rubs, listening to stories about work drama, giving advice about work drama (then learning to never give advice about work drama ever again), small gifts when you are out of town, kisses on the top of the head, back scratching, spooning, prolonged gazes, fingers through hair, notes on windshields, surprise Chinese carryout, and buying an extra toothbrush. And hopefully the LOVE whispering in his/her ear will start telling them just as many inefficient subtleties that they Must perform for you.
None of these things are logical, if you think about it. There is no reason to run my fingers through the back on my girlfriend's hair while she is driving, or rubbing her knee for a brief moment while I futz with the radio. But, I feel compelled to do these things from time to time. I'm not doing this because I'm clingy, but I also don't do it because I feel obligated to. I just feel it. It feels good to convey that emotional bond and connection with another human being. I can't explain it with cold logic, because it just seems absurd when you really try.
Take for instance the scientific view that we mate and pair up as a way to best raise our future generations of children with the support of a family system and local community. Sure, these seem like logical reasons to explain why we form intimate relationships with others, and some people may actually take some of these things into consideration when choosing a mate. But this is not LOVE!
LOVE is stupid, chipper, whimsical, electric, smitten, chaotic, engrossing, magnetic, and other adjectives as well. It's an emotion, and we can't waste too much time trying to explain it with a mortal's logic.
So it's just an emotion, but we both know how strong those little bastards can be at times. Instead of fighting with the emotion, just acknowledge it. In a way, this disarms the ticking time bomb. If you start to feel yourself slipping, just say to yourself, "Oh, yeah that's depression creeping in. What up depression? Make yourself at home." Go to your room, or do whatever you like to do when you are sad. Fully embrace the melancholy, the grief, the sorrow, the pain, and just let the tears fall where they may.
This may be a bit intense the first couple times. I cried a lot my first time. I cried, and cried, and cried some more. Probably some old tears that were never fully ringed out from years ago. I just, let go. The key for this to be effective, is that you have to ignore logic, because it is anything but. You can't beat yourself up. You have to learn, to enjoy crying.
Once we stop trying to always apply logic to explain emotion, then we can deal with the two of them as different camps that will never understand one another. But they can help each other, so long as they both stop trying to jokey for position in a race to the Final Answer, which we never end up getting to in the end anyway (but that's a whole other rant).
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Keep Pushing
The following is selected excerpt from my correspondence.
I was raised a Protestant. But, in the third grade my Father had a scandalous affair with another married woman in our little piss ass town of 700 people. He left my mother and married this woman, and they lived together in that little town.
Every other Sunday they took us to church, made us sing solos about Snow White Doves and the Sweet Baby Jesus, and put a dollar in the collection plate. A splendid little show for the town's people. They all KNEW what had happened.
It was just this open festering wound that my Father and Step-Mother tried to heal with the bandage of GOD. Finally at some point in my teenage years, They came to their senses and just stopped participating. After years of having two Sunday mornings a month robbed from me, my captors had succumbed to the ultimate weight of the Christian religion. GOD wasn't listening. GOD wasn't healing. After taking that bandage off, they finally let the fresh air of REALITY do it's work. While not painless, it usually brings rapid progress.
I consider myself a medium agnostic. agnostic should never be capitalized, because it has the insight to know it's no better than anything else. Personally, I find most religions to be silly and idealistic. Even the interesting ones, like Buddhism, have gone through a Californication (only the appealing sections are copied and pasted into a coffee table book for Barnes and Noble) of sorts.
Even though I cannot find a religion worth believing in, I will still not call myself an Athiest. No. They are the ones who will end up stuck in that black hole of Absurdity that pulls so strong. It pulls me too, but like Sisyphus I keep pushing that weight. I have to madly laugh with glee as I keep pushing till that rock falls down the other side of a new mountain.
I find myself captivated with fact that for all the genius brains and the shared knowledge of our time, we still can't figure out what happened in that split second right after the Big Bang. Math and Science just lock up like dragsters pushed to their limits. That is beautiful.
Now if those weasel scientist ever come to the last thing, that last piece of the puzzle to connect quantum mechanics and general relativity, what will we do then? Will everything unravel, or will we actually see the end of every future action taken? Can man continue reading if he knows the last chapter? That may be the singularity in the black hole of Absurdity. The point where the only escape from Hell is to take the pills, pull the trigger, slit the vein, make the leap. That is scary.
Enough about my beliefs. Yours sound a little deeper rooted. I can't just tell you not to be ashamed of your hormones, but I can tell you that ignoring them will only cause more conflict between biology and reason.
As far as "Fucking the College Education", it's not completely worthless. You just have to accept that it amounts to a piece of paper that helps get your foot in the door. This country is run by idiots with college degrees in "something or another!" You just have to be ready to fight and claw and push and kill your way to the top. IF, that is really where you want to go? We were all raised to believe we could be anything if we just put our minds to it, but they didn't tell us we would need to sacrifice our hearts and souls as well.
Keep writing. Keep asking. Keep pushing. That's all you can do in order to escape the harsh reality that swallows our friends and family day by day.
I was raised a Protestant. But, in the third grade my Father had a scandalous affair with another married woman in our little piss ass town of 700 people. He left my mother and married this woman, and they lived together in that little town.
Every other Sunday they took us to church, made us sing solos about Snow White Doves and the Sweet Baby Jesus, and put a dollar in the collection plate. A splendid little show for the town's people. They all KNEW what had happened.
It was just this open festering wound that my Father and Step-Mother tried to heal with the bandage of GOD. Finally at some point in my teenage years, They came to their senses and just stopped participating. After years of having two Sunday mornings a month robbed from me, my captors had succumbed to the ultimate weight of the Christian religion. GOD wasn't listening. GOD wasn't healing. After taking that bandage off, they finally let the fresh air of REALITY do it's work. While not painless, it usually brings rapid progress.
I consider myself a medium agnostic. agnostic should never be capitalized, because it has the insight to know it's no better than anything else. Personally, I find most religions to be silly and idealistic. Even the interesting ones, like Buddhism, have gone through a Californication (only the appealing sections are copied and pasted into a coffee table book for Barnes and Noble) of sorts.
Even though I cannot find a religion worth believing in, I will still not call myself an Athiest. No. They are the ones who will end up stuck in that black hole of Absurdity that pulls so strong. It pulls me too, but like Sisyphus I keep pushing that weight. I have to madly laugh with glee as I keep pushing till that rock falls down the other side of a new mountain.
I find myself captivated with fact that for all the genius brains and the shared knowledge of our time, we still can't figure out what happened in that split second right after the Big Bang. Math and Science just lock up like dragsters pushed to their limits. That is beautiful.
Now if those weasel scientist ever come to the last thing, that last piece of the puzzle to connect quantum mechanics and general relativity, what will we do then? Will everything unravel, or will we actually see the end of every future action taken? Can man continue reading if he knows the last chapter? That may be the singularity in the black hole of Absurdity. The point where the only escape from Hell is to take the pills, pull the trigger, slit the vein, make the leap. That is scary.
Enough about my beliefs. Yours sound a little deeper rooted. I can't just tell you not to be ashamed of your hormones, but I can tell you that ignoring them will only cause more conflict between biology and reason.
As far as "Fucking the College Education", it's not completely worthless. You just have to accept that it amounts to a piece of paper that helps get your foot in the door. This country is run by idiots with college degrees in "something or another!" You just have to be ready to fight and claw and push and kill your way to the top. IF, that is really where you want to go? We were all raised to believe we could be anything if we just put our minds to it, but they didn't tell us we would need to sacrifice our hearts and souls as well.
Keep writing. Keep asking. Keep pushing. That's all you can do in order to escape the harsh reality that swallows our friends and family day by day.
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