How funny would it be to wake up in your own car in the middle of the early morning after accidentally blowing your steering wheel airbag into your face the night before tinkering with the switches and wiring around the wheel?
The thought crossed my mind, walking home from the local store to buy smokes and chips. Almost as good as chips and ice cream. When I feel horrible, I prefer cigarettes because they make me feel a little less horrible without making me wish I felt an unsustainable joy derived from ice creams sweet and cooling goodness. If only anyone could always be that smooth, creamy, and soothing all the way down to the belly. The thought crossed my mind after walking away from my truck to go buy some comfit after I noticed my fuel gauge was malfunctioning and realizing the problem's solution was going to cost me at least $120 and 10 to 20 hours of labor at worst and 20 to 40 hours of labor, learning, trial and error, and no dollars at best.
I kept chuckling thinking about how angry I felt. I kept chuckling thinking about reaching under the seat for my hatchet, letting out a bloody war cry, and smashing the wheel to pieces. Only then, ditching the hatchet, pulling and tearing wires out of it with my bare hands until the airbag exploded and shoved one of my closed fistful of wires straight into my face and I basically ended up knocking myself out cold with a rocket powered fist to the dome. Then waking up the next day with a deployed airbag, swollen knuckles, one hell of a headache, and one hell of a fist shaped bruise between my eyes.
Part of the reason for the rage is that I finished fixing another small problem with a steep learning curve and dozens of hours of labor and learning rolled inside only days before. The truck is not falling apart around me, though it feels that way sometimes. The problems are routine problems and I wish I could take it in for routine maintenance instead of d.i.y. desperation weekends. The other part of the reason for the anger is that if I were paid more in line with my actual skills and level of higher learning, I could shrug, say "okay", and rent a car tomorrow while my truck sat in a shop for an afternoon.
Living near the bottom of the middle class is deceptive. Bottom of the middle class, top of the lower class. Living in the region can be deceptive if you have some imagination, some confidence, some helpful friends, and some ingenuity. I have a one bedroom apartment with a closet bath/shower and mini kitchen. If I take away all of the furniture a friend gave, all of the furniture I built, and all of the furniture I found on curbs or being given away by strangers, I have cinder blocks, two folding chairs, one of those university lobby lounge chairs, a sheet of particle board, and an end table. Remove every worldly possession, so to speak, and there'd be a truck parked outside, a few pots and pans and plates, a desktop and pair of monitors, a console, a found tv, a few books and magazines, some shoes and goodwill clothes and multipack tees, some mechanical gadgets, some home and auto repair tools, and a printer and phone.
Imagination allows me to see what can be and holds the hand of ingenuity to find ways to make it happen. Call it humility or call it living within your means or call it mining gold or a hobby, thrift stores are one of the keys to forgetting that you are part of the working poor. The cream of the lower class. Keeping good friendships is a huge part of the puzzle. Without them, my life easily fits inside a 10' by 10' cell with a hole in the ground to eliminate and a spigot somewhere to drink and bathe. Part of the anger stems from those parameters.
I have been heavily detoured. Charging along the roads as quickly as possible in an effort to get back on some kind of track while wasting as few years as possible is frightening. I ask myself what will happen if I miss a black on orange florescent sign letting me know my next turn is coming three turns from now and the sign at the third turn was never erected so commit this one to memory. First and final warning. The reason why it does not feel fair to me is because it is not fair.
I continue to consider the many branches not followed that have lead here, fighting for time to write. I began to believe my father was trying to teach me a lesson about his pain all along and I am finally beginning to understand it, but I will not be able to understand until I am 48 or 50 or whatever his age was when I stopped talking to him. Before that thought grew too large, I remembered he hasn't the subtlety or emotional imagination to allow him to pull that off. I can see where some of his resentment stemmed from. Losing all of the prime years of life and talent at the cutting edge of art, design, and martial arts bad-ass-ery to childcare. Who wouldn't be a lot angry all of the time. Though extremely dissimilar in their divination (did you see what I did there), the results are similar. Cut away opportunities, trim an effective gesture here, clip a nudge there, ....
... I don't know. I do not know why I never got the same support. It would not have taken much. Some days I am alright never knowing. Some days it all comes to a head staring at your broken fuel gauge and doing the right thing and getting the hell out of the car without slamming the door and spinning 180 degrees to put your fist through the window and slash your own tires. The world could've been miles from now.
I could be writing about my third year working as a librarian somewhere and moaning about coding database systems and dealing with angry patrons and making time for dates between writing short stories and working on my two part novel about warfare and keeping up to date on my space opera hopeful crown jewel I'm still searching out an editor for, however the third poetry anthology is going pretty great. I'm tearing out the kitchen in parts on my down time when I get tired of writing and it should be finished in another week or two.
Today felt like opposite day. Loading my truck up with bale after bale of carpet, a refridgerator door, water logged drywall, a cane and broken umbrella, armfuls of empty paint cans, a screen door, and three dozen other pieces of jetsam from the home I'm renovating's previous occupants, it was opposite day. What I was doing should be my hobby. I should be putting that sweat and blood and cuss into my own home, not someone else's. When I go home I should be thinking about what I am going to tear down and visit the hardware store to work on next. When I go home I should not be thinking about what I can write next that can be packed into the time it takes to shut my body down to hit the hammers and brushes and trash bags and saws again.
As much as I love working with my hands, I could find a way to work with my body in the face of an occupation that demanded I not.
"You're poor! You're poor! You're poor! You're poor! Do not be deceived; you're poor!"
Independent life is a horror show and funhouse of mirrors broken and whole. I am staying positive.
What brought me back to a semblance of balance is remembering that the day is still young. Independent life is 5 years old. Five. Five years ago you started stepping outside of your cell. A year or two later you walked down a hallway and into a cafeteria. A few months later you learned there was a yard and no time restrictions. A few months later you found a gate into another yard. It's getting larger and larger as long as you do not screw it all up and have your privileges revoked. All of the time you lost will be compounded by the time you spent finding a way back out.
No one pays you what you're worth unless you have the paper to create the market. Or the portfolio and charisma, in lieu of paper. Portfolio and charisma is an absolute "and" statement. The one and not the other turns into a luck base number system. I will never know my actual value. Maybe that is the worst of it? I will never know if I am being over paid or under paid, valued appropriately or not. The optimist inside, the petitioner, tells me that if and only if we suffer for as much time as we spent pursuing the degree, our penance will be met with paper if and only if we are gracious through our turbulent era. The eros inside whispers about penance through joyful degradation, The musician adds another kick drum, knocking over cymbal stands. The child snaps crayons in half so both hands can draw at once inside the same lines.
It is difficult not to fantasize about getting my degree in the mail, tearing it in half, driving to their house, and suffocating them to death in turn, each by half, with a wad of paper. That would be thoroughly satisfying.
What are you supposed to do when the toys you want to play with are above the grade you are licensed for? What are you supposed to do when what you are allowed to do you can do very well, but the ceiling is opaque and the sounds coming through it are not in a language you can or maybe will ever understand? Maybe I am paid exactly what I am worth. If I have reached my ceiling and given no indication that I am prepared for or understand in the slightest or am equipped for beyond that ceiling, I am paid exactly what I am worth.
That's frightening. Also true. Harrowing.
Sometimes I understand that I'm getting too fixated on true freedom. I get a taste of working something I can enjoy to support the writing habit and expect everything else to fall in line. There's a luck element to it, that I cannot unlock through work or optimism or faith or trust. That operates on its own time table. If I do win the lottery, I will take out full page ads in major cities for the hell of it, but only once.
Part of me continues to say it is not supposed to be this hard to make massive uncertainty and day to day, week to week, at best month to month living a thing of the past. My state is, however, that fragile. At the ripe old age of at least 1/3 dead the best I can do for myself is knowing I have at least a month to figure out a new lowline. Fear the high lines because you know a low line is around the corner... ....what to do when you are following low lines? High lines have to be engaged. My spider sense is not tingling. Shake the wrong tree and a warship mine may fall out of it, let alone a tank or soldier sized one. The other story of America. Every body wants to be a cat. If you have enough money you can do whatever you want to. Not that much money. I mean enough money to swap cars, or pick up and move, or add and subtract clothing, or change lighting, or paint colors, flip what you walk on, change shoes when you feel like it, add and subtract channels, modify whatever you want to when the moment strikes you, eat out, order drinks for other people, pay for other peoples gas, buy extra fresh fruit. It's nice.
I am still going to try to brew my own beer this summer. Do not give me that horseshit "God works in mysterious ways" because chance does too. The only thing better than chance is ingenuity, and the only thing more important and better than ingenuity is imagination.
I am trying to stay positive with some success. Frustration and rage are part of being us. Born here? Sure. From here? No. I've missed you. Don't lose touch. If you ever need to talk, do not forget my ear. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.I love you.Iluvu.Ilvu.Iu.U.I.
We'll get this thing sorted out. We have a lot of time ahead of us, like it or not, we do.
Do not quit.
You have the rest of your life to make that decision.
It is opposite day, okay?
It is not wasted time.
Opposite day.
Time becomes more valuable as it accumulates.
Okay. I am
with you. Agreeing to never throw hands up in frustration. Agreeing to ride it as long as there is still track in front. Agreeing to dance as long as there is a beat to dance to, be it from within or without. I am okay with you as long as your are
okay. With me.
///Aesop Rock - (Gun for the Whole Family) ~ i've missed you for a very long time. things got bad. things were getting bad. i had to remember that they weren't as bad as they'd been. we're working toward a utopia of coexistence. we're not there yet, but damn sure we're going to keep on trying while helping lay the ground works and maps and blue prints for the next iteration of our being.
/
//
///Alanis Morissette - (Thank You) ~ passive mobile adaptable armor.
Clean with alcohol only. Do not attempt to replace blown fuses. Do not remove access panels. Return to certified mechanic for regular maintenance. Made in the USA.
Showing posts with label snobs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label snobs. Show all posts
9/15/10
The Farce of Human Interest
The upside of funemployment is free time. The downside of funemployment is day time television. I won't come out with a blanket statement about the demographic that watches or is available to watch daytime television on a regular basis, but what I will do is call out the insanity of the supposed human interest story featured on daytime television.
In its thinnest guise it is the paternity specials on talk shows and the daily freak shows created from people with actual problems who somehow think taking their children or families on talk shows will provide some kind of lasting solution to whatever it is that ails them on the inside or maybe just to make a buck and get a tv special pitched at them from TLC. In its thicker, more elaborate manifestations it's the two day back to back experience of the "half ton mom" and the expose' on teenage fight club sex parties and alarmist programs highlighting manufactured cultural tensions and real ones.
And I guess I'm just sick of people calling it human interest. Human interest, the term itself, seems to ask a little more of itself than to simply raise emotion and sympathy and "wow" from the viewer. Human interest should denote a desire or interest to view and understand human-ness or humanity. A term as charged as human interest shouldn't stoop to the ridiculous shallows of daytime television for any reason. Human interest should be about introspection and reflection and I guarantee you the people watching human interest stories are as interested in taking in introspection and reflection as a red head at the beach is interested in taking in an afternoon of sun bathing. Having to be around people purporting to enjoy watching human interest stories is like going to a meeting with 30 yes men. All they're doing is soaking up reaffirmation of their pre-existing beliefs. In the end though, I'm sure that's why the shows are on tv. That and to illicit all of the "wows" and "oh my Gods" from the people that are watching purely for the floor show.
Personally I like to take my entertainment from sports arenas and sit coms. Wow, that sounds snooty. You know what, I'm saying it anyway. It only sounds snooty in the context of the ridiculousness of this modern day reversal. So human interest is an enormous farce that people watch so they can say things and feel connected to problems they don't have and feel a conscience they never acknowledge for the other 130 hours of their week and feel reassured that drugs are bad and teens are dangerous and gangs live in every dark corner of every city and know that they're not so bad because "look at the tv, there're worse people than me." So what.
I don't know. I feel dumber for having brought it up. I suppose the takeaway is: at the end of the day, I just wish we could all stop conveniently naming and pretending and applying euphemisms and have lived with a smidge more awareness of ourselves. I guess it grates me to have to listen to the people that talk to each other and while one rests all they say is "yes" "oh yes" "you know, that's what they say" and then they talk and the other turns into the yes man and by conversation's end no one has actually said anything and no ideas or information has been exchanged. The thing that unnerves me the most is that as personal awareness erodes so does creativity and imagination until the person becomes part of the reciprocating cultural wheel, the ultimate feedback loop, and they're lost as though they never existed.
///Amon Tobin - "Straight Psyche"
In its thinnest guise it is the paternity specials on talk shows and the daily freak shows created from people with actual problems who somehow think taking their children or families on talk shows will provide some kind of lasting solution to whatever it is that ails them on the inside or maybe just to make a buck and get a tv special pitched at them from TLC. In its thicker, more elaborate manifestations it's the two day back to back experience of the "half ton mom" and the expose' on teenage fight club sex parties and alarmist programs highlighting manufactured cultural tensions and real ones.
And I guess I'm just sick of people calling it human interest. Human interest, the term itself, seems to ask a little more of itself than to simply raise emotion and sympathy and "wow" from the viewer. Human interest should denote a desire or interest to view and understand human-ness or humanity. A term as charged as human interest shouldn't stoop to the ridiculous shallows of daytime television for any reason. Human interest should be about introspection and reflection and I guarantee you the people watching human interest stories are as interested in taking in introspection and reflection as a red head at the beach is interested in taking in an afternoon of sun bathing. Having to be around people purporting to enjoy watching human interest stories is like going to a meeting with 30 yes men. All they're doing is soaking up reaffirmation of their pre-existing beliefs. In the end though, I'm sure that's why the shows are on tv. That and to illicit all of the "wows" and "oh my Gods" from the people that are watching purely for the floor show.
Personally I like to take my entertainment from sports arenas and sit coms. Wow, that sounds snooty. You know what, I'm saying it anyway. It only sounds snooty in the context of the ridiculousness of this modern day reversal. So human interest is an enormous farce that people watch so they can say things and feel connected to problems they don't have and feel a conscience they never acknowledge for the other 130 hours of their week and feel reassured that drugs are bad and teens are dangerous and gangs live in every dark corner of every city and know that they're not so bad because "look at the tv, there're worse people than me." So what.
I don't know. I feel dumber for having brought it up. I suppose the takeaway is: at the end of the day, I just wish we could all stop conveniently naming and pretending and applying euphemisms and have lived with a smidge more awareness of ourselves. I guess it grates me to have to listen to the people that talk to each other and while one rests all they say is "yes" "oh yes" "you know, that's what they say" and then they talk and the other turns into the yes man and by conversation's end no one has actually said anything and no ideas or information has been exchanged. The thing that unnerves me the most is that as personal awareness erodes so does creativity and imagination until the person becomes part of the reciprocating cultural wheel, the ultimate feedback loop, and they're lost as though they never existed.
///Amon Tobin - "Straight Psyche"
7/26/10
Forever and a Day and Bits and Inception
I feel like I've been away from you forever, but this guy has been hard at work producing results through A/B php learning. Well, I made up the part about A/B learning. It wasn't even a nerd joke. I don't know enough about A/B testing to make a joke about it, let alone a joke that stretches its meaning to other boundaries. Why am I even wasting time discussing that? Next song!
So I've learned a lot of php. Not the core packaged functions (I assume there are some basic functions that deal with arrays and maths and sciences and religions like in js), but mostly learning how to construct and pass information, which I can then apply to whatever codex's are available for php projects. All of that is basically a very long winded way of saying I can now manipulate wordpress as a content management system and a blog hosting system, kind of the same way I can manipulate blogger templates.
I took a long ass time to figure it out mainly because I never did it with more than filling out test questions and completing bullshit exercises in mind, but taking the plunge and doing it from the ground up taught me the ins and outs pretty thoroughly as I hoped it would.
What to show for it?
This to show for it: Bits for Flames . A fine skeletal specimen. I don't know why they call frameworks skeletons. It's more of a nude. Well not even that. I'd call it a unpolished nerd waiting for mtv of the early 90s to come along and... not sure what exactly.
And now we move on to the graphics... the part I've been waiting for. Hah, waiting on myself to get to, now that's frustrating: when you are the only person standing in your way.
Picture time:
So the good news is I'll have more time freed up to work on writing. The bad news is the immediate future will be consumed with editing and uploading the story content to Bits. The better news is that once that is done I'm gonna be back on OEM digesting my life and documenting my failings with new verve. Verve is also a word that gets under utilized. So jam it into a sentence tomorrow if you get a chance. Throw in a fist pump too. Or finger guns.
And by the way, Money Never Sleeps looks like its going to be good. Plus I'll tell you if Inception was good or not. You've already seen it, I know, but I'm still going to tell you what you should think, because I can't tell myself what to think. No, that doesn't sound right. What I'm trying to say is: as someone with a checkered mental past, I'll give you my take on a movie about a checkered mental present. That's better.
Since retro movie posters are all the rage, I'll make an Inception themed retro poster. I sort of want to get in on it, but at the same time I feel like it's becoming one of those things thats already exhausted itself. The problem with the internet is that it takes forever to digest the sheer amount of "stuff" out there and at the same time once you find the stuff worth seeing or of interest to you, you're already too late to participate meaningfully because 80% of the internet is populated by critics and 20% by doers. 80/20 comes to bite me in the ass again.
I'm pretty far from my starting point. I'm gonna shut up now and get back to it so we can talk later about something more fun and interesting and depthy. If Anne Coulter ever comes to my front door and says anything even remotely derogatory I'm going to break his nose. For the record. The late nights just keep on rolling.
///Mum - "Sunday Night Just Keeps On Rolling" riding your bike through the night on empty streets with a burly Atlantic breeze beating across the back of your neck and the click of manhole covers beneath your wheels and the u-lock bouncing off the aluminum frame and the bike chain spooling around the drive gear and buzzing through your derailleur all come together and conspire in the orange street lights under pollution lit clouds to sound like this song. Minus the little kid at the end of the youtube video. I hate kids. They get into everything.
So I've learned a lot of php. Not the core packaged functions (I assume there are some basic functions that deal with arrays and maths and sciences and religions like in js), but mostly learning how to construct and pass information, which I can then apply to whatever codex's are available for php projects. All of that is basically a very long winded way of saying I can now manipulate wordpress as a content management system and a blog hosting system, kind of the same way I can manipulate blogger templates.
I took a long ass time to figure it out mainly because I never did it with more than filling out test questions and completing bullshit exercises in mind, but taking the plunge and doing it from the ground up taught me the ins and outs pretty thoroughly as I hoped it would.
What to show for it?
This to show for it: Bits for Flames . A fine skeletal specimen. I don't know why they call frameworks skeletons. It's more of a nude. Well not even that. I'd call it a unpolished nerd waiting for mtv of the early 90s to come along and... not sure what exactly.
And now we move on to the graphics... the part I've been waiting for. Hah, waiting on myself to get to, now that's frustrating: when you are the only person standing in your way.
Picture time:
So the good news is I'll have more time freed up to work on writing. The bad news is the immediate future will be consumed with editing and uploading the story content to Bits. The better news is that once that is done I'm gonna be back on OEM digesting my life and documenting my failings with new verve. Verve is also a word that gets under utilized. So jam it into a sentence tomorrow if you get a chance. Throw in a fist pump too. Or finger guns.
And by the way, Money Never Sleeps looks like its going to be good. Plus I'll tell you if Inception was good or not. You've already seen it, I know, but I'm still going to tell you what you should think, because I can't tell myself what to think. No, that doesn't sound right. What I'm trying to say is: as someone with a checkered mental past, I'll give you my take on a movie about a checkered mental present. That's better.
Since retro movie posters are all the rage, I'll make an Inception themed retro poster. I sort of want to get in on it, but at the same time I feel like it's becoming one of those things thats already exhausted itself. The problem with the internet is that it takes forever to digest the sheer amount of "stuff" out there and at the same time once you find the stuff worth seeing or of interest to you, you're already too late to participate meaningfully because 80% of the internet is populated by critics and 20% by doers. 80/20 comes to bite me in the ass again.
I'm pretty far from my starting point. I'm gonna shut up now and get back to it so we can talk later about something more fun and interesting and depthy. If Anne Coulter ever comes to my front door and says anything even remotely derogatory I'm going to break his nose. For the record. The late nights just keep on rolling.
///Mum - "Sunday Night Just Keeps On Rolling" riding your bike through the night on empty streets with a burly Atlantic breeze beating across the back of your neck and the click of manhole covers beneath your wheels and the u-lock bouncing off the aluminum frame and the bike chain spooling around the drive gear and buzzing through your derailleur all come together and conspire in the orange street lights under pollution lit clouds to sound like this song. Minus the little kid at the end of the youtube video. I hate kids. They get into everything.
5/1/10
life snobs
for a while i was afraid that what education ive pieced together over the years has made me a snob. like a life snob. the kind of person who turns their nose up at everything because of things encapsulated in the following phrases:
"the book was better"
"the original from (insert obscure year) was better"
"i wouldnt buy that if i were you"
"i researched X Y and Z and this is my informed opinion"
"i heard on npr the other day..."
"i read on bbc.co.uk the other day..."
"thats just history repeating itself if you look back to (insert obscure date and event)"
"that was actually a sample from (insert less known band)"
"if you weight the pros and cons of it..."
"i think you are definitely mistaken..."
"well if you think about it, thats what they want you to think..."
"thats how the system works..."
and so on. any one of the above phrases can be exchanged for simpler cruder and more direct and colloquial phrases like "you dumb shit"... and "that is some nigga shit right there" and on and on so the point is.... the point is that normally i would be extremely self conscious about these kinds of things and go home and worry that people think that i must think im some kind of poindexter life snob who knows more than he should about anything and tries to lord it over his peers cuz he has no friends and sleeps with a teddy bear and a dictionary under his pillow.
but the fact of the matter is... haha what an ugly phrase... how about the simpler answer to this conundrum is that all this percieved snobbery is a machination of being American. Simple as that. America encourages simple, muddy, plain as dirt thinking for the masses. Sure schools don't (usually) but the other school, the tv, does and continually. whats more is that any show of discernment, of critical consideration, automatically punts you up to the ugly "elite" class... those people that are too smart for their own good that fuck up the country for everyone, regardless of what your actual income is. im broke as hell most of the time, but im 99% certain that my parents think im some uppity smart ass who doesnt understand the value of a dollar. whatever the fuck that means
so i guess what im trying to say is that the french aint so bad. or the brits. what passes for snobbery now used to just be critical thinking skills and the ability to turn down cheap and instant for slightly more costly and much longer lasting. the desire to turn max profit out of everything has essentially made anything less into snobbery, when in fact most profits should not be measured in dollars despite the thousand dollar bills the tv smacks us with continually. but thats snobbery. dont be a snob. dont make your own sandwiches because they taste better. just shove some mcdonalds in your throat. its cheaper too so you get to put more money in your pocket. no brainer.
everyone has become so obsessed with no brainers when the honest to god truth is the people that keep the brains in their skulls and turned on have a hard time passing in the world of the no brainers. so many things happen and we have to say to ourselves ... wait what the fuck just happened there... but what have to say it internally because if we said it out loud we would sound crazy. if we said half of the things we actually thought about we would probably be called crazy.
i dunno.... maybe the problem here is that my thirst for knowledge has vastly outpaced my station in life. that could be seen as the problem. if i was a lot dumber. like a lot fucking dumber.... i would be happy as a skunk doing whatever it is skunks do the 23 hours and 55 minutes i dont see them walking across my parents back yard. i would be happy to be at home doing nothing. happy to eat food and wash dishes and mow the lawn and happy to listen to my mom talk about her bleeding fucking toes and my dad talk about how he has to beat the sluts off of his fat disgusting body all day while he works as a phone technician. christ... the root of this entire existential crisis is my education.
at least thats what a no brainer might say. and you know what... in the current setting... in this state of the union... they'd be right. fuck them. my brain is strapped on at all times and it might be the death of me, but god damn it, if thats the case then im ready to die.
///four tet - "Untitled [SAW2 CD1 Track1] (Four Tet remix)" this song has brought me nothing but joy. i came across the four tet remix album in the second lowest pit of my life. it wasnt a shovel. it wasnt water in the desert. it was meaning and reason and design written across the formless mass and black and blue of life's crush. and thats why i still like it. and thats why i still love it.
"the book was better"
"the original from (insert obscure year) was better"
"i wouldnt buy that if i were you"
"i researched X Y and Z and this is my informed opinion"
"i heard on npr the other day..."
"i read on bbc.co.uk the other day..."
"thats just history repeating itself if you look back to (insert obscure date and event)"
"that was actually a sample from (insert less known band)"
"if you weight the pros and cons of it..."
"i think you are definitely mistaken..."
"well if you think about it, thats what they want you to think..."
"thats how the system works..."
and so on. any one of the above phrases can be exchanged for simpler cruder and more direct and colloquial phrases like "you dumb shit"... and "that is some nigga shit right there" and on and on so the point is.... the point is that normally i would be extremely self conscious about these kinds of things and go home and worry that people think that i must think im some kind of poindexter life snob who knows more than he should about anything and tries to lord it over his peers cuz he has no friends and sleeps with a teddy bear and a dictionary under his pillow.
but the fact of the matter is... haha what an ugly phrase... how about the simpler answer to this conundrum is that all this percieved snobbery is a machination of being American. Simple as that. America encourages simple, muddy, plain as dirt thinking for the masses. Sure schools don't (usually) but the other school, the tv, does and continually. whats more is that any show of discernment, of critical consideration, automatically punts you up to the ugly "elite" class... those people that are too smart for their own good that fuck up the country for everyone, regardless of what your actual income is. im broke as hell most of the time, but im 99% certain that my parents think im some uppity smart ass who doesnt understand the value of a dollar. whatever the fuck that means
so i guess what im trying to say is that the french aint so bad. or the brits. what passes for snobbery now used to just be critical thinking skills and the ability to turn down cheap and instant for slightly more costly and much longer lasting. the desire to turn max profit out of everything has essentially made anything less into snobbery, when in fact most profits should not be measured in dollars despite the thousand dollar bills the tv smacks us with continually. but thats snobbery. dont be a snob. dont make your own sandwiches because they taste better. just shove some mcdonalds in your throat. its cheaper too so you get to put more money in your pocket. no brainer.
everyone has become so obsessed with no brainers when the honest to god truth is the people that keep the brains in their skulls and turned on have a hard time passing in the world of the no brainers. so many things happen and we have to say to ourselves ... wait what the fuck just happened there... but what have to say it internally because if we said it out loud we would sound crazy. if we said half of the things we actually thought about we would probably be called crazy.
i dunno.... maybe the problem here is that my thirst for knowledge has vastly outpaced my station in life. that could be seen as the problem. if i was a lot dumber. like a lot fucking dumber.... i would be happy as a skunk doing whatever it is skunks do the 23 hours and 55 minutes i dont see them walking across my parents back yard. i would be happy to be at home doing nothing. happy to eat food and wash dishes and mow the lawn and happy to listen to my mom talk about her bleeding fucking toes and my dad talk about how he has to beat the sluts off of his fat disgusting body all day while he works as a phone technician. christ... the root of this entire existential crisis is my education.
at least thats what a no brainer might say. and you know what... in the current setting... in this state of the union... they'd be right. fuck them. my brain is strapped on at all times and it might be the death of me, but god damn it, if thats the case then im ready to die.
///four tet - "Untitled [SAW2 CD1 Track1] (Four Tet remix)" this song has brought me nothing but joy. i came across the four tet remix album in the second lowest pit of my life. it wasnt a shovel. it wasnt water in the desert. it was meaning and reason and design written across the formless mass and black and blue of life's crush. and thats why i still like it. and thats why i still love it.
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