Three A.M. and Cranky

Due to a certain unpleasant and uncomfortable illness this week, it's 3:30 a.m. and I cannot sleep. This is newsworthy because I say so. Am I rationalizing the newsworthiness of my blog? Screw that.

I'm going to, in the classic style of the Internets, make a list of things that are currently pissing me off, in the hopes that it will calm me down and help me sleep. In no particular order other than stream of consciousness:

1) The currently touring Smashing Pumpkins: dude, if when I'm 41 years old, you catch me strutting around a stage wearing a pleather apron and singing songs about my teenage pain and really feeling it, someone should just beat me until I'm dead. Honestly. Not that I'm advocating beating Billy Corgan. I'm not. I just...dude, you're incredibly wealthy, incredibly famous, and pretty damned talented. Mayhaps you get over life's foibles. If not for your own good, then for mine, because Mellon Collie is one of precious few double albums worth a damn, and now when I listen to it, I think of a pathetic man-child crying into a microphone about how tough adolescence is.

2) MRSA: lame. Absolutely lame. I shake my fist at nature.

3) Economics: wouldn't it be cool if even one economic philosophy was true/concrete and absolute? Just one?

4) I'm fat: just pisses me off, that's all.

5) Bam Margera: Actually, he doesn't piss me off all that much. But why the hell does he always talk like he's got a cigar in his mouth or he bit his tongue really badly? Does he have some kind of brain damage or something? I don't get it. Maybe I'm being incredibly insensitive. Whatever.

Bah. That's all I've got. It's four in the morning and I've get better things to do. Like read Trivial Pursuit cards.

Art College Girl

Every morning, I take the Metra train into the city for work. There's a community of regulars on the train...nobody ever speaks, but there are plenty of nods and smiles. We recognize each other, and are comfortably friendly while maintaining anonymity. There's me, Oddly-shaped-head guy, Baby Man, Bald Cary Grant, Stupid Lady, and Art College Girl.

Art College Girl typically sits in front of me upstairs on the train. Like any (presumably) eighteen or nineteen year old girl, she's bubbly and cute. She's one of few women I haven't automatically had impure thoughts about, because, well, I'm certifiably old, she is not, and sometimes you just want to preserve an image of innocence about a person. Normally, I'm a complete pervert, as you all should know. But not with Art College Girl; I just get on the train, sit down, flash a smile and wave when she walks past, and go to sleep listening to my iPod.

So this morning, I get on the train one stop south of my normal station, because I parked at my parents' house for a whole host of reasons. My usual seat is unoccupied, possibly out of everyone else's respect for routine. I sit down, pop in my ear buds, and boom, out like a light as soon as Three Little Birds hits my timpanae.

When the train pulls into Union Station, everyone starts getting up and queuing to get off the train as fast as possible, but per normal, I wait until the train has stopped moving because I'm a clumsy fat ass and know better. Art College Girl gets up, gathers her things, turns around, sees me and smiles as she walks past. I turn my head back towards the window and close my eyes for thirty seconds more sleep, and suddenly someone's patting me on the chest. I turn and look back, and it's Art College Girl.

She looks down at me, and strokes her chin, asks me, "Did you shave?" I had shaved, because two nights ago I ate soup, and had a moment of pure fatigue at having to shampoo my face every time I imbibed any spoon-ladeled liquid. For the first time in years, my face is completely shorn of whiskers. I nodded, "Yeah," and she smiled an eighteen-year-old smile, patted me on the shoulder and said, "You look good," with an approving nod. "Thanks," I said, mostly stunned at the first and potentially last conversation I'll ever have with this person.

So, the up and down of it, thank you Art College Girl, for giving an old dude something to feel good about first thing on a Friday morning. It was a sweet thing to do. And no, I'm totally not sexing you up in my mind now, and won't be. Sorry if that disappoints my readers.

Laziness

I feel horrible that I haven't written anything here in over a month. Also, I feel horrible that I haven't drawn a new Benny since freakin' May.

I'm just sooooooo lazy.

George Carlin's Final Interview

So I'm reading George Carlin's final interview (by Jay Dixit for Psychology Today) and I caught a few excerpts that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up a little bit. You know, when you identify with a statement so completely that it almost ruptures your sense of individuality?

Here they are:

"Abraham Maslow said the fully realized man does not identify with the local group. When I saw that, it rang another bell. I thought: bingo! I do not identify with the local group, I do not feel a part of it. I really have never felt like a participant, I've always felt like an observer. Always. I only identified this in retrospect, way after the fact, that I have been on the outside, and I don't like being on the inside. I don't like being in their world. I've never felt comfortable there; I don't belong to that. So, when he says the "local group," I take that as meaning a lot of things: the local social clubs or fraternal orders, or lodges or associations or clubs of any kind, things where you sacrifice your individual identity for the sake of a group, for the sake of the group mind. I've always felt different and outside..."

"...I don't really feel like a member of the human race, to tell you the truth. I know I am, but I really don't. All the definitions are there, but I don't really feel a part of it. I think I have found a detached point of view, an ideal emotional detachment from the American experience and culture and the human experience and culture and human choices.

I'm not an angry person, just very disappointed and contemptuous of my fellow humans' choices—and on stage those feelings sometimes are exaggerated for a theatric stage—you're on a stage you have an audience of 2500 or 3000 people: you need to project the feelings, the emotions it's heightened, and people mistake it for a personal anger but it's more dissatisfaction, disappointment and contempt for these things we've settled for."

JD: So let me latch onto that feeling. You're grabbing somebody and you're saying, "Don't you see it?" But if you really don't care about America, then why are you doing it? Why are you on stage? Is it just because you want to express yourself? Do you hope you can influence people in some way?

"You've hit on the contradiction, and it's one I don't understand the resolution to, if there is one...
But yeah, of course I care. Of course I care. My daughter has pinned me on that. She says of course you care, can't you hear it? And I say yeah yeah yeah, but they gotta prove it to me first. Show me you care people and then I'll let some of it out; right now I just want to scold you a little bit. "

Read the whole interview here

Not so short, not so sweet.

As a child, I was pretty happy. Carefree, for the most part. I can't say the same thing as an adult. My perennial state as an adult in America is one of fatigue. It's a harsh existence we have as individual adults here. Should life be easy? Probably not; I'm more apt to agree with people who say you need to work for your due. But, as someone who's worked hard both mentally and physically to get to a point of earning a slightly above average income, I'd have to say that existence in our economy is still a struggle. And after struggling for real independence for the past eight years, fatigue overwhelms me. Fatigue which is magnified by the knowledge that the struggle is not over, and most likely never will be. The struggle is on so many different fronts, that my paycheck is honestly the least of my concerns.

Let's hasten to the point. I'm tired.

I'm tired of being insured by companies that are not interested in my health or my safety. Companies who spend more time, effort, and money on not insuring me. Companies who we all (those of us who are "lucky" enough to have employer-provided health insurance) pay to cover our health care, yet go out of their way to do the exact opposite of that. Why is it even an option for an insurance company to deny services? As it stands, we're paying for a dice roll, not "insurance."

I'm tired of the "fend for yourself," or "what's mine is mine" attitude so many Americans have. What is so abhorrent about investing in the community as opposed to investing in yourself? Yes, people should work for their due. Yes, people should earn what they have. In terms of luxury. What about necessities? Is our military privatized? Our police and firefighters? I've recently heard the following in discussions about socialized medicine: "Why should I pay for your healthcare? Why should you pay for mine? It's only fair that everyone pays for their own." Anyone objecting to socialized medicine on the basis of that argument needs to do some research; that's how our system works now. You pay into your HMO or PPO, a fund which goes towards covering you and everyone else in your plan. In any case, I'm not advocating socialized medicine; I'm advocating finding a fix to the mess we're in, whatever that may be. We're a nation of individuals divided by our self-interest. We're too concerned with what's mine and not what's ours. A gentle reminder--the motto of our great nation is E Pluribus Unum; Out of Many, One. We can admit we're part of something bigger than ourselves, that we are not whole simply operating as individuals surrounded by other individuals, or we can be united only in collapse and failure.

I'm tired of being afraid. We have a culture of fear. There's so much to be afraid of that I'm afraid to think about it. It's not unlikely that a round of layoffs could land any one of us in the unemployment line. Getting sick, that's terrifying. Even if insured, it'll cost more than expected, and there will be a fight for the coverage. What about inflation? The collapse of the dollar? The ruins of Social Security? Will my generation even be able to afford to retire? Will I be in debt for the rest of my life? Where will the terrorists strike next? Frankly, the current administration and the mainstream media have done a great job of controlling us through fear. We make our decisions in life based on consequences that have been invented to scare us into compliance. What happened to hope? Has it been squashed out of us completely?

I'm tired of everything costing so damn much. Housing, utilities, gas, milk, bread, cigarettes. Inflation is out of control. In constant dollars, wages are going down. People are making less money than five years ago. Not because companies are paying less per se, but because the dollar is almost worthless. We don't have buying power, we exist on credit lines, and are forced into debt to survive. Everyone I personally know carries debt, and not irresponsible debt. Debt to pay for education, housing, survival. It's downright un-American to be financially stable.

I'm tired of not being able to fix any of it. The corporations that control our debt are the same ones that control our law makers. Futility is the word on Capitol Hill, and futility is the attitude of the people. Getting anything done that would in some way hurt industry, or have a perceived negative impact on industry, is impossible.

There's nowhere else--nowhere good--to take this commentary. It's a downward spiral. We need to fix these problems, and not just leave it to Washington to figure out. It's our job, our duty to ourselves to think about this, and unify over our collective hope to survive. If nothing else, we need to unify in objection to the lack of control any one of us has.

Reality Check

Life in the Real World can be staggering. Not much of college education will apply to living as an adult, especially in that first year after graduation. For those of you nearing graduation, I've compiled a brief guide for your first steps into life as a professional adult. While I can't guarantee any kind of success rate, or even define success, strict adherence to this list can create the patterns by which your future will unfold.

1. Move into your parents' basement. If they don't have a basement, take the spare room, or make the living room your very own studio apartment. Decorate with posters touting slogans such as, "One tequila, Two tequila, Three tequila, floor!" Spend no energy whatsoever on getting out of the collegiate lifestyle. Keep the floor clean by littering it with a protective three-can-thick layer of empty Pabsts. Host parties that run well into the wee hours of the morning every Tuesday.
   
   
2. Don't look for a job until you've actually graduated. Tell your parents about how much time you're spending applying to want ads and how you just can't get a legitimate interview. When you do get an interview, wow them with your incredibly individualistic thoughts on life, professionalism, career longevity, and goals. Do more talking than your interviewer. Explain in explicit detail your objections to a business or business-casual dress code. Refuse to work anywhere that restricts your individuality through appearance standards.
   
   
3. Settle into a routine of waking up at the crack of noon, smoking two Marlboro cigarettes (with your head out the window, of course, so Mom and Pop won't know...even though they do...), drinking only Starbucks brand coffee, and staring at the computer screen complaining about how few jobs there are out there. Send out thirty generic applications a day on Monster.com. Accept every pyramid scheme as a legitimate opportunity. Never submit a resume on paper, and don't bother with that follow-up nonsense. Only use the internet to search for work. Newspapers are so twentieth century.
   
   
4. Take a job at a lumber yard or Blockbuster Video. These are generalizations; Home Depot, Best Buy, Wal-Mart, etc. are also acceptable. You'll know it's time to take this step when you've been out of school for three months and haven't found a job yet. Another key indicator is that your father will wake you up by stumbling through your beer-can-floor-protection-device (patent pending), shove an ad clipped out of the newspaper under your bleary, beer-bespectacled eyes, and say, "Go get a job." Quit this job after a week, or perhaps a month or two, claiming that it's interfering in your search for a "real job."
   
   
5. Go to a temp agency. Take whatever they can throw at you. Treat these assignments the same way you treated the lumber yard. You want a diverse resume, and the only way to achieve that is to leave as many jobs as possible. Also, temp jobs never turn into full time work.
   
   
6. Don't bother with volunteer or freelance work. The last thing a prospective employer wants to see is initiative taken towards individual endeavors. Furthermore, a sporadic paycheck won't help to develop necessary routines. You need to focus on finding a job; not personal interests. Anything that doesn't count as finding a job counts as personal interests, and your personal interests should never interfere with your professional life.
   
   
7. Apply to grad school. Pay the application fee, take the tests, and get accepted. Then don't go. It would just be a waste of money anyway, and you just spent four whole years becoming an expert on something. What do you need another piece of paper for? Besides, it's better to sit around accruing credit card debt than to take another student loan.
   
   
8. Insist that you're an expert in your field of study. Argue semantics with people who have been professionals for ten, twenty, thirty years, and insult their education and experience as being "old, outdated, and patently wrong." Blather incessantly about "modern approaches" and "innovative techniques." Convince yourself that the five page paper you wrote on ethics in the media qualifies you as a topical authority. Don't read or investigate any new books or material you may find on what you studied; they're irrelevant because you already earned your degree. Commit yourself to your momentary zeitgeist-nothing that will happen over the next five years will change your perspective on anything.
   
   

Apply these simple practices liberally. There will be no stopping you on your way up the corporate ladder. Certainly, if these recommendations are followed, by the time you're thirty you'll be President and CEO of your own Fortune 500 establishment. You'll be well beyond a low-level clerical position at a monolithic institution making slightly below the national average per capita income, and free of debt.

Musical Malcontent

I love music. But I'm not passionate about it. There are people who are perpetual insiders to the music scene, who know who's who and what's what from Captain Beefheart to Alien Ant Farm. I'm not one of those people. I know what I like, I know what I don't like. Red Hot Chili Peppers have been a perpetual favorite of mine, and I can tell you which albums featured Hillel Slovak, John Frusciante, and Dave Navarro, but I'll be damned if I've ever known the drummer's name, or any of the other guitarists for that matter. I can't even say I've ever been curious. My enjoyment of the music stops at hearing the music. Memory typically fails for matters of trivia.

It seems like every five years or so, my musical interests swing dramatically. Throughout junior high and most of high school, it was all about heavy metal, metallica t-shirts, megadeath posters, and wearing military surplus clothes. Then I discovered KMFDM and industrial, and it felt like home. Throughout it all was a skittish interest in punk, but I didn't delve too deep because I couldn't make my round peg fit into the square hole of that particular subculture, and a lot of it just got on my nerves. My bad. Once I got out of college, I revisited the chili peppers and funk and reggae, but was musically empty for a long time. Now, I'm just a listener with eclectic tastes and a huge iPod library of songs I don't listen to frequently. Somehow, this makes me feel like less of a person. It always embarrasses me when I'm in a discussion about music and someone says something like, "It kinda sounds like____, you know" and I don't know. At times like these I do a lot of nodding and smiling, because the alternative is typically disdain. Also, I've learned (and occasionally am still learning) to keep my opinions on music to myself, because people get insulted personally when you don't like the music they like. Saying, "Yeah, they weren't great," or, "They just didn't do it for me," translates directly into, "YOU ARE A SON OF BITCH AND I HOPE YOUR OPTICAL FLUID BOILS UNTIL YOUR EYEBALLS BURST AND THE BOILING FLUID SCORCHES YOUR CHEEKS!" It just doesn't go over, you know?

I've never been able to really get into a "scene" beyond listening to the music and going to shows, either. Some would argue that that's getting into the scene, but I tend to think getting into the scene entails living the lifestyle. Getting tattoos and piercings, saying fuck off to your mom a couple times a week, slamming around the pit at the show, breakin' the law to stick it to the man. This is getting into the scene, and these things generally apply to any particular music-related scene, save maybe Country; Toby Keith clearly loves his mommy and G-Dub. I've never been able to make the leap into a scene. Tattoos freak me out. They make me violently uncomfortable. Just one of those things, there's really no explanation for it, something stuck deep in my subconscious. Piercings...whatever, not a big deal, just completely not for me. The pit scares me. I can't push people around, it makes me feel like a bully. Getting pushed around just makes me mad. And there's always that asshole who keeps pushing you back in when you're trying to get out, so you throw a hook at his jaw and get tossed out of the show. And as far as breakin' the law and stickin' it to the man goes, I've done plenty of that, but never related to music or a subculture.

To be honest, I've never much fit in with any group. Except the nerdiest of the nerds, and that was usually grudgingly. Maybe I just don't like people in general. Or maybe I spend more time analyzing everything in my life than actually doing anything. I've never been able to just go with the flow, as they say.

I confess: I'm a malcontent.

Idols and Disappointment

It’s easy to get sucked in when one of your idols is standing on a stage fifteen feet away from you spouting the same rhetoric that runs through your mind every time you read a newspaper or watch the news. When your thoughts are coming from his mouth, there’s nothing left but to sit in awe, clap your hands, whistle and shout and cheer.

On Monday, July 3, 2006, Jello Biafra made something of a surprise appearance at the Lakeshore Theater in Chicago . At 7:15 p.m., Biafra walked out on stage in black judicial robes and shiny aviator glasses and performed a piece in which he declared the country to be under martial law. It was an interesting bit, and made very clearly a point of how close we’ve come to exactly that situation under Bush.

He then made a few remarks about the hypocrisy and malevolence behind the Bush administration, and read his Gulf War piece, “Die For Oil, Sucker.” At about twenty-five minutes into the show, still going strong, I was enthralled; sucked in and breathing the fumes coming from Biafra ’s lips, as was everyone else. We were his audience. He never even had to try. After the show was over, I realized, he didn’t.

Three hours passed. Three hours of railing against Bush, thrashing the Corporate Media, exposing Congress as the do-nothing slaves to commerce they may indeed be. An entire Major League Baseball game began and ended while I sat and was pandered to by one of the great leaders of the left.

After three hours of a ceaseless serenade to an audience full of people sharing the exact same views, for many of whom those views were placed by the same chanteur standing on the stage in front of them, we were treated to an intermission, after which there was the promise of more of the same. I think I’d have been less irritated and much less disappointed if there had been a message beyond “Bush is Bad” during that first three hours. But there wasn’t. There was no Breaking News. There was no shifting gestalt. It was a rehash of knowledge and opinions shared by everyone in the room, and we cheered away because an idol stood there and told us we were right.

Intermission ended, and Biafra strode back out on stage to declare that it was time for him to tell us what to do about it. I got excited; the payoff was about to arrive. But for forty more minutes, instead of giving us guidance for our rage, or recommending some kind of action to take or group to join or people to help, we got more anti-Bush sentiment. Then, when the time for the Grand Revelation had finally arrived, the moment for Wisdom to be disbursed amongst us, our directive was “Don’t forget who you are and where you came from.”

This is where my irritation, disappointment, and even anger became a palpable part of the evening. That was the moment I experienced a Grand Revelation all my own, and I suppose I should thank Jello for that.

I had just sat through a microcosm of the liberal/progressive/leftist/what-have-you movement in this country. It’s all buildup and no payoff. Our unifying message is “Hate Bush,” and our unified action is to do nothing. Do nothing but feel strongly that what’s going on is wrong. Do nothing but talk to each other about our shared politics and polemics. We focus on our hate for Bush and his administration, so much so that we lose sight of the fact that the man is done in two years, and it’s the future immediately after those two years which is in the direst of situations. Our triumphal activity is to sit around and complain, stroking our own egos, unwilling to really make our presence known. Unwilling and unable to do anything that might make a change, but willing to say “I told you so” when things really begin to go wrong.

The conservatives are at least capable of deciding what they want and pursuing it. Maybe in that, they deserve the control they have. They may be taking this country farther and farther away from the ideals which I and hopefully many others believe it was founded upon, but the only reason is because they’ve been given free reign to do so, part and parcel, by the inability of the left to stand by their convictions and take action towards achieving anything at all.

I suppose “Don’t forget who you are and where you came from” is a decent place to start, except that it doesn’t mean anything. I’m twenty seven years old, the son of upper-middle class baby boomers who moved to the suburbs in the early nineties. I come from a life of comfort and convenience. This is what I’m supposed to use to shape my world view?

My recommendation would be almost the exact opposite. Read a newspaper. Then read eight more, at least three of which are foreign. Spend some time figuring out who you are and what you stand for, because chances are you haven’t done that yet. Take a look at your idols and who they are and what they do, and reevaluate everything you know about anything. Ask questions, because after taking in all this new information, you should have a few.

Expect more. Don’t just vote; make sure that your representatives are doing what you voted them into office to do. If they’re not, vote them out. Get involved come election time and stay involved afterwards, especially on a local level. Write letters. Get to know your local newspaper people. Volunteer for campaigns you believe in. If you don’t believe in any candidates, run yourself. It’s not about win or lose, it’s about taking some damned initiative, because if you don’t stand up for what you personally believe in, you sure as hell better not expect anyone else to either. No one is going to do anything for you. You will be disappointed in life, it happens, but when you expect less, you get less. Expect more until you get satisfaction, and then keep expecting more.

Expect better. Stop swallowing the same pabulum because you don’t want a different meal. You believe the Bush administration is wrong? You believe things have changed disastrously in this country since 2001? If so, do you really want to sit in a room for four hours to hear someone tell you those things four thousand different ways with no further substance? If your answer to that is yes, my suggestion to you is far graver: stop thinking about anything at all, ever, because there’s just no point. On the other hand, if hearing your own opinion spewed back at you is no longer enough, get angry. Not just angry at Bush, not just angry at the war or the oil companies or Halliburton. Angry that the great leaders of the left aren’t leading anyone to do anything other than Hate Bush. Angry that there’s no plan for the future. Once you’re there, the only thing left to do is lead. Lead your friends, your family, anyone. Stop being static. Change starts with one person.