Monday, June 7, 2010
Friday, June 4, 2010
ATTN: 18-25 demographic, all races
I gotta bone ta pick with our parents. The baby boomers. Not YOU, Mom and Dad, because you're both ideal grown-ups, but the vast generations of adults who are fucking up all over the place. This is why.
That's a seagull. Or, it was, before the gulf oil spill. Critter's still alive, but he's not going to last long. When they get coated in oil like that, they can't fly. Which means they can't get food. They die. They're immobilized by the oil. So they're all dying.
They dive into the water because they don't know. They just see their dinner swimmin' around, because the fish that are still alive in the gulf coast swim beneath the tar bubbles, and the birds dive down through it, not realizing what they're kamikaze-ing into. They float up paralyzed and blinded.
I'm so infuriated. Like, frustration-tears-furious about this situation because I DID NOT ASK FOR ANY OF THIS. Thinking about and watching the talking heads babble baffling arguments back and forth on the television makes me want to pick up and leave. It was just released that the head of BP is handing off responsibility to this Dudley guy, an American (BP is a british company, I learned that today), so that blame can start getting shuffled around. They spent $3 million on that ad that's been running on tv, but they are slow to reimburse crippled businesses along the gulf who rely on the shore for fishing income. They're also only reporting the minimum gallon amount gushing into our waters to lowball the cost of the $4,300 per gallon they have to pay. It's much worse than we know.
This is not the America I asked for.
Older generations, I'm going to helpfully and politely point out your discrepancies.
You tell us to dream big and shoot for the stars, and that anything is possible if we work hard enough, but you make education so impossibly expensive and unobtainable that only certain classes can afford to "dream big."
You tell us that we're all created equal, but some of us can't marry each other if we want. What's that? Oh, sorry, I can't hear you. It's gotta be this glass ceiling above me.
You tell us to slow down and not grow up so fast, but you put Human Growth Hormone in the food that we eat, so that our bodies develop faster and we physically become adults before we're supposed to.
You tell us to eat right, but you put high fructose corn syrup and monosodium glutamate in all our food so that we get addicted and obese.
You tell us that our body is a temple and should be treated as such, but you are the ones that set the impossible standard of beauty in advertising and media that taught me to hate my body with such enthusiasm starting when I was a little girl. I can show you the scars.
You are the ones who just want us to be mentally sound so we can be productive members of society, but what that entails is that you first discover symptoms, attribute them to a new disease, and then prescribe us the medication to quell this sickness you fabricated so you can profit from our purchase of the pills.
You are the ones that started the war, and asked us to die for it. You also asked us to kill for you.
Capitalism doesn't work because it is constant warfare within one society. It is marred by free-enterprising battles, the terrain pockmarked with self-indulgent battle scars left behind in the wake of destructive corporate tankers, and since YOUR parents worked their asses off so you could go to college, you have put your education to work by looking out for yourself and proliferating your finite fucking nest egg.
My inheritance from you is a war, its debt, a crumbling economy, dismal job market, and a destroyed coast. Fuck you.
I have lost my faith in you. You have ruined this country. My hope remains with my generation. We are the activists. We are the ones who turned up in droves to vote for Obama- highest young percentage of votes ever. You're welcome. And for those of you who doubt my dear president, here's a list of achievements thus far. I like that list. It includes Bo.
To my peers, if you're out there and sentient, I'm going to ask something of you. Put down the xanax and the adderall. I know we're Generation Medication, and that fake prescription is our birthright, but just stay with me for a second. You don't have to be dependent. You don't need any of our forefather's bullshit. We have the right to take this country back and start repairing the damages. We just have to get angry first. Please. Get mad. Get fucking infuriated and do something. It's what we're really known for. It's what we're best at.
Activism.
That's a seagull. Or, it was, before the gulf oil spill. Critter's still alive, but he's not going to last long. When they get coated in oil like that, they can't fly. Which means they can't get food. They die. They're immobilized by the oil. So they're all dying.
They dive into the water because they don't know. They just see their dinner swimmin' around, because the fish that are still alive in the gulf coast swim beneath the tar bubbles, and the birds dive down through it, not realizing what they're kamikaze-ing into. They float up paralyzed and blinded.
I'm so infuriated. Like, frustration-tears-furious about this situation because I DID NOT ASK FOR ANY OF THIS. Thinking about and watching the talking heads babble baffling arguments back and forth on the television makes me want to pick up and leave. It was just released that the head of BP is handing off responsibility to this Dudley guy, an American (BP is a british company, I learned that today), so that blame can start getting shuffled around. They spent $3 million on that ad that's been running on tv, but they are slow to reimburse crippled businesses along the gulf who rely on the shore for fishing income. They're also only reporting the minimum gallon amount gushing into our waters to lowball the cost of the $4,300 per gallon they have to pay. It's much worse than we know.
This is not the America I asked for.
Older generations, I'm going to helpfully and politely point out your discrepancies.
You tell us to dream big and shoot for the stars, and that anything is possible if we work hard enough, but you make education so impossibly expensive and unobtainable that only certain classes can afford to "dream big."
You tell us that we're all created equal, but some of us can't marry each other if we want. What's that? Oh, sorry, I can't hear you. It's gotta be this glass ceiling above me.
You tell us to slow down and not grow up so fast, but you put Human Growth Hormone in the food that we eat, so that our bodies develop faster and we physically become adults before we're supposed to.
You tell us to eat right, but you put high fructose corn syrup and monosodium glutamate in all our food so that we get addicted and obese.
You tell us that our body is a temple and should be treated as such, but you are the ones that set the impossible standard of beauty in advertising and media that taught me to hate my body with such enthusiasm starting when I was a little girl. I can show you the scars.
You are the ones who just want us to be mentally sound so we can be productive members of society, but what that entails is that you first discover symptoms, attribute them to a new disease, and then prescribe us the medication to quell this sickness you fabricated so you can profit from our purchase of the pills.
You are the ones that started the war, and asked us to die for it. You also asked us to kill for you.
Capitalism doesn't work because it is constant warfare within one society. It is marred by free-enterprising battles, the terrain pockmarked with self-indulgent battle scars left behind in the wake of destructive corporate tankers, and since YOUR parents worked their asses off so you could go to college, you have put your education to work by looking out for yourself and proliferating your finite fucking nest egg.
My inheritance from you is a war, its debt, a crumbling economy, dismal job market, and a destroyed coast. Fuck you.
I have lost my faith in you. You have ruined this country. My hope remains with my generation. We are the activists. We are the ones who turned up in droves to vote for Obama- highest young percentage of votes ever. You're welcome. And for those of you who doubt my dear president, here's a list of achievements thus far. I like that list. It includes Bo.
To my peers, if you're out there and sentient, I'm going to ask something of you. Put down the xanax and the adderall. I know we're Generation Medication, and that fake prescription is our birthright, but just stay with me for a second. You don't have to be dependent. You don't need any of our forefather's bullshit. We have the right to take this country back and start repairing the damages. We just have to get angry first. Please. Get mad. Get fucking infuriated and do something. It's what we're really known for. It's what we're best at.
Activism.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
thank you.
"The world is meaningless, there is no God or gods, there are no morals, the universe is not moving inexorably towards any higher purpose. All meaning is man-made, so make your own, and make it well. Do not treat life as a way to pass the time until you die.
Do not try to \"find yourself\", you must make yourself. Choose what you want to find meaningful and live, create, love, hate, cry, destroy, fight and die for it. Do not let your life and your values and you actions slip easily into any mold, other that that which you create for yourself, and say with conviction, \"This is who I make myself\".
Do not give in to hope. Remember that nothing you do has any significance beyond that with which imbue it. Whatever you do, do it for its own sake. When the universe looks on with indifference, laugh, and shout back, \"Fuck You!\". Remember that to fight meaninglessness is futile, but fight anyway, in spite of and because of its futility.
The world may be empty of meaning, but it is a blank canvas on which to paint meanings of your own. Live deliberately. You are free."
found here.
Do not try to \"find yourself\", you must make yourself. Choose what you want to find meaningful and live, create, love, hate, cry, destroy, fight and die for it. Do not let your life and your values and you actions slip easily into any mold, other that that which you create for yourself, and say with conviction, \"This is who I make myself\".
Do not give in to hope. Remember that nothing you do has any significance beyond that with which imbue it. Whatever you do, do it for its own sake. When the universe looks on with indifference, laugh, and shout back, \"Fuck You!\". Remember that to fight meaninglessness is futile, but fight anyway, in spite of and because of its futility.
The world may be empty of meaning, but it is a blank canvas on which to paint meanings of your own. Live deliberately. You are free."
found here.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
quick little math lesson
When I graduated college, I learned about subtraction. When we're in first grade or so we learn the arithmetic action of subtraction, the mathematical component and motions, but it's the anthropological, psychological concept of subtraction that doesn't really kick in until much later. About what you have left in your life when everything else is removed.
I've been formulating this theory because today I came home and my roommate had unexpectedly moved out. I dimly knew she'd be headin' out soon, but I've been too wrapped up in my last film project here for it to kick in that this weekend she'd be gone. So I came home, and saw the unexpected physical manifestation of what my life was like once she was subtracted from it.
All the shit I've accumulated in my years on this coast is pushed into corners, and this is the difference that is left in our lives once she is subtracted. My sneezes echo.
Seeing this math problem led me to think about subtraction and the parts of my life that have been shed now that we are scattering. I'm all that's left in this apartment. I'm looking at my life now that the social construct is taken away, the roommate removed, the college subtracted, and the film shoots are at an indefinite hiatus now that the necessary academic requirements are no longer relevant/impending/impeding. So...what's left are the parts of my life I haven't looked at very often. The lesser parts. Like why I pick at my cuticles. Or fixate on the things(people) I shouldn't.
This is a pessimistic way of looking at things. Wise man say you have education, relations, riches, and LOVE. Which I'm truly, painfully, aware of. But right now, I can only hear my typing clattering noises clicking weakly in the empty apartment and my social calendar is empty. Shit. I'm a negative number.
I've been formulating this theory because today I came home and my roommate had unexpectedly moved out. I dimly knew she'd be headin' out soon, but I've been too wrapped up in my last film project here for it to kick in that this weekend she'd be gone. So I came home, and saw the unexpected physical manifestation of what my life was like once she was subtracted from it.
All the shit I've accumulated in my years on this coast is pushed into corners, and this is the difference that is left in our lives once she is subtracted. My sneezes echo.
Seeing this math problem led me to think about subtraction and the parts of my life that have been shed now that we are scattering. I'm all that's left in this apartment. I'm looking at my life now that the social construct is taken away, the roommate removed, the college subtracted, and the film shoots are at an indefinite hiatus now that the necessary academic requirements are no longer relevant/impending/impeding. So...what's left are the parts of my life I haven't looked at very often. The lesser parts. Like why I pick at my cuticles. Or fixate on the things(people) I shouldn't.
This is a pessimistic way of looking at things. Wise man say you have education, relations, riches, and LOVE. Which I'm truly, painfully, aware of. But right now, I can only hear my typing clattering noises clicking weakly in the empty apartment and my social calendar is empty. Shit. I'm a negative number.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
H.A.G.S.
There's always these little chillen's being carted around Hofstra's campus, trotted out from some nearby daycare center when the weather warms up a bit, and sometimes I want to run up and smack the smiles off their faces and yell I KNOW YOU'RE THREE. BUT PREPARE FOR WHEN YOU GET TARNISHED AND IT'S NOT FUN ANYMORE.
I had no idea that I would become this jaded. There wasn't an inciting event that lured me away from enthused orgiastic acceptance of unfortunate life circumstances, or any riotous fight with a loved one that made me the way I am, but here I am. Anesthetized. Overlooked. Unconscious.
When I'm stuck in traffic now, in the summer, on the Belt Parkway, people roll down their windows and just stew in the muggy heat out there on the asphalt. Lots of old people clutching the wheel and waiting for their exit to crawl by since I live in a "NORC" (naturally-occurring retirement community). We start out sprinting, just kind of racing for an inevitable flag to fly by like a graduation or a marriage, getting there as fast as we can until at some point we see the definitive light at the end of the tunnel and we slow down. We age and we move slowly and we stutter and we forget and we lose ourselves in the marathon. We put up a fight.
It's raining now. Rain always smells like pennies. I walk outside and can smell weird minerals.
I'm transitory. I am aware that we are always transitory, that because we are aging and moving and talking and changing at all times, that we are permanently transitioning from one moment into the next so that we may string together a personal, linear, sequence of events and scrapbook it and call it a life, but I feel especially transitory. Aleatory. Moving without purpose. This part of my life will go undocumented in my scrapbook.
In my french literature class this past semester, these two kids gave a presentation and asked everyone in the class to write out on a notecard what we want to be when we grow up. Yes, phrased like that, in a college course. I instinctively wrote "happy" (which has been my every shooting star/birthday candle/fountain coin/eyelash wish since I was a kid, but don't tell anyone that or it won't come true) and then the people giving the presentation asked who wrote happy. Of course my hand shot up, because I assumed that many people would have answered similarly. They didn't. They were astronauts, forensic anthropologists, dance studio owners, exotic trade derivatives. I was the outlier for just wanting to be happy.
I say things, a lot, I talk real big when it comes to my future, but I gotta say folks, when it comes to graduating college and staring down my identity for the first time, I actually feel like I've just been flung out of slingshot blindfolded and I can't even feel the trajectory. It's scary. It's normal, and expected. Right? We base our entire beings around the confines of some sort of synthesized academic personality and we identify with the people who have chosen the same interests so we conform to create a group, and find our role within this group, which is easier than tackling a larger percentage of the population. It's simple. We categorize. We eke out our identities and build ourselves up within these little microcosms, which just seems like exercises in futility once we have finished school and all of our anthropological attempts at existence return, sunburned, to their separate suburban homes with bidings of a good summer and see you soon. I'm going to miss my friends.
I can't remember everything about college. I mean, I remember these little moments and these big walls, and those people who maybe saw me when most didn't, but mostly I remember the spaces that contained me. That dorm, that bedroom, this one. I remember you and I remember the smiles that glowed in the dark and I remember the bone-crushing exhaustion and I remember pushing through that and I remember momentary connections and that's why I can't stay in New York. Nobody settles down here. No one grows up. Manhattan is a playground. Some people fall in love. I just shatter. At this point, my heart just wants to know it exists.
So, I watch the rain and I bleat out insipid refrains online into nowhere and hope to reach some sort of semi-enlightened catharsis. I mostly feel like an untethered kite. And I'm sorry for that. I'm mostly really sorry for the things I never said. Like thanks. I love you. It's been the best four years of my life.
Here's an irrelevant but currently-listening-to-song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOAPzYJprS8
I had no idea that I would become this jaded. There wasn't an inciting event that lured me away from enthused orgiastic acceptance of unfortunate life circumstances, or any riotous fight with a loved one that made me the way I am, but here I am. Anesthetized. Overlooked. Unconscious.
When I'm stuck in traffic now, in the summer, on the Belt Parkway, people roll down their windows and just stew in the muggy heat out there on the asphalt. Lots of old people clutching the wheel and waiting for their exit to crawl by since I live in a "NORC" (naturally-occurring retirement community). We start out sprinting, just kind of racing for an inevitable flag to fly by like a graduation or a marriage, getting there as fast as we can until at some point we see the definitive light at the end of the tunnel and we slow down. We age and we move slowly and we stutter and we forget and we lose ourselves in the marathon. We put up a fight.
It's raining now. Rain always smells like pennies. I walk outside and can smell weird minerals.
I'm transitory. I am aware that we are always transitory, that because we are aging and moving and talking and changing at all times, that we are permanently transitioning from one moment into the next so that we may string together a personal, linear, sequence of events and scrapbook it and call it a life, but I feel especially transitory. Aleatory. Moving without purpose. This part of my life will go undocumented in my scrapbook.
In my french literature class this past semester, these two kids gave a presentation and asked everyone in the class to write out on a notecard what we want to be when we grow up. Yes, phrased like that, in a college course. I instinctively wrote "happy" (which has been my every shooting star/birthday candle/fountain coin/eyelash wish since I was a kid, but don't tell anyone that or it won't come true) and then the people giving the presentation asked who wrote happy. Of course my hand shot up, because I assumed that many people would have answered similarly. They didn't. They were astronauts, forensic anthropologists, dance studio owners, exotic trade derivatives. I was the outlier for just wanting to be happy.
I say things, a lot, I talk real big when it comes to my future, but I gotta say folks, when it comes to graduating college and staring down my identity for the first time, I actually feel like I've just been flung out of slingshot blindfolded and I can't even feel the trajectory. It's scary. It's normal, and expected. Right? We base our entire beings around the confines of some sort of synthesized academic personality and we identify with the people who have chosen the same interests so we conform to create a group, and find our role within this group, which is easier than tackling a larger percentage of the population. It's simple. We categorize. We eke out our identities and build ourselves up within these little microcosms, which just seems like exercises in futility once we have finished school and all of our anthropological attempts at existence return, sunburned, to their separate suburban homes with bidings of a good summer and see you soon. I'm going to miss my friends.
I can't remember everything about college. I mean, I remember these little moments and these big walls, and those people who maybe saw me when most didn't, but mostly I remember the spaces that contained me. That dorm, that bedroom, this one. I remember you and I remember the smiles that glowed in the dark and I remember the bone-crushing exhaustion and I remember pushing through that and I remember momentary connections and that's why I can't stay in New York. Nobody settles down here. No one grows up. Manhattan is a playground. Some people fall in love. I just shatter. At this point, my heart just wants to know it exists.
So, I watch the rain and I bleat out insipid refrains online into nowhere and hope to reach some sort of semi-enlightened catharsis. I mostly feel like an untethered kite. And I'm sorry for that. I'm mostly really sorry for the things I never said. Like thanks. I love you. It's been the best four years of my life.
Here's an irrelevant but currently-listening-to-song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOAPzYJprS8
Monday, March 15, 2010
bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzbuzzzzzzzzzbuzzzz
Okay. Breathe, breathe, breathe. I am standing on the shore facing a tidal wave.
Or, even better, I am a rubberband that is stretched much too tautly. Little plinks pull me down and I vibrate, but eventually I am just going to snap and strike out in futility.
The past three years have been a practice run. A drill. Simulated combat under controlled circumstances.
This is not a drill. This is the war.
This is the year of the tiger? I heard that weird things happen during that. I'm looking for full moons and swinging tides to explain the chaos, because shouldering it and not asking questions is not enough any more. I'd rather find an external source, some smoldering mysticism to blame. Until then I have to content myself with placating internalized falsehoods and picking my cuticles.
This is war, right? We fight. We fight. We fight.
We arm ourselves, kick and scream at the wicked things, and hope for the best.
Or, even better, I am a rubberband that is stretched much too tautly. Little plinks pull me down and I vibrate, but eventually I am just going to snap and strike out in futility.
The past three years have been a practice run. A drill. Simulated combat under controlled circumstances.
This is not a drill. This is the war.
This is the year of the tiger? I heard that weird things happen during that. I'm looking for full moons and swinging tides to explain the chaos, because shouldering it and not asking questions is not enough any more. I'd rather find an external source, some smoldering mysticism to blame. Until then I have to content myself with placating internalized falsehoods and picking my cuticles.
This is war, right? We fight. We fight. We fight.
We arm ourselves, kick and scream at the wicked things, and hope for the best.
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