Because I so often actively criticize our government, I am frequently asked whether I “love” America. Don’t I feel privileged to have been born here? Do I just take all of the freedoms I was given at birth for granted? Don’t I know how lucky I am to be here?

Rhetorical questions like this invoke emotion in people because the idea of questioning one’s government or criticizing one’s country is utter blasphemy in the eyes of the average citizen. We are taught as children to salute the flag, declare the Pledge of Allegiance, and sing literal hymns to the United States of America. The only thing patriotism can be compared to is religion, in both blind faith and righteous condemnation. In church you’re taught to follow God’s Law (written by man), sing to God’s glory, and to purposely curtail your active critical thinking skills which tell you there isn’t an old white man in the sky who magically impregnated a virgin in order to sacrifice that very magical child for the sins of the world in order to keep us locked in a guilt factory forever. Questioning, doubting; these are tools of the devil. Criticizing, inquiring; these are the tools of the political infidel. 

It is in our nature to create elaborate myths around our world and the mysteries it exhibits; so religion isn’t really a “bad” thing, per se. Likewise, it is also part of our nature to build hierarchies both socially and politically in order to both organize and alienate. One could argue it is also in our nature to rip each other to shreds with our teeth and nails; in many ways, religion and politics are just extensions of our physical weapons externalized in a game much more complex than simple torture or death: the game of psychology.

Being blindly allegiant to any group is dangerous, as it allows one’s self to integrate into a group where personal responsibility and critical thinking take a backseat to group conformity and loyalty. Think of how a politician is attacked when they change their stance on an issue. They’re called a flip-flopper, someone who doesn’t adhere to the ideals of the party, a person without loyalty or cause. We never stop to think that changes in opinions and ideals are a good thing, as it means the person in question is evolving or at the very least questioning something they once believed in. Everything you regard as fact should be questioned not just once in your lifetime, but on a consistent basis. Likewise, the adage you can never understand your own argument until you understand your opponent’s is something we should have adopted as the Golden Rule long ago. Unfortunately, we have more or less adopted Schopenhauer’s 38 Stratagems as how we run business these days-righteous dedication to one’s own cause or ideals with the systematic destruction of the opponent’s ideas and argument.

Religion and politics have long been bedfellows, and Christianity in particular was initially adopted in large scale by the Roman emperor Constantine I (Constantine the Great). Adopting Christianity as a political strategy affected both his usage of warfare in neighboring regions (you can collect more soldiers for your cause if you fight under the mantle of the same god) and to ensure his lineage would come into the Crown after his passing. The phrase “when in Rome, do as the Romans do” is easily applied here: if you’re the king of a country and you’re losing ground to a new religion, why not simply adopt it to win your constituents favor? 

When I am asked if I love America, the question flies blindly in the face of what I believe in. I love America the way I love anything else: conditionally. Do I feel lucky I was born here? Often. Do I feel this luck allows the American government to be able to do whatever they like at whatever sacrifice it takes? No. Country lines are imaginary borders we have drawn onto land we don’t own to alienate and divide in order to manipulate. Have you ever thought about what would happen if there were no country lines? Party lines? 

The ideal of unquestioning faith and unwavering belief in both religion and patriotism are the same concept. Do as you’re told, and never question it. NEVER question God’s law. NEVER question the effectiveness of the government. NEVER take for granted what you’ve been given. Beggars can’t be choosers, remember? And the choosers continue the climb the ladder higher and higher while the beggars stay at the bottom, crying thanks to those that throw the crumbs. It is like this whether you’re in church, in business, or on the party lines-you only get what you fight for. The question is whether you’re content with mediocrity, and how much blind faith you’ve got left. 

-Sterner

It became profitable to be an asshat, or at least act like one. I’d like to pinpoint notable asshattery in recent history as evidence.

In the early days (early meaning the days before television), reputation was one of those things you either worshiped in the manner of God (believing that reputation would make or break you) or cast aside to be thought of as daring, avant-garde, or at the very least different than all the other people you were surrounded by. Assholes like Zelda Fitzgerald, Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray forged paths in the Olde Days creating their own legacies as Epic Asshats, people content to buck the status quo and throw off the regulations of a respectable reputation under the guise of art which we all know really just means “partying”. I mean really, all the artists I know live in paid for by daddy lofts and have a lot of unprotected sex with ugly people while high on cocaine. All of this is fine by my moral standards but we all need to start admitting throwing paint on a T-shirt when you’re not busy trying to catch VD isn’t really being an artist. Sorry, Victor.

I’m just fucking with you. Some of this guy’s shit is okay.

Anyway, after TV bukkaked its way into our lives, it opened up a new world of stupid shit. I hardly need to remind you people we were all once captivated in the 90’s by someone named Puck who harassed a man with advanced HIV-AIDS and practically made his living eating boogers and picking scabs. 

I can hardly sleep at night over the sound of all of my Anglo Saxon ancestors screaming.

Television opened up so many possibilities in the minds of unoriginal morons across the globe an entirely new genre of TV was birthed: reality TV. Many people blame the aforementioned Real World (Puck 4 Life) for starting this trend, but the Real World didn’t start out totally disgusting; at least that’s what I tell myself whenever I get a flashback of Tami wiring her jaw shut to lose weight (did you guys know this chick is on another reality show now?! Basketball Wives. I need to stay better abreast of previous Real World cast members careers for mockery purposes) or David the confused asexual punching Irene “Lyme Disease” McGee in the face after she threw his stuffed dog into whatever body of water the cast was living next to. All right. Never mind. The Real World totally began the spiral of the Apocalypse. 

Gay, not gay or asexual: Stephen’s choice of attire makes one wonder; usually gay men have more respect. Although…look at everyone else. I vote asexual. No one would fuck someone wearing that shirt.

Because I respect myself, I haven’t watched television (via cable) for the last 3 or 4 years, and even when I did I usually watched crime shows because I am a potential serial killer in training. Seriously, I could kill you and never get caught. Rubber gloves, full body suit, no traces. FUCK YOU, CSI! YOU’LL NEVER CATCH ME!

Anyway, because of this fact I have no goddamn idea what complete bullshit TV is pumping out for the consumption of idiots. I do know Fox News is still operating, which is further proof of the Apocalypse, and last time I accidentally caught TV at the gym I saw a show who’s premise was teaching spoiled girls how to be humble or else their families/fiances would cut them off from their cash money. Everyone on the show was really fucking ugly and it pissed me off thinking I’ve been going decades of my life not getting shit paid for by anyone but myself. HOW COME I CAN’T CASH IN ON THE TREND OF BEING AN ASSHOLE?! READ THIS BLOG! I AM TOTALLY AN ASSHOLE, AND I’M PRETTY! THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE WHAT AMERICA STANDS FOR!

Obviously my work ethic and self respect are holding me back from a life of luxury and potential sponsorships by Monster energy drinks and Trojan condoms. Luckily, I know the route to real success: acting like a weirdo.

Some people with no discernible talent who are famous for acting like weirdos:

I could go on and on.

The point is, how did we get from living in a society seemingly obsessed with a spotless reputation to living in one where you can get mega-rich and famous just from pretending you’re a weirdo?! As someone who borders on actually being a weirdo (I can never be a weirdo 100% because I used to watch Newlyweds and still think a lot of Celine Dion’s songs are pretty good) I find it insulting to the world (and everyone I had drama class with in high school) that these poseurs can just slap on a horrible wig and make some robot faces and BAM! they’re rich. This is complete nonsense! One should only profit from weirdosity if one can actually prove one is a weirdo. Just wearing wigs and making robot faces isn’t enough, says the entire Broadway community and every child who walks the Earth. Do you listen to and actually enjoy Yoko Ono’s music? Do you know who Genesis P-Orridge is? How many times have you seen Doom Generation? Do you ever eat carrots with barbecue sauce? THESE ARE THINGS WE NEED TO ASK PEOPLE BEFORE WE ALLOW THEM TO SUCK OUR MONEY AWAY, PEOPLE! Or we could just force our entertainers to actually *be* talented at something. I don’t know.

Readers, I love you.

-Sterner

From delicioustacos.com:

Cynthia Nixon recently said in the NY Times that she “chose” to be gay, which caused controversy and people freaking out and etc. To all of which Andrew Sullivan responds:

I don’t watch the Republican debates, because they happen when I’m at work.  Plus, I’m sure they would bug the fuck out of me.  I’m a liberal, you know. I like causing abortions and I would be on food stamps if I could, and I don’t see how we can kick out all the Mexicans.  And people should be able to say “fuck” on TV and, we should let people out of fucking jail and let them smoke pot and what have you.  And if we don’t give the old people free medicine, everyone with an old person in their life is going to be instantly destitute from the freakish gigantic costs of squeezing an extra forty five secnds of life out of decrepit and demented shells of their former selves, so you know, Medicare.  That kind of shit.

But I watched the first five minutes of the one last night in South Carolina.  Because Andrew Sullivan started flipping out over it on his liveblog saying Newt had a genius tactical masterstroke responding to a question about his ex wife. Basically ABC was running an interview with one of Newt’s exes right after the debate, where she’s going to spill all kinds of dirt about how horrible he was and left her when she was cripplingly ill and etc.  And I thought: oh yeah, that’s right— he left his wife for another woman he had already been boning while the wife had terminal cancer, and this was not too far removed from the time he was going after Clinton’s head for getting his dick sucked by a hot young piglet. And: man, this is old news but once everybody gets reminded of this maybe they wil in fact steer clear of old Newt.  They will remember why he’s been out of the picture for the last fifteen years or so.

But no, this was a DIFFERENT wife, whom he had also left for another woman he was already boning while she, this different wife, was afflicted with an entirely different debilitating illness.  Whoa. This guy who we remember as Clinton’s greatest adversary is a serially adultering destroyer of terminally ill women. This is going to be some devastating shit.

And so silver-haired mannequin John King brought it up right at the top of the debate and Gingrich had clearly planned for this contingency and completely turned it around with a snarling “HOW DARE YOU, SIR” spiel.  I am appalled, frankly, that you would begin a presidential debate with this sort of tabloid fluff and indignity and ignominy and etc etc.

And that is a fucking masterstroke. I am afraid of this guy now.  He is on my radar as a credible threat to the second term of Barack Obama, which I care about for some reason.*

Newt’s move was a masterstroke because a brilliant demagogue knows in his bones to always attack, never defend, and Newt pivoted right into a motherfucking righteous attack without a nanosecond’s hesitation.  He delivered an eloquent full bore speech that while I’m sure he and his team had planned meticulously and prayed for a reason to shoehorn it in to the first few minutes of the debate, it seemed like and emotional, off-the-cuff, nobly wounded response.  This motherfucker is a campaign genius and if he didn’t have a compulsive need to cuckold middle aged broads with Lou Gherig’s disease he would be emperor of the fucking planet. I am terrified of this guy now. 

* Or do I?  Why do I care?  It doesn’t matter who’s president.  It genuinely does not matter at all to your life who is president, unless you’re in the military.  The president is capable of accomplishing nothing domestically and that’s the way it should be.  So who the president is only matters to your life if you are a soldier, or the family of a soldier, or a person living in the country where the president is going to send soldiers to blow up your house at 69 Azadi Street because someone was holding the paper upside down that said Osama’s chief lietenant was living at 96 Azadi street.

But still. I can’t stand another four years of Republicans because I just don’t want to have to hear these fucking guys or look at their smug fucking faces on the five occasions annually that I watch TV news.  And I don’t want to hear fucking disgruntled liberals mewling about them endlessly and getting all huffy about their domestic policies that will never be enacted, or be enacted in name only,  or fail, or otherwise ultimately mean less than nothing— it doesn’t fucking matter who’s president.

— Rogier

I want all the years I spent with my exes back

All new wine and champagne glasses from the friends who break something every time they come over

All the cell phone minutes I spent listening to whiny friends bitch about the lovers they keep “swearing” they’re never taking back (only to take them back over and over again)

All the presents I bought for people who didn’t buy me anything

All the inches of hair expensive stylists have cut off my head after I asked them to “keep it long”

All of the hope I felt electing government officials who promised me things and then didn’t deliver

All of the time I’ve wasted watching shitty porn that promised to be artistic

All of the brain cells I’ve ruined listening to stupid reviews on Yelp

All of the time I spent making an imaginary Christmas list.

Loody and I went out Saturday night for some beers and conversation. I was also convinced Ingrid was going to find herself a manfriend, which looked like it was happening, only to be crushed later by Ingrid’s insistence the dude she had been chatting up for like a fucking HOUR was boring. Yeah, dude! We couldn’t have established this much earlier? I could have saved myself the experience of having amuse his entire group of friends while you talked to him.

One thing that did come up during this time, however, was the topic of weed. Well, the act of smoking it. There was a couple in the group (who I actually liked) named Tim and Kellie who asked me if I smoked weed. I vehemently said YES. OF COURSE. EVERYONE SHOULD. Tim high-fived me, bro-style, and Kellie groaned and they told me it was an issue in their relationship.

Just for visualization’s sake, let me first say I am often told random personal facts about people’s lives after only knowing them for mere minutes. People, as a rule, like talking about themselves, and our instincts are always to confide in new friends to “bond” with them over the common thread of storytelling. Oh, you have an older brother who’s an artist? Me, too! Your secret dream is to be a singer and dress up like 70’s-era Cher every night? Dude. Me too. We have shit in common! We’re friends! Kellie was the one who approached Loody and I in the first place, and I always feel like girls bond with other girls especially easy, multiplied by 1.6 million when there is alcohol involved.

Kellie was a short-ish (5’5” maybe?) attractive NATURAL blonde (this is important to point out just because) wearing jeans, a tweed jacket, and a delicate gold necklace. I pay HEAVY attention to people’s visual cues, and Kellie’s said she was Serious, Driven, Motivated, and Romantic. The tiny gold chain and a few other cues (a pinkish hangbag, her one length, bobbed hair cut in the color the Lord gave her) told me she was romantic and girly. Tweed says you’re serious and conscious of other’s opinions. Jeans with sensible but cute heels says you’re comfortable with yourself but still need to be viewed as a lady (I could write an entire dissertation on women in flats vs. heels).

Tim looked British, but was not. Large, sort of pyramid-esque face with floppy hair, and a black tee and jeans with a large, ivory cardigan over it. The cardigan was double breasted and screamed ENGLISH PREP SCHOOL. It was amazing. I love men when they wear pretty things. A sweater is such a simple statement, but is often thought of as “odd” mentally by men. They equate sweaters with stylish fags; fisherman; their grandfathers; prep school boys they grew up with; tennis players they’ve seen on TV; so many options, none of them clear. Fisherman and Old Gramps are cool; tennis players and spoiled Ivy Leaguers are not. Men: WEAR SWEATERS. They ALWAYS make you look good, regardless of age, body type, or temperament. Tim wearing this sweater told me one thing: confidence. Jeans with understated lace up dress shoes told me he probably worked in business attire but valued casual moments with his ladyfriend. A black tee under a white sweater is an obvious choice, but told me he was open to thinking about the box and not afraid to take criticism. As a couple, they looked similarly understated, but I would have NEVER put them together. Tim looked much more flamboyant than Kellie, and not in an “opposites attract” kind of thing, but they seemed almost…brother and sister-ish. 

The issue was: Tim smokes weed, and Kellie does not. She hates the fact he smokes weed and wants him to stop. He says he doesn’t smoke around her or whenever he knows he’ll be with her later. She said that is not always the case-he never smokes around her, but she sees him high all the time and it bugs her. He acts different, she says. Nothing bad different necessarily, just different. And she hated it.

I asked Kellie if she had ever smoked weed. She said once; it made her intensely paranoid and anxious and she hated it. I asked her if she’d give it another chance, just to experiment. She said no. Tim jumped in and started pleading with her to just try it once and I’ll admit I was totally nodding my head the whole time, peer-pressure style. COME ON, KELLIE! SMOKE POOOOOT! IT’S WHAT ALL THE COOL KIDS ARE DOING! JUMP ON THE BANGWAGON!

I did a shit ton of drugs in high school. Oddly enough, smoking weed was the one drug I never particularly enjoyed. It made me sleepy, sluggish, anxious, and just sort of weird. Still, I smoked it ALL THE TIME because I was psychologically unable to say “no” to people I wanted to look cool in front of, and because I was insanely competitive with dudes when I was younger. I always had to do everything BIGGER and BETTER than the dudes I was friends with-just because. This is stupid, pointless, and something I still struggle with occasionally. When I graduated high school, I quit doing drugs. All of them (besides booze). My 18th birthday was an orgy of epic proportions: everyone was drinking and smoking, there was K everywhere, coke some places, and my best friend lost our E pills midway through the party and a household hunt happened which still cracks me up to this day. Get out your magnifying glasses, kids! Find those magic pills! I still owe my friend Gwen 10,000 props for letting me have my party at her gorgeous house in the hills, complete with jacuzzi, patio, pool table and all other sorts of nonsense. As a matter of fact, I am mailing out a gift to her today. I’ll have to add an extra kiss.

After my 18th, I stopped doing drugs. Cold. Peace out. I’m a legal adult now and don’t need a rap sheet any longer than my teenage record. I drank, and that was it. I had boyfriends who smoked weed who I “made” stop, and none of my friends did drugs at all. My longest boyfriend (4 years) sold weed for a living which I was ethically okay with (bitch needs shoes and dinner), but he could not SMOKE weed around me, for the same reasons Kellie hates Tim smoking weed: it made him different, and I didn’t like it. During this time in my life, I was a shrill, condescending, know-it-all asshole; how anyone actually dealt with me WITHOUT being high is a fucking mystery. I continued this cunty behavior for a while before getting slapped in the face with dicks by the universe (figuratively, not literally) and Growing The Fuck Up. Oh shit, I realized. I DON’T know everything.

The last dude I dated smoked weed. It bugged me. Can’t you just stop, I said?Why don’t you just start was his answer. I love you, but you could really use it.I crossed my arms. I was still kind of high strung.

Several things coincided with my decision to start smoking weed again. One, my best friend at the time was “awakened” to pot randomly on a trip to Alaska or something. Her new mission in life became to FIND SOME GOOD WEED and SMOKE IT. My dad got his first prescription, followed by my brothers and almost everyone I knew. Suddenly, that shit was everywhere! Weed smoking dude and I broke up, and I decided I needed to chill out on drinking. But I still needed an escape! A vice! Enter pot, skip to Chapter 10: Tim and Kellie.

Smoking weed is the greatest thing that ever happened to me. I smoke on and off, usually every other day but sometimes every day. I’ve cut down insanely on drinking since smoking. I can do all the regular shit I do while I’m high: write, do homework, clean, take pictures, work, whatever. I don’t smoke the strong, super strain shit; I smoke the kind of shit that fades you halfway through a joint, and doesn’t turn you into a surfer, couch or otherwise. I’m a lot chiller when I’m high-my same usual self, without the quickness to anger (my temper is my downfall) or the edge. That dude was totally right-I’m the type that pretty much NEEDS to smoke weed. I think of weed as somewhere in between green tea and a bottle of champagne. 

I told Kellie and Tim they were never going to work unless they figured out an answer to this weed issue. It will go from a small thing to a big thing, I said, and Kellie jumped in with “yeah-it’s already a big thing”. She looked at Tim cryptically. Aw man, I said. A man’s love taking away his medicine.

I don’t give a fuck whether you smoke weed. If you do, rad. Not? Fine. I will openly say I would like EVERYONE to smoke weed, on the regular. It would cause less sidewalk dickery (hey, man, watch it!), less speeding (just relax and enjoy the journey!), less general assholery. I’m convinced of it. If it makes ME, just little old me, less of an asshole, it could help EVERYONE. I’d never force it on a person (LEGALIZED WEED AND FORCED INHALATION, 2012!) but I do wish it would stop being compared to fucking meth and coke and heroin and all sorts of other, busted ass drugs that do FOR REAL DAMAGE and inspire people not to calm down, but get AMPED UP and GO BREAK THINGS. 

I guess my point is, I love weed. End story. I don’t love all strains, or all methods of obtaining it or consuming it. But “it” as a plant, “drug”, and resource (hemp!!!)-I love. 

Tim and Kellie look like they love each other. I hope they work it out, those crazy kids. 

A fucking gas powered leaf blower going. Which is illegal,right? Gas powered leaf blowers are banned. But I have never seen a leaf blower operating without the sound of a fucking outboard motor blasting. The ban on gas powered leaf blowers has had absolutely zero effect. What did they do— was there some amnesty where you could turn in your gas powered leaf blower in exchange for a toy or something? For an electric powered leaf blower? I’ve never once seen anybody using an electric powered leaf blower.

Still, the fucking gas powered leaf blower. Accelerating now. Crescendoing. And then diminuendoing, murmuring almost, then roaring again as its operator discovers a new patch of leaves. What the fuck does the gas powered leaf blower do? How is this a more suitable tool for cleaning up the approximately 30 leaves that accumulate in front of an apartment building in Studio City, where the flora consists almost entirely of evergreen or tropical trees? Why, in the area I am from in New England, where there is a legitimate problem with the enormous mountains of leaves dropped annually by oaks, birches, maples, etc.— why in that place where there are genuinely a shitload of autumn leaves to deal with, do you never hear a gas powered leaf blower? People go out with a rake and rake their leaves into piles. Kids jump in them.

I think it’s because a gas powered leaf blower, or really, a leaf blower operating under any sort of power, is an essentially useless piece of make-work that only blows the leaves onto some neighboring property where they will have to be blown off with another gas powered leaf blower, etc., forever. So a gas powered leaf blower only works if you have no real problem with leaves to begin with. If the leaves don’t really need to go anywhere, and it doesn’t really cost you a significant sum, there’s a whole underclass of illegal immigrants willing to strap on this loud fume-blasting arm cannon and walk around blowing leaves three feet off their original location, and that’s just what’s done here. You just hire Mexicans to do things, they bring a bunch of big serious-looking tools, and you feel like they’ve been of some use. Back East where you don’t have a secret caste of slaves and there are actually a fuckton of leaves, you must dispose of them yourself and use the actually appropriate tool, a rake.

In rich neighborhoods in California there is a constant roar of gas powered power tools being operated by Aztec-looking illegals. Every tree on every fucking rich man’s block is constantly being sheared, and chainsawed, and otherwise attended to. The only cars that are parked outside Hollywood Hills homes during the day are ‘86 Mazda pickups with big illegal pipe-cages welded on the back, filled with branches or 2 x 4’s. And seriously nowhere— nowhere in this town will you go 15 minutes without hearing a sound like an old outboard motor, or an Ent getting thrown screaming into Saruman’s lumber mill. The amount of landscaping that goes on in Los Angeles is ridiculous— for a desert. We live in a desert. Our native plants are dry queasy herbs and gnarled chaparral bushes that grow point oh one millimeters per year and have roots that stretch five thousand miles below the Earth and are three thousand years old. Aside from just watering the shit, there shouldn’t really be anything to be done, because every other plant should just fucking die basically. But still. Even on my humble street there is never not at least one illegal landscaping business truck parked out in the street and a guy with no health or liability insurance hanging off a high branch with a long claw-shaped saw at the end of a catchpole, hacking off branches so some other, more desirable branch might live. So that the tree might not just be left alone. So that one’s neighbors might not be undisturbed by loud gutteral machines screeching and roaring and whining like a dirt bike making constant laps in your driveway.

Because we all know you like to be made to laugh; you’ve told us, over and over and over again.  Collectively you have said “live laugh love” or “make me laugh” a thousand million billion times.  Or you’ve put up the whorish-sounding “make me laugh and you can make me do anything.”  Make me laugh and you can sneak it in my ass, is that what this means?  Make me laugh and you can jerk off in my mouth while watching porn?  Make me laugh and I will fuck guys off craigslist and bring you back the money?  I mean, I shouldn’t complain about this— I am not a professional comedian, but I consider myself funny.  And girls do in fact “do anything,” although the “anything” that I’m asking for is just to fuck me in the most vanilla manner imaginable.  I don’t require that they cook me a meal or take me on a date or engage me intellectually or anything, and they certainly haven’t offered.  Make me laugh and you can make me do anything.  That pretty much spells it out— you bring the personality, I’ll bring the pussy. 

And frankly not much else.  I know this is sexist and has been done to death, but why are girls so fucking unfunny if they like funniness so much?  It’s like fat guys who are really into televised sports.  If you consider this activity to be the greatest thing in the world, why don’t you go out in the park and toss a fucking football around once in a while?  If this thing brings you so much pleasure, why aren’t you interested in creating some of it yourself?  Why do you have to be a completely passive participant?  Don’t you want— like, even if you just selfishly want to be made to laugh without having to contribute, don’t you understand that being at least marginally funny or fast on your feet will help the person whose job it is to actually be funny to get out of his wheelhouse and create fresher, funnier material for you to laugh at as a precondition for fucking?  Don’t you see the guys getting bored telling you their canned pussy-getting funny story for the ten thousandth time?  Don’t you want to help the poor bastards out?

I went down to Occupy Wall Street yesterday.  Occupy LA, rather, in front of City Hall.  I wanted to see what it was about, what people were actually protesting, what they actually wanted.  Also, I figured there would be girls there.

The talk on the internet seems to be that OK, it is understandable that people are pissed off about “the way things are right now,” but the “movement” has no concrete goals and really stands for nothing besides inchoate frustration. And so while it’s growing, while it’s spreading worldwide, while cops are cracking heads in Zuccotti Park and Carbanieri vans are on fire in Rome, until this “movement” gets its shit together and actually asks for something it’ll all be for nothing.

From what I saw at occupy LA this is entirely accurate.  First, I was a little disappointed that it is in fact a peaceful, organized protest.  There was a march right before I got there, which seems to have gone smoothly and in an orderly fashion.  There is a tent city around City Hall that is completely confined to the grass with fastidious volunteers appearing out of nowhere every five minutes to pick up cigarette butts.  Protestors happily stayed contained in the few streets that the city had conscientiously blocked off to keep shit from getting out of hand, and gathered around a stage and PA system that seems to have been set up with all the appropriate permits.  There was an adequate amount of Port-o-sans.  The few cops visible were the LAPD’s bike-bound squad of “courtesy officers,” or whateverthefuck they’re called.  They wear purple shirts that make them look like the world’s most militant kickball team.  They kept to themselves, returned eye contact and smiled when smiled at.  This is different, I gather, from New York, where the NYPD is crushing people’s femurs and throwing haymakers at nancy-boy college kids.  As is their wont.

I wonder if this comes down to the difference between the city’s mayors.  Bloomberg is a billionaire businessman who made his business billions off a proprietary information network for other businessmen to get tips about business.  A paper pusher for paper pushers.  The ultimate meta-captain of non-industry; basically a glad-handing blue suit stuffed with hundred dollar bills. Of course he wants to just get the freeloaders off the lawn.  He doesn’t strike one as the head cracking type, but if it gets in the way of money, that’s what needs to be done.  Also all his cigarette-banning shit and no bicycles on the grass, etc., shows a totalitarian instinct. Villaraigosa is an unprincipled intellectually bankrupt game show host, but at least on the surface he stands for unions and immigrants and that type of Old Left shit, so it makes sense that his instinct is to peacefully let the hippies camp out outside his office.

Anyway.  My shameful urge to see cops punched and tear gas going off was not slaked, and the protest was exactly what I expected it to be.  The protestors stood for exactly nothing,  or at least collectively they stood for nothing; individually there were countless micro-agendas that people had brought in in an attempt to glom on to the movement.  Lyndon LaRouche disciples authouritatively screaming at people.  Medical marijuana advocates.  Anti-human trafficking activists.  An Indigenous Peoples Committee with actual daguerrotype-looking Native Americans involved.  There was a big banner about chemtrails, which is what people call visible jet exhaust that they think is the government dropping chemicals from the sky to sterilize blacks or cause autism or something.

And they had bands, and speakers.  The speakers were middle aged Chicano Studies professors offering the exact reheated Trotskyist boilerplate you would expect, which the young people were politely supportive of even if they seemed a bit bored. The only people who seemed genuinely excited were the old people.  The old hippies, who looked delighted to be pulled down from the attic and dusted off for some old-fashioned agitation.  I’d seen plenty of these types up in Santa Cruz and our LA hippies were exactly the same; focused on Dick Cheney and the wars but now trying to tie this stuff into the issue of money.

I ran into a girl, someone I’d been on one date with off OKCupid and never called again.  Despite this she was happy to see me and introduced me to her friend, who was, judging by her hairstyle, a true believer.  The OKC girl was cute, way hotter than I remembered, and I had to go back and kick my past self in the ass for not getting a second date and sealing the deal.  What was I thinking? 

They asked me for my thoughts on the protest and I started to tell them the truth, that while I felt I stood for whatever vague principle they were having trouble articulating, that at least in LA this is a nebulous jerkoff that will ultimately amount to nothing. I brought up the chemtrails banner— shit like this is what gets legitimate movements dismissed as nuts.  I was doing well, seeming smart about politics with a little humor thrown in; I was on my way to recovering from my earlier blowoff and earning my way back into the hot girl’s panties.  I would text her later to say “cool to see you at the protest” and casually ask her out for a drink, and the ass would be mine.  But then her friend was like “well, you know there is something to that chemtrails stuff.”

What do you do in this situation?  There is nothing to this chemtrails stuff; only a retarded idiot could possibly believe in this type of thing even for an instant.  I  had an urge to bite her head off and yell at her for even suggesting that such a thing might hold water.

But I opted for the pussy.  I shrugged it off and said nothing.  I took a bus back home and texted the OKC girl and then jerked off to her facebook photos.  We’ll see if she gets back to me.

Thinking about going down to Occupy LA today.  Not that I give a shit. Or rather, not that I think it is a meaningful movement with any concrete goals. And if they did have concrete goals, they would be impossible to achieve. 

Not that I’m against them either—while the “I am the 99 per cent” people complaining about student loans seem dopey to me, far worse is this “I am the 53 per cent (of legitimate income tax payers)” canard; the people holding up signs that say  I bootstrapped my way to the bottom attending a state school while working 30 hours a week at a minimum wage job and never having an instant of freedom, now I will buy a shitty house in Phoenix and have kids who will also have to work 30 hours a week getting yelled at by some undereducated jerkoff because they didn’t adequately mop down the little channel between the beef and chicken grills at Arby’s — congratulations, you’re a fucking idiot.  I wasted my youth grinding myself down to the bone in the most debasing manner possible and now I insist that people with billions of dollars be able to contribute nothing, is what you’re saying. 

So I’m not going down there to yell at them or argue with them.  Like most people, I am going down there because I think there will be young pretty girls in revealing outfits.  I won’t talk to them, because they need a guy who sings for a band about communism or something, but you reach a certain age and just looking at a nineteen year old’s barely clothed tits and ass is enough.

And you know, it does suck to have just got out of college right when the price of education reached a high water mark; it cost you a quarter million fucking dollars to go to school for four years, and you got out at the exact moment when the job-getting value of all this education became utterly meaningless.  Or, for certain “desirable” white collar professions this fancy education is necessary,  but it is no longer even close to sufficient. You have graduated to a snowball’s chance in hell of being able to work in any kind of meaningfully air-conditioned environment.  And in fact this fancy education now works against you at the kind of it-sucks-but-at-least-allows-basic-life-sustaining-expenses kind of gig that might be available— management at these places thinks you will get bored and move on; they don’t want to waste the time and money training you.  And they’re right, you would move on.  Except there won’t be any place to move  to  for at least a decade.  The shortsightedness of these HR professionals for shitty jobs is that they fail to see that the guy out of Berkeley is going to have nowhere to go for ten years, and hell yes you want him telemarketing.

It’s funny, the 53 per cent movement seems dedicated to painting the 99 per cent movement as rich, elitist snobs.  Overeducated, over-worldy layabouts.  They are saying “we are even poorer than you, and we are proud of it.”  Not necessarily monetarily poorer but somehow culturally poorer— we are the real blue collar bedrock of this country and blah blah blah, and so stop complaining, you lazy rich people.  Stop complaining and let the really rich people keep their money.

I mean, what the 99 per cent movement wants, at least the college kids, certainly is some kind of socialist, redistributive shit to happen.  In their bones, that’s what they want.  Give us money.  They want a jubilee.  A forgiveness of debt.  I don’t know why they have to be so cagey about it, and couch it in demands for nitpicking banking reforms— we all know that’s bullshit.  They want money.  They should come out and say it. French people aren’t chickenshit about this type of thing— they say “we want the government to give us money.”  And good!  Fucking give it to them.