How Adult Are You?

After some early morning banter about the habits of adults and adultoids, why don't we take a look at the top ten adult habits and characteristics, and you can find out once and for all how ADULT you wound up!

10. FORMAL OUTDOOR WEAR - Are you prepared to go out on the town with a client? Or are you ready to impress your date with the job that your 6-foot long peacoat says you have? Do you find yourself in the great outdoors but still desperately afraid of getting brush and earth fodder on your garmet because you paid a shitload to look this good beyond the almost-as-great-but-not-so-great indoors?

9. OCCUPATION-BASED INTRODUCTIONS - Is it 100% likely that you're going to have to try and give a crash-course what you DO on a daily basis FOR A LIVING within the first ten seconds of an introduction to a stranger? Do you find yourself even asking other people what they do within the first ten seconds because you're scared you will be judged on not having an appropriately adult and productive conversation? Do you find yourself talking about what you do to people more than you've ever even thought to yourself about what you do? Is there inevitably an implied lead-in to whether or not you are satisfied with said work, and what you are going to do to fix that (because you won't be allowed to say you're honestly satisfied with your current work)?

8. CIGARETTES - You've already had a pot of coffee, a few beers, some non-descript pharmaceutical products, some form of sex, and you still need a buzz? Are you looking for that smoooooth, nerve-calming, stress deterent in the form of a rolled up sleeve of tobacco? Need something that goes with everything, gets you out of an awkward situation, and lets you finally occupy that fidgeting, time-ticking space that keeps reappearing in life?

7. DATES OF IMPORTANCE - Do you find yourself constantly worrying about (instead of celebrating or being indifferent to) holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, and days of massive obligation? Are you stressed just thinking about days like these approaching at this moment? Are you enjoying the normal non-event days exponentially more than the days you are considered a bad person if you don't get off your ass and recognize the occasion?

6. FALLING ASLEEP ALWAYS - Is everything a yawner these days? When did 9 PM start feeling like 4 AM? Have you noticed that time has changed from being like a river into being like one big fog, and all you know is you just want to fucking sleep? Are you asleep right now?

5. BILLS/TAXES/DEBT - Has it become second-hand to stop trying to count the exact amount you owe in dollars, but in degrees of fucked-in-the-ass? Have you started to curse on a regular basis these vaguely enormous, intangible, and inevitably ambiguous entities that you owe your life's worth in dollars and change to?

4. DINNER PARTIES/ENTERTAINING GUESTS - Have various shindigs, socials, and gatherings with large amounts of loosely bound adults become your main form of social interaction? When was the last time you've learned and forgotten so many names within such a short span of time... never? Have you noticed yourself developing a sixth sense each time you enter a room for the safest corner to not be bothered, the other guy/girl who feels the same awkwardness as you, or the nearest exit/closest free beverage and/or food? Do you suddenly have the urge (read: need) to get immediately and irrevocably tanked?

3. NEWS/MORNING PAPER - Name the latest developments in Afghanistan, on Capitol Hill, the Gaza Strip, Darfur, or the condition of Haiti and New Orleans. Did you frown or show a look of stress or disgruntlement at any of these? Are these articles and large print photos the best way for you to tell the days apart? Is it the only way? Do you have personal relationships with each news anchor and notice the incoming and outgoing trends in their wardrobes? Are you salivating thinking about the overloaded, fatty weekend edition?

2. WEATHER - If everything looks bleak around you, do you just opt out of discussing anything remotely relevant to the daily grizzind and choose something so intensely and extremely mild? meaning: the weather. "Say, Fargis, it's a bit cooler this morning than the last 900 mornings, what are your thoughts on that?" "Well Don, the front's on the move and Weatherlady Kathy told me last night that we're going to be seeing a lot of that in the coming year, you know grays and blues, some blue-grays and some grayer-blues; like I tell my wife every morning, 'It's all in the Farmer's Almanac, honey.'"

1. COFFEE - Is this black liquid your lifeblood? Can you not wake up without pouring yourself a good mammoth-strength cup of Joe? Do you find yourself arguing with other coffee beaners the subtle nuances of the office kitchen's french roast? How many brands and model numbers of coffee machines can you name? Do you find yourself using the "still haven't had my coffee" excuse 3-5 times a day? Would you kill someone for a cup of coffee?

Take a tally of the ones that applied to you and throw that number out the window, because you already are an adult for reading this - the bonus #11 habit/characteristic of adults is enjoying petty humor at life's little trials (and then emailing it to your coworkers and family and friends). I hate to think what level I am for writing this.

Post-Apocalypse Now

I don't know why everyone's so quick to assume that the apocalypse is somewhere in the future, when it very well has already happened, and not just once. Welcome to the post-apocalyptic world number 456*. No one ever said it had to be some distinguished war or incredible disaster. What if it was a slow and gradual process that inevitably let our abilities and ambitions and dellusions take over our lives and in a sense, ended the world that once was?

In fact, how many times has a the world ended in some respect for some species or way of life? I feel like with each major technological advancement, we entered a new world while simultaneously ending an old one. But in terms of our present post-apocalyptic world, I'd like to take a look at the what we're facing in a completely new conceptualization of the end of the world.

We no longer occupy ourselves with the space outside our screens, TV, phones, and computers. Our wasteland is paved, out poisonous gases are the heavily monitored and circulated fresh air. We have at least two or three layers separating us at all times from the world that was - screens, earphones, phones, music, emails, text, cubicles, elevators, cars, and other living body bags**. The nutrients we get come from laboratories, our exercise comes from stationary machines, and our thoughts come from fictional characters, who we take for a slightly exaggerated but mostly real reflection of what normal people are. We've created a self-existing existence so we don't have to do shit.

The world has already ended, and we're just waiting out the days in our various online, wired, hooked in purgatories. Days stretch on for miles, and subcultures not possible before have now taken over lingo, habits, and insecurities. Everything's awash with speed, super-saturated images, and constant noise. Innocence is a joke, if not a fetish or a myth. Awkwardness has become mainstream so that we can no longer distinguish discomfort from being cool. We hurtle through space while remaining planted at a computer for 95% of the day waiting to hit a wall somewhere, but all we find is more slippery mediums to slide faster through. Anything that can be built or crafted doesn't merit approval from us until it hits 1 million views, at the minimum. Death doesn't really exist, but then again neither does life.

And the scariest part of the present post apocalyptic world? It is how strange this world would be if everyone didn't always act so damn unfazed by it all.

*This number is a completely arbitrary number

**A little over the top? Perhaps.

Of Nemeses and Archenemies

Some of you may have already heard me yabbering about this topic, but I think it warrants a post and some responses. I've been reading the book Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas on loan from Edward (tanks Eddy!), and I definitely recommend it to any and all of you. In the second half of the book - Things That Might Be True, he goes into his more exploratory essays about concepts and societal situations (leaving the first half - Things That Are True, which is composed of interviews with celebrities and musicians as well as other pretty cool crap), and one of them has to do with nemeses and archenemies.

It's kind of an interesting concept he brings up in that all anyone really needs for a compelling and successful life, he says, is a nemesis and an archrival. The differences between these two can often be hard to really see clearly, but one of the best defining statments he gave was, "you measure yourself against your nemesis, and you seek to destroy your archenemy." He also provides some guidelines that help:

"Recognizing your Nemesis:
- You kind of like your nemesis, despite the fact that you despise him
- You will always have drinks with your nemesis.
- You would attend the funeral of your nemesis and-privately-you might shed a tear over his or her passing
- At some point in the past, this person was (arguably) your best friend.
- You and this person once competed for the same woman (or man), and you both failed.
- You have punched this person in the face.
- If invited, you would go to this person's wedding and give them a spice rack, but you would secretly hope that their marriage ends in a bitter, public divorce.
- People who barely know the two of you assume you are close friends; people who know both of you intimately suspect you profoundly hate each other.
- If your archenemy tried to kill you, this person would attempt to stop him."

"Recognizing your Archenemy
- You would never choose to have a cocktail with your archenemy, unless you were attempting to spike the gin with arsenic.
- If you were to perish, your archenemy would dance on your grave, and then he'd burn down your house and molest your children.
- You hate your archenemy so much that you keep your hatred secret, because you do not want your archenemy to hate the satisfaction of being hated.
- Every time you talk to htis person, you lie.
- If you meet someone who has the same first name as this person, you immediately like them less.
- This person has done at least two (2) things that would be classified as "unforgivable".
- The satisfaction you feel from your own success pales in comparison to the despair you feel from this person's triumphs, even if those triumphs are completely unrelated to your life.
- If this person slept with your girlfriend, she would never be attractive to you again.
- Even if this person's girlfriend was a hateful bitch, you would sleep with her out of spite."

Now, I thought it would be interesting if people would pipe in and try to suggest some duos that are nemeses and some that are archenemies. One of the interesting aspects of this dynamic, as I've discussed with others, is should these relationships be reciprocated, as in if you are my nemesis then I am yours? Or is it possible for these relationships to be more one-sided where you could be my nemesis but Weird Al Yankovic is yours?

Klosterman gives some more interesting examples of who he sees as nemeses and archenemies:

Magic Johnson was Larry Bird's nemesis but Isiah Thomas was his archenemy - whenever Magic and Larry played it was an instant classic in match-ups, a beautiful battle of skill, talent, and hard work, but when Larry went against Isiah, it was a "train wreck", as in everything fell apart and was hard to watch. From this I think it should be noted that nemeses, when put against each other, often create something greater than themselves, while archenemies clashing usually result in destruction and bringing each other down to very basics of humanity.

Joker was Batman's nemesis but Superman was his archenemy - this may not be the best example, especially depending on interpretations of the concepts and which versions of these characters you refer to, but I think the idea of it is that Joker and Batman were often on the same level of head to head battling, each basically challenging they other to push them to the top of their game in order to prevail. With Superman (and again I don't know a whole lot about the relationship here), I think he's saying that Batman basically hated Superman because Superman rendered Batman "entirely mortal and generaly nonessential". I could also see him hate Superman because Superman was eternally clean cut and much more willing to side with the cops or government it seemed, while Batman pursued independence from such forces (at least later on in the Frank Miller and Nolan versions, where he might have an inside man - Gordon, but stay out of it for the most part).

Vince Neil of Motley Crue was Axl Rose of Guns n' Roses's nemesis, but Kurt Cobain was Axl's archenemy - I don't know a whole lot about these guys, but it sounds about right.

My own suggestions:

Michael Jordan was his own nemesis, and the Detroit Pistons were his archenemy - possibly cheap for taking the Pistons again, but I honestly didn't know much about Bird and the Pistons. Most of my knowledge about that team of the early 90's was that they would kick the shit out of Jordan, literally, fouling him so hard that he would just get furious while not allowing him to be the immortal basketball player he was. And he basically measured himself against himself, which proved to motivate him like crazy.

South Park are the Simpson's nemesis but Family Guy is their archenemy - South Park provides an experienced competitor that is honestly of a contrasting style, is more violent and crude, but still very intelligent in its execution. Family Guy has been accused of stealing all kinds of jokes from the Simpsons and seems to breed an even more sarcastic of an audience than the Simpsons or South Park ever did, which makes them even more snarky, irreverant, and basically an entity that is like an ungrateful successor who doesn't even seem to deserve that sort of title. Don't get me wrong, Family Guy is a hilarious show, but I could see how the Simpsons would want to destroy it and rather measure themselves against South Park. Feel free to debate.

The Beatles were nemeses with the Rolling Stones, but they were the archenemy of the Beach Boys. - I'm basically taking this from what I've heard from Edward (hopefully I interpreted this right, but he could tell you better than me).

Winter is Summer's nemesis, but Fall is Summer's archenemy - a little abstract I'll grant you, but it is Fall that ends Summer every year, while Summer and Winter compete more head to head in various types of activities (snowboarding vs. surfing, Olympics vs. Olympics, cold vs. hot - I mean come on!).

All right, let me know some of your own ideas for pairings of any kind, maybe even some of your own nemeses and archenemies.

Reply to "The Decline of Religion in the West?"

This is a huge, huge topic, and it has really been the basis for a lot of what we've kept bringing up on this blog, often reflected through the creation and consumption of various forms of art. I will continue on with my sort of gritted-teeth, pained hopefulness that all of the corroded ways of society and technology will eventually overtake our human limits to a fault of their own (as I believe it has already started to), which is when we will physically be forced to rediscover what reaches something deeper for us and returns us to what makes us human.

That can't make sense in anyone's head but mine I realize, so I'll try to explain it. Religion in the West has been taking blow after blow from science and technology (with the exception of jumbo-tron Jesuses coming to a Super Church near you) through the centuries, with this most recent century taking it to a whole new level. While I basically take the side of dastardly, nitpicking, and insatiable science in battles against religion over topics like evolution and the afterlife, I recognize, as Edward mentions above, the ultimate gifts and spiritual benefits that organized religion offers a society beyond the distracting zealots, perversion, and battles with Science.

Although my anti-religion phases of life probably never reached the depths of some angsty, authority-hating teens growing up, I did basically hold in contempt anything having to do with the institution of religion, meaning the churches, the meetings, and the mass-oriented nature of religion for quite some time. And I still am severely creeped out by a large portion of what that consists of, but at least now, I feel like I've also come to appreciate the subtler, more powerful benefits of religion, which in the end, have very little to do with the specific words being said, the structure the meeting is held in, or the various controversies that may be related to the institution at hand. These benefits of course, I attribute to the only truly important part of religion in my mind, faith. Faith within an individual is what I took from my experience with religion as a kid. It’s what I found in my friends, in my family, and anything worth loving in life. It just has taken me a while to realize and admit to the power it can have (for good) when applied to a crowd larger than one person.

As is the case with any big crowd situation, there is fear and discomfort for those on the outside. Anyone entering such a group must shed the personal apprehension and nagging voices inside one’s head in order to actually embrace and feel the power at hand. In other words, it's defined nicely by the painfully overused phrase at various camps, “leave your cool at the door.” Once people cross that line and let go of their inhibitions, much can appreciated and much can be achieved. Of course this lends itself to another too-many-times-repeated and recently exhausted-by-the-Spiderman-franchise phrase, “with great power comes great responsibility”. The truth of the matter is, just as an individual yearns for that spiritual foundation to help provide guidance in life, the group needs a spiritual foundation to remind the individuals that support is out there, that humanity is out there.

I think that society is hurting right now, and has been for some time. Basically, since America’s been able to progress at the rate it has since WWII, there has been more free time, more over-protection, more laziness, and annoying generations popping up (ourselves included FO SHO). As much as I wanted to think that authority figures were just lame and too much a representation of “the Man” while growing up, I’ve realized, with the great help of our younger brother/sister generation, that the 90s bred some of the biggest sarcastic and spoiled jackasses that I’ve seen (again, myself not so innocent here). The problem I see now, though, is not so much the secularization and disappearance of our grandma’s religion, but the failure of the spiritual base to keep up. It’s painful to think of the majority of the our generation’s voices being the idiots that post senseless rants about Justin Bieber on Youtube, but I certainly don’t want us to turn into a stuffy tight-ass who nitpicks every little thing out of order with the great history and culture of human history. Money and technology have overridden our senses, destroyed our shock-value, and created hyper- and increasingly soulless-human beings, all wrapped up in the attitude of being too cool to care, too cool to make a living.

The question is, how do we move forward? If people are increasingly secular because we simply don’t care to believe the tall tales of religion or want to listen to a preacher, how do we scrap the Adam and Eve but keep the golden rule? How do we lose the guilt and damnation but keep the community? Like one of my more favorite theories of the universe’s course of expanding and condensing cyclically forever, I feel like we’re bound to go the same way. Our technology works faster than our brains can effectively use it, so eventually we’ll start caring more about how smart we are in what we do with it, rather than how smart it is when we use it simply to waste time. I believe (and hope to all the Gods out there that I’m right) that we will return to something more genuine, but we will figure out a way to do it without going back to the 1950s when even the milk and cookies were racist. We have to win back the minds and hearts of our generation with our abilities as artists, philanthropists, scientists and spiritual leaders alike, not blind marketers of pulpy, unoriginal, hi-tech mush and bullshit.

I think at a certain point the internet’s universality will work against itself and people will end up counting on what’s physically around them to get them through the day (gchat be damned! bwahahaha). To use music for an example, because so much more is available now from all over the world, it can become overwhelming very quickly. Consequently, you might end up caring more about bands that you can physically see and experience, just as you might with your friends you experience on a daily basis, despite the fact that you could theoretically spend the whole day skypeing with friends continents away (even that would be hard though because of the time difference). Hopefully, all this will come full circle and we will find a way to return to something sincere, something spiritual, while progressing forward into something new and of our own. Until then, I’ll just have to keep scratching at the (don’t say it, don’t say the title!) demons in my britches.

TP into the future

I know this is religious month- but I'm going to segway because this is a question that needs to be addressed- -plus Edward is getting on my case to contribute to the blog. Here it goes:

Think about it. We have weapons that can kill hundreds of thousands maybe even millions of people. We have successfully put men on something that is 238,857 miles away floating in space. We can shoot satellites moving at a ridiculous speed right out of the sky. We can grow a new liver from a piece of an old one... you get the point. So why are we still wiping our asses with paper?!?

Paper? Seriously paper? I'm sure most of you can think of more compelling stuff than what is above to signify human achievement and that is exactly my point. We have all this technology and yet we are stuck wiping with a refined bit of tree. Shouldn't there be some sort of robot that gently sucks shit out and then sprays some sort of summer wheat field scent? At the very least I am saying there is no reason to be using this primitive form of cleaning anymore.

Dont even make the argument of a bidet. Water is not the answer and it most certainly is not progress. And progress should not be stifled as a result of the 'Well if it ain't broke, don't fix it' argument.

Make a better way. Do it.

Help Self vs. Self Help

I've always been a little skeptical of "Self Help" books and media. I feel a part of me becomes too proud to ever think about using such books that make me recite things to myself, make an effort to smile more whether I want to or not, or come up with impossible thoughts to stretch my mind, all because a book told me to. In a way, it seems very far from self help, because you're getting help from this author or this voice who is making a living out of empowering people (don't get me wrong, people need plenty of empowering, and if it works all the more power to them and the author). But I guess that's the secret to it, enlisting million dollar-level, focus group-tested, research-based help and disguising it as innocent words that you found in a book. And when you read them, they become your own words so that it's you that's helping you.

The other part of me knows I'm being stubborn and would probably buy into some of the crap they tell you to do, and have it work by way of some kind of "Michael's Secret Stuff" effect as in Space Jam, when it's just water the whole time. But I never really get to that point because I sort grimace whenever I see them in stores. I think it's not as much that I feel too proud to take help from a book, but that I can't get over taking help from something so impersonal as a book that is directly trying to help me (I'd rather get help from books trying to take me somewhere completely unrelated to my present life), especially when I know other people are getting help from the exact same book. I want to preserve that selfish notion that I'm so unlike others that some generic book isn't going to get me like I was just another pawn struggling over the same dilemmas and annoyances of life as everyone else (and I bet a mass group of people want to feel that way too).

This is why I inevitably will trust people who know me to help me, because they know me as someone discernable from the sea of billions, with specific traits to myself. I don't think that is too absurd, although I know it could be (like everything) followed to a fault, where you'd never consider the opinion or words of an outsider viewer. It's also hard to hate on the self-help books for me in a way, just because I'm drawn to that tone so much, the tone of speaking to strangers as if they were familiar. But in the end, I do think self help has to come more from the self and being open to the forces at hand, including not just the positive ones of friends or family, but the negative ones as well, of shitty situations that confront and challenge someone to figure out how to get themselves in a better situation. You have to have your own brain to actually help yourself. Like right now, in deciding whether I'm full of shit (as I often wonder when I write).

Wishing to be where you don't want to be

Reading about the despair that is the existence of an office working so-called productive member of society, I just thought I'd pitch in about the feelings as one looks in, as an unemployed piece of shit with no real goals in life, on this sort of life while frantically hoping to some day finally make it there. To a place where you can bitch about the bleakness of being a paper pushing office worker while being extremely aware that this will provide you with neither happiness nor a sense of fulfillment.

It's a fucked up world we live in, when everyone bends over backwards to make it somewhere they don't want to go. When I think about how to define my life, and in many ways the lives of those around me, the best I can come up with is a high achieving underachiever. There's a rush to get somewhere, even though I definitely don't know where that is and there are classes and a ton of extra-curriculars along the way that are supposed to be useful to you somewhere down the line, they won't tell you when but somewhere , maybe you'll remember something you learned that might help you. You graduate from high school, why? because you want to go to college my boy, they say. So you go and get a degree, why? because no one will hire you if you don't have a degree. And don't take too long to graduate either, don't waste your time son... so you rushed through 18 years of schooling to become a 22 year old man child, who still depends on his parents for sustenance and who has no idea what he wants to do in life, and who can't even find a job doing something he doesn't want to do, so i guess my question is: What was the rush?