The Two Most Depressing Facts of Suburban Existence
"Long live the mall kids; may they show no mercy when their day comes." --John Dolan
If we mall kids and rootless suburbanite lit-drifters are to have our day in the cultural sun, we're going to have to tap in to some deep sources of pain as fuel for our aesthetic vengeance. I can think of nothing worse than 1) awkward neighborhood gatherings, and 2) the local nightly news.
1) Nothing is more depressing than mixed-age people forced to act interested in each other's lame lawncare lifestyles, eat bad picnic food dripping in mayonnaise and processed sugar, and throw the whole styrofoam mess away in a heaping kitchen trash pail. I call it The Bloat: that feeling of hopeless malaise that accompanies a stomach stuffed with food it can barely assimilate as you heartbreakingly struggle to explain why you chose to dual major in Painting and Philosophy to the guy down the street who blasts Bill O'Reilly while he waxes the pop-up camper. No one is introduced properly, elderly people stare off into the distance while kids yammer back and forth about the latest video games and DVD releases, barely-grown adults chirp thoughtfully on the merits of 401Ks and the new Walmart down the street, and cancer and war lurks just behind every whiff of petrochemical cleaning product and body fragrance.
2)That's nothing, of course, compared to watching your parents pass out every night to the nightly news. Mom with her latest cross-stich project, Dad drooling on his Yankees shirt, and people in a provincial version of "perfect hair" and orange pancake make-up feigning concern as they tick off the latest South Side drug deal killings before segueing with frightening ease into the 5-day forecast and a failed high school tailback's voluminous paeons to the local college football team -- all of it encased in a hard plastic bubble, opaque and dripping in Tesh-inspired muzak, obscuring the fact of a real world existing just beyond the weed-whacked edgings of the middle-income industrial products storage facility, meatspace's answer to the safe, primary-colored filterings of America Online's crypto-fascist omnipresence.
That's our launchpad kids, lets get to work.
posted by Paul S. at
12:31 PM
2 Comments:
These are two really good posts.
Reminds me of how I have to invent daily what it means to be a man living in this world.
And that's why I'm becoming a radical conformist. Fuck it Paul! Let's don suits and invade the places we are REALLY afraid of.
Bringing awareness to a party is kid shit. Let's bring it to corporate america.
Sounds a bit like Jonah in the belly of the whale to me Mike.
Apparently Jonah was swallowed up by a huge Whale as he was trying to flee God's calling to go to Nineveh and preach against the wickedness therein. In other words, Jonah didn't want to go to Nineveh and tell them that how they were living and operating was not in accord with the Way. So he tried to escape speaking out against the 'powers that be.' In his fleeing and departure on a boat, it was God who sent a beast to capsize the boat and swallow Jonah. In the belly of the beast Jonah cried out to God and reconsidered whether or not he ought to go to Nineveh and speak out, or not. In prayer he gained courage and decided it better to 'call a spade a spade' if you will, then run from his calling/purpose.
We each do what we must then, eh? If we refuse our 'calling,' don't we all end up in one or another dark place, consumed by a wrathful deity... until we return to our purpose, our calling, and go where we know we have to; where we must. For some the streets. For others the boardroom.
Genuinely,
David Jon
Apparently those in Nineveh didn't change their ways after Jonah went there (corporate America?). Jonah ws pretty pissed about it and God said it eas alright to be pissed. Jonah wanted God to go in and kick some ass, but God said to Jonah, 'Should I not pity Nineveh... where they cannot tell their right hand from their left... ?'
How can you be wrathful to those who are deluded?
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