Eugenics Begins With You!

A good, ol'fashioned rant:

I just heard something strange on the radio.

I was driving home from work - NPR blabbing on my radio - when one of the Day-to-Day ladies started replaying a three-year old story she did on the paparazzi.  I know - must be a slow day at NPR.

She starts talking about how paparazzi are some of the highest paid photographers in the world (which made me sad), and while they may be universally reviled (by the same scum that go out and purchase magazines and obsesses over their pictures, thus propagating their poison) they still never really want for work.  Apparently in the last few years they've been getting more and more pushy - violent even.  And then they played the clip that's got me a little worked up.

Apparently, some paprazzo smashed his car into Lindsay Lohan's $180,000 - and here's where I stopped listening.  For a moment anyway.  My ears heard the first part of that story... collected the information... Lindsay Lohan - unremarkable busty redhead / smashed into - so this is an object / $180k - so, naturally, I thought they were talking about a house.  Something deserving of such a high price tag.  Maybe I'm naive... but I never thought for a second that they were talking about her car.

Yeah - 180k for a car.

What the hell is wrong with this world?  What the fuck can a 180k car do that a 30k car cant?  What's the attraction?  It's a fucking car.  People... you need to realize this.  It's. A. Fucking. Car.  That's it.  A car.  A. Car.  Car.  Not a house.  Not a plane.  Not a work of priceless art.  Not an antique loom.  Not a solid gold puppydog.  It's a mother fucking car.

Why the hell would anyone want to spend 180k on a fucking car?!  What can it possibly do?  Does it fly?  Does it?  Because if it doesn't... it isn't worth 180k!

Why am I getting so mad about this?  I'll tell you.  Because there is no justice in the universe.  Because if there were... that paprazzo would have killed her in the crash.  She would have died.  She'd have died in that 180k car, just as a regular person would have died in their 30k car.

Why is that lavish excess something that we're supposed to want in this culture?  I simply don't understand it.

Do you know what I'd do if I had 180k to piss away on a car?  I'd get creative with it.  I would build rooftop gardens in inner-city high rises - or I'd build a giant puppy farm and open it up for kids. I'd shrink-wrap a skyscraper.  I'd buy an old movie theater near a film school and show really great old films... I'd open the screens up to students to show their work.  I'd build an art gallery.  I'd start a creative writing program for high school kids.  I'd finance a local theater group, and hire David Ogden Steirs to come and direct the plays - that bitch will do anything for money.

(Not really, I just like the idea of making fun of David Ogden Steirs... which is basically like getting mad at moss for growing on a rock)

Why on earth would anyone want a car that expensive?  It just doesn't make sense to me.  It doesn't compute.

I think we should have Lindsay Lohan killed.  Her and every other shallow, hollow, frozen, broken, soul-dead uberconsumer who overvalues their own self-worth so dramatically that they spend more money on a single purchase that most people will ever see in a life time.  I think we should commission a 180k dagger made out of platinum and diamonds... and then ram it into her fucking stomach and leave her bleeding in the street.

What is that car but a 180k, giggling admission of vanity?  

I hate that I live in a world where behavior like hers is acceptable.  Where I'm the kook for finding it strange.

Admittedly, the dagger part is a little nutty, but I don't really mean it.  That's just hyperbole.

But still... It wouldn't break my heart if she died.  Really.

I'm gonna go read a book and have a cigarette.

Go fuck yourself.

Kiss My Pink Ass

It's been a while.  Let's get to it, shall we?

Okay... so I'm watching my friend Jamie's Pomeranian.  He's like a furry, orange worm who seems to do nothing more than lick things and writhe.  She named him Marcel, because he ate all of her Proust.  Greatest. Name. Ever.

I'm sitting at my computer, and have been staring at my essays for a few hours.  Writing a sentence.  Erasing it.  Writing it again.  Erasing it.  Writing two sentences.  Erasing the whole paragraph.  Looking longingly at the window.  Writing a sentence with the word "defenestration" in it.  I hate writing today.  Right now I want to never write again.  I want to just drop the whole writing thing and go be a cop or something. 

I'd be a terrible cop, of course... mainly because I'm way too awkward to ever give someone a ticket.  That and the fact that I'm mildly oppositionally defiant, and I have a preternatural dislike for authority figures.  Even when they're nice.  Or doing their job well.  I'm automatically resentful of the fact that they get to tell me what to do.  I can't be that guy.  I'm too annoying to be that guy.  I'm basically a self-absorbed, neurotic spaz... which pretty much limits my employment opportunities to "essayist" or "Tyra Banks."

God she's just awful.

I just watched a commercial for toilet paper where two pink, cartoon bears (father and son) were playing football.  The kid bends down to hike the ball, exposing his balloonish, pink backside to his father who upon peering down at it, recoils with a resounding, "Yikes!"  We're then treated to a POV shot from the daddy bear's perspective... inspecting his son's furry, cartoon ass, which is now bedewed with a confetti of what I'm choosing to infer are toilet paper remnants.  Now... we could look at this from a psychological/psychosexual angle - analyze the crap out of it (har har) and all feel really dirty and strange - wonder why the hell the dad was up to his retinas in that kids business.  And why he felt it was appropriate to start criticizing him immediately without first directing the conversation away from the innocent game of catch they were having to the virtues of good ass-care.  Or, to put it another way... poppa bear needs to butter the bun a bit.

I stole that from Sean - greatest oneliner I've ever heard.  "Oh, you've got to butter the bun..."  I will never be funnier than that man.

We could also consider the value of this kind of banality in advertising when it comes to hocking the more blush-inducing necessities of life.  Do ad. companies do this intentionally?  Play dumb because we're all embarrassed about the subject?  I guess that makes sense... imagine if they made condom, toilet paper or hemorrhoid/ladyproblem cream commercials the same way they advertise for luxury cars or perfumes.  Really intense and vivid... kindof abstract.  Confusing.

What about the fact that these ad people consciously chose to make bears the spokescreatures for their product?  I've seen these bears before.  They've got to be at least a little famous if I've heard of them - I live in a cave on Mars.  This leads me to my next big question - do you think they picked bears because of the expression, "Does a bear shit in the woods?"  If not, then... man, that's a weird coincidence.  If so... then what's the difference between the allusion to the word "shit" in the commercial, and the actual word "shit"?  This is a big thing for me - why is it okay to make allusions to something, but it's crude, impolite or improper to just say it?  FCC rules are insane when it comes to "offensive" material on the airwaves... and yet we've got cartwheeling bears waving their apple-shaped asses at the screen, giggling coyly at us, and blushing.  "Someone's got a linty bottom!"  It's all so apple pie.  So whitebread (yes, I resent that my last name is Italian for "boring").  But still... smoldering at the core of this commercial is one of George Carlin's seven words. 

Who sets up these rules?  Who's to say what's offensive?  Personally, I find the word shit to be far less offensive than a toilet paper company treating me like I'm a blushing idiot.  Or worse... someone who's so prissy and sensitive that I actually need a cartoon to talk to me about my linty ass.  I'm actually mad about this now.  I'm writing this stream'o'conscious... and I'm actually experiencing anger.  I think I might have to get rid of my television.

I can't bring myself to write anything real right now.  I've got a blizzard outside my window (looks like the end of days - I love it), and a little furry fireball licking my ankle (when he's not rooting around under my bed like a piglet).  I'm pissed about the toilet paper commercial... which basically means that it's referred annoyance at my inability to write anything of any value tonight.  Or ever, really. 

I think I'll just go round up all of the toilet paper in my apartment and set it on fire.  And then, as a further act of self-satisfying protest, I'll go buy a tv guide and use that in its place.