She won’t ever write you a song.
For those of you in the Kansas City/Lawrence area, you’re doing yourself a horrendous disservice if you’ve never seen NatureVS live.
Bar fucking none, the best band I’ve seen at the news room* in years.
Eat it.
*Yes I know that’s like saying ‘best band I’ve ever seen in my living room’, but take my word on this one.
Don’t know what to call it
Okay, so the other day I was going to do some internet browsing. Maybe I was planning to update my facebook status. Maybe I was going to look for shoes or read erotic fiction. Perhaps I was even going to do some research. It really isn’t important what I was planning to do, because I didn’t end up doing it. My Yahoo! homepage opened up, and there it was: Miss Universe Bodypainting Controversy. Being an occasional canvas for body-painters myself, I decided to see what the hell was up. Inside was a story about how the Miss Universe contestants (or at least some of them) took part this year in promotional advertising in which they were wearing “only body paint.” Then I looked at pictures of the said contestants in bikinis with zebra stripes painted on their arms and was slightly disappointed by the false advertising in the article. Then I started reading comments and hating people.
The comments ranged from “you go girls!” to rants about politics to portents of the apocalypse, with a few obligatory Bible verses thrown in. Overall though, I was disgusted by a few specific “camps” of commenters.
The First Camp, I’ll call them the “you poor thing” people, somehow assumed that adult women who get paid to appear in beauty pageants are somehow unwitting victims in a gigantic corporate (or maybe gay, or possibly satanic) plot to rid the world of its virtues by exploiting beautiful women in bikinis. I hate these people, mostly because the large majority of these commenters were female (or at least claimed to be). These unknown persons, claiming to be women, somehow find it beyond their comprehension that adult women can be anything except victims. That adults, can, in fact, choose to wear bikinis and body paint in photographs. And that such adult women don’t feel ashamed or exploited, and were not in fact coerced into doing so by being threatened in any way. I cannot understand these commenters. Are you saying, as a woman, that you are incapable of choosing your own wardrobe on a daily basis, or that somehow by choosing to wear a specific outfit you are being exploited by unknown (and possibly demonic) forces? Are you saying that you personally couldn’t make even the simplest of daily choices, and therefore no other woman could possibly do so?
The Next Camp of commenters believe that somehow 82 (I think) women from various countries, a bikini manufacturer, a photographer, and a guy who does body painting are conspiring toward the downfall of all things good in the world. Seriously, I read comments like “if we allow public nudity (I’d like to add at this point that being in a bikini on a billboard isn’t public nudity), then the streets will fill with foul-mouthed degenerates and people will just be screwing in public all the time.” Okay. First of all, I sincerely doubt one ad campaign for a pageant nobody ever watches has that much power over social consciousness. But besides that, there are plenty of places where public nudity is allowed. I’ve been to a couple of them and found them overwhelmingly pleasant. There were no more foul-mouthed degenerates in the streets in these places than can be found outside Yankee Stadium (or OU Stadium for that matter) on a weekly basis. As for that ’screwing in the streets’ idea… well, for starters, it’d be impractical. Also, these people seem to think that the only things keeping us from fucking constantly are clothes. When is the last time you, dear reader, wanted to fuck someone and just COULDN’T because of their clothes? never, right… I mean, people take their damned clothes off. Again, having been to places where public nudity is accepted, I’ve never really encountered a vast orgy in a public street (though it’d be kinda cool if I did). Generally, in places where nudity is accepted it is also largely ignored. Kind of like women in the United States wearing pants. Or T-shirts. You don’t really stop and stare at someone for daring to wear jeans any more than the people of France stop and stare at someone for daring not to.
The Third Camp of people were the “representatives” or “role models” camp. These were again, largely people who claimed to be women. These people, first and foremost made the argument that “Miss USA doesn’t represent me”. What the fuck?? They’re models. They’re beauty pageant contestants. They are fucking not your elected officials. It isn’t their duty to represent you. You don’t fucking complain if your state increases taxes or lowers education standards or places unnecessary and unfair sanctions on certain members of society, but you complain if a beautiful woman doesn’t somehow “represent’ you. Living in Oklahoma, I for one am glad that beauty pageants aren’t representative. We serve fried fucking butter sticks at the State Fair here. Over two-thirds of people in this state are Obese. I wouldn’t really want to see the swimsuit portion of that particular shit-show. Another complaint was that by seeming to be confident in their bikinis these women aren’t positive role models for girls. Again, they are paid to be good-looking. Your precious ray of sunshine (daughter) has a better chance of being hit by a fucking bus than being paid to look good. Not because your hypothetical daughter is ugly, but because that’s how the world works. Not that many people have the genetic disposition, the skill (because having good pictures taken is a skill) set, and the drive to actually succeed in what is a very selective market. Maybe you should be spending time, dear commenters, teaching your daughters about setting realistic goals. Again, Miss Universe isn’t paid to be some kind of gold-standard paragon of virtue to which all little girls aspire. She’s paid (and not much) to look good in a fucking bikini and not sound like a complete moron when stringing sentences together. Mostly the bikini part.
I really don’t understand this. We never say that professional basketball players are being exploited for their height when they sign million-dollar endorsement deals, but women who choose to get paid for being pretty are somehow being exploited for their looks. Nobody, for that matter, ever complained about “poor Marky-Mark being forced to appear in Calvin Klein ads” because somehow, somewhere, we all understood that he chose to do so.
Recovery.
I’ve just spent a few hours rereading a lot of the posts on this blog, and I’m beginning to realize exactly how right I’ve been and I’m going to take a bit of my own advice.
I generally expound greatly on shrugging off shit like a wet blanket, but until recently I didn’t realize exactly how heavy that blanket can be. I’ve also gone to great lengths to stress that one cannot please all people all of the time even with an extremely narrow definition of “people”… and yet I’ve spent the bulk of the last nine months huddling cautiously under my sad-sack blanket while attempting to live up to the (likely imagined) expectations of everyone in my life, while almost entirely ignoring my own. This has been an unproductive and exhausting waste of time and I don’t think I’m going to do it anymore.
Now about that blanket…
When it’s first thrown over your shoulders, the shock can almost kill you. It’s cold, it’s staggeringly heavy, and generally you don’t see it coming. Either a relationship comes to an end, you find out someone’s lying to you, or you just suddenly come to the grim and menacing realization that reality as you saw it a few minutes ago no longer applies. This places a burden on your previously less burdened psyche and throws your perception all out of whack. This produces a reeling that’s more difficult to get rid of than a bad case of the drunk-spins in a ceiling fan showroom. Your wounded sense of self is coloring everything you see with a fresh coat of negativity, and through the natural protective ratio of being bitten to being shy, you’re left in a hopeless state of mind producing a feedback loop of shit that can turn even the lightest wet blanket into a seemingly immovable object. This is quite clearly not the natural state that any living creature should be in, but we’re often not equipped with the tools necessary to recognize it’s going on, thoughwe are equipped with the tools to fix it.
Choice.
Will is the biggest burden any living thing can have, but it’s also our most valuable tool, and the very thing which allows us to justify our existence. To apply ones will to a situation is the only way one can have any say in it the way that situation ends, and if you’re spiraling into an endless void of sadness and disappointment it’s likely due to allowing that will to deteriorate until you feel powerless to change the situation you’re in, but good news… unless there’s a gun to your head it almost never is.
So I’m entering into a new and glorious phase of choice, and will impose what ever will I can muster onto every situation my limited resources will allow, until this blanket is… once and for all… off of my shoulders.
It’s good to be back.
Antidote
No matter what you do, I am always right behind you.
In the midst of your giant emotional displays, I watch the back of your head as it swirls and dances in rhythm with your wildly gesticulating hands. As your eyes expand as if to say “am I right?” the dead calm of my face can be seen in the shadow you’re casting. When literally every lens in your world is pointed directly at you, I will be the backdrop your chaos chooses to most vividly depict it’s entitlement. I am the gray to your swirling vortex of color. I am the answer to your riddle. I am the rock on which you build the cross to crucify yourself.
When things need get done, you will come to me. When questions need be answered, you will ask them of me, and when problems need solved, it is my bell you will ring. I am the glue that reassembles the worlds you shatter and the hands that assemble the reels on which you’re heard.
Without me and mine, nothing you do has any meaning, and when the chips are down, we are the ones that know how to pick them back up again.
Go into your make-believe world of color and light until you’re too dizzy to stand up again. Maybe this time we won’t pick you up when you face-plant on the floor we tiled for you to walk on.
Choreographed pall bearers.
I’ve started to write this blog about a dozen times in the 2 weeks since I turned 30, but every time I got started I found myself preoccupied by the fact that it sounded false, over hyped, and confusing. I’d get going on some kind of unimportant tangent that went on for multiple paragraphs, or I’d think something wasn’t pointed enough, but by the time I’d sharpened it, it began to feel trite or saccharine. I kept coming back to it because I felt like this is something that’s important and that I’d like the emotional turmoil of aging to be documented for the tiny doughy archeologists from Venus* that will some day uncover whatever we leave behind after we destroy our civilization in an orgy of self replicating nano-murderers.
I guess the reason I’m incapable of making a big deal out of turning 30 is that… it’s frankly not that big of a deal. When I look at my life over the last 10 years, I can certainly say that I’m not where I intended to be, but that I’ve also accomplished all kinds of things that I never anticipated. I’ve established long and meaningful relationships with people who value me, I’ve started an honest to god internet relationship advice column, I’ve even brewed beer and mead. I distinctly remember not being anxious about turning 20, and that decade has brought some of the worst times of my life. I was disappointed, betrayed and forced to weather the corrosive effects of failure so many times that by the time I’d actually reached my 30th birthday I had taken off the sickly green lenses of self loathing that make those experiences so poisonous in favor of the clear unfettered sight that experience presents.
I guess what this process has really taught me more than anything is that making predictions about where your life will take you is folly by nature. If you’re doing what you’re supposed to… if you’re learning from every mistake you make, developing and cultivating your relationships both big and small and if you’re looking to the future for the surprises and joyful moments that it will inevitably bring you, then you should never be capable of disappointing a younger less experienced you. If anything you should be progressively more pleased with who you are becoming, as you chuckle more and more at the foolishness and naiveté of that earlier version of yourself.
You’ve never met a bigger tool than me at 20. I was an over-emotional doormat that took criticism way too personally, I wouldn’t listen to rap, I hated mushrooms and beer, and I’d never gotten far enough outside of my bubble to actually be able to look back at it and realize just how small my world had been up to that point. I wanted to be a rockstar, and a computer programmer, I had awful hair and an truly horrible sense of style. I was at 20 what I would now consider a man-child and to be quite frank I don’t really value the opinions of man-children.
Hopefully I’ll share the same opinion at 40 as I look back at this blog from my million dollar penthouse, but for now I’ll keep living the only way I know how until I either explode or finally invent the murderous cloud of self replicating nano-bots that flense you all into nothing.
*No doubt listening to Valiant Thorr on their iPods, or iPawds, or whatever the hell the Venutian people call their digital music players.