Pet Rock
2006-08-12 3:59 a.m.
It�s strange to look at a big fat check from a client and feel a sense of history. It�s not the money, specifically, though it has afforded this bottle and this evening of time from my desk and a good touch of stress relief. But its not like I just hit my number on a roulette table. I earned this motha fucker.More importantly it sheds light upon grasping a goal that seemed silly, and to many continues as such.
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The world tends to tell you that educating yourself and living upon your own terms is ridiculous. It�s an indirect statement - usually drooled upon your lap through an acquaintance in the hopes of �saving� you through their capitalist religion. Unfortunately though, the true capitalists actually own these people. They own their debts, they own their paychecks, they own their property, they own their lives.
It twists your nipple every time you explain things to some shithead in a tie who knows a third of what you do and earns 3 times as much. And even if that fucker knows more than you, nothing earns a human being the right to condescend to another; especially not your god damned paycheck. It grinds your teeth every time that same idiot takes a half day to �meet with clients� as you slave away on the phone or in excel or otherwise �flip burgers� for some other white collar franchise.
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But yes� the path exists. Do what everyone does and you�ll be content�
Just go to these schools and take these shit jobs and in no time you�ll be rich and comfortable. Read Sun Tzu and Who Stole the Cheese and apply war tactics and kid stories to business and you�ll be rich beyond your wildest dreams.
Climb the ladder, slicked with overpriced steak-filled refuse from the idiots who got their jobs through mummy and daddy. What they tend to leave out is that they are in no position to tell you how to be happy as their own depression affords them a bathroom cabinet full of orange plastic bottles and a dysfunctional family to use as a target of their drug induced apathy.
Fuck them. These are the same statistics who have mid-life crises and cheat on their spouses and have no means of true confidence. These are the morons who strive to look like the products of photoshopped magazine photos and actually believe in getting-rich-quick and losing 20 lbs in 2 weeks and that a bigger cock and bigger tits will solve all their problems.
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Our culture, sometimes referred to as �pop culture�, is based on the greatest common denominator. These days our media is filled with shit that aims Not to offend or harm anyone. The more people you offend, the less money you make, and what�s a culture without income?!?!?
Our music is tepid, our newspapers and magazines are bland, our movies leave cookie crumbs in the film pans. The worst part is that people actually buy into this shit. People above the target market (ages 12 � 16) actually like this bullshit. They play it on the way home from work. They watch it when they get home. They steal it from their kids and tell their friends about it.
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There�ve been so many instances where things got weird and strangely comfortable. The hardest part about a bad situation isn�t necessarily the situation itself but the odd sense of infallibility. The empowerment created by one�s lack of mortality and deficient sense of consequence.
And there�s the other end� when the universe goaded me to forget my past and grab hold to the �future�. Suits and the Hamptons. Skinny Blondes with their silly fa�ade of stupidity. Pillars of expensive booze and mountains of coke.
Or worse yet, the in-between. The plain life. The suburbs with a city area code. Overpriced condos in downtown high rise buildings. �Nice� furniture. Indie Pop Music. A bookshelf that acts as a plaque of medals to show how cultured you are. Dinner with friends who you would never consider friends when the word friend actually meant something. Occasionally reminiscing upon the days when you could actually prove the existence of your soul through writing or drawing or singing or dancing or living a life that didn�t involve muted tones.
Many of us are fortunate enough not to have to come to an actual deciding point on such things. They happen gradually. We lose our past and welcome our future regardless of the detriment. Far too involved with how well things are going to realize how bad things have become.
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I was explaining to NE today that I felt like I was retarded through a good portion of my life. I just didn�t get it. So many things went over my head, I honestly felt completely stupid.
What kind of things� well, things like the pet rock. Admittedly, the pet rock was before my time, but when I was a kid I remember people showing them to me. I had never misunderstood something so fully. I was convinced that the rock did something. It had to. It had to have a function. Why in the hell would people buy a rock!?!? I must be the dumbest kid on the planet for not understanding something that seemed so simple.
I honestly felt there was something missing in my brain for something that seemed so obvious to make absolutely no sense to me. Fortunately and not, I was brought up to question everything and never to follow. A likely byproduct of being a child to an independent immigrant woman (and both grandmothers). So I was just left to feel retarded.
And I believed this. As a matter of fact, now that I think of it, that openness still resides in my day-to-day conversation. There are so many instances where I will state something and immediately disclaim it as my own view or opinion. I know � sounds like lack of confidence, etc. Fuck it. I�ve no issues with confidence; I just want to be sure people don�t agree with me without thinking about the subject on their own.
It keeps me open to learning. I get to see the exact opposite when I hang with my cousin EF. He makes his decisions quickly and early. I love him like an older brother, but I think he�s a blowhard. Not unintelligent � as �unintelligent� has noting to do with the man, just a closed-off conservative prick � which is all the more reason to love the bastard.
So, yeah. I�ve always felt stupid. Which confused me when people started listening to me as if I had something intelligent to say or when people started taking my advice or when people actually came to me for help. I used to look at people like �Why would you come to me? I didn�t even get the whole pet rock thing.�
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And now I�m mostly all games. Not with everyone, just with those who provoke me. I�m assertive when people don�t want me to be. I�m iffy when people want definition. I�m mocking when people want condolence. I hang loose when people want austerity. More than anything, I offend at the very worst times.
My disinterest in interpersonal games becomes my natural being. I don�t try to conflict with �what you want�, I just come off that way. It�s become my natural response. I�m not going to play �who�s in control� or �who�s more manly� or �who gets the last say�. Fuck all that bullshit.
And once this all started, I began to see something important. A natural fragility. Once I began to appreciate truth is when I began to understand lying. I finally �got� the pet rock. It wasn�t even the cynical joke that was explained to me (which I never accepted � hence my confusion). It was a joke unto its owner. It was humility.
You want to see the pain of truth it in its truest form?
Watch a straight man eat a banana. There�s a voice in his head that says he might look gay. My favorite instances are the types who glance around and then break off pieces of the banana to eat.
Watch a well dressed woman walk through a crowd of men. If you watch close enough, you can see her bottom lip quiver. Even worse is her reaction if nobody pays her attention.
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The truth is that people bought the pet rock because other people bought the pet rock. That insecurity is what makes us listen to the majority. It�s what creates our cynicism and eventually our sense of belonging and eventually status. It�s what makes that new movie about reptiles and planes so popular. A $10 ticket to being cynical about Hollywood movies. A movie specifically made to be critiqued and laughed at.
It�s what tells us what books to read and what channels to watch and what clubs to go to, even if we can�t stand the authors, actors and music. It�s what defines pop culture. It�s what makes muted tones the perfect ambience for a spacious loft that was once a crack house a decade ago.