A note on some things that are no longer timely

Currently Listening The Trials of Van Occupanther By Midlake Roscoe see related

I have moved – like, permanently, actually moved – now. I am actually living with Bret, as opposed to having a lot of my crap piled up in a room of his place. I am starting classes soon.

Please stop asking me if I am excited about it.

Over the last week and a half of being home I was asked the standard, "So, are you excited about moving/starting school/etc…?" at least eighty-five times, and while much of these I think probably came from family, and I appreciate the intentions behind them, I have tired of the question.

And the truth is no, I am not particularly excited to be leaving a fairly vast network of friends and acquaintances back home, many of whom I have come to know quite well. I like these/you people. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have spent the last five fucking years there.

That’s not to say that I don’t think things will be awesome here in Chicago. Every single class I am taking is something I actually want to take, I love the city, I enjoy hiding babies in-and-among Bret’s things¹, I am ecstatic about not having to work for the first time in years and years². Things are better than they should be and this is before even getting to the fact that I am now living in the hometown of my favorite brewery³.

So believe me, I have no qualms with what is happening, I just find it strange the way people regard significant life changes. People will say things like "Oh it’s gonna be a big change, but I’m excited about it," or "Yeah it’ll be different, but I’m really looking forward to it." These people are liars. The only time a sentence like this is uttered is when one is talking to someone they don’t know all that well, and has been asked generically about some recent alteration in their life that the questioner is just being cordial about.

And so they give a pleasant response that really means "Even though there are all these things and people and elements of my life that are important to me that I wish not to leave behind and must do so anyway, I’m going to pretend that these things are not concerns so as to present the simplest, most positive illusion for all those involved" – and my question is why are we always so damn concerned with hiding the negative aspects to things?

I do not believe I had one single conversation like this with one of my friends while I was back, because with your friends you speak how you feel regardless of how unpleasant, or negative, or socially acceptable it is. But with more or less formal acquaintances, you wouldn’t answer such a question by explaining how you’re losing important parts of your life, and that this is sad regardless of whether or not new experiences are going to come in and fill the void, because this isn’t the general social response being sought in such an encounter, which is to confirm that everyone is HAPPY(!!!). Such elements of small talk serve no other purpose than to act as pleasantries artificially confirming that all is well.

Liars.

If I were to respond to, say, a general acquaintance, or a friend of the family, or some kind of professional collegue⁴ by saying that while I am optimistic about what is coming, I would honestly just as soon stay where I am, doing what I am doing, with the people I am with, I would be thought a pessimist, or a downer. No one actually asks those questions because they’re interested in what you think.

So you lie in response by abbreviating and adjusting what your real thoughts may be, and I have lied the near-one-hundred times I have been asked while back, saying things like "Oh it’s gonna be a big change, but I’m excited about it," or "Yeah it’ll be different, but I’m really looking forward to it," when in reality I would honestly just as soon stay where I am, doing what I am doing, with the people I am with.

Not forever, but for awhile more maybe.

A fair amount of time ago, towards the beginning of summer, I was at my apartment with people drinking a Goose Island, and I saw on the back label down by the UPC their little message that "Goose Island will remain fresh inside the bottle for 110 days." The brewed-on date for the six-pack was May 15, and this was probably the first week of June.

So I decided to keep one bottle from the pack – hidden in the meat drawer of my fridge – until after I moved, and then drink it at the new place. In that three-and-a-half months I have experienced two 21^st birthdays⁵, seen a car drive straight into the front of a house and a drunk person flee from it, hung out a lot more with people I didn’t see much previously, walked an hour-and-a-half home with a hubcap in hand, run out of gas on the interstate⁶, hung out a lot less with some people I used to see almost everyday, gone to a high-school reunion (sort of) that somehow didn’t suck, talked to the happiest cop in Normal, sat outside in a kiddie pool watching Flight of the Conchords on the lawn of the farm⁷, wondered a lot about where people go when they’re not in your life anymore, and been called a Beatle⁸, an event that nearly ruined us and our LaBamba’s on the walk home.

And all of this with friends I will miss greatly, particularly while trying to make new friends who likely will not have the same vigor for late-night insanity to which I have grown accustomed at home. This is probably good, but that doesn’t make it any less sad.

And so now I am sitting here, in the new place, alone, and being used to my apartment in downtown Normal it is very very quiet here, and I am drinking that 109 day old Goose Island.

And they’re liars too.

1. No explanation.

2. Translate: The only jobs I will have will be writing-related.

3. Disaster.

4. I acknowledge that the idea of me having "professional collegues" is ludicrous, but its an example, and I don’t think it changes the point any.

5. Celebrations of which for each lasted approximately one week.

6. More on this later.

7. Our only trip yet where at least one person hasn’t almost died.

8. I think.

Currently Reading Perfume: The Story of a Murderer By Patrick Suskind see related

Something strange and wholly inconsequential dawned on me the other day: While I am not someone who typically watches "reality" television, the only shows I can sometimes manage to stand if they are on, and I am outnumbered and out-voted by those others who are also watching¹, are the ones involving cooking². The reason I find this strange is that the very function of most reality shows now on the air is to act as a sort-of continual, character-driven game show – where the audience is made to get to "know" and care for certain individuals so that when they are publicly and nationally humiliated upon losing whatever type of contest is essential to the show’s theme, said audience can sit around and say things like, "Noooo! I loooved him!" and "That’s bullshit! Christmas Jr. TOtally makes worse dresses than her!³" before forgetting about that contestant forever and becoming equally upset the following week about someone different.

What I don’t get then is that with most of the premises for these shows, the audience gets the opportunity to judge for themselves in one way or another. If a contestant on Survivor is eaten by an alligator whilst balancing jars of his own urine on his head in hand-made pots and traversing a floating-log maze across a marsh towards a rope-ladder made entirely of snakes, he is clearly the loser of the challenge. Likewise one can level immediate criticism on shows with an entirely visual competition, such as if a Project Runway designer were to fashion an outfit that a real human-being might wear, or if a model on that Tyra Banks show has the skin of a grapefruit and looks like a horse when she speaks. These shows give the audience something tangible to comment on and a chance to judge a contestant’s level of success for themselves so that they can scream emphatically about how wrong the judges⁴ are later.

With cooking shows this is not the case. While one watching is able to observe the process and hear the contestant’s thoughts/concerns/intentions concerning a particular dish, it is impossible to know in any way whatsoever if Bertrand’s vegetarian pineapple-based meatloaf is any better than Roberta’s American hamburger sushi. The entire "participant effect" is completely excised from the process.

This opportunity to (sadly⁵) debate the outcome of an episode or a particular contestant’s fate has been so seemingly instrumental to the success of such shows in the past because it allows viewers all across America to do something they so fundamentally enjoy: insinuate themselves into decision-making processes which they are not a part of and which they know nothing about, while doing no research or making any steps to become informed, and then moving on to reruns of Friends or Seinfeld.

But with reality shows based around cooking⁶, one is forced to rely on the judges’ assessments as the only basis of evaluation. The only other components available to a viewer are the (apparent) personalities of the contestants and the completed dishes as they look on camera, but people are liars and Chef Boyardee there could have peed in all the sauces and you’d never know by the look of it unless one of the judges says something, and for all you know he/she could be some kind of culinary pee-freak.

All of this means that the shows in which viewers are presented with some undeniable product to judge for themselves are likely to eventually tell them they are wrong – for the industry has spoken – and the only show in which personal taste and opinion should be of sole importance – and the only type of competition therefore in which the audience should be able to truly decide for themselves – demands that they rely solely on the words of the judges acting as commentators.

What I guess I find interesting here is leave it to television to destroy itself with "reality" shows only for that industry to implode on its own original premise, leave it to "reality" shows to demonstrate the true inability of television to portray any kind of objective reality, and that none of this is groundbreaking because really Fox News did the exact same thing first.

In conclusion 1) America: Please stop buying into and arguing about televised contests over things like high-class designer fashion and who Tyra Banks thinks is pretty enough to pull off their completely ridiculous and likely fake name the best – for these are industries who’s singular purpose is to propogate themselves – and 2) I take comfort in the knowledge that the only reality show I can even approach stomaching is the one where I couldn’t logically participate in such debates anyway, even if I wanted to. I prefer it that way.

1. Read: My sisters.

2. There may only be one of these. Irrelevant.

3. "All she’s good at is draping. That’s the ONLY thing!"

4. Actual industry professionals.

5. ie: "In a pathetic manner," not "being of low morale."

6. I caved and looked it up. There is one – Top Chef.

- Living at home (sort of) recently has had its perks, including free food and the fact that the new house has a large basement with a sweet TV, all of which I have almost exclusively to myself – the only problem being that it is also apparently host to a resident centipede community. I have discovered two so far. If I find a third, I will have to explain the use of napalm in the insurance claim.

- There is a large, inflatable, purple dinosaur towering near the edge of the road outside the Coliseum on Main. I know this because I was driving the other day, in the rightmost lane, and suddenly after passing the corner of the Elks Club building a three-story-high reptilian monstrosity was upon me. I did not catch what this is for, possibly to act as some kind of generic Barney to attract children to whatever the ill-advised Coliseum is host to currently, though I think I remember him having sharp outstretched claws, and he looked rather angry.

- Hollister is the worst place on the planet. It is like the combined efforts of someone who tried to open a cologne-bar/perfume-dance-club, and someone who successfully out-American Eagle’d American Eagle. The only possible acceptable excuse for its existence is the potential sociological significance of a place where junior high exists year round, preserved, forever.

- Don’t try and text when you’re standing at a urinal. It just looks like you’re trying to photograph your penis.

- I was at The Movie Fan the other day looking for something, overhearing one of the most dumbfounding one-way cell-phone conversations I have ever witnessed, and heard the phrase "no WAY" a total of seventy-eight hundred times over the course of thirty seconds, and this was before I looked up and realized that the girl’s face was made of plastic. Furthermore, it was the color not of tan, or of fake-tan, but of some mutant hybrid cousin up from the south on holiday. I don’t know if it’s that so much synthetic skin just doesn’t respond well to nine hours-a-day of artificial sunlight, or if it came that way when she ordered the face^*, but I fled from the store.

- Definition of "terror": When you are driving past the water-treatment plant, and the familiar scent of filtered feces transforms from "shit" to (briefly) "swamp" and then "steak?"

* (Looking through magazine of Barbie^TM-inspired, pre-built faces at Dr.’s office) "Do you have this in burnt-sienna?"

"No, but we have it in orange."

"SOLD."

Currently Reading Super Flat Times: Stories By Matthew Derby see related

A few thoughts:

The Megabus creeps me out.  Specifically, the guy on the side of the Megabus, who may in fact be the scariest animated mascot for a company I have ever seen.  I like the idea of cheap tickets just about anywhere you would want to go (this would be particularly handy for Chicago, alleviating the need for me to take the train, an event which will never again occur in my lifetime), but it’s not super comforting when immediately before boarding I must stand under what appears to be a two-story high, amphetamines-laden cartoon Mickey Rooney with a facial expression indicating he’s going to try to diddle me in the back of the bus.  Which I suppose means that if you’re Rosa Parks you’re ok.

I have narrowed down what for me has been a confusing, years-long phenomenon: Enya sounds like I’m being held against my will at a figure-skating match and everything is underwater.  Now able to succinctly describe what I think she sounds like aside from the standard “dying cat from outer space” pad-answer, I still don’t understand why people listen to her music.

The only reason I would ever attend the upcoming (or any) high school reunion would be to see all the people who are now fat and have babies, and have conversations like, “Wow.  You look older,” or “Sports didn’t pan out, huh?” or “Hey remember when you were attractive and popular and worked to further enhance that popularity by sleeping with everyone?  I bet you think about that a lot.”

If I ever get a pet hedgehog, I’m going to name it Mario.

Do you think at any point shortly before he died that Charlton Heston thought of how hilarious it would be if, on his deathbed, he suddenly leapt up and screamed, “Soylent Green is MEEEEE!!!”

I like to think so.