Let's take a walk!

[hunter s.durden]

I would like to invite anyone willing to come take a walk with me. A guided tour of a day in the life of a madman.

Madman? I'll let you judge. Some seem to think so. I have my doubts.

Generally the beginnings of my days have me fleshing out what happened last night, and what is going to happen later today. This means first checking the Weather Channel. Two minutes into my weather inquiry, and already I am frustrated. Why? Because in two minutes i've seen three commercials for the Weather Channel, and no temperature. I can't specifically condemn them though. The History Channel runs ads for Dogfights, during Dogfights. Just last night I saw an ad for Family Guy at 11. It was 10:57. My, what short attention spans they must think we have.

Next I check the news and hope for the worst. Perhaps society collapsed while I slept... No such luck. What I am privy to are some gripping pieces about American Idol and what Barrack Obama looks like in his swimsuit. Occasionally they break things up and show a little about the car bombs that killed more innocent people, but not too much. I'd hate for them to clutter things up in case a celebrity drinks and drives. Those bombing stories only embolden the terrorists anyway. Maybe society is collapsing after all...

Seeing as how the status quo is being nicely protected for me by Bill O'reilly, I decide to take my daily walk. This is a time for me to put on tunes, and block out the world for a little while. Thing is, every now and then, something sticks out and ruins it for me. Today it is a sign. The sign is on a mini-van and it read: "Caution: Show Dogs on Board". My pulse raises. I begin to think "Today is the day I go to prison." These yuppy fuckers have extended our prissy sub-urban class system to dogs now. "Baby on Board" is one thing, but a dog? A useless dog at that. A sick, sad, shell of a wolf that has been stripped of it's balls and forced to prance around for the amusement of pretentious assholes that like feeling up dogs for "sport".

Being in a funk this particular day, I decide that I need to gain some rage to get in a good workout. Nothing brews it up like some more TV. I go straight to the bowels of TV hell: MTV and E!. These channels show me the nausiating heights of hypocricy. MTV swings first with a great commercials about how I fund the war and destroy the environment with my dependance on foreign oil. If only I would go buy a hybrid, life would be set right. This is, of course, followed by a rap video which features Hummer, Escilades, and private jets, all funded by robbery and acts of urban terrorism (or so they want us to think). They then tell me if I give ten dollars a week I can help obliterate hunger in Africa. This is promptly followed by a spoiled 16 year old girl getting a birthday party for the low low price of 60 G's. If torturing spoiled little brats saved Ethiopians, I would surely take a stab at humanitarianism (pun intended).
The E! network runs a show about how fashion magazines make it impossible for young women to meet the beauty standards of our society. They condemn these high standards for making millions of girls Bulemic. Littered through it are ads for the Girls Next Door and Dr. 90210. I guess if your going to try and look like a Playboy model, surgery, not starvation, is the answer.

After a good rage filled workout I try to read, but my concentration is shattered. Those fucking show dogs are in my head. I think I know what Berkowitz was screaming about now. "Keep it together, man." I turn the TV back on. Oh Fuck. Fox News is on. O'reilly chastizes a girl for having pink hair. AHHHH. Couldn't get the remote fast enough. When I do it flips to CNN. Dammit. A law in Michigan is going to be used to hook a man. There is an old little known law that says you can get life in prison for cheating on your wife. I stifle back vomit and instead of hitting back I hit up on the remote. Back to O'reilly. Now he is trying to get a judge to explain why he thought a rapist should get only a year of probation. I'm proud of Bill for once, but thinking of that and the life sentence for adultry is too much.

Time to search the internets for some lulz. Please take away the pain. I go onto Myspace knowing the risks, but hoping for a message from a friend. No luck. What I do get,is an army of waste. I cringe everytime I click on a profile and under books it says: "Hee, Hee, What are books." Under TV it undoubtedly says Grey's Anatomy in an effort to say, "I'm retarded, but watching a soap opera set in a hospital shows I want to appear smart enough to land a man." I am amazed when I see a guy acting hard on Myspace. Noone sent him the memo that say having a Myspace makes you incurably weak and ineffectual. Good luck with your ghetto look.
Not wanting to spend too much time hating everyone, I look for some lulz in the troll department. I check out the trusty Encyclopedia Dramatica and am floored. Someone wrote them saying that My Chemical Romance isn't emo... they're... get this... punk. Jesus... Punk...

On and on this goes. Day after day bombarded by Blackberry commercial and news stories about Anna Nicole. Head on, Verizon, cutting education budgets, Mel Gibson, AT&T, it goes on. Life is a never ending commercial.

Did I go mad? Am I insane due to too much or not enough of some chemical?   "Have my years of wild hedonism finally caught up with me?"(-Lela)
Or am I just seeing things as one of the few rational people left?
Am I wearing those glasses from "They Live"?
You guys see it right?
Am I walking alone?

[LHX]

PUFFY LUVS YUO HUNTER

[Cramulus]

I hear ya dude. Is it that you only watch TV that pisses you off, or that everything pisses you off? I find I usually only watch TV that irritates the hell out of me. Like MTV's My Super Sweet 16... rarely have I been so outraged as when I watched like four episodes of that in a row. So why do I keep watching it, right? I guess I like being offended - it's the only way TV gets a rise out of me. :P

maybe you should learn to get the hots for this twisted, conflicted, vain, self-loathing monstrosity that we live inside.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Hunter:  Turn your fucking teevee off.  Toss it out the window.  Shoot it before it hits the ground.

You'll feel better.

[P3nT4gR4m]

If sanity is what passes for such, in this day and age, then I prefer to remain 'insane'

For the insane to exist unmolested they must learn to pass themselves off as sane or prepare to be 'corrected'

Fortunately this is relatively straightforward and should pose no significant challenge to the 'insane' How they think is always reasonably apparent, with a great scope of variety to be found.

One could, if one were so inclined, use a random selection of tv programs to dictate one's entire paradigm, opinions, dress sense, moral code...

Bauhaus were right, smalltalk sucks but it's smalltalk they want from you. Smalltalk is drab, highly recyclable and utterly irrelevent. Suck it up and chew the bullshit. "how 'bout this rain?", "traffic's a nightmare, innit?"...

A square peg can fit in a round hole but he has to learn the art of looking round.

PS - Fucking swote rant BTW 

[Thurnez Isa]

Hunter:  Turn your fucking teevee off.  Toss it out the window.  Shoot it before it hits the ground.

You'll feel better.

but that would deprive US of all his rage

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Hunter:  Turn your fucking teevee off.  Toss it out the window.  Shoot it before it hits the ground.

You'll feel better.

but that would deprive US of all his rage

Point.  But that's artificial rage.

[hunter s.durden]

Please do not look at the above as an indictment against TV. I did do alot of talking about TV, but this is because TV helps to reflect our culture as a whole. Sweet 16 only stays on the air because their demographics show that poor people like to watch rich girls get everything they want.

When I mention the Draconian sentence for cheating, versus the leanient sentence for rape, I again simply use TV as my vehicle. If I didn't watch TV it wouldn't change the fact that people = shit.

I've gone weeks without TV, yet when I walk the streets I can see the shows reflected in the eyes of the zombie public. I see some young "punks" glare at me because I'm dressed like a redneck, and I feel MTV. I see a man in a suit glare at my tattoos, and I feel O'reilly.

I went on yahoo chat about a year ago and guess what I found. Two hundred bots trying to sell me porn. No real people there anymore. Just pornbots. If you have a myspace account, go check it. I'll bet there's a porn ad waiting right now.

It's illegal to get drunk in public and sleep outside, but i'll be damned if there aren't at least 3 billboards advertising alcohol within any given half-mile.

Perhaps i'll kill my TV forever. Computer too. Then what? I get calls from telemarketers who have a great deal for me. I get junk mail cataloges for stupid unicorn nicknacks.

Silly got what I was saying. My rage against the Ad campaigns isn't about TV, it's about life. I try to explain to a doctor why I think people are stupid herd animals who derserve their lots in life, and I get pegged as a paranoid sociopath.

The commercials don't end at TV.

Stupid herd-apes don't end at commercials.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Please do not look at the above as an indictment against TV. I did do alot of talking about TV, but this is because TV helps to reflect our culture as a whole.

You have that backwards.

[Idem]

Yeah, I've recently got rid of my teevee.

Haven't really seen any dramatic change at all, but only a bit happier.

[P3nT4gR4m]

Silly got what I was saying. My rage against the Ad campaigns isn't about TV, it's about life. I try to explain to a doctor why I think people are stupid herd animals who derserve their lots in life, and I get pegged as a paranoid sociopath.

Yeah I sat in that seat, lot of injections used to happen as a direct result of those convesations. Finally broke the cycle when I told the doctor that anytime I got notions like that I knew it was just my illness talking.

Partly true I'd developed a much greater awareness of upswings and downswings and could take steps to stop me flying off, before it went too far. Opinions about the human race being a herd of sleepwalking fuckheads, on the other hand, never went away. But doctors are sleepwalking fuckheads too, they don't need to hear about their shortcomings, nor do they seem to enjoy or be enlightened by it.

You know that advice they give on public talking where you picture your audience naked? Well when talking to a psychiatrist I always picture them asa person who has never seen inside their own mind, let alone mine. Black box remedies are bullshit. These guys are trained to look for patterns in what you're saying or doing, they have no idea what you're thinking.

[Triple Zero]

Yeah, I've recently got rid of my teevee.

Haven't really seen any dramatic change at all, but only a bit happier.

how long? i didn't notice any real detox effect until after a month or two, three.

The commercials don't end at TV.

but about 90% (rough estimate ymmv) do.

i noticed that i now get annoyed at billboard-ads a lot more than before. stuff at billboards that others don't even notice.
ok i'm still annoyed, but it's a progress, somehow.
another thing is that i seem to have stepped outside the "thinkworld" of the most stupid herd-apes. they talk about shit i can hardly understand anymore, because it's zero-content bullshit made up of glued together TV memes. this makes me feel good, because i cannot get pulled into the discussion "hey yea huh huh that ad was kinda funny in this context" and (when i care enough) i can change the subject to something slightly more worth my while.

Stupid herd-apes don't end at commercials.

this is true.

but that makes sense, because stupid herd-apes aren't caused by commercials, but the other way around.
it's kinda what TGGR said, but i think it really goes both ways at the same time.

if it weren't for the stupid, the ads wouldn't have been there or at least so stupid.
and if it weren't for the ads, the stupid wouldn't have been so much more stupid than they already are.

[B_M_W]

Yeah, I've recently got rid of my teevee.

Haven't really seen any dramatic change at all, but only a bit happier.

how long? i didn't notice any real detox effect until after a month or two, three.

The commercials don't end at TV.

but about 90% (rough estimate ymmv) do.

i noticed that i now get annoyed at billboard-ads a lot more than before. stuff at billboards that others don't even notice.
ok i'm still annoyed, but it's a progress, somehow.
another thing is that i seem to have stepped outside the "thinkworld" of the most stupid herd-apes. they talk about shit i can hardly understand anymore, because it's zero-content bullshit made up of glued together TV memes. this makes me feel good, because i cannot get pulled into the discussion "hey yea huh huh that ad was kinda funny in this context" and (when i care enough) i can change the subject to something slightly more worth my while.

Stupid herd-apes don't end at commercials.

this is true.

but that makes sense, because stupid herd-apes aren't caused by commercials, but the other way around.
it's kinda what TGGR said, but i think it really goes both ways at the same time.

if it weren't for the stupid, the ads wouldn't have been there or at least so stupid.
and if it weren't for the ads, the stupid wouldn't have been so much more stupid than they already are.

Its a self affirming and self increasing cycle. Kinda like body temperature and body rate. You need a high body temperature to keep a high metabolic rate, yet the high metabolic rate is needed to sustain the high body temperature (through waste heat from metabolism). So, which one came first, the stupid or the ads?

[Idem]

Yeah, I've recently got rid of my teevee.

Haven't really seen any dramatic change at all, but only a bit happier.

how long? i didn't notice any real detox effect until after a month or two, three.

A month and a half.

[Random Probability]

I recently started watching a little TV lately when my computer blew up (literally, the power supply smoked).  It took me a few days to figure out what all the channels did.  I don't understand why half the stuff is on there.  The last meme I remembered seeing was MTV's retarded "the revolution will be televised" warning.  That's when I shut the fucking thing off.  When was that?  '96?  '98?  It's been so long I don't remember.