That does it.

[hooplala]

Today started like most other days, with me getting out of bed and wondering what was on the Teevee (and between the screams of my two kids, I was able to catch most of a shitty C-Rate film about Beowulf). Dinner was boxed again, but quick, and adding enough salt almost gave it flavor. I stepped outside for a cigarette -- the last vestigial remains of my youth -- and then my flashy cell phone I pay too much for every month rang, and I answered it. It was my buddy Lunchbox, or "Chris" as he weirdly refers to himself these days. He calls up sometimes to bullshit. A couple of months ago he called a lot about forming a band and playing shitty songs for drunken roughnecks at shady bars, but lately he's just been calling to bullshit.

Then, it happened.

He didn't call to bullshit this time. He called for another, far more sinister purpose. He told me he and his wife (he's married now, believe it or not, and even has a few kids of his own) had gone to WalMart and picked up a pack of UNO cards, and he wanted to set up some time when me and my wife could go over to their place and play cards.

I don't think you heard me. This jolly fat guy who used to play kick ass punk music until his band blew their last offer at a record deal, called me up to play UNO.

UNO.

And what did I do? Did I berate him? Did I snap him out of it? Did I threaten to pawn his guitars and buy him a fucking Blackberry? Nope. I said I'd talk to my wife and see when we could do it.

And then I hung up. And then, I died a little.

Don't ask me why it took this one phone call to draw my attention to this fact. I'm sure I must have noticed something slowly overtaking me, I've just been "too busy" to care. It isn't that living with "the wife and the kids" is a bad thing, by itself. By itself, it's a good thing. That it's 180 degrees away from where I planned to be by 25 isn't the sticker, either. The part that really kills me is that in the half a second it took for me to click my phone off, I took a silent inventory of everything I do every day and I realized there are only two things left to do for my life to be complete.

Register as a Republican, and join a church.

Because for all my talk I might as well be every other Joe Schmoe out there, I'm no different than any of the wifebeating assholes who go "bowling" because they're too pious to just go to a bar like honest men. I get up every day, I go to work, I come home and have a prefabricated dinner, I smile at the kid and then I go to bed hoping I die of a stroke while I'm sleeping so I don't have to do it all over again tomorrow.

But it's alright. I've found solace in the one god who can really save me from this mediocrity -- the TeeVee. Maybe if I watch enough fucking soap operas on the Discovery Channel about midgets, listen to enough shitty third-rate emo music and subscribe to the Triple Digital Deluxe package, there'll be something in my life to offset the fact that I've given up everything but the attitude of a free man, and even that barely makes an appearance unless I feel like offending the sensibilities of all the wrong people.

Maybe if I convince my boss to let me grow shoulder-length hair and wear the bottom half of a bad goatee I'll be able to look myself in the mirror, like I'm getting ready to go tear shit up at the coffee house like some pretentious Beatnik, pissed off about all the injustice of non-recycled newspaper.

On second thought I'll just stick to the TV. I might be slipping into the world of prepackaged citizenship, but if I ever start looking up to Beatnik's, I'll hang myself.

Fuck this, there's nothing wrong with Uno.

[Cainad (dec.)]

There's nothing wrong with UNO, but I get the weird impression that Lunchbox was testing the waters. He was feeling old and gray, so he did something mildly absurd that one might expect of screwball teenagers and college students. Then he called up someone whom he figured might feel the same way, to see if there was someone left in his world who wouldn't tell him to behave like a timid old man. Suggesting a game of UNO (as opposed to a game of poker, croquet, or something similarly 'adult') was his way of saying "Hey Vex, have you been feeling like Daily Grind has worn your soul down to a nub? 'Cause I sure have. I've got an idea that might alleviate that feeling." Even better, what he was suggesting was not the act of a desperate middle-aged man, and I'll prove it.

Desperate activities are easily recognizable, because they try to convey the message "I'm still young" using the language that only the worn out and defeated have learned to speak. It's the language of soulless consumerism, of trying to grasp Slack with money and lies. Let's look at these three examples:

1. Buying a sports car = Fail, because you just sunk a couple grand for... what? A car? Get fucking real, you're not picking up chicks anymore. You know damn well that if some chick throws her bra at you when you drive past in your convertible Jaguar, she's a gold-digger. This classic example of a poorly handled mid-life crisis screams "I'M USING MONEY TO TRY AND REMEMBER WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO HAVE SELF-ESTEEM."

2. Taking up golf and buying expensive equipment, even though you don't really care for the game = Fail, because it's transparently obvious that you're trying to look like a 'distinguished gentleman,' whom people will respect and admire even when his temples go gray. Way to go, dummy; now you've pissed away a bunch of money so you can look 'distinguished' while being bored off your ass. This is a classic example of MISSING THE POINT on an epic scale.

3. Playing UNO with a friend on a whim = Not Fail, because now you're starting to get it. It's also a reminder that you are not alone in The Machine, that you are not 'wrong' or 'pathetic' for grumbling and grousing and hating yourself for being a disposable part of it. It's a card game, so therefore it's cheap as hell (cheaper than drinking yourself stupid) and the real value of it is social interaction on a level that you might have forgotten exists: company for company's sake.

Teenagers seem to take an uncanny pleasure in just being around their friends and talking, but that's because they're still marveling at the mutual realization that "Hey, we're all human beings, how awesome is that?". Once that initial rush wears off, it's all too easy for society (i.e. The Machine, Real Life, or whatever) to condition us in perverse ways; to reprogram us, via soul-crushing drudgery, to seek that sense of of fulfillment in ways that bolster the economy and preserve social order without fully realizing that we're missing it. That desire to feel worthy, valued, becomes little more than a dull ache that we instinctively–futilely–try to soothe in the only way we know how. Or, I should say, in the only way we can remember. Our old ways of entertaining ourselves are dismissed as childish, and we laugh at them. We've been taught to find fulfillment in the numbers on our paycheck and in products, things that we can get without the company of friends or family. Indeed, it's often easier to get these things if we don't spend our money and time on the things that can actually make us feel human; and what's more, we pump more of that desperately needed liquid capital back into the economy when we try to have fun on our own than when we invest in having a good time with people we like. So we turn against our old friends, our neighbors, and basically everyone who isn't a close family member (and even they're within a hair's breadth of estrangement), and they turn against us. By being modern citizens, we have signed an unwritten pact to mutually neglect each other, without perceiving the inevitable result: we come to hate ourselves.


Who or what is doing this to us? Who or what is slowly but surely turning us into ingrown, spiteful little bitches?





Who cares? In this state, the answer would probably just depress us more. It doesn't matter who's been using you as a doormat when you haven't even fucking stood up yet to remind your own damn self that you're not a doormat. Look around; maybe you've only been lying in the mud feeling like shit because you think that's what you're supposed to do. Sure, someone might try and pull you down, or even several people, but if you look you'll see that they're all acting like doormats too, and they've got nothing but words and opinions. Who gives a shit about what a doormat says or thinks? Only another doormat.

YOU ARE NOT A CORPSE, SO GET OUT OF THAT FUCKING HOLE. GRAVEYARD SPACE IS LIMITED, YOU SELFISH JACKASS.


Vex, it's a good thing you decided to swallow your pride and play UNO. You might not have the time that you once had to spend with people, other than those with whom you have no choice but to socialize, but it takes only a little jolt to remind yourself that you're still alive. It's a strange thing, the human soul, because it constantly checks itself for vital signs. Once it stops checking, then you'll know it's dead.

(P.S. This whole thing wasn't specifically targeted at Vex. But you knew that.)

[tyrannosaurus vex]

actually this wasn't what i REALLY thought. it was a sociological experiment! there, safe now.

srsly tho, being old and disposable is nothing to be ashamed of or gripe about. everything in the universe is either old or waiting to be old, and it's all disposable. besides i'm reaping the benefit of 100,000 years of human evolution and achievement right now. 99% of everyone who came before me was disposable too, but they amounted to enough to keep me out of a cave and killing things with rocks so i don't starve.

my OP sure sounds like the pitiful whine of a mid-life crisis (or one-third-life crisis in my case). but my real complaint isn't that i'm old and stagnant and going nowhere in my life, or going the wrong direction, or going there with the wrong people because none of that is true. it's just venting that i've absentmindedly skated through most of the decisions in my life, and i'm beginning to realize what living on autopilot does to your mind on the days when you wake up and take a conscious look around.

i'm not unhappy really, just one of those jarring moments when it comes to my attention how easy it is to make a lot of big decisions without making any real choices.

[Cainad (dec.)]

actually this wasn't what i REALLY thought. it was a sociological experiment!

  Never again will I let you play me for a phool!