I re-learned a valuable lesson last night. It's the same thing I discovered while piloting the OBNOXIOUS JERK CABAL to pointless screaming marathons and drunken debacles. Stupid drunken childish fun is nothing to be ashamed of! In fact, it may be the only thing that can save some of us from becoming total cabbages.
I was back at my old college campus last night. It's spring break there, and some college buddies were getting Saint Patrick drunk with one of their friends that still lives on campus. So they called me, piss drunk, and said CAPTAIN WE NEED YOU, GET DOWN HERE. So I shrugged, picked up some booze, and drove down to my old college.
I love these guys. When they're on, they've got the trickster-asshole thing down pat. But they're kind of media-obsessed, and it gets in the way of their awesome individuality. So instead of talk about movies, I told them we were going for a walk, and we took a tour of all the sacred spots on campus.
There's this place called the elephant tree, this huge old gnarled tree which looks like elephant skin. It's in the middle of this beautiful glade, and for generations, kids have been coming here to - do drugs, fuck, larp, read poetry, whatever. More specifically MY group of friends has spent a lot of time in this spot. it has a meaning to our group. And we stood there for 20 minutes while everybody quoted family guy, swapped celeb gossip, and referenced their favorite moments from recent sitcoms. They're really interesting, creative, energetic people, but sometimes they need a reminder about what REAL fun is.
So I led them away, and I took them down this dark staircase into this really creepy place under a building, which is where I came when I tripped out for the first time. It's easy to pretending you're outside the gates of hell. There's a shaft of moonlight that illuminates the otherwise scary industrial basement-area. I've always found that place extremely poetic. Also, I hadn't been there in three or four years and it was really strange to be back. But everybody was still talking about Watchmen or the Watchmen video game, so I sighed and led them back out.
We used to have ADVENTURES, you know? I mean for real, spending the entire night breaking into buildings and exploring basements and crawling through air ducts.
I kept trying to start a conversation about real stuff - stuff we had done together, stuff we wanted to do. Things that had happened in our lives. I hadn't seen this crowd in two years and every time we started to catch up, it ended up getting derailed into a tangent about complete dross.
and finally, as we were walking through the woods piss drunk, I realized that I was frustrated and bored, and so stopped talking altogether, and I picked up a stick and I broke it over somebody's back.
And they stopped talking, confused, and tried to make sense of it as I walked into the woods, grabbed an armful of sticks and started hucking them at the fuckers. I threw sticks right at their stupid conversation. Then suddenly eveyrbody everybody was laughing and throwing sticks and yelling.
And still laughing, we continued to roam, growing more insane, until we ended up in the big metal scrap pile behind the sculpture lab. And I found this big metal can thing that you could push like a lawnmower, and it made a HELL of a lot of noise, and it was pissing off everyone so I kept doing it louder and more annoying as we walked. And as it got more obnoxious, it got more funny. I can't explain it, but you know what I mean if you've been there. We were all laughing ourselves blue in the face because this trash can I had insisted on dragging along so fucking obnoxious. Somehow that degenerated into us throwing the damn thing as far as we could over and over again and laughing like dizzy baboons as it crashed cacophony onto the pavement. And we were all laughing and screaming and laughing even harder because we were drunk and nobody was hung up by anything. and for a moment we couldn't imagine being hung up on anything ever again.
Screaming hysterical nothingness.
This is the most beautiful possible form of anarchy.
:mittens:
Quote from: Cramulus on March 18, 2009, 02:28:15 PM
We used to have ADVENTURES, you know? I mean for real, spending the entire night breaking into buildings and exploring basements and crawling through air ducts.
I kept trying to start a conversation about real stuff - stuff we had done together, stuff we wanted to do. Things that had happened in our lives. I hadn't seen this crowd in two years and every time we started to catch up, it ended up getting derailed into a tangent about complete dross.
This is just like on Full House when Becky and Jesse are trying to have a nice night without the twins, but after a few minutes of conversation their conversation inevitably drifts back to the twins. They tried to discuss Jesse's music but then got sidetracked. It's like they had no life or frame of reference outside of the twins!
Hunter, I want to repeatedly run you over with my car while blasting TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE HEART.
1. Nice, Cram!
2. I am so glad Hunter's back. :lulz:
I think I saw Peter Griffin do that on an episode of FAMILY GUY. Stewie wasn't laughing though.
WATCH IT, BUDDY
\
(http://i209.photobucket.com/albums/bb163/wompcabal/forum/WATCHITBUDDY.jpg)
I like this a lot.
Every time I see the title of this thread I get confused and think that Cram is addressing A Pesky Nonvoting Screeching.
I hope you really ran into the woods and started lobbing sticks at people. I would be severely disappointed to find out that you were making that up.
no no, that's totally real. My friends expect that I will randomly assault them, but at that moment they were taken delightfully off-guard.
it's fun to watch high annoyance turn into high madness in under 30 seconds
I enjoyed this.
:mittens:
A fucking great read.
:)
It's a very familiar headspace, one that I usually find myself getting into after too much sleep deprivation more often than getting smashed.
Quote from: Nigel on March 18, 2009, 08:00:23 PM
Every time I see the title of this thread I get confused and think that Cram is addressing A Pesky Nonvoting Screeching.
It's why I opened this thread.
I dunno if it's my screwed up mental state right now or what, but what I got out of that wasn't probably what you intended.
Media -- particularly COMPLEX and MULTILAYERED media -- is a treasure trove of... well, nonsense. Chaos. Life turns chaos into order, and entropy fucks with our heads and turns the order back into chaos. Which is a good thing, because otherwise we'd start viewing life as a sitcom or something -- which would be scary, because that means that if it BECAME one we wouldn't notice (there's this story idea a friend and I have been playing with for a while subverting the sitcom trope, set in a future surveillance society that is distributed wherein every home is filmed by a camera in the television and has built in laugh tracks in order to cause the people watching it to believe that it is a sitcom). Okay. Well, the problem here is the homogeny of order that comes from a small and densely interlinked communication network that encourages making and propogating its OWN order (this has been termed an 'autistic community' which is suitable in the literal sense -- highly active but fearful of the Other -- and potentially in some situations medically appropriate as a metaphor -- some explanations of autism involve just this type of dense internal interlinking -- but probably will be a bad term because of the misinterpretations of the intent of the metaphorical label). This kind of community is TOO GOOD at creating order, and HIGHLY RESISTANT to outside forces that jolt the internal sense of order -- think cult mentality. This situation has been around forever, but the advance of communication (McLuhan's intent of the term 'global village' involves this) makes it easy to have autistic communities that are highly distributed, very BIG, and far more efficent at creating order. The problem is that people like their order. It's THEIRS. Humanity has a bit of a hubris streak, as we all know.
Cram's community there was active. IS active. The problem is that without Cram's ability to shake shit up (and maybe other factors) they have homogenized and gotten into complexly ordering and processing as a group whatever already semi-ordered half-digested bullshit in the popular semi-mainstream pseudo-fringe media. Adult swim isn't counterculture. Watchmen isn't counterculture. Counterculture isn't counterculture. Counterculture is a motherfucking monitor full of static -- something that you can discuss and come to no conclusion about the MEANING, but, KNOWING it has no REALLY REAL REAL MEANING, you can go and watch it and MAYBE get enough of a buzz to have hypnagogic hallucinations and find a meaning within YOURSELF that came out of extrapolating MEANING from MEANINGLESSNESS. This is {the,a} function of life. Mathematically, life doesn't do much aside from act as an extremely efficient schocastic process: cherry pick from noise, create order by synthesizing bits and pieces to better fit your apophenia. Life now finds it too easy to re-digest existing order, and even order that is complex and chaotic at first glance is still order.
The author is dead. Let's at least have some fun with his corpse.
:golfclap:
the Situationists (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situationist_International) proposed that life has become a big spectacle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectacle_(Situationism)), in which our lives have been subverted by nonliving things.
"We live in a spectacular society, that is, our whole life is surrounded by an immense accumulation of spectacles. Things that were once directly lived are now lived by proxy. Once an experience is taken out of the real world it becomes a commodity. As a commodity the spectacular is developed to the detriment of the real. It becomes a substitute for experience." -Larry Law
How many of your early impressions of the world were formed by TV?
how to act in a relationship
all the expectations of what sex would be like
what people from other countries are like
how to be cool
TV sets the defaults
I'm so fucking glad I don't watch TV.
Also, OP (Cram), :mittens:. I've totally been craving that sort of experience all day long today. Unfortunatly no one is around this week.
Maybe next week.
mmmm
Perfect to read in the morning, thanks Cram.
Great story / rant! We all need to get back to this kind of unselfcoscious joyfull playing to shake off the blah.
Quote from: Cramulus on March 19, 2009, 02:17:06 AM
:golfclap:
the Situationists (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situationist_International) proposed that life has become a big spectacle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectacle_(Situationism)), in which our lives have been subverted by nonliving things.
"We live in a spectacular society, that is, our whole life is surrounded by an immense accumulation of spectacles. Things that were once directly lived are now lived by proxy. Once an experience is taken out of the real world it becomes a commodity. As a commodity the spectacular is developed to the detriment of the real. It becomes a substitute for experience." -Larry Law
How many of your early impressions of the world were formed by TV?
how to act in a relationship
all the expectations of what sex would be like
what people from other countries are like
how to be cool
TV sets the defaults
I got chatting with Suu about something similar yesterday: How many characters in our childhood reading material / other media were gender neutral or gender unspecified?
I read a lot of books as a child; I figure I based a lot of my impressions of the world on some of my favorite characters.
Is there a difference?
Fucked if I know for certain, but the next time I hear someone talking trash about trangendered / transexual folk, I plan to have fun telling them how it's in children's books.
I get the feeling there's potential to get them to shut up AND damage their sanity.
I liked this. A lot. Life is a Spectacular Spectacle! Like an antidote to "Life is short, brutish & nasty." Sometimes it's just so much bullshit, sometimes you're acting it out & sometimes you're part of the audience. Either way ... living it. "Approach love & cooking with reckless abandon."
Bravo Cram! :mittens: YaY!
Quote from: LMNO goes back to the Big Blue Cock on March 19, 2009, 12:20:28 PM
I read a lot of books as a child; I figure I based a lot of my impressions of the world on some of my favorite characters.
Is there a difference?
you probably read different books than other kids.
Whereas kids that watch a lot of Nickelodeon (or CSPAN or whatever) are homogenized towards that kind of sense of humor.
There's a part in Culture Jam (http://www.amazon.com/Culture-Jam-Americas-Suicidal-Binge/dp/0688178057) where the author references how if you grew up during a certain range of years, your image of "cool" includes wearing sunglasses. When you go out to buy sunglasses, you'll be predisposed towards the ones Tom Cruise was wearing in a movie you saw as an early teenager.
It's part of that nefarious "top down" generation of cool. In olden times before multimillion dollar marketing campaigns, the top 40 songs on the radio were popular because people heard the song, bought the record, told their friends. Good music got spread that way. These days the top 40 "sound" is discussed and agreed upon in advance, and musicians are plugged in like a mechanic replaces a part of an engine. Yeah if the music sucks nobody's gonna buy it, but if you've got a multimillion dollar budget, you can fight a lot of that. My (occasional moron) buddy says "I listen to top 40 because it's the best music on the radio. It wouldn't be in the top 40 unless it was good, right?"
(alright maybe my pop prejudice is showing through)I was also thinking about how the first time I was in love, and I wanted to tell my girlfriend how I felt, my only reference for how to say it was the zillion times I've seen it done in movies and on TV. How many TV shows have you seen which are about telling someone you love them? Uncle Jesse and Aunt Beckie were in my head at the time.
One thing I've (mostly) learned is that every time, for fun to be truly fulfilling, it must be a new experience. It can be a new experience doing the same thing you've done before, but if you try to go back to previous fun and try to re-experience it, you're dabbling in nostalgia and your fun will lack the depth of joy you're trying to relive. Two sayings come to mind: you can never go home again, and each enlightenment is only good for one person, one time. It took me a long time to really understand the meaning of the first one, and the second one was the key to it.
You can never re-use fun, you have to make new fun each time. Sometimes you're not done with the first fun for weeks and weeks, even years, but once that fun is over, the next fun has to be a new experience and a new energy.
Quote from: Nigel on March 19, 2009, 04:32:22 PM
You can never re-use fun, you have to make new fun each time. Sometimes you're not done with the first fun for weeks and weeks, even years, but once that fun is over, the next fun has to be a new experience and a new energy.
Feeling a bit bossy today?
Maybe shes just sure of herself from her perspective and feels strong enough about what shes saying not to litter her phrases with meaningless e-prime.
Quote from: Kai on March 19, 2009, 05:09:51 PM
Maybe shes just sure of herself from her perspective and feels strong enough about what shes saying not to litter her phrases with meaningless e-prime.
I don't doubt that.
But maybe she's wrong.
You of all people should know not to tell people how to be happy.
Quote from: hunter s.durden on March 19, 2009, 05:18:19 PM
Quote from: Kai on March 19, 2009, 05:09:51 PM
Maybe shes just sure of herself from her perspective and feels strong enough about what shes saying not to litter her phrases with meaningless e-prime.
I don't doubt that.
But maybe she's wrong.
You of all people should know not to tell people how to be happy.
the word "you" is often used in place of the classical "one", as in "one must do this". When 'you' replaces 'one', more often than not its a very subjective general pronoun, in this case an allusion to one's self, i.e. "I". It was a personal statement of affirmation.
Whats telling is that you (not in the classical one sense) were bothered by it. Whats it about that statement that bothers you so much? Just people talkin on the internet. Afaik, wasn't directed at you, Hunter.
Because I think it's generally bad advice for you, me, one, two, whoever.
Aside from the phrasing I take issue with the message.
Three or four years ago I noticed a phenomenon that occurs in about a quarter of the people I spend more than a couple of hours with. Looking back it's always happened, but I just happened to finally notice it. It was the the ability of people to not be where they were. Physically they are there, but they are always looking for the next thing. People invite me over to drink and watch movies, and within an hours they're on their cell phone calling the other friends they have. Is it the poor quality of my company? No, because no matter where we go or who we meet it's always the next big thing. Go to the bar. Now go to the party. We need girls. Now we need different girls. On and on, never contented with their moment.
I just think that this is one piece of advice that desperately needs to filter out the "must" and "always". Those words aren't helping the guy that swears he'll be happy once he leaves this job for that, the one that in six months will be saying the same thing. The post had a "grass is greener" air to it that didn't sit right. I don't feel it should have been directed at any one. Happiness is tricky in this era, and that advice was just too concrete and misguided for my tastes.
Quote from: hunter s.durden on March 19, 2009, 06:23:52 PM
Because I think it's generally bad advice for you, me, one, two, whoever.
Aside from the phrasing I take issue with the message.
Three or four years ago I noticed a phenomenon that occurs in about a quarter of the people I spend more than a couple of hours with. Looking back it's always happened, but I just happened to finally notice it. It was the the ability of people to not be where they were. Physically they are there, but they are always looking for the next thing. People invite me over to drink and watch movies, and within an hours they're on their cell phone calling the other friends they have. Is it the poor quality of my company? No, because no matter where we go or who we meet it's always the next big thing. Go to the bar. Now go to the party. We need girls. Now we need different girls. On and on, never contented with their moment.
I just think that this is one piece of advice that desperately needs to filter out the "must" and "always". Those words aren't helping the guy that swears he'll be happy once he leaves this job for that, the one that in six months will be saying the same thing. The post had a "grass is greener" air to it that didn't sit right. I don't feel it should have been directed at any one. Happiness is tricky in this era, and that advice was just too concrete and misguided for my tastes.
I have to say I agree with Hunter on this. When I was writing up the "Two Thousand and Nein" goof, I started thinking about that mantra you hear a lot of people say, "Live life to the fullest." I think a trap that many fall into is taking it too literally, trying to literally fill up their life with stuff. Sometimes I think maybe we need a little in the other direction, emptying some stuff out so you can still live a fulfilled life, but, one where there is more breathing room between the things you are filling it with. It's the quality vs quantity argument.
I refute Nigel's post with my drumset.
I understand what you mean Hunter, and I've seen it in myself too.
The first time I did ecstasy I love love loved it, and tried to find that feeling again, but was never able to. I realize now that it wasn't really the drug I liked, but that for whatever reason it allowed me to live COMPLETELY in the moment. I wasn't really able to think about the past very well, and didn't give shit about the future, and did absolutely NO self reflection... that came afterwards in the horrific crash that followed.
I think back on that night with great fondness and often wonder if thats how most other animals live their entire life. It wasn't intellectual at all, but it was so enjoyable.
OP: :mittens:
I feel like I'm in a similar position. I hate sounding like a Discordian elitist, but some of these people have no idea what fun is. Luckily, there are a few people on campus who share the sentiment that we ought to do something hysterically fun instead of just getting drunk and doing nothing.
:mittens: to the OP and the very interesting comments!
Some things just never seem to get old. Like water slides & surfing (whether or not you're mind-altering in other ways)
Ever notice how truly brilliant this thread is?
Quote from: hunter s.durden on March 19, 2009, 06:23:52 PM
Because I think it's generally bad advice for you, me, one, two, whoever.
Aside from the phrasing I take issue with the message.
Three or four years ago I noticed a phenomenon that occurs in about a quarter of the people I spend more than a couple of hours with. Looking back it's always happened, but I just happened to finally notice it. It was the the ability of people to not be where they were. Physically they are there, but they are always looking for the next thing. People invite me over to drink and watch movies, and within an hours they're on their cell phone calling the other friends they have. Is it the poor quality of my company? No, because no matter where we go or who we meet it's always the next big thing. Go to the bar. Now go to the party. We need girls. Now we need different girls. On and on, never contented with their moment.
I just think that this is one piece of advice that desperately needs to filter out the "must" and "always". Those words aren't helping the guy that swears he'll be happy once he leaves this job for that, the one that in six months will be saying the same thing. The post had a "grass is greener" air to it that didn't sit right. I don't feel it should have been directed at any one. Happiness is tricky in this era, and that advice was just too concrete and misguided for my tastes.
I didn't take the message that way. I saw it more like a beginners mind sort of thing. Every time you experience, it should be a fresh and new experience to you, rather than within the nostalgia of the past. Means you are open to new experiences in things you have done before, and living in the present moment. You shouldn't let yourself stagnate.
I thought it was advice I should take.
Quote from: hunter s.durden on March 19, 2009, 04:39:25 PM
Quote from: Nigel on March 19, 2009, 04:32:22 PM
You can never re-use fun, you have to make new fun each time. Sometimes you're not done with the first fun for weeks and weeks, even years, but once that fun is over, the next fun has to be a new experience and a new energy.
Feeling a bit bossy today?
Can you re-have the same orgasm a second time? Or is it a different orgasm?
That's all I'm saying.
The new experience is a new experience, not the same as the old experience, even if you're doing the same thing. It takes new energy to have the new experience. I think that sometimes people get caught up in the nostalgia of the old experience, and they bring this expectation that the energy from the old experience will make it happen again, and then they're disappointed.
Quote from: Kai on March 19, 2009, 07:48:27 PM
I didn't take the message that way. I saw it more like a beginners mind sort of thing. Every time you experience, it should be a fresh and new experience to you, rather than within the nostalgia of the past. Means you are open to new experiences in things you have done before, and living in the present moment. You shouldn't let yourself stagnate.
I thought it was advice I should take.
Right. It can be good advice. It can also be a gateway to headache. Some need that, but I think even more need to go the other way and learn to be happy with what they're already doing, hence the wording issue.
I think almost all advice has a niche where it will work. "Saw off your arm" sounds like a stupid fucking idea, but if you have a horrendous spreading infection it might be exactly what you need to do. The reason I tangled with that post is because it seemed like she was telling us to amputate when some of us just need antibiotics.
Take a mental inventory of a few dozen people you know, and ask yourself "are they more in need of a change of scenery, or just an attitude adjustment toward the old scenery?" I think enough people will fall into the latter to justify my little post.
Quote from: Nigel on March 19, 2009, 07:57:54 PM
Can you re-have the same orgasm a second time? Or is it a different orgasm?
That's all I'm saying.
The new experience is a new experience, not the same as the old experience, even if you're doing the same thing. It takes new energy to have the new experience. I think that sometimes people get caught up in the nostalgia of the old experience, and they bring this expectation that the energy from the old experience will make it happen again, and then they're disappointed.
So you're telling me I can't travel through time? Thanks for the info.
I get what you're saying, but I felt this conversation was necessary. Let's use the orgasm. I know many guys who hop from woman to woman looking for some sort of fulfillment. "If I bang this chick I'll feel much better." (I'm not talking about looking for the right one, I'm talking about those guys that are never satisfied) They keep investing new energy into new experience, and getting new disappointment. Sure it CAN be great to experience hundreds of different women, but sometimes that energy is misused. Sometimes it needs to specifically be directed toward something not new.
That's all. Your OP was far too definitive.
I don't think we're even discussing the same thing. I was basically saying "you can do the same thing again, but it's a new experience every time". If you're just seeking to relive a previous experience, it won't be as fulfilling as experiencing it as it's own unique experience... ie. don't get bogged down in nostalgia or trying to recreate something, because it won't work. Sure, it's obvious and logical on one level, but that doesn't mean our irrational minds don't impose that expectation at times.
I'm not saying you have to do something different every time, with a new partner. I'm saying that each time you do it, it's a new experience, and if you let yourself get bogged down with expectation based on past experiences, you won't be focused and bringing your energy to the NOW experience.
relating back to the OP--
I used to smoke infrequently. It was a nice escape.
then as I had more time and money on my hands, more frequently.
then eventually every day
then a few times a day.
I eventually realized that I wasn't getting high anymore, and I was having much more fun sober than stoned.
Very gradually, the activity which used to be an escape had become the part of myself I was trying to escape from.
Quote from: Nigel on March 19, 2009, 08:27:04 PM
I don't think we're even discussing the same thing. I was basically saying "you can do the same thing again, but it's a new experience every time". If you're just seeking to relive a previous experience, it won't be as fulfilling as experiencing it as it's own unique experience... ie. don't get bogged down in nostalgia or trying to recreate something, because it won't work. Sure, it's obvious and logical on one level, but that doesn't mean our irrational minds don't impose that expectation at times.
I'm not saying you have to do something different every time, with a new partner. I'm saying that each time you do it, it's a new experience, and if you let yourself get bogged down with expectation based on past experiences, you won't be focused and bringing your energy to the NOW experience.
IIIII think I get it. Like a dissolving of expectation? That's better.
We were definitely mixing apple and and hogloaf there.
Come to think of it we were, in a way, saying the same thing.
Quote from: Nigel on March 19, 2009, 04:32:22 PM
One thing I've (mostly) learned is that every time, for fun to be truly fulfilling, it must be a new experience. It can be a new experience doing the same thing you've done before, but if you try to go back to previous fun and try to re-experience it, you're dabbling in nostalgia and your fun will lack the depth of joy you're trying to relive. Two sayings come to mind: you can never go home again, and each enlightenment is only good for one person, one time. It took me a long time to really understand the meaning of the first one, and the second one was the key to it.
You can never re-use fun, you have to make new fun each time. Sometimes you're not done with the first fun for weeks and weeks, even years, but once that fun is over, the next fun has to be a new experience and a new energy.
I'm talking about not being trapped in nostalgia, basically. No matter how many times I wake up in the morning, it's a new experience. No matter how many times I go to B's house and burn shit in his back yard, it's a new experience. If I let myself be too focused on that one time we did it and it was so much fun and let's try to make that happen again, I'm not having NEW fun, I'm trying to necromance OLD fun. Fun is in the present moment though, not in nostalgia. The 4000th time you have sex with your partner is a new, distinct experience... it's NOT the same sex, or the same orgasm, as the previous 3999 times. But if you start thinking about how awesome it used to be, and try to make it that, it can suck all the energy out of the NOW-sex.
You may think that's so obvious that it should go without saying, but it took me a while to really figure it out, and maybe other people did too.
Quote from: hunter s.durden on March 19, 2009, 08:33:58 PM
Quote from: Nigel on March 19, 2009, 08:27:04 PM
I don't think we're even discussing the same thing. I was basically saying "you can do the same thing again, but it's a new experience every time". If you're just seeking to relive a previous experience, it won't be as fulfilling as experiencing it as it's own unique experience... ie. don't get bogged down in nostalgia or trying to recreate something, because it won't work. Sure, it's obvious and logical on one level, but that doesn't mean our irrational minds don't impose that expectation at times.
I'm not saying you have to do something different every time, with a new partner. I'm saying that each time you do it, it's a new experience, and if you let yourself get bogged down with expectation based on past experiences, you won't be focused and bringing your energy to the NOW experience.
IIIII think I get it. Like a dissolving of expectation? That's better.
We were definitely mixing apple and and hogloaf there.
Come to think of it we were, in a way, saying the same thing.
Yeah, actually I think we are. :)
Quote from: Cramulus on March 19, 2009, 08:30:32 PM
I eventually realized that I wasn't getting high anymore, and I was having much more fun sober than stoned.
I've gone through that. I don't know how people do that for years and years. Getting stoned everyday gets old after about 3 months. The giggles wear off, and all you are is lazy.
(well I still smoke more frequently than I probably should. but I've learned to take time off occasionally so it can become fun again.)
Quote from: Cainad on March 19, 2009, 06:39:26 PM
OP: :mittens:
I feel like I'm in a similar position. I hate sounding like a Discordian elitist, but some of these people have no idea what fun is. Luckily, there are a few people on campus who share the sentiment that we ought to do something hysterically fun instead of just getting drunk and doing nothing.
I think that in a lot of cases, they have a really good idea of what fun is, it's just not the kind of fun you're interested in.
And then again, some people really DO have a hard time concocting fun, which I think is a real skill and a valuable one, but fun can take a lot of different forms. Some of the most fun I've ever had, EVER, was sitting on Optimus Pinecone's porch in the summer, drinking beer and not really having anything to say. Some of the most fun I've ever had was also driving around with B and leaving bizarre thank-you notes and gifts on people's porches. Some of it was going down into the pipe with whiskey and a bunch of raucous, singing boys, and spray-painting until we were high on paint fumes.
It's good to have the instigators, the concoctors of fun like Cramulus. But fun can take a lot of different forms, and because it's a state of mind, it's hard to judge anyone else's fun. I mean, look at scrapbooking. That shit boggles my mind, but tons of people find it fun.
Quote from: hunter s.durden on March 19, 2009, 08:36:40 PM
Quote from: Cramulus on March 19, 2009, 08:30:32 PM
I eventually realized that I wasn't getting high anymore, and I was having much more fun sober than stoned.
I've gone through that. I don't know how people do that for years and years. Getting stoned everyday gets old after about 3 months. The giggles wear off, and all you are is lazy.
Wow... that must be some kind of weed you guys smoke ;-)
Quote from: Cramulus on March 19, 2009, 08:49:26 PM
(well I still smoke more frequently than I probably should. but I've learned to take time off occasionally so it can become fun again.)
Fo' Sho'.
Once stupid shit stops being funny, or the ideas stop flowing, it's time to take a breaks. Once it becomes something you just
do with no childlike joy it becomes shit.
Because of my infrequent use I rarely come to that point, but it's something to become mindful of.
Fun is hard to define. It appears that as soon as you define something as being fun it stops being fun, because the fun you have doing something is not necessarily a function of what you are doing -- much of the time it's the context, and the particular context of not having done something before is occasionally enough to make it fun even if once you know how to do it it's not fun at all.
Some of the most fun I've had is taking a walk at 3am on new years eve wearing a raincoat over a tshirt and going out sleep-deprived with a friend to get an energy drink and chat about coding while we waited for dunkin donuts to open. This was fun the first several times. It ceased to be fun after a while. That kind of fun is not explicitly replicable.
Some stuff is generally pretty fun much of the time. But you can also wear it out.
Quote from: hunter s.durden on March 19, 2009, 08:36:40 PM
Quote from: Cramulus on March 19, 2009, 08:30:32 PM
I eventually realized that I wasn't getting high anymore, and I was having much more fun sober than stoned.
I've gone through that. I don't know how people do that for years and years. Getting stoned everyday gets old after about 3 months. The giggles wear off, and all you are is lazy.
I politely disagree.
Quote from: Dr Hoopla on March 19, 2009, 09:29:32 PM
Quote from: hunter s.durden on March 19, 2009, 08:36:40 PM
Quote from: Cramulus on March 19, 2009, 08:30:32 PM
I eventually realized that I wasn't getting high anymore, and I was having much more fun sober than stoned.
I've gone through that. I don't know how people do that for years and years. Getting stoned everyday gets old after about 3 months. The giggles wear off, and all you are is lazy.
I politely disagree.
Sorry.
Quote from: hunter s.durden on March 19, 2009, 08:36:40 PM
I've gone through that. I don't know how people do that for years and years. Getting stoned everyday gets old after about 3 months. The giggles wear off, and all I am is lazy.
I haven't used weed as a source of fun in years. It was kind of fun when it was still new and exciting, but mostly for me it's just a way to relax. If you're trying to de stress, there's nothing like a soak'n'toak.
On the other side, I have a friend who breaks his neck to find this stuff so he'll have a good time, and inevitably things go exactly the same way. Lame.
Never learns.