May 27th, 2009
What pleasure it is to make fun of fat people, those lumbering sideshow marvels that we see every day. What isn’t funny about the fellow who ate too many doughnuts and now needs the same daily assistance as the veteran who took too much shrapnel? Even the man who shuffles around at a quarter ton will guffaw at the half ton man confined to a bed.
Most of us feel that the ridicule is justified, that managing one’s weight is an effort of will. If these people only exercised a little discipline they would be as svelte and attractive as the balance of humanity. Do fat people have an excuse? The truth is they have an exceptional excuse. They are made of the same cheap materials and shoddy workmanship as the rest of us. The only singular thing about fat people is the relative conspicuousness of their failing.
The gremlins of greed come in many forms and there hasn’t been a human born that wasn’t chained to at least one of them. In this world of few fulfillments the pleasure of food is the least ephemeral – the one that can be got while others are out of reach. If someone has eaten their way to obesity let he who is without an abiding pain in his own soul make the first wisecrack.
In a fair world ignorance would hang over the belt, cruelty would smell like old soup. We might then shoot our darts at different elephants. The next time a woman emerges from the bodega with an armload of strudel – make your dinosaur sounds, but know that in doing so you’ve failed the human race as much as she has.
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May 20th, 2009
What diabolical process created the contemporary hipster? I contend that it was the coddled upbringing; the conspicuously consuming baby boomers raising a generation of spoiled children and telling them that no door is closed to them, that creativity is the highest virtue and imagination the greatest asset. They failed to mention that creativity requires reason to achieve anything, that imagination must be true if it wants an audience.
Too many of these self-absorbed creatures think they hear the call of the artist. As they pursue this appropriated role they find they are out of their depth, unable bring any kind of illumination to the mysteries of life. Some will turn aside at this realization; the hipster presses on. This unfortunately coincides with our ‘post-modern’ era where the work of a great master becomes harder to distinguish from the work of a five-year old.
To strengthen their facade hipsters look to emulate what they see as the trappings of the artist. Many a hipster thinks alcoholism is something other than a tragedy and that heroin addiction is to be admired. Others pursue a healthier lifestyle but for all their effort live in the city. Most are fundamentalist atheists (the rest will ape any religion that is not their own) and ardently defend some form of Utopian politics of which they are only marginally acquainted with.
The infamous hipster irony is a defense mechanism, because when they do something sincere it is an unmitigated disaster. In the end the hipster is one who has failed in the process of individuation, dead weight in our culture of specialists. The other day I passed by an aspiring busker with a ukulele as he sang out with total conviction, “…I wish I was spe-cial…” I’m sure he does.
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May 13th, 2009
Last week I attended the announcement of winners for the Annual Bukowski Tavern ‘Pint and Pen’ Contest. Bukowski Tavern in Cambridge, Massachusetts features a peanut butter burger and a admirably broad selection of beers I don’t drink. Every year they host a local writing competition in honor of the late, miserable Charles Bukowski. I don’t much care for Mr. Bukowski’s writing and frankly almost everything about the contest disgusts me about as much as the peanut butter burger.
So there I was, having entered for the fourth year in a row. I wished I could have washed my hands of it, but the contest requires roughly a one page story, is free to enter, has a very limited number of entries, and the top prize is $2500. I’m ashamed to say it, but I can’t see not writing a one page story for a shot at $2500 – I don’t care if the theme is patio furniture.
The first year I did my level best to write what I thought was a fitting tribute to this author whose work I didn’t much care for. I felt like a fraud and was fully prepared to lose. What I was not prepared for was losing to a borderline retarded poem (no offense to the author) about bowling that followed the rhyme scheme of “Roses are Red…”
Each year I look around at my fellow losers – journeymen writers in leather jackets who have drunk themselves to depression and pour their souls into vignettes about cigarettes and misunderstood artists only to get beat out by a story of personified goldfish who dish about teen dramas. Bukowski must be turning in his grave so rapidly that his cadaver ought to be looked at as a source for alternative energy. Maybe those scores of rejected writers who try to think of better sentences than “the moon was orange,” and better plots than ones that end with basically the same twist as “The New Kid on the Block” – maybe they are the real tribute to Charles Bukowski, poet laureate of the loser.
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May 6th, 2009
I’ve said before that I have absolutely no idea what I am talking about; this is my fundamental position when arguing any subject. Before you start wondering why I would admit to arguing from such a weak position know that I think it is a strong position. So strong in fact that in a few words I’ve already convinced you of my initial premise.
Most people will tell you something is so just by virtue of it sounding good to them – and go on to defend it like a mining claim. We are specially interested in ideas that seem counter-intuitive (perhaps because our own intuition has embarrassed us so many times). A rare few will found their arguments on specific books, articles, documentaries, and other rubbish.
We should shut out the opinions of friends, ignore pundits completely, and disregard their quoted facts and statistics, for these will always lead us awry. We must also be wary of our susceptibility to the lure of rhetoric and the fever of polemics. The most rhetorically convincing argument will often have the least substance, and the most divisive issue will attract the most wrong-headed ideologues.
I feel my position is strong because I recognize that it is nearly impossible for you or I to be correct about anything. Nearly every notion that we cleave to will one day be as foolish as the idea that the Earth is flat and that sea serpents patrol the brink. Of course there is no advantage in knowing nothing, so we must read the balderdash and sift the hokum, putting a premium on the testimony of proven (often elderly) experts who are wise enough to admit that they don’t know most of what is crucial to their field. If we pan for these few grains of what we hope are gold we make ourselves a little richer than the rest who sit upon their hoard of pyrite. In either case we should practice humility when we pretend to represent the truth.
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