Wednesday, November 20, 2002

Blah, Blah, Blah!

Here we go blogging with nothing to say. I seem to be bored, lately... that feeling of not having anything you want to do, and not wanting to do anything you have to do, and not really caring one way or another. I call that boredom. And there's nothing to do but wait for it to pass, like a cold or allergy season.



Speaking of boring, I am officially sick to death of John Mayer. Okay, so he's very cute; okay, so his songs are pleasant and tuneful... but he's so fucking bland! And he's on the radio all the time... if I have to hear "Your Body is a Wonderland" (with it's disturbing image of a 'bubblegum tongue') one more time, I am going to go off the deep end. Of course, one problem is that I live in an area where almost all of the radio stations are owned by the same company, and have the same programming as well as the same commercials (which are timed to come on at the same time, so you can't escape them). Those which aren't owned by this company are owned by another giant well-orchestrated communications company, or are devoted to endlessly boring talk and/or community access programming.



I am going to have to get new batteries in my CD player and bring more CDs out to the car. I'll wait John Mayer out, that's what I'll do! And Cheryl Crow and Avril Levigne and all of these other faux-edgy pseudo-moderns. The rest of America will have to get tired of them eventually, and something new and interesting will happen.



I think it's just that we are entering one of the musical Dark Ages that comes along every now and again. Like the early 90s. Vast wastelands of nothingness, where popular music transitions from one great time to another. When everything starts sounding alike, prefabricated for instant popularity, because record executives are trying to sell something just like that which sold before, and people are dumb enough to buy it. I think what's wrong right now is this market-fear in which everything is a clone of something that has already been proven successful... so now we know what happens when there are too many Boy-Bands and Britney-Clones. It seems to me that right now, the entire market is focussed on a group of people (young teens) who can't be expected to have developed any taste yet, and who always do exactly what the Disney Channel tells them to do.



I have to respect Disney for its thoroughness, and the quality of product, but honey they are the new Evil Empire... they are garnering such power over the public that they are no longer catering to trends, they are dictating them. Mark my words, one day we'll have a Lawrence brother or a Lizzie McGuire cast-member as our president. It will be an improvement, no doubt (Lawrence brothers are awfully cute, and they're probably smarter than a Bush or Clinton), but it's still creepy.



Speaking of creepy and Bush (practically synonyms), I just heard from my coworker that the Senate passed the Homeland Security Bill, carrying not only the entire GOP but a good sampling of Democrats as well. Funny how "Homeland" and "Fatherland" sound so much alike in this context. Grandmother also told me the other day that the arms inspectors have begun their sweep of Iraq and its weapons holdings. I'm told that Hussein claimed that he has no weapons at all, which nobody believes... and I had to point out to Grandmother that the reason we all know that he's lying is because we are the ones who sold the arms to him in the first place. I imagine it would be difficult to produce a receipt, though... I'm sure Fawn Hall and good old Ollie North (who is now considered a national hero for reasons that completely escape me) shredded it with the rest of the Iran/Contra documents.



It's all so very disturbing that it doesn't really seem quite real. I keep feeling like I'm going to wake up and it will all have been an unpleasant dream... or perhaps an over-elaborate practical joke in very poor taste.



Though I usually prefer holding to Henry James' edict of "never apologize, never explain," I want to apologetically explain myself in the matter of critical population growth, about which I lashed out in my last post. Though nobody complained of my opinion, I have come to feel (during my usual compulsive and repetitive re-reading of my own work) that by overstating my case for dramatic effect, I essentially lied. I do want to assure people who have children or are considering having children that I do not blame them for the problem. I mean, there are so many other globally irresponsible things going on — things to which I myself contribute: beef production and oil consumption to name but two that come immediately to mind — that I have absolutely no right to characterize people having children as irresponsible.



The phenomenon I complain of is the assumption of prerogative in having children. It seems to me (and I may be wrong) that people don't think about the sociological and ecological effect of each single child born into this world; they take child-bearing rather for granted. Many people seem seldom to question their own fitness as parents, and they certainly don't think about the resources that each life uses up, they don't seem to comprehend the scope of overpopulation. They merely have children because they expect that they will, without thinking about it at all. But this is a gross generalization of my own observations, and considering the necessarily limited scope of those observations, I shouldn't be making such a generalization in the first place.



So, having got all of that off my chest, I am going to go eat some lunch. Later today I am going to see Far from Heaven starring the delicious Julianne Moore; and tomorrow I am going to see Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. On Friday I am invited to a literary salon, and Sunday I have a drag show... so it doesn't look like I'm going to have time to be bored. Things are gearing up again. Soon it will all be far too much, and I will look back nostalgically on this period of bland ennui as an Elysium of leisure.



On this last topic, here are some sage words, which were the text of a sampler my mother once received as a white-elephant gift from a church Christmas party (I only saw it once, and I don't know why I remember it so clearly, except that it is so terribly, terribly true):



This animal, Man, is such a fool:

When it's hot, he wants it cool;

When it's cool, he wants it hot.

He's always wanting what is not.




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