Posted by John on May 19, 2002 at 10:00:21:
In Reply to: Re: pie hole alert! posted by John on May 19, 2002 at 09:58:55:
Of course how could i forget Henry Rollins.
: Thank you for this moment of sanity. While reading your rant, I felt like all of my posted and unposted rants are not wasted, only not correct enough for people to hear. Well I say screw correct and just do what is right. It was very nice to hear the same voices that role in my head being spoken from someone outside my head. I think it is the strangest phenomena that we all hate the same things and yet continue to do them. You know if we quit, all of us just quit doing them, one by one, what could anyone do. For example, one of the stupidest and most pointless customs of our time- the business suit, including necktie. They are too hot, uncomfortable, hard to care for and almost everyone hates wearing them except those few who derive a sense of power or supremacy from being dressed like that. Well why is it still worn? Because it looks professional. Well it only looks professional because we say it does. If we just quit wearing them, then they wouldn't be professional! We coud define a new standard. For God's sake we made the damn standard in the first place, and it has less backing it than our monetary unit!!! I could go on and on and on.
: So I say let's rant a little. What just pisses you off? I can think of many great ranters:
: George Carlin
: Zack DeLaRocha (Rage Against the Machine)
: Tool
: Even God (Jesus in the Temple, at Job, at Israel every few generations in the old testament)
: : *warning, rant ahead, for no particular reason, sorry! i really have no idea why i wrote this, and even less why i'm posting it.*
: : i think to myself, i'll write something. i'll create something, i'll do something creative and real for a few minutes, maybe it will be something that doesnt' suck too badly. : : i think, that will be good. i'll write somethign. i haven't written anything decent in a long while. : : but then i get distracted. this pulls my mind right back out into the bright street where all the people are walking around with the dogs shitting on everything, and buying things and making secret judgments about anyone they see. this person is a Good Consumer! this person is a Bad Person because they are not consuming, they are just standing around begging or performing street theater or spitting on my windshield, or all of the above, or minding their own business. yeah, i get right out into the street where everything is common. and anyone can say anything they want about anyone else. it is only in our homes where we believe that no one should be making any judgments about us, because now we are clothed with the secrecy which we have purchased and pay taxes for and so on. we have clothed our bodies with walls and furniture and cool air, and this gives us the right to privacy. something connects in our minds. is this cultural, or something deeper? body as temple, temple as structure, structure as outer walls, skin as inner walls, something like that. somewhere is our deepest sanctum, but it is far away from buildings and walls and things we consume. often we don't find it unless we are wandering around in the woods. : : also i think that authority means nothing without the threat of force behind it. the deadlier the force, the more authoritative the authority is. the more people the deadly force can touch, the larger the authority is. there is no such thing as authority without an implied threat. people who can exert this Threatening Power are called Leaders. we look up to leaders, we follow them. : : even on shows like star trek, where we have the Prime Directive and where everyone is supposed to be Enlightened, where hunger on earth has been vanquished and where there are no more wars, the star ships go out and they blast away at any alien they don't like very much. every conflict is always settled with a phase pistol or a photon torpedo. and there is always a conflict. which of course has more to do with Ratings than anything else, which means they can sell advertising, which means that good looking or funny people will pitch things to us so that we will Consume. violence and consumption, violence and consumption. we can't get away from any of it. : : star trek reminds me of the united states, where at least theoretically hunger has been averted (not completely true in poor neighborhoods or at least among poor children or the homeless, but then again i heard an immigrant say one time that he has friends who want to come to america, and the reason is that they want to go to a country where the poor people are fat), and we aren't making war among the states any more, everyone is basically at peace within our borders, and yet we go out into other countries and drop bombs on them any time we want to, and we supply arms to whoever seems to be giving us some sort of strategic advantage, or whatever. the poorer the country is, the easier it is to bomb them because the poorer they are the smaller their voices are. might still makes right, whatever anyone says. power comes directly out of wealth, or the ability to Consume. this is why big corporations and big banks are in some ways more powerful than governments now. : : we end up i think with a collective notion that we are more righteous than other peoples, other nations, because we have more stuff than they do. we have worked harder and smarter (the notion goes) and therefore we deserve to push everyone around and drop bombs on anyone we please to protect our Way of Life, our Right to Consume. this is our highest political Good these days. well that and The Family. and everyone has a different definition of Family, so half the time we aren't sure what someone says when they say that. its like a word that gets repeated over and over again until you can't know anymore what it means. i only know what my own family is, and the definition wrapped around that changes a bit every day. : : that is the way it seems to me, but then again i'm just a little guy, or as my friend mark once said, i'm just a little squirrel trying to get a nut in this big big world.
: :
: : *end rant, ok if you read this far, sorry about all that. shutting pie hole.*