What Are We Gonna Do With All This Trash?: August 2011

August 18, 2011

Floatsam And Jetsam

So I know that telling you about a wealthy entrepreneur (Peter Thiel - full story here) investing over $1 million toward efforts to create a floating, Libertarian-style island nation sounds like a zany story (or even like an awesome video game - hello Bioshock), but yeah, that is just how the elite roll. Crazily.

But you know who also rolls crazily? Island-razing bands of criminals, among other sadistic motherf@%#ers. And while I'd love to sit here and type out point after point about why a Libertarian society would never, ever work -- I'll just sum up my thoughts like this: we, as a (primarily) human society, need some level of government/state-based intervention to keep us safe from ourselves. Is this sad since it means that we haven't evolved to a point where we aren't constantly taking physical, social, spiritual, or economic advantage of one another? It sure is. I'm sorry about that.

And while I'm all for people like Penn Jillette, Rand Paul, and other Ayn Rand-minded elitists with too much money rushing to their inevitable, grisly fate by moving to the ocean, don't think for 2 seconds that a bunch of hedonistic rich people are just going to magically build a utopian society full of personal freedoms with all of their dollar bills and "entrepreneurial zeal".

August 01, 2011

Post-Racial Society At Its Finest

*UPDATE* - David Sedaris channels Morrissey's views on Chinese people in a Guardian piece.

--Black valedictorian? Whoa.. slow down.. that's way too progressive for Arkansas.

--Regarding the recent debt ceiling brouhaha, Colorado Rep. Lamborn thinks working with Pres. Obama was like "touching a tar baby", was retroactively sorry about using that racially charged phrase, and was later quoted as saying, "Aw shucks, I didn't mean nuthin by it, no siree. A-hyuck."

--According to Fox News (now with 5% more fact-like content!!), Barack Obama doesn't have birthday parties, he has hip-hop barbecues! Word.

A History Of Trash

Trash, at first, was a pretty cool guy. You know, he’d come over with some beers, and you’d hang out and have a couple of laughs. Maybe Trash brought some weed with him, and you guys tried to sync up Dark Side Of The Moon with The Wizard Of Oz until you remembered you lost your VHS copy of that movie sometime in college and that you fucking hate Pink Floyd. Good times were had, nonetheless.

But then, you don’t know what changed, but Trash started to overstay his welcome. He’d just linger for hours, never taking the hint you wanted him to leave, no matter how many times you yawned obnoxiously or mentioned how early you had to get up tomorrow. Trash just didn’t get it. You were getting older. You didn’t have the time anymore to stay up until 3 a.m. to talk about the Port season of “The Wire” or how much you miss Jawbox. Eventually, you just stopped taking Trash’s phone calls and no longer replied to his group e-mails about sneaking into abandoned mental hospitals.

Last time you saw Trash, he was smoking alone outside a local dive bar, looking down at his decaying and mismatched shoes. You hoped he had been doing well. You hoped he had not been hurt by the disintegration of your friendship. And if he had, you wanted to comfort him. You wanted to tell him that even though people move on with their lives, it doesn’t mean they stop caring. You wanted him to see in your eyes a sincere appreciation for the time you shared, because all the relationships in our lives help make us who we are, and even if you weren’t the best of friends anymore, you wanted him to know that there would always be a piece of Trash in your heart.

But instead, you looked away and crossed the street. You were with your new girlfriend, and you really didn’t want to have to explain Trash to her. She’d never understand.