manunderstress.com

Is it worth it to rage against something intangible like bureaucracy? I imagine not. Why is ‘collective man’ so fucking useless? The Kafka within me just won’t submit quietly. Ok, instead of succumbing to fantasies of workplace violence, I’ll just listen to the Circle Jerks…

So the other day after observing a child throw a tantrum, and in the wake of a mini-internal tantrum of my own, I was thinking about how advanced whining over not-getting-what-one-wants can actually become. We just hide it better as adults. As children, it is very over-the-top emotional rage, usually culminating in public outburst and crying. By our 20s we perhaps don’t cry as much, but still rage a little, but for the most part we keep it out of the public. Or we become intellectual about it; about how we are in the right and deserve X, and Y that got in our way is the source of all evil. So, in contemplating expectation, I thought I would profile three celebrity personalities and look at the differences.

Sisyphus. Confined to a life of daily disappointment, he is the Jesus of the secular set, representing the poor and misfortunate many of this world. Perpetually disappointed, he is hardened, a beaten down calloused man whose hope has long been vanquished. He expects nothing because everything is dead by way of cynicism.

Tom Cruise. TC is the proverbial child-mind gone wild: enough celebrity and wealth to finance the deepest voyage into the depths of surreal, self-important fanaticism, polishing an unbalanced and unchecked ego. As such, like Kim Jong-il, when he whines, he gets. When he doesn’t get, he goes slightly more insane. Like a Zoo raised Cheetah, he wouldn’t last a day in the real world, where he’d most certainly be an overworked project manager. Mission very possible.

The Dude. Perhaps the most ironic example of maturity, the Dude represents a highly evolved attitude of staying flexible in the face of adversity. With virtually no expectation to begin with, the Dude is thrown only by highly unusual circumstances, but maintains his integrity in dealing with them, with the assistance of a little THC. The Dude is an existential hero because like a Buddhist monk he has nullified the concept of expectation before it owns him. Bravo, Dude, bravo.

But in the end I wish we still had public tantrums as adults. Going out would be that much more interesting.

I’ve had two itinerant visitors recently, the first of which transformed the house next door to me, approximately 15ft away, into a 24×7 crunk-hall fiesta, booooooming in such a way that I could barely hear the internet, or my silly thoughts. That made me mad. I tried the Buddhist thing, I tried to ignore it, I tried to get used to it, but it would sneak up on me unawares, and I would be fuming like a madman outside asking whoever was on their porch at the time, visibly irritated but polite, to “maybe turn the bass down a little bit.” These requests were often met, however shruggingly blithe, yet the next night retained no memory of the previous one. When I daydreamed about it, I imagined noise so persistent that I would eventually loose it, street arguments and gun battles would ensue (I would have to get a gun of course, a really good one), and as is typical to my imaginings a tragedy would occur, when one of them would grab a nearby groupie to use as a human shield, as villains do, and all of a sudden I have unintentionally taken the life of an innocent. Or I am hit, and become a celebrity vegetable, and the fucking Republicans try and keep me alive. The horror.

My other visitor actually moved into my mailbox for a few weeks, on and off, and let me pet it once when I was drunk. It was amazing, I exclaimed to drunk onlookers, who didn’t seemed as impressed as I was. But instantly a connection was made, unlike my neighbors, who I instantly hated with that animal hate humans reserve especially for each other. The bushes would rustle often when I passed through the front door, and sometimes I’d get a glimpse of the little lady flying haphazardly away in a low, clumsy course across the yard. She’s here to stay I thought. Then one night leaving the house, I was startled to see her sitting so calmly in the mailbox, alone, and she returned the fright and flew away. I then stood outside the car in what must be considered paralyzing maternal agony for a few moments, worrying what would become of her, before remembering that I eat chicken, and therefore it’s kind of hypocritical to care about stray birds.

But then an interesting thing happened as I was further conspiring with the neighbors about the new menace, preparing for the worst; both my visitors vanished without a trace.

Another thing nobody told me about, like currywurst, is this fantastic place called the Container Store. Go ahead, laugh, as you have all been conspiring to keep it a secret from me for years. While everyone else has led perfectly “containered” lives, I’ve been suffering in an agonizing distopia of poorly containered closets, shelves, cupboards, and subconscious. But the secret is out…and soon I too will have a container for everything: my libido, my thoughtlessness, my irrational ambitions, my procrastination, and my gravitationally ignorant idealism.

From a Church on Hill St. Thing is, I saw this same sign near verbatim over ten years ago in Athens, GA on a particularly very hot day riding in my little-to-no AC Subaru down Oglethorpe Ave. It was funny then. But apparently God is running out of original threats.

I’ve brought up my fascination with non-lethal weapons before. And let me tell you, whether it’s military adventurism, fraternity pranks, or good ol’ domestic abuse, non-lethal weapons can play a big part in your life. With no casualties everyone’s a winner, in a non-lethal utopia by way of a sticky foam rave kind of way, where pain is only an illusion, and therefore, not real, right? In no time we’ll all be mad with laughter, at the mere thought of “war.”

My problem with future weapons technologists however, is that they just aren’t thinking outside the box enough. Nuclear missiles? Come on. That’s so 1980s. We need to have fun with this. We need a Willy Wonka of future weapons. Previously I mentioned my idea for the Ibiza Techno-BubbleBox, capable of turning any street corner disturbance into a full-on Ibiza style bubble rave. To build upon this I’m currently developing several alternatives such as the the spaghetti web, slushy riot crowd-control spray, milk non-duds, meatball catapult , and a very simple replacement ammunition for all machine fired projectiles, part of the forthcoming Nerf-War package. There’s one more technology in the early stages of development known as “pizza delivery.” It’s very complicated but the idea is that wherever there are dangerous crowds, enemy lines, etc., precise geographic coordinates are logged through fancy GPS technology, and then the “interwebs” contact food-service giant Halliburton and orders a large number and variety of pizzas to said target location. When the pizzas arrive the crowd loses it’s will to fight and begins to dissipate amidst the confusion of pepperoni and who ordered which pizza. It’s the perfect confusion.

For products already on the market see slip n’ slide, jumpy things, and of course the old standby: opera. Nothing immobilizes like bad music.

Since war doesn’t want to go away, shouldn’t we just make it fun and more safe?

Christ, I wish someone would hurry up and remake Logan’s Run. Damn those Wachowski brothers and their Speed Racer!

It occurred to me that Logan’s Run is perhaps little more than the dystopian imagining of the uber-welfare/warfare state gone slightly awry. After all, we may not have Sleepshop, the public sporting-extermination of those over 21, but we always seem to have a convenient war for them. Thou shalt be wary, very wary, of government intentions.

I’m all for studies and research and anything in general that makes sense where there formerly was none, or tosses some long standing, ill-begotten misconception out of the window, but I find all this happiness research stuff kind of silly. Um, The World Database of Happiness…are you kidding me? Now I’m a big fan of the InterWebs, and the varied geekness you may find on said webs, including dorky databases, but I really hope they were being ironic with that name. I doubt it however, because the website is so horrifyingly 1996 that the author wouldn’t have- wait a minute….the whole thing is a great big giant ironical culture jam! Perhaps the Yes Men are behind it.

But seriously, isn’t it fucking obvious safe to assume that people will be relatively happier with more wealth, with more health, with more freedom, with more leisure time, but that these things in and of themselves do not guarantee “happiness?” Didn’t we learn this boring lesson over and over again in all those bad novels that we had to read in high school? What more is there to say? And I’m suspicious about these psychological polls because they are fallible and people are also fallible (and they lie, conscious or not!), so let’s stick to measuring things that make sense, like blood pressure. I know this: the smiley checkout lady at CVS will be happier than I will ever be, and good for her. But I don’t envy her line of work, or to be honest, even her smileyness. That’s right, I’m Scrooge, bitch!

Dave Eggers, author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, and Valentino Achak Deng, Sudanese refugee and subject of Egger’s new quasi-fictional biography What is the What?, spoke tonight at the Margaret Mitchell house. It was one of those typical writerly events, free cheese with $10 admission, annoying introductions (what for?), no drum solos, minor technical difficulties. Dave didn’t speak much about his writing as most of the time was spent interviewing the affable Valentino who spoke about the tragedy and fortune that led him to the US. Interestingly enough, the aspect that moved me the most wasn’t so much the genocide tragedy (which, like all of them, are so awful they are difficult to even process) but Valentino’s emphasis on the fact that he did not suffer, that he escaped the suffering, and that those who didn’t escape are the ones who suffered. Now that, is fucking human. Survivor guilt was palpable, paralleled with the first-world status guilt of the audience, most of whom were not refugees, and whose lives nowhere approached this level of tragedy. Whose most taxing dilemmas stem from having too many choices to contemplate. How we labor over freedom, if we have the luxury.

I’ve often thought there was a special bond between the animated and equally rhetorical dictators Chavez and Dubya. They have a Yin and Yang thing going on. While Bush has arguably fanned the fires of terrorism worldwide, weakening the international reputation of the US in the process, Chavez has rallied the troops with his anti-imperialist USA rhetoric to starting new heights in Latin America. And he rubs it in Dubya’s face whenever he can. Now Bush is hitting back. They make great caricatures of political leaders, the only problem is that it’s without the caricature.

Sheldon Richman with the lowdown on the Latin America, and the connection between these two goons:

If Bush were truly interested in seeing poverty diminished and freedom increased in Latin America, he wouldn’t be playing these games, which will only give Chavez more grist for his propaganda mill. Prosperity and freedom require that governments back off, respect individual rights, and not try to direct economic affairs. Latin America needs neither socialism nor American-style state capitalism. It needs radical decentralization and genuinely free markets. Come to think of it, so does the United States.