What Are You Listening To?

We walk around our cities today with a sort of voluntary obliviousness that one cannot help but love.  I'm talking about us and our ipods.  On sidewalks, in coffee shops, in the gym, on the bus; all of us shutting out the noise of the world so we can live in our own little private paradises.  The only question I have for my fellow zombies is, what are you listening to???

Does that sound like a rhetorical question?  One that I've asked to be polite, even though I can guarantee that whatever you're listening to is nowhere near as fucking awesome as what I'm listening to?  I think many of us think of it like that sometimes.  After all, a person's choice in music (what type you prefer/how much variation you appreciate/how intense is your internal flame/etc.) says a lot about their identity.  Wouldn't you agree?

Like that little blue-haired kid, who could be goth (but who knows with kids today?), wearing jeans so fucking tight it looks like he's gonna sterilize himself and essentially shoot blanks for the rest of his life; what is he listening to?  Or that twenty-something female walking down State St. with arms full of bags, sassed out to the max with her fine self, looking like she just did the shopping version of a city-wide pub-crawl; what the fuck is she listening to?  I'd really like to know...

In that way, I kind of envy people who read books a lot in public.  A book is somewhat similar to a song/album in the sense that it is a snapshot of a person's artistic idiosyncrasies, perfectly packaged for individual consumer purchase.  The major difference: you can't hold the idea of the song in your hand, but a book makes people aware of what you choose to fill your head with.  To me, (although I love my ipod obsessively and could never imagine my life without its glorious presence providing me real instant happiness whenever I fucking please), we are cheating ourselves by imbibing such a publicly invisible art form.

What's that you've got there, 1984 by George Orwell?  Well now, that is one of my favorite books of all time.  How do you like it?  Yeah, my sentiments exactly.  Oh, me?  I'm flicking through Bertrand Russel's The History of Western Philosophy.  Yeah, its boring and a bit daunting, but I'm into that sort of weird shit.  Sorry.  Looks like you have the cooler book.

See how much fun that was?????  So in the future, since none of us are likely to start picking up leisure reading any time soon (excluding all my nerd homies), and we're definitely going to insist on our little bubbles of personal auditory heaven, why not share what you're bumping?  Don't worry, even if you listening to shitty techno or 80's pop, we won't judge you... promise.  :)

(Here's what I've been listening to... how about you?)

Begging for Smiles

So today I'm coming to the realization that intellectual prowess is just like any other activity you'll run into in life; practice makes perfect.  Lately, I've been sucking really bad at this.  I'm not sure why.  It was as if recently, something in my head clicked, and everything I had done to build up my knowledge in this world had accidentally turned me into a giant dickhead.  That just didn't fit the script as I felt that the only natural consequence of the examined life was tranquility.  Yet here I was telling other people that their opinions and hopes and dreams were total bullshit because they were built on a fucking foundation of lies. 

That is obviously no way to address a fellow human being in the modern world.  To be frank, looking back and reading certain previous posts in this blog makes me laugh at the complete delusional supremacy that I was experiencing.  Does that mean that I necessarily disagree now with all that I had previously felt so vehemently about?  Hardly.  However it does signify a moment of clarity in my life; we little humans are undoubtedly the permanent focal point of our own existences, and those existences are utterly pitiful in scale as compared to what we think of as "existence" generally.

That being said, good luck ENJOYING YOUR OWN LIFE WHILE AVOIDING BEING AN ASSHOLE AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE.  That is essentially my new creed.  Speaking for others who aren't asking to be spoken for is just fucking stupid, and I feel like myself and those of like-minded character have done that for a bit now.  So if eyes ever are struck by a screen's light emissions, and the words of The Philosurfer Manifesto are carved into your oculars, know that I speak for not you but me.  I can no longer carry the burden of trying to please any of you, because it is quite a difficult task with only residual benefits.

Is there a diamond in this rough?  Some hope in this despair?  Order in this chaos?  If there is any sort of value into this experience between you (the reader) and I (the obsessive compulsive narcissistic author), I hope that it starts with a chuckle and ends with a smile.  Do not take this shit at all serious, because that would be a humongous waste of time.  And by "this shit," I mean to say yours and my life.  Plus, please don't be upset for all the cursing that goes on in this little space; I know that it "makes you sound less intelligent," but fuck that fucking illogical horseshit.

Fuck, as we all are plenty aware by now, is not only one of the most versatile words in the English language, but it is also one of the most beautiful.  We all know we love to say fuck.  In fact, when George Carlin was asked what his favorite word in the English language was, he responded with "motherfucker."  I have to agree that it does roll of the tongue quite nicely.

So please, smile for me motherfucker.  :)    


(Here is a picture of my kitty... hope it helps.)