5 posts tagged “english”
A 40-minute timed response to an AP prompt about our money-centric American society:
Down the tracks
beautiful McMansions on a hill
that overlook a highway
There's riverboat casinos and you still
have yet to see a soul:
Jesusland
-Ben Folds, Jesusland
Once upon a time, before grande mocha doubleshot lattes with cream and sugar and a side of exploitation, before a million dollars was “chump change,” before The Fabulous Life of… was the only thing on television, people did not worship money. There was no Church of Scientology to milk its members of cash in exchange for salvation; a higher-level education did not cost more than a house; and the rich were not demigods afforded higher reverence than spiritual leaders. The ideals of American society, once billboards advertising the picture of equality and, as Lewis Lapham describes it, “egalitarianism,” have fallen upon the ground and become marred with dirt. It is no longer simply stock brokers and accountants who center their lives around money; it is all Americans.
The skewed priorities have reached past balding middle aged men with convertibles and slid their tentacles into the very core of the future of American society: teenagers. While teenagers are notorious for having distorted views of what things are important in life, the public image of adolescents as anarchistic antichrists has shifted to one of an overworked, exhausted bunch of kids. It is not an uncommon conversation topic sitting upon the lips of sleep-deprived Advanced Placement students: “Why? Why are we doing this to ourselves?” But this rhetorical question has a clear answer that almost no one mentions: money. Why are we losing sleep? So we can study more and get better grades. Why do we want better grades? So that we can go to a $45,000 plus-a-year big-name Ivy League college. Why do we want to attend these schools? So that we can get “good” jobs. And why do we want these “good” jobs, jobs that we will very likely not enjoy? So that we can make money. Whatever happened to learning for the sake of learning? Where did “the pursuit of happiness” disappear to? We’re torturing ourselves for money, and to what end? Will it take us until death is whispering upon our shoulders to realize that we have not enjoyed our lives, that despite the millions of Benjamin Franklins smiling at us, we are a sad, unhappy group of people?
We have, as a society, failed ourselves. We have forgotten to balance our devotion to money with “faiths in family, honor, religion, intellect, and social class.” Political and social involvement is waning; more and more people are becoming disillusioned by this idea of a quantitative “life purpose,” that few things matter except for monetary gains. Yes, money can bring food and entertainment, but can it bring happiness? As Henry David Thoreau said, “Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.” Perhaps we are not a happy people, and may never again have the ability to be, blinded as we are by materialism, but take solace in the fact that we can be distracted from these misfortunes by the task of counting greenbacks.
When will you realize it doesn't pay
To be smarter than teachers, smarter than most boys?
[...]It can't get worse than this.
'Cause you'll soon be old enough to leave them
Without a notion of a care
You'll leave two fingers in the air
To linger there.
-Belle and Sebastian, Lord Anthony
I've been reading Equus in order to get a better grasp on all of this naked Dan Radcliffe hype (and to, you know, up my literature IQ),
But, although I'm only on the start of Act II, Shaffer is doing a fairly good job addressing a strange issue. I the play lacking in depth in terms of character, sometimes, but I suppose I am just used to authors handing me these sort of things on silver platters. Perhaps i'm underestimating myself altogether. I'll update again once I've finished the play, hopefully.
Moving on... we had to write a piece discussing our "cultural milieu" for English, so I came up with (what else) a satire (keep in mind I haven't proofread it yet):
Ruin
Or: How the Media is Keeping me from Impressing Boys
Kurt Vonnegut once made the apt observation that “we are what we pretend to be.” Few people are willing to accept this point, lest their carefully crafted facades crack upon the public’s discovery of their fraudulence. I, however, feel it necessary to uncover my true identity for, as Napoleon said, “It is the cause, not the death, that makes the martyr.” While this is most certainly not the death I would have chosen, I feel it pertinent to expose a faction of society (of which I am a part of) that has long been discriminated against: pseudo-intellectuals.
My kind is slowly withering and dying with the proliferation of tabloid culture and E! specials. How can I continue to pretend to be an intellectual if all people care about is popular culture‽ I don’t know if you’ve realized, but it’s nearly impossible to slip Kierkegaard quotes into a conversation about Tara Reid’s breasts. It’s a true travesty that the world has become so concerned with celebutantes the likes of Cory Kennedy that it leaves no place for pretentious douchebags like yours truly to flex their holier-than-thou muscles. Par example:
Me: I read this really interesting article in the Times yesterday on—
Media Sponge I: I know! I can’t believe Anna Nicole Smith was murdered! I mean like, I totally knew it would happen, but I’m still really shocked!
Me: No, that’s not really what—
Eavesdropping Media Sponge II: (whips around) What? Anna Nicole Smith was murdered? Oh my god! I can’t believe it! This is almost as bad as when Britney Spears didn’t feed her kid for three days!
Me: Wait, what? When did—
Unnecessarily Loud Media Sponge III: NO WAY! That was totally worse! Like I can’t even think of anything worse except for maybe when David Hasselhoff grew a third—
ME: Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower! (silence)
Not only is the media thwarting my attempts to appeal to the lower rungs of the intelligence spectrum, but the increasing mass appeal of “higher-level” reading such as The New York Times is saturating the market with real intellectuals. The presence of these scholars is further ruining my chances of appearing to be a unique, intelligent, worldly individual. I can’t brag about having superficially read works by Camus, Kafka, Molière, and Chekhov when every intellectual with opposable thumbs is blogging about the existential quandaries L’Etranger sparked in them.
It’s not only current events and literature that are being taken away from my people; perhaps if it was simply that, I would have kept quiet. But the growth of independent print and online magazines such as Spill, JPG, and N.E.E.T. have allowed more people than ever to access obscure music, art, and fashion than ever before. Few realize that a large part of the job of a pretend intellectual is to be informed enough about the indie scene so as to impress others with one’s knowledge of it. Alas![1] I can longer even cryptically quote songs on my AIM away message without someone recognizing them:
boxesandboxesof: hey charline
Auto response from sovvviet kitsch:
When will you realize it doesn't pay
To be smarter than teachers, smarter than most boys?
"So shut your mouth, start kicking the football."[2]
boxesandboxesof: ooh, belle & sebastian! I love them!!
sovvviet kitsch: Yeah, uh, they’re pretty good.
boxesandboxesof: I really wanna see them live!!
Auto response from sovvviet kitsch:
If you're wondering why
All the love that you long for eludes you
And people are rude and cruel to you
I'll tell you why
You just haven't earned it yet, baby[3]
boxesandboxesof: Moz!!
You understand the importance of this issue, don’t you? Just think about it: what would the world be without teenage and twentysomething pseudo-intellectual like me running around and blowing cigarette smoke in your face? Wouldn’t you miss hearing irrelevant references to MOMA exhibits and Beethoven’s 9th symphony in the Starbucks line? If you are any sort of civil rights advocate, you’ll realize the danger of the situation. If we let the media ruin the lives of pseudo-intellectuals with the spread of daft tabloids, high-culture newspapers, and independent magazines, what will stop it from going farther? Let this stand as a precedent to all future discrimination! But most importantly, “the more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it is.”[4]
[1] T.S. Eliot’s The Hollow Men, of course. Are you impressed?
[2] Belle and Sebastian’s Lord Anthony. How about now??
[3] The Smiths’ You Just Haven’t Earned It Yet Baby. No?
[4] Nothing? Not even an ooh? How about a little clap? Guys? Guys…?
I am sure you would all sooner jump off of a building than hear about my 2,000 word paper on T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men" (although some masochistic part of me is enjoying writing it), so here's some musica:
What song are you obsessed with right now?
I just discovered something more than slightly disconcerting! First off, Crispin Glover has always scared the holy bejeezus out of me, ever since I saw him in Back to the Future Part I. He just looks like the kind of skeevy greaseball who would pull up to you in a crowded bar and breath in your face with his vodka stained mouth. (Apparently I've thought about this more than I realized.) In any case, I was searching for some T.S. Eliot stuff for that paper of mine, and accidentally clicked images, and realized:
= 
This is one of those times where I can only sum up my thoughts adequately in an emoticon:
This was an English assignment, believe it or not. We were supposed to criticize some aspect of modern pop culture, so I chose my favourite subject of ridicule: scenesters.
Guide to the Modern Scenester
Or: “Hey scenester, hey hey scenester.”
You aren’t unique unless you’re just like every other nonconformist around you, you aren’t special unless you’re an Internet phenomenon (preferably for doing nothing, but being e-popular for making shitty art is acceptable too), and you’re not hot unless half of your face is covered by ratty extensions and oversized sunglasses. No, I’m not talking about a John Waters film—I’m talking about the world of scenesters. There is no doubt in my mind that the primary concern of scenesters (when they’re not worrying about whether or not their myspace picture is angled correctly) is fitting in. The desire to assimilate into a monochromatic pool of adolescents is second only to perhaps determining who loves internet celebrity and self proclaimed “Queen of the Beautifuls” Jeffree Star[1] more. The scuffle to be a conforming nonconformist (a la South Park’s goth kids, of course) leaves everyone without multicolored hair and Monroe piercings[2] in the dust—but don’t worry, I’m here to make sure that you can keep up.
The most important part of being scene is looking the part. (I know, I know, “Isn’t the scene about the music?” No, grasshopper, it appears you are wrong. Listening to the Spice Girls at age twenty-four is about the music—being scene is not.) First of all, you’re going to have to cut off all of your hair. Now, don’t start whining that you’ve been growing it out ever since someone called you a lesbian in seventh grade; if you’re going to commit to the scene there has to be at least some vague question concerning your gender[3]. Pick up a bottle of bleach (actually, make that two, you’re going to need it) and take out any hint of natural color you’ve ever had. After you’ve successfully dyed your black, pink, yellow, purple, and/or platinum blonde, it’s time to flatiron it and garnish it with as many multicolored bows as possible. Remember, people that say that “less is more” are just communists that are trying to bring you down. (Or is communism trendy nowadays?) Now, while watching a pseudo intellectual indie film for inspiration (try Garden State, or perhaps a slice of Me and You and Everyone We Know), get dressed. Your closet should be based on the formula 3Th + 1((Hm)(F)(V)(Ad)): three parts Threadless.com t-shirts, and one part miscellaneous garb from H&M/Forever 21/overpriced vintage stores/the apartment dumpster. Multitasking is a crucial part of being a scenester (or a teenager in general, for that matter), so log onto Livejournal while you’re pulling on your too-tight pants and update the Internet world with something enlightening—perhaps “guys, I’m putting on my pants! their the raddest colour, like really brown but not. comment my new picture: myspace.com/____xxplaidnancy!!!” After all, the Internet was created so that you could tell people about your pants.[4] Don’t forget to post a contrasted photograph of the pants taken with your trusty webcam, people respond better to things if they have backsides to admire.[5]
Next, you have to prepare to go out. After you’ve slathered on some electric blue eye shadow and red lipstick, it’s time to accessorize. The first step is your tote bag, which should be black and white, and either checkered, plaid, or striped (generally any pattern that will give anyone around you a headache is perfect; here’s a foolproof test: step back from the bag and squint. Do you feel like you need Advil? Yes? Congratulations, you’ve found the perfect bag). Inside of this goes your iPod, stocked with Pretty Girls Make Graves, Metric, and Panic! At the Disco, as well as two pairs of black fingerless gloves and a bandana. After sitting on Myspace for two years straight, you’re very likely going to need prescription glasses, so head on over to Lens Crafters (it’s okay to shop there since you’re not punk—if you were punk you’d have to make your own out of denim and safety pins, but that’s another essay entirely) and pick up a pair of thickly rimmed black glasses.
You’re all ready to go! There’s just the issue of where to go. You can’t really go to any “real” coffee houses; the hipsters will bite your head off (and besides, who wants to hang out with those conformists anyway?), so you have to make your way over to your headquarters: the Starbucks back parking lot. You can neither go inside of Starbucks nor more than two miles away from it, since your central “power” comes from laughing at Yuppies. While you’re participating in the ritual of ridicule, go ahead and smoke some Camel Lights outside your car; remember, you can quit any time you need to— they’re light cigarettes. Conversation with your comrades will consist of who got what new piercing and whose hooded sweatshirt is tighter than everyone else’s. Since you’re probably wearing a band shirt (either something “vintage” like the Beatles or the Cure, or perhaps some newer music like Ladytron or The Shins), plunge into a completely bull-shitted discussion about how (although you barely ever listen to them[6]) you love so-and-so’s music and how much he/she/they changed your life. All of this self-promotion is going to wear you out, so try to get home as soon as possible in order to get ready for the ten Saturday-night keggers coming up[7].
Since you’re going to wake up hung over Sunday morning, you might as well spend the second half of the weekend working on your Internet popularity. All proper scenesters have at least a small Internet following, which is often attained through the uses of “networking tools” such as Myspace or blogging websites such as Livejournal or Xanga. No detail is too small to be shared, as long as it’s accompanied by pictures and/or pretentious poetry.[8] Myspace should be used as a vehicle to advertise your “photography” and “poetry.” Add as many people as you can and post bulletins every time something vaguely terrible happens to you in order to get sympathy and attention. In cases of emergencies (and this should only be used in emergency situations, like if no one has commented on your new picture and it’s already been ten minutes since you posted it) post a bulletin threatening to quit myspace if you don’t get x amount of comments and friend adds. Your band of followers, no matter how small, will very likely freak out and comment you until you post another bulletin taking back your threat. Livejournal is a less concentrated community, and so it’s harder to get a large fan base. When you’re starting out, remember to aim low in your expectations for friends. Beggars can’t be choosers in the world of the Internet, and you’ll have to simply accept every illiterate user that is attracted to your Photoshop-abused photographs of “exit” signs. Post thirty to forty photographs of this nature in a row, accompanied by out-of-context quotes (“Fuck! Fuck you! Fuck me! Fuck old people! Fuck children! Fuck peace! Fuck peace,” or perhaps the perennial and always appropriate “Valentine's Day is a day invented by greeting card companies to make people feel like crap”) or cryptic messages (“&& i never got to say goodbye”). Expect a slew of comments to be e-mailed to you in the few seconds after you post (“I totally know what you mean,” “I love that film soooooooo much,” and “omg, that’s an amaaazing photograph!!”). Hopefully you have a well enough honed bullshit detector to realize that most of these kids are just sucking up to you. Don’t be afraid to be rude, you can always just laugh it off with the excuse “it’s the internet!” afterwards. Being scenester Internet royalty means never having to say you’re sorry.
The life of a scenester is not a simple one; you will endure the trials of having Indie kids discover that you do not actually listen to Beck, the inner struggle of whether or not to put in that extra string of plastic novelty pearls, and the self-actualization that only wearing too much eyeliner can give you. It is not an easy path to take, but with a little bit of hope and a lot of hair dye, you can find your nonconforming conformist niche in the world—both real and electronic. So go, young, impressionable minds, blend into the over-dyed and undersexed crowd and further the demise of true rock and roll. After all, the dog’s already dead—it can’t hurt.
[1] Jeffree is the answer to the joke, “What is androgynous, pink, and has the word ‘cunt’ tattooed on its ankle?” Apparently a makeup artist on the side, Mr./Ms. Star is the embodiment of scenester worship, recording awful songs with meaningless lyrics and showing up to as many concerts as possible in order to promote his image. Punktv.ca made an attempt to convince its readers that he “there's more to Jeffree Star than makeup and well coifed hair, more than the space age Teflon personality,” but I beg to disagree. Jeffree himself says in the same interview “[that] talent is put below beauty and vanity wins over intelligence….” Uh, I think that’s enough right there.
[2] A piercing above the lip—appropriately named after Marilyn Monroe’s birthmark
[3] For guys, of course, this would require growing your hair out until it is three quarters of the way to your chin. It’s technically okay to leave it all black, but don’t come crying to me if someone calls you emo.
[4] Just ask Al Gore!
[5] Just ask Mark Foley!
[6] But as we all know, actually listening to music is secondary.
[7] Straight-edge scenesters (Druggus Refusicus) are scenesters that, according to urbandictionary.com, make “a lifetime commitment never to drink, smoke, or do drugs.” Interestingly enough, many of this species “break edge” by the time they hit twenty-one (some as early as eighteen—or, you know, two days after declaring edge). Straight-edge scenesters can always be identified by their belts, which are marked with three white x’s.
[8] A quick guide to writing pretentious poetry:
-Include as many ampersands as possible, often more than one in a row. Improper use of semicolons is even more important. In fact, all other forms of punctuation should just be disregarded (punctuation is for pussies anyway).
-Your poetry has to do with love, despite the fact that you are very likely younger than fifteen and haven’t even been kissed yet.
-Use this as an example (in fact, just rewrite the same poem over and over, changing small words here and there):
boy;
I'm losing myself when I'm
around you
The high-pitched giggling, the flaming red cheeks
&& everything else that makes me feel like a china doll
♥
;girl
We had to write an anecdote for English. It's not my favourite recent piece by far, but I suppose it provides some insight into my personality. (Everyone was a little surprised when I used "fuck" in the paper. It was amusing to hear the whispers of "Oh my God, did she just say that? Did she just use the f-word in an English assignment?")
Shindig
The first
thing that struck me when I entered the basement wasn’t the pallid blue
mattress piled with fried teenagers, or the nameless rapper spitting out lines
about this “pimp fucking up that ho.” It wasn’t the couple having an endless
make out session by the bar, or the curtain of smoke billowing from the black
and mild sticking out of the host’s mouth. No, the first thing that struck me
when I entered the basement was how much I didn’t actually want to be there.
The whole day had been dedicated to preparation for
my first “real party.” I was advised to eat a lot, so I gorged myself on cheese
quesadillas and a disgustingly rich “like it” sized cup of Coldstone’s Birthday
Cake Remix. I stopped short of the suggestion to drink olive oil, deciding that
vomiting was endlessly preferable over downing two tablespoons of yellow-green
fruit discharge.
The second my foot left the stairs, a pair of arms
wrapped themselves around my shoulders. Before I could register what was going
on, a high-pitched voice squeaked my name into my ear.
“Charline!”
“Oh, hey, hi,” I wriggled out of the grip and turned around to face a pair of cabernet-colored eyes.
“I haven’t seen you since like, the morning!”
“Yeah, it’s uh, been a while,” I slid away and made my way over to the mattress; her gaze remained fixed on my previous position.
“Okay, bye!” she bid the stairs farewell and attained a position of intimacy with the floor. The rapper announced that “shit” had indeed gone down on the streets of Compton, and that some “bitch” would certainly get what was coming to her.
“Oh man, sick!” Someone came screaming out of the bathroom.
“What, what?” the host turned to him, the cigarette still hanging from the corner of his lips.
“Man, someone threw up in the bathroom.”
“Oh, fuck! Who the fuck threw up in the fucking bathroom?” Everyone replied with mumbles of innocence. I took a swig from the misnamed “Hard Lemonade” that had been shoved into my hands (it would have been more accurately labeled as “yesterday’s toilet brush extract”) and shook my head. I started up the stairs and by the time the last “ho” was getting “beat down,” I was already sitting on the curb.
“Hey, you okay?” One of my more sober friends followed me out the door and came up to me, “I’m sorry about this.”
“No, no, it’s alright. It was… an interesting experience,” I laughed. The front door creaked open and a thin silhouette appeared in the doorway.
“I have to pee,” the silhouette admitted, “Do I smell like throw up? I was in the bathroom.”
My friend turned to her, “Go pee, the bathroom’s right there.” The silhouette stumbled over her foot.
“Go, help her, I’ll be okay,” I smiled.
“You sure?”
“Yeah, yeah, don’t worry about it. We’ll talk
tomorrow,” I stood up and gave her a hug, and she disappeared through the door
with the silhouette in tow. As I waited for my father to drive up with the car,
I thought about what had happened. At first I was a little angry with myself
for letting the opportunity to be a real teenager slip away from me, but then I
realized that, as corny as this sounds, being a “real teenager” doesn’t have to
mean sitting outside of convenience stores and smoking blunts in basements.
Being a teenager means being unsure and uncomfortable with life, it’s about
discovering yourself and losing yourself again at least twice a week. It’s
about finding your true calling in aluminum can making one day and deciding to
become an astrophysicist the next. Being a teenager isn’t about age, it’s a
state of mind.
(Okay, and maybe a little partying.)
