4 posts tagged “rants”
That being said... we got bikes recently, so now we ride every day, and are slowly building up stamina, speed, and ability. I feel good, if sore, I'm drinking lots of water, eating okay, and even have a lot more energy. I have discovered that, after twenty years, bike riding is still fun. A lot of fun. In fact, this may very well be The Thing That Got Me Through It All. Or something like that... we'll see.
But...
You're still full of it.
Losing weight is not easy and it is not fun. It sucks. It sucks every day and it sucks no matter how you spin it. And being thin will never ever ever taste as good as a perfect steak dinner with a wonderful wine followed by rich coffee with real cream and a slice of cheesecake heaven. While I'm sure that "feeling thin" is very nice, it ain't a slice of cheesecake. 'kay?
Also, drinking a glass of water when you're hungry does not, in fact, make you feel full. It makes you feel sloshy, so quit trying to fool me, please. I can, and have, drank up to an entire gallon of water per day and have still been hungry every single minute of it. Munching on carrots and celery does not work either, nor does talking a brisk walk around the block or finding some way to keep busy. That's all shite, thank you very much.
Ummmm.... okay, rant over. Thankyouverymuch.
Sure, it's an oldie, and almost everyone who might be interested in it has probably already read it. But, if you haven't, go do it right now.
In light of the article from NYT that I linked to a couple of days ago, I thought it would be a good time to dig up Huxley. In the NYT article "Dumb and Dumber: Are Americans Hostile to Knowledge," there is a line that struck me, reminding me of BNW. "Not only are citizens ignorant about essential scientific, civic and cultural knowledge, she said, but they also don’t think it matters." That's pure BNW, folks.
I am ever more convinced that this book is truly representative of our times, more so than Orwell's 1984. After all, why go to the expense and trouble of policing and spying on your citizens with Big Brother when you can simply anesthetize them with TV, Prozac, infotainment, alcohol, and Britney Spears? Get them so focused on non-issues like abortion, fat, gay marriage, and celebrity death that they don't have any interest in the business as usual corruption of politics or some country they've never heard of murdering and raping its citizens. It's boring, after all, and takes too much effort to actually think about something rather than letting CNN or FOX tell you what to think. We don't really need to be policed and spied on because we simply do not care about government, politics, or the idea that history repeats endlessly when the people allow themselves to become numb and dumb. Let me have my soma and Bravo TV, please, I'm not interested in how a dictatorship is born.
So, yes, some of Brave New World will seem a bit dated to modern eyes. The people seem quaint and stuck in a sort of 1940's innocence that we no longer possess. It was written in 1932, after all. It projects the plastic fantastic and hovercar world that the 1940's thought we'd have by the 21st century. The speech seems antiquated, but that isn't insurmountable. But Huxley's view of "the future" still feels on target, even if it did arrive about 500 years sooner than he expected - well, okay, we probably won't have the hovercars until then, but boy do we have the sex and the soma and the mindless entertainment and the lack of interest in intellectualism and hedonistic consumerism and the idea that we are supposed to Always Be Happy, Dammit.
Read it if you haven't. Read it again if you have. Welcome to your future.
To the young man in the booth across the aisle from me in the Chinese restaurant where I had dinner this evening: The thing is... any sentence beginning with the word "They" in the context of describing any whole subgroup of people, particularly one you do not belong to, is not a true statement. I don't care what the subgroup is or even if what you are saying is complimentary (or, if you think it's complimentary) rather than a stereotype, it is extremely unlikely that you are correct - the numbers just ain't on your side, friend. "They" aren't "all" anything... all cheerleaders aren't, all men aren't, all fat people aren't, all blacks aren't, all Christians aren't, all atheists aren't... none of "them" are "all" anything.
There is no "they."
Like many other nerds, I spent a lot of time in line in May of '99. This was the first new Star Wars movie after many long, dry years. We waited in line for the tickets in the early a.m., we waited in line for the first midnight showing, and waited in line again and again (and again), for showings later that day. We met a few people we knew there, and had the pleasure of meeting many more. Though few of us even remember each others names anymore, on that one perfect day we were all as One with the Force...one big band of freaks.
What struck me that day, though, was how pretty normal most of us really seemed to be, on the surface at least. There were moms, dads, kids skipping school, college folk skipping school, computer guys, sure; but also truck drivers, medical professionals, bartenders, office types, anything you can think of, we were all there to share the same experience. Not so different, in my opinion, from a crowd of people waiting to get into, say, a football game or a concert. Sure, some people were dressed a little strangely, but I'd just as soon go out in public in a big brown Jedi robe than painted green and gold and wearing a large foam cheese on my head.
So, though I don't go to work in a Jedi Knight costume (at least not yet), I believe there's really nothing wrong with Freakdom in Fandom. Life's too short to leave your Starfleet uniform in the closet. Put it on. Go to a Con. Hell, bring your cheesehead if you want. Just have a few moments of joy before you croak. Happy New Year. Now go get your geek on!
