Before one can hold an idea, they exist merely as thoughts: currents of wind that blow the sheets of life but are not caught.
A “nobody” is someone that “does nothing with her/his life.” She/he refuses to insist upon the perception of others to manifest her/his being, more specifically: her/his doing. Without the observation of outsiders, the individual is unquantifiable, existing only on the periphery of perception, as does the moon, which is there even when we do not look at it. Nobodies, however, can observe, just like the somebodies.
When you look at the cat, it exists, but when we are not looking – who knows?! Emily Dickinson only started to exist when we dared to look:
I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us--don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.
How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!
Because, you see, if you tell anyone that you are a nobody, you can’t be a nobody. A true nobody cannot tell anyone to look in the box.
A lesser type of nobody is an anybody. Anybody can try and make themselves seem like somebody, but anybodies are actually nobodies, in the sense that they fail to affect others by the movement of their life. No one looks at just anybody, he/she is not worth the observation. An anybody will often admit to being a nobody, but in speaking it, they fail to live up to the strict standards of the hard-core nobody. Anybodies also like to associate themselves with somebodies, trying to gleam a sense of undeserved observation, trying at every turn for their moment in the spotlight, whether
garnered by accident or fortune. Anybody can come up with a great idea, somebody makes an idea a concrete object.
There are many ways for a human to change their reality, but every way requires energy. If you want to lose ten pounds, all the positive thoughts you create, alone, will push you nowhere near the goal. They are unobserved phenomena. But if you exercise regularly and eat healthily (as previous research had indicated will result in weight loss), you will be making the observable actions that will allow you to reach your goal. Nobody tells you that you are fat until you try to be somebody, everybody tells you that you look thin after you have spent thirty days in a row working out and
eating well, even if you used to be a nobody: someone not worthy of observation nor comment.
Humans time-travel all the time, unfortunately, we can only do so by moving forward in time at a one-tenth-second pace. We imagine being able to leap in the future so we could gamble on games where we knew the outcome and get rich quick (be a somebody!), but we fail to be impressed at the minuscule actions of a somebody that, piled on top of each other second-by-second, constitute the great, major works of a true Someone. Observers will see the championship, but they cannot
quantify the volume of sweat that earned it. The somebody, of course, knows the exact weight of those unglamorous hours toiling in obscurity in preparation for the moment of reward, but only the observable statistics make the Hall of Fame plaque. Trying to quantify the “How?” and “Why?” of achievement can be found in the Barbara Walters special, not in the numbers.
Barbara only deals with Somebodies, who, even if we don’t like them, continue to make the actions that convince us to observe. Even anybody knows that.
I've blahed since back in the day about the time of change, about the America I dream about, about our next President. Now that The Big O has squeaked out the battle against the friendlies, I suppose I could give a bunch of reasons why he should be our President. But the thing is, I'm already so completely confident in who Obama is and who he is capable of becoming, that I don't need to do any more convincing. In the next five months, you'll find plenty of your own reasons, as he begins to demolish McCain on the
ground and in their debates.
My theory of why Obama is right for us right now involve generational politics, with the simple calculation that the voters already eliminated the Boomer candidate in Clinton and won't be interested in a return to a G.I. Generation candidate in McCain.
But the more satisfying theory is this: it's simply a matter of feeling. There is a feeling in the air in America, and The Arcade Fire have already pinpointed it in "Wake Up." You can view here.
The time in America has come to "hold your mistakes up." The feigned responsibility the Boomers prattled about for the past fifteen years with their War on Drugs and Family Values tour and Moral Majority joke taught us the useless act of blaming others for our own failures, when any feeling, knowing human being already understands that only the individual has the power to change the world for the better. We don't need a law to know it's not right to kill a human being. We don't need a law to know that we shouldn't cheat others. We don't need a Bible, either. It's something
that we know in our hearts and in our heads, and (I believe) that the time has come for this knowledge to manifest as action in our world. The past is littered with examples of humans destroying the human spirit, our future can eliminate that unfortunate blight upon our conscience.
"I guess we'll just have to adjust!" they shout. For so long, we have spoiled our world, taken too much, done too little, and soon the opportunity will arise for each of us to actually build the better world that we can finally admit hinges upon our own actions. It will be an adjustment, but it is an adjustment we are capable of making.
See, cos, "when my lightning bolt is glowing" – that is, when I'm pissed off and angry about the world that sits below, when I lash out at the earth – I am not simply a destructive force – I am a source of enlightenment! "I can see where I'm going!" All the anger that we hold (against the world that surrounds us) will turn to brighten the world. Instead of being mad that things are the way they are, we will begin to feel joy again when we create a more fulfilling world by distancing ourselves from that which has angered us.
I know we can all feel this potential within us. "You better look out below!"
If you know the Snajder family, you know our love for Diet Pepsi. Our appetite for the stuff is as persistent as it is voracious. While I know we started drinking Diet Pepsi over Diet Coke due to Coke's apartheid-era South African investments in the 80s, I doubt I can adequately explain our dedication to the product – it is a thirst that defies explanation.
This is a story about how Diet Pepsi and, in particular, the Pepsi Stuff campaign, saved my life from maggotization.
Back in the days when I was a teenager, before I had status and before I had attended a rager, you could find the Patstract listening to Mets games. On weekends, I would turn on the radio in the afternoon to catch WFAN's broadcast (somehow transmitting all the way to the boonies of Ontario, NY) and listen to the mid-90s Mets falter their way to another humiliating loss. Betrothed to the Mets by their title in '86 (my walls still strung with orange and blue streamers from my celebration), I was subsequently confined to the drudgery that was the Mets in pretty much ever year from 1987 until
1999. But, being a diehard fan, I could not turn off the radio.
One day, surely trying to shake the Mets from another midsummer lull, I decided to listen to the game on the roof of our kitchen, which was right outside my bedroom window. I remember removing the screen, climbing out to enjoy the beautiful breeze off of Lake Ontario, and wasting away a Saturday afternoon listening to the sweet sounds of Bobby Bonilla's bat riffling through another third strike. I left my perch in the seventh inning, already deflated in a blowout, and climbed back into my room. I left for the evening to see my younger brother in a play, not returning to my bedroom for
another five hours.
When I returned, I switched on the light and threw my jacket on the floor. As I did, I noticed a minor whirling of activity on the carpet that stopped me in my tracks. Flies.
I looked closer. Flies had landed quietly and patiently on my floor, camouflaged by the matching dark blues and blacks of the carpet's pattern. I looked in the air, none were flying, they only sat on the floor.
I looked at the window: still open. Brilliant.
Let it not be thought by the reader that you are dealing with an idiot, though: nay, I enjoy solving problems, and here was one readily delivered (albeit by my own stupidity) that I felt would be best kept to myself: there was no need to inform the parental authorities. As my first act in controlling the situation, I shut my door.
But now: what to do? I tried shooing the flies of course, and surely the reader will think that enough shooing should push the flies back outside, through the still-open window. But I ask you: have you ever been trapped in a room with over a hundred flies sitting lazily on the floor? I dare assume that you are all ignorant of any similar situation. The truth was that these flies were, well, I don't know what they were doing – preparing to hatch eggs, maybe? – but they weren't moving, not even with the initial bout of strong mortal encouragement that I supplied for them. They
were limp and defenseless, but, unfortunately, I couldn't get to my bed without removing them somehow. Before I began to swat them without discretion, I imagined the pall of corpses that I might leave in my wake. While killing hundreds of flies that lacked any defensive capacity was appealing to a teenager, the prospect of having to clean up hundreds of dead flies pushed me towards a more fitting solution.
I looked around my room for tools to devise a more ingenious, original method. It is at this point that I will note that the Snajders were in the midst of a Pepsi Stuff bottle-cap hoarding period. When we were done with our bottles of pop, we would collect the yellow caps in pools, ultimately putting them into treasure bags that littered virtually every corner of every room in our house. In my room, I had at least a few hundred caps, each yearning for a purpose even greater than redemption in a vast marketing scheme. I would give them that purpose.
Slowly, methodically, I placed the bottle caps over the bodies of each fly in the room, staying up way past my bedtime to complete the project. In the morning, I cautiously lifted a cap to find a (finally) dead fly. I lifted another for confirmation and soon enough, as the day broke on a soft summer Sunday, I found the piece of paper that would deliver the flies to their final resting place. Their last rites were read on that day, but I lost something too: I would never be going out of my window to listen to Mets games: the cost, for me, was that great.
In stories like these, the author will naturally lean towards hyperbole to make the situation seem more dramatic. I've been saying "hundreds" of flies, surely the reader thinks "maybe twenty" or "only a handful," and sadly, I did not count the number of bottle caps that dotted my floor like so many anthropod mausoleums. But I can tell you this: the Snajder family earned at least one of every item on the Pepsi Stuff catalog that year (and Pepsi didn't even have the gumption to run the Pepsi Stuff promotion the following summer, most likely due to the significant losses that our family waged
upon their inventory). To say I had a hundred bottle caps at my disposal for their disposal is no bit of hyperbole, indeed, it is a most believable truth. I only fail to say one-thousand because I fear having so many dead bodies laid upon my conscience. In this case, any hyperbole would make me a genocidal monster. Only in deflating my numbers can I prevent being known as a monster.
But still to this day, on a cool summer night, when I leave the window open just a bit too much, I can hear the screams of the hundreds of flies that I once let into my room to die by method of bottle cap.
When I was a kid, whenever I heard, "Don't trust anyone over the age of thirty" (usually uttered in reference to a hippy), I immediately told myself:
"That's the problem with you people. When you turned thirty-one, you started trusting yourselves." Hell, that's been our problem since y'all idjiots got in charge. But, whatever, I digress: you "bought-in," you didn't "sell-out." Whatever, man, those ideas are old.
The most fundamental point of the Kesey/Leary-inspired trip is that our reality exists as how we make it, but that only takes the conclusion of the trip one step further: the world just as much exists as the sum of our collective parts. They have in their lifetime, exhumed the resources of the world while creating Earth Day in 1970. In 1980, they went through this rationing period as well and since then they done eaten up all the supply! So now, we have to figure out the limits for the entire world, eventually on a per capita basis, of
what we can spend in energy. And until we can agree to keep some nuclear waste in a mountain (not a terrible idea, although residents disagree) or find some fungus that eats radioactivity, we are living in a world with less fuel for people. So all of us can either sit on the couch watching sports on our plasma screens: conserving valuable energy!!! Or you can burn energy in everything you do, so at the very least, you aren't wasting any energy.
"Think of the starving children!" moms used to say; today's mom can plead "Think of the poor children in China with only 1 gig of memory on their ipod!"
Growing up with an intense hatred for Reagan, a serial loathing for Bush, and a wincing hopefulness for Clinton, I should have seen W. coming. Egads, what a douché (in the parlance of our times). It was a bunch of dads at their worst: Reagan: the coyly smiling slickster of the 1950s that hid behind his back every possible devious intention; Bush: the absent-minded professor that was also a dick; Clinton: the lascivious philanderer and smooth-talker. Bush, admittedly, seems to me more like a step-brother that you would just ignore. It's only our great misfortune that someone gave him
the keys to the car.
And Hillary and McCain are the same thing – they reek of Old. The motherfuckers that have sent our manufacturing jobs to every other country in the globe, the dumbwads that created a real estate crisis by making bad bets on their Wall Street money-machine, the fools that still think "Greed is good," the asses that hold onto the food when the masses are starving, the vacuums of morality that are so often given the title of "Boss," etc. etc. etc.
The ideas that will shape the world in the next twenty years will be those of Generation X, for better or worse. The event that I believe is most important in our existence is the Internet. We will be the last on this earth to remember a time before email. We will probably be the last, man! That shit is crazy. And, even though Obama is a late Boomer with his 1964 birthdate, I think of him as an honorary Gen Xer. There is a great part of him that disagrees how the system at large is currently run, he is beyond the control or limitation that a long career in politics now bequeaths its
participants, he is totally new school, and old people hate that.
They talk about how elections are mandates. For instance, Bush used a half-win and a close win as mandates. When Obama is elected this November, there will actually be a decisive mandate. It will be mostly generated by the league of young voters that will attack the polls in force this time. Obama is the first time we can get one of our peers into office; and slowly but surely, half of the Boomers (GOP and Dems both) are showing interest in throwing out the old in favor of something, anything new.
When the world totally sucks (as surely historians will be saying when we Gen Xers begin to receive our social security [oh, wait, no we won't: thanks Boomers]), the only thing one person can do is improve the self. You have to pare down the problems around you. I believe in these days, you have to recognize that you should take no more than your share from the world while also trying to give everyone else the opportunity to have their share. We will be the generation that figures out how much that share is. As I like to
think: How much will it cost to fulfill the bottom two parts of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs for every citizen of the world?
But don't worry, we have a bunch of geeks on the case right now. But they were right: don't ever trust anyone over thirty: they are working on different things than what you will be working on at that age. New generations always do. Trusting that we were always right was the Boomers legacy, so Gen Xers have to Rampage that ish and bring the buildings back down to the people.
*****
So anyways, I'm old now. So, please, stop sending me invites to facebook. Seriously, that isht is stealing your data, suns. What your piddling Millenial generation will figure out is that while, yeah, you can throw your deets around without worry about where they will end up, the isht we are building is going to reward those that control their own copyright. All that posting on social networks is lameness – you are giving away content. What you can do is write your pieces on your own hosted site, and generate advertising revenue from whomever comes to your page. One day you will
learn that giving your content to Facebook/MySpace/Friendster is just like giving money that you deserve to some random person. But that's a lesson for later, little ones.
Anywho, so on New Years, all my good friends decided to bail on my Tops of lists, so I delayed mine til now, because, really: what do I care about some January first? It's not my birthday. So now, if you are still reading this far, congratulations: here is a list of all the awesome things I did and saw and heard and stuff in the last year of my life. The State of the Pat is a good one! While many goals were achieved in the thirtieth year, We expect to put greater emphasis on physical conditioning and intellectual focus, resulting in an even more-better Pat as thirty-one. Happy Birthday to
me, all I want is an Obama 60-40 win in Pennsylvania. Come on, Pennsylvania – I drove on Route 15 all the time. Good times.
Note: Since I didn't do this on the turn of the year, my list compiles awesomeness occurring to me between Jan 2000 and the moment I am typing. All of the selections completely resemble the tastes of the author, and in no way should his association degrade any of the individual performers noted below. Long live Jaambi.
Ashley won for her performance in the season finale of Extras, Page for. . . actually, Hard Candy, which was probably released a while ago but only scared the shit out of me recently.
FRESHEST ALBUM
Obviously, Neon Bible is up there, but ultimately, it can be too intense for a listening. It's the album that was released at the perfect time, capturing a certain spirit that is in the air, and so on terms of artistic and aesthetic achievements, it scores high. But, man, it can just be. Too. Much. It is the best album, by my choice for best album I listened to in the last year was QOTSA's Songs for the Deaf, which nearly killed me when I was driving in a blizzard. Well worth the danger, though.
FRESHEST TV SHOWS
Sorry, BSG, but the end of last season and the start of this season cannot beat the consistent funniness of either Carpoolers, Psych, 30 Rock, and The Office. And funny should win this past year, cos it's been a funny year (and Carpoolers got screwed, I tell ya: the Dennis Kucinich of television!). Bill Maher should also be commended for being on his game in a time of need (ditto Stewart/Colbert), and I also really like this cast of SNL (again: the generation thing) with Poehler leading the way, Rochestarian Wiig not far behind. Battlestar will obviously
rock when it concludes, but so far I haven't been blown out of the water (and can only ask: What other bar would Chief be at besides Joe's Bar on the ship? Is there a Bennigans?).
FRESHEST MOVIE
I saw Cool Hand Luke for the first time this year, which I think beats the rest. I also saw Lucas the whole way through this year, and that was funny.
FRESHEST GUEST BLOGGERS
Steve [Hilarious and informed.] Seth [Incredibly informed.] Patrick [Informed everyone, apparently, to vote up his story.] Strauss [Nailed it, need more.]
FRESHEST BOOK
Mine and the Strauss/Howe works on Generations.
FRESHEST SOUNDS
Sigh. The new DEL?
FRESHEST PUNCTUATION
I'm really feeling parentheses these days (no doubt).
Sure, I've definitely booed a Mets performance while at Shea. But booing your own team in baseball is reserved for four occasions:
When dude(s) exhibits lackadaisical performance;
When there's that guy that you just can't stand being on the mound, who has blown every chance for redemption in each performance;
When the team utterly blows an inning, this is usually a combination of bad pitching, sloppy fielding, and a general lack of heart as the physical or mental errors are made.
On the SNY broadcast, Keith asked Gary if the booing had always been like this. Gary said it has gotten worse, and cited higher ticket prices and higher salaries, sports talk shows, and the Interweb as the main reasons for the increase. But he also remembered a time when Doug Sisk couldn't touch the ball without being mercilessly booed. If he thought for a bit more, surely he could have remembered the earfuls that Gregg Jeffries, Bobby Bonilla (who had to wear earplugs), Kevin McReynolds, and the like had to hear during the 80s and 90s. When players slump, fans are there to pile it
on.
From that conversation, the next question is: Is the fanbase going over board? In this case, my beloved NY Mets have started slowly after a mountain of offseason expectations, and critics must wonder if April booing is even fair to the players just getting started on a very long season. In theory, each new season wipes the slate clean, so while I understand some lingering frustration from last year's finish, I think these 2008 Mets should get a few games into at least May before we consider them as the same underperforming team.
Ideally, booing serves as a fan's test of a player's heart. Everyone knows that we are all prone to slumps, errors, and lapses of judgment; the fan, in celebrity or in sport, piles on expectations to individual performance, fans provide instant feedback on performannce. Players are in our constant spotlight – when players perform great, they receive the just reward of adulation; so when they fail, it is likewise the fan's duty to play the social role of punisher. Booing, in and of itself, is not always a harmful act.
If a player can play through a slump, like Beltran and Piazza have done, then fans will learn to embrace them. It sometimes makes a player more lovable when they battle through a slump to lead the team, as Beltran did in 2006. If you at least show the fans that you go all out on every play, the fans will let you slide with only a brief time as the scapegoat. But if you combine sloth with persistent failure, fans will run the player out of town, as so many player's careers suggest (see: Jeff Kent, Juan Samuel, Bobby Bo, etc.). If you pass the test and perform, you are beloved; if you fail,
you are moved someplace else. It's the basic fan-player agreement.
In the Mets start to the 2008 season, the fans are merely displaying their gross ignorance. If you've been following the Mets from the moment pitchers and catchers reported, you know that Schoenweiss has recovered from last year's difficulties, you know that the team would be up a creek without the presence of Jorge Sosa, you know that Aaron Heilman at the top of the game is a necessary piece of a Mets bullpen that gets to play in November: already in a young season, Schoenweiss and Sosa have both won games for the Mets, and any learned Mets fan knows that Duaner Sanchez is the 8th inning
man, and Heilman's been pretending all along. If you haven't been following the whole story, you'll be found at Shea cheering, rightly, Angel Pagan, but you'll end up booing Johan friggin Santana because he gave up some home runs. In his first game at our place, instead of acknowledging the big-picture significance of Santana's presence on a team that desperately needed any distraction from last year's team, these "fans" demoralized an entire team that was ready to give it all for a city that would embrace them. But if this sort of pointless booing doesn't make clear which fans are studied
fans of this Mets squad, there are a few more ways to spot them in the crowd:
These fans also leave in the seventh inning, conveniently forgetting the magic that Shea Stadium has given to its fans over the years.
These fans will also boo players like Lastings Milledge (a potential star who's most famous transgression was interacting with the fans!) and they will surely boo Paul LoDuca when he is introduced. Personally, I've been a LoDuca fan only during his good times, when he was ripping line drive singles in key situations (mostly during 2006), but I certainly felt there were deficiencies in his defense that, when combined with his mostly-weak 2007 offensive season, didn't have me in tears when we let him sign with the Nationals. But if I was going to be at Shea when he comes to the plate, as a
fan of the Mets, I'd surely give him an ovation for the effort he gave on the field (even when tainted by his connection to the steroid ring). Did he talk too much, did he not come through for most of 2007, did his aggressive nature make him progressively more annoying? Definitely; but he always played hard and almost got us there in 2006.
Has there been a moment of righteous booing at Shea this year? Surely. But I think the only time so far was Brady Clark's attempted "steal of home" that killed a rally. That was boneheaded. Should Schoenweiss' efforts be booed when he induces a potential double-play to get out of an inning that Delgado throws into "Hit Me I'm" Utley's fat back? Should Santana be booed for giving up three home runs in his first home outing? Should Perez be booed after one bad outing that followed two sparkling starts? Should Sosa be booed after he gives up a few runs in a game where the offense left 10
on base? Not in my book. It wasn't for lack of effort, and it is too young in the season to insist on a pattern of poor performance. Eight errors in twelve games isn't awful for the spring, and a team that constantly leaves people on base is better than a team that isn't getting anyone on base: so there's no need to go directly into Crisis Mode. We can't know yet if the 2008 Mets are great, inconsistently good, or awful (the only three possibilities), so let's sit back and let the players talk with their play on the field. There's always plenty of time for booing in August.
What if I told you I had a magical solution that would:
a) Make a more significant, positive environmental impact than all of the tree-hugging proposals you have ever heard about combined;
b) Eliminate (virtually entirely) our dependence on foreign oil;
c) Reduce nationwide transportation costs for both personal and commercial travel;
d) Improve nationwide transportation safety; and
e) Provide a national project to allay our current unemployment/jobless problem.
Knowing that this solution wouldn't bring any immediate, personal harm to other individuals (I can't say that it won't destroy entire American industries, which would certainly harm those who would lose their jobs), would you be willing to get behind such an idea? Would you be willing to, for the good of your community, your country, your world, give up a few minor, short-term indulgences for a future that is much cleaner, much brighter, much more visionary than the harmful (albeit comfortable) stasis that is our modern American present?
We never did get our flying cars but, Americans, I tell you this: we are entitled to at least plastic cars!
You get rid of 18-wheelers moving cargo from city to city, you lower our dependence on trains for the same reasons, you make frakking airplanes obsolete because everyone wants a cheap ride on the public plastic car-rail.
Author's rendering of sweet plastic
car.
*****
I mean, first of all, if Americans deserved a flying car, we should first have an efficient airline industry. If flying was such a great answer, don't you think the airplane builders would have marketed personal planes for families already? If our technologies in propulsion and haven't yet advanced to the flying-car level, than what hopes do we really have that our children will even get them?
Sorry, brothers and sisters, but the answer is: none.
So let us put aside our silly dreams of yesteryear and get to the matter at hand of solving the problems that we have (and that we would still have even if we did drive pilot flying cars).
Here are a few problems with our proud nation today:
Gas is really expensive.
Cars need a lot of gas to move.
Needing a lot of gas makes more problems (see: war).
Every major American transportation system is currently insolvent.
Every American airline has either folded or claimed bankruptcy, except for (teehee) American Airlines.
Amtrak was formed when all the railroads went bankrupt, and now Amtrak is barely surviving.
American car companies are currently being crushed under the weight of promised pensions and struggling sales.
More people are killed in transportation fatalities per year than all other fatalities combined. [Source: Wikipedia, duh.]
Lots of people are unemployed and/or jobless.
Finally, I hear Al Gore has mentioned that the entire Earth is melting and he's supposedly pretty smart about such things.
Here is a solution for all of those problems:
Make plastic cars.
*****
First, you're going to say: that's impossible! You want to remove all the cars from the road and replace them with plastic cars? Que ridiculo!
But would I allow such a shallow proposal touch your ears, dear readers? Puhlease.
When the plastic car project begins, the first aim will be simple: run tracks right by the current railroads. Using the specs of the best-designed plastic car, we will create wide tracks that ensure a stable ride for our plastic cars. When we finally get plastic car #1 on the road, it will only be capable of moving its riders between cities (not within cities). So normal, heavy metal cars will still be the norm for most short distance trips within the confines of a given city, town, etc.
I mean, the old timers in the 1800s could lay an entire nation of rail road, so why would doing the same these days seem so farfetched? And given our current supply of unemployed jobless laborers, we could probably get the sort of cheap labor that once made America's rail system the envy of the world! BAM! We lay down the track of America's future, and that track is groovy.
Second, you're going to say: but you're still using gas and shit!
Hardly, friend! My plastic cars are much lighter than our current, conventional cars and will therefore require less energy to pull their weight. So right there, we're talking major savings. Plus, we throw in pedals for all the passengers. The pedals aren't required to move the car (for the time being, we can use some gas), but for passengers wishing to add a bit of exercise to their long commutes, pedaling can be used to store mechanical energy for running air conditioners, stereos, etc. BAM! More energy saved!
Third, you're going to say we're all going to kill ourselves in plastic cars when we crash!
But dude, think about it – on a straight track, the only possible problem would be animals. And as my preliminary sketches note, we can put a bumper on the front of the car to get them out of the way. (Don't worry, animal lovers, they'll figure out not to be on the tracks with the hundreds of cars that fly by every hour.) By implementing simple safety measures, you can ensure that no collisions between plastic cars ever occur – surely an improvement over our current 40,000+ fatalities on the road.
Fourth, you'll be all like, but, dude, all that change costs a lot of money!
But I respond: it seems like we can spend trillions of dollars to try and fix some foreign system, why couldn't we choose to spend that money in the good ol' U.S. of A. on something we desperately need?
Fifth, you're going to say that we can't/won't/shouldn't focus on plastic cars, because we are stuck in a system of real, metal cars. Cars are American, and abandoning them is unpatriotic!
I say: Hogwash!!! What is American is ingenuity and adaptability! Sure, the auto industry may eventually become obsolete, but what is so great about these two-ton vehicles of death, vehicles of overconsumption, vehicles of waste? I ask you?! Can't we build something better, something . . . plastic?!!!
*****
So BAM! First you use a whole buncha plastic, recycled of course, to build the tracks and cars. You use gravity from hills to store up energy in the tiny li'l' engine, you add some pedal power, you cut out energy waste by making these puppies lightweight and BAM! America is saving energy and using less gas.
You make traffic accidents impossible and BAM! Americans live longer.
You employ thousands of workers to construct the most progressive transportation system in the world and BAM! Americans have jobs.
You make an investment in the infrastructure of our nation and BAM! America becomes a better place for us all.
*****
You may say that I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. Sure, it's beginning to look like we won't be getting our flying cars anytime soon. But why not zip around the country on cheap, reliable, lightweight plastic cars? It's the very least we owe to our environment and ourselves.
My first Muxtape is 12 songs off of great albums that people don't mention as stand-out tracks.
Check it here. I'll try and drop one every week, we'll see how that goes. Don't get it twisted, plebians: my first love is for Pop! Many critics out there have a fear of pop, but not I. So throw away those antiquated concepts of "guilty" pleasures and enjoy the soundscape I've painted. Or weaved 'n shit.
Jeff Buckley - "Eternal Life" - Easily the most kick-ass song on Grace, yet all you hear about are "Last Goodbye" and "Alleluiah" – which are great songs, but not as caustic as this jag.
Red Hot Chili Peppers - "The Righteous and the Wicked" - On an album filled with great singles ("Give it Away," "Under the Bridge," "Breaking the Girl," and "Suck My Kiss"), you could easily go with "Naked in the Rain," "Sir Psycho Sexy," or any of the first ten songs on the album, I happen to like this track. Starts funky, then rocks, dude sings than slangs: I'm down.
Jane's Addiction - "Of Course" - A lot of people would select "Three Days," but because a lot of people would, I'm going to praise this jaunt through a dessert off of Ritual de lo Habitual.
Blind Melon - "Mouthful of Cavities" - My mom got me first Blind Melon album, presumably on the hype of the bee, and it sat on my shelf a good four months before I popped it in to listen. I was fortunate enough to discover one of the great artists of the 90s (naturally, he would die too) and was hooked enough to buy their second album. Most people won't even admit that there was one good song on this second album, Soup, but the single was "Galaxie." This track right here might give you the first reason to actually buy that album with the bee on the front (always
available at your local used CD store).
Barenaked Ladies - "When I Fall" - As a boy in the 1990s in upstate New York, I had to know how to play euchre, had to shop at Wegmans, and had to listen to the Barenaked Ladies. I knew, as soon as their third album, Born On a Pirate Ship, was released, they would earn some due fame. With the singles "The Old Apartment" and "Shoe Box," BNL set the stage for their next release, Stunt, that would push them into obsequious stardom with over four million sold. "When I Fall," though, always kills me. It sort of wraps up everything I think when I'm ready to jump.
PJ Harvey - "C'mon Billy" - I've always loved Polly Jean. This is my favorite track off of her third album, To Bring You Love: I remember the store I bought this album in. The song actually did appear as a UK single, but most people only remember "Down By The Water," right?
Satchel - "Trouble Come Down" - Classic Shawn Smith and piano, more emblematic of his sound, IMHO, then the single "Mr. Pink." Also, Shawn is putting out a new album soon, so check out his stuff herely.
Luscious Jackson - "Why Do I Lie?" - The phrase "one-hit wonder" has been bandied about in reference to LJ, and I, for one, will not stand for it! Their EP In Search of Manny is a must have for all listeners. Natural Ingredients was a great album, bolstered by "Citysong" and "Here." The so-called "one-hit," "Naked Eye," was on their second full-length release, which included this classic song, this perfect song! Admit, dear listener, if you have ever heard a song more appealing in lyric and musical movement?
U2 - "Acrobat" - Someone was trying to be all smart and shit and was like the best song on Achtung Baby! is "Love is Blindness." Which, you know, is so totally wrong. It's cute because they were trying to do what I'm doing here, but unfortunately, it is factually song. "Acrobat," friends, may be the greatest song since The Beatles put down their amps.
The Freddy Jones Band - "Take the Time" - I mean, I wouldn't say this song is better than their instant classic (and, sure, one-hit wonder) "Living in a Daydream," but I like it, and I like them, and I saw them put on a great performance, even if they are a bit country.
Liz Phair - "Sometimes a Dream Makes You a Slave" - Oh, Liz. You didn't even know the half of it! If anyone has been accused of being a slave to the demands of the music industry since 1999, it's been Ms. Phair. She had a modest dream and got exactly what she asked for, what she knew was coming, way back when she was recording this four-track demo. While many of her songs off of the Girlysounds demos appeared on later albums, this track is noticeably absent from Phair's mastered works. This is not ironic, I think.
Scissor Sisters - "Tits on the Radio" - Great song, that's all. Better than "Comfortably Numb," fer sure.
