Tuesday, August 28, 2001 :::
Delusions of Individualism
I was on the way to work yesterday morning and saw something that saddened me.
It was a late model Mitsubishi Eclipse who's owner thought it keen to use his back bumper to lay some heavy ideology on me. I mean, what better way to speak out in an outspoken world than to craftily affix your life-guiding mantras to the rear of your vehicle. But then I read the words and was suddenly struck by a deep pity for this driver of the late model eclipse.
It Read (capitalizations as noted):
"You ALL laugh at me because I am Different...but I laugh at ALL of you because you are all the SAME"
Now, examining this profession of singularity a few things immediately occurred to me and added to my pity for this guy/girl (moments after seeing them at the red light, I took a right,they went straight).
1) Uniqueness needs no modification or amplification. If one is truly "different" they stand out to all as a blaring contradiction to the norm. Their every action and interaction breeds a sort of irreverence and lack of conformity, their whole life is an unintentional opposition to regularly accepted truths. (you notice I am using a lot of concepts that mean different?)
2) How different can a person be when their taste in cars gravitates towards a model of vehicle that is one of the most plentiful on the road?? If I had 5 bucks for every Eclipse on the road this observation wouldn't have ever happened because I would not have been going into work because I
would not have to work! Different people drive tricked up hippie vans, cars from Former Soviet Block Nations, or VW beetles customized to look like rodents or insects.
3) The factory that produced this bumper sticker must have obeyed the laws of common sense as they pertain to economics and general accounting. It would have been a losing proposition to gear up the machinery, pay the man-hours, the rent, and other fixed manufacturing costs to only produce 1 sticker. These laws of elementary accounting dictate that as you produce more of a particular good in mass, the average cost per item decreases therefore effectively increasing profitability of said item....so...they must have produced in excesses of 1 million....even with 20% of them going unsold, unstolen, and unused, that still leaves 800,000 of these sticky-backed delusions floating around. Sharing a vapid, fundamentally flawed, and virtually pointless thought with 800,000 other people does not make one different...any way you slice it.
A character name Tyler Durden once screamed from a rooftop through a bullhorn "You are not unique,you are not as individual as a fingerprint or a snowflake."
Some people prefer the delusion.
::: posted by Mike at 11:03 AM
Wednesday, August 22, 2001 :::
I cannot write today....couldn't yesterday...and have little hope for tomorrow.
I cannot find any explanation for my sudden and inexplicable loss of process. This happens. Over the course of my creative life I have known this to happen and every time it does I float in this pocket of suspension wondering when (or if) the words will return. Bad Poetry usually gets the mill churning...not this time. I sit for hours frustrated, staring blankly into universes where I have proclaimed myself God. Nothing...static on all channels...ground control to Major Mike.
Perhaps this block is a result of some imbalance in my life...? I am having difficulty finding such a breakdown but that does not mean that it doesn't exist. Humans fry circuits we never knew we had all the time.
I have a deadline to keep...part self-imposed, part not...and I find myself beneath it and angry about it. I am whining now. This is not some sort of proclamation to be damned. Not a cry for help or understanding. Sometimes life's cat gets your tongue. Sometimes you get it back.
I am writing a new front article for Sept's version of the website about a common man who let ESPN piss in his cornflakes so he attacked a baseball player. If the high drama of a beer swilling slob hell bent on the destruction of an overpaid athlete doesn't get the juices pumping I will have to go back to the joking about fake-teen porn or getting into losing battles with close friends about Hitler and his divisible shame. Either way...I will be O.K.
::: posted by Mike at 8:47 PM
