Tea, Fire and Boredom
Stupid Shit
“Apparently, in this country, the Stupids are an extended family. And besides wearing them T-shirts, every one of them families have got on a backpack, strapped to their back, so that they could carry around lots of stupid shit. And the reason they need to carry their stupid shit strapped to their backs is because their hands must remain free at all times to hold food. And to get that food up to the mouth where it gets shoveled in with all the rest of the disgusting shit they ate that day. And another reason for the backpacks is these people are going to buy even more stupid shit. They haven’t got enough stupid shit at home, they just had a stupid shit sale and they are going to buy more.They are going to go out in the parking lot and stuff this stuff into their big fat ugly oversized SUV, that’s got plenty of room in it for stupid shit and lots of room left over for these big fat ugly motherfuckers to get them home. Stopping of course for jelly roll and fried dough“
-George Carlin in “Dumb Americans” from Life is Worth Losing
One of my heroes. I wish I could put it better, as this is my blog. But whatever.
I can’t say that I’ve done much productive in the past few days. Despite my old pledge to learn how to program, speak Japanese and learn to do everything else in the span of this free week, I’ve made progress on almost none of those things. Actually, I’ve spent more time cleaning out my room and packing my stuff up. I’ve gone to calling me stuff “stupid shit” more than anything else. I believe such a title is much more fitting given that this past week has been the first time I’ve thought/seen many of these items in several months. And I’m not just talking about the winter coat hanging in the wall. There’s lots of little odds and ends of trinkets that I thought would be useful at the beginning of the year, and turned out not to be. Like, I had a box of 500 paperclips. 500… I had used about 1% of them. At the current rate, I’ll need a new box when I’m 118. And I had a lot of extra clothing. I’ve found that I wear a small band of comfortable clothing repeatedly. My 2 pairs of tennis pants have gotten lots of usage. Plus, black shorts match anything, which means less thought when I get dressed in the morning. It has been a steady stripping away of all of the so-called necessities that I needed in my room. Down come the photographs. I’ve put away my clothing, jackets, winter coats, boxes, books, water bottles, coins, CD’s, paper towels, and my kettle. And I’ve used many of these things once. Just once. I’ve spent more effort moving, transporting and storing this stuff than I have actually using them. All I have left (besides the boxes and duffles of stupid shit) is my laptop, my bedding, some clothing, my comb and my teeth cleaning stuff. I still choose to maintain personal hygiene. Oh yes, and some books.
I got 2 books from the book store the other day. I guess I figured if I wasn’t going to be learning stuff for my job, I might as well learn something that I enjoy. I got In Defense of Food by Michael Pollon and Deep Economy by Bill McKibben. They’re closely related. They’re both non-fiction books that deal partly with the industrialization of food production (though Deep Economy is more broad, with food being one aspect of the book). I ended up with the second book because it was 1/3 the original price. That either means a good deal, or a shitty book.
They found a fairly receptive audience in me given that I already care about food and attaining it in good quality. I agree with the idea that production and consumption of processed foods both negatively impacts the people’s health, but also the economy of farmers and communities. And the idea that perhaps we could do without tomatoes in the wintertime instead of flying them in from Peru. There are many more things I could say about these books; however the simplicity of any such explanation would betray the central ideas of the books. I found I especially enjoyed these books because they propose something fairly simple and straightforward, and yet these ideas present deep and profound problems for our current way of living. You only have to go to a supermarket to see how many additives and strange foods there are. What the hell is this “high-fructose corn syrup stuff”? Or Deep Economy poses the question “Is More really Better?”. Our society is dominated by individuals trying to get ahead for a better job, more money and more “stupid shit”. Perhaps our current system of achieving, working and producing may be making us less happy and less well off in the long run.
Genius can make the complex be easy and the easy be complex.
