Friday 9/13/24
It's depressing the number of people from all over the world who come to this journal to view the entry titled "Used panties for sale" presumably so they may buy used panties though this entry does not actually feature the sale of any. Throughout the day and night--with a spike on weekends--people are constantly going to that entry and I'm pretty sure that's the reason why.
I've seen many people complaining about the cost of a hash brown at McDonald's of late. They add that it's just a portion of a potato, it's highway robbery, and all of that. I'm sure this is true. Corporations want to charge the most they can for everything. If they can over-charge, they will.
I had my reaction to this news--which took the form of a solution--and was then saying to someone the other day, with this simple, obvious, and correct solution in mind, that it would produce offense because we are always looking to be offended at present and that which does not enable us is especially offensive. It's how we're conditioned now. We are also so sensitive and we can't compartmentalize. Someone is either wholly in line with our views, or wholly against us. We click out of the screen of their lives, so to speak, never to open the page again. Metaphorically. But also literally.
We can't say, "Well, she makes a fair point, though if she's right I'd be wrong, I'll think about it." What you end up with is people saying the safest, least interesting, blandest, most repetitive things, because that way many people can see or hear those things and not be offended and be entirely aligned with that other person.
To the with whom I was speaking, I said that I could write something about something as benign as McDonald's hash browns and people would be offended and not return to the blog going forward.
There are things every day. Probably hundreds that people can take offense from. Smart, sound, balanced, on point, and true though they are. Because people will take them as an indictment of their entire existence for the reasons listed above.
Here's what I'd say about the cost of McDonald's has browns: You shouldn't be eating at McDonald's. It's terrible for you. Problem solved. Stop eating crap. But that is very offensive. Everything that is not a form of "Everything you do is perfect! Everything you think is correct!" is offensive.
The more you know and the more you know about, the greater the chances of causing offense. If you know nothing and speak in forms of the same four platitudes, you won't offend anyone, and you can have a massive following for this reason alone. What we need is someone who knows much about much to have the massive following and for what would result then. Societal improvement.
The key right now, though, in terms of getting anywhere and monetizing one's brand, books, persona, shtick, etc., is to express one's self without actually saying anything. What happens when someone does say something is it wrecks people accustomed to the nothingness.
Think of it like physical fitness. We sit on the couch. We get fat. We move as little as possible, but we think we're in shape, especially if we're always having it said and reinforced that we're in shape.
That's what it's like following all of the nothingness and the people who say nothing and needing that nothingness. When someone says something that's spot on, it's like this horrible challenge to us and now we're meant to be running ten miles instead of sitting there on our fat asses. And we see what horrible shape we're in, we throw up, we don't want this. We blame the person who made us get up and shattered the lies. They're the enemy.
A side is picked. This is my side, this is my group. Then one spoon feeds the same nothingness that the group wants to hear again and again and again. In publishing, that's lying about all of these shitty authors in Brooklyn literary culture. We know what this looks like in politics. We know what this looks like in self-victimization culture.
The only side worth being on, though, is the human side. The societal side. Which is to say, not a side, but the whole. And that's what should matter. Not identifying the group that you just then say your stupid shit to.
Never have people been more self-congratulatory than at present. They'll congratulate themselves over anything. No matter how small that thing is. No matter that the thing isn't even really a thing. They strive for nothing. Tying their shoes is reason enough to pat themselves on the back.
I read a post this morning from a woman congratulating herself for waking up not hungover given that society glamorizes alcohol so much. Does it? I wouldn't say that society glamorizes alcohol at all. Alcohol is a thing people think they need. But how is alcohol glamorized?
No one says things that are true. There isn't anyone who says what is the actual truth about anything. Truth is antithetical to everything in our society. It's like truth stops everything from continuing. Causes everything to break down.
We're at a point where I very much doubt if the truth can even be seen by people when it would otherwise be obvious. When they're told about it. When it's help up in front of their faces. Like we are now cloaked in this sort of forcefield that blocks out truth, or, our brain has this scrambler device that turns the truth into a form of mental white noise.
I never see anyone say anything correct. About anything. Even when they're trying to present facts and nothing more. They're just talking. Or writing. It doesn't matter who they are. People don't use their brains. They cannot think. They just use their ass to talk out of. And then they demonize the use of the brain. The use of the rain is threatening to what they've made themselves into.
Recently I saw some people who know nothing about the Beatles--the same as no one has a clue about anything--arguing about lyrics and how bad and creepy they were, etc. The normal stupid shit of today's world. The complete lack of understanding, the ignorance of history, of context, of how art works.
All of these people arguing about these lyrics--they were from "I Saw Her Standing There"--and quoting these lyrics, and not one of these people even knew what the lyrics were. All of the quotes were wrong. No matter how simple something is, everyone will get it wrong. People can't even correctly quote the lyrics to a song. It wasn't just the first person. And this isn't a case of the lyrics being hard to hear.
What do you do in a world like this if you are not this way? Because this is how it all is. There is no baseline. There is nothing that is so easy to know and do that most people can do it, on the mental side.
Rock and roll was initially a youth movement. It was a dance hall culture. You went to the dance. You danced. You hung out with your friends. You eyed the girls. You whispered about the boys. The music was playing. Moves were pondered. Do I ask her to dance? What will I do if he comes over? Think of the sock hop. It was like that.
That's where "I Saw Her Standing There" is coming from. The line, "She was just seventeen, if you know what I mean" nails it. That's writing. It was originally, "She was just seventeen, never been a beauty queen." That's creaky. Old-timey. Didn't work. And all of these dumb, dumb, dumb people think it's about bedding underage girls. Then the equally stupid people are like, "Paul McCartney was such and such age when he wrote it so it's okay."
Doesn't matter if he was sixty-four when he wrote it. It's a song, it's a character. People don't even understand that the "I" of a song is not the human who wrote the song. Or it doesn't have to be. We can't even grasp this basic idea. We can't grasp it because people don't even know what imagination is. They don't have one. They don't even understand the concept. All of these writers with their shitty writings and it's just them. The "I" is them. Because what are they going to do? Have characters who aren't them? Who are unlike anyone they've ever known? How's that going to happen? They're going to invent them? And they'll be real and believable?
People will defend anything except greatness. Make excuses for anything. Fourteen-year-old kills people at school, other people jump online to bemoan how wrong it is for the teen to be tried as an adult. How limited does your intelligence have to be to make that claim? How lacking in morality must you be? All of your internal mental and moral machinery has to just be fried. What do you want to have happen here? Put him back on the street later on? It's mass murder.
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