When It Rains, It Snowballs: The Maculate Reception

An all-too-obvious platitude we tell ourselves nowadays is that an excessive news media diet can gnaw at our minds, leaving a jaundiced, world-weary spirit.
Today was such a day for Travis.

Along the pavement he skulked, hands thrust in pockets, muttering about the incessant headlines.
 “Protesters. Protesting how Life Is Unfair. Paedo scandals. Grown adults acting like children. Cultural coat-tailers. The fatuous gestures of the creatively bankrupt. The suffusing stink of ubiquitous nihilism. The filth and the rot and the fraud and the waste and the p!ss and the swill and the...”
 Someone was having a bad day.
 But oftentimes the ills of the modern world are topped off with a layer of the ridiculous.
So let us take Travis’s litany of wrongs, ball them up and plop it all down in one steaming heap of absurdity.

In his foul humour Travis made his way down the walkway where he found himself amidst a group of protesters. Protesting how Life Is Unfair. A gloved hand jutted out of the crowd, and out of polite reflex he shook it whilst trying to place the face.
 “Travis! How you been?”
 It was Mr Melton. Former co-worker, aging boomer. Convicted paedo. Hanging around a group young enough to be his grandkids. Reliving his lost youth in the most pathetic way imaginable.
 “Hey, Lynn, look, it’s Travis,” he called over to his wife. [His wife was still with him?]
 She barely looked over her shoulder as she was more entranced with shaking an illegible placard at passing traffic. Her faced beamed with the crazed grin of self-importance as headlights reflected in her eyeglasses.
 “We’re having fun,” Melton smirked, trying to imply that this was all just a lark for them, not to be taken seriously. Somehow, that admission made the pair seem all the more sad and hollow.
 The Nostalgioid Opiate is a strong pill indeed.
 “Yeah... cool,” Travis mumbled weakly in response.
He stood dumbfounded at the scene, a seeming summation of the media miasma that had permeated ― nay, occupied ― his aching head.

Abruptly he drew away from the half-arsed conversation and crossed the street to get away from the crowd. He wiped his hand on his pants in visceral disgust.
 Not only was his psyche suffering in consternation with Today’s Malaise, but now his physicality was sullied as well ― contamination by handshake.
 Travis strode down the dark streets trying to shake off the taint of the encounter. But as he thought about it, he got a small chuckle at the odd confluence of events.
 More often, we laugh not at the humourous, but the absurd and the inficete.
 Still, he wanted a hot shower.

Cultural Autosarcophagy: The Erysichthonic Last Supper

The transition from Culture Vulture to Cultural Cannibal is nothing new with scene-level dilettantes running out of others’ material to recycle.
  But today the very torchbearers who have safeguarded decades worth of globally beloved creative works are vivisecting their own canon to feast upon their own viscera.
  A desperate move by the creatively impotent to reprocess legacy content, for sure. We know Kultural Kuru is a slow creative death for individual try-hards. But the Cultural Autosarcophagy that currently looms on a macro level happens to destroy both the content itself and the eater of his own content faster than a studio head can shriek ‘reboot.’ Not to mention, it doesn’t look so pretty to the public witnessing the Entertainment-Industrial Complex self-gorging without a lick of shame.
  Again, a lifeless carapace is the result — ironic, in the sense that to these callow cultureclasts, the importance of the façade has always outweighed any innate aesthetic essence.

SIDEBAR: From afar this may look like another example of Gaijin Contagion, or more accurately, Báizuǒ Bìng Sickness. Another irony — the genesis of Mao-Think itself comes from the Middle Kingdom, so the seeds of cultural rot planted in the West indeed come from without. Yet the cultural brahmins over here are the knowing knaves of the Long March playing their fools to incessantly bleat their performative concerns.
  Ultimately, this conflict (like most) boils down to “divide et impera” strategies, wherein the Powers That Be watch from on high as socio-political and economic entropy engulfs a world that only the Powers themselves can “rescue.” But this meta-scope view is a rabbit hole one could burrow into quite endlessly.

  Anyway, critics may say the onset of Cultural Autosarcophagy is just the endgame where the demand for Nostalgioid Opiates overrides the Thumotic Assertive. “Updating a Classic,” the proud tastemakers sniff oxymoronically. In truth, it’s just Burge’s Axiom turned on itself — the champion waving the knife is the one in the mirror, mirror on the wall.

“People Against Bad Things”

Every week a group of locals meet at Town Square to advocate for good things and oppose bad things.
  They call themselves “People Against Bad Things,” and, as a means of bringing awareness to citizens of Classic City, perform silent morality shows whilst sitting around holding signs.
  “Instead of breaking a sweat and doing something constructive, we’ve found that it’s easier to sit at traffic intersections and hold pithy placards with paralogical platitudes,” says participant Ruth Gopnick. “The vaguer the phrase, the better.”
  The local People Against Bad Things movement originated in Heritageville a few years back in response to the power vacuum created by the splintering of the BubbaCabal and the ascendancy of BärteHansa busybodies.
  Today, the movement continues though the ponytails grow grayer. The ostensible driving force behind these vigils are “bad things” but Armchair Psychologists just point at Nostalgioid Opiates as the unitarian elephant in the room.
  “I sit with these people to give a lot of positive inspiration and to do good and all that,” participant Ted Rant said. “It allows us to live on as people who are against negative things in the world.”
  However, not everyone has agreed with the People Against Bad Things. Gopnick said over the years, they have had numerous criticisms aimed towards them.
  “When we started out, people said we were too negative,” said Gopnick. “So we held signs saying ‘honk for good things,’ and we only got a few honks. I just don‘t think people are very interested in making noise in traffic when they already have things going so well.”
  “There’s just so much badness right now in the world, and when we sit here, we’re sitting against that badness and saying with silence that there is a more better [sic] way to be in the world,” Gopnick said.
  “Talk is cheap,” Gopnick whispered aside. “It’s even cheaper when it’s unsaid.”
  “People Against Bad Things” meets every Wednesday on Town Square in Classic City. Bring your own lawn chairs.

Adult Heresy: Puer Aeternus

Witness the adult who insists on frantically coat-tailing whatever Cultural Yugo comes sputtering down the pike, retroactively clinging to some imaginary vestige of ego-pampered youth, reinventing salad days in which he was only a flavourless vegetable.
The failure of the Societal Superego to temper the Peter-Pan-meets-Pauly-Shore Syndrome in aging men* has resulted in legions of middle-aged, middle management turds grasping for relevance with false nostalgioid opiates (as if real nostagioid opiates weren’t bad enough).

Taken to its gerontological and psychological extreme, what would we have?

Paunchy, pasty putzes toolin’ for tail in the high school parking lot, blasting Creed from their T-top Z-28s? Graying geezers drooling on their GAP Kids™ t-shirts and teddy bears as they relish a future of unfettered infantilism? Depends™.
Yes, it all hinges on what a civil, sane society will allow. Perhaps an end to people just muttering and looking the other way. Pungeoning protocol dictates a “cut to the chase.” “Calling it like you smell it,” if you will.
Which brings us full circle back to a Societal Superego that needs a shot in the arm. A Collective Consciousness with cojones that isn’t afraid to Take the Punge. A no-nonsense potency with the austerity of a drill sergeant, ready to pounce and punge any who dare commit Adult Heresy.

*Do not be mistaken in thinking that this is solely a men’s issue. It is equally pathetic when middle-aged women engage in such questionable self-affirming activities as trolling for boytoy, vain implants, and the wearing of mix-n-match animal prints with one-size-fits-all white stretch pants.

Editorial: ‘Sniff Jocker Archetype Must Be Reformed to Avoid Collective Doom’

The following editorial comment was broadcast recently on Heritageville’s WBLO-TV Channel 13. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the positions of WBLO-TV. 

  In high dudgeon I bring to you a stern plaint about the insufferable public behaviour of a group that rates quite high on the Connard Social Irritant Index. I’m talking about our fair town’s fraternal
Sniff Jocker community. Though this is a free country and all, we are constantly reminded that this constituency is the cradle for our future’s leadership. Well, these leaders of tomorrow are playing
grab-arse today! These manlets spew in the streets! They dress like toddlers and foul the collective nest!
  Let’s look at some telltale signs that are mysteriously coincident within this cohort:
  • Making an obvious display of being a Man Impervious to the Elements, he proudly marches through the snowdrifts wearing boat shoes and cotton shorts with his chin smugly held high. Never mind that his goolies have shriveled to naught in his chilly promenade — he has ‘brothers’ to impress.
  • Instead of a casual arm draped over the shoulders of tonight’s ‘date’, clutching her in a headlock is the closest he’ll come to any Public Displays of Affection. This possessive signaling is an overcompensation for Low T as well as a general lack of adult social skills.
  • Any musical taste will strictly be second-hand Affectatious Anemoia; in other words, someone else’s Nostalgioid Opiates, the ‘hits’, and pre-approved pabulum that performs as muzak behind empty conversations in both rec rooms and concert halls alike.
  If he’s lucky, this phase will never end, and he will eventually join his Hebetative Alumnoid brethren in their conspicuous cavort. Who am I kidding — this isn’t a phase at all. It’s an archetype.
  Alright, alright — Adult Heresy is nothing new and the Wankening is quite common. It’s the same all over. But pointing out an age-old problem doesn’t make it go away. If you float a certain way, okay, but overcompensating for your insecurities doesn’t make you leadership material.
  You want constructive solutions? Our town’s Semi-Adult Day Care Centres are already packed, plus their admissions are strictly voluntary. The old man on his third mortgage can always bail Junior out of his pesky predicaments that the rest of us have to clean up. And that same old man will also pull strings for his meritless legacy. What else can we do but cry ‘Shame!’?
  Johnny Gutts laments a world currently being run by C-students. But how much worse will it be under a leadership that needs help just to achieve mediocrity? It’s not sustainable!

— Morgan Musone, Heritageville

The Secret is Out: Orville’s Culture Transition Services™

Why do one-time “cutting edge” youth-oriented factions unexpectedly transition their aging lifestyle into (ostensibly) more mature, more age-appropriate levels of energy exertion in their interests and hobbies?

  For the last 20 years Orville’s Professional Services Division has been implementing their Culture Transition Services™ to help coordinate a delicate, seamless transition of young men and women’s “entire scene” towards a more productive future. Today’s twentysomethings cannot simply abandon their youth for responsibility without also abandoning social circles and self-identity, with the resultant freak-out leaving them empty and even more insecure. We can’t let scenesters trickle off without a note, one by one, month by month, leaving the Scene King without a kingdom.

  Orville’s CTS uses a specific matrix algorithm to analyse subjects’ psychological and socio-economic background to tailor a natural transitional “growth path” for each individual.  For example: The graceful transition of Southern Ohio Juggalos to a thriving bluegrass scene didn't happen ‘by chance.’ CTS experts analysed key players and came to the conclusion that Level 3B Proles would remain ‘within caste’ over a lifetime.

  This is where CTS professionals came in: They offered advice on tattoo updates, incorporating banjos and fiddles, gradual music venue showtime adjustments over 3-year period from 11pm gatherings to 4pm hoedowns, and a clever marketing strategy from Orville’s Energy Drink Division with new drink offering “JUGG-R-NAUT™,” which came with a free corncob pipe.

Pipes initially looked and acted as crack pipes, but over a 18-month time period were gradually changed to actual corncob pipes.  Though the scene remains in the same caste, they are now semi-productive bluegrass musicians, rather than sad, 45-year-old Juggalos hanging out in parking lots.

Other case studies:
• Riot Grrll scene in Spokane 5-year transition into weekly Saturday afternoon Quilting Party gatherings at local community center.
• ‘90’s Straight-Edge/Skate scene in Denton, TX transition to thriving co-ed softball league.
• Transitioning Classic City’s aging BärteHansa members suffering from Role Strain into a benign niche spiral that flatters their sense of narcissism whilst socially sequestering them from the rest of productive society.

These fantastic results don’t happen on their own. Orville’s CTS labs architect and engineer every step of the transformation. Where needed, Orville will introduce one or more SXAs (Scene-Xfer-Agent) into your community. These are trained, attractive actors that your friends will find to be highly influential, and will help you guide them into — and through — the scene metamorphosis. (Oh, and don’t worry, SXAs don’t hang around, their skills will be needed elsewhere... Usually a staged death is their exit, and you’ll be the hero who almost saved their life…)

  Orville’s Culture Transition Services™ kindly lends young people a firm but guiding hand to fulfill their socio-economic imperative. Young skeptics may scoff at their colleagues “selling out,” but look at the alternative: How pathetic are middle-aged folks who are left clinging to lost youth? Or worse yet, those who co-opt the culture of people their own kids’ age?  Surely these same skeptics would call shenanigans on this.

  When we consider the sociological problems of the growing number of middle-aged people still indulging in Xbox with their kids, cougar antics, walking around in khaki shorts and flip-flops, and ingesting Nostalgioid Opiates, both the usefulness and the need for Orville’s Culture Transition Services™ becomes clear.

Peaceful Tempers at the Brink

Infotoxin peddlers and psychic vampires are in no position to dictate the sources and use of the energies of others.
  The qi-booters of today merely recycle the vibes of yesteryear, trying to pass off the labour and output of others whilst dropping a nuke on any residual value.
  The cultural half-life of their resultant exploits is pretty much an open book for the public to gaze upon -- and sadly shake their heads at. The only use their dwindling peanut gallery has for them is for last-ditch Nostalgioid Opiates.
  But don’t puncture their zeppelin unless you want a public meltdown on your hands. (Or, maybe you do want that.)
  The old brag was that Subjective Reality is a lifestyle choice.
  Objective Reality has other plans.

Betwixt, Between, and Beyond

Ianuspater points hither and yon
Supra et infra, gazing on
Fourth Dementia swallows the Third
Lines of Limentinus, sharp, then blurred

Submitted for consideration:

Liminal Spaces — Ah, those transitional loci of circumstance that are subjective enough for both normie and dilettante to ascribe their navel-gazing expositions upon.
  In the particular universe perpendicular to the one from which you read this, physical examples abound. From the deserted Global Congress Centre to Buddhist columbariums and empty provision buildings, spatial peculiarities both confound and inspire. Much the same with Patinoires Del-Wood et Parkaire, the derelict Echelon Facility, and sundry no-man’s lands one may happen upon.
  And, from the mundane déjà fait iterations of visiting drinking establishments to the abundant intentionality of the APF’s Project: Horloge endeavours, liminal instances of course present themselves in the temporal realm as well.
  But the importance of the liminal’s psychological sphere must not be overlooked, dear friend. Here we see the time between stimulus/thought and its response, which may range from mere microseconds for the nimble-minded to the paralysed purgatories for those riddled with doubt. Mitigating factor? Intuition, which even Johnny Gutts admits is a “fleeting thing.” This psychological effect may well activate nostalgioid opiates and/or an aesthetic wonder at what-ifs.
  How then does John Q. Public negotiate this common (yet little acknowledged) void? Metacognitive recursions are always a risk when dealing with Verges on the Verge, and the resulting quantum friction could best be described as type of Dynamic Tension™ (apologies to Mr Atlas). But we’ve known such is the case as far back as the days of Blake’s ‘doors between known and unknown.’
  The bottom line between optimism, pessimism, and middle-ground realism is that Uncertainty is Opportunity.
  How you carpe that diem is up to you.

Role Strain in the Making

Anyone alive during the last fifty years must be familiar with the tendency and trend of college-age youth to rely on mere spectacle and forced drama to Address Issues and to Raise Awareness.
  Subsequent generations, for a time, witnessed these antics in hindsight, logically noting that such feel-good dramatics at the moment served the hungry ego whilst outweighing any possible practical solutions.
  Ergo, one would think that mature minds would eschew look-at-me shenanigans in favour of persuasive methods with a more rational approach — appealing more to the adult than the child, lest they become a living cliché spouting trite slogans without any thought behind them...

Today’s actual dialogue:

Bystander: “It looks like you strongly believe in your cause. What constructive steps are you taking to remedy the issue?”

Protester: ”Well, um... we’re gonna get together and have a meeting... and decide what actions... like... to take...”

What happened?
  Are today’s youthful protesters unwilling to learn from history or are they unable, given the inarguable dumbing-down of education, nay, even parenting itself?
  Judging from the consequence-free attitude seen in discarded signage left littered thoughtlessly about the quad after their public posturing, one must conclude the worst: the means are the ends themselves — Attention-Whoring 101. Spent theatrics can often be quite a sad curtain call. But let us not allow fading youth get in the way of Nostalgioid Opiates.

Nostalgioid Opiate '05: Conversational Hostage

Good manners and feigned interest are all that keep one from fleeing a spotlit scene of vapidity. Even over-obvious clockwatching and exaggerated [ahem]s are lost on our gesticulating subject... who also just happens to be the topic as well.
Alas, your attention is the ransom; your patience, the victim.

Nostalgioid Opiate '05: Back ‘Atcha!

The pestiferous deluge of Ordnance Metaphors by Tele-Hucksters hawking their Personal Financial Adrenaline Plans has come full circle as the Masses of the Nonplussed retaliate with full-bore 12-gauge furor... metaphorically, of course.

Nostalgioid Opiate ’05: Revenue Projection Failure — Back to the Crib

A traumatic backstory comes to life: You talked the Talk, but you couldn't walk the Walk, so you'll have to crawl the Crawl.

Nostalgioid Opiate '05: Fanning the Flames of ‘Friend’ship

Resentment smolders from tiresomely schwimming upstream against the Tide of Mediocre Sidlers... until a spontaneous Drawing-of-the-Line with Riot Act Announcement sends the amigos off como una nube del humo.