20 Years After Man

http://on.mash.to/1roxBi5

By now you know all about the angry zeitgeist behind GenX methodology, because we want to blow the whistle on how we see the world, which takes us to some very strange places indeed, first and foremost is the human condition as it exists out in the world, because we sometimes stand up openly and in violent contrast to pop culture and its' requisite artifacts around us. It's hard: you're the problem and we clearly know that, but how to change you, a broken human? Answer: through intelligent design, and very often mindless repetition, resulting in positive growth. 

It's excruciating slow in genius-time, which means me and my peer group often outsource intellectual capital (in the form of expert consultation) to do the more dreaded monotonous and daily grinding of your ax. We feel anger at you, but since you're the patient, we can't in all good ethics hurt you, so we seek to heal you. But, where does the energy go? Oftentimes, we channel it into our art, music, dance, clothes, speech, etc. You get the point: Mommy is mad, but it's against the law for me to slap the shit out of you at this point in time because I'm a registered human weapon, so I won't. Feel me?

With that in mind, take most local and evening news programs: it's made mostly for people who need the repeating of spoken words for their ADD/Dyslexia/BDP (like a lot of the anchors themselves), therefore it is the exact opposite of informative for someone like me. If I'm a regular viewer of television content, I often have to watch an alcoholic with shiny red-rimmed eyes sign his lack of comprehension live and on-air, in the form of the same question over and over again. Yes, it IS very painful. Thank you for not answering, and/or caring about me as a person, because your sickness takes precedence over me and my feelings each and every day.

So, I watch most stuff with a grain of salt. Oh, I know the anchors who are good at what they do, and the ones who are glorified actress/model/wannabes in tight dresses, but when I see and/or hear Ernie Anastos, that means "GREEK" to me in New Yorkese. He's been an anchor here for so long, that like The Mets or The Yankees, we would struggle with change; the real kind, not your temper tantrum over no chocolate ice cream left in the freezer.

It was with great trepidation and some degree of shock/awe/horror that I had to watch my man from New York sign weirdly easy questions at some New Age pale skinny gay gothic hipster in all black and some eyeliner from Ohio. Sorry, Middle American peeps, for your loss (sarcasm). The intellectual premise was thus: what to do when robots take over? I'm sorry....what the fuck did you just say? Did that fucking hipster just say "robots" in all seriousness to Ernie freakin' Anastos?! Dazed, I waited a bit, thinking this mess would right itself, but no; some 20-nothing "producer" even had the graphics guy throw up a cheesy (and quickly made) type graphic for this very serious and timely pertinent Robot Takeover story. Is it ethical to, like, be nice to them and stuff? Holy shit, yo. Excuse the fuck out of me? WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY?

By now, I'm very used to media dip-shits, because publishing isn't exactly filled with just Harvard, Yale, and RISD, so I know I can expect a complete fucking idiot at any time in life, but sometimes the very fact that some ass thinks that we would want to watch his gay friend mouth their shared mental disorder makes me, well...mental. And then I went off, shouting at the t.v. like any Mad Dog-drinking Times Square bum pissing his pants in broad daylight. That's how fucked up you and your choices are to me sometimes. I re-grouped, shouted many choice and very appropriate curse words at my t.v set, and then I did what I do best: I "depantsed" intellectually some kid who has the nerve to invade my space, just because I want free t.v. and not some rip-off cable channel that makes YOU richer, and not me.

So, here it goes: we humans make robots, we humans then service the robots, and (THIS IS FUCKING KEY) because machines break down all the time with or without humans, our metallic equipment doesn't last long. When I did have some satellite channels in Brooklyn, and heavily rocked the NatGeo channel (among a few other choice channels), I actually discovered things; you know, like you do with educational programming. Disclaimer: you should know upfront that I an a huger fan of free PBS channels, mostly for the nature specials, but some other stuff, too.

And so I realize that I had the privilege to watch informing and entertaining specials about what happens to our stuff 20 years after <insert latest type of Apocalypse here>, which formed this brilliant deduction: shit breaks down when we aren't there to take care of it. Your house falls apart, weeds sprout up everywhere, and wild animals nest in your old bedroom. Chernobyl is a radioactive human nightmare BUT wolf cubs are born there, irradiated. So it's like that, asshole.

The Mars Rover spent half the Martian year docked on the side of a small hill, parked there by code sent to it through NASA engineers, so that it's solar cells and other mechanical works won't get gummed up when they try to power it back up after the annual sand storm season, with, yes, yet more slow code sent to it via space. Except for that one time, when the images that came back to the control center didn't accurately predict the small depression in the sand, so the guys had to send it messages in painfully long Computerese to move it very slowly back and forth (like parallel parking in the city with an angry mad trucker cursing at you for blocking traffic), because if it breaks down, there goes $40 billion U.S.D. of our taxpaying money, and if the robot is done, it's fate is to be forever covered in sand.

Ditto with episodes of "Taboo" that highlight fringe carnival freaks as entertainment. Yeah, I know that guy jerks off in his car and pretends it's his girlfriend, but do you want him dating your daughter? Same thing with Diaper Boy; he can't talk to you, A PERSON, because some crazy human beat him every day of his childhood so, lo and behold, he wants to be held like a small child instead of loving you. It happens, it's disturbing, but at the end of the day, your stupid fucking robot toy that kicks a soccer ball to the President (you know, the man we freely elected to kick a ball AND save the free world on a shoestring. Yeah, that guy.) is just that: a very fancy and nicely designed piece of equipment that breaks down. And it doesn't get to save the world. No. It gets that crazy IT guy who costs $XXX/hour to fix it, because your dumb fucking machine costs us $XX billion dollars to make, no Presidential addresses included. How's that for a price tag? No?! 

Yeah, that's what I fucking thought. I have to monitor your usage of what becomes (conceptually to me) that fancy fucking color copier with it's own hard drive, and then fix it for you when you become weird about using it, because you are too cheap to outsource it to some wonk who specializes in gadget repair. Oh, then please douchebag me around in a phony budget meeting because you ONLY UNDERSTAND spreadsheet numbers from your learning disordered brain, (that's why you work in the text-based industry of literature) plus I'm way better looking than you, and you really hate that. I PASS. YOU FAILED.

Just learn some real shit by clicking through the links below, yo, and more importantly: LEAVE ME ALONE.

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_After_People
• http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2014/10/nuclear-tourism/johnson-text
• http://www.space.com/11773-nasa-mars-rover-spirit-mission-ends.html 


“I’ll be in the paper, the news with Ernie Anastos
They’ll even print my recipe for pasta with pesto”
—“Finger Lickin’ Good” by The Beastie Boys.

Freak

All my life I've been called names or talked about in a disparaging way. Typically it's behind my back, though occasionally it's hysterical outbursts in front of me. It's really the only avenue left for those who wish to harm me, because I learned to defend myself physically. I know it comes from fear and self-loathing, but sometimes that doesn't make it easier to bear. It's particularly hard for me to grasp because I know there's nothing wrong with me. Seeing or hearing me incorrectly comes from the distorted senses of the beholder. That makes it all the more terrifying for me: these strong, visceral, and violent reactions from strangers, so-called friends, and even family members who should know me better. But they do not. To really know the object of ones' loathing would require honesty. To see me clearly, they would have to take a good look at themselves. For the mentally and emotionally disturbed, the truth is more than they can bear.

Of the many choice names I've been called since childhood, the one that stands out as the most oft-repeated is "freak". While I'm on the subject, let's go down the list: weirdo, witch (and the rhyming b-word), lazy, druggie (which oddly enough started in 7th grade, when I hadn't even kissed a boy yet), hippie, Alien, Martian, flat, flat-as-a-board, pancake, Olive Oyl (Popeye's skinny girlfriend), freckle-face, Pippi Longstocking (a crude, rube of a red-haired girl from children's book lore), and "boy" after my hair was shorn off for the summer, then broom stick because I was a late bloomer.

As I got older, the names got more insulting, becoming ethnic slurs and curses. My hair was a great target, and as I blossomed, so was my body. A relative told me one summer during my puberty, that some boys who called out to me to join them playing a board game, while on our way to the beach, only did so because I looked like a "slut" with black eyeliner. I was 13 years old. Of course, no help was extended to me in regards to its' application. A friend gave me a makeup palette as a birthday gift another year. She handed it over to me and said, "Marie, as much as I like purple, there are other colors out there." Her British stepmother took me to get our ears pierced at 15 years old. My mom had flatly refused to help me with such matters. She scorned my time in the bathroom as "primping", though in reality I was desperate to blend in, if even for a day, a luxury I've never had. Being average seemed like a blessing to me. I started reading beauty mags, teaching myself hair and make up, to survive school. I got my first manicure at 27, the day before I married. But I was marked as different, and I knew it. I felt like a monster.

If it wasn't my looks that got me in trouble, it was my brain. I didn't think like the other kids, and I knew it. I once stopped my parents cold by entering their bedroom and reciting a few lines from Shakespeare. I was about 7 or 8. My appetite for reading was voracious. I blew through books by Poe, Stephen King, sci-fi novels, and all the stupid period romances like Wuthering Heights, borrowed from my parents bookshelves. I joined book clubs at school and read in the library. Somewhere, out there, it had to be better than this insipid suburb we landed in. And it was. College was an epiphany in self-actualization for me. I was no longer told to "shut up" or looked at like I had three-heads. I could let my freak flag fly, as Jimi Hendrix once wrote and sang. I had been set free. I could let my hair down, and stretch my thoughts as far as they could go. It was so relaxing and luxurious. Leaving home had a profoundly beneficial effect on me. It taught me that freedom is worth dying for, because nothing compares to it.

I grew up and realized that I was atypical in the best ways: a ballet dancer instead of a ball player like other kids, an artist instead of some playground bullshitter, a reader and writer in lieu of the class gossip. I am unique, and not in the short-bus way I was mocked for. It's sad, but I've learned to adjust and protect myself from hatred and envy—hard, lonely lessons for anyone, let alone a little girl, one of the most vulnerable creatures on this planet. It's made me almost unbearably strong and resilient, which separates me from the pack even more. But being an "outsider" has become my greatest blessing, instead of the curse I'd been taught to believe. If it wasn't the hair on my head, it was my last name. If it wasn't my last name, it was my ethnicity. And if it wasn't my ethnicity or race, it was my religion. How fitting that today is Ash Wednesday, marked with a symbol we wear on our foreheads. I've finally embraced my path in life: by standing up for myself, I've accepted standing out. And how sweet it is!