Furious Charge

I think the banality is getting to me today. Generally when I sit at the Vista Moxie it is full of weird, somewhat off-beat folks that quietly set about reading a book, surfing on their clunky laptops, or whispering to each other like the place was a church. Today it is full of regular work-a-day stiffs wearing their fresh from the mall clothes, armed with false laughter, and noisy as hell. Then the canned radio station coming over the loud speak starts up with the Counting Crows telling me how they paved paradise and put up a parking lot.

If I had a time machine, one of the first things I would do is go back and kill that band. I'd run them down with a Big Yellow Taxi... hehe. I look around and I can almost see the whole room grooving to the song. I throw up a little bit in my mouth and despair. I put my headphones on and start up the most violent British Thrash I have on hand hoping to drown it out. What I hear is interesting. The tone of the Counting Crows seems to have the same pitch as the dirge of the norms squawking around me. They are one and the same, the anti-something to my everything.

America has officially lost all sense of itself.

I think about the books, music, media, art, movies, and fashion that seems to be popular and I'm filled with a sort of terror. It is like being strangled, and all you want to do is squeeze back. I look to all the people standing at the front of non-conformity and independent creative action and marvel at how tall their multi-million (billion) dollar corporate sponsors are. It makes me really respect the works of those people who do not sell out, compromise, or infringe the creative agency of other people.

The radio is dead.

Television deserves to be killed. MTV hasn't been on the air for more than 10 years.

The movies haven't been really cool since the 80s. (Dune, Outland, Goonies, etc)

Almost every book I pick up gets put down unfinished.

I will never buy another comic book from Marvel (may they die a fiery death).

Has something has gone terribly wrong? I've thought that maybe my own uncompromising nature is to blame. Maybe somehow this is just me being melodramatic. I have so few creative refuges.

Webcomics unfettered by anything save the creative force of one or two people.

Metal & Classical Music.

The 1% of TVs and Movies produced in the last fifteen years that I can actually stand to watch.

It makes me angry that people living in the US accept the tripe the entertainment industry foists on us. It's not like we don't know better? Then I stand in the checkout line at Winco and look at all the Gossip Rags while listening to people saying how good Avatar was and realize I am alone. By and large people don't care and that as long as you cater to their weaknesses and understand how to exploit them... you can get people to buy into anything.

Okay. I think I'm mad enough now to start writing for a few hours. I think if I wrote a book about writing, I'd call it "Berserker".