Excerpts
This is part of a conversation I had on FB, to be saved for posterity; and to have a permalink to refer back to, so I don't have to keep typing all this out every time I have this very same discussion. LOL.
"...a sad but true fact that I don't love to dwell on overmuch..? I remain living in New Orleans, yes, because it is a magical and brilliant community, filled with awesome and creative people... but also because I very sincerely believe (and have been proven true on way too many of occasion) that my way of life is simply impossible anyplace else in this country. I joke a bunch, about the "lynch mob" coming to my door if ever I try to live another place. But, in my experience, that is not much of a joke. I don't preach, I am not Che Guevara . I haven't as yet amassed as much money as it takes to be considered "quirky" by any upstanding community. And "Elsewhere" is encroaching upon New Orleans, every week. It won't be long before this place finally gives up the last ghost. People think I don't know that, with my stubborn loyalties. But that dronish, puritanical, ostracizing, Idiocratic mentality is spreading like the horrid virus that it is, even into the last cities in this country where one used to be free to be a freak.
Hold on, lemme go get something...
"...Here it is. My friend Mike posted this on his timeline yesterday:
'College students drinking and dancing to the most soulless music I have ever heard. They drink all night trying to get laid. The daiquiris they drink have penis shaped straws. They think the straws are funny. They take pictures. They go from bar to bar although there don't seem to be any important differences. Eventually they realize they aren't going to get laid so they vomit on the ground and drunkenly drive home hopefully missing the police checkpoints. The bar gets paid to liquor them up and the police get paid to catch them on their way home. At 4 in the morning the city comes to life with the sound of street cleaning machines wiping up all the vomit and penis straws from the night before. It's a vomit and penis straw based economy. The thing that hurts me about all of this, that makes it hard for me to endure night after night is that the culture is so shallow and empty. There is absolutely no substance in any of it and the vast majority of people can't tell the difference.'
Sounds like NOLA, right?
Nup, he's been living in Austin for a year.
"The people he's writing about are the same people who plow through Jackson Square, drunkenly screaming "WOO!" at the tops of their lungs, and hollering the most disrespectful, nasty shit at... Not only myself. Not only the psychics, but the musicians, the mimes, the artists. Everybody they pass by who is not a bartender or looks like the latest popular asshole on Bravo channel.
This is the mentality that is permeating every eclectic community nowadays. "FUCK YEAH, Mardi-GRAS, dude!!!! Whoooohooo! Show me them...Booobies!!!" has replaced any curiosity or appreciation for actual culture, intellect, things of actual value.
It pisses me off, breaks my fucking heart.
Dammit, you troglodytes, in most other places I'd be considered a holy woman! People wouldn't dare allow me to be treated the way your buddies seem to be encouraging you to do!
"And I'm sorry, I don't mean to be a filibuster. But if you think that personal freedom is a concept that is honored or encouraged these days, it has been wayy too long since you've tried kicking it with us lunatics.
People are being dumbed down and brainwashed by that disgusting, mass-consumeristic, pop-culture mindset at a rate that is more alarming than it has ever been. And ANYBODY who does not subscribe to it are cast out as societal pariah. Which never used to phase me per se.... But nowadays people are encouraged (Whoa, Patriot Act!!) to not just live-and-let. Nowadays they really do bring out the mob mentality. If it's different than you... KILL IT. Or, report it. Or abuse it verbally. Mock and scorn it with your friends, lest one of you be accused of actually having predilections outside of the herd's hivemind! "Oh shit, Heather, don't talk to that tarot reader! let's go get a daiquiri!"
Springer! on the air for what- 20, 25 years now? And has been fully imprinted on society now. I triple-dog, pinky dare you to go watch an episode of it. Protip, have on hand pepto bismol, Xanax, and lock up all your guns.
Civil liberties are wonderful and vital things. But, in the day to day living aspect in this society? They are just really old words scribbled on rotting parchment, and are treated as such by most of this country. Because gawd knows, nothing's sacred to them anymore."
Whew, that was a lot. LJ-cut it is! ;)
*BTW, if anybody is still here and reading -wow, really??? Thanks- the above rant is in relation to my having posted a graphic to my timeline, that contained that quote from Ecuador's President Delgado to the U.S. Ambassador: "Don't come lecturing us about liberty...Here we haven't invaded anyone. Here we don't torture like in Guantanamo. Here we don't have drones killing alleged terrorist without any due trial, killing also the women and children of those supposed terrorists. So don't come lecturing us about life, law, dignity, or liberty. You don't have the moral right to do so."
My friend John -a renowned SCOTUS scholar and Constitutional purist- and I get into many hearty debates, and this one was about the concept of "personal liberties", and the waning ability in this country to be "free inside our own heads".
If you have a Facebook, it's right here.
.
"...a sad but true fact that I don't love to dwell on overmuch..? I remain living in New Orleans, yes, because it is a magical and brilliant community, filled with awesome and creative people... but also because I very sincerely believe (and have been proven true on way too many of occasion) that my way of life is simply impossible anyplace else in this country. I joke a bunch, about the "lynch mob" coming to my door if ever I try to live another place. But, in my experience, that is not much of a joke. I don't preach, I am not Che Guevara . I haven't as yet amassed as much money as it takes to be considered "quirky" by any upstanding community. And "Elsewhere" is encroaching upon New Orleans, every week. It won't be long before this place finally gives up the last ghost. People think I don't know that, with my stubborn loyalties. But that dronish, puritanical, ostracizing, Idiocratic mentality is spreading like the horrid virus that it is, even into the last cities in this country where one used to be free to be a freak.
Hold on, lemme go get something...
"...Here it is. My friend Mike posted this on his timeline yesterday:
'College students drinking and dancing to the most soulless music I have ever heard. They drink all night trying to get laid. The daiquiris they drink have penis shaped straws. They think the straws are funny. They take pictures. They go from bar to bar although there don't seem to be any important differences. Eventually they realize they aren't going to get laid so they vomit on the ground and drunkenly drive home hopefully missing the police checkpoints. The bar gets paid to liquor them up and the police get paid to catch them on their way home. At 4 in the morning the city comes to life with the sound of street cleaning machines wiping up all the vomit and penis straws from the night before. It's a vomit and penis straw based economy. The thing that hurts me about all of this, that makes it hard for me to endure night after night is that the culture is so shallow and empty. There is absolutely no substance in any of it and the vast majority of people can't tell the difference.'
Sounds like NOLA, right?
Nup, he's been living in Austin for a year.
"The people he's writing about are the same people who plow through Jackson Square, drunkenly screaming "WOO!" at the tops of their lungs, and hollering the most disrespectful, nasty shit at... Not only myself. Not only the psychics, but the musicians, the mimes, the artists. Everybody they pass by who is not a bartender or looks like the latest popular asshole on Bravo channel.
This is the mentality that is permeating every eclectic community nowadays. "FUCK YEAH, Mardi-GRAS, dude!!!! Whoooohooo! Show me them...Booobies!!!" has replaced any curiosity or appreciation for actual culture, intellect, things of actual value.
It pisses me off, breaks my fucking heart.
Dammit, you troglodytes, in most other places I'd be considered a holy woman! People wouldn't dare allow me to be treated the way your buddies seem to be encouraging you to do!
"And I'm sorry, I don't mean to be a filibuster. But if you think that personal freedom is a concept that is honored or encouraged these days, it has been wayy too long since you've tried kicking it with us lunatics.
People are being dumbed down and brainwashed by that disgusting, mass-consumeristic, pop-culture mindset at a rate that is more alarming than it has ever been. And ANYBODY who does not subscribe to it are cast out as societal pariah. Which never used to phase me per se.... But nowadays people are encouraged (Whoa, Patriot Act!!) to not just live-and-let. Nowadays they really do bring out the mob mentality. If it's different than you... KILL IT. Or, report it. Or abuse it verbally. Mock and scorn it with your friends, lest one of you be accused of actually having predilections outside of the herd's hivemind! "Oh shit, Heather, don't talk to that tarot reader! let's go get a daiquiri!"
Springer! on the air for what- 20, 25 years now? And has been fully imprinted on society now. I triple-dog, pinky dare you to go watch an episode of it. Protip, have on hand pepto bismol, Xanax, and lock up all your guns.
Civil liberties are wonderful and vital things. But, in the day to day living aspect in this society? They are just really old words scribbled on rotting parchment, and are treated as such by most of this country. Because gawd knows, nothing's sacred to them anymore."
Whew, that was a lot. LJ-cut it is! ;)
*BTW, if anybody is still here and reading -wow, really??? Thanks- the above rant is in relation to my having posted a graphic to my timeline, that contained that quote from Ecuador's President Delgado to the U.S. Ambassador: "Don't come lecturing us about liberty...Here we haven't invaded anyone. Here we don't torture like in Guantanamo. Here we don't have drones killing alleged terrorist without any due trial, killing also the women and children of those supposed terrorists. So don't come lecturing us about life, law, dignity, or liberty. You don't have the moral right to do so."
My friend John -a renowned SCOTUS scholar and Constitutional purist- and I get into many hearty debates, and this one was about the concept of "personal liberties", and the waning ability in this country to be "free inside our own heads".
If you have a Facebook, it's right here.
.