Fuck Asheville and Fuck Social Media (a paranoid screed about Tedx, Jen Saylor and marketing)
If you happen to belong to Facebook or twitter like I do, you’ve probably heard every bottom feeding member of the social media plankton going on and on about Tedx Asheville, which happened tonight in town.
For those of you not familiar with the Tedx phenomenon, let me explain it to you. Imagine a group of maladjusted computer nerds attempting to place their enthusiasm for technology attempting to mingle with a bunch of idiotic hipsters and star fuckers while talking about saving the world (without actually doing anything about it). That is Tedx Asheville.
The entire thing has made me realize how much I hate what Asheville has become, social media and new moneyed cokeheads all over Western North Carolina.
Another Picture of the Puppy
I never wanted to be a dog person. I kind of hate that I am, but I am so into my dogs, both the large one (Chili) and the new one (which we are still calling Samson), so who knows what road to mediocrity these dogs are taking me down.
I’m just adding a picture of the dog because I really don’t feel like updating today, but to not update would be to break my “update this blog every day between now and my birthday” credo that I’m currently operating upon.
I promise to write something long before tomorrow.
Dillard’s Sucks.
I’ve never been a good dresser. My jeans have always fit me poorly due to my big waist and short legs, shirts hung weird over my slouched shoulders and proto-beer belly, so when I went into Dillard’s in the Asheville Mall when I was 18, I undoubtedly looked as if I didn’t belong in the department store’s standard look of faux elegance and upper middle class America’s delusion of being better than they actually were. Dillard’s isn’t a nice store so much as it is a collision of name brands and slightly above Sears quality clothing. But for me, and a lot of other people in Asheville, it was where you went when you wanted something nice- especially for someone older (or where someone older bought you a gift card when they were subtly trying to tell you that you looked like shit).
Why Tron sucks and Justin Bieber doesn’t.
The summer movie season has burst up us like buttons in a fat girl’s changing room, and I’m just as guilty as everyone in America of getting excited about big budgeted, trite Hollywood garbage. I like explosions, I have been known to enjoy remakes, and I enjoy sitting down to a movie and having to make myself not think for a few hours. I like to be entertained, I guess.
This compelling and rather American need to be entertained by utter shit stands tall in my life like a New York City skyscraper, and tonight in preparation for this summer’s onslaught of shit, I let an al Queda-driven airplane called Tron come crashing through my feces skyscraper, and I don’t know if I’ll ever recover. Now that that long and rather unsatisfying metaphor is out of the way, I’d like to explain why.
I remember Tron’s release in the theater. Just judging from the previews and the few posters that I’d seen of the movie, I knew that it just had to be the most awesome thing ever. For one reason or another, I never saw it in the theater. It probably came out on home video soon after that, and I still never got around to seeing it. The movie always popped in and out of my sphere of geekdom, and I never really sought out the film until a few weeks ago. Until Netflix burst through my better judgment and I placed it in my queue. Today Tron arrived, and after dinner I decided to sit down and watch this movie that had garnered such a cult following that it has spawned a sequel nearly three decades later.
I’m here to say (or type, or whatever) that Tron is a huge steaming pile of black light covered shit. It was so bad that I laughed throughout the entire movie and wondered what was so awesome about this movie that people raved about it for years to me. I wondered what prompted people to dress up like the characters at comic book conventions and I wondered if Jeff Bridges Oscar could be taken away for doing a movie like this.
Immediately after sitting through the movie, taking the DVD out of the player and placing it into the magic Netflix envelope to send back to Send Us More Movies Land, I fired up my computer and checked my Facebook, and noticed at least three friends of mine’s status as being something about how much they hate Justin Bieber. That’s when like a lightening bolt straight from God, or Usher, or even the Master Control program it hit me:
Justin Bieber and Tron really aren’t that much different.
Thirty-Two
Saturday was the birthday celebration for a great friend of mine who works a rather important job and thus doesn’t want his name being spread around on the internet (I refer to him as Batman when I’m online, unless of course I’m talking about the comic character, which I refer to as my friend’s name) and I got nice and drunk with my good buddy Bort for the first time in a while.
For the last few months, Bort’s been dealing with his life, the good stuff and the bad, and I’ve been dealing with mine, but it was really nice to hang out, have a few drinks and a lot of laughs. He’s still my best good friend. I could gush more about him, but it would do no good and only make me seem obsessive and coupled with the picture I’ve chosen for the main image of this entry could make me seem like I was a raving homosexual madman for Bort, which is not entirely true. I’m more casually gay for the guy.
Either way, my buddy Bort is a fucking legend. I wish that we could hang out more, but it is what it is. When we do hang out, we laugh, we talk and we get along so I’m not complaining. He was a friend that stayed around, and for that I appreciate him.
(Also, Saturday is his birthday!)
Have a good night/day tomorrow. I’ll be around in the evening to share an awesome musical discovery.
Be good.
Who hates me this week?
It’s not every day that I tick someone off. Okay, it might be every day. But usually there’s a good reason for it. A better person than I would see people typing ridiculous things online and just ignore it, but I’m not that person. I’m pretty petty.
Because of this I tend to have a lot of people around me that get so red-faced angry at me that they take the time out of their day to let me know what a jerk I can be. Sometimes it’s creepy, while other times it’s a little flattering. I’ve decided to take a moment and spotlight the latest person who would like my head on a platter: Dylan Schacht of Hendersonville, NC.
Blocking out the bad
Sunday after work I came home in a terrible mood; nothing I’d done all day seemed to work out for me, work was awful and reminding me again why I want out of there and the aforementioned job kept me inside on what was a gorgeous day that was hard-earned after what has felt like three straight months of sub-freezing temperatures.
I came home, gave my wife (whom I hadn’t seen since late Friday night) a big long hug and sat down on the couch.
Suddenly, everything got better.
Hey look, Tea Partiers are racist fucks!
Here’s a shocker- the guy who founded Teaparty dot org, which is one of the bigger sites for the rotund fear-based closet Republicans out there was photographed carrying a sign into a tea party gathering (imagine the cholesterol count at that place!) that read “Congress= Slave Owner Tax Payer= Niggar” (his words, not mine).
So this proves two things: that the tea party does have some racist leanings up top and that they are on equal footing grammatical skills wise with Chad “ZOMG GOVERMENT ARE FUL OF WHITCHEZ LOL” Nesbitt.
I’m not a fan of the photo, but in the interests of those too lazy to click the links, I’ll post it here after the jump.
Greetings from the Tundra.
Sweet Jeebus it’s cold. This is some artic bull kaka blowing outside and all through my drafty house.
For those of you not in the Southeast, there has been some sort of epic cold has blown through Western North Carolina with all of the fury of Anton Chigurh looking for missing dope. This is horrible. Yes, I’m aware that there are colder parts of the country or the world, but I live in the South, where the winters are advertised as mild. I always thought that mild meant a few cold snaps that jar the area, but nothing that would leave permanent marks. So far this winter has left welts, bruises and other protuberances that only Gorilla Monsoon could locate on a person’s person.
So we aren’t going outside. We should be okay, right? Wrong. Jessie and I live in one of the coldest, draftiest houses that I’ve ever experienced. At this moment, we are waiting for a delivery of firewood to come so that we can get our living area nice and toasty. We’ll survive, but right now we are bundled up on the couch watching football and laughing a
t how cold it is.
The nice thing is that this weather is giving us a chance to spend one more day being close to each other before school starts again. Then, there’s not much happening until April.April, as of right now, is my saving grace; on Easter Sunday, Jessica and I are departing on a cruise which will take us to Jamaica and Grand Cayman.
As I sit here freezing- dying a little bit with each chill, even- I’m thinking about hot beaches, clear blue water and premium Jamaican weed (which I will be too cowardly to buy or try). I’m thinking about seeing new places with my lady and eating too much food. I’m thinking about screwing on a boat while Jimmy Buffett-sounding Muzak plays in the hallway outside of our cabin. I’m thinking about all of these things to stay warm, and it’s working a little.
So to my friends in Western NC, please stay warm today. To those who are experiencing even colder temperatures stay strong and warm (and yes, before you say it, I know that I am a wimp).
Until later,
Be good.
Jason Bugg versus the War on Christmas
That’s a blurry picture of my Christmas tree along with my cat Moe in the lower right hand corner. It’s stuff like this picture that makes me excited about Christmas.
I like Christmas, I really do. I like the lights and the idea of giving gifts, I love the music and love how the entire country turns into this halcyon-tinted, 1950s world where Bing Crosby still matters. I love it all. I respect the religion part, although my rational brain knows that the Ghandi-like figure that we are celebrating was actually born in the spring. But the thing that I do not respect about Christmas is how people use it for whatever political platform that they are perched upon.
It comes from all sides: I have Earth Fare shopping, incense burning assholes on one side whining about Christmas being too commercialized and Glenn Beck worshiping fools on the other complaining about Christmas is being taken away from its true meaning. I guess what I’d like to do is to speak up for the sensible amongst us.
Christmas is overly commercialized. There’s too much importance placed upon holiday sales and the “you must buy this or else you are a bad parent/friend/spouse” thing is sickening. Part of me sees the day as an overly capitalistic orgy of credit cards and cash, that’s a given. But another part of me likes to point out that while that is happening, is there any other time of year when the message is to buy things and give them away? There’s something really beautiful about that. I know that whatever happens after you purchase something doesn’t really matter to the people selling the gifts, but it matters to me. Is it shameful and pretty damn repugnant to see people spending so much money when so many others have nothing? Of course it is, but it’s also rather heartwarming to see people spend so much money on something that they are going to give away.
Maybe that’s what keeps me from going completely insane this time of year. I’m not sure if that is it entirely, but it helps.
The other side of the coin is the “War on Christmas” believing tools. On Sunday, I saw the ugliness of this up close.
I sat at my station in the store at my part-time job watching the throngs of people walk in, and smiling to those who made eye contact with me. To my right were a group of middle school cheerleaders letting customers know that they were wrapping presents inside and accepting donations to benefit their cheerleading squad buying age inappropriate uniforms. It was a rather monotonous little routine; the door opens, a customer walks in, the girls say “Happy Holidays”, rinse and repeat. It kept happening and after a while, I barely even noticed it.
Then, all at once an older white man walked in. When greeted with a “Happy Holidays” the old man fired back at the girls, his face red and eyes narrow “It’s actually Merry Christmas!” and started to walk past me. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy being rude quite a bit, but something about the venom that this old, scared white man spewed at a pair of 13 year-old girls was rather troubling. In the half a second between the rather hateful correction and the moment he began to walk past me an almost contented smile came over his face as his normal coloring returned.
I had to say something, and I said it fast.
Sir, tonight is the second night of Hanukah was what I managed to say as he continued past me. He stopped, his face within inches of mine, and trembled with anger. For that fleeting moment, I was certain that he was going to fight me, scream at me, or start a complaint that would result in me getting fired from my horrible part-time job, but instead he walked away.
I wondered if he knew that Sunday was part of the Hanukah festivities. I wondered if he cared. I wondered if he respected anyone else’s faith as much as he expected us to respect his. I wondered if he knew that not everyone in that room believed in his magical space Ghandi and some people even chose not to celebrate his rather arbitrarily agreed upon birth celebration.
Sometimes I’m taken aback by people’s actions, especially those who actually believe that there is some sort of War on Christmas. There is no war. The last time I checked, Christmas was still the only religious holiday that the government recognizes by closing their banks. The War on Christmas is just another tool cooked up to get white people even more afraid and marginalized. The War on Christmas is as real as The Great Pumpkin. Actually, I saw The Great Pumpkin once, so that isn’t entirely true.
When dealing with the people who behave this way, I’m reminded of David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech at Kenyon University. In that speech (which everyone should read, and you can buy it in a book!) he spoke about true intelligence, and how that isn’t just what you learn in books, but about how you perceive the world around you, about how you choose to behave and react to it. It’s quite moving, and Wallace (in his complete genius) illustrates the entire point with only a simple joke: two young fish are swimming along, after a while an older fish swims past them and says “Good morning boys, how’s the water?” The fish nod and continue swimming, but eventually one looks at the other and says “what the hell is water?”
That is the point of life: to be like the older fish. To be aware of what is around you and to know that the other people around you are going through their lives also. It’s relatively impossible to think this way and to imagine some sort of persecution going on around you because some people don’t celebrate Christmas. It’s improbable that a person who takes the time out of their day to be a bit more aware would be so rude to a teenaged girl because she wished you well the wrong way.
I wish I could find that old man and talk to him. I imagine that he’d be just as hateful towards me for pointing out that he is an idiot as he was to two thirteen year old girls.
Be like the fish, people.
Until later, be good.
