lies my boob toob told me

lies my boob toob told me

[ed: one of those rants i feel is for all seasons. it has been called ‘the kx rant’ for reasons which no longer make sense: it had some (deliberate) spelling problems, which have been corrected. let me know if i missed any. —ben]

rant

today’s rant is entitled: life lessons via tv . it’s a multipart series.

all of you know this: the tv lies. and it lies in the most foul ways to the most impressionable people on the planet. who is it that really has time to watch tv? kids. and all the tv’s content is geared toward them.

don’t get me wrong, there are a few good shows on the tele, which i dutifully record on my tivo. i haven’t had to watch live tv in a couple of months.

tv’s first lesson deals with love:

every couple can work things out : this simply isn’t true. sometimes, people are just so different that things can’t work. crack addicts can’t date mormons. republicans can’t date alex. computer folks can’t date anyone except computer folks. they just don’t have any common ground, and there’s none that can be worked toward. but every cutsie teenage couple on tv always solve their fucked up issues by the end of the hour. it’s disgusting.

really, that’s one of the things that beverly hills 90210 got right. first, in any group of friends, there will be inbreeding. friends will date friends. and after this happens for the first time, the people involved get ostracized unless they break up, at which point they are required to date everyone in the group so that they all feel equal again. but they’re not. and it can only end badly.

friends don’t let friends date friends.

corollary: true love exists

included in this little lesson is this: even 14-year olds know ‘true love’ when they see it. nonsense. rife, steaming choad. (in case you were wondering, the word ‘choad’ is brought over from the british raj from india, where it means ‘fuck’.) teenagers don’t know what love is. all they feel is this drive from between their hips to bury tab a into slot b, so long as slot b doesn’t skin you up too badly (in the case of boys) or this screaming insecurity and need to be wanted and needed by everyone, which they think they can gain from at least one person even if it means taking the locks off slot b.

nix teens, adults don’t really have the love thing down either. it’s not about mutual needs or common goals, or watching ally mcbeal together on monday nights. it’s not about candlelit dinners or buying jewelry or taking trips to the bahamas. it sure as fuck isn’t about splitting things up when you figger out you’ve made a mistake. dats the tele telling you how to think again.

true love, in the television sense, is this imaginary ideal that can never be reached. a more practical definition of true love must be reached, and it has to be defined for each person. what is it to you? i don’t care, but that’s what you should be thinking about.

corollary: love leads to marriage

love and marriage aren’t even necessarily related—especially in this day and age. i don’t even know why people get married, other than it’s expected of the men and every woman feels that it’s their goal in life from age 22 to age 28. women, of course, control the boob supply, so we go along with it. there’s always some chump willing to take the dive for three weeks of free sex, three months of sex on the pretty cheap, and the three years before the divorce getting intermittent attention they don’t really have to work for. [ED: in retrospect, the previous line seems very prophetic. (12/29/03, ben)]

people, you are not looking for someone you can live with here. you are looking for someone you can add to your tribe, make part of your life, share everything with fully, lean on in times of weakness and trouble. someone who makes you give up everything to see them happy. yes, even sex. in short, someone you can’t live with out.

this is not to say that you’re looking for a stand-in. and definitely not someone you have to be with all the time. that’s called dependency and is reserved for the weakest of the weak. if you need someone in your life, you need to fix that problem before you even start thinking about ‘love’. gain some independence. learn to sit alone, eat alone, and think alone. echo and doodle, i’m talking at you here.

back to the topic at hand —

you don’t find that someone with a casual glance across a crowded room. that’s how you find a slampiece. there’s nothing wrong with finding a slampiece, but don’t confuse the 30 or so seconds of release and that disappointed expression on her face with love. that’s for people in trailer parks to mistake. don’t bother to get attached.

finding someone real takes work. and sometimes, you don’t find someone, you have to manufacture them—and that means they get to manufacture you. it’s a trade: a life for a life. you’re not going to know for a long time if they’re that person. and you’re not going to get a straight answer until they see you at your weakest. they’ve gotta see you fall in the pool with your pants on. watch ya cry when your little merlin dies. see you at your lowest, and still be there to bear you up, with not a chuckle, but understanding.

this kind of friendship can exist between guys, girls, or the more traditional relationship of guy and girl. there is an imaginary line labeled ‘serious’ in a lot of people’s mind—usually related to fucking. when people start plugging into each other they’re suddenly ‘serious’. that’s another of tv’s ideas. ditch it. if you’re really brave, imagine this relationship between more than two people, say, three, where each is willing to stand under the other two , taking and giving that support as needs be.

corollary: sex is a beautiful things between people that love each other

we’ve already established that we don’t know what love is—you can’t go by feeling, at any rate. under those rules, no one loves each other (definitely) so no one gets laid, and that logic just isn’t going to fly in america, land of child porn and and beer ads.

fucking is completely unrelated to love—it’s just this thing that happens sometimes. it has two modes—one in which you’re looking to give the other person the best time you can, and the other in which you needs your satisfaction. ideally, both parts are included in any given night of warm sticky pleasure, but not always.

this is also something tv wants to control—we want to posess a person, and be their only source of physical pleasure. why is that? i’m not even going to claim to be above it—i’ve been indoctrinated by the boob toob as well, and even though i can’t reconcile it logically i still am one posessive bastard. which i can’t justify. at all. there is no real reason, and no map within the human psyche that demands monogamy, jealousy, and posession. we’re brainwashed here, squeaky clean.

this is another idea that needs to be chucked. toss it next to the one where ms. spears can sing.

corollary: there is someone for everyone or you’ll find someone

you don’t have a special person out there waiting to be found. if you think this is true, slit your arms open from elbow to wrists and dive off a nearby building, because being someone else’s messy entertainment is all you have to hope for, anyway. send me the photos, if possible, i’ll add them to my collection. you’re doing the right thing. you can pick up razor blades at the pharmacy.

there is one truth that stands above all others in this world: there are no free lunches . a christian will argue that the path to heaven is free, we just have to accept the sacrifice of Christ. killing the son of God though sounds pretty expensive to me—the truth stands: no free lunches.

in that vein you don’t get a soulmate. it’s a farce. if you have a bond to someone it’s because you forged it out of the stuff of your will, not because there’s some fat naked gay guy with a bow marking your territory for you. you have to earn this. and you’re not going to find someone. you’re sure as fuck not going to get the number of your one true love beamed to your palm from a passing subway car.

reality check, folks. you’re probably never going to find someone who’s custom fitted to you. it’s statistically improbable. if you find them it’s because you’re looking. hard. constantly. always willing to squint your eyes and look into the soul before you and wonder if it can be shaped into something useful. you make them and they make you. you shape each other, chipping away everything that doesn’t look right. and sometimes you put the chisel in the wrong place, and strixe too hard and ruin it. you can’t fix it, that’s the tv talxing. sometime’s it’s just broxen.

summary: i said all that to say this—if you want to find someone, you have to work, be willing to give and take, have reasonable expectations, and realize that sometimes it doesn’t work out. you can’t/shouldn’t posess them, and there are no rules about love and marriage being related. find someone(s) through hard work, and make them your own.

all of this tv has lied to you about.

Lesson two, this is a quickie—

people are dangerous : this is utter crap. 99% of all people in america were either raised in america or on american culture. and if there’s anything that american culture maxes ya it’s passive and weak. hell—most punk rockers are (as the astute mr. rollins pointed out last evening) begging for change outside the circle ‘x’ because they’re too lazy to get jobs.

even our criminals are pussys. look at those badasses on tv. gun-totin’ l33t gangsta’s. chinese kung-fu motherfuckers. ruthless money-grubbing businessmen. these people don’t exist. they have been dreamed up by the media to make you buy home security products and make you easier to control.

here’s the way it really is: the guy who’s robbing you? his gun’s not loaded. the safety’s on. a round isn’t chambered. he’s scared shitless. you say ‘boo!’ really loud, and he’s gonna take off. his friends? they’re there to watch not help.

laugh at him, and push past. he won’t stop you. because at this point, he’s gotta stop and think—’is this guy bullshitting? or is he one of those beatdown-layin television hero motherfuckers?’ they don’t know, and they’re too scared to find out. you’re pushing through their entire gang like it ain’t no thang. you’ve got your travel on. relax. there’ll be time to shit yerself later.

in short, the most dangerous people aren’t really dangerous—they just look dangerous with the right script and the right illumination, and if the streets they’re filming on are all slick from a hose down and the lights are reflecting just right.

next time, boys and girls, we’ll be talking about the misplaced notion that there are things that are fair .

that’s it, i’m done.

—eb.out

i know you by heart,
i know you by name,
i know you by a touch in the pouring rain