Friday, August 27, 2010

Philosophy, is the Talk on a Cereal Box

I haven't been punchy here for awhile. Or been self revealing in the form of navel gazing. While I'm in a good place, overall - there's always room for improvement.

There are things I'd like to write about, for instance, the Columbus Metropolitan Library levy, but anything I say, as a disgruntled former employee, would come across as me being bitter. So I do not criticize it, even though I'm more for the levy than I am against it. But, as I learned while working there, expressing any opposing view of that place was strictly forbidden.

It's not even that I'm censoring myself. I do not want to be negative. The trauma of being at my old workplace still exists. After three years I've finally found myself not flinching while being around my current coworkers when they talk to me, about anything. Only now am I coming to terms with it to find myself facing their levy campaign head on in the lives of the people around me. And I understand why it should pass, but there are still people there I want to slap with a dead fish. The bad stuff is not something that is easily let go, but this extension of my pain is not good either.

It's hard for me, like Edie Brickell, I don't get too deep. Yet, I do have my own passionate, yet often misinformed, opinions. Problem is, it comes out as anger, rage, a rant rather than anything with any real depth or intellect. Which is more about me than I care to admit but it's on the screen now.

The online interactions have all become a bunch of snarky one liners in lengthy Facebook threads, and they're starting to bore me. What's getting solved there? Opinions are not changing. I'm not going to retreat to this blog, shake my fist and give out links of things that I hate - there's nothing productive or remotely positive about that way of communicating.

The last thing I need, is a cell phone, another electronic addiction. I'm not a gamer. What I do here is the extent of my gaming. I watch very little actual television, outside of sports, and have no clue who these Jersey Shore people and their ilk are. Nor do I care. Why should I care about Heidi and Spencer, whoever they are? I read Entertainment Weekly and see the names and headlines and read that none of these reality people have done anything of any substance, other than making show. I'm not impressed. Television seems very boring now days and I'm better at entertaining myself than shouting old Nirvana lyrics at the world.

Sometimes I think even the poetry has suffered. Feel like it's rehash. Even when I challenge myself the results are mean. I can't even write a love poem. Should be grateful I'm not blocked. Stuff is coming out. Most of it I'd like to pitch. Some of it, I have not read in public and probably never will. Have I painted myself into a corner?

Never watched Lost. Don't watch Mad Men or anything on pay cable. Wish I saw The Wire, maybe I'll borrow the DVD from the library, but the rest seems a waste of my time. My dead boss used to say 'life's too short' before he dropped dead of a crack overdose at the age of 33 - and he was right.

I try not to pay attention to Glenn Beck, the group of inbred Palins or how the crazy folks in the Federal Reserve and Treasury have pushed this country into insolvency. At the same time it's so bad out there we've forgotten how to coexist. No one wants to share the $1,000 pizza though - and why should they? They paid for it. Then tweeted about it.

So do I lay on my deathbed wishing I had not wasted so much time on my laptop, or that I wasted too much time watching Gene Simmons' reality show? Heck, at least I did not do both. Now, if I could put myself in a situation to ditch both of those options for the real alternative - there's your hot action.

2 comments:

s_baghaii said...

Is television better than Facebook? That is a pretty difficult question because the time on Facebook is wasted. The time watching television is wasted too. The things that we watch now, we watch while acknowledging that television is bad. But in what way is it bad? Is the writing bad? Is the acting bad?

The Wire is not a DVD. It is probably five, and you should probably borrow it from the library. The writing and the acting are both pretty good even though people liked and disliked various seasons. Can actors pull off a murder investigation scene where the only verbal interaction they have are variations of the f-word? For over a minute?

Some characters became too unbelievable at various points even in that show though.

30 Rock has been surprising. I avoided it due to its popularity, but the writing is pretty good; and all sorts of people appear in the show. Though some of the characters are exaggerated for comedic effect, it seems like this was an intentional choice.

Someone Said said...

I think good television comes from good writing first, followed closely by the acting. Networks no longer want to pay writers, so the cheap put a camera on the idiots and watch method of reality programming has become the norm now.

I know The Wire is a series, and that involves commitment. Having never watched an episode, we'll see what happens when I get the first season, from the library. Natch :)

I think 30 Rock inteferred with House and Top Gear so I don't tune in.