Cruise-Ships & The Banality of Relation-ships

Cut to a setting at a coffee shop near the Miami coast.  The weather is gorgeous, the crop of people trekking thru the area are youthful, determined, and ignorantly oblivious. 

Gerald: (sets down his chi latte) Yo! buddy its good to have you back in God’s country.  How was the Caribbean cruise? Tell me everything.  What was the spread like?  Did you meet the indigenous people of Disney Island?

Arnold: (takes a deep breath and stares off into the horizon) Gerald, you have no idea what I have just been through.  In the weeks leading up to the cruise I found myself loathing the very thought of it.  My preconceived notion of cruises was based on that one Cuba Gooding Jr. movie where he mistakenly boards a gay singles cruise. I thought the boat was going to be littered with overweight tourists who wanted nothing more than to eat buffet food, drink to excess, and tan their pasty white complexions into a lobster tail red.

Gerald:  Sounds like heaven, what chu bitch’n about?

Arnold: That’s just it man, I thought I was going to hate it but it was heaven.  It may have been the greatest week of my life….until I arrived at the realization that it was all an illusion.  Cruise ships are like being in a relationship. 

Gerald: How is cutting through the Caribbean on a 80,000 square foot vessel that has an Old Country Buffet every 10 feet like being in a relationship?

Arnold: Think about any girl that you’ve ever dated in your life.  When you are getting busy the excitement stems from the unknown.  What is she going to do next? Whoaa was that her tongue nearing my ahhh…is she really going to let me hit it from behind?

But it doesn’t have to be sexual, maybe she blows your mind intellectually or emotionally in a way a girl never has before.  It’s the honeymoon phase, you know? She can’t do anything wrong because it’s all new.  You want to explore every inch of her body, every fold in her brain.  You cannot get enough.

            The first day on the cruise ship was just like the euphoric feeling of being with a new woman.  The cruise staff greeted me with a pineapple cocktail the second I walked on the ship.  I didn’t even need to pay cash, they just asked for my room number.  I felt compelled to explore every crevice of the ship initially but I got caught up at the self-service ice cream machine that was located on the ships upper deck.  I grabbed my cone and dipped my toes into the wading the pool while the multi-cultural staff tended to my every need.  I have never been so happy in my life.  The breakfast buffet, in particular was like nothing I had ever seen before.  The lox were fresh, the bagels were soft, and they even had bacon wrapped honeydew topped with a sliver of brie.  Bacon wrapped honeydew with a sliver of fucking brie!  Can you imagine? Every corner that I turned there was something new and exciting. Bacon wrapped honeydew is to the cruise ship what stand up 69-ing is to a relationship—an unbelievable perk.

Gerald: You’ve seriously dated a girl who doesn’t let you hit it while stand-up 69-ing?

Arnold: It’s a metaphor you jackass…keep up.  The honeymoon stage went on for a couple of days and things just kept getting better.  You know the little things.  It’s the way the wait staff fluffed my pillows every morning.  It’s the way they made sure there were fresh towels in my cabin at precisely 9:30 am.  It’s the way they looked at me sincerely every time I passed them in the hall and said “how are you today sir”.

I had dinner every night at 5:30 at one of the five premium restaurants on the ship.  The same wait staff would rotate each night to the restaurant that I was eating at so they began to get to know me.  Well, not the “real me” but rather, how I like my steak done and the fact that I prefer desserts filled with chocolate vs. fruit.  The little things add up and I had a growing sense that these people cared about me. Then I instantly grew bored with them.  At that moment, I realized that there was nothing left to discover.  The cruise staff spoiled me rotten and I found myself growing progressively disgusted with the whole thing.  The only means of excitement left on the trip was when the boat docked for “day trips” on an island. But it was a controlled and contrived excitement because the cruise line planned everything that I did in advance.  Part of me was turned off by this contrivance, but the other part liked the comfort of not having to make decisions for myself.

The boat stopped at a total of three islands and I did the exact same thing at each: para-sailed, went to the gift shop (strategically placed close to the harbor) to purchase a neon cutoff t-shirt that said something like “I was here: Key West 2012!” and a post card to send back to my friends as proof of my vacation….before B-lining back to my place of comfort—the boat. Sadly I went to three exotic Caribbean islands and all I have to show for it is six fucking neon t-shirts and a half smoked faux Cuban cigar.  At the time, I saw no purpose in venturing any further than that because I just wanted to get back to the boat where people knew how I liked my steak!

Gerald:  Thanks for sending me a post card asshole….

Arnold: By the fourth day, I had sampled nearly every drink on the menu and I had devoured every type of cuisine.  In order to keep things interesting I began to test the limits of the wait staff’s hospitality.  The more I pushed the more accommodating they were and the more frustrated and bored I became with the whole thing.  I ordered 4 cheeseburgers with 2 sides of fries from room service at 4:30 in the morning and the food arrived 20 minutes later.  I didn’t even eat it. I just let it rot on my desk in front of the vanity mirror for the wait staff to clean up in the morning.  I wanted someone to express some real emotion to me. Discontent, jealousy, frustration, anything!  But they didn’t…they took everything in stride with a smile on their face.

Every night at dusk I would go down to the boat’s 3^rd floor deck to run laps.  As I circled the boat I became infatuated with how beautiful the horizon looked and how deeply blue the water was.  However, the infatuation soon faded into lust and romantic fantasies about leaving the boat behind.  I just wanted to get into one of the rescue boats and trek off into the horizon but where would I even go—there was no land in sight.  Who would I even be without the comfort of the cruise?

Gerald:  So you are saying that your identity entered a temporary state of paralysis while you were on the cruise?

Arnold: Exactly, a cruise ship is like a pressure cooker for simulating the stages of every relationship. At first, everything is exciting and euphoric.  After the excitement fades away, the basis for the relationship becomes the established comfort zone.  Exclusive relationships exist solely because they are efficient, easy, and predictable.  It’s much more efficient to spend time finding one person who embraces your strengths, hobbies, aspirations, and overlooks your faults, than it is to convince multiple people that your life has some sort of value. You use this comfort zone as a crutch to avoid any scenario that threatens your perceived well-being and in the process your individual identity is compromised.  The identity of you and your significant other begin to meld into one indistinguishable, interdependent being.  Suddenly you find yourself only associating and socializing with other people who are also in relationships, thus eliminating the possibility of ever lusting for someone or something else.  This leads to complacency.  When you feel completely satisfied with who you are in terms of someone else, it’s easy to abuse the relationship, either consciously or subconsciously.  That’s the precise point that a relationship begins to erode—when you know someone too well to the point that you exploit them.  The longer you rely on the comfort of someone else, the more difficult it becomes to reenter society as an individual. When you are locked into a long-term relationship life becomes a calculated set of destinations, rather than an aimless, yet, organic journey of finding yourself.

On the last day of the cruise, I awoke and went down to the accounts payable office to settle my outstanding bill.  I left the wait staff a generous tip for their service over the last week.  After that, I headed towards the breakfast buffet one last time before docking on land.  As I approached the buffet, I was astonished to see that the bacon and honeydew were in separate trays.  Why are they not wrapped around one another?  And where the hell was the brie!??? The wait staff had already been tipped out, what was their incentive to impress me? Their hospitality was an illusion, their sincerity was an illusion, the whole goddamn cruise was an illusion that I grew to depend on over a week.   Although at times I tested their affection just to keep myself entertained, having the option of neglecting someone is more appealing than having no one who cares enough to let you neglect them.  The second they stopped caring, I realized just how much that week meant to me--even if it was an illusion.  With them, I was a needy, selfish human, and without them, I was a lost, torched soul who did not know where to turn.

Gerald: So, much like a woman, the wait staff neglected you after your perceived value had diminished.  You have been back in America, on solid ground for three days now …how are you holding up?

Arnold: (Staring off towards the Caribbean Sea) I would kill for some bacon wrapped honeydew with a sliver of brie wedged in between…

Gerald: Wait.... are you talking about the food? The standup 69-ing? A woman? The cruise wait staff????

Arnold: Its a metaphor Gerald, life is one big metaphor....

Is Alanis Morissette an Idiot? Irony vs. Coincidence

Alanis played the character of god in Dogma.  A woman
playing god: is that ironic? or a coincidence? Don't ask the
woman pictured.

“Isn’t it ironic how Michael Phelps, my favorite athlete, got caught ripping a bong at a college party and then two weeks later I got busted in the dorms for smoking weed because I tried to use a Doritos bag to block the smoke detector.”

            No. It is not ironic.  It is a coincidence—and a minor one at that.  Seattle columnist Dan Savage successfully altered the history of the word Santorum, much in the same way that Alanis Morissette obliterated the meaning of irony.  Her song “Isn’t it Ironic?” does not come close to exemplifying a sliver of irony, which confused a mass amount of people, thus resulting in 15 years of statements similar to the one above.  The events that Morissette describes in her song are mostly coincidences.

            A coincidence is when two independent occurrences collide to form a unique, and often-hilarious outcome.  Situational irony (the type Morissette aims to convey) exists when actions have an effect that is contrary to the expectation.  The expectation needs to either be universally understood by being implied or explicitly stated.  When the result of something is contrary to the expectation, irony exists.  The lyric, for example, “10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife” by itself is just a coincidence.  If Alanis found herself in the same situation at, say a Steakhouse, then it would be ironic because one would expect a steakhouse to have a breadth of knives.   Nevertheless, forget abstraction—let us get concrete.

Examples of Irony (Some of these are hypothetical so please do not take offense)
Lets start simple:

-You are a dentist who has a serious case of gingivitis.

-You are a child who only prays to God for two things:
1) That Santa will bring you an iPad 3 this Christmas.
2) That your parents over sleep their alarm every Sunday morning.

-A bully on the playground constantly berates and harasses you.  As a means of retaliation, you retort to the bully with a cocky and clever sing-along “thas alright, thas okay, urrrr gunna pump my gas someday.”  Twenty years later, you find yourself working at a 711 outside your hometown pumping gas for the bully who is now the owner of said 711.

-You pull up to a stop light and look to your right. In the lane next to you, there is a Chevy 4x4 with a Jimmy Johns delivery topper perched on the roof of the vehicle.  Disgusted, you turn your attention to the car in front of you only to see an equally repulsive Toyota Prius with a “Drill Baby Drill” bumper sticker. 

-You are the head of CIA.  Your job is to protect and secure our borders by providing the government with top-secret information about our enemies. However, you begin to worry about how the recession will affect your career.  Fearing job security, you decide to sell some weapons to our enemies.  Over the next 15 years, you work on locating the weapons and suggest to the government that we wage a couple of wars in order to keep our borders safe.  Years later, you write a tell all book in which you state “The decision made absolute sense from my standpoint.  A temporary breach in national security led to a generation of job security for my division and the defense department as a whole.”

-You smoke Camel Crush cigarettes and puncture the mentholated bead in the filter before lighting. 

-You used to think that ESPN’s NFL pregame was paramount in terms of insight, humor, and opinion.  Then the other day you watched the telecast for a whole hour after accidently hitting the close captioning button. You realize just how obtuse and humorless the show really is when all of the on-air personas are boiled down to pure text.  As you sit on the couch reading the transcript of the show, you cannot help but notice the excessive use of the word “man” and how often everybody refers to themselves in the third person.  Suddenly, you begin to feel bad for the person sitting in a cube somewhere typing word for word what these guys are saying. 

Keyshawn: Boom where’d you get that haircut? You look like Danny Devito in Taxi
Boomer: I’ll tell you what Key, this cuts looking a lot better than your ability to predict games this year.
Keyshawn: hahahahahaha ahhh man Boom you sure know how to zing me (slaps the table)
Ditka: (raspy tone) God I love football you guys crack me up.
All: (Unison laugh)…….
“”
“”
“”

Boomer: (Out of breath) Alright folks--we are having a lot of fun here this morning but lets take a commercial break.  Up next the Mayne Event!  Kenny finds out what type of shampoo Tom Brady is using on his luscious locks and how it’s the Key to his success.

-The state of Wisconsin is livid about people who drink and drive.  Legislation and smear campaigns have raised the collective consciousness to the consensus that it is in fact a bad thing.  However, many bars in Wisconsin prohibit people from parking in their lots over night.  Not sure if you are too drunk to drive? Don’t worry there is a breathalyzer at the door for a nominal $1.00 fee (buy one blow, get one free!).  But hell--its much easier to criminalize and lock people up than it is to provide the means for a solution.

-John Cougar Meloncamp makes millions of dollars singing about how rewarding it is to grow up in blue-collar Middle America, thus ensuring that he will never have to drive a tractor, fix his own vehicle, or live in a little pink house ever again. 

-Barack Obama is the leader of a country where he could not even vote for himself 150 years ago. 45 years ago, he could not enjoy a Coca-Cola at the same establishment as a white person in any state below the mason Dixon line.   Now he is arguably the most recognizable and powerful man on the planet—how’s that for situational irony? Sometimes irony can be poetically just.  

Part 2: Examples of Coincidence Coming soon

Hey Credit Card Companies-->F*ck You.

The American dream, according to Wikipedia, is defined as:
 A national ethos of the United States in which freedom includes the promise of prosperity and success….life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.

That is a beautifully written, outdated fallacy. The new American dream (or perhaps the real American Dream) looks a little bit more like this: It is every Americans civic and economic duty to spend as much as they can today to ensure the future prosperity of America.  This new ideal is the not the creation of the consumer but rather a debt perpetuating instrument called the credit card. 

Credit card companies present themselves as enablers of this dream.  They position themselves as selfless philanthropists by granting American citizens the opportunity described in the latter half of the Wikipedia definition—a chance at “a better, richer, fuller life” (minus the need for ability or achievement).  Strip away the fluff of the phrase and it is easy to see the underlying truth: “Spend today….pay for it for the rest of your life.”    

Credit cards have ushered in a generation of people that buy into these debt-enslaving instruments and the culprit is not the consumer, but rather the entity. These instruments have not only wronged a generation of people (myself included) but also the very dream they claim to be aiming for—the future prosperity of America.            

 I showed up on my college campus as a savvy 18 year old.  I thought I was a lot smarter than I was, but as it turns out, I was more naive and obtuse than most.  During the first week of school, I found a coupon in my dormitory mailbox for free pizza at a local restaurant. Within a week of college, my body was already craving the dietary staples of pizza and beer—so the mere mention of “free” lured me in.  At the entrance there was a slick man shaking hands while handing out clipboards and pens. The man was of course a credit card tycoon.   Behind him, there was a mountain of “free“ pizza.  He told me that if I filled out a short personal information survey, I was free to indulge.

Personal information surveys are the equivalent to offering a woman a backrub during the seduction process.  It’s a seemingly harmless excuse to get close to another person without stating intent.  Sensing my skepticism, he told me that there was no obligation to sign up for a card, as he stressed the importance of building credit and earning rewards.  Eager to eat, I scribbled my contact information on the form and the man thanked me with great delight. I engaged in flirtatious foreplay with the debt devil.

What happened next was a rollercoaster ride of blurred euphoria and a subsequent mixture of regret and shame.  It all happened so fast. When my pre-approved application for a Discover Card came in the mail a week later, I filled it out and started charging everything—all in the name of building credit. Suddenly, I found myself 1,500 dollars in debt.  My incompetent spending earned me a Discover Card fleece blanket, and four 8 oz. vacuum-sealed skirt steaks—in 6 years. Under the influence of pizza aroma, and the promise of financial freedom, I became the victim of a heinous credit assault.

I am fully aware of my stupidity but some of the blame should be put on other pivotal enablers.  Why did the university allow the credit card company to solicit our business with direct mail?  Why did the owner of the pizza joint endorse the man pushing credit cards on 18 year-olds?

The reality is that credit companies are malicious when it comes to targeting young people.  They lure naïve individuals who define adult independence as purchasing their own groceries and wiping their own asses, with complimentary gifts. The practice is flawless from a revenue standpoint because a person, who is stupid enough to trade their personal information in exchange for pizza, is likely to indulge in frivolous spending habits.  Unfortunately, “good business” can be guised under unethical false advertising. 

What is there to actually discover at discover.com?  That I’ve been pre-approved for a high interest rate credit card that has a 5,000 dollar limit?  Finally, a company that understands my innate desire to mortgage my future so that I can start living the way I want today!.....because as a Black LT Discover card holder, “anything is possible.”

            Credit card companies are legal loan sharks that compete for business with clever product names and tag lines in attempt to empower a consumer’s sense of freedom and identity. Companies that sell easily abused products should be required to use generic names like “Credit Card Company 1” and “Debt Device 2”.

For instance, look at the prescription drug industry.  Drugs are named with basic scientific titles that evoke little to no emotion from users.  To most, the terms Ritalin and Adderall mean absolutely nothing, but their function is widely understood.  If a doctor offered his patient a choice between the two, they would likely be indifferent.  However, imagine that Adderall renamed its product “Magic” and the patient was approached with same scenario.  Magic would be the drug of choice a 100 times over because the name is more appealing.

            Discover’s product differentiation model is equivalent to the above hypothetical scenario. Isn’t it ironic that a domain that suggests exploration and wonderment belongs to a credit card company? The Discover domain should be reassigned to a company that actually makes sense. (I suggest stumbleupon.com be granted the domain)  

             The last cigarette advertisement aired during the Johnny Carson show in 1971.  Since then, the FCC has outlawed the glamorization of cigarette usage on television.  Likewise, companies that sell alcohol are not allowed to display people drinking their products.  Companies that sell inherently detrimental products are not allowed to romanticize what it is like to be a user.  Credit card companies, on the other hand, are allowed to depict people climbing mountains, flying first class, and eating cuts of steer only available in the remote annals of Africa.  The underlying theme of these commercials is obvious: with card X anything is possible—or as Discover eloquently puts it: It Pays To Discover.

            Companies like Visa and Discover are able to plaster their names all over the country’s biggest events because they have loads of money.  The irony is that they make their profits from consumers that are the exact opposite of their commercials.  If people were able to pay their balances on a timely basis, then the credit card industry could not afford to advertise.  Instead, they fictionalize the lifestyles of card members and reap the benefits of people who default on their debts trying to live out these fantasies in reality.

Furthermore, increasingly austere tobacco regulations are making it unattractive to continue to smoke.  In the near future, congress will pass a bill requiring cigarette packs to depict the inevitable results of usage—so mangled babies, black lungs, and rotten teeth will be on packs of Marlboro Lights soon.  Credit card companies should be held to these same standards.

Credit card companies offer consumers the opportunity to customize the image on their cards.  They do this by collaborating with a local sports team or by allowing users to put a picture of their Great Aunt Nan on the card.  This practice plays into the American consumer’s obsession with customizing a ubiquitous product with their uniqueness.  In the process, a device that promotes frivolous spending is assigned to the consumer’s fanship or family.  The ill intent of the device is guised under these customizations. 

 Instead, cards should depict the likely result of usage—a man sitting on a park bench, dressed to the 9’s with his shoulders shrugged, pockets turned inside out, and a look of despair and confusion in his eyes. The picture should be watermarked so that in bold 16 point font a warning can be issued that says: WARNING: YOUR CREDIT SCORE DETERMINES YOUR ABILITY TO SECURE A JOB, A MORTAGE, AND YOUR OVERALL WORTH AS A HUMAN BEING! SPEND WISELY!

Sadly, the barometer for a person’s competence in modern society is based on their ability to borrow and buy goods and the masses need to constantly be reminded of this.  Just like we are constantly reminded that cigarettes are bad for our health with anti-smoking campaigns, TRUTH ADS, and lawsuits. 

As Credit card companies continue to incentivize acquiring cards with customization packages and free airlines miles, they are in turn creating habitual errant spenders.  Awareness is crucial, and the above suggestions, though hyperbolic, are steps in the right direction.  

            Look, I understand that not everyone is in credit card debt and those who are foresighted and fiscally responsible will never be victimized by Credit Card companies. However, American culture, down to its very core, is built on consumerism--the need for the newest, brightest, and most expensive product of the season.  Day after day, we are bombarded with advertisements that remind us of our inadequacies and media hubs telling us that the only way to avoid the next great depression is to SPEND NOW. 

            With unemployment and wealth disparity at an all-time high, where are people suppose to get the money to, well, be American? Credit Card companies feed on these ideals by exploiting consumers who cannot stop indulging their every whim. 

Employ a recovering alcoholic at a nightclub and eventually he will be back on the sauce; offer high-interest short term loans to people who are born to consume and eventually they will be in debt for life.  Debt instruments only hinder the possibility of prosperity and success described in the old American Dream.   The new American Dream casts a grave shadow on American citizens, but at least someone was nice enough to give them a chance to Discover.™

Cigarettes and Iphones: Which has more utility in the modern world?

With the analog apocalypse and yearning for a simpler time aside, I am still reluctant to purchase an IPHONE.  Until my recent epiphany my biggest gripe was the price.  AT&T offers an unlimited text, calling, and the smallest data package for 75 dollars month—who has that kind of money?  Then it hit me, I spend that sum (roughly) on cigarettes every month.  If only I could just burry my addiction to tobacco I could easily become an IPhone owner.

           Now I know it may not be proper literary form to assume what the reader is thinking, but I’ll assume most of you are screaming “EASIEST FUCKING DECISION EVER, put down the cancer sticks” as you are reading this.  But what I am suggesting to you is that my concerns run much deeper than just the price—it’s actually my skepticism about giving up one for the other. So it has come to this: before I assume the role of an IPHONE owner I must fully hash out what I will be gaining by the purchase and what I will be giving up.

Stylistic Liquidity

          Much like a woman recovering from a self-esteem boosting boob-job right at the peak of ovulation (leading to an unexpected pregnancy), the decision to purchase an IPhone is going to take some precise timing, planning, and a little bit of luck. Monumental purchases always have unintended consequences if the timing is off.   The problem with purchasing technology is that the marketplace reinvents itself too quickly.  If I wait for the price of the IPhone to drop, I will be stuck with an old model.  If I purchase the phone too soon I will spend a ton of money and deal with a bunch of preliminary software bugs.   

If I purchase an IPhone I am going to be locked into that purchase and the brand identity that is associated with it. The opportunity to develop a unique identity amongst a sea of other IPhone owners is difficult because it is expensive to do so.  The only way I could distinguish myself is by purchasing an array of accessories.  If I start to think like this, I know I am in trouble:



“Maybe I’ll go with the green case today, or perhaps the red one.  Screw it the fourth of July is coming up, where is my red-white-and-blue case? The one with strategically placed rhinestones in the shape of stars that captures the very essence of my patriotism.

Ask any pubescent child who has ever tried to ease the social aggravation of wearing braces by periodically customizing their teeth caps to reflect the current holiday or their artistic angst.  The verdict?  You can’t accessorize something that is socially repulsive into being acceptable.

            It’s much easier to alter my cigarette smoking habits to reflect my current feeling.  Camel lights are my baseline brand but my purchases alter depending on my mood.  If I am feeling especially frugal, I’ll roll my own.  If I am feeling cash saturated, I will throw down for some Parliaments. Because cigs are so cheap (relative to the IPhone) and quickly consumed, I am able to adapt my brand to fit my current need. (ADVANTAGE CIG)






Social Worth

I’ve been smoking cigs for about 14 months so I feel like I am able to speak on the behalf of habitual smokers. Yes cigs are expensive and yes they are bad for your health but let me remind you that they used to be a perfectly acceptable social norm.  I use cigarettes for a variety of things but I think it’s most valuable use is to connect with other people and also myself--in reality.

In today’s social world, we have become progressively numb to letting our guard down in the physical because of the Internet and its omnipresence. When I see someone smoking a cigarette outside of a public place, I feel an instant connection with them because they are openly advertising something about them self that I can easily identify with.  My hope is that the conversation progresses beyond just talking about cigs or the weather but our shared interest is the catalyst to that opportunity.  IPhones on the other hand prevent this type of connection because users are always buried in asocial world that exists somewhere beyond the immediate present.  I fear that by replacing cigs with an IPhone I will lose many opportunities to spark organic conversation.

             Cigs also provide an escape from awkward social situations.  Whenever I find myself in a place where I lack confidence or there is a great amount of tension, I am able to step outside and collect my thoughts with a cig. If I tried to step outside and collect my thoughts for five minutes without a cigarette people would think I was nuts.  The same concept applies to public places with lots of people—if I were to just stand around without appearing busy, people would instantly discount my social worth.  A cigarette puts me at ease.

The IPhone could solve much of what I just described of course because anytime I may be feeling frightened, alone, or awkward, I could just bury my attention into the digital abyss of entertainment that my phone provides.  The difference is that I will not be reevaluating my situation and looking within myself for answers but rather leaning on the social comfort of my phone.  An IPhone is a means of extro-spection and a cigarette is a means of introspection. (ADVANTAGE CIG) 

Ability to consume:

The utility of a cigarette has been marginalized by legislation preventing smoking indoors.  This is probably for the betterment of everyone, but it limits where and to what frequency I can smoke.  The hurdles to consumption provide me with a feeling of delayed gratification which only makes the cigarette that much sweeter.  There is nothing better than a smoke after a long hard day at work.     

As an IPhone owner possessing the power of 3G and a fully charged battery, I could theoretically consume whenever possible.  Indoors, outdoors, in a car—Hell I could even surf the Internet hands free during sex thanks to SIRI technology. (ADVANTAGE IPHONE) 

Social Taboo

I used to look down on people with smartphones because they always seem pre-occupied with validating what they are doing in terms of what the rest of their social-sphere is not doing (thank-you Facebook status updates) but the presence of smartphones is so wide spread now that it is completely acceptable to do so.  I often find myself referencing someone’s twitter update or Facebook status during a real conversation and the moment passes without criticism.  We live in a digital world and being perpetually attached to the digital dimension is completely normal.

Cigarettes, on the other hand, have regressed in terms of social acceptability.  They stink. They kill. They are completely taboo.  Whenever I meet a new group of people or hang out with someone for the first time I Fra-breeze the hell out of my car and I try not to smoke in front of them in order to avoid judgment. Being a closet smoker is becoming progressively difficult and time consuming.  At my parents’ house I migrate towards deciduous shrubbery when disposing of my butts in order to avoid the criticism they will offer up when the leaves fall of the trees.  

In the middle of writing this paragraph, I stepped out for a cigarette in front of a coffee shop and a man driving a gas guzzling Chevy 4x4 slowed his truck in the middle of the street just to yell “SMOOOOKER!” at me, as if I had just exhaled a vile toxin into his precious air. (ADVANTAGE IPHONE)

Perception from Law Enforcement

I’m obsessed with petty crime or at least getting away with frivolous acts.  Some of my favorite past times include jay-walking, stealing range balls, and texting while driving.  There is a fine line between someone who is texting and driving and simply changing a song on their IPhone.  

As an IPhone owner I would relish the opportunity to trick law enforcement of the latter.  I imagine that if I were to be pulled over by an officer I could simply hold up my IPhone and say “sorry sir, there must be a misunderstanding, you see I am an IPhone owner and I was simply trying to shuffle my playlist. “

The officer’s look of disgust would quickly turn to envy at the misunderstanding. At that point I would toggle over to my apps page and show him my police radar application to service his ego. “I’m a big fan of your work sir, some people listen to the radio, but I enjoy listening to police calls.  He’ll laugh and ask me what I pay monthly for the phone while simultaneously motioning that he would like to give the interface a try.  I will direct him to the shotgun application and let him aim it at cars passing by and we’ll have a big chuckle.  The life of an IPhone owner must be sweet. 

            Recently I’ve been hand rolling my cigarettes (to save money) so to the eyes of a skeptic they may appear to look like joints filled with schedule 1 narcotics.  Although I am sure I could convince the same officer that his “reasonable cause” for pulling me over was just a big misunderstanding, I can’t imagine the post-pullover-chit-chat would be nearly as inviting.  (ADVANTAGE IPHONE) 

           Transitioning from once vice to another is always tricky because I am forced to make a decision that compromises my immediate identity, paving the way for my future being.  But sometimes I just know when a change is needed, and I need a change.

            Cigs, or the IPhone?  I think my analysis has led me to the inevitable decision of becoming an IPhone owner.  The IPhone may cause my social skills to regress 15 years but in the end, I suppose that is better than losing 15 years of my life to cigarettes. 

             We had a good run “Cigarettes” but being able to showcase a flush Angry Birds scorecard, complete with 3 stars at each level has become just as much as a conversation starter as you ever were.

Outdated Technologies I yearn For (AA part 2)

Look, I am just going to say it--I want an IPHONE.  I have a pressing fear that I am going to be left behind by a digital generation.   I am only 23 years old and I still have time left to adapt. I consistently find myself making the follow three arguments about technologies that I yearn for that make me sound like a prehistoric punk destined to be left behind on judgment day.

1) Downloading media from Napster:  I miss the Napster logo with the weird alien wearing headphones. I miss cursing at my dial-up connection as a bootleg .mp3 version of Puff Daddy’s Bad Boys 4 Life downloaded for countless hours.    I even miss the imminent threat of being stuck with nothing but static at the end of a long download, or ending up with an edited version of a rap song because some wise-ass up-loader named it incorrectly--but the delayed gratification made for emotions of frustration and satisfaction.  Pandora,Spotify-Bit torrents--its all a bunch of madness in my mind. 
                Before Youtube swept the nation some 10 years later, Napster was the only place to download user videos (i.e. porn, human folly, cat bloopers).  Now its easy to stream video and watch montage “still photos” to see if the video is even worth watching.  Again, back in the day all there was to go on was the brief description of the video.    

2) T9 texting is like a virtual editor: For all you trash talkers who criticize the limitations of T9, I think of it as a virtual editor of every text that I send.  It forces me to spell words correctly, discourages profanity, and eliminates acronyms from taking the place of whole sentences.  But most importantly, it makes me think about what I am sending rather than just releasing a half-witted comment.

Countless times I have grabbed my phone and tried to T9 the sequence 78779 to patronize a friend.  My phone returns “puppy”.  In that moment I am faced with two options—either use a different word, or go through the intellectually numbing process of “adding” my intended word to my T9databank. 
T9 polices my ignorance and encourages my literacy.  

3) The innocence of AOL Instant Messenger: I have a theory that by simply wearing a pair of sunglasses people can escape himself or herself and drop a certain level of inhibition.  The shades create a new perspective and an altered reality.  A reality in which they do not have to own up to what they say with direct eye contact. 

The same is true of mascots.  I once spent a week dressed as a human sized Dalmatian slanging fireworks and freedom on the side of a highway to draw in customers.  Wearing a “costume” is freeing because it creates a level of anonymity that is not otherwise achievable.   Suddenly my identity was no longer open for immediate ridicule because “I” was not the one doing the hand-jive with two American flags in my hand—it was the Dalmatian.  When the week was over I was able to re-enter reality with ease.  My screen name on AOL AIM was like being a mascot with ran-bay aviators glued to my nose.

As an awkward overweight 12 year old, I did not have the capacity or the confidence to present myself in an appealing way but AIM kind of changed all that.  It allowed me to “customize” my appearance in a way that could not be done in reality.  I would run home everyday after school so that I could “sign on” and starting trolling the digital airwaves for an infinite amount of social possibility.   Under the guise of my screen name Carousel 182 182 I talked to girls with ferocious whit, collected and compared buddy lists like trading cards, and obsessed over finding the perfect song lyric that personified the preteen plight to use as my “away message” (the original status update). 


As a 12-year old, a typical Friday involved having a couple of friends sleepover and going on AIM to drum up some entertainment.  Our objective was animalistic and simply--to get girls to say provocative things.  If there were not anyone online worth talking to, we would create a new screen name and impersonate someone else.  Yes, in today’s hypersensitive world we were committing a combination of identity theft and cyber bullying but I’ll rationalize it by saying AIM was innocent.  We were innocent.   We were simply experimenting with the Internet and how it affected our identities.  We had no idea what we were getting into. 


It is hard to remember but the Internet and AIM were still a huge novelty 10 years ago.  The Internet supplemented our lives but it was not our lives.  What is unique about AIM is the clarifying adjective “screen” in screen name.  Screen acknowledges what was said and done under that digital persona was almost “surreal” or on a stage.  An identifiable reality still existed in absence of the Internet, but now Facebook has taken it to an extreme.  The line between a “real” identity and a “digital” identity are now blurred.

My Facebook screen name is my NAME whereas AIM was just my favorite band.  What was said on AIM was contrived and phony but we knew it because “Matt Baumann” was not saying these things, Carosouel 182 182 was.  Today, the way we present ourselves on Facebook is approached with less suspicion and its almost considered fact because social connectivity has lost its anonymity.  Everything that is said and done on the digital airwaves is categorized and chronicled under our names.  In a way, we have all become firework-selling- Dalmatian-mascots, except we cannot take the head off to re-enter reality anymore because a new reality has been created.

The Analog Apocalypse (Part 1)

Steve Jobs is to Jesus as Bono is to Peter.  Keep it moving Bono, in the name of love.

The analog apocalypse is here. I keep having this dream where Steve Jobs is actually this millenniums Jesus Christ figure. In the dream Jobs pulls out his IPhone from heaven and sends out a video text only to Iphone owners. He tells them that a new world is in order and those who believe in the devices that he has created have been chosen to represent the future of the human race. His demands of the masses are simple, "loot all the modern digital devices you can and meet me in Times Square". 

Over the next six hours IPhone owners begin to pillage the earth until it is washed clean of all modern digital devices and then begin to storm the city of New York. The crowd becomes progressively dense as the Iphone owners wait for Jobs with great anticipation. 

"Look! It’s Him," shouts a pompous IPhone owner as the crowd looks up to the sky to see Jobs in the flesh.

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 Jobs descends from the sky wearing his finest black silk turtleneck, designer jeans, and a pair of heaven-white Adidas all-stars. His body is kept afloat by a hovering, gold plated IPad that stores a list of names of those who will be joining him in the new world. Without hesitation and in a near simultaneous fashion, the Apple brand identifiers utilize the "Flashlight" app on their phones to illuminate the darkened sky as Jobs cuts through the horizon on his golden Ipad before landing on the mound of digital devices. 

Jobs delivers a brief manifesto about his vision for a new world that is based on social connectivity, pure entertainment, and the future of technology. He states that his efforts have gone unnoticed on earth by those who have ignored his digital movement. At this point he sets a blaze to the mountain of digital devices he has perched himself on and turns his golden IPad into a fleet of IPad hovercrafts. He announces, "MacHeads--the digital rapture is here and you have been saved. Join me in the new world". With Jobs leading the way the crowd members jump on their newly issued hovercrafts that are powered by the heat of the souls trapped inside the analog hell on earth and ascend back into the sky. 

Me and the other people left behind are forced to live in a world free of apple products and the digital infrastructure that Jobs created during his life. The analog reality is bleak. Our reality is reduced to buying music from the Microsoft Zune market place (Joan Osbourne's "what if god was one of us becomes the number 1 song in the country in matter of days) , printing out map quest directions, and trolling AOL instant messenger looking for social get togethers--literally hell on earth. 

Then I wake up from my dream soaked in a pool of manic sweat. I turn over and look at my Samsung flip phone (circa 2005) and feel a sharp pain of emptiness. Then the tag line from the popular Iphone advertisement, that stars no actual people but just the device itself, begins to play in my head. "If you don't have an IPhone...then, well, you don't have an IPhone".

Why do you want this job?

“Why do you want this job?”

Well Chuck, do you mind if I speak candidly, about exactly why I am sitting here before you?  By now, you probably have a good sense of my ostensible persona. Up until this point I have pandered my answers to your liken, but I feel I need to be completely honest when answering this question.  If you really want to understand me as a person, and the pain that is associated with the dichotomy of thought I am feeling then I hope you embrace what I am about to describe to you.  Know that that this is my last attempt at abstraction.  This is merely an effort to describe who I was, what I want to be, and how that will benefit your company. 

When I was in grade school there was this awesome substitute teacher named Mr. Quill.  He was a wide-eyed, jubilant man with an insatiable desire to have fun and make kids laugh.  He was as much a novelty as his quirky last name suggested.  Out of the entire, substitute-teacher-pool the students prayed to get Mr. Q.  Like all substitutes, he never required us to do any real work but he always leveled with us in a way that we respected him for.  He usually led off class with a goofy joke, followed by a brief attempt at doing the “assigned” busy work before he would just say ‘screw it, push your desks aside, we’re playing a game”.  
             

 Mr. Q was somewhat of a celebrity in the local performing arts scene.  He was a staple member on the prominent improve team in town called Comedy Sports.  He always incorporated a level of goofiness from the stage into his teaching persona.  As an 8-year old I hoped to one day have the same type of energy and enthusiasm for living that Mr. Q had as a middle-aged man. 
      

 As I aged, Mr. Quill continued to substitute teach in my classes a couple times per year.  Around my Junior year of high school I noticed a sharp change in his demeanor.  His tone became more desperate, his pitch more monotone; it was like he had lost his will to entertain, to create, and essentially to live.  Soon he became a shadow of himself, exhibiting little enthusiasm while he hid behind his computer for most of the period and forced us to do the type of busy work he once despised.  Students resisted this change.  Every class had a few who couldn’t help but point out to Quill that he was no longer who we thought he was. 

“Hey aren’t you a comedian, tell us a joke funny guy” is what they would say to him in a condescending voice. 

                Quill would just shake his head, sink his shoulders, and disappear deeper into the abyss of his once vibrant mind.  He would sit behind his computer while he sporadically typed in a manic fashion.  I assume he was working on a novel that he had ambitions of finishing before waking up on the wrong side of 25.  The weight between his waist and sternum constantly reminding him of an adulthood filled with overconsumption.  His aging face and smokers cough were evidence of a lifetime riddled with unchecked impulses for “living in the moment”.             

It was not until I started searching for jobs in the business world and thus having to deal with the reality of adulthood, that I understood what happened to Mr. Q.  He was dealing with the realization of being creatively exhausted and irrelevant. 

I can take one of two paths as I transition into adulthood.  I can either be a speculator/distributor of someone else’s value or I can be a creator of my own value.  However, there is a third option, which is a combination of both roles. This is the most dangerous path because the two ideas are so conflicting in and of themselves.  This is exactly what Mr. Q attempted to do.

He was using the guaranteed income of a substitute-teaching gig to supplement his creative aspirations.  He probably figured he would do the teaching thing while he tried to launch his writing/acting/comedy career.  Slowly he realized that he was never going to make it.  He was never going to make a living in a creative capacity.  Yet, everyone at his rational career (students and peers) already had this expectation of him to constantly be creative and funny.  In a way, we were all rooting for him to reach his creative potential but it never happened.  Can you imagine what it must be like to be expected to play that role all the time? Can you imagine trying to earn a paycheck based on your personality and ability to make someone laugh?  This must be the loneliest place a human being can be.  A human life trapped inside a character-- typecast for eternity. 

So, what does any of this have to do with me being here?  If life operated in a vacuum, there would be no reason to be afraid of anything. No risk too dodgy. No desire too selfish. No deprecating thoughts that could inhibit and destroy the mind.  In this vacuum accomplishment is limitless and creative thought is infinite.  However, I do not operate in a vacuum. I live in the real world.  A world that is dictated by dollars and cents, haves and have-nots, successes and failures.  And the barometer for success is always money.         

When I went to college 5 years ago, I thought a business degree was the next logical step.  A proverbial security blanket in case I didn’t achieve wild creative success or start a retail phenomenon equivalent to silly-bands.  But that turned out to be an ideal fantasy.  A myth buried inside my head.  For 23 years I have lived my life with a complete sense of wonderment, and curiosity.  I have woken up in foreign places, said things I shouldn’t have, used and abused substances/friendships/relationships all in the name of “finding myself”. I have taken a lot of risks in effort to find my creative self but it's easy to be idealistic and socially rogue when I don't have any adult responsibilities like paying bills.  I need to let go of my childish ways and start living with some foresight because the future scares the shit out of me.  My youth and my careless approach to life have been catalysts for creative output and I feel that as soon as I commit to an "adult" life, the rigid domains of reality will limit my ability to find joy the way I once did....but its something I have to do.     
        

Have you ever loved something and then slowly watched it slip away because of factors you felt you had no control over?  I’m talking about a pain where the lingering sense of loss presents itself in subtle, yet myriad ways.  It’s the feeling you get when you brush your teeth in the morning and see your youth fading away in the mirror day after day. It’s the look of terror in my parents eyes as they watch the news and begin to realize that the “American Standard of Living” that they once thought was infinite, is actually eroding.  The best parallel I can think of is the thought of treading water in the middle of the Atlantic ocean—delaying the inevitable.

I know that I cannot commit my life to working in a creative capacity while the jaws of reality nip at my heels and because of this, I am here to take the brunt of the pain now, rather than deal with a lifetime of depression due to a lack in myself.  I want to avoid what Mr. Q went through at all cost.

As I see it this job provides structure, vertical promotion opportunities, and most importantly a consistent paycheck.   I need to be “Jared the Insurance Salesman” from 9-5 and Jared the human being after hours.  This separation is key for my peace of mind.  Someone with creative aspirations is never off the clock.  Their workday is not finite because as an “artist” their job becomes all encompassing.  It must be impossible to approach ANY situation--social or even in solitude, without thinking about how they must produce something.  Eventually their minds eat them alive. I am here to plug-in and bury my idealistic vision of myself for my own safety and well-being.  I am leaving that part of me in the past and opting into a life of certainty. 

However, this does not mean I am completely done making irrational decisions.  Someday I may use my savings that is earning minimal interest in a CD to buy a boat.  I may assume the role of a boat owner.  I will wear retro fitted caps and measure my relative bravado against other men in terms of horsepower and hyperbolic fish stories.  I might even play the lottery on a weekly basis and internally romanticize about the things I might do if money were no longer a problem.  But this is a different type of irrational behavior in terms of my worth to you as an asset to this company.    My temporary lapses in frugality will only further insure my dependency on the paycheck that this job will provide me. 

The dark truth is that I am a coward. I do not have the balls to commit to a life of uncertainty and make an attempt at creating value.  But I know that my commitment to working here is not selfish--it is actually the most selfless thing I can do.  People say that “surviving” is just a euphemism for slowly dying, but people who are “living” are simply selfishly desiring.  This type of creed works for some people and I have the utmost respect for them, but I am too cowardly to make that commitment.  My dream is to give my son a chance to pickup where I am going to leave off.  I hope that I can provide him with a life of consistency and stability that will allow him to grow into what I could not be.  To give him the bravery and encouragement necessary to find success in making the “unknown” work for him.  
        

By the time I was 12 I realized my athletic limitations were going to prevent me from ever playing in the NFL and some 12 years later I am realizing that I will never be a creator of my own value.  I don’t think there is a better counter weight to that realization than being a salesman who insures someone else’s value. I am here not because I want to be, but because I have to be; and in that desperation, you will find an employee that is so unequivocally dedicated and addicted to the idea of stability and the importance of success that I will make the best “Yes”-man-employee this side of the Mississippi. 



….Soo what do you think Chuck….am I fit to sell insurance?