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i suspect i'm an idiot.

i mean, i've smoked for nearly nine years. that isn't smart. we all know what's down the road and yet i haven't stopped. in fact, that's pretty fucking dumb.

This statement it false.

I've found something really cool in nearly everyone I've gotten a chance to really talk to. Those that I haven't, I'm probably asking the wrong questions.

Calling people stupid, by the way, says that they have a fundamental flaw. Something that is wrong with who they are. Something that can never be changed. Saying that "most people are idiots", then, is either Catholic of pessimistic.

Having been both of these at some points in my life, I think it's good to go through life being neither.

= Justin

By saying this, you're painting with a broad brush, and it's hardly a notch better than labeling a mass of people as "weird".

Generally statements like these explain more about the person saying them than the group of people they're writing off.

Either way it's a cop out.

total crap.

so far i'm the only dude/dudette to choose the "i dunno" option. (there are lot of other things i'm in limbo about too, btw. no, my sexuality isn't one of them. )

i have more to say on this subject, but i'm not depressed enough to write at length on a message board on a friday night (even in a room fulla guys screaming at the TV over the bulls & bullets). wait, i was just informed they are the wizzards now. "that's a gay name for a team," sez my friend from high school.

at any rate i always liked the following line from jonathan richmann's "affection":

people all over the world are good
people all over the world ain't bad

i believe this is true. in my late teens/very early twenties i learned this simply watching good films from all around the world. (not having had many opportunities to travel, i suppose it was the next best thing. i was also extremely depressed, and a little pimply.) plus there was that stereolab track "les yper sound" which always made perfect sense to my younbg ears.

perhaps though a poll along the lines of "are all americans idiots?" is in order. i kinda think we, as a collective, are. (my friend, a very smart computer science guy, just shouted at the tv again.)

i'm becoming a quiet dude. the thing i dug most about berlin was that most everybody was mellow and almost nobody bothered me. (no obnoxious poor people jealous of my sunglasses calling me a fag. ) i got this book a few weeks back chronicling the first fifty years of the international film festival berlin. the guy who did larry flint had a great obvservation, that the reason berlin has become such a great culutral epicenter is that, during the twentieth century, no other city in the entire world had a greater mixture of good and "evil" on its soil. this is one of the smartest things i've ever heard. europe has a much greater sense of history than the u.s. and ubdoubtedly this is linked to the fact that the arts are treated very respectably there. they give credit where it's due, at least in comparison to us, the states -- with england not far behind, what with its corresponding (global) americanization.

i guess the reason i'm so amped on the arts is that, more than anything else, they are a refuge for beautiful people who've lost their way. it's a way of dealing with any sort of poverty. i may be aman of strange ways and meager means, but if i'm a damn good artist, i've been vindicated. the same goes for you and anybody else. all you need is dedication and insight. by contrast the capitalist ontology closes its door, directly or indirectly. the weak may live, but under the most marginal of terms.

i am gay!

this is what my jocko friend from high school felt the need to type while i was speaking from the heart. sometimes he has no subtly. at all. i'm the same way really, but in a more artfag than jocko sense. hence our continuing bond. (i love my friends. it's really gonn a fuck me up when the first one dies. or maybe it'll make me a better person. or i'll just feel guilty more often from time to time, like i know i will when my parents croak.)

anyway, my main point here is that if art was more predominant and accessible (from day one), i honestly beleive we as a culture would be smarter. (i know that more artists would yield more miserable people, but having more art in one's peripherals would be a hell of a lot more stimualting that this exceedingly ugly culutral backdrop. and then there's the famous godard citation: that 100,000 italians went to go see antonioni's la notte; that, despite the unlikliness of this becoming a frequent occurance, there exists an inner need and appreciation for and of art in the hearts and minds of so-called average people. enough to justify the trouble. at any moment, it could happen again.

so there is something at stake afterall, i.e. we need to accomodate the arts and artists more and more as our lives grow increasingly absurd and (possibly) not worth living. there's that line in david bryne's true stories, "the early astronauts never read poetry. all that is changing." i believe that within this ideal lies our salvation. it will take a phase of art that acknowledges the underclass for this to happen though. being bourgeois and not "getting" art may become a future embarassment. hahaha.


anyway, i believe we're seriously headed toward extinction. that it's become more and more innately inherent that one becomes tragically dulled down by society by they time she has any real place in it.

if you were a doctor, and society was a reuglar patient, you might be worried about its future health, even as you push it away with another "have a nice day."

I think many people are trapped inside a layer of stupidity, but they are not innately stupid. Most of them could shed that layer like a snake if they knew that they could, but the persuasion has to come from somewhere and there's definitely not enough to go around.

I think a lot of it has to do, first, with the pace of modern life, which keeps people in a semi-agitated state all the time so they take intellectual shortcuts all the time just to keep up with the crowd, and second, much of our lives is managed for us by the system we have built around us, so many people aren't fully engaged with their own lives. They become sluggish, because as long as you follow a minimum set of rules, you usually get by.

(I know that paragraph reads like it contradicts itself a couple of times. )

Conversely, with many people who get sent away to prison for long stretches ( not generally considered the smartest segment of society ), life slows way down, and suddenly, guys are reading books and thinking introspectively and shedding those layers of stupidity.

If television broadcasts stopped tomorrow, you'd see a lot more smart kids in 15 years. Heavy exposure to television re-orders brain waves; it's child abuse, it really is. Parents who severely limit TV and read to their kids and talk to their kids always have smart kids.

The fact that this whole thing is even a "crap/not crap" poll proves that......well......at least SOME people are idiots.

Sheesh. Most people use such a phrase in exasperation over something. It's not literal. It's a figure of speech. Get it? You might as well crap/not crap the phrase "You're killing me" while you're doing this. Why don't we explore that oft used phrase and all its nuances? Hmm?

And I thought organizing my dozens of audio adapters was frivolous....

Sock OR Muffin? wrote:Yes for two reasons.

Not so recent: the last election.

More recent:
I've been noticing more and more people who when talking on their cellphone will take the phone away from their ear, put it up to their mouth like a walkie talkie and shout into it. They then put it back to their ear to listen to the response. This action is repeated over and over.

I don't understand this new cellphone etiquette. I have never had someone tell me they can't hear me while I spoke normally with the cel at my ear.

Most people are idiots.

After working at a cell phone call center for the last five months, I believe that a good chunk of folks with cell phones are idiots.

matthew wrote:The fact that this whole thing is even a "crap/not crap" poll proves that......well......at least SOME people are idiots.

Sheesh. Most people use such a phrase in exasperation over something. It's not literal. It's a figure of speech. Get it? You might as well crap/not crap the phrase "You're killing me" while you're doing this. Why don't we explore that oft used phrase and all its nuances? Hmm?

And I thought organizing my dozens of audio adapters was frivolous....

I suppose it's also a mere figure of speech when people tell you to fuck off every day.

how about everyone is an idiot

Lazy and selfish maybe. Not idiotic.

Or is being lazy and selfish idiotic behaviour.

I dunno.

b