The General Problem with America (One Man's Poorly-Reasoned Opinion)

I've been having a really difficult time the last few days keeping up with what I want to do with my stupid, pointless blog.  Thinking about what I'm going to write about and doing the appropriate listening to form a moderately-coherent opinion about the subject matter is difficult enough, and that's before I even start to generate penis- and poop-themed jokes to drop in there to make two of my friends laugh.  It really is difficult to constantly keep pushing yourself to be creative and make something fall out of your brain, particularly when it doesn't want to come out (read: you're drunk), and to tell you the truth, I'm painfully ready for the weekend, which will bring my company Christmas party (open bar and free food, suckah!) and some much needed rest.  That's not really what I want to talk about right now, though.  What I'd like to do is make a clear and concise treatise about the greatest problem in America today: people.

This might sound strange, my having literally blamed America's ills on people in general rather than specifying what kind of people are the problem.  The issue is that there are too many different kinds of people who are destroying everything to actually blame the downfall of Western Society on just one subgroup of the population.  And it should also be noted that if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.  Now let's you and I take a trip through some subgroups of people who are ruining America, shall we?

1) Hipsters:  This one is completely obvious.  Everybody hates hipsters exept hipsters, and they only like them on an ironic level that is deep, confusing and convoluted, like the plot to Inception.  Living in Austin, TX, I'm living on the San Andreas fault of hipsterism; their presence pervades everything, and in the back of your mind, you know that one day something is going to slip just right and you'll all be killed in a catastrophic event made of rusted fixies, knit caps (worn only during the summer months) and skinny jeans.  Hipsters are not the only problem with America today, however; the hipster army does have one solitary redeeming quality.  "That's bullshit and you know it."  Yeah, I heard you say that from all the way over here.  But you're wrong.  You see, the hipsters' devotion to irony (which used to actually be funny) has transmogrified itself into an amazing and affordable source of entertainment.

Example: during SXSW I was walking around downtown with Wife.  This was on the last Sunday of the festival, and we were talking about how ready we were for everybody to leave so we could travel on the freeways again.  I had just remarked that SXSW brings a staggering number of surplus hipsters into the area, which prompted Wife to ask me to define "hipster."  At that exact moment, a group of gentlemen rounded the corner.  They were all clearly hipsters of the highest grade; the most odious offender was wearing (and I swear that I'm not making this up) liederhosen, cowboy boots, a porkpie hat, hornrimmed glasses and a handlebar moustache.  All I had to tell my wife was "Like those dudes," and she immediately understood.  it was the most ridiculous and memorable thing I saw all weekend.

Bonus example:  Goatwhore concert at Red 7.  I'm rocking out super hard with Van Damned of Crustcake.  Abysmal Dawn slayed, and Abigail Williams had mercifully finished their set early so Goatwhore could play some extra tuneage.  It's an ocean of crusties listening to some seriously gnarly black/death metal played by a significantly smaller group of crusties.  Stage left (my left, I'm not sure how that labeling is supposed to work), a couple of clueless tardmo hipsters had wandered in, no doubt thinking that a metal show would be "super quaint and ironic" to take in, especially considering the headliners were a band called GOATWHORE.  The look on these assholes' faces was fucking priceless; they gazed horrified at the stage while grown men in gauntlets sang about Satan, suddenly feeling out of place wearing cowboy boots with cutoff shorts and drinking their Lone Star beers through straws (?????).  Hipsterism is like cancer, except normal people can't die from it; they have to live with it until it kills itself.  And that's taking far too long.

2)  People that don't like Meshuggah:  If you don't like Meshuggah, you are wrong.  I know I say that about lots of bands, but this is fur reelzeez.  The only thing heavier than Meshuggah is the Earth itself, and I don't care who you are or what you do for a living.  If you don't like Meshuggah, you are destroying America.

Now, the first thing many people might point out to me is that Meshuggah aren't even American.  They are from some ridiculous and inferior European country that I don't care about.  Not important.  Meshuggah should (collectively) be allowed to be the president of the United States, because then we'd all be rocking our balls off so hard that war and famine would be obsolete and relief agency rice would rain down on Africa while the dulcet tones of "New Millennium Cyanide Christ" blasted over the Serengeti, causing antelope to die mid-gallop and hit the ground fully cooked and stuffed with mozzarella cheese.  What a world that would be!

My coworkers don't like Meshuggah.  I tried to sneak some in at a time when I was all alone (I can't wear earbuds), but they snuck back in while I was packaging some stupid piece of computer equipment.  Usually people are frightened by Meshuggah, which is what I expected and is the main reason why I chose to try to shield them from my taste in music.  They threw me a curveball, though.  They started making fun of Meshuggah!  Blasphemers!  It made me want to puke.  I didn't realize that they hated things that were awesome and great (but, to be fair, the amount of reggae music I'm subjected to on a daily basis should have tipped me off).  I don't hold this against my coworkers, though.  It's really not their fault.  It's the fault of the last group of people we will examine for this exercise.

3)  Old people:  We all love our parents in some way, whether that's the way that we wish they had given us any attention as a child (slutty girls/dudes with Ed Hardy shirts), or the way that we shave the bunions off our parents' feet as a means of passing time (nerdmos and people without functioning genetalia).  However, it is not commonly known that old people are the actual scourge of America.  Did you know that all of those retards that spend their time and money inexplicably throwing tea into the ocean are rich, well-established old people?  It's true!  They also think that you and your devil music are unarguably and unequivocally evil.  They think that such angry stuff makes people do horrible things, like become a homosexual or support upper-class tax hikes.  These same people will be caught soliciting gay sex in an airport restroom or housing their illegal immigrant housekeeper and poolboy in their reinforced sex dungeon underneath their house.

The most important thing that you can remember for yourself is that old people are always wrong.  They preface truly racist statements with the phrase "I'm not prejudiced, but..." and will generally assume that you are their oldest son/younger brother (trust me, I worked in hospice care for one horrific year of my life).  That they like to hang around chanting "no taxation without representation!" while the Senator and Congressman they voted for sit in their plush beanbag chairs in D.C. is telling of their mental status.  "Don't trust anyone over 30" is a quote that can be attributed to Homer Simpson back when The Simpsons was still funny (Episode: Homerpalooza, from season 7), and should be followed precisely.  I quickly approach the age when I cannot be trusted, and beyond that, I hope for a swift death that silences my nonsense opinions before I can be holding a sign that accuses a president who won the presidency through the standard course of democracy of being an illegal immigrant/homosexual/9-11terrorist.  I hope you'll kill me before that happens.

And there you have it; a brief-ish synopsis of the ills of America created to fill space and distract from the fact that I hadn't done any of the stuff that I laid out for myself to do this week.  It's been a hell of a week, and I hope that next week, you'll be around to join me for the next edition of Gay or Not Gay*? and my Kowloon Walled City review, which will probably refer to human genatalia a great many times (as my writing tends to).

With that, I'm taking a three day weekend.  Next week will also be short, since it'll be Christmas and I'll be busy putting up with my family and playing video games alone in my darkened living room.