On the last day of your life don’t forget to die
One entry a day encroaches on self-absorbsion, and probably more acutely boarders on flat out narcissism. But you’ve got to love the blog: hundreds of thousands of hands out there, and millions more fingers, clacking away on the keyboard, transmitting some kind of message, something. To actually be published may appear to be that much more narcissistic: to maintain the belief that you’re worth believing in. But here in the blogosphere, where minute everyday occurrences are recorded with vigor and transmitted to the masses, is actually ten times more obnoxious. I like to think of the things that I’m transmitting as some sort of boomerang that I’m hurtling into the void, and which only I get any real satisfaction out of. But in the end, it’s strange to admit that that’s not entirely true. Two days away and the people are materializing in the void, sending things to my email inbox, in the pleading attempt of I don’t know what. Well, you get what you pay for, motherfucker, and as of one week ago, I noted I only had 10 cents in my bank account. Not exactly the prevailing wage, but I have time and my hands for another ten minutes, and so what do you know?

I’ve recently decided that I’m becoming uncomfortably American. I actually do things like watch portions of baseball games now. Whereas I may have tended to quote Chomsky, appropriating terms like pre-jingoism and other such non-sequiturs to annoy my parents, I now find myself actually watching an inning or so. I still have no idea what to make of basic television programming, opting instead to issue a confused look when the latest contestant of American Idol has been announced, but what do you want? That’s just right and natural. And if I ever find myself feigning interest in such things, I will know that I have banged a right hand turn that’s clearly taken me far from the road.

I honestly feel all around me, everyday, the cancerously malignant nature of this culture. Two kids talking on the radio today about hating America, and it’s hard not to get behind that sentiment. Things seem, simply, fucked. And it’s hard not to find examples on any front. A recent article in the paper cites an eighth grade child who is unable to spell America, erroneously producing, “Amarika” on a test and still receives a passing mark. It’s kind of funny, but it’s sad, too. And I think the best thing that you can do, truthfully, is transcend those delineations. To get away. Although, what does that even really mean?

On a recent trip to the dentist (which probably moves my bank account to the negative), the hygienist asked me, “What are you doing?” I gave her the short version, which actually is short, and while she has me there, supine, with her hands in my mouth, prattling on endlessly, the loneliest job in the world, she proceeded to tell me what all the other patients were up to. Apparently there is a lack of jobs among my demographic, I learn, which could have just been a nice ploy to mollify my own disconcerted explanation. But I learn all about who went to Harvard and who’s doing what. And then she deducts that nobody really seems to be doing anything. Even the Harvard student had a break down. Even the dentist’s son himself is working on some hippie commune in upstate, she says. What the hell? She wants to know. She has her hands in my mouth, so I can’t answer, and all I can do is produce a series of garbled grunts in agreement to what she’s saying. But the strange thing is, that seems to sum it all up.

On the way out, I notice an advertisement for some teeth-whitening agent, which features a gnarly set of teeth, with a caption that reads genetic teeth. Alongside that is the sparkly appropriation of bleached-white teeth that the product will afford you. “They now are making a product which makes your normal teeth appear inferior?” I say. “What’s up with that?” I want to know. She has no idea what I’m talking about, but tells me that I don’t really need that anyway. She says goodbye, and when I smile back at her, I imagine the gnarly teeth of the advertisement smiling back at her, which aren’t too bad, man.