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Culture Shock

I am done with the south.

Not literally, of course, but more in line with the figurative 'i am SO done with this place.'

I went throught the initial novelty of being exasperated with the commercialization of what is already a struggling cultural powerhouse 'Mega-Church' demographic. i am not christian, but i respect the ideals set down by this Jesus fellah, but my animosity towards christianity as a social/political entity is unyeilding. Dogma and archaic ideology has been confused with 'morality' and the people who are trying to improve connectivity and broaden minds throughout the world are suffering because of the placement this monster has within our legislative body.

But that's not the point.

I suffered through what is a flagrant demonstration of how appallingly under-educated the lower/working/middle classes are in this country with the same grace you can expect from a nose-in-the-air snob subjected to the 9-5 grind of bottom rung theatre. it's good for us to broaden our understanding of what it is to be american and not simply assume that without a college education someone falls under the category of 'minimum wage surf.' the south is a brilliant crossection of this group, and i fear it flaunts it somewhat.

But this is not the point.

I have come to face my own distaste for obeisity in this country and have found myself surrounded on all sides by the causes and subjects of this epidemic. We are an omnivorous species and it has become that gastro-intestional truth that has allowed corperate science to merrily opportunize on our evolved desire for 'sweet' 'fatty' and 'salty.' Being unhealthy in your approach to diet and excercise one day and then going to abortion clinics to picket line the emotionally vulnerable young women who are making one of the most difficult decisions of their lives and doing so because you say that they 'disrespect the body and life god has given them' makes me want to light my own hair on fire and dance a jaunty jig.

Neither, nor, is this the point.

the point is, dear friends, that i am simply done. all and none of these things are the point because, when it comes right down to it, i feel as if i'm in the wrong damn country sometimes. we are scrambling at every second to find a conflict to win. not resolve, but win. we do not want the war in Afganistan/Iraq/Anydamnwhere to end because then we would have to work our asses off to find another contrived, amoral reason to start one eslewhere. we do not want Jesus or whomever to descend from the heavens to tell us that 'it's all ok, we're done here, let's go to heaven' because the actual reckoning of eternal accountability would call a good number of questionable 'moral truths' into a very stark, "christ, i've been a bit of a dick my whole life, haven't i" light.

i can't help it anymore! i'm ripping at the seams and i don't know what to do about it. all i want to do is pour this bile and disdain out of my head into a bound volume of unbleached, recycled paper, and then never have anyone read it and tuck it away forever(now dan, is that accurate? nobody read it, but then what's the blog for?) (...shutup). these are thoughts, i recognize, that serve only as futile ramblings of an elitist shmuck who doesn't know how to handle the conflict between what he wishes the world were like, and what it IS like.

It has been almost a week since i started writing the previous paragraphs and, returning to this, i am happy to report that i've been granted a full voiced, full bodied discourse with some friends from work and have, by and large, vented a good amount of my frustration that way. The previous tirade is still true to my perspective, i simply do not have the same fervor. give it time, it will come.

i suppose we could look at this as the hyper-sensualized ramblings of a sex-starved-someone looked back upon by his/her/their well laid future self. i have felt the passionate release of my energies and serve myself better for the lost bile...

Ew.

Language and it's uses

I love the english language.

Fair enough to argue, i know no other language with any real literacy/conversational fluency, but there is something about our bastard tongue that excites me.

Perhaps it is that it is so very alive, so constantly bombarded by foreign influence, so susceptible to trends and fashions...and yet so old, and so structured and vastly diverse in uses.

The languages that service the scientific laboratory, the political pulpit, the theatre, the school and the street are all the same, subject to the same origins and the same stories, though some may consider the others more or less valid.

This is irrelevant: perspective does not determine truth.

My love for this language manifests itself most in my writing style, becoming at once the twisting convoluted meandering of a guy who's making it up as he goes along but longs so desperately to have the know-how to truly pontificate like a learned man and the slang laden drivel of a child of the 80's and a citizen of the Aughties.

My writing is without polish, sure, i'm working on getting better, but i am a practiced speaker and i feel confident in my ability to articulate myself vocally as well as verbally (not mutually exclusive, but not always intrinsically bound, either). that said/written/articulated, i have been, more recently than ever, been accosted by my peers and co-workers for the way i use our language.

I'm getting made fun of for how i talk.

Really?

Are we still in grade school?

Does it offend you so much that i'm not afraid to use such words as 'existential' and 'mono-culture' in a series of sentences that make sense? does it offend you further that i choose to NOT garnish my conversation with references to racism, sexism, homophobia, religious extremism; the likes of which all contribute rather heftily to our international personae as inbred, under-educated fatsacks who would just as soon press a button to heat up their hungry man microwaveable meals as return an entire region of the middle east to the bloody stone age?

Perhaps it's more stuff like that that offends you.

I'm sorry, then, that i offend. Let it never be said that Dan Stevens wasn't one to try the amicable approach to social discourse...see, there i did it again: showing off for the Internet.

//

I'm writing more and more. I can't stop the outpour of words, which is nothing new, but now i have a structure, a story, a world to work within and it's working.

It may be contrived and cliched, but it's my contrived, cliched world and i'm happy with it.