The giant clown gloves on my hands are merely proof of my devotion.

Hello, gentle readers.

I realize that the staple rule of all internet interaction is not to feed the troll, but sometimes something so incalculably brilliant appears that you simply have to toss the slavering beast a few scraps. Behold Hitch Bitch. Perhaps the most erudite 15-year-old nihilist on the entire staff of Vanity Fair (take that, Kendrick Darkrayven) will even get his comeuppance. If reading the New Yorker has taught me anything, and it hasn't, it's that college professors often have nothing better to do other than think up zingers in response to the things that they read.

Because they are nerds, Lebowski.

Anyway, I apologize for my absence (I'm certain you were tres desolee) but I had stuff to do. Like go west of the Allegheny River, to Columbus, Oheeyo. It is a strange land, full of bars and sex shops and then more bars and then more sex shops and then! Aldi's! LET'S RENT SOME DAMN SHOPPING CARTS! The entire state seems to be riddled with Arby's and Cracker Barrels, too, so if you've got a hankering for biscuits or roast beef, allow me to merely point the way middle-west. Though if Ohio is the mid-west, does that make Pennsylvania the mid-east? Or are the mid-Atlantic states simply content to exist as they are (Mid-Atlanticism), proudly being neither southern nor western? Oh H E double hockeysticks, we already passed up that theme week, didn't we?

One of the greatest vices I indulge in is political bickering. For the record, I don't especially hate any candidate this year - I've spent the adultier-third of my lifespan in open protestation to our president and his baby-eating party, so you can understand if I am somewhat bewildered with McCain, and how I agree with some of his policies. We are presented with a candidate that is not a raging douchebag from the Republicans. Likewise, spend-o-crat side, we have Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, who both deviate from the Old Evil White Male stereotype significantly. What is going on, America? Like season 4 of Project Runway, there is no clear-cut villain. Which is partially why things are interesting to me. Like, I am happy no matter what happens.

So I suppose I can only really support whichever candidate proposes catapult the aforementioned Christopher Hitchens into the sea, perhaps to be followed by Tom Delillo or the Bizarro version of Gabriel Garcia Marquez (who I imagine is actually George Bush Jr.). I mean, since Ron Paul basically slid away with his tail between his legs, and since Mike Fucking Gravel has evaporated like the ethereal being he ran as, we have very few (openly) madmen with which to entrust the title of Chief Executive. Logically, we must then make them mad.

Their public nature will be the first stepping stone. They want our vote? They must do little things at first - provide sound bites, pose with the elderly or the frowny or the ugly. Barack Obama must perform a handstand to prove his presidential character, and Hillary Clinton must eat ten banana pies. McCain must enter the Chute of Shoes, and find ten matching pairs within five minutes. Little fokesy things! To prove how connected they are with the people. Soon things are stepped up a notch. Perhaps someone boxes a kangaroo, or even wanders through a maze of mirrors with several body doubles and wax duplicates. Eventually, they will wear clothing made of grape jell-o and write backwards, or perhaps unicycle on elephants. Really, it could be anything, because what I'm proposing here is not just delightful whimsy. I will vote for any candidate who wants my vote so badly that they sacrifice their dignity and sanity.

Is it a lot to ask for? Certainly. But this is hedonism week (for like, negative two days now?) and I am feeling haughty. And I tire of candidates who are willing to talk and debate and blah blah blah. Give us a show. America is the next Roman Empire, so why bother pretending that it isn't? Our decadence could burn so bright that it casts a shadow for centuries to come, instead of just burning guiltily behind closed doors.

BONUS CONTENT:
You may have been aware of your own suffering enough last Friday to notice a lack of Krazy Kwotes. I have heard benediction, and relief comes swiftly.

On hedonism.

Hedonism is an intelligence of the flesh. It is the active choice to make, of an indifferent and ugly world, a better one. Bite into the correct fruit, something spotless, pulpy, and wet, and you've not only gained admittance to the garden, but created it.

Why rely upon vulgar biology and accidents of time and space when we can make choices? We can invoke our best selves. We can wrap ourselves in strange glamours and furs, in suits with silken and luxurious linings never to be seen save by ourselves and a few lovers¹. We can inform the universe of what we are, rather than accepting the things we are told to want and be.

The current incarnation of the world, this thoughtless and slovenly beast that feeds on waste and plastics, is, indeed, disappointing. Materialism, we're told, is nothing but the cheap, the new, the replaceable. It is to be consumed without question at the same time that it is to be distrusted. That distrust is not revolutionary, but built into the creature itself. It is expected that we should resent without either fighting or ignoring the corporate gods we are told we cannot escape. In our discomfort with the physical we rape the planet because, for all our desires, we do not respect the things themselves. The objects will, they must, be replaced by something newer, so they may rot, and the earth and the materials and the people that made them, being also things, may rot with them. The segment of the world from which I hail, as noted by Mister Thomas à Becket, does have too much, and we certainly have more than we've earned. My nation is fast becoming a landfill because we feel that we need, that we are entitled to, things that we do not enjoy. However, the material of materialism, I might suggest, is not the problem.

Decadence is a delicate and wounded thing. I do not fear objects. I do distrust the ugly, and the inhumane. So I avoid it, and instead cling to the rare, the antique, the strange, and the beautiful. May I request that you join me?

Hedonism, I posit, requires more than excess. It also relies upon a strong sense of discernment. One wouldn't wallow in just anything. Drunkenness is little more than a vice without knowledge of what we drink. Our ability to afford fine wines and ancient liquors is irrelevant: what matters is that we perfect our own preferences. Knowledge of the textures, the colours, the flavours, the scope of possibility, makes selection a sacrament. Therein lies the indulgence.

¹_{Yes, I am in fact implying that Lord Whimsy's lovers include every one of us to read his blogue. He's a gentle, intelligent, and dashing man. We cannot be expected to restrain ourselves.}

A Brief Defense of Hedonism

I am a hedonist, and proud of it.

I do nothing except search after new experiences, facts, situations and puzzles in the hope that I will derive some enjoyment from having found them. My mind is ever-hungry, and the rest of my life is structured around feeding it. Everything else is less important, the body a not-always-so-distant second. The world exists, and I yearn to know it with an intense and bottomless hunger.

I'm no good at owning and caring for material goods. I don't keep my room in order or my clothing clean. I have a lot of trouble paying attention to things that don't interest me. But when I'm on my game, when my mind is sharp and my talons are out, when I can taste what I'm looking for in my brain, that's when I know I'm alive.

There is so much that I don't understand, so much that I have not seen, and I want to know it all. And there isn't time to do anything else but seek it out. If pleasure is the motivating factor in my continually deepening understanding of the world, then so be it.

I try to be the best person I can, because I find it hinders my ability to enjoy myself when I do not.

I don't understand people who don't set out, as best they can each day, to enjoy the world. Sure, it's a terrible place full of terrible people who want to do terrible things to one another. Sure, it can be pain and suffering and despair. Sure, we're a set of evolved neuroses competing for processor time and nutrients in a fleshy sack laced with poisons and a million different kinds of tiny battling monsters.

But it still beats nothing.

The rain on your face when you look up at the storm beats nirvana hollow any day of the week, as far as I'm concerned. Heaven, as the Talking Heads say, is a place where nothing ever happens. This world may not be the best of all possibilities, but it's the one we have, and it is fascinating, fragile, beautiful and terrible in equal parts.

In the face of such an existence, hedonism is the only logical way to proceed. Enjoy the world you live in, take hold of it, and make it an even more unbearably beautiful place.

I can't think of a better alternative.

Theme Week: Hedonism.

You're right.

This is a loaded theme week. Loaded in the sense of there are quite a few negative connotations with the word we're basing our writings on, and also in the sense of illicit substances, liquids and corporeal objects.

Devotion to pleasure as a way of life is what the Random House Dictionary of the English Language calls hedonism, though the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy (roughly 1070 pages, and yes, you can bludgeon someone to death with it...) defines it quickly as the pleasure as the good and I can't really disagree. (After all, they did write the books.) I always got the idea that there was a connotation of opulence in the use of the word hedonism, so with that said, I shall continue.

Behind the scenes, there is a little mantra we have, and that is reveal as much about yourself as you please, but do allow other people to reveal themselves as they please. So, we'll have to eschew a little bit of background. I hope you don't mind.

I am not terribly hedonistic in the current (and perhaps classical?) sense. I have only recently started imbibing alcohol, I still haven't used other forms of recreational mind altering substances (recorded media aside) and my sexual palate is rather limited in both scope and variety.

Despite this, I get the idea that I can speak about hedonism fairly frankly and (perhaps!) with a bit of authority. Let us consider the United States. Despite the wide, wide gap between CEOs and the minimum wage earners in large companies, the United States still consumes the world's resources inequitably, a statement which should this point, be a fact.

Much of what is bought in America is not produced here, and much of what I eat, type on and wear has been imported from around the world. Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, a wise man quipped, and we're the ones with the circlets of shrubbery on our heads...

Botch continues to be right, that America has a parallel to Mediterranean history, and it ain't the Athenians. All roads lead to Rome, and if I've learned anything from my experience it is that most of the talent and material in the world is shipped here to be consumed. Consider, for a moment, the object you're using to read this with. It could be a computer monitor, your iPhone/Blackberry/Sidekick screen, or whatever else science has come up with in between making new bombs and new TVs. It was probably compiled in China, the microchip sent in from elsewhere, then shipped back to wherever here is to be sold. This also goes for your jeans, my tshirts (ah, but they had silkscreens placed on them in America...) my hoodies, my watches and my cell phone.

Well, thank God for underage laborers for making everything on my body including my underwear. It allows me the free time to bemoan this, while also getting an education that costs more than half the world will ever get paid for a lifetime of their work. And yet, I continue to worry about girls more than my own work.

To include my own missteps into this week's lexicon of hedonism: There is hardly ever silence in my waking hours, and that's probably the most direct form of hedonism, since I far prefer to listen to music than people. If we're going for a textbook definition, then that is the best way I can show of pleasure as a way of life. I have more pleasure listening to music than interacting with people, and that's my hedonism. Pleasure ought to be pursued above all, right? Well, there you go.

To tie this back into the rest of the post, evaluative hedonism I think is the one that I (and most of America) are guilty of. Evaluative hedonism is defined as "pleasure is what we ought to desire or pursue". The pleasure, in this case, is the unknowing of...oh, to hell with it.

Ignorance is bliss, motherfuckers. Let's revel.

The Zombie Menace

Today I am going to write about the Zombie Menace, and how unprepared our society is for this looming crisis. Now I am not talking about your 1960’s, raised by some mad scientist zombies, I mean your infected with some crazy disease, unstoppable, completely uncontrollable zombies. I really feel that people don’t realize what would happen if a zombie outbreak got out of hand.

To be honest, zombies are also my biggest fear. As I lay in bed at night I find myself mentally checking the room’s defenses. Is the bedroom door locked? Is the front door locked? How long would our food and water last if we had to isolate ourselves? What sort of anti-zombie weapons can we make from what is in the house right now? And then I wonder, would my friends and family survive, would I be able to reach them before the outbreak got too widespread? Even if I did survive would the government declare a state of emergency and napalm the whole area anyway?

This thing is, despite all these fears, and the fact that they regularly keep me up at night, and are the subject of some very frightening reoccurring nightmares, I have an uncontrollable fascination with zombies.) This fascination that lead me to the book The Zombie Survival Guide and the realization just how unprepared the world is for this kind of disaster. The U.S. government refuses to even acknowledge the existence of the undead, including zombies, so how can they have a coherent plan to deal with the outbreak when it happens? And that means it is up to us to protect ourselves.

People often ask me why I am so afraid of zombies, seriously, there are plenty of other things to be afraid of out there in the world, and zombies aren’t even “real”. I mean, really, all they want to do is eat our brains. Well, real is a relative term in my mind. I mean, what are the chances that you are going to be killed by some ax murderer who just happens to walk into your house? And what is the likelihood that you are ever going to be thrown into a pit of poisonous snakes? But what it really all comes down to is the fact that ax murderers and snakes are real things, they can be dealt with, stopped, and killed.

Zombies for me symbolize an every growing, never ending destruction. They are the pinnacle of hedonism: always consuming, never satiated, never stopping. Sure you can kill one, but they have an endless supply which is always replenishing itself. And they are all driven by the uncontrollable desire to eat human flesh.

Of course, this is all conjecture, maybe zombies really don’t exist. Maybe my fear of zombies is just my overactive imagination. Maybe they are simply the personification of humans acting on their most basic urges, and what I am really afraid of is the animalistic nature that exists in everyone, our inner zombie as it were.

Either way, if the outbreak does come me, my shotgun, and my machete are going to be ready to save the world . . . . or at least defend my apartment.

Theme week: Hedonism. And vaguely anti-corporate sentiment!

Upon hearing that my beloved Planningtorock is going to be at South by Southwest this year, I sprang (Sprung! Springed!) into action, and tried to get Zachary to convince me this was a bad idea. Since this is Zachary, however, nothing is ever a bad idea, but in the end, we found out that the cheapest way to do this would still cost far too much money, and maybe result in us getting mugged. In Austin. Texas, why are you our most irascible state? Don't change, though, we still love you.

In our way.

In fitting with the theme of this week, let's see what Webster's Dic(HAHAHA)tionary has to say about Hedonism: "The doctrine that pleasure or happiness is the sole or chief good in life." Well hey, okay. Didn't Oscar Wilde say that same thing exactly? Well, he did, but in defense of Webster, Wilde said a lot of things. Cheesy introductions aside, really now, I struggle to understand individuals who do not, in their way, life lives for their own happiness. Self flagellating monks took doubtless pleasure from their whips and uncomfortable shirts, knowing that their reward lay beyond. Further, I mean, come on - monks? Seeking the chief good in life? Those bros were ALL ABOUT the chief good in life. Thanks a lot for your crappy definition, Daniel Webster. I hope you get what's coming to you.

Anyway. My greatest vice, aside from eating diet foods and bitching about iPods, is music. It is an intensely personal vice - I meet other people with different tastes, and I must resist the urge to rend the flesh from their bones for not agreeing with me, or for having even heard of the bands I like. And I fully acknowledge that this is a stupid thing to think, because music is like TOTALLY OMG WOW a personal experience, and so it is a ridiculous thing to force my subjective assumptions onto strangers. So when it comes to music, I usually just shut the hell up and hold back my tide of bitchfork-like fury against the uninitiated, because no one likes that. The last thing I want is people hating me for silly reasons - there are already so many good reasons out there. I'd feel like I was wasting their time.

So there are things that we must do to preserve our hedonism - our happiness is never a sure thing. We are sensitive to the moods of others, to the weather, to what we ate last night for dinner. Our pleasure is never immune to distortion, and it is always precious and fragile. It is a rare gift to find those individuals who are able to enjoy themselves with the relentless force of a hurricane, or even to be able to ignore the small details that derail more detail oriented minds. Hedonism is so often pegged as a bad idea, but why? If it is the pursuit of happiness and goodness, what's so wrong with that?

I might argue that there are profits at stake. If you convince others that they aren't having a good time, you can provide for them an easy out. Consider the advertising blurb for the Hedonism resorts:

"Sleep in. Stay up late. Give up counting calories. Have a drink before noon. Give up mineral water. Dine in shorts. Talk to strangers. Don't make your bed. Go skinny dipping. Don't call your mother. Let your hair down. Don't pay for anything. Don't leave a tip. Be your beautiful self in spectacular Negril or Runaway Bay, Jamaica."

These are the same manipulations that get us to spoil ourselves and buy a luxury car, or to indulge in some hideous new meat patty and sauce at a fast food restaurant. The above text does not inspire me to be beautiful in any way - it makes me an ugly, self-centered jerk. An easily impressed self-centered jerk. Talk to strangers! Eat in shorts! These are not, strictly speaking, novel. If we are made to think that these things are new and that they can be provided by this service, then our sense of being beautiful and free hinges on paying these fuckers. Don't get me (and my misdirected self-righteousness) wrong, there are some people who probably totally love that place. But they are tools and I hate them. The more we relegate the pleasures of life to a specifically cordoned off area, the more they are removed from our daily life - we become the agents of our own discontent.

So, enjoy hedonism week. Think about what you do for your own pleasure (you sickening freak), and about how different you would be as a person if this were taken away from you. ON WITH THE SHOW.