It's Only Okay to Hit Children in the Brain with Ideas

Did you see the theme week? It's lies that we tell to children! Come along, and allow me to elucidate.

We lie to children. I, personally, do it out of a mixture containing equal parts of a desire to preserve some sense of childlike wonder in our increasingly dull world (Hey kids, did you know that the moon is made out of cheese?) and because it is personally amusing to do so (You're also adopted!). The lines between generational abuse and affection become so blurred that we are often unable to stop ourselves from perpetuating these vicious not-truths. I'd love to not be responsible for fucking up notions of the world, but I realize that I'm going to end up doing it anyway. It's a psychotic compulsion I have, to spin fabulous tales and make up lies that children below a certain age aren't cagey enough to realize for what they are.

There is little doubt in my mind that if some kind of codex were to be assembled of everything I've told to children under the age of five, it would read very much like how I wish the world worked. Real Life Example Tiem: When I was a wee sprout, my mother (who is 100% Slovak) would tell me that if I misbehaved, Baba Yaga was going to come out of the woods, kidnap me, and then either eat me or turn me into a sheep. The specific form of punishment was never specified, but to me, the witch became a kind of elemental figure, whose inscrutable ways were bulletproofed against my critical thinking skills. Why would an old witch care if I hid in the clothes dryer, and didn't eat my yams? Did she really like yams? Maybe she really hated them! All I knew was that I didn't want to be eaten or transmuted, and so I best do as my mother says.

My mother was at once abusing the trust I have in her (WHY WOULD MY OWN MOTHER LIE TO ME LOL) and perpetuating some aspect of her own youth (specifically, that of child-eating witches. Not recipes or children's rhymes, but child eating witches), inculcating old world names into a new generation. Which is kind of neat. Here is normally where I'd post some tripe about being able to believe small lies (Witches, Santa, the awesomeness of running around naked all the time) before we're able to swallow the larger ones (that our parents will never be disappointed in us, that everyone is willing to give us a fair shake, the awesomeness of running around fully dressed all the time). But I don't really believe that.

The differentiation between large and small lies is basically the taxonomy of different breeds of griffin, that is, you are making arbitrary decisions about something that doesn't exist. All of the lies that we tell to children are our little subversions from what others would have them believe - we know that what we tell them is untrue, but to them it is real, and so the lies live on. Baba Yaga has basically been replaced by the police, in my mind, as the abstract entity that will fuck my shit up if I step out of line. There's no big or small about it - maybe some notion of maturity (witches are cop training wheels), but as a certain past theme week will remind us, we are still plenty superstitious about the world around us.

It can be disorienting too. As technology (and hated science, hsss!) progress blindly onward, our understanding of the world declines. Actual history slides into the realm of myth, borders fade, and soon, we realize that we've always just been the same cavemen as we were before, still just as petty and biased and driven onward by the chemical prods of all kinds of conquest, just put into a suit. It could be said that the lies we tell to children are the only things that really represent us as human beings, as we wrap our hopes and dreams (and fears) up in stories and give them to our younglings as we sit, huddled and picking the nits out of each other's hair as we watch the campfire embers. Or Celebrity (now there's a generous definition if I've ever heard one) Rehab. Or mind reading enviro-helms. Or maybe some kind of controlled hallucinogenic nano-spores. In the end, though, we want some whisper of the things we only half-remember as children to continue onward, to propel the dreamy parasites of our world on into the future, so that we can someday look back at them on the edge of our twilights, and see what is best in our nature being forever youthful and energetic, never quite realizing that the phantom hag that lurks in closets and beneath old trees is really the fondest token of affection they'll ever receive.

Also, that they are adopted.

THESE SHLAVS NEED TO GTFO OUR SCLAMS

I should already be asleep, so let's get down to brass tacks.

Point the first.
I have a semi-demi-hemi girlfriend, but a man cannot love a woman in the same way that a man can love, say, beer. Having grown up in either boondocks (west of bumblefuck) or a "college" town, I did not know the refined pleasures of beer that was not made of pisswater or drinks that consist of some bitters, snuck into the gaps between ice cubes through some kind of bartending legerdemain. Then I met my one true love, here in the city. Honestly. Brooklyn Brewery crafts ridiculously fine brews, seemingly brewed with the express purpose of enjoying them in the waning hours of the day, sitting in a sidewalk cafe in a trendy/filthy part of town, watching insane Russian vagrants mixing with the French hipsters.

Anyway, as the (endless!) summer finally draws to a close, it's very nice. Why weren't the preceeding months this nice? July was like being eaten alive by some kind of feral squirrel tribe. August was marked with a three day long family tiff. And September is entered in with whistful recollections of my youth, and tapping into a general sense of brotherly responsibility and affection.

April is the cruelest month indeed. Never be tutored by Ezra Pound.

Anyway, you know what's a bad idea? Right wing militant social organizations focusing around hating jews, gypsies, and gays. Sounds familiar, amiright? Well, those who don't remember history are doomed to be embarassed when they look back at themselves.

...Sorry, watching Flight of the Conchords, and it is hella distracting.

New York City can be a horrible place, because if anyone wants something, there are eighteen better people available to supply it. This is why I am having trouble finding both a place to work and a place to live. And why I'ma head to Pittsburgh. Sure, it's no New York. Hell, Brooklyn alone is bigger than Pittsburgh (no joke - it's about seven times larger in population), but it's cheap, close to people I like, and not as cutthroat.

Anyway. I'm a small fish, moving to a smaller pond. The humility needed to navigate a sub-par collegiate career is a difficult skill to pick up. The snide remarks and casual egotism tend to pale before the "Oy, we've no reason to hire you, pees awf" attitude that all of the evil British employers here have.

Speaking of the Brits - Pulp! Common People has to be among the finest songs written in the past fifty years. I was listening to it earlier today, and I tell you this - that song is the very definition of strutting music. While it plays on my headphones, I am ten feet tall and made of impenetrable adamantium. A good song to follow it up with? Clap Your Hands Say Yeah's The Skin Of My Yellow Country Teeth.

...There's a hoarse old man outside my window screaming "Who the fuck are you?"

Anyway, yes. The two go together like raspberries and ginger. And come on NME, Oasis as the best indie rock anthem band? You can go and suck on a brick until you realize that you aren't Pitchfork.

Did you hear that if we pull out of Iraq, proposed oil prices will go up to about $9 dollars a gallon? Betcha wish you'd waited before you bought that Hummer 3, eh? No? And you get all kinds of women, and can run over skyscrapers with it? Well damn, that is pretty neat. How much did it set you back? You got it used? Well, that's. Er. Hi!

Politics are not my strong suit, though, so don't ask me where or how I heard this.

With that in mind, might I draw your attention to this*? I like the midwest, kind of. I feel that it often gets a bad rap for... Jesus, the guy is still out there screaming, he's hoarser than Tom Waits... Anyway, it gets a bad rap for not being either New York or LA, or very often even humble Chicago. So it's nice to see something serious dealt with in a lighthearted but mature matter. Also, the joke about the woman thinking that getting her hair caught in the car door is an orgasm is pure gold.

*Work is not to be safe viewing plz.

GOD SHUT UP HOBO IT'S THREE AM.

Anyway, I'm on the train tomorrow. Happy labor day! Remember - were it not for the Trucker's Union, the US would still have the fastest, most efficient train system in the world. Ha ha, instead we have truck stops. Thanks a lump, boundless avarice.