Culture?

can i just talk about some ads i've seen recently?

ok, i saw this ad for pasta that comes in these little individual servings, so all you have to do is microwave it and then add the sauce or something -- amazing!! in case you haven't yet mastered that challenging step of learning to fucking ***boil water***, don't worry, we have created a package just for you. coming soon, and for the rest of time, to a landfill near you.

i saw another one that advertised some rasty looking dinner-from-a-packet product, and the whole theme of it was that when your hubby and daughter come home from a long day of frolicking in your backyard pool you can serve this meal thing to them and it will be "fit for a king" and you will feel like "queen for a day." ahhh!! i am going fucking insane!!! were things always this bad? has feminism done nothing? this one is too bad, i can't even talk about it any longer.

ok, last one. i was at a friend's house and we watched some god-awful program on 3 couples, one of whom would get divorced by the end of the program (it had followed them through 7 years of marriage or some crap). one of the couples who stayed together said that one thing they did to help their marriage was to set goals that they wrote down so everyone in the fam could see them. they showed their nice little goals, and i

couldn't believe it! get a lexus, get a maid, take a fancy vacation, have a shopping spree at tiffanys! does no one want to do anything that doesn't involve money anymore? arggggh. then this same idiot woman in this couple said that one reason their marriage worked was that "he is the more dominant one" in the relationship and she doesn't mind letting him make more of the decisions.

things are getting worse people. it is up to us to change things by making our lives the change. we cannot let ourselves be like these people, driving their lexuses and eating their pasta with plastic flavoring and forgetting that anything real can exist. oh god, it is so depressing. smash your tv, please. send me the shards in a little box and i will make you something from my heart, something from things i've found on the street and taken home and loved, something real.

the other day i put a up comic i found in utne reader in my little office. it shows 2 birds sitting on a green hill. in each panel one bird is asking the other if he gets a certain magazine, newspaper, tv channel, or radio station. the other bird answers each question by telling him that he doesn't know, and finally he says, "i...i don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about." the other bird replies: "well what do you read then? where do you get your news, your culture? i

mean, what the hell do they use to line the bottom of your cages?" there is a blank panel where the birds stare at each other, then the other bird says, "cages?"

i look at this comic every time i am on the computer. today, feeling a little down and especially reclusive, i realized that this comic sums up perfectly how i feel about "culture."

even among alternative, underground types it is seen as weird not to have a desire to keep up with the news. i do read a lot of magazines, but the idea of reading "news" is somehow sickening to me, and a lot of times i feel kind of bad about it, like if i was really a good political person i would want to know what's happening in the world so that i could know how to fight it better. this feeling has dramatically intensified since you-know-who took office. i just can't bring myself to read about the horrors that fucker is creating. if i really educated myself about it it could create walls of anger in my heart that i am afraid would trap me forever.

my whole theory about the election was that everyone should vote for nader not only because it is *wrong* to vote for the "lesser or two evils" but because if the fucker (i can't bring myself to say his oily name) got elected all the lazyass liberals in this country would rthey finally had to get off their asses and do something about it.ealize that now

and, in at least one case that i know of, this is what has happened. but in my own case, my cynicism and jadedness (is that a word?) has deepened to a point that in order to save myself i have had to wall myself off from what is happening in washington.

in fact, i have found that i thrive on not knowing what's going on. the less i know about the outside world the more chance i have of not falling into a spiraling depression and therefore the more possibility there is of me actually making some change in the world.

and then there is the comic: perhaps what we call "culture" is just a cage we trap ourselves in that distracts us from real happiness. it reminds me of those people you sometimes read about who live in tents on the edge of forests and grow their own food and don't need a job because they don't need money. to me they seem amazing because they have cut through some kind of fog that the rest of us are stuck in. i am constantly thinking of how i can pare everything down, what i can get rid of, in what ways i'm being brainwashed into thinking i need more than i do.

when we don't watch the news or pay attention to mainstream culture i think it is that much easier to see to what extent "trends" that the media talks about are completely and totally made up. the things the
mainstream media reports are *not* things, they are media-created non-events, crap that they have decided is newsworthy that most likely has no relevance to the average person. whose "news" is it? it sure as fucking hell is not mine. let's not forget that something like (i forgot the exact fact) 90% of our news comes to us from 2 companies or something. when we read the new york times or watch the tv news we are learning only what they want us to learn.

when i see some fashion mag lying around, or even something like time magazine, i always pick it up, thinking it will be good for a guilty look or at least a laugh. but, especially with fashion magazines, i always end up feeling cornered. even with a degree in women's studies, on a bad day marie claire can make me feel like a failure in 5 minutes. culture is such hard work.

i'd rather cook and read all day, and forget that at this moment there are earthquakes in india and bombs in israel and i should be up on all this anti-choice shit the fucker is doing, oh, and am i going to have wrinkles when i get old from sitting in the sun all day? should i go pull out the little hairs above my lip?

unfortunately, my voluntary ignorance will never again reach the heights it did in college, when not only did i not bathe for days and days at a time but my mother called me two days after the fact to tell me that

princess diana had died because it happened over a weekend and she knew that i never had any contact with the outside world friday-monday. in college, free from tv (although no one watches it at home now, the amount of ads i see every day walking to work through times square makes up for it) and being surrounded by suits obsessed with their nyt and wsj, my world revolved around snow days and feminism and poetry and our tiny apartment and my coffeehouse. i felt walled off from the world and i loved it.

now, all that has changed. news somehow comes to me, unbeckoned, i guess because i have to go so often to the brainwashing capital of the world, new york city. but still, i try to close my eyes and forget. when i am at my house in teaneck i love my 5-years-furry legs and the pleasure of stretching my toes in the morning, my ragged-edged poetry books and my screamy riot grrl music and my organic peaches...and i know that it is only in seclusion that i can make up a world for myself untainted by the sickness all around me and can drown out the voices of mainstream "culture" long enough to define for myself what constitutes a fulfilling life.

February 2001