"a fish, a barrel, and a smoking gun"
for 10 September 1996. Updated every WEEKDAY.
Just Do Yourself
Masturbation has been touted as
the safest sex, and it's
undoubtedly the safest bet, but
our turn of phrase today refers
to an entirely different kind of
self-abuse.
There's been some speculation
that plain old professional
sports are on the wane. People
are sick and tired of
stadium-sized events, featuring
stadium-sized egos, and
stadium-sized paychecks. It's as
if the collective consciousness
has just awakened to the
absurdity of paying grown men
six figures to run around in
their pajamas. On the other
hand, maybe we've begun to
realize how easy it is to put
aside the vicarious enjoyment
and actually participate - in
the words of Anthony Burgess's
A Clockwork Orange - in our own
bit of ultraviolence.
For some time, we've been inching
closer and closer to a broadband
indulgence in personal violence.
Time was when a few thousand
fictitious murders a week on
network television were enough.
Throw in some sensationalist
news reports on the hour, and we
had more than enough material to
go to bed feeling comfortably
debauched. But, as O.J. Simpson
and Susan Smith so effectively
communicated to the Body Public,
why settle for shoddy
made-for-TV movies? Why not take
matters into your own capable
hands, and cross over to the
supply side of ultraviolence?
Of course, there have been
DIYers since the dawn of time.
Cain was one of the first to hoe
his own row - and he's not
very fondly remembered.
Ted Kaczynski, David Koresh,
the Freemen, and a whole
host of others are great contemporary
examples of folks carrying the
torch of DIY violence. And they
seem to be spawning a legion of
garden-variety wannabombers,
from Atlanta to Reno.
Then, of course, there's the
ESPN-sponsored daredevilry of
extreme sports. A whole
generation of latter-day Evel
Knievels are hitting the
streets, both literally and
figuratively: a bunch of Type-A
pituitary cases showing off
their arcane athleticism. The
reason we can't sit back, relax,
and change the channel is the
same old embarrassing foible:
blood lust. Actually, like car
racing, the real reason we watch
is to see whether the players
will survive the game. Talk
about American Gladiators. From
bungee jumping to street luge
and snowboarding, these "sports"
are populist in the only way
that counts: With all the right
cross-promotions and product
placements, you can buy a pair
of event-specific Nikes.
Sure, Doc Marten has cornered the
market on footwear for the pit,
but we expect the good folks of
Beaverton to make inroads any
day now. Next to inline skating,
moshing has grown to be one of
the most popular and dangerous
activities for young adults.
This summer, reports have
circulated that injuries - and
even fatalities - are on the
rise globally as the result of
violent dance-hall antics. Kids
these days.
But youth has always been
reckless. If death is the great
equalizer, then age is the great
wussifier, giving most people
over thirty a crystal-clear
appreciation of risk and pain.
It's not clear why young adults
find it so compelling to
constantly put themselves in
harm's way, other than the fact
that they seem to have the best
chance of surviving it. And it
seems to get a rise out of their
parents. How else to explain the
spectacular and unflagging
popularity of smoking among the
barely legal? You think Congress
will move to ban candy
cigarettes as training wheels
for the real thing? Smarter to
watch for the arrival of candy
crack pipes, and wax syringes
filled with colorful sugar
water.
Every generation has its own way
of flirting with death. The
Romans had their Colosseum, the
Mayans their Xochicalco. Last
century, the Industrial
Revolution managed to grind up
quite a few folks. We're no
different. Today's senior
citizens did idiotic things like
home birthing and nuclear
testing. Their children - the
boomers - smoked like chimneys,
drank like fish, and applied Dow
chemicals to everything in
sight. And our enlightened,
health-conscious generation?
We've got bungee jumping and
stage-diving.
Harvard theologian Richard
Niebuhr once said that modern
literature - strangely loaded as
it is with stories of gratuitous
and extreme violence from
Faulkner to Bukowski - is
evidence of a kind of
industrial-age numbing. In a
time when we've grown far too
comfortable for our own good, we
read Cormac McCarthy, Pete Dexter,
and Irvine Welsh as a way of
pinching ourselves,
metaphorically speaking, to
remind ourselves that we're
alive. Well, Dr. Niebuhr, we've
gone well beyond pinching
ourselves. Now we're into the
kind of serious
self-flagellation that makes
sackcloth and ashes look like a
walk in the park.
courtesy of E.L. Skinner
--** History 101** Hiroshima 45 - Chernobyl 86 - Windows 95 ============================================= "The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste, they have absolutely no taste, and what that means is, I don't mean that in a small way I mean that in a big way. I have a problem with the fact that they just make really third rate products."
Steve Jobs, Triumph of the Nerds, PBS Documentary
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