Dolla', Dolla' Bill, Huh?

More than anyone, I understand the plight of the American rapper.

They try so hard I'm surprised they don't sweat blood. From what I know of the hip-hop world, rappers need to fight out of the hood, fight their way into a select group of elite rap royalty, and then fight stay fresh to def. Yea, there is lots of fighting. And then, you need to deliver a bumpin' beat and something to say with a voice as smooth as Ja Rule. Yea, that serious.

They develop sexy new dance moves. They rock ice colder than Hitler's heart. Who doesn't want that? They roll on 22's for goodness' sake. Clearly, these rappers want to be taken seriously.

With that, I want to everyone to respect their rappers. Hell, even hug one. They love that. And, above all, I want the American people to excuse rappers from their ridiculous use of slang terms for the great American dollar. Just let them have one thing without fighting everything in sight for some recognition!

Look, regular Joes like me and you can call dollars bucks, moolah, or smackers, but these poor, innocent rappers have to recognize that rubber band banks and cheese are, for lack of a better term, "stupid"? C'mon.

You can understand how big pockets easily conjure images of pants sagging with the weight of cash. Paper stacks are just another way to measure how much money you made once you sell your soul to a record company and some fancy equipment. And what, you enjoy dough, but not bread? That's money being baked into money! DOUBLE WIN!

So, People, what I want to express is simply this: All these fellas want to do is sing some songs. Let them live their lives with their hoes and Courvoisier. Ok? And maybe when we all can live in a more accepting world, we can all share those bones in a more progressive way. Like maybe giving back to the communities that told us we wouldn't make it.

HOT, HOT, BABY

In our modern world of convenient impatience, you're telling me there is not yet an adequate appliance for freezing things quickly!?

The beautiful, awesome power of the microwave oven made American life that much better around the mid-century. Radiation-charged shrunken heads and the switch from TV dinners to microwaved Ramen in front of the computer mark its amazing life. It is astonishing. After all that, we can progress to a point in human evolution that we no longer have to spend long, rough hours over the fires of the Earth just for some sustenance and survival. We can just press buttons and consume.

Now, I want you to think about the opposite end of the spectrum. Is it completely unreasonable for me to demand speed when freezing things?

Freezing things is cool and I have the evidence to back up that pun:

Exhibit A: Arnold Schwarzenegger in Batman Forever. Batman may be Forever, but ice is pretty damn uncomfortable for attackers after a few minutes.

Exhibit B: Sam Jackson as Frozone in Disney's The Incredibles. Suck it, public transportation, I got my own way around New York City traffic.

Exhibit C: You can make icepops in your own damn freezer with whatever liquid you want! I use Smirnoff Ice.

Which brings me back to my question of why can't we freeze with ease? And now, I think I have the answer. It scares me to say it because I think I have stumbled on the biggest conspiracy of the new millennium. The very core of this thought could very well have me killed by sundown tonight, and here it is:

The iced coffee industry wants you to impatiently heat everything!

Forget freezing forever! They want you to burn everything and buy their cold, cold coffee! If we stay used to scalding hot coffee all year round, the iced coffee machine wins!

I took Microeconomics in high school and it's finally starting to sink in. Iced coffee is so damn pricey because there is a demand. Idiots, like myself, will buy something cold for a buck more when they could get it hot and wait up to three or four hours. Even then, coffee doesn't turn iced, it just turns lukewarm. So, we buy the ice. THE ICE! WE BUY ICE, just cause we're scared of what the iced coffee industry will do!

It is time to stand up, people! We need to develop the technology to say "NO MORE" to hotter-than-Katy Perry coffee. Stop paying outrageous prices for some liquids that taste delicious together; that's what rum and coke is for! Coffee beans are born equal and they should have the same opportunity to get to my lips as Katy Perry does. Yes, two Katy Perry references in one post. I'm wild with rebellion! BRING IT ON!

London Bridge Bit It, And So Do We

My name is Dan Scharch and I have a problem.

I am severely entertained by people falling down. I may have graduated from college with a healthy resume to sit on, but most of my brain power seems to reside in where to find my next fall fix. America's Funniest Home Videos has legitimately kept me alive and happy for 20 years. Failblog was a gift from Heaven.

But thankfully, every time summer rolls around I not only get to see bikinis and eat popsicles, ABC returns one of its most popular shows to the boob tube: Wipeout. My weeks are now consumed with surviving till Tuesday where I can get an evening dose of people bouncing on big red balls and giving off the Wilhelm Scream all the way to the water. It is pure joy.

Somehow we're wired to crack up at the moment of Grandpa biting it. Is it a cultural movement or is it brain chemistry? One way or the other, I think my insatiable craving for spills is reflected in my own. I've drunkenly stepped on a skateboard (don't remember), swallowed a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle sword going up my back-porch stairs (don't remember), and celebrated New Years by (drunkenly) launching myself off a trampoline (kinda remember).

We all fall down as the London Bridge song goes and it makes total sense. We all figuratively wipeout every once and a while. I think we're all just laughing to outwardly admit that, hey, it happens to the best of us.

It is much sweeter when someone asks for it, though.

Am I right, old people?

Castro? C'mon.

All Kinda Pills Give Us All Kinda Thrills

Does anyone else miss the drugs in music?

I can't remember ever seeing a band as high and mighty as this performance by Dr. Hook. While they may have been higher than a bunch of potheads sitting on Stonehedge in their time when drugs ran rampant, but I think we're sober now and we're boring.

Just today, reports are being passed around that Amy Winehouse has quit drinking and smoking because of her new filmmaker boyfriend. 50 Cent battled cocaine rumors even after he was caught on-tape, overseas, sniffing a table. We all know Fergie used to be a methhead and Eminem used to swallow pills and spit rhymes. Now Ke$ha is hot and just as boring because boys are her new drug and I'm sure she smells as bad as she sounds.

I'm not saying I need my musicians to be smashed. There is just this little part of my brain that longs for that excitement and revolution. Woodstock easily comes to mind as this beautiful cultural sphere, where bands were doing some amazing things and just floating with the flow. And there were more afterwards. Think Jefferson Airplane, Johnny Cash, the Sex Pistols, and, oh, I don't know, the Beatles.

It must have something to do with our lost of community. Instead of harboring around a scene like the punks or political ideology like the free-loving hippies, we circle around ourselves and our personal top 40. Drugs used to do one thing well: fuck shit up. They could bring our gears to a screeching, grinding halt and throw a monkey wrench in the other end. Communities sprouted on either end of the fence and tensions rose. Either you were groovy or square, hip or not. But finding others like you was harder, so you latched onto something that felt real.

Now we build our own castles in the sky, sober, and with earbuds jammed into our ears.

Oh, and Rolling Stone is now old and out-dated.

They do get out of tune, ya know?

The Answer to Hipsters

I've caught wind of an apparent and rampant Interweb craze straight out of post-apartheid South Africa. Die Antwoord, or "The Answer", is a hip-hop faction of Zef (translates mysteriously to "common", cause they are anything but) culture on the "next level", as they say. Made up of MC Ninja, Yo-Landi Vi$$er, and the mute DJ Hi-Tek, Die Antwoord recently performed at Coachella and are now signed with Interscope Records.

There is plenty more to discuss about the rap sensation (like Ninja's tattoos, Tsimfuckis, their child(?) or their future) but I can let Pitchfork do the footwork for me: Who the Hell are Die Antwoord?

Running in circles to determine authenticity, there are whispers of Ali G and performance art. Are they fo' real? Are they the "Williamsburg hipsters of South Africa" seems to be bubbling on the lips of the Blogosphere as far as I can tell, but what I think is much more frightening to the non-hipster crowd.

We don't need to hate hipsters. We mean even, gasp, need to embrace them.

Let's get it straight: We can all despise the trustfundarians, as the New York Times once called them, or those who live in the hip part of The City because their rich parents can fund them through their career ventures in all things media. We can shun those who act pretentious, like their shit don't stink, and those who generally stink, for some odd reason.

BUT why do we HATE the costume, the parties, the lifestyle, and the Fun? Hipsters dress like it is Halloween every day and they get away with it! Girls can wear their comfortable pajama shirts with neon leggings and guys can get away with rocking it like Burt Reynolds in a library. They have jobs where they can socialize day and night, and all the while celebrate the moment like we all wish we could.

They still seem pretty boss to me. Or, I mean, not boss, but you know what I mean. Right?

The fashion of previous generations keep dragging me back to this point. We've had cocaine, disco, big shoulder pads, bigger than big hair, baggy pants, and tribal tattoos. And we laugh plenty of it off as us "just being kids".

I want to look back at pictures of my youth and scream bloody murder. I'll smack my forehead, trying without success to recall what went through my head as a twenty-something, but, for most, I don't think they'll remember. But they just might miss it. Or worse, we could all just miss out. And be boring. And then die.

So when it comes down to tests of whether or not Die Antwoord or hipsters or you or me are "real", we will never know. Or do we already?

The Radio is a Rude Boy

It's always enlightening to take a deeper look at things that don't require it.

Pop culture is one such scene where anything that pops sticks and anything that sticks sticks hard. But their ephemeral nature says something itself.

Radio is particularly vengeful in drilling hit songs into our ears until our heads fill with nonsense and danceable beats. Sometimes, though, a step back helps my consciousness a bit, recognizing the crap I do indeed love.

Jay Z and Alicia Keys are a good example. Their endlessly played smash-hit "Empire State of Mind" was good at first. Even gave me tingles when I saw the performance live on the TV. But too much of a good thing is never great, and now I can thank radio for making me think Jay Z and Alicia Keys really, really want me to hate New York. Ramming it down my throat every day, all that song reminds me of now is that New York is not that glamorous in endless, heavy doses. Much like the song. Thanks Jay Z and Mr. Radio.

Likewise, thanks to the Baha Men for tainting the word "Who" by barking it at me. Thanks Usher for honoring the work of Lil' Jon with "Yea!". Thanks Outkast for partnering the catchy "Hey Ya!" with clapping, forever. And, as Ice T famously remarked, Soulja Boy can eat a dick.

So we let the simplicity wash over us until we hate the songs for their radio repetition, basically no fault of the artist's own.

But Rihanna's "Rude Boy" has given me an ever ruder awakening.

Currently, the song to be played every half-hour on the radio, Rihanna's "Rude Boy" does much to challenge my love of some pop music.

First off, "Rude Boy" clearly portraits Rihanna's stutter as a speech impediment to be exploited. The song is called "Rude Boy," but her chorus repeats, "Come on, Rude Boy, Boy". She proudly proclaims, "What I want, want, want is what you want, want, want." Does no one else see a problem here?

Rihanna kicks off the song by submitting to her Rude Boy as the "Captian" in the bedroom. Great. But then the tables quickly turn and Ms. Rihanna barks orders, like "Relax, let me do it how I wanna." Wait, what? Who is in charge here? Does Rihanna need some kind of freaky role play? Probably.

And my favorite line Rihanna chucks in among the other nonsense goes something like, "If I don't feel it, I ain't fakin', no no." My masculine insecurity has so many problems with this statement that I don't know where to start. I'll suffice it to say that clearly this is the thing to do, Rihanna. But both you and your Rude Boy sure have talked a big game up by now.

Crashing Through the Window, Renouncing our Culture God

Billy the wannabee astronaut and Sally the next hopeful President of any random third grade classroom would have never thought they could grow up to be wolves. Sadly, by the time they could sound out their career dreams, their chance to be wildlife had already ran off.

There is believed to be a small window, a critical, irreversible period where all human development depends on for us to break into the world of humans. While we learn that crying gets us some delicious breast milk, our brains are analyzing, like little robots, the culture around us. We might see pain as something to panic over when our father slams his foot on the leg of a chair. We might learn that pennies aren't swallowed so easily. But, most important, we become humans when we learn to understand language. And, as babies, we're living life in the fast lane, pooping and crying; if we never learn language, the window is slammed shut and we might as well be thrown to Mother Nature's wolves and their snapping jaws.

Feral children are different. Feral, or "natural" children, are the Lost Boys of the Jungle Book, not Peter Pan. Tarzan was a feral child turned ape-man adult. But feral children exist in this world, and not just in the happy stories of the cartoon jungle. Abandoned by their parents for some personal or societal circumstance I hope to never understand, feral children either die in the wild or become wild. Oxana Malaya was the Ukraine girl raised by dogs. John SSebunya ran away from his murderous father at age 4 and grew up with monkeys. They show that we learn from our surroundings with or without language, and if that means wolves, you better believe you'll learn to growl, howl and eat raw meat. And that window for language slams closed.

What this boils down to is the simple fact that Culture is God. It's frightening and fascinating to know We were all one short step away from being unleashed animals left to our own biology. Language opens the window we need to swallow the culture around us. We end up looking to culture for guidance, knowledge, reason. We work forty hours cause America says we do. We buy breath mints and deodorant, HDTVs and sports cars. And that's all fine, if you're happy with it.

My understanding, though, is that we're not happy. I feel endless guilt to remain part of the Culture-fearing society. If I tweet and jerk around on Facebook all day at work, I feel the enormous pressure to do something for the company. When I'm unemployed and trying to enjoy the day I feel enormous pressure to search endlessly for a new one. It's all to repeat the cycle my brain has developed understanding.

But what if there was a small window for us to renounce Culture? What if there was a window slamming when we're stuck being "productive" humans and not something more? While science has yet to show us how declining a Starbucks mocha frappe could be beneficial for us, besides our waistline, it might be worth it to think outside the culture we live in each day.

It raises long lists of questions as to how we could live if we just realized that everything we know on this Earth might not matter. Likewise, the idea of renouncing your God, whether it is culture or religion or wolf, is never easy. But you might want to consider it before that big ol' window slams shut and there is no looking back.

Cell Phone Power

Has too much time passed that we can't marvel at the ubiquity and utility of the cellular phone? Like modern cowboys of communication, most of us can sling our Swiss Army talkmachines out and easily yammer away with the rest of the Cell Wild West.

We all knew the day would come that the telephone would improve, but once that cord was cut there was no looking back.

No longer do we need to mentally calculate tips for Flo at the local diner. We don't need Uncle Lou's lousy, long-winded directions to savor the sweet meats of a family BBQ. We don't even need to buy a hundred dollar camera to remember the globs of carnivorous honey we ate at Flo or Lou's expense. It seems to all be in the palms of our hands, the key to a digital world of convenience.

With great innovation sure does come great change, but we're not oblivious to the changes. We giggle at the thought of speed dial being an added feature while understanding numbers are no longer meant to be remembered or written down. Somehow cellular devices make sharing nude pictures or dirty love notes much, much easier and without much more guilt or shame. Which lead me to think that maybe these handy devices may be changing the world for the better. We become more open with one another and spend less time remembering sequences and math our brain doesn't need to compress. With all that cleared space, we have more room to think and act on the meaning of life, as long as the batteries stay burning.

The power of the cellular phone gives good enough reason to weary, though. When a device can hold your personal information, image and innermost thoughts, you can't help but wonder if someone can peep in.

For a second, I want to imagine the anarchist destruction people could do with the power of the cellular network.

Waitresses around the world could tamper the tip calculators ever so slightly to forcibly raise their incomes and feed their kids. Porno directors could hound you down like college admission committees solely based on your performance in private cell sex videos. Hell, even TomTom would cutcut the power to the GPS systems in newer phones just so he could tell you how to get where you're going himself. Selfish bastard.

Whether or not we all admit it, we want some sort of power. It is easy to get. Simply reach into your pants pocket or purse, answering that hip, crunchy, new ringtone, begging for your attention and love. We hold power in our hands everyday but if we don't use it, someone will abuse it.

Mein Blog: Hitler on the Internet

Comedian Jerry Seinfeld has a joke about fear in America. To his knowledge, the fear of public speaking in America ranks higher than the fear of death, meaning, as he proclaimed, people would rather be dead, rotting in a casket, than giving the eulogy.

There is something about face-to-face connection that haunts the average person. There is nothing like looking into someone's eyes and watching their pupils fill with boredom. Multiply that by a given amount and the thrill is almost pants-wetting. We have a need for acceptance.

You can't please everyone, sure, but if you're lucky enough to have a platform you better have something to say.

NOTICE: The World Wide Web has no such rules, though. The fear of judging eyes melts away as we spread our smalltalk on the Internet. Disdain for our jobs or updates on our exhaustion level float freely through cyberspace, building a flimsy digital connection between us. We all feel we have the right to a platform now, whether or not what we say is vapid or mindless. But those who actively use the Web to engage an audience with more than common complaints slowly start to confront the fear of judging eyes and, gasp, public speaking in reality.

SIDE STEP: It made me wonder how Adolf Hitler would handle the Internet. A man unafraid of criticism or public speaking, for sure, the Internet would be just another stage for Hitler to spew his hate. But would it be effective?

Hitler's ideology thrived in part due to the secrecy of The Third Reich. The Internet wasn't available to spread photos and video of concentration camps and warn the world of injustice. But you have to wonder how the Internet has shown us world crises all over and we still seem to roll over.

Of course, in our politically correct and progressive society, hate is not tolerated through Internet popularity. While viral videos may flirt with the idea of racism or hate, as with the most recent scuffle on an AC Transit Bus with Epic Beard Man, Hitler's hate speech would send red flags immediately. Screaming and sweating on YouTube, Hitler's talk of a Final Solution would be a toss-up. While I can easily see a video as offensive and disturbing as that striking fear into American hearts, I could also easily see my buddies sharing a laugh over a goofy-mustachioed foreigner in a tight uniform, blasting such irrational hate. He would either be considered armed and dangerous or be laughed off the Internet.

What it really boils down to is passion. Hitler would use the Internet, but he would do so strategically. We wouldn't hear of his struggles with organizing Nazis or the cost of milk in Germany. I don't even think his random, hate-filled thoughts could fit in a single tweet. What I do believe, though, is Hitler was talented. You can't argue that he knew how to manipulate and motivate a crowd. He had an audience close to the size of a powerful nation without the use of the Internet. And he stared down the fear-mongering eyes of boredom and lashed out with passion.

In my own twisted and garbled way, I'm trying to say that what the Internet's stage needs is passion. Where Hitler succeeded, we have the tools to progress way past hate. Belly laughter over a song about delicious rainfall or a fat kid embarrassing himself imitating a classic movie series may serve as instant gratification but when it comes to updating the world, why share the same bullshit?

We need to save the smalltalk for the times when it is necessary: as a diving board for getting to know someone. When we jump right into our late-night thoughts or deepest fears we tend to turn people off with informality. I think we need to drive toward our fear of public speaking, battle it, and realize that we all can be boring sooner or later but we don't always have to be.

**props to Jess on the title joke

Responsibility + Imagination = Best Friends 4 Ever

Responsibility gets an unfortunate reputation when you consider your entire friendship.

When we were young that dude was a butthead. He didn't share his toys and, even worse, he always played by the rules. There was no peeking in hide n' seek for him.

In high school, responsibility had this weird glow of possibility. He seemed like a guy who could open doors for you so you could one day do what you wanted as a career. Needless to say, for me, responsibility and I were somewhat best friends in high school.

College came and, as most friendships do, ours was put to the test. Responsibility seemed a bit too uptight on weekends and I'll be the first to admit I rarely invited him to the best of parties. In retrospect, it may or may not have been the best idea.

Then, in some freak radioactive explosion accident, responsibility slammed into me as I stepped off the graduation platform. Before I could formulate questions, our hip bones ground together and meshed into a thick soup.

NOTICE: Life would never be the same. Or so I thought...

Imagination was always a cool dude, though.

If I remember right, he was the crazy kid on the playground. We hung out every now and then, and he always had fantastic ideas, like building rocket ships and forts where we could cut ourselves off from the world and live in peace with our friendship. (Was imagination gay or just selfish with his friends?)

He opened our minds to the Real World while he kept his head in the clouds. It goes without saying that imagination may have had tough times at home, but he was always smiling.

In college, though, imagination slowly turned in on himself. His drinking got out of control and he started to get a bit lazy. His rambling ideas about the world started to sound more and more unrealistic and, honestly, a bit bonkers. I mean, how can anyone eat fast food for an entire month? Or choreograph a dance on treadmills? Or even make a movie about a vagina with teeth? Dude got weird.

But somehow I miss him.

SIDE-STEP: Now imagination needs a kidney and responsibility is the only one with a matching blood type. Sure, there is the possibility of death, for either, but to not try is to not success.

Funny story is that once you opened your eyes to it, responsibility and imagination could actually get along. Responsibility loosens up enough to debate imagination into a corner on occasion and all you have to do is sit back and enjoy. Imagination still has his head in the clouds when his kidney doesn't hurt and he even got a job with health benefits, thanks to his new friend, responsibility.

The two of them think it's possible to make a magazine for my friends. There was also talk of making some really weird films and even running around the country like a fugitive in our spare time.

This may be the start to a beautiful friendship.

Time is a Terrible Thing to Waste

It's only right that snowstorms bring out unnatural feelings. It is a rare occurrence to see a blizzard here in New Jersey and when it does happen you're alienated from most of what you consider the world and left to your own thoughts.

This time around I was reminded of a lecture I once found online from one of my favorite authors, Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club, Choke, Rant), where he described how modern American society has nothing but time. With a tip of the hat to our ancestors, we don't have to forage and hunt for food, search for water, make our own clothing or worry about a plethora of diseases our vaccines laugh at. Now our system runs on dollars and, despite coming a long way to this point, we barely look back.

NOTICE: Until a snow day comes along.

Where we normally have filled the void of basic survival practices, like hunting and gathering, with data entry and synergy, snow drops a blanket of white on it all. It, no doubt, delivers a tinge of purity. It's a coercive one-way ticket back to the times of self-sufficiency but with half the danger. Food is scarce inside the home and difficult to hunt down outside. Shoveling the walkways and driveways is the day's back-breaking labor and the only transportation available is at your feet.

But when the work you do to survive is impossible, i.e. your job, you're left to those things rocketing around your head: your thoughts.

SIDE STEP: The blizzards of 2010 graciously gave me two days where survival wasn't necessary. Left to my own discretion, I found myself thoroughly enjoying what made life so unique.

I don't want to get all uplifting and inspirational because I won't be, so let's focus. Both snow days gave me plenty of time to consume whatever the television set regurgitated. Fine. It also gave me the chance to act like a giant kid again and destroy myself sledding down South Plainfield's hills. Awesome. But what I found most interesting was I was happier than most days I could remember. An ecstatic smile crept across my face and I can only attribute it to enjoying the perks of life without absolutely any worry. Food and water were available when I was inside a nice, warm house. Band-aids were in reach for when I smashed my face on some ice.

When the sun fell, though, was when my thoughts turned inward. I took stream-of-conscious notes under the influences around me and turned out some interesting developments, too many to write here.

I surged back to the Palahniuk thought. If we all have so much time, what are we doing with it? These snow days were nothing but introspective thought and sheer, childlike bliss. And while blizzards can't happen all the time, I quickly realized I wanted to recreate this elation as much as possible. I dove headfirst into all the things I wanted to do in terms of time, instead of the selfish, ungrateful boredom I felt on generic weather days.

Forget TV for a month. I could watch French New Wave films while reading gritty detective novels.

I want to mix graham crackers in mint chocolate chip ice cream.

Fly to the island of St. Croix for a weekend and enjoy the warm breeze.

Or draft the recollections of my childhood in short, narrative form

What snow has given me this winter is the return to power of using my time wisely. If we all recognize that we don't have to do all the chores we think are survival, we can use all that other time we spend being bored and make our life way more exciting. Like a kid plastered with a smile in a snowstorm.

ChatRoulette: A Cultural Evolution

I honestly believe that you can get an accurate snapshot of America if you just watch a couple of hours of America's Funniest Home Videos. You are quite literally welcomed into slivers of American homes. Tom Bergeron is your Robin Leach into the Lifestyles of the Middle Class. It's not to say we're all clumsy or silly or stupid, but we all take pride in sharing the moments that made us laugh. Laughter is an acquired reaction and when you get someone laughing you surely have their attention. We all just want to be seen on our own terms.

Enter ChatRoulette, an anonymous one-on-one video chat session online. Like speed-dating on crack and with lower expectations, you're poised to share whatever it takes to keep someone on the other side.

Ironically, the dichotomy of the ChatRoulette audience is pure good and evil. The reflection of the young, Internet-savvy America is either curious groups of kids or dicks. Physical dicks. Either people are looking for something interesting to watch or hear, or providing the most basic of entertainment: masturbation.

NOTICE: The beautiful, sad truth is the power ChatRoulette gives to each user. You have the world at your fingertips, firmly ready on the F9 key that connects and disconnects your "Stranger" on the other line.

We are all eager for connection of the right kind. Our generation has grown up drowning in media, meeting so many characters that they feel the same. And when we don't feel that we know anybody on a passive screen, we turn to the active one.

SIDE STEP: Whether or not we are losing our attention span I can't say for sure. Like some kind of cultural evolution we are expected to be of interest to the world. If someone is patient enough to be interested in your face and hear your words, you're expected to say something of interest, too. It becomes an exercise in how alluring you honestly can be.

For my group of friends, most conversations quickly became an impromptu session of show-and-tell. We resorted to how children express themselves. Through our possessions, we opened up our homes rather our minds because too often we don't have original, compelling thoughts. Myself included.

But now it makes me think that building myself into a more interesting person is worthwhile. To have something ready to ponder, discuss, analyze or rant about seems like tons of more fun than small talk. Likewise, I've always been content with the causal jeans and tee look but now I dare to wonder if changing my style is worth it to make the best of my interactions.

I think the world wants us all to be more interesting. And damnit, I'm gonna try.

The World is a Zoo

MindPron began with an analysis of porno so it only seems right to jump headfirst into my second entry discussing bestiality. Last night, I had the awkward pleasure of watching Zoo, the arthouse documentary with a shocking core. Zoo was the stylized exploration of bestiality following the death of a local man, known as Mr. Hands, after being fucked by a horse.

There is no way to be quiet about it. A man...died...having sex...with a horse! The film ratchets up the shock value even more by presenting the story in a beautifully, meandering glow, half re-enactment, half documentary. While questions of animal consent and innocence float around in light of Mr. Hands' death, I couldn't stop but think about the Internet.

Rob opened the floodgates when he jokingly suggested that the true villain of the piece was the Internet. We all know the depths of the World Wide Web act as a harbor for all sorts of sexual perversions. We may have even seen those perversions. I know I've seen Mr. Hands' handiwork.

The Internet represents and gives a voice to all as the last democratic medium. And the men who label themselves as being 'zoo' united through this technological Underground.

These men are doing exactly as I hoped to in this blog and the term starts to irk me. No longer a place to observe animals in quiet fascination, 'zoo' becomes the recognition and acting out of bestiality urges, confronting and realizing their fantasy.

But, again, they are not alone.

But what if you were?

What if in the age and enormity of the Internet, you were alone with your fantasy? Men aching to have sex with a horse could find others, but you couldn't even lay your eyes on your wildest fantasy. Existence would immediately seem bleak. A constant, critical search to justify your interest with another would most likely consume the best of us.

Because, if we're not alone, then we can't be 'weird'. And if we're not 'weird' then we're free to do as we dream.

In the end, I can't but wonder what Mr. Hands was thinking as his colon spewed blood inside his body. Did he feel ashamed or embarrassed? Most likely not. It was his dream to be intimate with a horse. It could be that he didn't even regret it. But when it comes down to it, his dream wasn't to share. It was for him alone and the other 'zoo' men didn't matter in the moment.

I would like to say I can't imagine what Mr. Hands thought at that moment, or even in his lifetime, but I'm glad to try. Maybe some dreams aren't meant to come true after all.

Sex Dreams

Pornography is something beautiful. Yea, I said it.

When the funky soundtrack, expected range of corny dialogue, and sometimes visible scars are forgiven, porn is nothing but the sexiest of our imaginations come to life. The weirdest, wildest, wettest fantasies of them all exist in front of our eyeballs with just a few keystrokes. But when our dreams are delivered in the hottest of wrappings (or lack thereof) on a brightly-lit screen for just a couple bucks a month, do we start to lose the drive to live like the pornstars we admire?

Porno reminds me of one of my first film courses at Rutgers University. The professor, John Belton, a boisterous and fairly average-looking man, addressed the class with a warning. He loudly declared that if anyone did not want to ruin the ignorant process of simple enjoying a movie for the images on-screen, without criticism, they should leave now. To delve deeper into the celluloid, he proclaimed, could ruin some of us for life, a paralysis of shallow entertainment. It sounded much like a disease of no fun, but no one dared leave the room. It was almost a challenge to discover who could be ignorant and proud. I, thankfully, never showed doubt and never looked back.

Yes, entertainment, with or without people fucking, has led me to the Blogosphere. Horny for sex or the silver screen, I have found the screens that surround my life not showing me anything lately but myself. They've become mirrors, as they should be, according to Belton, not the porn industry.

Porno without understanding is expected. It's not creative, it's primal. We know there are no perverted pizza delivery men getting lucky with the tip. And we don't care. But when we realize that porn is time spent observing and not doing, we lose the pleasure of just watching, as Belton warned.

With that, I begin MindPron. It is my chance to be critical of the world, rather than just observe it. Living vicariously through screens and pipe-dreams is just an escape from the hard work it may take to find it myself.

Sometimes, it's just good to think. And that's just what I plan to do.