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.