If you really want to teach your
children about the human digestive system and you are willing to go the extra
mile then there’s nothing more educational than a road trip to New York City by
way of the Lincoln Tunnel. In fact, it is so demonstrably reminiscent of the
human digestive system that the chapter dedicated to it in any boilerplate
public school science book could be summarily scotched so definitive is the
experience it is almost not metaphorical.
Having
accessed New York City via the Lincoln Tunnel then you know exactly what I
mean…28 hours to travel 15 feet, bumper-to-bumper, winding, winding, winding
down through the lower colon of New Jersey into the alimentary canal that is the Lincoln Tunnel out to your final destination.
As
a true story it is probably not. As a symbol of modern life well…
I
cannot tell you how many times I’ve felt like a piece of shit in relation to
the rest of the culture. It is not a self-esteem issue as mine has been buffed
into high relief. This is a hearing problem. The culture can see my lips
moving, but can’t hear a goddamn thing I’m saying because everybody is talking
at the same time! No one shuts up…ever!!!
Forget about listening, that would require a spirit of inquiry. That
notion died ever since WW 2 ended and the cities expanded outward to
accommodate the newly minted heathen hordes.
“The
spread of slums, the hyper growth and congestion of manufacturing cities, the
noise and stench of the industrial process, debased urban life all over the
western world and led to a great yearning for escape … in America, with its
superabundance of cheap land, simple poverty laws, social mobility, mania for
profit, zest for practical invention and bible drunk sense of history, the
yearning to escape industrialism expressed itself as a renewed search for Eden.
America reinvented that paradise described so briefly and vaguely in the book
of Genesis, called it suburbia and put it up for sale.”
James Howard Kunstler
My
name is Jeff Schneider and I am a suburbanite. The suburban concept is something
I could never get my head around. Weeding, feeding, the will to kill for
horticulture perfection…
Once Harold’s lawn was perfect
he began getting invited to the toniest parties in the subdivision.
Lawn
care is a recent invention in this country probably within the last 100 years
or so picking up steam right after the post WW 2 liberation of the masses. The creation of suburbia, promoted by the advertising
industry (Dupont’s slogan "Better things through better living...through chemistry") created a naïve trust
in the benefits of chemicals, fomenting an American obsession for the perfect lawn. Prior to that most people in America
lived on farms where a kinship to wilderness and the natural world was a
dominant force.
Suburbia
was the great leveler of experience. Once ensconced the motivation now became;
how do I blend in? After all of the flavor had been removed from daily life,
the suburbanite was malleable to any sales pitch Madison Avenue could conjure. You have a suburbanite champing at
the bit for assimilation, an advertising industry that knows this, tethered in
to the constantly changing and seductive properties of new technology and the
takeover is complete.
The
Walkman is the forerunner of the smart phone as it was the first early
technology able to wall off the individual from all stimuli outside of the
musical experience. Fast-forward 30 years and now I witness families, groups of
men and women seemingly out for the evening together staring at their smart
phones. Instead of sharing in the common experience of being alive in the
cosmos or even looking up into the heavens where the real show is, life for
them has been reduced to a 4-inch screen.
Before
smart phones you had dick going on! Now your dance card is always filled! Hobos
are texting hobos about some hot new dumpster. Your girlfriend is texting her
girlfriends that you are shit in the sack…while you are fucking your girlfriend!
I
am writing this diatribe knowing full well that is will probably never be read
by another soul and that includes my mother. She’s too busy promoting her own
website Bubbies Schtupping Boychicks to give a rat’s ass what I’m up to.
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