Death of the Cool

I was reading today that the Federal Aviation Administration is thinking of allowing passengers to make phone calls during flights.  Not just play Words with Friends or read some spreadsheet, but to actually call your bros and tell them you are 6 miles above them.  And with as quiet as the last plane cabin I was in, callers will be yelling more loudly than if they were Texas A & M’s 12^th man.

Why can’t this one moment be a place where we aren’t obsessed with living our reality show in front of everyone else?  Flying has already become something that wouldn’t be recognized by passengers 50 years ago.  Flying was something that you may not do in your life, and if you did, you were big shit.  Lots of room (because fewer passengers means fewer seats), delicious libations: hell, you could even smoke.  It was Mad Men in the sky.  Now you pay for the privilege of having TSA look up your ass with a flashlight, throw half your valuables away like you are boot camp, and then crowd yourself onto an overcrowded plane where people can yak without mercy.  Planes, ladies and gentlemen, have become buses.

There is not one person walking this earth that fathoms that they won’t be here forever, even when they know they won’t.  I said earlier that everyone is starring in their own reality show, and I truly believe we are.  Most people can’t get a show on television (although they green light some real detritus), but with Facebook, Twitter, Vine, Instagram and whatever else just was invented by a  19 year old while I wrote that sentence, every person with Internet access can create multiple platforms to show their lives to their audience.  And that is what everyone else is becoming: our audiences.  You have followers on Twitter, a ’la Jim Jones.  People you have never met are your friends on Facebook. Everyone has an outlet to show what is unique about you, and why others should join in and program the DVR of their life to tape your show.  Even this site, it is a platform for me to shout out my angst into the cold winds of the internets. 

For a good long time, I refused to be involved in social media.  I acquiesced and wrote on a blog with my friends, and then after we had to do adult things I stopped.  I got on Twitter because it seemed like an ongoing conversation, and as someone who works in politics, it is also a newsfeed.  And I started this site because I wanted to find like-minded souls (who may be able to employ me when I was out of work).  I had to create a brand, because we are all brands.  You don’t get jobs; you sell an employer on your brand.  And a single person, trying to be a brand, is utterly fucking exhausting.

Again, I am not against progress.  I am not a luddite (and besides, the sales of turntables and vinyl I am attributing to people loving my speed of music, not hipsters), but I am someone who does not want to spend every precious second trapped in the screen, worrying about my responses to questions, having to through every move in life because it will not play well in the final cutting room version of my life.

I want to love hard, work hard, sleep hard, dream hard (hat tip to Webb Wilder).  I want to know how something/someone smells.  I want the easiness that comes with being comfortable in your skin.  I want tangible experiences, and I think at the heart of everyone, they do, too.

When someone has a vice, it is almost always because something is too large and scary to deal with or we want to be something we aren’t, so we mask it with drinking, drugs, sleeping around, slashing and burning on the Internet-anything that will keep us from looking inside at the movie that is actually continually running in our soul-the documentary of your experiences and your feelings.  I believe in a heaven, and I picture that heaven as a huge sun dappled field next to a lazy river.  And we all just hang out in the field, talking and hanging out, like the largest picnic in the galaxy.  In that heaven, we look at each other-and this is a possibly for us all-no savings of money required.

I will end this rant (get off my lawn!).  Just for the love of all that is decent, let’s reserve something that is not assholed up, even if it’s just a plane ride.

AND TELL EVERY FRIEND YOU KNOW ABOUT THIS SITE AND THE LIFE-CHANGING EXPERIENCE OF READING MY WORK SO MY AUDIENCE EXPANDS-YOU COULD CALL ME BUT I WOULDN’T BE ABLE TO HEAR YOU OVER THE SOUNDS OF MY AWESOME.

Notes on My Birth

I'm 37 today.  I have more regrets than happy memories.
I miss who I used to be, but upon reflection, how great was that guy?

I have to make changes or that will be my epitaph.  But starting today I am no longer "kid" or "young man."

But at least I have hair...and I'm older than Bill Hicks ever got to see.

Remember, friends: it's just a ride.

Having a Dream...

50 years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King went off script and changed the world.  He worked forever on a speech, sitting up late into the night in a Washington hotel, making change after change to his prepared text.

He stepped up to the mic and proceeded to read the words he had tried to perfect.  He started haltingly, and slowly, delivering the words he thought the crowd wanted to hear.  And then, halfway through the speech, he said screw it, and he spoke from his heart.  He told everyone listening and watching about his dream of a more equal union than the one America was in at the time.  Like all parents (even though he was a very young man), he wanted a better world for his children, but he also wanted a better world for those that stood with him that day.

The lesson, team: whether it's at work, with your partner (or potential partner), your friends and family, teachers, bartenders, whoever it is...speak from the heart.  Live and talk like your soul is on fire, because it is.  The world turned when MLK went off script and just described what he wanted for the world.  Your wants can be just as important.

Keep dreaming, friends.

Sequestration on 5, no--4 dollars a day

Hey team:

Have you looked around the house to see what you are going to sequester when the asshat party in Congress finally makes us pay their bill?

Hey you!  Yes, you, truck driver in Akron, OH: You are totally paying for this shit!  (Smoke 'em if you got 'em).

Just like the banks, Washington can go long on the people politically, and then when they come up boxcars, we have to pay up.  Republicans made this bet thinking Barack Obama wouldn't be president anymore, but he is...and they will have to explain how they put gasoline pants on our country and then had us run through fire.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57571879/in-sequestrations-11th-hour-finger-pointing-reigns-in-congress/

Not Dead Yet...

From the Rolling Hills of Nashville, Tennessee...

Greetings to all friends young and old.  The Soapbox stills lives, and will be back on a regular posting schedule soon.

I will also try to touch up the paint a bit and spruce up the site.

Smile big, take care, and remember: it's just a ride.

Jason

A Won't Do Congress For A Can't Do Time

Politico Question: Will The Failure of the Super Committee Affect This 9 Percent Approval-Rated Congress?

You wish you could say it is a big hit for Congress, that the shock of the most powerful government in the world not being able to get something done would give pause to the nation.
But its par for the course for this group, and this congress has an entire year left to implement their agenda of nothingness. Remember the ads for the Maytag repair guy, where he was sitting around bored because the product never needed fixing? The new Maytag repairman is the Capitol Hill correspondent: "nothing to report here... hey, there's a tour group! Back to you, Steve." Every incumbent, no matter party affiliation, has to be worried about their chances to return to their seat just based on being part of this congressional session. Speech writers and staff hacks deserve huge win bonuses next November.

I am amazed that conservatives want to cut unemployment benefits for those who want to work and are actively looking and fighting for jobs, while members of the super committee, who make $170k a year and have large staffs that actually do the work, shrug their shoulders, blame anyone but themselves, then head home for the holidays on a taxpayer-funded plane ticket. This crew dodges responsibility the way a dead-beat parent dodges child support. The supercommittee failure, along with every failure of this congress, points to the fact that Republicans did not have an answer for what ails our society and our government: they just said you can't blame us because we weren't in charge. Now they are, and all they can do is kick the can down the road with such gusto that Pele would be impressed. John Boehner cried as we took the Paul Bunyan gavel to become speaker of the house. Heavy is the head that wears the crown, Mr. Speaker. I feel for Boehner: to look out over a majority that has no fear of your discipline would drive the Marlboro Man to weep. Sometimes congressional sessions shift the agenda so greatly that they are given labels. Truman ran against the "Do Nothing" congress. In 1994 we had the Contract with America. And as we near the end of the Mayan calendar, I give you the 112th Congress: a masterpiece of minimalism. I am a member of Generation X (and I speak for all of us in our 30s and early 40s by saying thank you to the boomers for this great system you have left to us), and we often turn to media to express ourselves. When I think of the upcoming elections in 2012, I implore my fellow voters to cast their ballot by asking the candidates, especially super committee members, the question made famous by the Bobs of Office Space: "What would you say....you do here?"