2007-12-14

I Quit You, Generation X

My generation continues to suck.
How I was born into a suckfest like this is beyond me but certainly in being a part of Generation X, I am proving to social science everywhere that in the midst of chaos, reason can exist.

Generation X, characterized by apathy, depression, and Grunge music has failed me.

Apparently, many of the idiots who moved to Seattle and did an assload of hard drugs in the early nineties are now clean and having children.
They've decided that their children should not be subjected to the same dangerous influences that led them to Heroine City so, rather than banning Nirvana albums from their stereos, they've collected themselves to move against Cookie Monster.

Sesame Street.
Is nothing sacred?

Enough people, who are total assholes, got together and agreed that Cookie Monster displayed the tendencies of a drug addict and was teaching very small children that it's okay to need something bad for you.

"C is for Cookie? It's good enough for me?"
What the hell is wrong with a goofy blue monster who likes cookies and eats them with a hilarious level of messy, physical comedy?

To the Gen X-ers that have always taken everything literally, Cookie Monster is a bad guy.

From Sex and the City, which is a completely inroaded show where the women are so "empowered" that they talk about their looks and their men ALL THE TIME, to Pearl Jam, people my age take entertainment more seriously, more literally then any group of people I know.

Hey assholes? It's NOT REAL!
You have to think for yourselves once in awhile! You have to know that being a sexy, single gal in stilettos who is still single in her thirties but searching for true love is probably going to be searching a damn long time and is going to have to make some fucking compromises already.
Carrie Bradshaw?
She treated the only realistic character (Aiden) like a tool and got away with it only to find herself in turmoil over not loving him? And he let her go on like that.
I call bullshit.
At the end of the series?
She didn't do for herself at all. She went all ex-pat with no job and no back-up plan and failed to take any stand or care of herself while she was there.
She had to be rescued in a fairy-tale fashion by the guy who had treated her badly over and over and over.

This is not a lesson I would want a daughter of mine to learn.

But it is entertaining.
It's a STORY.
Sadly, many women my age take this story to be some kind of movement, some kind of statement. It's not. And if it is, it's a statement I vehemently do not want to be making.

Sesame Street is entertaining.
It's not real.
It's pretend.
It should not have reality forced into it by telling children that cookies are an occasional food. Cookie Monster is a character, just like Carrie Bradshaw and in my mind, Carrie Bradshaw destroyed many more good heads on good women than Cookie Monster made small children fiend for a cookie.

Got a kid who thinks he's Cookie Monster and wants cookies all the time?
TELL HIM NO.

But don't presume that the rest of the world is as unable to understand the difference between television entertainment and real life.

The world is real.
You know what else?
It's so real that there are addicts.
In the real world, addicts are not entertaining and eventually, kids figure that out.
When you woke up one day, aching from a hard night of partying at a friend of a neighbor's of Chris Cornell, didn't you realize that addiction was no fun?
Didn't you decide you wanted to change things?
I thinks it's sound and logical to say that you would not be who you are if you had not had your share of life experiences.
Denying your children life experiences and making the world a rainbow of different vanillas, stereotypes of politically correct puppets is a much bigger lie than Sesame Street presenting your children with a kooky blue monster who lives for cookies.

There are modern-day Rapunzels, whose Princes rescue them from evil Russian artist-kings.
You've probably wanted to be rescued like Carrie was at the end of the series.
Maybe you even got rescued, by a man or your dad or a random everyday hero somewhere but at the time you were rescued, you probably were not expecting that it would happen.
Believing in Sex and the City is setting an expectation for yourself and the men around you that is impossible to meet.
When it is met, since you are expecting it, how much will you appreciate it?
How much will you value something if you feel like you have a right to it?
Not as much as if it is a special and unique lightning strike of serendipity.

Generation X, quit being assholes.
I want to join you and vote for Barack, one of our own.
I want to believe you when you get going on some tangent about the lies of GWB or when you are telling me about this awesome band.

But right now, I hate you so much that I am exiling you to the fake island of pseudo-reality that you truly seem to believe in.

Call me if Michael Stipe ever actually shows up the way you've thought he would for 20 years now, then I'll change my mind.

Otherwise, I'll be out here on my own, enjoying actual reality with all of the blood, sweat, tears, stomach-dropping thrills, and soaring joy that comes with living for real.

arizonasarah at 11:59 a.m.

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