The Unrepetant Critique: We are of the Shit Earth.

Lately, dear reader, I have been in intense crisis as to the nature of criticism. Surely antagonizing celebrity culture is just my misguided groping for my own celebrity. Should I be ashamed?

Should the misguided artist be left unscathed for not having enough therapy before stepping on stage? In an utopian society, where we give gestalt antagonizings and maternal embrace on twitter--with every tattered soul in perfect context,--maybe we would need no game theory for parties. Maybe the drunken "I love you's" would be possessed with more endearment and marriages could arise out of a genuine shared love of a certain type of beer.

But we are of the shit earth. We know the premature lover stumbles out of Saturday Night parties only to throw up on themselves on another persons lawn and metaphorically perpetuate that throw up in a text to an ex-lover.

I have been that lawn. I have been that throw up. I have even been the person throwing up on lawns. And, yes, the means to adamantly fulfill a promise of 'never again' is to be critical of the mass media pawns who want nothing more to be named with a positive emoticon preceding before and after their names. But we are of the shit earth--and better to use such shit to build an artifice that pretends it isn't shit than to star in our own versions of Ground Hog Day.

To Jamie Kenedy and all other whiny fame gods that whine that there are those of us brave enough to call the shit kettle shit, please shut up. We must leverage what we have to transcend the void, for we are of the shit earth.

Artifices To Pretend To Like At Parties

Reader, one of the most common mistakes a member of the intelligentsia could ever do is make a sudden, drastic move. We, the intellectuals (assuming that there are others), are like the benevolent old people feeding insight to the cooing dumb pigeons. Even the slightest unexpected motion would cause us to lose the masses.

"WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU JUST SAY
ABOUT THE COPERNICAN MODEL?"

Which is fine--they will move on, forget the lessons of history, and choke on garbage. Except that many pigeons become disoriented and attack the hand that feeds them. Do not forget the sordid tales of Galileo, Turing, or even the recent imprisonment of the culture hero, Tiny Wayne.

So when my editor informed me that changing the title of this project to "Artifices To Pretend To Like At Parties" would give my gospelog a 95% higher chance of being referenced among the Elite, I was distraught.

Although the notion of developing a secret handshake that signified a detente of "We both read Artifices To Pretend To Like At Parties Therefore We Will Not Duel" or maybe  charging 30 dollars for an ATPTLAP application that updated every month with the new Secret Orgy location enticed me, I still knew any sudden movement could beckon a savage mauling of my eyes by the startled and ignorant.

I have always promised myself that if given the option of doing something I truly believed in or accommodating the masses, I would accommodate the masses and use the riches to bribe my inside voice with the trans-fats or carbs or fringe sexual fetishes. But upon reflection of my situation, I came to the profound realization that the masses do not read.

People will eventually tire of hearing about your Yacht, Elite.

So, following my editor's advice, I will actually go against the grain and say unabashedly smarter things catering to the people that have time to look up what words like 'Artifice' mean. To the pigeons that come here looking for crumbs, I plead with you to not kill me. I want the same things you want except in a much more complex and sophisticated way.

To the Elite, I promise I will expand past the physical medium of music and into the wider tricks and gimmicks and charades that truly make our society the stupidest composition of the human condition since the cave-people accidentally inhabited the cave with the toxic gases.

Sophistos--I will be your caviar, your over priced chocolate, and your means to not run out of socially dominant things to say when you are up all night doing coke with the beautiful people.

Party Rock Anthem by LMFAO

Those of us that are not slaves to our smart phones--those of us that have taken the time to master mnemonic devices know that the sooner civilization collapses, the faster our horde of loyal simpletons will raid an outlet mall and help us form a post-apocalyptic royal court to [cause other people to] die for.

The romantic cultural deceiver, however, tries to illicit a nostalgia for some trite perfection. At a recent tea party I attended, a tender-hearted ass attempted such a tactic:

"Remember when we sent signals to each other that journeyed beyond the dual nature of the erection?" he said.

I booed him immediately. I threw my lemon cake at him and I just booed. Other people followed suit. I was so tired of people trying to talk sense.

Please note how they transcend the noise in this image.

The secret truth is that shit-artist's like LMFAO are well versed in the horrible truths like Hume's Critique on Induction and Godel's Incompleteness Theorem and that the Lost writers had no idea what they were doing for six seasons.

Those of us that know the void and are at peace with it hear the idealists whines and have REQUESTED for our music to get more compressed and inundated and DEVOID of meaning. 

Meaning, dear reader, is a lie. 

LMFAO are doing us all a favor.

If I had been more patient, I would have slowly put my arm around his shoulder, pulled out my phone, and showed him where to watch all the conspiracy videos and Wikipedias he needs to get with the program. But I was and am exhausted of such fiends trying to summon the void on what was a pleasant afternoon.

Instead, my fellow picnic goers and I continued to stone him with our tea desserts as he went on to talk about his idealistic garbage.

Glaring at him,I pulled out my phone and started playing a barely audible version of "Party Rock Anthem." I arose, aroused. I grabbed the nearest woman and began to bump and grind. 

I shouted at him, on the verge of tears, hips thrusting and swaying, "CAN WE NOT HAVE SOME TRIVIAL PLEASURE AMONGST THIS VOID, SIR? MUST YOU RUIN EVERYTHING? YOU CAN NEVER RUIN THIS."

I grabbed her and impassionedly made out with her as we continued our nihilistic dance.  My fellow picnickers had their cellphones out, recording their real Cultural Hero defending their inalienable right to destroy the reception of knowledge when it gets annoying.

Those of us that know the rules of survival understand that even when society crumbles, there will always be a trash fire to grunt conversation around. So why worry? What is there to defend other than the right album to pretend to like at parties?

The Dutchess by Fergie

In the party of society, we all pretend that wearing a weird colored wig and dressing obnoxious is somehow driving culture forward. And listen, 20 years ago--this strategy would have made sense. Taking the homeless girl off the street, dressing her up in a leotard, and having her walk around commandingly as other people dance around her, occasionally chiming in on what is supposed to be her own song--that was, at one point, avante garde. In the best way.

I know what you are thinking, reader. "But Johann, how can we rise to power if we do not collude our tastes to whomever has the best hair in the room?"

Yes, and here we have a paradox, for surely we all sense we are paying a significant cost to something greater than ourselves, while at the same time benefiting. What cost, you ask?

Well, I remember an expression my mother branded into my sixteen year old brain right after I came downstairs dressed in my usual eclectic velvet blazer for church--she had a blank gaze that pierced right through me and groaned a timeless truth while shaking her head, "The weird people are becoming normal. And the normal are becoming weird."

"But Johann! What about Nikki Minaj's message Ba-boom-ba-boom-ba-boom-ba-boom-boom bass!" you might ask.

And I understand if you have the sentiment that the mainstream has always been awful and that there's nothing we can do about it and that we should all go to the forest to listen to the truest leader of the top 40 charts, Nature.

As if Nature won't sell out as soon as a slicked back manager tells it how much money it could be making if it put all its gurgling brook videos on Vevo.

Fergaliciously doomed.

And slowly, every day, when we make more harrowing assumptions about what people have the attention for--our idea of media not offending someones attention span instead of actively engaging it, another beautiful person will think art is wearing a wig and and mumbling into a studio mic and doing whatever their Machiavellian producer says.

What can we do, reader? Pretend to like Fergie's The Dutchess parties.

And just as people like to shower the leotarded with undeserved accolades just for they don't die virgins, we will pretend that that this genius art garbage is underrated. We will wait till everyone is really drunk and demand everyone to sing along.

And we will pray for deliverance.

will.i.am's Lost Change (Instrumentals)

I once partook in a conversation amongst two dapper young men at my lovers quinceañera . I was playing the fool, as I often do as to not be responsible for the rising cost of therapy. 

They were both majestic partyists, going tit-for-tat in every complexifiying opinions. I thought I finally was about to witness what my father always tried to convince me was possible--two equals admitting everything they just said was full of shit, shaking hands, and shutting up. 

Maybe this satori was possible in his generation, where people weren't able to excuse themselves to the bathroom to manically search for up-to-date arguments on why the earth was flat. There is endless warfare of opinion. Some call it the 24 hour news cycle. I call it a perpetual self shitting machine.

But maybe, I thought--maybe they had the same speed of broadband connection at home--the same amount of time spend scowering for eclectic facts, and the same 4g data plan on their smart phones...maybe, even, the same perfect self-critical disposition granted by their fathers when they accidentally used their children's first poems as toilet paper. I was filled with disastrous optimism. I encouraged their conversation by continuously chinking their glasses.

They were in a splendid dance talking about energy. Charles, as I will call the first gentleman, made a dignified point.

"Clean energy is our future, Thomas--not children. Clean energy."

This is a humorous picture of Atlantis. 

Denying the commonality of not hating children! I was impressed. I smiled and nodded so eagerly, passionately.

"Charles--energy? Really? Only level 0 societies use energy. The Atlanteans never needed that garbage."

My mind was blown. An equally drastic move. Denying the value of physical energy... unfathomable... could my father be...

"Ah! A fellow Atlantean... surely you will forgive my previous statement... I did not know you were in the fraternity of the gill...'

At this point I was on the verge of tears. I will not lie to you, reader. I excused myself from the conversation and wept for a little bit outside. But this as not and is not about me. I rushed back to see how their joust-turn-dance would play out.

When I came back, I saw Thomas furiously tapping on his phone. I asked him where Charles was. In the bathroom, he said.

Things were on the verge of falling apart. A trip to the bathroom... you only get one... if Thomas were to stump him again...

"Ah, Thomas! You must excuse my bowels. The answer to your question is..."

"New Hampshire"

They answered together in unison... a détente of 4g data plans.

"Yes, Atlantis as we knew it is now New Hampshire. Cursed bowels... fogging up my mind..."

They laughed in unison. 

"Charles, which part of Atlantis did your ancestors live in?

"They moved around a lot."

"As did mine! But they usually stayed near the Azuruth Sea."

"We..." he looked off to his left and began to sweat. "Curses! You must excuse me, I must use the restroom."

Game, set, match.

And it was all over.

As Charles sprinted to the restroom, swiming through the crowd, Thomas grabbed his phone and nervously tapped. He looked up to me, barely holding on to his charisma,

"Emails! Can't live with them, can't live without them!"

I smiled. He knew what was at stake. He had tied the game.

I breathed deeply, remembering the countless meals my father tried to convince me to denounce my blackened heart. He begged me to believe that silence was possible. That détentes could emerge. That the strong could stand side by side as victors of the party. No, I said. There could only be one.

The rest of this tale hurts me too deeply, reader. Charles emerges from the restroom, making the unsightly error of saying his bowels made him enter a fugue state. This opened the door for Thomas to ask the decisive question that broke my heart.

I never saw this movie I just know enough people
who inanely quote movies to make this reference.

"Have you listened to Bach's fugues? Over-rated. I prefer the compositions in will.i.am's Lost Change (Instrumentals)."

Charles realized his demise immediately. He was gentleman he couldn't use the bathroom excuse twice. He was beaten--beaten by an associative topic due to his poor word choices. He ran out of the room yelling that he was sorry. Thomas slept with every woman in the room.

Yes, reader. There can only be one. 

The rest of that night I waited in my car for my lover's turn to be over, researching Will.I.Am, weeping.

There can only be one.

 

RIP, Dead Whitney Houston

The death of a celebrity defines our character. How will you face the strange dilemma of defending or defiling a famous person's corpse? 

More importantly, how does one intuit what the party demands of you? A good rule of thumb is to consult Google. Not in an obvious way, mind you--for all of us have tried to query 'rise to power now' and were disheartened that this machine has not yet the capacity for Genie-ism.

What I speak of is something far more profound. You can use Google to discover the proletariat perspective on any topic by seeing the common search descriptors associated with it. For example, I went to Google Images to find a picture of a crying Whitney Houston and found the following:

Minutes later in my very own Facebook feed:

This crack joke is about as trite as me noting their 'murdering' Houston's last name. RIP, good taste.

Why would I want a crying Whitney Houston picture? Because maybe seeing her innocent tears will be the wake up call my social graph needs to think beyond the crack joke. Unfortunately I couldn't find a good picture that didn't also look like she was on crack.

Is it wrong to take the path most traveled? Not necessarily. You and I are complex creatures. We know when to yield a crass, lowest common denominator "HEY DID YOU HEAR WHITNEY HOUSTON IS SOMEHOW NOTORIOUSLY ASSOCIATED WITH CRACK EVEN UPON HER DEATH?" discussion and when to appeal to higher order signallings.

Candor should be used sparingly, reader.

But I will warn you all that the battle for social supremacy is also an internal battle. We, as individuals, fight the same boorish oblivion that we see at parties within ourselves. If we, but for a moment, think we are some how relieved from the human condition, we might find our left hand lurching for the crack pipe as our right hand makes an unclever joke about Whitney Houston and crack.

In full candor I reveal to you that during the editting process of this very Truth-blog, I cracked. Yes, reader--I, too, in a knee jerk reaction, made a crack joke in reference to Whitney Houston's demise. Rest on crack? What had I become? If I were to allow myself to partake in melodramatic conjecture... maybe a part of me died along with Whitney, that day. May she intercede on my behalf.

Now, I cannot yet speak with of the metaphysics of Whitney's passing. (My online degree is still pending completion.) But I can offer my analysis of effective modes of thought concerning Whitney's death that will, ultimately, give you victory at your parties.

"And the umbrella's open once it starts raining!"

THE AMBIVALENT OVERLORD DOUCHE

This person achieves social dominance by signifying not Whitney's death, but by 'predicting' an obvious human reaction to such news. Like a palm reader deducting that your wrists are attached to your hands, he achieves the appearance of a sorceror in a time of mass hysteria.

With tongue.

THE TYRANNICAL

ABSURDIST              

Somewhere between the brash necrophilia  and prudish respect is the absurdist perspective, which is a simple making out with the corpse. To make light, but not defile. To laugh, not at, but with the face of death. While sensuously stroking its hair.

FEIGNING 'SINCERE' IGNORANCE

If you feel like fiddling with the dead is too advanced for you, then the best path is to pretend you had no idea that she died because American Celebritism is disgusting. Feel free to give an impassioned speech addressing the fact that "[...] people die every day, man [...]" and  further go into discussion about how, when you die, you want your funeral to be a rave. Then have someone swear they will 'pop an E' in  your dead mouth while everyone "just lives."

This person later confirmed her frustration that impassioned queries like 'WHAT!?!?!' do not return relevant information when entered into Google.

808s and Heartbreak

Toward the fall of last year, I went to a Berkeley house party.  While searching for a place to stand and look preoccupied with my cellular device, I came upon a shocking scene of distilled white people.

They were singing along to Kanye West's ego-opus "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy," grunt for grunt. Their heads were tilted back in drunken splendor. The genuine feelings of comradery--the forming of a cohesive unison... giddy bodies writhing to the rhythm...

There was no resentment. There was no self-consciousness. There was no lambasting and leveraging of opinion. Surely this was a hell. 

The internet was supposed to prevent this type of filth from happening. The physical space could be a place where we are warriors to the granular search terms we enter into Google. We should not be fixating on aspects of similarity when there is an infinite amount of detail that can cause our disagreement!

I closed my eyes and whimpered a soft prayer to my Future Self, so that I would one day pardon the behavior of the weakling self I was--a self who knew not what to do other than give in and mumble along.

Why didn't I pretend that I would have preferred "Power" to be in a different key?

Why had I not pretended that I thought sampling was immoral and that anyone who perceives someone elses copyrighted material is going to hell?

As I revisit my past self to mend the trauma I have within, I will show you what to do in foreign value systems and how to become the conqueror of worlds. Reader, it is time to rise up from our sofas and pontificate.