Caltrops - Motherfucking News - Re: On the first evening of war.

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by Zseni 03/20/2003, 10:20am PST

Chief Very Boring wrote:

Interesting. Agreeing with Foogla here, you're younger than I thought. Young 20's angst, it happens...

Believe it or not (you probably won't), but I actually know no small number of people just like you. My work brings me in contact with young academics quite a bit, unfortunately, and with few exceptions, they share these flaws.

Had enough of those sociology students on the reservation, have you?

Too much time in pursuit of narrow interests leaves them out of touch with 90% of the people around them, and therefore feeling alienated and usually superior, as well. "I know things you don't, people, you must listen to me! I HAVE THE ANSWERS!" Sorry, no. I say "unfortunately" about being in contact with these kids so much because they piss me off and frustrate me so much. Like you. They condescend, they patronize, they underestimate, they insult. "I know history, I have culture, I live with philosophy." FUCK YOU (no, not you).

As opposed to condescending to, patronizing, underestimating, and insulting youth and academia. "I know who you are, I have seen a thousand of you, I live to tell you how superior my way of life is to yours."

The most important thing I've learned from them is that I can't change them, and that they can't change me.

Yes, I see that now. But I won't let that stop me from indulging in the futility of calling you a hopeless and unbearable hypocrite.

Do you see, Z? Who are you trying to save here? Why go into the tower in the first place?

And for fuck's sake, go have a Whopper...

Little Crow

Because familiarity with Whoppers is what it all really comes down to. Who am I trying to save here? No, that's a stupid fucking question, little cow, because the answer is patently obvious: everyone. The real question is What am I saving them from?

Are the dangers seen from the tower actually dangers or not? I think they are, and maybe it takes tower-dwellers to fend those kinds of dangers off. But they aren't the only dangers, and tower-dwellers aren't the only people. Trying to cut people "like me" out of the equation means cutting out all the well-meaning bright-eyed-bushy-tailed young volunteers and theorists and research assistants out of the equation, and that means everyone loses. That brilliant new vaccine entering live animal trials? We can't complete testing on it. Find someone who can perform high-level statistics for free so we can collect data on salmon spawning rates in various environmental conditions? Sorry, the local university is fresh out of people who give a shit. That book of poetry which will revolutionize and democratize the form again, written by some cocky pissant sick to death of the moribund modern lit-crit culture? He's busy right now, nose to the grindstone at Burger King and making my Whoppers. And let's not talk about how these people are future teachers and pundits and CIA analysts either.

As for people really and actually like me, they don't come into contact with people like you except at social grab-bags like this one. No, seriously, it just doesn't happen. It's like trying to mix lead and mercury. People like me see people like you talking to other fags and walk right the fuck by as inconspicuously as they can. You have very little to say that we haven't already heard, and a particularly ignorant and offensive way of saying it.