First of all, let's talk about the thing that's been killing my productivity and, well, crushing my fragile porcelain clown of a soul. It's the "New Internet." Web 2.0, with it's endless "invite your friends" and "share this!" and "say something, anything!" I was coming to this conclusion last year and I tried to put it into some coherent words. And basically what I came up with is that the social Web has turned us into belching frogs. And it ain't pretty. My friends are becoming avatars—smiling faces with one-liner quips next to their names, short expressions of happiness or sadness or love or hate. Or, oh my god, self-promotion. Propaganda. Marketing. We've become our own advertisements for...ourselves. Publicity agents for our own lives. Whoring ourselves to our friends. And I'm sure it's all genuinely felt. Oh, I'm sure it comes from deep within. But I know I start to get numb to it. And I just skim now and I don't really read. And I've "hidden" more than I show. And I think probably my friends deserve more than that. More, even, than my "Like" or "Become a Fan." An email, maybe. Or a phone call. Or simply our memory. Some of our friends just deserve our memory of them. That's it. We should all kill our Facebook. And I have a date to do just that. With a friend who isn't even in my Facebook. We'll do it over shots of whiskey. And we'll curse while we do it. And bang our fists on the bar. And celebrate our freedom.

And now I'm just spewing again aren't I? I'm telling you, all the silence over the last year or so has really let my rant index build to unhealthy levels. And left me with a lot of shit to get off my sporadically hairy chest. Shit concerning privacy (and the lack thereof). About how you actually wind up with less of it the more rural—the more suburban—you get. About how, as we put ourselves into houses inside of neighborhoods, we actually become more visible to the people around us. (And by the way, the people around us? They're all fucking crazy. Only they think they're the only ones who are sane.) In the city, I was surrounded by crazy people, but we were all crazy and we all knew it. And so we were all sort of invisible. And there was a respectful sort of camaraderie in that—in being crazy and invisible together. Because you know that you live so close to one-another that you'll probably bump into each other at some point and, you know, have to talk to one another and shit. So you might as well be civil. And no, I didn't hear whatever that was you were doing in your bedroom last night. Here let me get the door. After you.

Anyway, talking about all that will probably steer me into long tangents about the suburban hell known as Northern New Jersey. How should I describe this place? First, start by imagining any American suburb. Then take away civility (nobody even pretends to like one another here), modernity (you're hard-pressed to find restaurant concepts from the last decade, but there's a 1960s diner on every corner), and basic driving skills. Now add in the stink surrounding Newark, Jersey City, and Secaucus, a dangerously crumbling infrastructure, a disturbing number of Conservative Republicans, and more deer ticks than you could ever imagine. Welcome to the Garden State!

And talking about all that will probably bring me around to the murky subject of my own happiness and how I'm finally starting to find it again in the midst of existential crisis, severe underemployment, and debilitating depression.

As you can see, there's a lot of ground to cover. And I think we're off to a good start. I think I'll like this. I think I'll become a fucking fan.

Category: Nada