The Tyranny of Tradition

In the future, people will only communicate with each other using Top 10 lists.  Progress in the name of progress for the sake of progress will render all other forms of communication meaningless.  We will engage in the illusion of order until our planet is completely overrun by humans that are well armed, in peek physical condition and filled with a snarling, vengeful hatred towards one another. Then, some shocking and terrible catastrophe will take place and lots of people will write Top 10 lists about how awful it was and how sorry they are.  And they will be forgiven in order to do the same thing again.  Here’s my list…

1. You’d kill anything with a heartbeat.  You just like having other people do it for you.  No blood on your hands.  Very clean.  If you can put ketchup on it, chances are, you don’t care.  Tell me again about how you love the unborn, but you want to own a weapon that could flay the skin off of a buffalo from the distance of ten football fields.  Tell me about how people in far away places matter, but the idiot who just cut you off in traffic should burst into flames.  A fetus, presented neatly on a plate with a neatly arranged side of rice pilaf and a sprig of parsley, would present you with a nearly impossible ethical dilemma.

2. Everything is terrible.  Acting like this world is anything but a madhouse should be a  criminal offense.  Those who send greeting cards should be put in front of a firing squad.  Those who pretend to find meaning in life should be hanged.  If you are not disgusted by the basic perimeters of life, you are wildly disengaged from the events going on around you.  You are a product of a planet gone completely insane.

3. You are the problem.  If you look at all of the problems in your life, you are the common factor.  There are no outside factors or extenuating circumstances. You are both victim and victimizer in all cases.  You created God in your image in order to cause your own suffering and give meaning to your world.  There is nothing outside of you except for more you.   If you ever noticed the depth of it, you’d drown.

4. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.  People who don’t eat breakfast are demented and spiritually compromised.  They all should be punished.  They are the problem.  If you speak to them, they will infect you.  If they are not dealt with, the human race will sink into a spiritual vacuum and mankind will slowly die a moral death.

5. 9 out of 10 dentists are simply trying to feed their kids.  Experts are unreliable shills who offer nothing but reaffirmation of a world bereft of anything that could even remotely be considered human.  They have been compromised by a system that rewards blind allegiance, conformity and drooling stupidity.  They are afraid to be the one dentist who thinks the other dentists are morons.  They are compensated well for their crimes and their children grow up to be happy and healthy robots only slightly more disgraceful than their parents.

The horrible truth is that the one dentist who disagrees doesn’t even really exist.  He is a creation of some marketing executive who understands that 9 out of 10 is more believable than 10 out of 10. If he actually does exist, his views have been streamlined in order to create bigger and more inclusive slaughterhouse of a world.  Any dentist fit to look at the teeth of a human being wouldn’t even take part in this sort of a carnival.  And what kind of fool would trust a dentist anyway?

6. You are waiting for me to talk about you specifically.  Sure, all this railing against the world is entertaining, but when is this weird fellow going to say something that applies to me.  Or separates me from the rest of the fools he’s talking about.  Or takes me into his arms and offers me forgiveness.  I’m not that awful.  I belong to a neighborhood association and I fought hard to make sure that no retaining wall obstructs the view of trees from the highway.  I laugh at all the jokes I’m supposed to get and cry when I receive the appropriate cues.  I am in conspiracy with this jerk and he’s not going to offer me absolution.  The hell with him.  I’ll never read him again and unsubscribe from his blog.

7. Who are you to tell me I’m a fraud?  You are just as pointless as me, Cowboy.  Being a guy with an Internet site doesn’t make you interesting.  How dare you point out my faults without accepting your own?  This is self-indulgent drivel.  You are a pretentious fraud who couldn’t think of a dumb metal parody for this week, so now you are picking on strangers.  This isn’t funny anymore.

Most of the others have stopped reading and gone on to find more cute pictures of cats or something to prove once and for all that Obama is a Marxist or that Rush Limbaugh is a pill-popping degenerate. (Here’s the part where you insert the cliché about “wanting your two minutes back” in order to remind your audience that you know all the things that smart people are supposed to say in these circumstances.  Go ahead.  Someone will nod approvingly and laugh).

8.  This article is a complete waste of time.  Jesus, haven’t you outgrown the “meta-” stuff already?  Most writers go through this phase then move on to writing something worth reading.  It’s something that people tend to outgrow in their early 20’s.  Like cartoons.  Nobody really likes this style of writing; they just act like they get it when you are around so you don’t get your feelings hurt.  Time is running short.  Your coming up on a thousand words now, Tough Guy.  Better find something worth saying

9.  Pro-Pain is a vastly underrated band.  They have 13 or so albums and almost every one has a great song or ten.  I’ve listened to Foul Taste of Freedom almost 50 times in the past week alone.  I would love to live in a society where the only form of currency were Pro-Pain albums.  Two “Shreds of Dignity(s)” could buy you a goat.  Five “Fistful of Hate(s)” would get you a horse.  15 acres of arable farmland?  That’ll be 12 “Straight To The Dome(s)”.  And on and on.

10.  Spleens are not food.  I think this one is pretty self-explanatory.  I’m going to go look in on my fantasy football team now.