nin137

Nick's Journal
2006-05-27 13:15:54 (UTC)

Awkward Party

i normally don't like going to parties and i think last
night was indicative of why. my friend was having his
birthday party so i decided i would be a good friend and
join him. i'd hung out with him and his friends before and
one thing i noticed was that his friends were vastly
different from me.
they were all very congenial, very talkative, extremely
polite, and also extremely, extremely nerdy and liberal.
not to say that i am hateful, taciturn, boorish and cool and
conserative, but i definitely noticed a difference.
so anyway, we all sat around shooting the shit and they were
all really nice, like always pulling me into conversation by
asking me questions and referring back to my getting married.
it was all good and nice with a couple of innocuous jokes
(you know the really nerdy kind) coming out once in a while
and everyone giving a whole-hearted laugh. it was actually
kind of weird, i mean everything seemed kind of
"movie-like". i mean there didn't seem to be any
differences, there didn't seem to be any social outcasts,
and there didn't seem to be any awkward moments......until i
decided to provide one.

well with them being very liberal and all i got to listen to
a lot of "save darfur" "save the squirrel" and "down with
walmart" propoganda. now....on a whole i really don't mind
that sort of boistering. the thing is when liberals get a
few drinks in them they start to ceremonize, whereas when
conservatives (i.e. rednecks) get a few drinks in them, they
tell you whom they'd like to kill.

so i stayed on the side nodding meekly and smiling, very
content with not joining any conversation and just letting
them revel in their mutual assistance along the ascension up
the peak of self-righteousness. except of course...they
were still being too nice. so inevitably one guy (brian)
asked me,
"i mean don't you think that walmart is just a ridiculous
entity which shows what a corporation can do when it gets
too much power and takes over a community's values?"
that's ri-god-damned-diculous right there. now i've heard a
lot of walmart bashing in my time. it's actually a common
theme for any liberal. walmart is to liberals what hilary
clinton is to conservatives; sort of the epitome of evil.
the essence of their fight.
now to set it straight i don't like walmart. i don't like
the people that go to walmart (well 99% of the people) i
hate the people who work there and i sure as shit concede
that they do some un-savioury deeds (such as lock their
employees in the store...which i believe is well deserved).

but yet i don't think it's an evil corporation. so i slowly
but surely starting telling brian that i thought that
walmart was really a product of the demand of the american
society. immediately i was called a libertarian. UGH!
i've started to really loathe libertarians as well. i used
to think i was one, but now i know i really could never be
and i hate how they've high-jacked a few very sound
principles and piggy-backed them through their own dementia.
i mean i guess if i leaned towards any one spectrum, it
would be libertarianism more than anything else. but there
is so much that i disagree with in that doctrine that i
could never call myself one.

anyhow, i said i wasn't and then i started explaining to him
how i thought that walmart wasn't so much a product of
"price-hunting" but more of convenience. i mean look at
american society. we have gas stations where you can fill
up your car, wash your car, clean your car, buy fast food,
buy a small amount of groceries, get any refreshment on the
planet earth, get pharmaceutical supplies, even get god
damned cleaning supplies!!! look at strip malls (something i
view as the worst abomination ever), they are the very
essence of convenience. you have a dry-cleaner, an
electronics store, a hardware store, a grocery store, a
hallmark store, a movie store, a pharmacy, and at least 7 or
8 chain restaurants within maybe a 2 mile radius (not even).

now on a whole it seems very efficient at face value, i mean
what's more efficient than centralizing everyone's needs?
well here's the thing. who the fuck wants to live near a
strip mall? no the fuck one! so we drive gas guzzlers to
the strip malls. and the thing i never understood is that
you have so many different strip malls, if it were really
such a centralized idealistic urban-planning miracle then
why are there so many? simply because i think that with
centralization comes mass use and americans by and far love
their private space. so when there's a critical mass
reached another is made.

now back to walmart. walmart is the essence of convenience
(god i've used essence and convenience a lot in this
journal). it gives you every goddamned thing you want in
one store. and there have been others like target and so on
and so forth but walmart has prospered, why? their business
model. their technology and their HUB system of sending out
goods is the most efficient, therefore they can ALSO offer
lower prices.

i explained this to brian as to why i thought it was a
consumer problem, but he scoffed. the same dude, who
complained just 10 mins earlier that he had to drive to a
dry-cleaners 5 mins away from his grocer. i'm betting
neither of those two businesses were run by a corporation.

needless to say our "conversation" turned to an impasse and
i was promptly ostracized from further discussion. i
shuffled around a while feeling kind of uncomfortable. they
were all laughing and hugging and butt-fucking each other
again....i wanted to be a part of that. it looked so much
like Friends. but then i thought a while. and i realized
that my friends always compared ourselves to Seinfeld. then
i realized just how i never watched friends because i
thought it was too obnoxious, predictable, and ultimately
phantasmagorical. whereas i will always watch seinfeld when
it comes on, because it's funny, innovative, and not overly
saccharine.

on the way home i noticed that bon jovi was on classic rock
and so was david bowie. i found this un-fair. classic rock
to me as of the past 5 years has come to mean not something
that was recorded in the 60s & 70s but anything that's not
by nick lachey and kicks some ass. i found it un-fair
because not only were they deemed classic rock but i think
all women i have ever talked to would fuck either one of
them in a heart-beat. what a life.




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