Elbow Macaroni

Biology lesson of the day: do not attempt to eat a chocolate chip cookie whilst applying alcohol to an open and festering wound. It's not that the pain will make you vomit, because it isn't particularly bad -- not even if you are using the battlefield-medicine technique of vodka on a hankerchief while Val insists that you see a doctor unless it's better by morning. Rather, the problem is that your nerves are overtaxed, and so the messages from your tastebuds are scrapped; it's your body's form of triage. It's enough to make one wonder whether hospital food is really that bland, or if the patients are simply incapable of taste. It also makes one question the wisdom of incorporating food into sexual play.

[Editor's note: I'm fine. As soon as I got my hands on some hydrogen peroxide, the infection vanished.]

Atonal

The tone of the twentieth century was set by three things: Sigmund Freud, Jack the Ripper, and the Russian Revolution. Almost any definitive historical event can be traced to one of them, or more often to all three. From Jack comes the sexualization of violence, sensationalist news as entertainment, the idea that the rich should care for the unfortunate, conspiracy theories as common trade, and the notion that the bad guys get away with it. From the revolution, you get class struggle on a large scale, the end of aristocracy, equality among all classes, war conducted on and by civilians, Josef Stalin, and the Cold War. The two combined birthed Hitler, nationalism, and paranoia. Freud rounded us out with sexual liberation, psychotherapy, blaming our parents, and the preeminence of the brain.

I'm not saying that none of these concepts existed before, but that these three factors drove them home and influenced everyone so profoundly -- whether directly or indirectly -- that they can be given almost full credit for the last century. They were definitive.

I strongly suspect that September 11th set the tone for the twenty first century. Much as I'm tired of hearing about it and talking about it, the fact that it is still so present throughout the world speaks to its effect. I think this will be a century of uncertainty and fear, but with a sense of unity that I hope will prove more powerful.

Fuck, I'm not saying this right and I sound like a high school philsopher. Stop listening to me explain it and just think. Speculate.

Heads Up

There are some pretty interesting discussions going on in the comments section from my last post. You might want to check them out and contribute.

--The Management