How do high school seniors argue?

Surprise, high school friends! I took a little trip in my time machine back to a time when my liberal douching could set fire to the unaware passerby and my cache of argumentative ammunition was well-stocked. Check out these Xanga posts from back in 2004:

When President Bush decided to hop in his jet and stump down in Panama City, you can bet I had something to say about it. The cartoon in the link below is a sort of jab at all my friends who decided to attend the rally.
http://www.xanga.com/a_good_example/119693789/item.html

Of course, there was the occasional breakthrough of logic in my head. I still get those every once in a while but I've learned to suppress the logic in favor of smoking a cigarette. Oh, and me harping on heartstrings is just something you need to read anyway.
http://www.xanga.com/a_good_example/105596143/item.html

A discussion of whether I even matter. Definitely a good example of high schoolers at their best.
http://www.xanga.com/a_good_example/103900176/item.html

But it wouldn't be fair if this post was exclusively masturbatory. Check me being a true liberal douche, calling Michael Moore a "well-researched activist." Someone gag me with a mayonnaise-covered hot dog before Michael Moore eats it.
http://www.xanga.com/a_good_example/99299687/item.html

If there's one thing I still have, it's my ability to piss people off. I guess that hasn't changed at all. What I'd be more interested to find would be if my friend's political views-- especially the ones who argue tooth-and-nail in those above links-- still hold as strong to their views today. I know I don't.

High schoolers argue with an inflated sense of the world and their effect upon it. When you're limited to a school of 1200 students and teachers that get a kick out of seeing kids argue, you get the encouragement and audience necessary to feel like you're affecting something. These days, I feel like the true geniuses are the ones that see the futility in political discussions.

No one changes their minds anymore. No one is open minded. So you have to take clever, more intricate routes to changing minds.

That's where Kyle 2008 steps in to bitchslap his former self circa 2004 while, at the same time, appreciating all the fervor that put me here in the first place.

Obligatory Chistmas Eve Junk

Does Bono know he needs a haircut?


Gotta make room for Andy Dick!


The curse of being a man.

From the Barnhart Compound to you, Happy Holidays. HAPPY HOLIDAYS. A very all-inclusive, wonderful, non-commercial, secular holiday season to everyone.

Kyle

Again, it's too late for this shit

Before I pass the fuck out:

• Finished Bright Lights, Big City. Best book I've read in quite a long time
• Facebook won't import posts that are bigger than your mama's caboose. Good to know.
• I'm busy writing a lengthy year-in-review post, but it's hard to discern what should be written about on the Internet and what shouldn't. The entire year, beginning and end, has been quite a big one for me. Some of the more profound events in my life probably shouldn't be danced around on the Internet but, fuck, it's my journal! Oy, vey.

Top 10 Tracks since I got Last.fm:

Makes sense to me.

Adam Adam West West.

I'll find yooooooouuuuuu!

Hola, Caped Crusader!

This is great! The place is already decorated!

First things first:

• Doom House
• Ransom
• Muse - Starlight
• ...he was delicious (apologies to Gerald Ford)
• And speaking of Muse, ...bleh.
  

Now, let's talk about how much I'm enjoying this break. I woke up at 3PM today but only because my mommy made me. Without a doubt, I am seriously pissing off the rest of my family that has to get up and be places by 9AM every day. I could reverse my sleep schedule completely at this point if anyone was willing to let me try. It's really great that I did one productive things today-- filling my car with washer fluid-- and yet I feel like the most accomplished person on the planet Earth.

Oh, you know what? I don't suppose I posted anything about what I got for Christmas. See, usually I'm in the boat that everyone else is in. You know the boat: no Christmas list, 20 gift cards under the tree, none of them ever spent by the time the next Christmas rolls around. I seriously have roughly $50 in Starbucks money that's been building up over the past three years. I guess people buy me Starbucks because they figure I'm trendy and I like chai tea lattes, in which case they would be right. But gift cards are about as practical for me as leaving your wallet on Jupiter. I just don't use them, or I forget, or I leave them in the asscrack of my desk for six months.

This year, I had a dream. And a list. A Christmas list. And because I think I floored my family with the gesture of even making a list, it was fulfilled as follows:

Figure (a)Figure (b)Figure (c)Figure (d)

As you can see, I did all right. There are a few semantic issues, though. I'm going to have to de-loft my bed back at Rice to put those two awesome prints up. I was planning on doing that anyway, especially since Louie said I could take the desk that's in there for my own use and throw out the other one.

But where will Louie put his computer? And where will my STUFF go? It's a quandary is what it is. Maybe me and Louie will push our beds together and do something extremely homo with our room. It's the only way I can put up my new favorite things.

Brent got my that there Wonder Showzen on DVD, as noted in (c). You know, that was a big item on this year's list because I've found that Wonder Showzen isn't really all that useful if it isn't portable and easy to use. Hooking my laptop up to the big TV every time I want to watch it is time consuming and not spontaneous and generally very, very difficult to do.

Yes, by the way, that IS Pokemon Emerald and a Game Boy Micro. The way I figure it, I forfeited all of my cool points somewhere months ago and I really have nothing to lose. So hey, why not play some daggum video games? The GBM is tiny, and will take the place of the cigarette packs I used to carry in my pocket come Jan. 1. Yeah, I'm trying to quit, but I'm not going to be all uppity about it.

Yes, I also got a fedora and some sweaters. Anyone who would peer into my wardrobe would comment that I have way too many shirts and not enough sweaters, but not anymore. Let's pray it dips below 80 in Houston sometime before the winter is over.

Pez is a staple of any holiday, if you ask me. They put heroin in it.

Oh no! Teh gayz!

So I'm sitting up in my room with Augusta and Louie, just sort of kickin' it. Augusta asks to grab some music from my computer, namely the Chronic and all of my Explosions in the Sky. When I pop in my Memory Stick, though, I notice a little tidbit of a video sitting on there that I had never noticed before.

watchme.wmv

Curious, I double-click and am immediately horrified by some of the rauchiest German gay porn you can possibly conjure into your brain without needed therapy later. I remember they were on a couch but some good part of me has blocked out the rest.

No one knows who put watchme.wmv on my Memory Stick. Was it Joe Halbouty? Was it Louie? We'll never know, but my money is on Joe.

The best news of the day is that Bret Easton Ellis is making a TV show. The best videos of the day are here and here.

Good evening, gang.

I should be doing laundry but...

...instead I'm going to dump my brain on the Internet. Here's a random assortment of thoughts that have jumped the neurons in my noggin over the past few days.

If someone doesn't break my junk before the time comes, one day I'm going to have a kid. And one day I'm going to have to look that kid straight in the eye and tell 'em that I never did drugs, that drinking excessively is dangerous and not fun, that there is a higher power that beats down on us and causes the cogs of the world to spin. I'm going to put forth my super seed in order to help make my genius baby, then I'm going to lie to it like no one's business just like all parents lie to their kids. Because lying is the secret to raising a kid who isn't a dysfunctional monster.

Just think of anyone who was raised on absolute truth about all things, then think about how fucked up they are. Of all the people I can think of-- my close friends and people I knew growing up-- the kids who were raised on facts and truth on the part of their parents are the ones who are now in a very dismal condition. Most are depressed, very few of them have any ambition, and they're all real selfish buggers.

That's because parenting is a race to see if you can keep your kid innocent long enough for them to comprehend the true nature of the world. Twelve-year-olds can't comprehend the dangers of drug use; six year olds can't fully grasp the concept of death. You have to wait until they've taken in enough of the world on their own to reveal the truth from a parent's perspective. And that's that.

So meanwhile, I'm really enjoying these new playlists I made. I made three the other day. One of them has a good mix of early post-punk and generic Britishness called "the darker 80's." It's chocked full of Joy Division and Gang of Four and Chameleons and Echo and Wire. Then I have one called "the lighter 80's" with fair amounts of classic 80's fare. Blondie, Huey Lewis, Elvis Costello, Michael Jackson, etc. Then I made a good little "post-punk revival" playlist with basically every band worth listening to since 2000 on it. Yeah, I know. I'm in a very post-punk mood lately. Throbbing bass and all those dark undertones.

Allee asked me if Ian Curtis kind of looked like the lead singer from Muse. I just told her that every British lead singer from the past 30 years has that whole sunken-in cheeks AIDS look going on. I think they aren't feeding those Manchester boys very well, or something.

I made a YTMND. Check it.

I absolutely hate doing laundry. I'm starting to wonder if maybe, just maybe, I can put it off until Christmas break. I figure by then someone very close to me, either Louie or Allee, will just do it for me.

I really shouldn't post my genius plans on the Internet.

Today at dinner I realized that if it weren't for my family, there really wouldn't be a whole lot of reason for me to go home for Christmas. I think a Christmas with my Rice pals would be something interesting if nothing else. And fuck me if I haven't purchased one paltry present for anyone yet. I'm going to get my ass beat when all my friends and family get a donation to the Human Fund from yours truly.

Finally, I'm four pages into a story I started writing a week or two ago. Delicious, single-spaced pages. It's the second time I've been able to get more than two pages into anything written of my own volition. The first time was this really great story about life in Panama City Beach written about three years ago that I might post one day. I don't know. I used to impress girls with it.

I'm outtie.

We can thank Jon Stewart for this one

Let's get today's topic of discussion out on the floor like a bad dance move.

A Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll of Americans age 18 to 24 found Bush's approval rating was 20 percent, with 53 percent disapproving and 28 percent with no opinion. That compares to a 40 percent approval rating among Americans of all ages in a separate Bloomberg/Times poll.

Perhaps more amusing than the fact that this is news to anyone is the slew of typical partisan five-year-oldery on Digg. Anyone who has taken a step out of their house and onto a true college campus would tell you that, duh, kids are liberal. And less surprising than the fact that kids are liberal is the fact that kids hate W. I mean, haven't you heard that new Anti-Flag song? Dawg, it's ill.

Even if it's not news it still makes me happy that today's youth, as a whole, are against the guy. It says a lot about the future of the country: maybe my demographic isn't as retarded as I have always assumed it to be. Maybe there's a chance that at least some inch of liberalism will carry over twenty years from now where, possibly, people will be moderate and level-headed voters.

Or, you know, candy corn will blow out of my ass and propel me to the moon.

Let's be real: Vietnam went on for years and turned a vast majority of youth in American into acid-touting hippies. And now those same youth have grown up, nestled into McMansions, and thrown yellow ribbons on the backs of their Escalades. This generation doesn't even possess an iota of the liberal attitude of yesteryear and yet somehow "experts" expect that the American of the future will vote liberal? Stop. Snorting. Glue.

The only way that liberals will ever pull a stronghold over America again is a complete retooling that will force American youth to hold on to their liberal values through their 30's. And that'll happen when Barrack Obama rides a flying car that runs on turds through my bedroom window and invites me to fly with him to Never Never Land.

God, it sucks being a pessimist.

But hey, in other news, Michael Moore doesn't like movies.

Of Black Turtlenecks and Acid-Wash Jeans

So close your eyes for a moment and picture an event that calls together two of the world's most hated bodies: uppity geeks and journalists. This event is like a yearly sermon on the mount with the Jesus of Dickdom presiding over a sea of mop-headed nerds juiced on Starbucks and donning second-hand Armani jackets on top of ironic print T-shirts. The nerds are there to praise their prophet and reaffirm their large egos through what could only be called the largest technology circle jerk know to man. And the journalists-- just like eager pornographers ready to make a buck-- are ready to chronicle this ridiculous event, water it down, and feed it to the hungry masses.

Don't know what I'm talking about?

WWDC '06

This ridiculous gathering of Mac Addicts, bloggers, foreign press, and anyone who gets off on watching Steve Jobs move his hands around is the most sickening moment of the year for me and the biggest reason that I am so anti-Apple. It's not the technology that pisses me off, nor the snazzy interfacing, but the niche factor. The fact that owning an Apple product makes people feel like they're part of some grand movement or, even worse, the hippest hipster in town makes me gag. And when you get thousands of Apple addicts in one place for one big conference, well, I'm wondering why we can't pull a Dresden firebombing on the city of San Francisco.

One of the worst things about WWDC is, in fact, the hype leading up to it. People have been masturbating for the past 360-something days about what's going to be unveiled at THIS conference. An iPod phone? A new Nano? A giant Apple vibrator? Steve Jobs could probably shit in a bag on stage and throw it at the crowd and it would be hailed as the next big thing. In essence it doesn't matter what is released because people will praise it regardless.

It says a lot about the human race, actually: that if you polish plastic correctly, you can make anything into a staple of American consumerism.

The fanaticism, the blind worship by the media: it all comes to a head at WWDC.

Worldwide Dickhead Conference