The Irony of Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I hope you all had a splendid time with family and friends this weekend.

I think Thanksgiving is a great holiday. As my grandma eloquently said in our prayer before eating yesterday, "It is sad that we must be reminded to be thankful" but nonetheless, the reminder is good. There is something to be said about setting aside a special day to give thanks for the abundance we've been blessed with. It's a good thing.

Too bad Thanksgiving has nothing to do with being thankful anymore. Like every holiday, it has been corrupted by commercials and consumerism. Not having the best turkey, the prettiest tablecloth, or the latest harvest-y door decoration is enough to set most people back into the realm of self-pity and dis-contentedness--subconsciously or otherwise.

It's also amusing that America dedicates the last Thursday of November to giving thanks for everything, and the last Friday of November to buying so much retail that it finally puts stores into "the black". Thanksgiving Day, immediately followed by Buy Everything You've Wanted All Year But Couldn't Afford/ Justify Day. It almost seems like many people use Thanksgiving as that justification for indulging the next morning. We spent the entire day yesterday being thankful, today we can go back to being discontent.

Thanksgiving starts and ends in the kitchen. We wake up, put in the turkey, start baking pies and chopping up veggies, peeling potatoes and cutting bread. Then we eat. Then we wash dishes for three hours. It's actually a kind of frustrating and stressful experience, leaving everyone secretly grumpy and upset, but also secretly guilty for not being really thankful for the running water and soap that is allowing you to wash dishes.

Then you get those people that text you and say,

Dear Everyone I've Ever Known,

I just thought I'd take a split second from my day to tell you that you mean so much to me that I'd take a split second out of my day to tell you that I'm thankful for you, that's how thankful I am for you. I am just so thankful for every single second we've ever spent together. In fact, I'm just ridiculously thankful for everything that has ever happened to me. I'm thankful for every color of the rainbow, and every smell in the world, I'm even thankful for spiders, rats and snakes, I'm thankful for my cell walls and cytoplasm. I'm thankful for subatomic particles and also intangible things like love, peace, happiness, and thankfulness, too! I'm just so freaking thankful. How are you today?

Love, 

T. Hank Fuller. 


These people are astonishing for two reasons: their inability to recognize a run-on sentence and their amazing and admirable ability to be thankful in every circumstance. I truly wish I could be more thankful. I don't, however, wish to show that in the form of such a text message. Mostly just because it would suck to receive that message on a bad day. How would you even respond to that?

Dear T. Hank Fuller,

I'm glad that you felt the need to list all the things you're thankful for right down to the smallest things you could possibly think of. I'm actually having a really horrible day. 

Love,

Thanksgiving Scrooge 

Not to say that thinking about what you're thankful for on a bad day isn't good. It's quite helpful to me, at least. But I am particularly bother by society (American, that is-- I can't speak for other societies) demanding that everyone always has a good day. It has become taboo to respond to an inquiry of emotional state with anything beside "Good. How are you?". This is even further extended on a day fully devoted to giving thanks.

But like I said earlier, I think Thanksgiving really is a good thing. We should have it more than once a year in my opinion. We just need to guard against these inconsistencies and problems. 

Video games.

I am terrified of video games. I seem to have an utter inability to distinguish between reality and virtual reality. I recall one occasion when I was at a friend's cabin and couldn't fall asleep so I watched her brother and his friend play Mario. If you've ever played (or watched anyone else play) Mario, you know how anti-climatic it can be. At one point this crazy freaky looking temple thing emerged suddenly from the sand and I jumped big time. This is Mario, guys. In fact, I'm pretty sure it was Paper Mario. I would love to tell you that I was only startled because it was 2am, but that would simply be a lie.

A friend of ours gave my brother and me an Xbox and some games last year. One of these games was Halo [3] which we thought might be fun. We decided to play the one-on-one-shoot-each-other thing. It took me a good hour before I could ever kill him simply because every time I saw him in my screen I started jumping around like an idiot. I just get nervous, scared and excited all at once and I couldn't control myself.

I've asked gamers why they game, and they respond with "it's fun." I can imagine that being nervous, scared and excited would be fun sometimes (like watching a suspense film is fun). So let me start this entire post off with this: video games have the merit of being fun-- exciting, nerve-racking, and scary at times.

In addition to being a fun activity, gaming is a competitive one. Like sports, there's a desire to win, and a pride when you do win. This is also-- admittedly or otherwise-- a big reason why gaming is so popular.

I would argue, however, that there is more at work behind the fun and competition. There are undoubtedly other ways to have fun and be competitive, so why video games? (Some of you gamers are already spitting out answers at your computer screen. If you have some legitimate reasons, you may be one step ahead of your fellow gamers. (A legitimate answer is not that it's fun.)) What video games offer that other activities don't is virtual-ness. Playing a video game is like living life, only with infinite second chances and awesome supernatural abilities. I'm not going to pretend to be exempt from the draw to this; I wish I could jump as high as the guys in Halo.

The question, then, remains this: Is it okay to be living an ulterior life? My simple response is yes. It is okay. But would it be better to live life in reality, doing epic things for the cause of real-life problems rather than fictional disasters? Yes. Video games can be a means of a necessary escape from real life, which is perfectly legitimate. But when one starts sacrificing real life for an imaginary existence there is not only lack of productivity, there is perhaps a serious problem.

In one of Mark Driscoll's sermons, he discusses this topic:

Before you dismiss everything he just said as weird religious jargon think about this: do video games count for anything in life? (Gamers are ready to tell me that if they get good enough they could win competitions, or if they go through enough school they could be video game designers or something. Yeah. Go for it.) I think it is pretty far fetched to say that avid gaming will bring any tangible benefits beyond thumb-controller coordination. In moderation, video games may have positive effects on things such as education, but I think even these benefits are more to be owed to video game technology rather than video games themselves.

 Exchanging reality for a fictional existence is a reflection of an unfortunate disconnect. Desire to do something spectacular and meaningful is wasted on video games, instead of acted out in real-life. This presents us with a generation of epic warriors, master-minds and ----, who rescue the helpless, speak out against injustice, fight crime, accomplish nearly impossible top-secret missions, defend humanity, and ward off evil-- "with their thumbs."

Hipsterism

 A strange thing started happening to me last March-- I began being referred to as "hipster." Before that, people would often say things like "different," "inde," "weird, "defiant" or any other of the many words that could classify a person as something different from the general population. When I was originally confronted with this classification, I wasn't sure how to respond. My immediate thought: what does that even mean? 

So am I a hipster? 

The dictionary defines hipster as:

noun Slang .

1 .a person who is hip.

2. hepcat.

3. a person, especially during the 1950s, characterized by a particularly strong sense of alienation from most established social activities and relationships.
 

Since I didn't know what "hepcat" meant, I looked that up too:
 

noun Older Slang .

1. a performer or admirer of jazz, especially swing.

2. a person who is hep; hipster.

Well, I certainly love swing dancing, but I'm not sure if that's enough to label me a hipster.

  

According to the urban dictionary  "It is part of the hipster central dogma not to be influenced by mainstream advertising and media, which tends to only promote ethnocentric ideals of beauty" 

 http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=hipster&defid=2705928

As long as I can remember, this has been true of me. I was the middle school girl who refused to step inside a Hollister or Abercrombie & Fitch because I hated the idea of over-priced clothes that looked the same as things you could buy at Aeropostale or American Eagle, but without the expensive logo. In fact, I disliked even going to either of those less expensive stores because they were still essentially the same product that Target and Walmart sold. So yes, I do have a particular distaste for the way that mainstream advertising and media get away with selling the same product for more, just by their logo.

Apparently, however, I wasn't alone all those years. All of these articles about hipsters make it seem like all these years there were ranks of upset teenagers secretly defying mainstream behavior just waiting to sprout into maturity and make a statement about style and values. Or maybe it was all a bit more subtle. Maybe some of us just didn't want to fall for the trap of expensive clothing, and decided to shop at thrift stores instead. Or maybe some of us don't think pink polos are cute.

But now, we see a new genre of these anti-mainstream people. Now people shop at Urban Outfitters, where they spend $200 on a pair of jeans, and $50 on a metro vest. Or they go to American Apparel to buy $30 v-necks (that are, by the way, outrageously soft), or Buffalo Exchange which is basically a really expensive second-hand store. It is like the second generation of the Hollister trap going on. Perhaps round two is even worse than the first. The entire basis of the "hipster" movement was based on defying "ethnocentric ideals of beauty" and not being "influenced by mainstream advertising and media." But now hipsters are paying lots of money for what new trends are saying is cool, which is what old trends said was ugly. Hipsterism is about anti-trends. But when anti-trends become trendy, what happens?

Well that's where we find ourselves with our fellow hipster friends. The entire population of hipsters deny that they are part of a trend. I contend that hipsters can be defined as a people that desire to hold to a "different" set of ideals in all areas such as fashion, music, food and even politics.

Therefore, I plead innocent of being a hipster. I hold to the ideals that I always have: I like what I like, and don't let stupid things influence that. I buy things from the thrift store because I know I can find what I want for less. I listen to music based on talent and sound, not based on what's popular. I eat the food I like and do the things I like. This used to be called "Inde" and it is now being mistaken for "Hipster" but I want to strictly identify the difference:


Hipsters follow anti-trends because they are against the norm. 
Inde people follow their own trend regardless of everyone else and their opinions.

I will admit to having hipster moments-- those prideful times when I make a decision based on what everyone else isn't doing. But I think we can all honestly admit to those.

So there you have it. I am Inde.

That being said, you can expect many posts regarding hipsters. I find hipsterism comical, and I can be humble enough to laugh at even the things that relate to me. 

Hipsterism: a prompt

Read me.

The Disgrace of Modern Children's Shows: Kid Edition

None of these are good.

Spongebob:

     Spongebob is annoying and disgusting. He's a sponge. He lives in a pineapple. He periodically removes his own limbs. He has a pet snail. What about this sounds good at all? There is no quality of lesson-learning. No good.

Adventure Time:

     I abhor this show. I've seen one episode. There was some little girl (in gender only, as far as species I haven't the foggiest idea) in a tent crying. Some guy with outrageously long legs flew in and started screaming at her. He said something to the effect of (and I kid you not), "You stole my purity!" After some fighting or arguing or something, which apparently the intruder won, he said "Now that I have my purity back I can return to the Virgin Islands!" What kind of kids show says stuff like that?

     Maybe I'm judging a book by its cover. Does anyone have anything positive to say about Adventure Time (other than the ten-year-old I nanny)?

Chowder:

      This is a television show about a kid that lives in a chef's kitchen with his uncle (I think it's his uncle but maybe not) the chef. I have 3 major complaints about this show:

1) The cooking always fails. Not just a little bit, mind you. No. The cooking fails as in explodes the entire building, blows the roof off of the kitchen, turns all the pets in the town to ash-- that kind of thing.

2) Someone is always critically damaged. Someone always looses oxygen, or implodes, or is electrocuted, or falls to an abyss. Something along the general lines of too-damaged-to-come-back-to-life happens in every episode. Then of course, two seconds later, everything is back to normal.

3) The scene transitions are pictures of random food rapidly filling up the screen in different animation than the rest of the show.

I rest my  case.

Tuctu

Assignment: pretend to be writing the teacher an excuse for your missing homework. 

"Oh no I lost my homewrok Christy. My dog Tuctu chrid to eet it but he cudn't fit it in his mouth. Then my dad put his coffy on it and mad a big mrch on it. I tuck it in my car to finish it. I roled down and it flow out the window I thride to chas it but a thornato cam and I gad to get back in the car." 

What can I say? I was a pretty creative kid. 

I distinctively remember literally "lol-ing"  after writing my second sentence. In retrospect, it's really sub-hilarious, but I was convinced that it was ridiculously clever to make fun of my own dog for his smallness. I obviously wasn't very good at story-telling yet. In fact, I think that after a few lines I realized that homework not being eaten by a dog and getting coffee spilled on it isn't enough of an excuse, so I resorted to a tornado. Somewhat of a jump in intensity, but hey, I was limited on time. 

This is, by the way, the same dog previously written about in "Taceta". I could never quite decide how to spell it, I guess.