Der Übermensch ist auf Instagram

“This is Alan, he’s addicted to you tube videos.” 

On the screen a commercial is playing.

While staring at his phone, a man opens the door of his car and hits a guy on a bike who then flips over the car. The man driving the car is fixated on his cell phone watching a video of a guy getting hit by a car on his bicycle. 

“This is great Jason, you have a gift.” A tall, blonde, moderately attractive 28 year old woman with a great ass that she got from the gym that is attached to her condo named Susan tells him. 

“You have made a great addition to our creative department.”

Jason has been in San Francisco for 3 years. He considers himself an artist but he is working in the marketing department of a technology startup company because rent prices in the city are very high. 

The company Jason works for is called, “Bumble Bee”. He doesn’t know why it’s called that, he has never asked. 

The company prides itself on its "hipness" and "relevance".

Many of the engineers as well as the creative department spend most of their time there. They are fed three meals a day, have an endless supply of beer and even have a recreation center full of games. 

The Nintendo 64 emulator is especially popular. 

Also, ping pong. 

Jason studied art design in college. 

He is a nice guy. He likes to have fun and is happy to be living in the city. 

He was born in Wisconsin and even though he loves his home town, wanted a new experience.

Jason, at his heart is an artist. Well, he feels that way. 

You see, Jason is not an artist, he is an asshole. 

Of course he is a very nice guy but what makes him an asshole is that he is completely oblivious to the fact that in order to create art you have to suffer. He did read that before though, in a book, in a class.

Jason came from a nice, clean, nurturing middle class white family. 

He is happy. 

He also is not aware that other people suffer. 

He wants to be creative though but really he is simply emulating things he has seen. 

This is not art.

It's confusing, I know, I do it all the time.

In a story like this, Jason’s life will take one of two directions. 

 

In one scenario, Jason will meet a girl.  Most likely of ethnic origins. This girl will show him the hardships that she has endured and help him understand that even though he is a nice guy, he is completely out of touch with the frustration that others experience daily. 

Jason will then have new experiences, meet new people, quit his job and devote his time to working with people who have been neglected by a system that favors those who are typically white, come from middle and upper class families and do not understand the nuance of exploitation that makes some rich and others poor. 

He does not talk about himself anymore, rather he sees the needs of others and is overcome with compassion. His art reflects his passion for life and expressing the deep sorrow that he feels when he witnesses the mistreatment of those whose voices go largely ignored. 

He is deeply pained at his own inadequacies. He does not make excuses for himself anymore. Rather, he learns to accept who he is. He is filled with rage at the act of distorting the truth in order to convince the population that they need to buy a product despite our over indulgence at the expense of a genuine culture. 

The other thing that can happen is what most likely will happen.

Jason will work at his job, try and paint in his spare time and go to hip restaurants with obnoxious names that serve slightly better than average food and drinks with people who are just like him that he met at work. 

They will have endless conversations about how they have always wanted to live in a city and do very cool things and meet very cool people.

Occasionally they will say things like, "wow, it's really crazy in the Ukraine." And, "what does ISIS mean?"

Eventually Jason will meet a girl who is very much like him and they will buy a house that had recently evicted a family of non white origin who had lived there for over 20 years. 

He will have no idea. 

They will have a couple of kids, send them to private school and live boring, mundane lives while drinking very tasty beer and watching Netflix originals (which, indecently are not too bad.)

For the sake of a continuation of an unoriginal theme, Jason will (stupidly ironically, or ironically stupidly) get hit by a car while watching monkeys jump on top of a bus full of tourists having sex (the monkeys, not the tourists. Well, maybe the tourists).

“Where am I?”

“You are in an ambulance.”

“How did I get here?”

“You were hit by a car.”

“That’s ironic.”

“It is?”

“I think so, I don’t know why I said that.”

Jason will be taken to an emergency room where he learns that he has no idea who he is. 

After a month of recuperation, even though he has never regained his memory, Jason returns to work.

(Jason walks through a door.)

People yelling in front of brightly colored streamers crowd in front of a big sign that says “Welcome Back!”

Jason does not recognize anyone but he can tell that they are all a "little fucking weird". 

“Hi.” Jason said to a tall, blonde, semi attractive woman with a great ass she got from the gym attached to her condo. 

“Welcome Back!”

She exclaimed. 

Jason felt uneasy. On the one hand he was not attracted to this woman but when she turned around, he was.

Someone hands Jason a beer. Jason drinks it and thinks, “damn, this is really good.”

Someone also hands Jason a taco, “holy shit! That’s a good taco.”

After all the partying and ping pong die down, Jason gets back to work. 

Unfortunately for Jason, he does not remember how to use the software. 

Fortunately for Jason, it isn’t very hard. 

Jason picks it up quickly and gets right back to work. 

His boss, the tall blonde lady, likes Jason’s new edge. 

Jason has a new edge BTW. 

He uses profanity more loosely. 

“This is fucking awesome!”

He exclaims. 

Also, he buys "skater clothes". 

They are still new so he has kind of an urban, hip, informal/formal work style. 

Jason really wants to have sex with the blonde lady. 

Fortunately for him, she also wants to have sex with him. 

So they go to one of the studios in the building and have sex.

(a little while later)

They both walk out of the door. Jason is buckling his belt and he winks at the fat guy sitting behind a computer who is wearing a t shirt that says, "engineers do it sitting down"  and is writing code for an application that helps single dads find cool stuff to do on the weekends that they have their kids.

You see, Jason sucks. 

He will always suck because he just does. 

He is not inherently a bad person. He just does whatever he has to do to survive and be happy.

That’s it, nothing else. 

His white, liberal parents fucked up. *

They forgot that they needed to raise by example, not simply have NPR playing in the background while they paid their Mexican laborer a small amount of money for mowing their lawn that shouldn’t have been watered in the first place because there is a severe drought going on. 

(of course that doesn’t really apply because there has never been a drought in Wisconsin)

(I think)

(Yeah)

(pretty sure)

*But they are proud of him.

It's Global Warming People, Stop Wasting all that Ice

The Ice bucket challenge has really encouraged me. 

It made me realize that even though the only reason most of us will ever do any type of good deed is so we can make a video doing something uninteresting yet quasi self sacrificial with the primary effect being an inflation of our sense of self with a rationalization akin to preaching salvation to dying baby seals. 

People have argued that even though it appears that they are attention seeking whores in actuality they are offended by that kind of attitude because what we are talking about is a good cause and we all believe in good causes. 

And it is a good cause. 

That’s why Bill Gates is such a huge piece of shit. As well as other rich people, also, the rest of us. 

We know that there are things we can do and we believe that we should.

But we don’t. 

People like Bill Gates will donate huge sums of money to very worthy causes. Acknowledging that there is a tremendous need. Yet, he still keeps the majority of his 70 billion dollars a year income. 

So why do people venerate him? And why do we congratulate ourselves for donating ten bucks when we could easily do more? 

It’s like there is some secret code language that our egos speak to one another. A sort of anti feel bad about ourselves cut off switch. 

We all want to feel that we are good people but true sacrifice is not in our nature. 

Maybe it’s a defense mechanism. We don’t want to feel bad so we selectively ignore our apathy while taking pride in any thing we do that might seem nice no matter how sparse. 

I wish that worked the other way around. 

For all of the aggressive drivers and people who cut in line at the grocery store when they have a huge basket of organic, healthy liberal pretense food when I have candy bar that I desperately need to inhale, I wish I could ignore all of them in favor of the friendly smile I got from a passerby. Or the nice driver who actually let me switch lanes in order to get to the exit I needed instead of ignoring my turn signal even though they are 50 feet behind me in the right lane and continue to speed up in order to almost run into me and give them the opportunity to pretend that my intent was to ram their car and allow them the righteous feeling of indignation which grants them the right to flip me off and call me a piece of shit just so I can go home and watch some famous celebrity talk about a disease that they had until recently never heard of in order to draw attention to their waning career. 

Now if we can only pee our pants for hunger.

Justice is Blind, just not Color Blind

Growing up skateboarding frequently brought trouble from the frisk happy five O.

When you are a skateboarder the cops will fuck with you, a lot.

They will ridicule you, even sometimes touch your genitals.

Luckily for me I never got murdered because my skateboard is totally bitchin.

Although one time a cop did pull his gun out but that is because I was in a van with a Filipino and some Mexicans, oh and my wife who is of questionable skin tone.

I know what you're thinking, should've been in an RAV4 with Scandinavians.

So yeah, my bad.

It's kind of like how black people have to tell their children how to hopefully not get shot by the police even if they are already not doing anything to warrant it.

It's like that but for white people.

Fortunately for white people the only thing their parents had to say was, "just remember to be white today."

Unfortunately for black people, their parents have to tell them, "just say, 'yes sah, no sah'."

I guess it's a tradition really and nobody should ever go against tradition.

Except maybe we can this one time go against the tradition that goes, "well, I'm not black and I don't really care about what happens to other people because I already feel that I am in this tenuous position in society where I am not totally sure of my status and in some ways am grateful because there are other groups of people that are treated worse than I am based on their ethnic heritage and maybe if there is a scapegoat, society will let me slide by without incident and I know that even if things aren't going exactly as I planned there are those who have it worse and will always have it worse as long as I keep my mouth shut even though if I think about it I do feel guilty about the privileges bestowed upon me."

Plus, most of us don't care that children make our clothes.

So yeah, that last part is unrelated but really it's not. We are very good at laying our brains to rest in a warm North Face down sleeping bag when it comes to getting what we want, which is to live comfortably and spend most of our time trying to get people to think that we are awesome and expensive puffy jackets.

So am I saying we should feel bad?

Yes, that's what I'm saying.