Old Mean WORTHLESS

Old means worthless in America, over the hill old man, we don’t want to hear your opinions. And the hilarious thing is the old people buy it, they diet down to nothing, wear their children’s clothing and imitate their lifestyle. Why else to get plastic surgery other than to evade the aging police. It’s like the whole country’s living “Logan’s Run,” but no one will admit it. And they also won’t admit that with age comes wisdom, which grows from experience. You live and you learn, but most people don’t learn to let the epithets of the youngsters slide off of them. They feel inadequate themselves, when the youngsters say they are they don’t own their identity, they change it.

Income inequality. But it’s a television third rail, because of “class warfare.” Huh? There’s already class warfare, why worry about the moniker?

America’s inane optimism, wherein if you’re not a winner, or on your way to victory, you’re a base whiner who must be shouted down and removed from the debate, you’re a hater trotting out facts without concrete solutions so please get out of my way as I delusionally work twenty hours a day pursuing victory at a casino wherein the house always wins.

It’s like an album where all ten cuts are winners, where there’s no bait and switch, where when you’re done you want more.

It turns out that we’re not interested in exterior, but interior, that everything being told and sold to us is wrong. You don’t have to be beautiful, your father doesn’t have to be rich, but to triumph you’ve got to be smart, experienced and creative.

Half Full – Half Empty

This Illustration gives an Interesting Perspective to:

News final

“The New Yorker” is the best-written mainstream publication. But that does not mean it’s always right or on the cutting edge or can influence policy. It just means it’s the most rewarding reading experience. Too many magazines focus on the glitz and not the substance…then again, the average person can’t understand substance.

You see Kim Kardashian in the news because you want to. Want to banish her? Stop reading the stories.

The press stopped hounding Owen Wilson after his suicide attempt, demonstrating it can exercise restraint. But somehow, it never does. If the press didn’t report every move, would Amanda Bynes fly straight? Lindsay Lohan?

See who is paying the bills… Trust trade magazines and sites for raw data, discard the analysis, they say positive things about those who pay them.

Beware the professional prognosticators… Who said the iPod was too expensive and no one would want the iPad. Now digital music rules and tablets are killing the desktop. Furthermore, reporters on this beat go to the same damn pundits every time, skewing the story. But the iPod and iPad show that the pundits are powerless. The people will do what they want to do.

“Huffington Post” has a better layout than the “New York Times,” but is purely link-bait. The “New York Times” site needs a makeover, but no one working there understands design or the web, they’re too busy pounding their chests and claiming they’re reporters. What did Steve Jobs teach us? Number one comes usability!

“USA Today” is irrelevant. Because its bland stories are done better online, and no one’s got a captive audience anymore, you can get the news on your phone, you don’t need a physical paper.

There’s a need for local news, but local newspapers can’t make it financially. The “New York Times” and “Wall Street Journal” survive, everything else is up for grabs.

People need news. They don’t need to get it from traditional sources.

There’s new news every day, want your story to survive? Keep it alive, keep making news every day.

Kids today know more news than their parents, they’re exposed to it all day long.

10 of 30

1. Have children. The rest of life is b.s., all the achievement and the wealth. At the core, we’re just animals, looking for love and inspiration. No one will be remembered.

2. The older you get, the wiser you are, but with baby boomers trying to emulate the young, ageism is rampant in America. If only oldsters would own their wisdom. But then they’d have to own the lines in their faces and their lumpy bodies.

3. Obesity kills. Ignore Gwyneth Paltrow and Jennifer Aniston, the skinny-minnies, the fat police, the people who want you to make you feel bad so they can feel better. But the health consequences of excess weight are undeniable. Blame computers, blame the government, blame food producers, but we need a national campaign to get everybody up and moving, for their own benefit.

4. Exercise makes you feel better. Don’t go run a mile if you’ve been on the couch, work your way up and find something you enjoy, otherwise you’ll never continue it. But exercise gives you both an endorphin rush and perspective, it’s a great respite from your regular life.

5. Travel gives you perspective. Sure, it can also be enjoyable, but one problem we have in the U.S. is few have been anywhere else.

6. Don’t be afraid to complain. It’s the upbeat nitwits that bother me most. Woody Allen famously said life is about the horrible and the miserable, we’re all trying to get along, if you keep telling me your life is great and you’ve got no problems, I’m gonna tune out.

7. College isn’t about what you learn in class, but what you learn outside of it.

8. Great teachers are few and far between.

9. Pursue your interests. As soon as somebody says you’re spending too much time on something, you’re on the right track.

10. People love story. That’s the essence of novels and TV and movies. That’s why reality TV shows have scriptwriters.

Hooked on Phonics

From the diary of a Preschool Teacher:

My five-year old students are learning to read.
Yesterday one of them pointed at a picture in a zoo book and said,”Look at this! It’s a frickin‘ elephant!”
I took a deep breath, then asked…”What did you call it?”
“It’s a frickin‘ elephant! It says so on the picture!”

And so it does…
 

 

” A f r i c a n Elephant ”

Hooked on phonics! Ain’t it wonderful?

 

Childhood to Conquer Difficulties

We were told in childhood that the way to conquer a difficulty is to fight it and demolish it. That theory is, of course, the one that should be taught to young people. Many of the difficulties we encounter in youth are not permanent; and the combination of a heroic courage, a resolute will, and a tireless persistence will often – probably usually – break them down. Bu tin later years the essential elements in the situation change. We find in our little world prison-walls which no amount of battering will demolish. Within those walls we must spend our day – spend them happily, or resentfully. Under these new circumstances we must deliberately reverse our youthful technique. We must gain victory, not by assaulting the walls, but by accepting them. Only when this surrender is made can we assure ourselves of inward quietness, and locate the net step on the road to ultimate victory.

Our Difficulties

We should make ourselves stop trying to explain our own difficulties. Our first impulse is to try to account for them, figure out why what has happened did happen. Sometimes such an effort is beneficial: more often it is distinctly harmful. It leads to introspection, self-pity, and vain regret; and almost invariably it creates within us a dangerous mood of confusion and despair. Many of life’s hard situations cannot be explained. They can only be endured, mastered, ad gradually forgotten. Once we learn this truth, once we resolve to use all our energies managing life rather than trying to explain life, we take the first and most obvious step toward significant accomplishment.

Getting Old 3

And what’s up with the fascination with politics? It’s like getting your AARP card. You hit fifty and suddenly what’s happening in D.C. is utterly fascinating, whereas when you were young you barely looked at the paper, unless it was to read the sports scores or concert reviews. Now you read the Arts section last. You don’t care about most of the performers and the raw hype rubs you wrong.

That’s one thing that sucks about being old. The inability to turn off the spigot of hype. Buy this! See this! It’s the greatest! But you’ve been burned before. Again and again and again.

And there’s no self-respect. It can be the best football game of the year but the TV network is still hyping some lame sitcom that will fail in weeks, they’ve even got the announcer saying how great it is.

And then there are people like Rupert Murdoch, who don’t realize they’re not going to live forever. That’s the great leveler, death.

So I don’t know what oldster art looks like. Those healthy enough to make it are not angsting in love, they’re more worried about their retirement account. And if you tackle an adult subject, you can’t get financing, the young ‘un at the studio can’t relate and believes there’s no audience. And the potential audience is so wrapped up in its lifestyle, so resistant to hype, that whatever penetrates does so slowly, and media doesn’t care about that which is not immediate.

But, once again, being old is great. Except for the health issues. You know the game, you can suck out the b.s., you waste so much less time.

But you’re an outsider. They don’t want you on the field and they don’t want to give you any ink.

But life is grand.

Getting Old 2

Everything important to me will be thrown out by my heirs

And when you’re young everything is so dear. If it gets broken or stolen your life will end. Get old and you realize you’ll just replace it. You won’t be happy, but it’s a minor hassle.

And then there are the aches and pains. You do read about these. How you wake up and that’s as good as you’re gonna feel all day. But they don’t tell you that everybody is born broken, with a time bomb inside, and some of those you love most, who lived the healthiest of lives, will be kicked to the curb by fate and fade into memory. Then again, those who take their own lives live front and center in our brains for eons. If you decide to leave, we can’t forget you, why is that?

And no one tells you your opinion won’t count. That having lived for decades, through the last century, suddenly you’re dumb and inexperienced. You get happier as you get older, who’d want to be younger? Then again, all the boomers are chasing the fountain of youth, they won’t accept that the best plan is to kick back and enjoy the ride.

And time… When did they stop making less of it? Sunday night, you realize your entire week is shot. You don’t have time to do everything you want and you’re only interested in that which satiates.

Meanwhile, society bombards you with messages of inadequacy. You’re too old, too fat, too poor, irrelevant. But that’s not how you feel. That’s how young people feel. Despite “Jersey Shore” and the glorification of adolescents, being young is fraught with despair. But you rarely read about it, otherwise the world would be topsy-turvy, old people would rule.

And they do. But they won’t accept their fate. They’re just pissed they’re not young.

Extreme heat slows you down. lt becomes forced relaxation.

Sex and orgasm become very tricky if you’re just fooling around. An orgasm is a real chemical thing, and it does something to your brain, even if you’re not interested in doing it. And whether it’s you or the other person, it’s what makes things a mess if you don’t wanna go the distance. You can’t underestimate it.

If I could meet anyone or go anywhere in history? I’d like to be able to be back for the Big Band era, so that I could just walk around and listen to all those guys play that music. And dance.

If there’s one wish that I have in life, it’s to connect, to connect to my children, connect to my wife, connect to my friends, to connect to you. On my tombstone, I’d like it to say: “He tried to connect.”