Rhinocrisy

Some of you may be wondering, “Why does saurabh maintain a blog and never write on it?” And the answers to that, which, in fact, do exist, are manifold, and could be readily presented. To whit, as it were, ter woo, the provision of, at the very least, the escape tunnel, the emergency exit, the pressure release gasket, ejection seat lever or Monopoly Get Out of Jail Free card. Any time I wish, I may express my opinion herein, and there it is, expressed! Which cannot be undone, just like spilling milk into the carpet: that milk is in there, buddy, and you better just throw out the carpet. You might be able to cover it up with odor eaters, but you’ll know, lying in your bed late at night, that particles of milk still lie hiding beneath the curled nylon fibers and layers of dog hair down there in your living room. Similarly this blog, taking “the carpet” to mean the incorporeal ether, the fabric of society, the zeitgeist. At any moment, any insight of mine can be put “out there”, from the very mundane to the utterly trivial. That satisfaction is enough justification to maintain any blog. Blog about the weather. Blog about my pants. Blog about why Adrian Brody’s nose just isn’t straight, goddamnit.

All of which might be as much as to say, as you are likely doing right now, “Well, you obviously haven’t got anything worth saying anyway.” But that’s neither here, nor is it there. That simple fact has not prevented a long parade of insufferable dullards from foisting their worm-eaten wit on an aghast humanity, and never let it be said that I am too proud to aspire to the company of dullards. I insist on my impressing my logorrhea on an unwilling audience.

Some corners of the incorporeal ether have, in recent days, heard speculation that the “blogosphere” is at an end, made morsel of by the Gargantua of our time, the “M-S-M”. To those mongers of rumor I say, toddle pit, and other such nonsensical utterings, since really that’s the only response that sort of ridiculous prattle deserves. Can we imagine an end to the human desire to vent, to carp, to blow hard? Will there ever be a day when our mothers would not call up our best friend Kenny’s mothers, who they are also friends with, and tell them about what they overheard about the president of the local Lions Club while standing in line at the bank? Heck, no! And so long as this fundamental desire, as basic as our need to sleep and fuck, exists, why, now that we’ve got the bits in our teeth, we’ll shake the reins and let our words stream out across the wind. I proudly declaim the motto of the blogger: “I have nothing to say, and you’re going to have to hear it!”

I’ll tell those cocksucking motherfuckers what kind of asshole shit I consider obscene. And maybe why I like cunts too.

It is embarrassing to live in a country that allows torture and the execution of minors but thinks families need to be “protected” from the word “fuck.”

At the local vegan cafe, the dishes are all named for positive affirmations. You can ask for the “live bruschetta” and the waiter will say, “One `I am bountiful,’ coming up.” You might want a pecan pie, but you will be served an “I am perfect.” Yerba mate chai is “I am triumphant.”

It’s a bit like Starbucks, where you can order a medium coffee and hear the clerk — who is either a barista or a partner, depending on the context — call out, “Grande Americano!” But it’s worse because at least “Venti Americano” has a single referent. Its cloud of meaning in the mind is concentrated and precise. It doesn’t hijack perfectly good words and herniate their meanings. To me, Cafe Gratitude’s menu is Operation Iraqi Freedom all over again.

It would be harmless except that I’m kind of dumb. Euphemism fogs my thoughts. The best thoughts come directly and unencumbered, like a great dancer leaping up, tapping her feet together a few times and returning silently to the stage. But my thoughts rarely do that. They are tied up with mental fascia that drag on my mind just as fascia tissues drag on my legs when I try to jump a high-hurdle. If the word “freedom” is tied in the mind to aerial bombardment, and the word “graceful” is tied to steamed quinoa with fresh basil-almond pesto, those words will flow less freely in my head, language will become more cumbersome, thoughts come more slowly and arrive laden with distracting and antisocial subtexts.

Worse yet is the lack of sincerity. A close pal of mine works at a school where the staff have routine 15-minute staff meetings where people can offer a shout-out, thank yous, apology or call-outs — you know, a STAC. ^* If I’m happy with someone, I tell them face-to-face. I think public affirmations are a way of showing off. They are mainly about making the thanker look good, not the thankee. Formalizing and mandating thanks for other people replaces a beautiful feeling with an often-empty public display. People who do this too often can come to confuse the public display with the real feeling. I have known performers — actors and other showoffs — who become so good at ersatz feeling that they lose the capacity for the heartfelt variety.

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^* Even the name of the ritual is an offense against language. What does it have to do with any of the meanings of “stack”? A neat pile of flat objects, a bunch of speakers, a series of computer memory addresses, boobs — doesn’t this word carry enough meanings already? Why make an awkward, phonetically ridiculous acronym for a something people already know?

Not content with making a building that looks like the headquarters for Team Depeche Mode, the planners behind the new World Trade Center-replacement continue to insist on calling the building the “Freedom Tower”.

Now, one must give them credit: they had the good sense to trash their previous design, which might have given unsuspecting tourists the mistaken impression that the city had suffered an abortive attack by some sort of giant robot, one of whose limbs (complete with trapezoidal metallic faux-biceps and pulverizing laser-cannon attachment) had been severed and left behind.

However, the new design really isn’t THAT much better, and it still features the pulverizing laser-cannon attachment, along with pulverizing laser. I was a fan of the short-lived ghostly light sculpture (”Tribute in Light”) put up a few years back to mark Ground Zero. This laser-cannon attachment, though, doesn’t pull it off nearly as well and just ends up looking hokey.

Hokey is, I have to conclude, what they’re going for; why else would they have dubbed it the “Freedom Tower”? My god, can you imagine the embarassment of its inhabitants describing their place of employment?

ROGER: I work in the Freedom Tower.

BELINDA: I’m sorry, where?

ROGER: The Freedom Tower.

[BELINDA laughs explosively, sending a piece of pimento flying from her mouth onto ROGER's tie.]

BELINDA: Oh, I’m sorry… hmmm… Freedom Tower! (Giggles.)

And moreover I fear the word “Freedom” is starting to suffer from that phenomenon of overuse, where you repeat a word so many times that it begins to feel rubbery and unfamiliar, as if part of your brain has become fatigued and refuses to acknowledge its meaning anymore. And the men who are fond of overapplying it so clearly misapprehend that meaning that I’m starting to despise the word itself. Its constant application is meant to reassure us of some great Value, no doubt, but as the word erodes I’m finding that the Value itself is becoming increasingly slippery, until, perhaps, I will cynically doubt whether it exists at all, whether it was ever anything other than the blubbery syllable floating off the lips of disgusting demagogues.