Stumbling on Happiness
The industrial age brutalizes human beings. But mass culture eases our pain, channels our rage and fuses it into war or profit. If you consume the right products, take the right medicine, drink the right beer, and drive the right car, then you're not going to feel anything you don't like.
Old country, blues, rap, gypsy, cumbia, bluegrass, cajun, ethnic, and good old American ROCK and FUCKING ROLL!!!
WHITE CHICKS AND GANG SIGNS
Recuerdo la playa de la puebla bonita; La Ticla, Michoacan, donde quedar el mejor seviche y mota en todo pais.
Pro Heely Riding is the next Big Sport
John Perry Barlow
The Pursuit of Emptiness by John Perry Barlow
Don't pursue happiness; let it pursue you.
This is the REAL Keep Austin Weird - no hats, no t shirts, no merchandise, no copyright protection. I give respect to the originals.
What would you do right now if you learned that you were going to die in ten minutes?
Would you race upstairs and light that Marlboro you've been hiding in your sock drawer since the Ford administration? Would you waltz into your boss's office and present him with a detailed description of his personal defects? Would you drive out to that steakhouse near the new mall and order a T-bone, medium rare, with an extra side of the really bad cholesterol? Hard to say, of course, but of all the things you might do in your final ten minutes, it's a pretty safe bet that few of them are things you actually did today.
Now, some people will bemoan this fact, wag their fingers in your direction, and tell you sternly that you should live every minute of your life as though it were your last, which only goes to show that some people would spend their final ten minutes giving other people dumb advice. The things we do when we expect our lives to continue are naturally and properly different than the things we might do if we expected them to end abruptly. We go easy on the lard and tobacco, smile dutifully at yet another of our supervisor's witless jokes, read books like this one when we could be wearing paper hats and eating pistachio macaroons in the bathtub, and we do each of these things in the charitable service of the people we will soon become. We treat our future selves as though they were our children, spending most of the hours of most of our days constructing tomorrows that we hope will make them happy. Rather than indulging in whatever strikes our momentary fancy, we take responsibility for the welfare of our future selves, squirreling away portions of our paychecks each month so they can enjoy their retirements on a putting green, jogging and flossing with some regularity so they can avoid coronaries and gum grafts, enduring dirty diapers and mind-numbing repetitions of The Cat in the Hat so that someday they will have fatcheeked grandchildren to bounce on their laps. Even plunking down a dollar at the convenience store is an act of charity intended to ensure that the person we are about to become will enjoy the Twinkie we are paying for now. In fact, just about any time we want something—a promotion, a marriage, an automobile, a cheeseburger—we are expecting that if we get it, then the person who has our fingerprints a second, minute, day, or decade from now will enjoy the world they inherit from us, honoring our sacrifices as they reap the harvest of our shrewd investment decisions and dietary forbearance. - Daniel Gilbert