Talkin Bout My Generation
When I was growing up, I watched as Kid part of Live Aid til the power went out. I look back at my clothes on Easter and the neon colors, the high tops or Nike's that cost a fortune. I look back at my parents generation and watching Woodstock you wonder why people became Hippies, grew their hair long. When this was going on I grew up on Atari, Star wars toys, ghost busters, you name it, pop culture. As I grew up I thought I would be an individual and immune to my generation. Then I got a commodore 64, and through high school took a few programming classes, learned to type, thinking these were independent choices. The typing and computer courses was a well calculated gamble as they have put me where I am in my career, what has allowed me to stand out at my office, was the generation that missed the computer. It gave me a unique skill not to be intimidated by messing around with a computer, much the same way young people in the fifties would not be afraid to tinker with a car, I would be terrified to touch anything under the hood of my car.
We have great brains, but limited capacity for specialist knowledge. You can rare by a great drummer, trombone player, and guitarist, you normally only have enough skill and focus to be truly great at one. For me, my skills would be sixties music, and computers. Though not excelling at either, I am above average in these areas.
Going through the teenage years, I thought I escaped the generation of the nineties. My sister was the one who colored hair hair, listened to alternative. I though, near the end, when I came out of my hormonal funk, ended up at lollaplooza, listened to Korn, and now look back and can identify all that alternative music from the nights when I would lay at night with head phones on. Then came the Internet, I was the Internet generation, going through computers, video games, and then chatting and becoming one with the web. Me and my roommate even ran our own website that seemed silly at the time, but looking back, it was impressive getting noted or reviewed by web searches. It even led to the marriage.
I tried to be individual, I went for my dream to be an archaeologist. Then found I didn't jive well in college like I would have thought. I am a procrastinator, I hate writing, I hate too many rules, and then I learned I didn't have the money or the ability to sell my soul for A's. I got rejected from at the time my only hope a PhD program, to end up rushing to do a masters degree, there was a lot of mental pressure to just get school over with. I hated that Hunter College school, the bastion of liberalism that I despised yet studied a liberal subject, dissecting the rational truth from it, but hating the liberal orthodoxy that enveloped it, the students, and the professors.
I just felt they didn't like me, but more likely, I really didn't like them. Reading about the plight of bums or poor people who made bad decisions, for me was difficult, growing up poor and then getting graded. It seemed unfair when I got a C, but these people were given A's in life because of the color of their skin or their problems.
I thought I was not part of my generation when during the nineties boom, I remember after working in a pharmacy chain I had identified a shop lifter and was sent to the precinct to fill out a report. I found the clerk at the desk talking about Yahoo. Something was odd, why was a cop picking stocks? I was never one for economics, though I offhandedly studied the theory in school about neoconservatism, free markets, and I did OK in math, but was no whiz.
At the time I was doing Gothic and eighties clubs, again thinking I was outside of my generation by living in another, trying to recapture what I thought were happier moments watching music videos as a kid. I had a wide group of friends, but drank as though I was a frat house upstate. I also had a concept of pure love, that I wouldn't date for just sex, I was terrified of disease, and terrified of dating just to date. I thought you date for love, and after several bad experiences there, my out look is radically different now.
Still I thought I was outside my generation and then through a friend when looking for better work while doing graduate school at night, he suggested temp at an office. The first few weeks were an awkward hell. I wasn't dressing right, I was too shy, I knew nothing other than some programs and had very tough old school bosses. By the end of it I was a legend as an assistant and worked damn hard to get there. I thought though I would not be a yuppie, it was my fear, I will not be some yuppie, I will be different. But I was a yuppie, my best friend at the time was older, and taking me to clubs that now remind me of sex in the city. Cosmopolitans were flowing, yuppies were hanging out, and I was five to ten years too young to understand any of it, let a lone score with a girl. It was all just learning.
Looking back with the clubs, the Internet, working in an office at an investment bank when the economy tanked, I lived the nineties. So what of the 2000's? I find my self as we approach 2008 and I inch towards thirty that again, despite thinking I am different, I am fully part of this generation more than any other and now slowly give in these days to accept it.
I moved to the UK accepting an offer for a full time job in compliance. The driver was that I was in love with someone overseas. It all seemed magical that when asked to marry I just said yes. I thought moving to the UK was another chance to be unique, to go where as a child, a place that seemed safe, and my music came from. I found out its far from safe and suffers the same prejudices and teenage crime (fueled by hip hop and easy lives) that I was surrounded with in Brooklyn. The government is just as corrupt if not more so as they convince themselves they are not, cameras man the streets, and the prime minster isn't even elected. The police don't patrol but go after littering, drinking on trains, or your wife saying your shouting. They can't go after teenagers, law would not allow it, the jails are over crowded, and to top it off the worse criminals, such as Islamic preachers, rapists, and murderers have the new EU who says you violate their human rights! These people forget why mankind created law in the first place, to protect society, and deal out justice, but its gotten so full of itself, it now does quite the opposite in a Kafka sort of way, punishing the innocent at airport check points, and giving criminals Human Rights!
I saw September 11th and maybe that is why I wanted out of New York City. I wanted to teach history, but who knows now what would have happened? I may have ended up in compliance anyways, I may still be teaching, I may have moved to teach somewhere else?
The marriages and subsequent issues out here were hard and going through my divorce I don't want to go over that. I want to conclude with my generation, where I am in the 2000's.
First, I dress 2000's, jeans, tshirts, colored cheaper sneakers, my hair is short. I tried at a goatee, did not work out, but facial hair is a bit in. I spike up my hair, though told I need a new style, its enough to get by. I dress very London now, bright dress shirts, I have learned name brands. I am a yuppie, looking to get out of the house and back to an apartment where other yuppies live. I like to cook and I like cartoons still, particularly adult swim, which was of my generation as the jokes are a throw back to our child hood.
I want HD TV, I want DVDs, I own an IPOD and can categorize all my music at the touch of a button. I no longer wonder at wireless Internet connections, amazing how everything I do, type and say goes miles in an instance, and its not even connected anything, my thoughts, via the air instantly....maybe there is a god, we just can not sense him, god is wireless.
I work long hours, ten hour days, all year around. I only get a lot of holiday because I am in England. I have no time to enjoy my time off, too tired with work, and put all my chores to the weekend. The lack of down time, creates frustration, so I have anger problems, that I always had but fueled up by everything. Travelling is a night mare with your right violated at each check point, your bag opened up, your underwear prodded on display, and you find yourself questioning who you are to some retard with IQ lower than your dog, making you a criminal.
Global warming is real, commodities drying up is now real, and with no check on the human population we have to worry for real about things that were only talked about. The hope is that the technology will change and cars won't use gas and etc. green fuel. On top of this we live with horribly unstable places around the world, a war on outright lies yet not protested.
We have useless leaders feeding off useless systems, that are giant pyramid schemes. Our jobs, institutions, and everything are built up like pyramid schemes. Promote idiots, liars, as long as they show up on time and do no work, the fact they are always there is better than the person who works and accomplished, promote the harmless, promote the ones who did not rock the system, which are infected with very evil people who manipulate from within, that is our government, our hospitals, our everything, we are just pawns now. When we switched to salaries we sold our souls for things we don't have time for, that others can steal, that poor who live off our welfare enjoy.
We work long hours, and now with blackberries and roaming systems the lying media tells us they make our lives easier, work from home they say! This is not the truth, these systems break down our relaxation and guilt us back to work. Our managers tell us, check your black berry on holiday, be on call. Never ever stop from working. They want you guilty, why are you sitting there tired, you have NO RIGHT to be tired, you should NOT be watching that movie, get on the computer and write up that presentation! This is a strong subconscious message on the hopes we rise in the pyramid scheme. Give up your twenties to us, give up your thirties to us, then when you are forty if you are rich like them retire, but not us oh no. We will only work harder, the goal posts moving and then be told to give it all to our kids. Spoil them, you work so hard, dump it on them, so they learn the value of nothing. These vicious drones have no soul, they do not know music, only what is popular, as they only have time to watch what people tell them, only watch things they can share in elevator. They know nothing about life, they know nothing about value, because they only work, they have no time to harness any interest, and this is why their children will be the spoiled brats of tomorrow, and we will be slaving even longer for their bad work habits.
I am breaking the cycle, I got angry, I found my marriage was too forced, the wrong person and rather then let it linger I ended it for both our sakes. Its not easy, I got physically sick, I broke down, because unlike others, I studied this all, I saw myself in my nightmare, unable to escape my generation. I am now getting rid of the guilt, deprogramming.
Goodbye marriage, in this world, marriage may come later, but my generation is single, younger guys go with older girls called cougars, I may now be easy prey. My job, I will take the skills I learned and now no longer be bound. They can't bind me no more, I took the skills from them, and rather than slave away, while my job is slowly moved to Bangalore, I can fight back. They don't care about how hard I work, they don't care if I don't take time off around the holidays, with the rapid management changes these days nobody remembers or chooses too. You are forced to throw away old ethics and take for yourself, I have been too nice.
Now I will work hard, I will play harder. I will learn the acoustic guitar, I watch movies each night and catch up. I will follow sport again. I will take as much sick time as I can, like today.
I will not read my black berry on holiday, I hate the fucking thing.
And if they don't like it, they can lay me off or fire me, which they would do anyways no matter how good you are if the chips fall where they may. You work your life off they don't lay a tombstone for you saying you were worker of the year, as companies lay off, or merge, no wonder people go into shock, those that bought into the lies of the system. People, its work, you are there because they pay you, you work, they pay, that's the deal, lets not over complicate it.
Next year, I can decide, do I want to stay for another year? Am I at the top here with no room to move? Am I comfortable? Or more likely try to transfer to another area, see how that goes, if its more of the same, quit and become a journeyman. I don't fear it, I don't fear a boring cubicle, long as the hours are less, this is what nobody gets. You can make the same, and have less bounds, that is what suits me, and this is why I will not listen to others again. I am my own person now. I am free, and while I see a therapist, they tried to put me on mood changing pills, well I broke through all that, its helped me, that I been talking bout my generation, and as we head to 2010, I wonder what is in store, because I am free now, and accepting more of the good things that come to the generation and much more wary of the bad things. I have no choice now, its either that or suicide and I ain't ready to go out just yet, I have some fun things I want to try, that they tell me NOT TO DO.
.....as Les Claypool wrote in my book, Go Chuck!
We have great brains, but limited capacity for specialist knowledge. You can rare by a great drummer, trombone player, and guitarist, you normally only have enough skill and focus to be truly great at one. For me, my skills would be sixties music, and computers. Though not excelling at either, I am above average in these areas.
Going through the teenage years, I thought I escaped the generation of the nineties. My sister was the one who colored hair hair, listened to alternative. I though, near the end, when I came out of my hormonal funk, ended up at lollaplooza, listened to Korn, and now look back and can identify all that alternative music from the nights when I would lay at night with head phones on. Then came the Internet, I was the Internet generation, going through computers, video games, and then chatting and becoming one with the web. Me and my roommate even ran our own website that seemed silly at the time, but looking back, it was impressive getting noted or reviewed by web searches. It even led to the marriage.
I tried to be individual, I went for my dream to be an archaeologist. Then found I didn't jive well in college like I would have thought. I am a procrastinator, I hate writing, I hate too many rules, and then I learned I didn't have the money or the ability to sell my soul for A's. I got rejected from at the time my only hope a PhD program, to end up rushing to do a masters degree, there was a lot of mental pressure to just get school over with. I hated that Hunter College school, the bastion of liberalism that I despised yet studied a liberal subject, dissecting the rational truth from it, but hating the liberal orthodoxy that enveloped it, the students, and the professors.
I just felt they didn't like me, but more likely, I really didn't like them. Reading about the plight of bums or poor people who made bad decisions, for me was difficult, growing up poor and then getting graded. It seemed unfair when I got a C, but these people were given A's in life because of the color of their skin or their problems.
I thought I was not part of my generation when during the nineties boom, I remember after working in a pharmacy chain I had identified a shop lifter and was sent to the precinct to fill out a report. I found the clerk at the desk talking about Yahoo. Something was odd, why was a cop picking stocks? I was never one for economics, though I offhandedly studied the theory in school about neoconservatism, free markets, and I did OK in math, but was no whiz.
At the time I was doing Gothic and eighties clubs, again thinking I was outside of my generation by living in another, trying to recapture what I thought were happier moments watching music videos as a kid. I had a wide group of friends, but drank as though I was a frat house upstate. I also had a concept of pure love, that I wouldn't date for just sex, I was terrified of disease, and terrified of dating just to date. I thought you date for love, and after several bad experiences there, my out look is radically different now.
Still I thought I was outside my generation and then through a friend when looking for better work while doing graduate school at night, he suggested temp at an office. The first few weeks were an awkward hell. I wasn't dressing right, I was too shy, I knew nothing other than some programs and had very tough old school bosses. By the end of it I was a legend as an assistant and worked damn hard to get there. I thought though I would not be a yuppie, it was my fear, I will not be some yuppie, I will be different. But I was a yuppie, my best friend at the time was older, and taking me to clubs that now remind me of sex in the city. Cosmopolitans were flowing, yuppies were hanging out, and I was five to ten years too young to understand any of it, let a lone score with a girl. It was all just learning.
Looking back with the clubs, the Internet, working in an office at an investment bank when the economy tanked, I lived the nineties. So what of the 2000's? I find my self as we approach 2008 and I inch towards thirty that again, despite thinking I am different, I am fully part of this generation more than any other and now slowly give in these days to accept it.
I moved to the UK accepting an offer for a full time job in compliance. The driver was that I was in love with someone overseas. It all seemed magical that when asked to marry I just said yes. I thought moving to the UK was another chance to be unique, to go where as a child, a place that seemed safe, and my music came from. I found out its far from safe and suffers the same prejudices and teenage crime (fueled by hip hop and easy lives) that I was surrounded with in Brooklyn. The government is just as corrupt if not more so as they convince themselves they are not, cameras man the streets, and the prime minster isn't even elected. The police don't patrol but go after littering, drinking on trains, or your wife saying your shouting. They can't go after teenagers, law would not allow it, the jails are over crowded, and to top it off the worse criminals, such as Islamic preachers, rapists, and murderers have the new EU who says you violate their human rights! These people forget why mankind created law in the first place, to protect society, and deal out justice, but its gotten so full of itself, it now does quite the opposite in a Kafka sort of way, punishing the innocent at airport check points, and giving criminals Human Rights!
I saw September 11th and maybe that is why I wanted out of New York City. I wanted to teach history, but who knows now what would have happened? I may have ended up in compliance anyways, I may still be teaching, I may have moved to teach somewhere else?
The marriages and subsequent issues out here were hard and going through my divorce I don't want to go over that. I want to conclude with my generation, where I am in the 2000's.
First, I dress 2000's, jeans, tshirts, colored cheaper sneakers, my hair is short. I tried at a goatee, did not work out, but facial hair is a bit in. I spike up my hair, though told I need a new style, its enough to get by. I dress very London now, bright dress shirts, I have learned name brands. I am a yuppie, looking to get out of the house and back to an apartment where other yuppies live. I like to cook and I like cartoons still, particularly adult swim, which was of my generation as the jokes are a throw back to our child hood.
I want HD TV, I want DVDs, I own an IPOD and can categorize all my music at the touch of a button. I no longer wonder at wireless Internet connections, amazing how everything I do, type and say goes miles in an instance, and its not even connected anything, my thoughts, via the air instantly....maybe there is a god, we just can not sense him, god is wireless.
I work long hours, ten hour days, all year around. I only get a lot of holiday because I am in England. I have no time to enjoy my time off, too tired with work, and put all my chores to the weekend. The lack of down time, creates frustration, so I have anger problems, that I always had but fueled up by everything. Travelling is a night mare with your right violated at each check point, your bag opened up, your underwear prodded on display, and you find yourself questioning who you are to some retard with IQ lower than your dog, making you a criminal.
Global warming is real, commodities drying up is now real, and with no check on the human population we have to worry for real about things that were only talked about. The hope is that the technology will change and cars won't use gas and etc. green fuel. On top of this we live with horribly unstable places around the world, a war on outright lies yet not protested.
We have useless leaders feeding off useless systems, that are giant pyramid schemes. Our jobs, institutions, and everything are built up like pyramid schemes. Promote idiots, liars, as long as they show up on time and do no work, the fact they are always there is better than the person who works and accomplished, promote the harmless, promote the ones who did not rock the system, which are infected with very evil people who manipulate from within, that is our government, our hospitals, our everything, we are just pawns now. When we switched to salaries we sold our souls for things we don't have time for, that others can steal, that poor who live off our welfare enjoy.
We work long hours, and now with blackberries and roaming systems the lying media tells us they make our lives easier, work from home they say! This is not the truth, these systems break down our relaxation and guilt us back to work. Our managers tell us, check your black berry on holiday, be on call. Never ever stop from working. They want you guilty, why are you sitting there tired, you have NO RIGHT to be tired, you should NOT be watching that movie, get on the computer and write up that presentation! This is a strong subconscious message on the hopes we rise in the pyramid scheme. Give up your twenties to us, give up your thirties to us, then when you are forty if you are rich like them retire, but not us oh no. We will only work harder, the goal posts moving and then be told to give it all to our kids. Spoil them, you work so hard, dump it on them, so they learn the value of nothing. These vicious drones have no soul, they do not know music, only what is popular, as they only have time to watch what people tell them, only watch things they can share in elevator. They know nothing about life, they know nothing about value, because they only work, they have no time to harness any interest, and this is why their children will be the spoiled brats of tomorrow, and we will be slaving even longer for their bad work habits.
I am breaking the cycle, I got angry, I found my marriage was too forced, the wrong person and rather then let it linger I ended it for both our sakes. Its not easy, I got physically sick, I broke down, because unlike others, I studied this all, I saw myself in my nightmare, unable to escape my generation. I am now getting rid of the guilt, deprogramming.
Goodbye marriage, in this world, marriage may come later, but my generation is single, younger guys go with older girls called cougars, I may now be easy prey. My job, I will take the skills I learned and now no longer be bound. They can't bind me no more, I took the skills from them, and rather than slave away, while my job is slowly moved to Bangalore, I can fight back. They don't care about how hard I work, they don't care if I don't take time off around the holidays, with the rapid management changes these days nobody remembers or chooses too. You are forced to throw away old ethics and take for yourself, I have been too nice.
Now I will work hard, I will play harder. I will learn the acoustic guitar, I watch movies each night and catch up. I will follow sport again. I will take as much sick time as I can, like today.
I will not read my black berry on holiday, I hate the fucking thing.
And if they don't like it, they can lay me off or fire me, which they would do anyways no matter how good you are if the chips fall where they may. You work your life off they don't lay a tombstone for you saying you were worker of the year, as companies lay off, or merge, no wonder people go into shock, those that bought into the lies of the system. People, its work, you are there because they pay you, you work, they pay, that's the deal, lets not over complicate it.
Next year, I can decide, do I want to stay for another year? Am I at the top here with no room to move? Am I comfortable? Or more likely try to transfer to another area, see how that goes, if its more of the same, quit and become a journeyman. I don't fear it, I don't fear a boring cubicle, long as the hours are less, this is what nobody gets. You can make the same, and have less bounds, that is what suits me, and this is why I will not listen to others again. I am my own person now. I am free, and while I see a therapist, they tried to put me on mood changing pills, well I broke through all that, its helped me, that I been talking bout my generation, and as we head to 2010, I wonder what is in store, because I am free now, and accepting more of the good things that come to the generation and much more wary of the bad things. I have no choice now, its either that or suicide and I ain't ready to go out just yet, I have some fun things I want to try, that they tell me NOT TO DO.
.....as Les Claypool wrote in my book, Go Chuck!
posted by Chuck Deggsy at 12:58 PM
2 comments
