2002-09-26 - 12:51 a.m.

Obviously, I'm too affected by the crap I see each and every minute of my life (for example, the banner above the entry I'm currently writing) to have an authentic and original personality.

It's OK though. Think about living 300 years ago, when there were no ads and what not. Picture a world with no TVs too, and no GAP, and whatever else 300 years ago seems like to you.

Well, back then, the amount of individual "personality" you were allowed to develop, the amount of freedom you were allotted, if you put it into a specific figure that could be measured, was limited to an almost the same amount as today.

Today it's getting your psyche trampled by the twin storm troopers of the media and the idiots affected by it.

300 years ago, it's whatever the dominant media was, probably the immediate laws and procedures for a standard life for the neighborhood you might have been living in back then, plus the cultural norms you would have had to have been an idiot to oppose, just like today.

In other words, living in a neighborhood today is just like living in one 300 years ago, but things change faster. We just adapt more efficiently to the ever-changing rules. And there's always some idiot who's gonna tell on you if you break 'em.

I mean, yeah, we can burn a flag today if we want to. But if I go outside right now and immolate the ol� stars n� stripes, I�ll get more than my ass kicked.

And tell me, when�s the last time you burned one?

So we get the idea of freedom. Yay!

So if your lips aren�t glued to the corporate, rent paying, tit, or in other words, if you don�t have to work to make a living, then, and only then, are you free to burn flags.

I guess, then, it�s up to the rest of us, talking beside our proverbial water coolers, to debate and discuss, how many flags the free are allowed to burn.

I know that this makes no sense. I know it's sophomoric.

I allowed myself to write this 'cause, for the second day in a row, I've had to get up at 7 am.

It's midnight, and I'm tired and ready for bed.

Staying up late is the last bastion of my much romanticized, but never utilized youth.

I'm 25 now, a quarter of a century old, perhaps 1/3 of my life over with, and definitely more than half of the interesting things might happen have already happened.

I'm listening to my "precious" mix right now. It's for bed, so I'm not bothering anyone. It's a comp of a bunch of stuff that's a little too... precious. Think Belle and Sebastian. Or the entire K records catalogue.

Why do I always do everything three years too late? Sure, it�s romantic with a capital R, and sure I�m always right, but, hot damn, it lacks convenience and at the same time betrays me as one who does not have the knack for the concept of life as a state of higher being, um, living.