'80s LIVING

see? this is what i mean. just right now, i pushed the silver tv remote's button as hard as i could: no picture, no fucking picture, without tv i am already a ghost. was it the batteries? i raced to the combo attic/basement thing i have down the kitchen to find the other remote to the other tv. brown tape blocking the batteries-insert cover. i peeled it off furiously, rampaging because this was the end of the world. AAA, good, finally, my fridge was stocked with mounds and mounds of useless AA. replaced the batteries and it still didn't fucking work. what am i gonna do? i started fake-crying, which is worse than real salty tears, there's a sheen of inhumanity to it all, fakery, soullessness. i was thinking of transferring the heavy tv in the whatever-room over to my room, i might break my back in the process, steaming bad memories of wearing a back brace throughout high school, but it was worth it for my shows. what should my revised schedule contain?: a trip to the radio store, which doesn't open 'til fucking 9AM, need new AAA batteries just in case, and cat food's running low. cat food, cat, wait...the cat, he loves to run up and down the wire area at the back of my tv, what if?...the damn plug was unplugged, it wasn't noticeable, it was just barely unplugged, not from the socket, just barely askew for it not to work. it works again, never stopped working actually. i really can't deal with the stresses of this world.

what am i gonna do? really, what am i gonna fucking do? i'm out of options save two: there is the monastery thing, but i dunno, i did visit there for a week's boot camp, it was a different experience, wouldn't say i enjoyed myself, though i didn't totally dislike the experience, the men were weird jokesters, so that quelled the tension. it was more like a week's spa holiday, though, i just don't know if i could make such a lifestyle my lifestyle, i mean, the boredom would set it quick, i'd be pulling my hair out from missing my shows, i'd conform to the monkly duty of baldness soon.

the other option is what i dub '80s Living. this is how i was in the '80s before the scourge of social media. nowadays, it's a trigger reaction to go immediately to the imdb messageboards and type up my tv.com reviews once i'm done watching Archer or Degrassi or whatever as i see what the enlightened over there have to say about the episode and (their) life in general. back in the '80s, there was no such burden placed on my young shoulders. i remember distinctly what separated the two time periods. y'know that awesome episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation which ends with Picard the Borg and Riker in a Borg vs. Enterprise standoff and Riker having no choice but to exclaim the order, "Mr. Worf, fire!" and the epic Viking music swells up and poor Riker with his beard has to fire upon his dearly-respected mentor Picard? Family Guy later did a spoof of this...not that that means anything special...just trying to bridge generation gaps here. well, at the end of this epic episode, i didn't have a thumb to type with. i had a thumb, just not specifically a typing thumb, because there wasn't a device to thumb out nor a social-network platform to thumb to. the only discussion of the episode came the next afternoon at the schoolyard, after the bullies had their way with us, the bullies added to the conversation simply that Picard's Borg get-up looked "fake", this was the first use of the term which would later go down in youtube-troll lore, it ended up just my best friend and i talking about what we had seen and heard last night right before we had to go to bed without supper. my friend would have had the chicken, i the fish. we re-created the booming and the laser fires and the lines said in the episode like little children destined for a lonely life of sci-fi geekdom do, i pretended to be Borg Picard, my friend was Riker getting himself a brown-leaf beard, we re-created the scene a dozen times, each time it seemed that vignette got awesomer and awesomer, we discussed Enterprise politics and alien species and what a cliffhanger that episode was and how we couldn't wait for the next episode next season, we were peeing our pants over this! that was the extent, that was '80s-style imdb. other than that, i kept all my excitement and pondering over shows to myself. being an only child, i relived each episode solely in my head more often than not, never speaking a word to anyone about it.

so, should i go back to that way of life, those dark ages without facebook, twitter, hell without much of an internet at all, no social-board connections, no talking about anything and everything with complete safely-anonymous strangers with clever screennames, and those that try too hard to be clever with their screennames, the tryhards? damnit! see, internet culture has seeped into my rotten core (NIN reference). should i pull the 2013 plug and descend to a time of nostalgia, should i let the nostalgia arrow pierce me back to a simpler era, should i skateboard Marty McFly and myself right into the past, not blabber on about nostalgia on another wasteful youtube channel, but actually LIVE it again? you can't go home again, but you can re-create it as best as possible. if i just turn off all devices except for the tv, i can watch shows again like in the '80s and not have to worry about who is saying what on the boards, i simply let the episode settle into my imagination and that's it for (non)connection and analysis, bouncing my ideas off my left brain wall with the other images and preconceived notions and imaginings i had of the episode which reside on the other side of my brain, i have a conversation with myself about the episode, hours and hours it may go on, until Mom calls me for fish.

should i, should i should i? i can't decide for myself anymore, i've wrestled with billions and billions of possible combinations and permutations in my head but to no avail, pi just keeps on going forever. there are pros and cons to this, each weighs the same, each gets me nowhere, both doors contain the Monty Hall prize, 1+1=2, and Mother Teresa and Stephen Hawking are both correct. House of Anubis and the last of my netflix Twilight movies ended on the same day, will one get renewed while the other franchise is over? i was never the demographic of these movies, but i did cry like a 12-year-old girl when that last ending gray montage of all the characters spreads across the screen in Breaking Dawn, Part Two, accompanied by that great song "A Thousand Years", not so much because these were scintillating movies, but just because it was over, i'd never see these characters again living on (tv) screen, it's more the loss than the actual content. like when you end a play, the play may have been a college kid's experimental rubbish, but you cry at the last bow because you'll never see your fellow castmates again. promises to write will never be heeded, this is really the end of the line, get your kisses in now, your chance to make a baby with her is gone, to keep her contained, here with you, to give her a reason to stay, she's leaving on the first flight out at the Break of Dawn (get it?), disappearing forever, leaving only Bella, Pale Kid, and Shirtless memories. are werewolves immortal, too?

should i? should i? should i? i'll leave the monumental decision of the rest of my life not to me, but to random strangers on the internet, they shall decide my destiny. that is so this time-period, huh? that is so the 2013 way of doing things, leave it to the fucking social networks.

i could continue reading every messageboard in sight or not burn out like a Roman candle (Soundgarden reference) and have time to look at every bit of plastic debris that i use up eating and drinking during the week to see which number is in the little triangle, which kind of plastic it is, 1, 2, maybe 5, before i toss it in the recycling bin. hey, i may have loads more time to kill, but i would still have the forced OCD. sometimes i get treated to very rare types of plastic, like the 7 from that thin, yellow hard-salami package recently.

should i continue clicking on every one of the 11 news stories from HuffPo each day, even the ones about Miley's something not fitting right? those are never worth it, just time-consuming, and i have no more time. but i have to, i need to sate my gut with the latest pop-culture offerings or i won't be in the know, i won't have fodder for any more of my clever remarks, i will be lost. i don't mind sailing on the sea of mediocrity like everyone else, but i need to be sailing on a boat, not drowning to the bottom of the sea, where there is only doubt and the not-knowing.

trying to find a girlfriend on youtube vs. finding out my funny comments were misconstrued as creepy comments and giving up on youtube

"a life unblogged is the only worthy life."---Socrates

what shall i do?: monastery...or '80s Living...or something else?

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