The Meaning of Life (draft 1)

- Self-Acceptance
- Charity
- Karma
- Awareness of Mortality
- Existence of a Creator
- The Universe
- The Earth
- Perception v Reality
- Thumbs
- Family

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it's just a List (right now)

(Editor's Note: a List adapted from a Jan 2012 jive entitled "Spoiler Alert")

in no particular order (?)

I hope to someday tie it all up

(the way Life does)

into what?

an Essay (boring)
a lecture (moreso)
a rant (self-indulgent)

into a Conversation with other Humans?  (ideally)

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Post Script: no one knows for sure and maybe that should be on the list too

Alicia and the Pajama Party

Alicia is my mom's sister's daughter. My cousin. She's always had a contagiously positive energy.

Alicia is a teacher and fierce competitor and recently started a blog to write about these inspirational things.

And being a jerk, I came across a passage that bothered me.  So I emailed her about it.

-----
J:

"I feel we try to uphold this image that society expects of us. This image is all over the television, magazines, and the web. The image is of a sexy, skinny, pretty, “perfect” woman."

Alicia - I dig your blog.  One article in particular ("Who Says") has resonated, as many of our mutual friends have "shared" it already,

however I disagree with your premise that Society expects anything of us.

Society is a vague villain and easy to blame.  We are the ONLY ones to blame, we do it to ourselves!

I assume you agree (?) as you (the quote above) continued to say,

"We start comparing ourselves to her. We compare ourselves to something that is unrealistic."

-------------
A:

First, thanks for reading my blog! I'm glad you liked it. I want to clarify the fact that I am not blaming anyone or anything. I do think that there are a number of pressures that are put on us at a young age though. Teenage girls feel an overwhelming pressure to be skinny, pretty and perfect. Maybe it goes back to the toys we played with as kids. Do you remember us girls playing with barbies and you guys playing with GI Joes?

Think about the pressures of society that you have fallen victim to? Have you ever wore your pajamas to a gig? Or, are you guys dressing how society expects you to dress? What about the people that come to watch you play? Are they all in pajamas, or are they dressed up? We'd all stay in our pajamas because that's the most comfortable, but we don't. Wouldn't we get some strange looks if we did? 

So, I think we have all subcome to the pressures of society at some level. For me and most females, we compared ourselves to the image that is on the television and all over the magazines. It's human nature. As we grow, I don't think we let those expectations get to us as much. We come to a point where we know and love ourself.  We come to a point where we accept who we are. However, it's tough not to fall victim to those pressures when you haven't accepted yourself and you don't know who you are quite yet.

-----------------------

J:

-Of course I remember the action figures and although they were bearing my namesake, I never feared GI Joe. His bulging plastic muscles and cold blank stare may have challenged my personal fitness goals and patriotism, but I never let it bother me too long.

-I can honestly say we have never worn pajamas to a gig.  We dress how society expects us to dress.  The people at are gigs are also NOT wearing pajamas.

"me and most females" is a loathsome line, both a broad generalization and a generalization about broads...the Battle of Self-Acceptance knows no gender biases, in my opinion.

I do agree with your point that Self-Acceptance is very important to the Meaning of Life, which I hope to address in my next post (stay tuned!)

Your email made me imagine a group of people who were so completely comfortable with themselves that they wore pajamas all the time. Why not? Our campaign would demonstrate a large range of people who are already living it, you yourself could represent Teachers, myself the working Musician, we would recruit doctors, lawyers, policemen, nurses, life insurance salesmen 

to run a campaign of humans working for the greater good, in sweatpants.

This revolution would catch on relatively quickly I imagine, and when we ultimately challenge the Left & Right we will distinguish ourselves with an obvious moniker:

The Pajama Party

Downgrade: Part 2 (Weakness and Deception)

In regards to the last post, I called T-Mobile's Customer Service...

Worth Noting: my brother T-Gun infamously hassles this department (by now on a daily basis purely for Sport) and has reaped years of countless rewards from soft shelled workers who quickly crumble to his ludicrous demands when unable to cope with his incessant wingeing...

so I tried the T-Gun Technique and tried being angry and even though I have been a loyal T-Mobile customer for Far Too Long and am due for a Full Discount, I shamefully found myself about to pay $110 to downgrade (from Blackberry Curve to a Samsung Galaxy)

and the only reason I didn't was because I was driving along Old Route 1 in Topsfield, and the T-Mobile service crapped out and dropped the call, ironically canceling the transaction

Meanwhile, back on The Internet, I found a new battery for my Smart Phone. $4 with $2 shipping. So there's that.

Also, I found a section of the T-Mobile website where I can use my upgrade to downgrade to a Samsung t139 for FREE

which the C.S. rep failed to mention.

So a new battery, the hope of a $6 cure, travels to me as I type, likely in some part of America that I haven't yet witnessed...

and I don't want to take T-Mobile's offer of the dumb phone with the lower case t because it requires a two year extension and the thought of signing another contract with them turns my stomach

Thanks for Nothing, T-Mobile

Downgrade

I do not want a smart phone anymore.

I want an ignorant phone,

a simpleton,

and wish I had the gumption to ditch the cellular phone entirely.

Admittedly, there is challenge in conveying Why,

which I can only accomplish through a hodgepodge of bullet points:

-Looking into a crowd and seeing large numbers of humans (young and old alike) staring aimlessly into their hands

-To resist a growing temptation to multi-task whilst driving

-To value silence, isolation, meditation, introspection

*WRITER'S NOTE: as if on cue from God herself, my cell phone just buzzed while I was in the middle of typing that sentence, which was coming to me on the fly, in an improvisational and jazzy way that I was enjoying, and is now dead.

I report to you, oh Beautiful Reader, with pure journalistic integrity, that the very buzz which raped my prose

was an email from Spin Magazine, containing a link to an article entitled,

 "MTV VMAs' 15 Biggest Mistakes"

 and that proves my point more than my wordy words ever could have.