it might have to do with getting sober and it might have to do with the fact that people that you used to think are cool are probably not really as cool as you remember them being. just like once you get out of a bad relationship you think "why was i ever with that person in the first place?" and you wonder what you ever saw in them anyway.

i appreciate cary taking the sober issue seriously, but it's possible that that's not what it's about at all.

also, it's fine to be judgmental (i'm never judgmental ever ever ever..i mean, wut?), but don't forget to include yourself in the judging. like i think about what i was like in high school and i think "man i was cool then." i was fearless in fashion and with it in music. but then i think "man i was really lame in high school." i was a total snob about music and treated people who weren't into music badly sometimes. a lot of the clothes i wore were stupid. and i was really nerdy and had a stick up my bombom. and THEN i think about how lame i am now and how i can't even wear cool things to work anymore and how i barely stay up to date on music and how i sit around at home a lot on the computer. so in conclusion, if you haven't been boring the whole time (as in both in high school and now), you gotta at least entertain the possibility that your friend finds you just as boring and lame as you find her now.

what is it with these people? i thought rich people were supposed to be all tactful, well-mannered, and generally better at etiquette than us slobs down here. i always thought they'd look at us like we'd just murdered someone if we used the wrong fork at dindin. and yet it's socially acceptable to do this stuff in this day and age? don't these guys read the news? didn't they notice that nice gallup poll which has like 90% of americans either "outraged" or "bothered" about this crap? are they still in the corporate thief "we can get away with it" mindset? i just don't get the extent to which they're not getting it...and tbh, it was excusable to not get it before this most recent aig bonus thing blew up because the other outrage inducing rich people being ridiculous things weren't as well publicized. but after aig bonusgate AND a separate office redecorationgate several weeks ago, all i can say is wtf?

i don't know any people who are this phenomenally rich so i don't really understand how they could be this clueless...anyone got any articles i can read for background? either some nice anthropology of rich folks or some article written by one of them titled "why i am an entitled jerkoff"? anything? i'd like to learn!

when your ideology's primary organizing principle is "defer to authority," one can't be surprised that the proponents of that ideology defer to those in power.

when your ideology is as varied as that of the "left" (ranging from garden variety liberals to socialists to anarchists), pretty much the only uniting factor here is an opposition to "deference to authority."

i used to think that progressives' inability to get their people to even agree with each other let alone rally around a single cause long enough to see it through as effectively as conservatives could (due to their inherent investment in hierarchy and willingness to support leaders) was a recipe for failure in today's american excuse for democracy. but the bush failure (and subsequent collapse of the national conservative movement) shows the pitfalls of the organizing principle where everyone just lines up behind a single guy (an organizing principle that is not just morally odious but also now seems to be not entirely practical).

what lev said.

tbh i thought we all agreed that these days the real american dream is to be famous. and if being an artist is the route to fame, so be it...especially since if you have a skill, you can imagine that the fame is much more deserved than if you're say paris hilton or the kardashian woman (why is she famous anyway?).

love it!

i started out writing a spam poetry blog, but it's sort of morphed into a combo spam poetry and wingnut poetry blog. you can see it here: http://eucheuch.wordpress.com/

i'm surprised that no one has yet mentioned how the unique urban ecosystem that is the east bay enables this kind of lifestyle. here in durham, nc, one finds the occasional stuff on the side of the street and we do have our share of thrift stores, but the vast community emotional/psychological investment and infrastructure for this kind of lifestyle just doesn't exist. the berkeley community in particular has historically supported and found value in making sure that this kind of re-use-oriented lifestyle is viable. here in durham it's hard to imagine a totally freegan lifestyle even possible...the city is very spread out and the resources just don't exist. i vividly recall being amazed at how many scrap stores and used furniture stores and junk stores there were in berkeley last time i visited - and how easy it would be to relocate there just considering the vast amount of 2nd hand resources available.

i understand that the folks profiled want to demonstrate how easy (to a certain extent) it is to live mostly off the grid, but i wish that they would give credit to the fact that their community nurtures their lifestyle and makes it possible and acknowledge how difficult it would be even in a smallish city. if they were intending their book to be a useful guide to freegan living, they might as well add "in a very large city" or "in berkeley."