Comments on: Roundup

By: Matthew da Silva

Matthew da Silva — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 07:14:48 +0000

Ed, this is the postmodern generation. Live with it! Modernist grand narratives are demonstrably sad and anachronistic. Pulp Fiction told us it’s OK to copy. So the young copy each other.

But you should know by now that youth is naturally ‘callow’ due to genetic programming: mating requires careful selection and aberrations are not at a premium unless they indicate survival skills.

Our duty as mature intellectuals is to develop strategies to cut through the buzz of data. But just whining about how ‘they’re not like us’ ain’t going to cut through. Something more is required.

By: Darby

Darby — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 01:49:37 +0000

“The National’s Boxer does tread water somewhat”

No.

By: Levi

Levi — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 23:50:27 +0000

Ed, now the Seagull is mad at you.

By: tao

tao — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 21:18:18 +0000

“Ah callow youth! Why are you so goddam non-rebellious when the world’s in the shitter? 64% of these little bastards “wake up happy?” Sixty-four percent? Christ, the generation after mine is disappointing the hell out of me. We were cynical as fuck and that was during the Clinton years! Maybe Charles Rangel is right. Maybe we should reinstate the draft just to give these smug little fucks a wakeup call. BLAM BLAM BLAM! What do you think of that, eh? If you want your nonfat hazelnut latte and your TiVo options, you’re going to have to march through the goddam DMZ to get them! HOW ABOUT THAT? Oh, what’s that? You need to go to the infirmary? Well, now that you’re in the middle of the GREAT CLUSTERFUCK YOU’VE BEEN GLEEFULLY IGNORING, that ought to put a damper on the whole “wake up happy” scenario, eh? ”

stop being mean

By: Patrick Stephenson

Patrick Stephenson — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 20:26:26 +0000

I have your Facebook profile printed out, so I know the answer.

The point of this being, if we’re going to attack Ed’s generation, attack the right one.

By: Patrick Stephenson

Patrick Stephenson — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 20:25:54 +0000

I have your Facebook profile printed out, so I know the answer.

By: ed

ed — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 19:31:37 +0000

As I believe I made perfectly clear yesterday, I am six years old. A savant who has a promising career as a slightly more sophisticated teenage ruffian. Really, do I need to drag out my birth certificate? Do we need a sworn affidavit for such an easily cleared up matter?

By: May

May — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 19:28:58 +0000

(referring to the previous question)
Can I guess the answer?
E is 32
D is 24

By: Patrick Stephenson

Patrick Stephenson — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 18:31:24 +0000

P.S. Which generation are we assuming is Ed’s, here? Daniel’s comment seems to assume Ed’s a Baby Boomer, but as far as I know, he is (you are) Gen X, yes? And the survey subjects are Gen Y.

By: Patrick Stephenson

Patrick Stephenson — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 18:28:28 +0000

“Nearly 3 in 4 said they had not had sex in the past week.” And yet, still happy. This is an odd survey.

By: DrMabuse

DrMabuse — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 16:43:43 +0000

Daniel: I admire your venom, which is not all that different from mine (although the great irony is that I am both happy and enraged, a visceral combo that these silly pollsters surely didn’t see coming!), but think it’s a great mistake to associate stupidity with a particular generation, much less reduce how one rebels to a spectrum. The world certainly doesn’t operate this way. Why then should acts of protest? Nevertheless, if 64% of these kids “wake up happy,” one must wonder if they are unhappy in any sense. While I myself am quite happy, I am deeply unhappy about world affairs. I listen to a news item on the radio and want to beat the shit out of an inanimate object because of some selfish or horrific injustice. But this is because I bear the burden of empathy and I hate to see people hurt, manipulated, or otherwise exploited. Never mind that our world does this on a daily basis. So too did the seemingly “ungreatful bastards” [sic] in some form. But how much does this 64% feel along such lines?

By: Daniel

Daniel — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 16:33:58 +0000

Ed only your generation would ask a bunch of kids such a stupid, pointless question as “Do you wake up happy?” and find insight. Happiness was never that important before you people, and it don’t matter much to us now. If you try to change the world because you’re unhappy, you do it for the wrong reasons. Protesting a war because you’re afraid of the draft is, well, why our grandparents thought you were all a bunch of ungreatful bastards. Let’s focus on values, not seratonin. Work to change things because you believe in something, not because you wake up miserable and afraid.

By: Jonathan Shipley

Jonathan Shipley — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 16:29:07 +0000

Richard Bach is a loon. I saw him at a reading at the Elliott Bay Book Company here in Seattle. He talked about the divorce of his wife and his love affair with a woman in another dimension. I have some appreciation for Jonathan Livingston Seagull (in that Jonathan’s my name, after all, and I was born when it was published) but his series of ferret books? I just can’t get into them, and I like ferrets.

By: A.R.Yngve

A.R.Yngve — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 15:20:25 +0000

I’d say the kids have reason not to wake up anxious:

1. They haven’t been successfully brainwashed to live in constant paranoid fear of terrorism;

2. They are not living in constant fear of being drafted and sent off to the Middle East;

3. They don’t live in mortal terror of Rudy Giuliani winning the 2008 election.