Growth #1

It's called the Christian fundamentalist goods industry, the sacred mixed with the blind modernity of indifferent commerce. A chief example of this is the "Bible Bar"-- a health snack made of ingredients mentioned in the Book of Deuteronomy: figs, pomegrantes, barely, and olive oil. Yes, containing only naturally-occurring substances "placed there by God himself". Imagine, if you will, a factory where they are duly churned out while a huff-voiced, blank-faced supervisor in shirt-sleeves with a clipboard claims they're "doing the Lord's work".

There is Christian punk rock, Christian metal, and Christian rap that is slickly produced to sound eerily like the secular counterpart with its own magazines and promotional materials. However, instead of freedom and "doing your own thing", it leads to right-wing theocratic absolutism-- which is anti-ethical to rock n' roll sleazin' around in the first place.

\Another thing churches do to bring in the kids is have martial arts training, but what this has to do with Jesus turning the other cheek completely escapes me-- the Romans whuppin' the savior up the hill to be crucified in the ultimate act of self-abnegation. Eastern fighting styles and Western religion simply don't mix. . . . . as they liquify cheeseburgers, milkshakes, and Gatorade in some kind of "Double Dare" game show in order to get kids to accept these gung-ho exurban concepts without question as grown men flop around like a combination between Jerry Lewis and a recruiter for "The Reverend Moon" with clipped, mincing, uptight Asian/Western steps in a gray business suit carrying a briefcase of literature and Amway products.

God help us all. . . . .

 

Growth #2

Of course, there is nothing so bourgeoisie as actually attacking the bourgeoisie and continuing to live in loose, gentrified, areas as yuppie Bohemians. Perhaps making up for Western civilization's past ethnocentric sins is an "anything goes" attitude that allows decadence to sprout up like rotten mushrooms between the "lolly-la" cracks in the sidewalks. The feminist and gay communities are particularly virulent, and Halloween at the coffee shops, bars, and bistros are to be avoided if you want to keep your children away from those walls of Sodom. In shops, a fat, snuffling Wiccan priestess in a black dress openly sells sex toys. All and all, the naive, urban "Sesame Street" value-system doesn't add up with the frivolity in men and women's hearts.

Growth #3

The exurban scene. A boy, 13 years old, overweight, sitting at his home computer with a cap on backwards. Downloading songs, music videos, and dueling someone on a computer game across the internet simultaneously as a slick, corporate punk band plays on his pounding speakers. Speed, stimulation, faster and faster. Sipping his sugary soda from a straw. Bugging mom n' dad for a higher-speed computer, "for school and stuff" although a computer from over a decade ago could perform the needs of simple word processing and basic internet. Games, games, games. Illegally pirated music. The attention span of a gnat. Is this who is going to grow up to join the work force? The kid lets out a long, contented fart.

It's the community college girl and her lunk-headed boyfriend in a white cap who live utterly without irony. "Whoo-hoo", she goes. "I'm gonna KICK BUTT!". Well, their flat gentile asses are sitting on a picnic blanket at a festival seating concert, sipping Evian bottled water like the flavorless of outings as they watch "Blues Traveler" or "The Dave Matthews Band" and other lame white acts with a harmonica figuring in there somewhere. They are taken to occasional bouts of frivolity that rapidly peter out as they run out of pet-phrases to blindly parrot from commercials on television and the vague mass mind consensus of "what rebels yet stays in the box".

"It's Miller Time. . . . ." the boyfriend oozes with a voice that sounds like a radio pitchman-- deep and deceptively confident as he stretches out his legs on a Styrofoam cooler while sitting in an equally-bland lawn chair.

Eat shit.