Such was putrid youth, and you could thank the slick media companies for attempting to provide a quick-and-easy and mostly-painless solution with their endless, remorselessly-driven conveyor belt of hyped products tooled to our wretchedness, dropped in boxes like manufactured sinister whispers. Of course, "baring down" with discipline and "book study" will shore up the shifting sands of the human soul and'll "make it stick" like Velcro n' wool. But if you have that thin sheen of all-too-easy digital/gamepad-tapped avoidance, "then woe to you", my son.

Enter the world of video game commercials. . . . .

You had the SEGA scream, a jet-fighter "hanging-ten" at "Mach-6" to underscore the crumminess of these cheap titles at $50/pop that mostly banked on big sports names lending their endorsements. Edgy flash, an arrogant brand persona as kids broke into rival, joshing gangs on America's schoolyards-- quite a step removed from boys chasing hoops with sticks out of a Charles Dickens novel or even a "Simpson's" parody. But the enthusiasm was still there, you bet! Like a coat that would trail down to their ankles as they malingered around in mischief and hoodwinked one-another as imps with pitch-forks, molten gobs of metal about to be picked up and cast into the furnace of adolescence like young goats "getttin' rounded up".

Years later, one finds themselves reading this childish outing called "Marketing Madness: A Survival Guide for a Consumer Society" which was essentially a perky, yet dreary diatribe against "our advertising age" that threw words like "commodity" around like pornographic hot-buttons for the left-wing crowd that already agreed with them anyway, so it wasn't as if "great mental frontiers" were being broken into the plains of the jowl-cheeked American consumer livin' it up.

Why, it even had a forward by Ralph Nader-- that prophet of non-profit reasonableness who juggles around his millionaire's stocks so he can keep his position of "rising above the fray" he knows little, if anything about as our twerpy, gnarled egoist with all the personality of water on a boiled egg, like rusted industrialism that has more holes in it than the working poor have cavities, and just about as effectively overcome with brown paper lunch-bag homilies that leave the cagier "jumping ship" from this snail-eyed version of "caring" and "sharing" that can go empty its own yellowed colostomy bag, if you please-- when it ain't shovin' a box of discount "snack cakes" in its gorping orifice like "the host of plenty", on sale for 99¢ at Shop n' Save where starch is unloaded from the truck like the ass-end of a pig.

What you will find about "the system" out there on that side of things is that it's made up of "grifters & slaves". . . . . the egomaniacs who are dubious enough to channel the system to their vest-patting advantage, and then "the lost souls" who were "roped in" to put in 70 or 80 hour weeks on a burn-out rate that "certainly leaves no time for Nintendo". Less guilt-wracked and self-abnegating types size things up and figure, "Fuck this SHIT" before dropping out for more pleasant lifestyles. That, or you develop enough of a specialized liberal arts skill and huddle around by the trash can fire, hoping you won't get fired or be shown out the door like the ole' fable, "The Grasshopper & The Ants" like so much bad minstrelry and stinking socks.

Life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel, and what I notice is that the Ralph Nader's and "Marketing Madness" authors of the world have deadened senses. They'd have to. . . . . in order to get "this far".

I ran into a girl from Canada whose major was "Sociology". Something told me that she took this mild, easy, laid-back course because she either didn't have the brights or the discipline or was too intimidated to leap into something "a bit more rigorous" as she pranced around "The Mushroom Kingdom" like the Princess Toadstool of socialized medicine. No one wants to think of themselves as a meticulous, petty, uptight bean-counter. . . . . especially in a friendly bar-room setting, but people like that will always have the advantage in the marathon of life. Not to say that you and I are any fonder of running marathons, but as "feelers" we can bring back far more kindness and insight from the front because it was certainly harder for us than some loping, stick-like rope of muscle who was simply born to to such grueling "test of endurance" without complaint. He or she knows not for, and that is the ultimate human idiocy and why they are the lesser ones. Fundamentally, if you can't "pull the camera back" and poke fun at the situation, then are you human or animal?

And there "the adults" are having sex in the other room, grunting like pigs. You read Stephen King books where grown-up's are torn asunder by werewolves, and it's the coolest thing you've ever beheld. Being older is quite literally having things "pass before your eyes" that you don't see, because part of you hardens and dies. It'll happen to me, it'll happen to you.

Because that's life. . . . .