Do I Really Need to Read Another Top 10 List?

Abso-fuckin-lutely. What do you think this is? Some sort of progressive blog where I don’t resort to clichés and actually talk about stuff with substance and meaning? Well, if you answered yes or no, you’d be correct – nobody truly knows the answer. However, the point of this blog is to go ahead and play into the popularity of the time and give my analysis on not just the year, but really the decade.

I feel honored to be able to fully analyze a decade with a cognitive mind (Let’s face it, half of the 90s, we were focused on trying to be tall enough to ride the fast rides at amusement parks and debating the reality of the tooth fairy. Sadly, some of us had to wait till the 2000s before we were allowed to ride everything. Damn PETA activists and their desire to get our animals “natural” and “growth-hormone-free.” I could have used some of that you know.)

Anyhow, especially the second half of the decade, it was interesting to see what it is like to be a true consumer. In all honesty, you learn about yourself a lot through the things you’re willing to spend money on. Therefore, I have compiled a Top 10 List of things I spent my money on this decade, and while I know that I am not a great perspective for the whole, I am just going to pretend that I am. In naming things I might stop and give a brief elaboration – for examples listing clothes might elicit a few ramblings out of my mind, but I hope you enjoy.

TOP TEN THINGS THAT ROBY CHATTERJI (aka “30 and under Society”)
SPENT MONEY ON THIS DECADE

10. DVDs
I remember the day we got our first DVD player at our house – it was probably 2000. I remember because I asked to borrow the new Matrix DVD that day from a friend to test out the speakers and sound quality. Much more than CDs, I think discs for movies have been huge this decade. CDs were cool but then came mp3s and really it didn’t matter whether you had a CD player anymore, because all you needed was speakers (therefore we have #9 on the list), but DVDs hold their own because most of still like TV to remain stationary in an ever-growing portable world. It’s one of the few last bastions of sitting around culture. DVDs have been great, especially since they put TV shows on them as well, but I do worry about their longevity. Hookups between computers and TVs becoming easier and easier, and with things like Hulu and instant Netflix, we might be entering the last decade where DVDs are big.

9. Audio Accessories:
DJ Rob can’t deny his place in this list. Speakers, headphones, armbands, more speakers, and of course iPods have definitely been a large part of my spending this decade. What can I say, the ADD tendencies I have mixed with a sincere appreciation of music makes the iPod like crack to me. Also my guilty sense of pleasure at being flattered about playlists or music selection makes me even more tempted to buy nice outlets to let out my musical tastes.

8. Energy Drinks/Coffee:
The Redbull era is far from over. It is just beginning. Welcome Monster, Rockstar (my personal favorite), and of course now the ultimate: Coffee + Energy beverages, and you have of course one of the great icons of these last ten years – instant energy in anywhere from an 8 to 24 ounce can. I must admit, I am extremely guilty of giving into these when I know most people refrain. I hated the idea of these at the beginning, plus I thought Redbull tasted like bad sweet tarts, but now I am a pretty regular consumer of Rockstar Zero Carb, and of course my love for coffee has only gotten stronger as this decade transpired. From lots of sugar and cream in my early years to pretty much all Espresso and a couple packets of Splenda these days, I have a fond appreciation for the almost subconscious cure of coffee – the feeling of the warm beverage going down your through and warming you from the inside out, and the “ahhh” you say sometimes after a good brew is almost automatic for me. I hope that my teeth don’t get badly stained in the next ten years.

7. Jeans:
Well let’s be real. If you don’t like or own jeans, you’re forsaking the most versatile piece of clothing we have. They can be used for going out to the bar, to get milk and eggs, and even on Fridays to work. Sneakers, fancy shoes, sandals all can adorn their lower end, and they are great for times you want to show off your ass. All in all, just a good piece of fabric that will likely be timeless. Definitely could have been written in any decade’s big buys for the last 40 years.

6. Shoes:
From the early 2000s when I was really into Nike basketball type shoes, to the whole easy looking Saucony/Puma phase, to the organic New Balance phase, to my “old man” phase because I enjoyed my sneakers to have little design and be plain, to fancy adult shoes that are square at the end – I think my shoes are a nice corollary for my mindset at a given time. They can be a fashion statement, they can simply be a tool to get you from one place to the other, but all of us deep down (male or female) know that we do like to make sure shoes look good to us, and perhaps others. If I had written this blog 10 years ago, I would have definitely mentioned Vans and skater shoes, but it seems that their heyday has ended.

5. Computers:
I’ll keep this one short and simple. Laptops and phones – which really are mini laptops – have taken a chunk of our money and culture this decade. Think about how necessary they’ve become for whatever purpose – working, music, communication, and it’s easy to see why this is one gadget that will continue to icon-ify our generation and lives.

4. Alcohol
Ahh! Where to begin? Definitely something that consumed my bank account in the second half of the decade –a growing realization that we are using tools to enhance our feelings. I know that not everyone drinks, or that other people have their tool of choice, but this is the blanket beneath most of our adult fun. Generally the terms “going out” or “party” have become synonymous with drinking in some shape or form. It may not be the focal piece of your evening, but it’s rare that we go out or go to a party where there is no alcohol. Weddings, birthdays, Thursdays, and of course “New Years” – all seem to point to the fact that we spend a fair amount of time/money on the hydrophilic beverage that eases our tensions, makes it easier to put up with our family, and makes our memorable moments filled with stories.

3. Mexican Food, but really the burrito:
This might be a Roby thing, but really, I think the explosion of big burritos and the whole “wrap-it-up” culture was a big thing to take off this decade. Coming from all angles – expansion of Mexican culture into American, the health conscious idea of vegetarian and wheat bread/wraps, and the ease of which you can consume a burrito – made this the perfect decade for the burrito. Fast, cheap, healthy, flavorful – it’s everything we are striving for, and you can have endless hours of fun going, “buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurrrriiiitooooooooo.”

2. Books:
Well going along with number 1 on the list, it only makes sense that after tuition, we spent a fair amount of money on books. Throw in Harry Potter and Da Vinci Code phenomena, and those weird periods of time throughout the decade where you tried to be more well-read, and you have a fair amount of time and cash going towards words on paper that you may or may not have read. Books are slightly becoming obsolete because of the internet, but I would think that in some weird analogous manner, the internet is our new library – a very fun and adult library at times. So, I would say we have spent a fair amount of our money on tools that will hopefully increase our wisdom.

1. Knowledge:
Think about it. Most of us that have been through colleges or graduate schools this decade have spent money or owe money for the fact that someone instilled us with knowledge. Meaning we spent thousands of dollars to hear someone tell us their theories. Essentially we visited an educational consultant for however many years we did. I completely agree with why I did it also. I wanted a pre-set system of talking points for conversation as well as strategies for balancing different aspects of my life. Oh yeah, and that whole specializing in a subject area, because that made a lot of sense. Was it worth it? Time will tell.

Overall Themes
We have the capability of being a very well-informed generation, but the choice on what we want to be informed on in completely up to us. We have lots of ways to amp up, to be entertained, and to be educated. I can’t tell whether we are creating separate segments of our life – the work side and the play side or trying to mesh them into one. Work fashion is actually a good indicator of how we are starting to see if the two worlds can mix – casual Fridays, less need to be formal – while they seem like a good thing might point to the idea that we are less interested in applying our education and instead using it for entertainment, which is what I hope this becomes for some of you. The New Year awaits. Happy regards to all of you.

It Builds As It Falls – The Irony of the Jenga Tower in Our Lives

As I’ve read through my blogs, I’ve realized I am definitely all over the place – to the point where I have lost myself, and I’m the guy that wrote it – so I apologize for my creative misgivings, but not really whole-heartedly. I can’t really promise that my blogs will get much better or much more focused, but hopefully I can make it a bit more concentrated on one topic – although I would say my previous musings are what are making me write this piece. As cliché as it sounds, it takes staring at your mistakes point blank, your shortcomings straight up, and your tumbling fallacies in the light of day, before you can start to reinvent yourself. So I think the core belief in this blog is that sometimes it is necessary to completely fail and fall before you can reinvent yourself. If a part or facet of you is still working, then most of us will cling on for dear life to that part and see how long we can sustain it. But perhaps only recently, I am starting to find that sometimes it’s better to let your life go to shambles, so that you can start building fresh and new, rather than trying to sustain a dilapidated hodgepodge that might function, but it’s not what you want.

As an analogy, I want you to think about a dirty room. You can bear to live in the room for some designated amount of time, but after enough time has transpired, you will feel that the room is now inhabitable and disgusting to the point where you will embark on a thorough cleaning (a cleaning far more rigorous and fruitful than the one you would have done at the beginning of the mess) – cleaning everything from laundry to dust to old papers, and now you will have a fresh new room to mess up all over again. This to me seems like the more fulfilling option rather than having a mediocre clean room and picking up a dirty shirt every other day –within that particular environment you would never be pushed to the idea of total cleansing because it is clean enough, therefore contentment would outweigh ambition. However, like all my blogs, this is simply my opinion, not something I feel you must agree with. Yet, I do want to talk about reinventing yourself or rebuilding your life.

Reinventing yourself is a phenomenon that I find frustrating, fascinating, and futile all at the same time – probably because I have tried to reinvent myself at least 17 times in the last three years. Many a great philosopher or statesman has said their piece on rebuilding or reinventing yourself, probably the best of which was “The greatest gift we have as humans is not so much in reinventing our cities, but rather in reinventing ourselves.” This particular quotation was likely an amalgamation of different Gandhi maxims, but I like it for its holistic nature. It seems to place so much merit in the fact that we can change. Change has become a buzz word within the last two years, partly due to politics, partly due to the idea that perhaps people are finally starting to embrace the idea that change is not something that is simply going to happen, but something that already has. Yet my biggest problem with reinventing yourself is not that we do not have the right vision for what we want to change, it is that we as a people do not have the discipline to make it consistent.

We are, we always have been, and I think we will continue to be “creatures of comfort” a group honed in on pleasure seeking, self-gratifying, and desiring the envy of others. Up until we have hit that critical point where the shit has hit the fan, we decide to close our noses and continue our patterns of behavior. Very few watershed moments in history have caused us to totally abandon something the way it is and start rebuilding, and I would say the same would be true for our lives. Sometimes it takes a bad accident on the road before we become better drivers. Sometimes it takes making a really stupid mistake when inebriated to realize that you need to not drink so much. However, many times when we decide we are going to reinvent ourselves, we don’t do it at the right time because we haven’t truly hit rock bottom. We always feel that something needs to change perhaps because of our sense of ethics. But that’s just it - we feel that things need to change. We want things to change. But feeling and wanting it aren’t enough. Those are temporary entities that shift and morph with time. What we need sometimes to really bring about a solid change or a legitimate reinvention of ourselves is to have completely fucked up. When we reach that point where we feel real pain and disgust at our situation the way it is, then it will be the time that is ripe for rebuilding and rebuilding in a way that will not just be temporary.

That instant will be the jarring moment, the climax if you will, when we realize that certain aspects of the life we have been living cannot continue to be replicated because we abhor them. They say insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. So when we finally reach the point where we can either choose to be insane or do something different, most of us then choose the “do something different” path. Therein lays the homage to the title of this blog – the Jenga Tower. The game that so many of us played as children was not without its prophetic message – your tower will stand for a while, even as you dismantle it, but at some critical point, the entire tower will fall and you will have to rebuild it all over again – stronger, straighter, and wiser. And perhaps the second time you play, you realize which blocks should not be removed so quickly so that you give yourself a little more time before it all falls again – but ultimately it will fall again, and you will rebuild it again, but that is the beauty of the game, and the beauty of our life – perhaps we should let ourselves fall so that we can rebuild, but this idea that the rebuilding should only happen once so we can be done with it – well, even as adults now we sometimes want to believe the fairy tale even if it’s not true.

Knowledge Speaks, But Wisdom Listens

So the title of this blog is one of my favorite quotations. It has been hypothesized that Jimi Hendrix said this, but if my research has done me well, he also got it from someone else, although who that person is remains a mystery. The originator isn't nearly as important as the meaning of the quote itself. The idea is that what you already know, you can say (Knowledge speaks). What have you have yet to understand, comprehend, and gain in this world can only come from listening (Wisdom listens). If you were to speak you would be divulging your own knowledge, which of course you already know, and you would not picking up any new knowledge.

To get new knowledge you must listen, but listening is only half the battle. It is like knowing how to add numbers, but never really using it to solve a calculation (sorry, math analogies come very easy to me these days). Wisdom comes from understanding that the build-up of your knowledge might have a theme, a pattern, a main idea if you will. Yet we are to quick to amass our knowledge into a pre-packaged theme that you might find in a fortune cookie or a Hallmark card. We rarely let the theme show itself or work itself out, and rather we are quick to label and judge our experiences and then further categorize them. I find this strikingly humorous, sad, and endearing all in one. It represents a perennial flaw of mine and yours - impatience.

I don't really have answers for you, but I do wonder how we work on not being impatient when the whole world is trying to get things to us faster, sleeker, and smoother. From 3G networks to Wikipedia to Google, we do have a knack for getting what we want exactly when we want it, and in some ways that's beautiful. To think that we can figure things out so quickly and have access to unlimited information - what other generation can say that? To simply be able to read in this day and age allows you to be a scholar. True, you would be standing on the shoulders of giants who researched things earlier, but that is no real matter, we all stand on the shoulders of giants for our own great epiphanies and gains. Yet we all wonder whether this double edged sword of unlimited information, and coming at you at fast speeds, will tilt us into a generation of doers or dreamers. A generation of listeners or creators. I myself wonder at how it will cause us to reflect.

Some of the greatest reflections people of older generations had was working/searching for something so long and finally finding it. Yet we do not need to reflect on what a search has done for us as humans because our searches only last .003 seconds. Imagine someone back in the day searching for a lost journal entry from World War II or perhaps they were going to a new land to look for gold - either way the search remains the same - these people looking for something with no hope that they will find it - perhaps they alienate their family, perhaps they learn something about themselves, either way - good or bad something happens to them, because they gained some wisdom in their search because they spent a lot of time listening. We, however, are stuck in speaking our own knowledge. We want something, we find it (anonymously, perhaps with no human interaction whatsoever), and then we grab it, get it, make it our own, and boom - we're back in our bubbles, enjoying our own things without having to find new ones. It's the fact that people had to do things before that makes it so weird. If we wanted to have an adventure we could, but we would have to CHOOSE it. And when you have a La-Z-Boy chair, air conditioning, and great options for playing any sort of media, it's a pretty easy choice to not venture out. So, I guess in my own babbling, I wonder whether we will continue to get wise, or simply smarter with knowledge but with no real life applications.

Comfortably Numb

Blogging is more fun than I realized. I think it might because you are actually creating something instead of just thinking it and then letting media numb your actions down. In fact, I realize we as a society have become numb, almost desensitized to the day to day happenings in our lives and the world. Somewhere betwixt YouTube and Recorded TV, we have learned that life generally cycles the more exciting events to us over and over again, and therefore if we missed it the first time, we have the opportunity to pick it up on the second go-around. The idea that you MUST go see something, MUST create something, or MUST be somewhere gets downplayed with the general response of, "Ehh, I can catch it another time."

In some ways that is why I maybe enjoyed working with kids this year. To them, doing or not doing something means the world. Sometimes, I feel like I miss that raw energy and desire - the idea that something had to be done at that moment, that instant, and everything else could be cast aside. Now I'm too lazy to walk to the other room to catch the Daily Show in its live showing, mainly because I know I can watch it like 4 times tomorrow.

Perhaps, that is why I enjoy blogging. It must date back to old times when you get that joy out of creating something. Maybe what I'm really saying is that I'm lazy and numb, and I try to make myself feel better by saying society has made me that way - but I guess I am overlooking the millions of people that are always doing shit. I just feel that those people get enough credit. What about the lazy folk? Who speaks on their behalf and tells them that it's okay that they ate a whole row of Chips Deluxe Cookies with the M&Ms (They're so damn good, it's not even fair. They win every time in Roby vs. Cookie). Who tells the lazy people that perhaps numbness and lack of desire is something your ancestors worked hard to provide for you, so maybe it's okay to enjoy it.

So I say, enjoy your lazy days without all the guilt. I can't tell you the amount of people that tell me I did nothing today and feel bad about it. I also really don't like the people that get uber excited about doing nothing on a day either, because if they're too excited it means that they don't do it enough. You know the people I'm talking about. They smile, and they're all like, "I did absolutely nothing today and it was awesome." In my mind, if you're not numb about your lack of activity it means you do too much and you're not an authentic lazy person. That person that exalts their lazy day is going to do a fuckload of shit tomorrow, you just wait. And then it's not fun because they deserve their lazy day. The best is when you haven't done anything during the day to be tired except eat Bugles, and you still find yourself waiting to take a nice good nap. So, I say on to all thee who love the lazy life, be comfortably numb. And for all you "Type-A" personality types out there, know that nobody cares about your list of errands to do - just get it done and then come chill out and don't talk about it.

The Smirk Face

You know what I enjoy about people, and more specifically - white people - when a song that they like comes on, they get the smirk face. Let me explain.

The smirk face has a little bit of the eyebrows furrowed so that there are wrinkles on the top of your forehead. Then there is the move of one side (only one) of your lip towards your cheek. Then, there is the head bobbing (kind of like a titled head nodding yes). Try this move right now. Pretty interesting, huh?

Now if you're thinking that nobody does this - you are wrong. In fact, you probably have done this. Many of you would be doing this right now if "Bump, Bump, Bump" by B2K came on. You pretend that you don't know what I'm talking about, but you do. I tried to point this out one time back in college, only to a mixed reaction of laughs and airplane bottles of Jaeger being pelted at me.

I didn't say anything was wrong with it, I just said I enjoyed it. People tend to assume that you are making fun of them more than commending them. I think it's great people have passion and umph for their music. It shows that you still have blood running through those veins. It's really the reserved people that bother me - I mean I'm all about staying stoic sometimes, but if you're like that all the time, it doesn't mean that you're some sort of cool, mysterious, mature being. It means you're unhappy. Unhappy people are the ones that trick themselves into thinking they are "cool" because they don't give into these things - Facebook, dancing, giving someone the fist pound.

My first bit of advice on the blog. Do something weird and crazy every once in a while, but make it like mayoanaise or butter. Spread it out, don't glob it all on at once or people won't be able to to stomach it, but do take the time once in a while to be a bit crazy, energetic, or weird so that if nothing else, you can gauge other people's reactions.

- Mr. C

A First Time for Everything

So, for many a drunken rant, I have made fun of people who kept blogs. I found it completely and utterly weird that so many people wanted other people to know what they were feeling, how they were feeling, when they were feeling it, and why they were feeling a certain way. I guess in a way, I'm still a bit skeptical about why this is necessary (I feel like I let my thoughts be known fairly well in the flesh), but perhaps it's the softness that creeps into your body the older you get that gives you bits of hope that maybe somebody will read your thoughts and laugh - either out of pity or concordance - and that a record of your wit should prevail on in the netherworld of the internet even if you perhaps do not.

As I sit and write this particular post, I cannot help but let my mind wander to the idiosyncrasies of this place we call "home." I wonder if perhaps we miss the permanence and simplicity of our youth to know that no matter what things were, we could give them a label easily when we were younger - "This is my house. This is my room. These are my friends. This is how I feel." Perhaps the greatest and worst tool college instills in you is a feeling of fluidity - we begin to see life and ourselves much like water- adaptable, powerful, and versatile, yet utterly bland, amorphous, and indistinguishable at times. This numbness that crept into you without even the realization that it was there came somewhere between recognizing your SAT scores don't matter at all and then realizing you are one of many people who are privy to the same guilty pleasures - hedonistic or intellectual - as everyone else. It's wonderful to realize there's a niche for you everywhere - people you can talk heady stuff with and people that will drink as much as you and perhaps embarrass themselves as well. But it also makes you realize that you can create that environment in many places and the thought of home starts to dissipate. I say this not to reiterate the message of "Garden State" (oh dramedy movies with a soundtrack, how you seduce us all), but more to wonder when we start to feel like the new life we are creating is our own, and not an escape/replication from our previous one. Does it take marriage, kids, or simply a certain amount of time away before you begin to sever ties with what life once was, and now what it is. When do we lose the nostalgia for the past and gain the ambition for the future? At 22, it seems weird that I am so nostalgic, yet I don't feel I'm alone. Therefore it makes me even more confused to think that I am happy to be home, yet can't really define what home is anymore. I shall think about it more this summer.