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Friday, July 28, 2006

The Boy: America in Microcosm?

Current music: BassDrive

The Boy has done yet another one of his in&out maneuvers. He came home Friday evening, and flaked off back to the New Party House Wednesday night after going to see a movie with M.A.E. Amazingly(?), this came after he started looking for a job and Big V offered him one when their regular guy quit. Of course, there were strings attached to the job, like getting a haircut and putting the hardware in his pocket (he has chunky pointy earrings and a lip ring that even his friends think looks stupid). There’s also the minor detail of cigarette addiction (we’ve been after M.A.E. to quit too). He supposedly has also embraced Rastafari, but I’ll bet you a beer that he can’t tell you who Haile Selassie is or what he signifies to Rastafari — his supposed conversion is probably exactly what you would guess it is. (I’m still trying to figure out whether white people are even allowed to be Rastas… if anyone who knows happens to be reading, please feel free to comment.)

So I was huffing and puffing on the evil exerbike last night, when I started thinking about how The Boy’s self-destructive behavior is a small-scale version of what our nation is doing to itself:

  • The Boy is using Rastafari to justify his ganja use; America picks and chooses parts of the Bible to justify a selfish, judgmental lifestyle that has little to do with either Judaism or Christianity.

  • As The Boy is addicted to nicotine, so is America addicted to oil. Both use their addiction as an excuse to continue doing what they want — and both will continue until it’s too late, most likely.

  • The Boy and America both want what they want, and want it right now.

  • Neither The Boy nor America is looking ahead 20 years (or even two years) to see where their respective paths are leading.

  • Neither seem to respect nor care for anyone else, no matter how much those others love them.

It’s difficult to stand by and watch both The Boy and the nation going to hell in a handbasket. But I have very little influence over either one. I do what I can about them both, but I fear it’s not enough.

5 comments:

  1. Hi FARfetched.

    Years ago I used to have a friend that was Rastafarian. The biggest thing I remember about him were ganja and reggae. Oh and that he married a girl in Germany, left and came back to the states and married another girl. The German father tracked him down, said here's your wife and left. I don't know how he ever worked the two wife thing.

    As far as the country. I feel pretty much as you do. Just as with my children and the country, I can only hope for the best.

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  2. Ganja and Reggae are pretty much the two things that everyone thinks about as being associated with Rastas. But I don't think the bigamy was part of being Rasta.

    The German dad was about as nice a guy as the Rasta though, dumping his daughter on him & leaving like that. Did he not have any consideration about how she felt?

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  3. Dont really know FARfetched. I had lost contact with my Rasta friend and a mutual friend dropped by and told me about it. It sounds like something he would do though.

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  4. I think that for the most part white kids who becomes Rastas do it for incredibly shallow reasons, much like teenage goth girls deciding to be Wiccan because they think it's scary. White Rasta kids do it because they like smoking weed. I'm not sure that it's prohibited for white people to convert, exactly, but despite the fact that modern Rastas denounce racism, there is still the whole "Black people should move back to Africa and be left alone by Whitey forever" theme that runs through the whole thing. I honestly don't think most of these kids know about that.

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  5. Thanks, Paulo. That's pretty much what I thought too.

    ReplyDelete

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