There’s a Chinese proverb that goes something like, “He who is not a radical at 20 has no heart, but he who is still a radical at 40 has no head,” which is nice because it’s letting you off for saying stupid shit when you’re young. So go ahead and say it, but rest assured a lot of it is stupid shit for sure.
Here are some examples of things you might say, why they are dumb, and how they come loose as you get older:
“I’M A COMMUNIST”
Yeah, you’re the family’s political firebrand and you ruined your sister’s birthday dinner by arguing with your granddad about healthcare. You’re fucking shit up at school with your confrontational stance on history lessons and girls dig how you know about books and have a passion for social justice.
But have you ever been to Russia? Play those guys a Sonic Youth record and they’ll look at you all puzzled before shooting your dog and stealing your shoes. Also, you really want everything to be run by the state? Even the record stores and the fashion industry? How far do you want to go? You want government-issue jeans? Of course you fucking don’t, and you will realize that and get over it. Plus, your granddad is 80 and loves you very much — don’t fuck with his ideals.
—
“I HATE CHRISTMAS”
Hanging out with your dickhead dad, your bitch mother, and spoilt siblings who don’t get you even a bit is such a drag. You’re a vegan and your mum doesn’t respect that and ruins your nut loaf by pouring real gravy on it and then you go upstairs to your room and listen to Merzbow while your family sings carols. It’d be so much better just to be on your own in your flat / apartment smoking weed with your friends from university who also have no sense of humor about food.
But haven’t you seen that episode of Roseanne where Darlene and her boyfriend are eating macaroni & cheese on Christmas day because they ditched their families? They fucking hate it! After their shitty poor people’s Christmas they came back to their fat parents who knew how to cook, could afford heating, and had bought them decent presents, which is exactly what you would do too. Also, eventually, you’ll get kids of your own, stop being such a selfish fuck, and enjoy the company of people who love you even if they don’t get what there is to like about Einsterzende Neubauten.
—
“I’M NEVER GOING TO GET MARRIED”
What an outmoded tradition, getting a woman to be subservient / tying a man to one woman, all those bullshit suits and dresses, and getting some fake religion involved in your life. You and your girl don’t need some fucking piece of paper to prove you love each other and as soon as you get married the sex stops, so why would you do that?
But what about when you and your girl are 40 years old and you are still calling her your girlfriend? It’ll look pretty ridonkulous, but what are the alternatives? Are you going to call her your partner? That sounds like you’re either in business with her or she is a man that you are dating, which is obviously fine and all that but not actually the case. So just get married because you’ll have a great day being center of attention: She gets to wear the dress of her dreams and later on you won’t feel like it’s OK to leave her without giving it serious thought.
—
“UNIFORMS ARE FOR FASCISTS”
Uniforms are just a way to keep people from expressing themselves. They’re a tool of the government to stop the workers from thinking for themselves and when they made you take your nose ring out at Pret, you just quit right there on the spot because it’s a fucking infringement of your liberties.
But have you ever been to an independent bookstore where the staff don’t even have name-tags? It’s fucking impossible to work out who you should be asking questions to. And would you really like your grandmother being treated at hospital by a doctor who she’s scared of because he’s a retarded Korn fan with green hair and contacts that give him cat eyes? Worse still, you want that same retard delivering the news to your family that grandma passed on due to the bowel cancer reaching all her other organs? You don’t want that at all.
—
“I’D NEVER SIGN TO A MAJOR / COMPROMISE MY MUSIC”
Of Montreal are dickheads for selling their songs to car adverts, fuck Earth Crisis for signing to Roadrunner, Iggy Pop has a become a corporate stooge (geddit!?) for doing those insurance adverts, and Pavement only reformed for the money. Fuck majors. They’re all linked to arms companies and they suck the life out of the music.
But have you heard of this little thing called paying the bills? When your parents stop doing it for you, you have to do it yourself. It’s horrible but it makes you realize that making music just for yourself is dumb (and, if you read back the phrase itself, kind of selfish) when you could be making it for an enormous audience and get the recognition that you would obviously love to get. Just sign on the dotted line dickhead — they’re giving you a hundred grand and all you have to do is spend more than a day in the studio and learn to sing in tune. Oh boohoo, you have to play on a kids TV show? Led Zep did that shit all the time.
Also, Bleach is a piece of fucking shit compared to Nevermind, At the Drive In were any other sub-Fugazi chancers until they got Ross Robinson in to do Relationship Of Command, and all music before 1980 was on a major, so get over this shit because you’ll just end up an angry internet commenter, and no one wants that.
Growing up is shitty but at least you’re getting less stupid the older you get.
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Wow, you were a fucking prick as a teenager.
I enjoyed the read a bit, though.
12.04.09 at 10:12 am
hahaha, have you ever seen that Roseanne?
12.04.09 at 10:31 am
russia is not a true communist country, there has never been one
12.04.09 at 10:36 am
fuckin’ priceless shit! it’s amazing how many know it all’s never grow up! look at Bill Maher- i bet he still hates christmas- what an ass clown!
12.04.09 at 10:36 am
I said I would never get married. I almost got a vasectomy at 18. I’m glad I didn’t. That would have been the worst
12.04.09 at 10:49 am
@steroid abusing homo- let me guess, “…that’s why it’s never worked blah, blah, blah…” ugh.
12.04.09 at 10:50 am
overheard a prissy rich poseur girl claiming to be a feminist once. yes, you banged every guy at this backyard party = feminist. why do you look like paris hilton then?
12.04.09 at 11:00 am
Denying communist countries are “true communism” is another stupid thing you do when you’re stupid. It’s the only way to cling to that stupid dream. It’s like saying Tiger Woods isn’t True Tiger Woods after you find out he’s cheating.
12.04.09 at 11:02 am
At the Drive were way better before RoC.
12.04.09 at 11:03 am
young is one thing, ignorant is another. this was written by a sheltered milquetoast. whatever shall the gay people do about getting married? oh right, that doesn’t exist in your life experience. what if you really don’t want to be around your family during the holidays because they’re major assholes (and what about the jews who don’t want to deal with chanukah, muslims w/ramadan, etc)? awesome how the only way s/he can reference the issue of uniforms is by noting how much the lack of them is an inconvenience while shopping. it’s not like s/he will ever have a, you know, real sucky job where a uniform is required. why no witty statement about the hired help? surely there must be some angst-ridden youngster out there who needs to be taken to task for not being polite enough to mabel for wiping his shit-stained ass during his/her drug-addled (designer, of course) teen years.
12.04.09 at 11:15 am
but…but…but, what about Crass week then? was it all just a bunch of meaningless hokey?
12.04.09 at 11:20 am
Jesus, if I had a nickle from every guy peddling his opinion as the truth, I’d have about two dollar fifty by now.
12.04.09 at 11:21 am
quality post.
12.04.09 at 11:37 am
Oh jeez that McDonalds costume!! HAHAHA
12.04.09 at 11:50 am
I’d sign to a major in a second, this nigger gots to get paid, yo! Art sucks and I’d leave it to all those ‘local’ musicians who ‘focus’ on their craft by rhyming ‘love’ with ‘dove’ and throwing in a ‘glove’ to stay local. I’d take the money, roll out to Rio, and have teh sexxors with all the beautiful babes…but first, I have to call the Welfare Office and ask them why they cut my transportation costs from my last cheque. Rock n Roll, yo!
12.04.09 at 12:28 pm
If I had a nickle from every guy who didn’t properly use the the word nickle in a sentence, I wouldn’t have any nickels.
Bee tee dubz, you know a post is quality when the only smarmy, asshole thing you have to say is aimed at another commenter.
12.04.09 at 1:07 pm
hey Anonymous go get back on Jezebel, not everything everyone ever says has to include every racial, gender, and socioeconomic group. it’s impossible and then the world would be boring.
thanks
12.04.09 at 1:10 pm
Is there anything worse than people who refer to college as “university”? Fucking limeys
12.04.09 at 1:13 pm
@ew
boring to YOU, milquey. stop flaunting your narrow world view, it’s unattractive
12.04.09 at 1:13 pm
You’re my new boyfriend. Apologies to your wife. xx
12.04.09 at 1:25 pm
that “chinese proverb” is from winston churchill and it’s “If you’re not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you’re not a conservative at forty you have no brain.” please disregard this if you were joking about it being chinese. i don’t know who to take seriously anymore
12.04.09 at 2:29 pm
by the way, this is a hilarious and spot-on post
12.04.09 at 2:36 pm
people who are unable to torture themselves and/or obsess over the gender, sexuality, race, religion or socioeconomic status of others have an ‘unattractive, narrow world-view.’
isn’t ‘progressivism’ wonderful.
12.04.09 at 3:07 pm
@giant queef: much better to pound pablum concerning one’s limited, cushy surroundings than concern oneself with the insignificant riffraff that reside in the remaining 99% of the world’s occupied area. god, you’re a prize.
12.04.09 at 3:14 pm
Another delusion I had when I was younger that I was always going to smoke weed 24/7. It got boring. And wouldn’t you know it, now it’s legal and I don’t smoke it anymore.
12.04.09 at 3:28 pm
Wasn’t that picture of the ugly couple in Vice? I think it was.
12.04.09 at 4:17 pm
It’s all funny and true except that it isn’t “selfish” to make art just for yourself. That doesn’t even make sense.
12.04.09 at 5:41 pm
tha sound like a sex man party!
12.04.09 at 5:47 pm
I’ve told boomers I think violence is an inherent part of real revolutions and that most of the movements of the 60s failed because they were asking instead of telling (telling=busting heads). I’m pushing 21 now, hope it doesn’y bite me in the ass later. I’m not a violent guy per se (I mean I’ll fight if provoked), but I’m not a revolutionary either.
12.04.09 at 6:10 pm
dammit , fake ew @ 1:10, u r sullying my good name!!!!!
12.04.09 at 6:21 pm
Also everybody in the entire fucking world has heard sonic youth, listening to it doesn’t make u exclusive and cool.
12.04.09 at 6:23 pm
Also also : At the Drive In? Did u fall into a coma when u were 15 in 2002???
12.04.09 at 6:27 pm
Awesome. good job
12.04.09 at 6:27 pm
well done and agreed. still cool with fighting off getting old, tho. ive mostly quit doing some of that young stuff only because its a lot of work to be that big a dick. that and my pops is so old he’d stroke out if i went all eugene debs on him now.
12.04.09 at 6:53 pm
did you know you can call your girlfriend you’re wife as much as you like I call my partner my wife when I’m around people I would have to explain it to or get shit for it who cares if you’re not married also korn fans aren’t doctors but yes uniforms are fine also does anyone say they are a communist? other then really sad political nerds and a few weird old people? what if you’re family are atheists and also hate christmas do you still have to like it? major labels rule
12.04.09 at 7:13 pm
good post, mainly because it made me hope my friends dont remember that week in grade 11 that I told people I was a communist..
although like another poster pointed out, you left out “russia is not a true communist country, there has never been one” as a dumb thing 16 year olds say
12.04.09 at 7:57 pm
@ hippie
I’m coming out of the closet: some doctors ARE Korn fans. I’d say they’re one of my “guilty” pleasures, but I honestly don’t care how much people love to hate them. Bagpipes and nursery rhymes were hardcore in ‘94. I did shave the red bihawk out of respect for little old Vietnamese grannies with Colon cancer and their sobbing families, though. I’m not being ironic.
12.04.09 at 9:37 pm
Anonymous finger fucks hisself while fantasizing about poor muslim black gay men with AIDS and dyslexia.
12.05.09 at 1:47 pm
DAMN dude.
12.05.09 at 2:43 pm
fagotish
12.05.09 at 6:05 pm
That episode of Roseanne is the Thanksgiving episode, not the Christmas one.
I’m going to kill myself for knowing that.
12.05.09 at 9:13 pm
funny + good, but for clarifiation: in the pre-80s, many many labels were actually independent but have since merged with majors and in hindsight we think of them as having always been subsidiaries to majors, when in fact they were not affiliated at all. examples include: motown, elektra, & reprise.
12.06.09 at 11:36 am
talking heads were indie rock: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sire_Records
12.06.09 at 11:39 am
My dad hated Christmas when I was little and signed my presents as being from Satan. I find Christmas pretty irritatng these days. I like my immediate family members, just not the music, gift giving, decorations or extended family.
12.07.09 at 7:10 am
I need a new website to read while I’m taking a poo.
I don’t like this one anymore.
Any suggestions?
12.07.09 at 9:31 am
@real ew
you arent the real ew. i started using that name back in mid 2008. i made it up. maybe you took over for a while, but i’m back, get over it.
@Anonymous: just because i don’t tell everyone how broad my world view is 24/7 doesn’t mean it’s narrow.
@nick: i love you.
12.07.09 at 9:34 am
@ ew
you’re an internet commenter you fucking loser
12.07.09 at 10:39 am
The funny bit is how you had no idea how Russia was or IS today. I wont get into a meaningless debate about real communism, I wouldn’t get any responses past “But communism is evil!” “The government is evil!” “The government is magically incapable of success because duh, it’s the government!”. But I’m drunk and I take offence at everything right now, including seeing two penguins.
I hate how america… wait, is this site even related to the US? Who cares. I hate how the US completely belittles socialism and communism, calling Obama a communist is fucking retarded. Just as how the US has no idea what a liberal is. Or do the english? All those terms mixed up probably stands for 50% of all retarded political debates that only build on skewing the perspective.
Long live communism. Seriously / Engelbrekt, swedish communistic alcoholic skinhead.
02.25.10 at 6:12 am