STFU

I find more and more fantastic reasons all the time to just shut up and quit complaining about my life. Like the quote above. I found it on a website belonging to Larry Silverberg, an acting teacher who's made the most of his association with Sanford Meisner. I'll forgive you if you don't know who Larry Silverberg is, but if you have no idea who Sanford Meisner is, then you're no longer allowed to read my journal. Get out.

Also, during a conversation with someone the other day, I jokingly referred to my "grinding poverty," and the person to whom I was speaking said, "which is nothing compared to the grinding poverty of the third world." Entirely true, and it never hurts to be reminded of it!

Now, of course, this doesn't mean that I will stop compaining about my life - just that I find newer and better reasons to stop every day. It's part of the human condition to be unsatisfied... at least that's some philosophers would have you believe. I'm not entirely sure if it's part of our condition, or we're just conditioned that way.

So, as you know, I'm reading Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged for the first time, and mostly I've been jokingly complaining about the size of the type and the thickness of the paperpack. But I have to say, I think I hate this book. I don't want to rush to judgement, since I'm only on page 300 (yes, I'm really aware of the full irony of what I just wrote) and I can't really say for sure that I've entirely grasped the theme of the novel. But let's face it... you can only be smacked in the head with the two-by-four of rugged individualism's superiority to over-devotion to social and economic anti-darwinism so much before you're, like, "Okay, for chrissake, tell me a fucking story!" I mean, the damn thing is one-thousand sixty-nine pages long, and she writes excruciatingly long and detailed descriptions of what the main characters are going through and thinking, but there's absolutely no explanation of how the United States comes to the sorry pass it does in the book... all these ridiculous lowest-common-denominator-welfare-state laws are passed. And how am I supposed to buy in to your thematic premise that the world is falling apart because we're more worried about building a nice environment for a man to work in than we are the quality of his work, when I can't see how the world could have gotten to that state anyway?

Unless I'm completely misunderstanding (and remember, I'm only on page 300), Ms. Rand seems to think that a businessman's only reason for existence should be to make a profit, and the needs of his employees shouldn't even be considered. I'm not entirely sure I'm ready to buy that. Ultimately, though, I could listen to the sales pitch and enjoy it. But if I end up hating this book (and right now, I'm pretty sure I will), it's going to be because there's no room in Ms. Rand's world for the middle ground... either you're a saintly rugged individualist who's out for profit and thinks everyone else should take care of themselves, or you're a pathetic loser who fails and can't accept responsibility for your failures because you were just trying to do the right thing by focusing on helping the underpriviledged. Well, I guess I think that's bullshit... I intend to be a success while trying to keep the needs of others in mind. Fuck you, Ayn Rand.

Dear sweet Jesus, how did I get up on this soapbox? I'm afraid of heights.