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Cars Are The Most Central Thing In America, In A Lot Of Ways. They've Probably Influenced The Way We Live More Than Anything Else, And Yet Every Really Big Problem - Whether It's The Environment Or Who Dictates The International Economy Because Of Oil - Is All Tied To Cars. Ultimately, Cars Are Bad For Civilization. I Don't Know If They'll End Us.

-Chuck Klosterman

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Cars Are The Most

Chuck Klosterman

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Cars Are The Most Central Thing In America, In A Lot Of Ways. They've Probably Influenced The Way We Live More Than Anything Else, And Yet Every Really Big Problem - Whether It's The Environment Or Who Dictates The International Economy Because Of Oil - Is All Tied To Cars. Ultimately, Cars Are Bad For Civilization. I Don't Know If They'll End Us.

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We Argued About How Hard It Would Be To Ride A Bear, Assuming Said Bear Was Muzzled.

I Think This Is The Kind Of Thing Where We're Rapidly Moving Toward An Age Where Most Of The Populace Will Be Almost Unable To Imagine Life Without An Internet Component Interlocked With It.

Mostly, We Argued About Who Which Of Us Was Better At Arguing, And Particularly About Who Had Won The Previous Argument.

Americans Have Become Conditioned To Believe The World Is A Gray Place Without Absolutes; This Is Because We're Simultaneously Both Cowardly And Arrogant. We Don't Know The Answers, So We Assume They Must Not Exist.

The Villain Is The Person Who Knows The Most But Cares The Least.

This Is What Being Alive Feels Like, You Know? The Place Doesn't Matter. You Just Live.

What's Hard To Do Is Describe Why You Like Something. Because Ultimately, The Reason Things Move People Is Very Amorphous. You Can Be Cerebral About Things You Hate, But Most Of The Things You Like Tend To Be Very Emotive.

I Would Hate For Climate Change To Be Accepted Simply Because Everyone Was Dying.

I Remember Saying Things, But I Have No Idea What Was Said. It Was Generally A Friendly Conversation.” —associated Press Reporter Jack Sullivan, Attempting To Recount A 3 A.m. Exchange We Had At A Dinner Party And Inadvertently Describing The Past Ten Years Of My Life.

Contrary To What You May Have Heard From Henry Rollins Or/and Ian Mackaye And/or Anyone Else Who Joined A Band After Working In An Ice Cream Shop, You Can't Really Learn Much About A Person Based On What Kind Of Music They Happen To Like. As A Personality Test, It Doesn't Work Even Half The Time. However, There Is At Least One Thing You Can Learn: The Most Wretched People In The Word Are Those Who Tell You They Like Every Kind Of Music 'except Country.' People Who Say That Are Boorish And Pretentious At The Same Time.

Coldplay Songs Deliver An Amorphous, Irrefutable Interpretation Of How Being In Love Is Supposed To Feel, And People Find Themselves Wanting That Feeling For Real. They Want Men To Adore Them Like Lloyd Dobler Would, And They Want Women To Think Like Aimee Mann, And They Expect All Their Arguments To Sound Like Sam Malone And Diane Chambers. They Think Everything Will Work Out Perfectly In The End (just Like It Did For Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones And Nick Hornby's Rob Fleming), And They Don't Stop Believing Because Journey's Steve Perry Insists We Should Never Do That.

Different Critics Go To Different Lengths To Disagree With That Sentiment, But Ultimately, They're The Person Experiencing This Art, And Whatever Judgment Or Taste They Use Is Internal, And Says More About Them Than About The Record They're Writing About.

The Mass Media Causes Sexual Misdirection: It Prompts Us To Need Something Deeper Than What We Want. This Is Why Woody Allen Has Made Nebbish Guys Cool; He Makes People Assume There Is Something Profound About Having A Relationship Based On Witty Conversation And Intellectual Discourse. There Isn't. It's Just Another Gimmick, And It's No Different Than Wanting To Be With Someone Because They're Thin Or Rich Or The Former Lead Singer Of Whiskeytown.

People Can Demand Someone They've Never Met Be Arrested And Thrown In Jail Forever Because They Know It's Never Going To Happen And They're Never Going To See This Person.

I'd Ask People To Keep In Mind The Idea That If You Really Understand Something, It's Even More Important For You To Consider The Possibility Of Your Wrongness. Even If It Takes Someone Dumber Than You To Point That Out.

If I Basically View Criticism As Sort Of An Interesting Form Of Writing About Oneself, An Interesting Form Of Autobiography, Then I Don't Feel Any Pressure To Have Any Kind Of Authoritative, Universal Voice. That Kind Of Thing Has Never Interested Me.

The Falling Flakes Were Random And Without Purpose; The Snow Was Drunker Than She Was.

...i've Spent The Last Fifteen Years Of My Life Railing Against The Game Of Soccer, An Exercise That Has Been Lauded As "the Sport Of The Future" Since 1977. Thankfully, That Future Dystopia Has Never Come.

Sure There's A Percentage Of People Who Are Like, "it Snowed In May. I Don't Believe In Climate Change." Well, That's Crazy, But That's Always Gonna Be The Case. I Suppose If Climate Change Happens Much Faster Than Even The Dire Experts Predict, Then I Suppose Opinions Will Change.

I Love Music, Right? I Can't Say "i'm Only Going To Listen To A Physical Medium," Because There's A Bunch Of Meaningful Records That As A Music Fan I Love That I Would've Never Been Able To Access. So If I Want To Be Part Of Something I Have To Get Dragged Along With Technology.

Booze Is The Greatest Of All Equalizers. Rich Drunks And Poor Drunks Both Pass Out The Same Way.

What's Hard To Do Is Describe Why You Like Something. Because Ultimately, The Reason Things Move People Is Very Amorphous. You Can Be Cerebral About Things You Hate, But Most Of The Things You Like Tend To Be Very Emotive. It's Really Hard To Do A Literary Reproduction Of What Makes You Happy. That's What I Try To Do. If Nothing Else, It Seems Like There's Enough People Out There Telling The World What Isn't Cool, Or What's Terrible, Or What's Depressing. I Think There's An Element Of Cynicism In My Writing, But I'm An Optimistic Cynic.

The People Who Review My Books, Generally, Are Kind Of Youngish Culture Writers Who Aspire To Write Books, Or Write Opinion Pieces About What They Think Of Neil Young, Or Why They Quit Watching Er Or Whatever. And Because Of That, I Think There's A Lot Of People Who Write About My Books With The Premise Of, "why This Guy? Why Not Me?"

It Might Sound Chauvinistic, But There Is A Sad Reality In Rock Music: Bands Who Depend On Support From Females Inevitably Crash And Burn.

Maybe I Could Survive In One Of Those Resort Prisons Where They House White-collar Criminals. I've Always Wanted To Get Better At Tennis.

Some Say That Time Is Like Water That Flows Around Us (like A Stone In The River) And Some Say We Flow With Time (like A Twig Floating On The Surface Of The Water).

Saying You Like "piano Man" Doesn't Mean You Like Billy Joel; It Means You're Willing To Go To A Piano Bar If There's Nothing Else To Do

What's Kind Of Happening Is The Conflict Over Football Might Be A Class Conflict Where There Is A Percentage Of People Who Have No Relationship To Physicality And A Percentage Of The Populace Who Still Does.

Punk Was Perfect For Lazy People, Because Anyone Could Do It--you Didn't Even Need To Know How To Play Your Instrument, Assuming You Knew How To Plug It In. There Was Really No Difference Between Sid Vicious And Anyone In London Who Owned A Bass.

Seeing No Resolution To My Existential Recognition Of Loss, I Decide To Eat Lunch.

In And Of Itself, Nothing Really Matters. What Matters Is That Nothing Is Ever In And Of Itself.

The Thing That Has Always Baffled Me About People's Perception Of My Writing Is The Sense That I'm A Very Controversial, Opinionated, Polarizing Person. I Feel Like I Write About Things That I'm Interested In, And I Describe Why They're Interesting To Me. I Could Be Negative, I Guess. It's Far Easier To Write Why Something Is Terrible Than Why It's Good.

I Think One Of The Many Interesting Things About [donald] Trump Is That People In The Media Did Not Take Him Seriously For Months. Then, When It Was Clear He Was Going To Be The Nominee, They Immediately Hit The Panic Button. I Think They Overlook The Possibility That He Could Just Be A Really Bad President In The Way That Presidents Are Traditionally Bad.

Necessity Used To Be The Mother Of Invention, But Then We Ran Out Of Things That Were Necessary. The Postmodern Mother Of Invention Is Desire; We Don’t Really “need” Anything New, So We Only Create What We Want.

If Someone Feels Negative About The Way Society Or Culture Seems To Be Going, What It Probably Suggests Is That It's Just Moving Away From The State That They Are Comfortable With Or Used To. It's Understandable Why Someone Would Feel That Way.

In New York, People Are Unhappy On Purpose, Because Unhappiness Makes Them Seem More Complex; In Washington Dc It Just Sort Of Works Out That Way.

Art And Love Are The Same Thing: It’s The Process Of Seeing Yourself In Things That Are Not You.

Let's Face It: Sadness And Evil Are Always More Believable Than Happiness And Love. When A Movie Reviewer Calls A Film "realistic," Everyone Knows What That Means--it Means The Movie Has An Unhappy Ending.

I Was Fortunate That I Was At Newspapers For Eight Years, Where I Wrote At Least Five Or Six Stories Every Week. You Get Used To Interviewing Lots Of Different People About A Lot Of Different Things. And They Aren't Things You Know About Until You Do The Story.

Sarcasm Is When You Tell Someone The Truth By Lying On Purpose.

There Was A Time In Our Very Recent History When It Was “interesting” To Be A Star Wars Fan. It Was Sort Of Like Admitting You Masturbate Twice A Day Or That Your Favorite Band Was They Might Be Giants. Star Wars Was Something Everyone Of A Certain Age Secretly Loved But Never Openly Recognized

When Given The Choice, We’d All Rather Be Happy Now … Even If That Guarantees We’ll All Be Sad Later.

All My Friends Are Rock Critics, So We Talk About Rock Criticism A Lot. Because Of That, In Order To Be Part Of The Conversation, You Have To Have An Awareness Of What The Discussion Is.

If Donald Trump Loses Badly, It Could Mean The End Of The Gop As One Of The Two Significant Parties.

Whenever I Can’t Sleep, I Like To Lie In The Darkness And Pretend I’ve Been Assassinated. I’ve Found This Is The Best Way To Get Comfortable. I Imagine I’m In The Coffin At My Funeral, And People From My Past Are Walking By My Corpse And Making Comments About My Demise.

Somewhere, At Some Point, Somehow, Somebody Decided That Death Equals Credibility.

At A Magazine, Everything You Do Is Edited By A Bunch Of People, By Committee, And A Lot Of Them Are, Were, Or Think Of Themselves As Writers. Part Of That Is Because Magazines Worry About Their Voice.

If Someone Breaks Your Heart, Just Punch Them In The Face. Oh Sure, It Seems Obvious Now, But You'd Be Amazed At How Many People Don't Think Of It When It's Relevant. Seriously, Punch Them In The Face And Go Get Some Ice Cream.

If You Move Furniture All Day, If You're A Construction Worker, If You Have A Job That's Real Physical, This Idea That There Is A Sport That Involves The Kind Of Conventional, Traditional View Of Toughness, You See That Still As A Positive Thing.

Anyone Who Claims To Be Good At Lying Is Obviously Bad At Lying. Thus - As A Writer Myself - I Cannot Comment On Whether Or Not Writers Are Exceptionally Good Liars, Because Whatever I Said Would Actually Mean Its Complete Opposite.

If Rain Is God Crying, I Think God Is Drunk And His Girlfriend Just Slept With Zeus.

To Me, Every Interview, Even If You Love The Artist, Needs To Be Somewhat Adversarial. Which Doesn't Mean You Need To Attack The Person, But You Do Need To Look At It Like You're Trying To Get Information That Has Not Been Written About Before.

I Think A Bigger Difference With Social Media Is Going To Be Things Like The Impact Instagram Will Have For Historians. For The Longest Time, We Had No Images Of The Past. And Then When We Had The Advent Of The Camera, We Had A Record Of The Things People Chose To Photograph, Which, For A While, Were Portraits Of Your Family, A New Building We Built, Or A Really Big Horse. Well Now We Have Images Of Everything. That Will Be The Biggest Difference I Think - That We Will Have A Visual Record Of This Reality In A Way That Will Be Completely Covered.

If You're Doing An Interview, You Need Conversational Tension. After You Talk To Them, You're Not Going To Have A Relationship With Them, They're Not Going To Like You, They're Not Going To Be Your Friend.

We All Believe That We Are A Certain Kind Of Person, But We Never Know Until We Do Something That Proves Otherwise, Or Until We Die.

I'm Really An Alarmist When It Comes To Epidemics. Swine Flu Now; When Sars Was Big, I Was All Freaked Out About That, Bird Flu. That Terrifies Me.

But Whenever I Meet Dynamic, Nonretarded Americans, I Notice That They All Seem To Share A Single Unifying Characteristic: The Inability To Experience The Kind Of Mind-blowing, Transcendent Romantic Relationship They Perceive To Be A Normal Part Of Living. And Someone Needs To Take The Fall For This. So Instead Of Blaming No One For This (which Is Kind Of Cowardly) Or Blaming Everyone (which Is Kind Of Meaningless), I'm Going To Blame John Cusack.

I Get Enjoyment Out Of Writing, But I Get Absolutely No Enjoyment Out Of Rewriting, So I Don't Do Much Of It. The More You Work On Something, Certainly, The Better It Gets. But There's Also A Pretty Clear Law Of Diminishing Returns. It Drives Me Crazy To Do Readings Of My Books, Because If I Read Anything I've Written In The Past, I'd Like To Almost Rewrite Everything.

Observing Someone Without Context Amplifies The Experience. The More We Know, The Less We Are Able To Feel.

The Only People Who Think The Internet Is A Calamity Are People Whose Lives Have Been Hurt By It; The Only People Who Insist The Internet Is Wonderful Are Those Who Need It To Give Their Life Meaning.

When You're Writing For Newspapers You Have All These Parameters. You Can't Swear, You Have To Use Short Paragraphs, All That. If You Stay Within Those Parameters, You Have Lots Of Freedom Because You're Writing For The Next Day.

I Want Fake Love. But That's All I Want, And That's Why I Can't Have It.

The Problem A Lot Of Writers Have Is That They Really Enjoy People Saying, "you're Brilliant." They Let Their Self-perception Be Dictated By Reader Response. But If You're Going To Let Other People Make You Feel Good, You're Going To End Up Feeling Bad When They Say The Opposite. You've Got To Be A Cultural Stoic. Then You Won't Be Devastated By People Who Respond Negatively. Of Course, The Downside Is That It Sort Of Stops You From Being Able To Enjoy People Liking Your Work.

In Some Ways, Halloween Is Much Easier For Women. They Can Just Dress As Sluts, And It's Kind Of A Costume, If They Never Do Any Other Time.

The Things He Did On Purpose Were Usually No Different From The Mistakes He Made By Accident.

If I Knew I Was Going To Die At A Specific Moment In The Future, It Would Be Nice To Be Able To Control What Song I Was Listening To; This Is Why I Always Bring My Ipod On Airplanes.

And I Spilled Gravy On My Carolina Sweater, Because I Am Alive.

If You’re The Type Of Person Who Wants To Associate Exclusively With Those Who Perfectly Mirror Your Own Ethical Worldview, You’re Reducing Significantly The Scope Of Your Potential Life Experience.

Life Experience

The Amount Of Response I Get, In Both A Negative And A Positive Context, Is Completely Related To The Amount Of Books I Sell, I Think. It Seems To Have Nothing To Do With What I'm Writing, But What Degree Of Success I'm Perceived To Have.

The Worst Thing You Can Do To Anybody Trying To Be Creative Is To Demand Participation In Their Vision.

Every One Of Joel's Important Songs--including The Happy Ones--are Ultimately About Loneliness. And It's Not 'clever Lonely' (like Morrissey) Or 'interesting Lonely' (like Radiohead); It's 'lonely Lonely,' Like The Way It Feels When You're Being Hugged By Someone And It Somehow Makes You Sadder.

But No Matter How Many Times We Re-rank The Presidents, In Another 200 Years, The Top Presidents Will Still Be Washington And Lincoln And Jefferson, Because They Defined What A President Is. They Are The Idea, And You Can't Be Better Than The Idea.

The Strength Of Your Memory Dictates The Size Of Your Reality

But It Goes Without Saying That Michael Jordan Could Never Date Pamela Anderson. That Would Cause The Apocalypse.

Sometimes I Think That The Amount Of Time You Live On Earth Is Just An Inverse Reflection Of How Good You Were In A Previous Existence. For Example, Infants Who Die From Sids Were Actually Great People When They Were Alive For Real, So They Get To Go To Heaven After A Mere Five Weeks In Purgatory. Meanwhile Anyone Willard Scott Ever Congratulated For Turning One Hundred Two Was Obviously A Terrible Individual Who Had Many Many Previous Sins To Pay For And Had To Spend A Century In His Or Her Own Unknown Purgatory Even Though The Person Seemed Perfectly Wholesome In This Particular World.

People Hate The Feeling That Technology Is Dragging Them Into The Future, That They're Not Really Following What's Happening, But Being Forced To Be Involved. Even If It Makes Their Life Better, It Still Feels Like It's Happening Against Their Will.

The Reason That People In The Intellectual Community Argue That Football Is Dangerous Is Because There's Now A Large Swath Of Society That Has No Relationship To Physicality Or Potential Violence.

[on Political Correctness:] Any Intended Message Mattered Less Than The Received Message, And Every Received Message Could Be Interpreted In Whatever Way The Receiver Wanted.

We Assume That All Statements Must Be Mild Inversions Of The Truth, Because It's Too Weird To Imagine People Who Aren't Casually Lying, Pretty Much All The Time.

Every Time I Learn The Truth About Something, I’m Disappointed

I Write Pretty Fast, Probably Faster Than Most People. But I Might Think About Something For Six Hours, Then Write It In 20 Minutes. So Did I Write For Six Hours And 20 Minutes, Or Just 20 Minutes? I Used To Write Absolutely Every Day, Except For Days When I Had To Travel Or Something.

The Amount Of Response I Get, In Both A Negative And A Positive Context, Is Completely Related To The Amount Of Books I Sell, I Think. It Seems To Have Nothing To Do With What I'm Writing, But What Degree Of Success I'm Perceived To Have. It's Really Weird, Especially Since I Spent So Much Of My Life Covering People Who Are Famous. It's Interesting To Actually Have It Happen To Me On Some Level.

I Grew Up On A Farm, And We Didn't Have Cable And Only Limited Radio Stations, So I Wasn't Inundated With Culture The Way People In Other Parts Of The Country Were. But I Was Really Interested In It.

I Used To Watch A Lot Of Documentaries About Satanic Possession - And I Don't Know If This Is Racist Or Not - But In The Documentaries, It Never Happened To Americans! It Was Always Happening In Central America Or South America; That's Where The Priest Was Always Going Down To Exorcise Possessed People. So I Didn't Have A Lot Of Fear Of Being Possessed By The Devil.

We All Eventually Become Whatever We Pretend To Hate.

It's Far Easier To Write Why Something Is Terrible Than Why It's Good. If You're Reviewing A Film And You Decide "this Is A Movie I Don't Like," Basically You Can Take Every Element Of The Film And Find The Obvious Flaw, Or Argue That It Seems Ridiculous, Or Like A Parody Of Itself, Or That It's Not As Good As Something Similar That Was Done In A Previous Film. What's Hard To Do Is Describe Why You Like Something. Because Ultimately, The Reason Things Move People Is Very Amorphous. You Can Be Cerebral About Things You Hate, But Most Of The Things You Like Tend To Be Very Emotive.

Pundits Are Always Blaming Tv For Making People Stupid, Movies For Desensitizing The World To Violence, And Rock Music For Making Kids Take Drugs And Kill Themselves. These Things Should Be The Least Of Our Worries. The Main Problem With Mass Media Is That It Makes It Impossible To Fall In Love With Any Acumen Of Normalcy. There Is No 'normal,' Because Everybody Is Being Twisted By The Same Sources Simultaneously.

Falling In Love

Americans Have Become Conditioned To Believe The World Is A Gray Place Without Absolutes; This Is Because We’re Simultaneously Cowardly And Arrogant. We Don’t Know The Answers, So We Assume They Must Not Exist. But They Do Exist. They Are Unclear And/or Unfathomable, But They’re Out There. And—perhaps Surprisingly—the Only Way To Find Those Answers Is To Study Nba Playoff Games That Happened Twenty Years Ago. For All Practical Purposes, The Voice Of Brent Musburger Was The Pen Of Ayn Rand.

My Mind And Gut Are Never Simpatico: Every Time I Think Somebody Likes Me, She Doesn't; Every Time I Think Somebody Doesn't Like Me, She Does. This Has Never Changed And I'm Certain It Never Will.

If I Had To Make A Choice Between Only Writing About Sports Or Only Writing About Music, I Would Probably Write About Music. I'm Not Sure Why That Is. There Seems To Be More To Write About With Music, Just Because It's More Of A Splintered Thing. There's More Subgenres. With Sports, It's More Objective In A Way.

Book Writing Is A Little Different Because, In My Case, My Editor Is A Year Younger Than Me And Basically Has The Same Sensibility As Me.

Outcasts May Grow Up To Be Novelists And Filmmakers And Computer Tycoons, But They Will Never Be The Athletic Ruling Class.

Real People Are Actively Trying To Live Like Fake People, So Real People Are No Less Fake. Every Comparison Becomes Impractical. This Is Why The Impractical Has Become Totally Acceptable; Impracticality Almost Seems Cool.

I Don't Go To Scary Movies. I Don't Like The Experience Of Being Scared. I Think It's Very Weird That Some People Do. Obviously, Humans Are The Only Animals That Do That. You Don't See A Wolf Walk To The End Of A Cliff And Look Over The Edge To Freak Himself Out.

As Of Right Now, I Am In Love With Her, And That Love Is The Biggest Problem In My Life.

Football Allows The Intellectual Part Of My Brain To Evolve, But It Allows The Emotional Part To Remain Unchanged. It Has A Liberal Cerebellum And A Reactionary Heart. And This Is All I Want From Everything, All The Time, Always.

The Biggest Hurdle To Writing Fargo Rock City Was That I Couldn't Afford A Home Computer - I Had To Get A New Job So I Could Buy A Computer. It Could All Change Though. In Five Years, I Could Be Back At Some Daily Newspaper, Which Wouldn't Be So Bad.

Anybody Who Says They Are A Good Liar Obviously Is Not, Because Any Legitimately Savvy Liar Would Always Insist They're Honest About Everything.

There Are Two Ways To Look At Life. The First View Is That Nothing Stays The Same And That Nothing Is Inherently Connected, And That The Only Driving Force In Anyone's Life Is Entropy. The Second Is That Everything Pretty Much Stays The Same (more Or Less) And That Everything Is Completely Connected, Even If We Don't Realize It.

It's Possible This Whole "why Do Latinos Love Morrisey?" Question Will Haunt Us Forever. Fortunately, Canadian Academics Are On The Case.

People Who Talk About Their Dreams Are Actually Trying To Tell You Things About Themselves They’d Never Admit In Normal Conversation.

You're Trying To Find New Ideas In People. I Always Think To Myself, What Question I Am Least Comfortable Asking The Person? And Then I Make Sure I Ask It Early In The Interview.

I Think That Most Technology Is Positive In The Short Term, And Negative In The Long Term. I Wonder, If Somebody Looked Back At The 20th And 21st Centuries A Thousand Years From Now, What Their Perception Of The Car Would Be. Or Of Television. I Wonder If Over Time, They'll Be Seen As This Thing That Drove The Culture, But Ultimately Had More Downside Than Upside.

Technology Evolves Faster Than People Do, Faster Than Biology Does.

I Am Of The Opinion, And Have Been For A Long Time, That Any Kind Of Big Technological Move Is Almost Always Positive In The Short Term But Inevitably Somewhat Negative In The Long Term. And I Think There Are Many Examples Of This In Every Possible Context.

I Am Ready To Be Alone.

Even Eternally Free People Are Enslaved By The Process Of Living.

If You Play "i Don't Want To Know" By Fleetwood Mac Loud Enough -- You Can Hear Lindsey Buckingham's Fingers Sliding Down The Strings Of His Acoustic Guitar. ...and We Were Convinced That This Was The Definitive Illustration Of What We Both Loved About Music; We Loved Hearing The Inside Of A Song.

I Feel Like A Lot Of People Involved With Celebrity Journalism Have Interesting Ideas About The People They Want To Write About Going Into The Interview. Then As Soon As They Actually Sit Down With That Person, They Basically Ask The Questions They Think Journalists Are Supposed To Ask, And They Start Viewing Themselves Almost As A Peer Of The Subject. Like They're Going To Become Friends. That's Why Most Celebrity Journalism Is So Terrible.

Perhaps We Humans Are Still In Command, And Perhaps There Really Will Be A Conventional Robot War In The Not-so-distant Future. If So, Let's Roll.

I Can Tell When I've Met A Bad Journalist When They Say, "i've Met Madonna," Or "i Know Marilyn Manson." Because I Haven't Met Anyone I've Ever Interviewed. I've Sat Down In The Position Of An Interviewer, And They've Sat Down In The Position Of An Artist Trying To Promote A Product. We Have No Relationship. I'm Able To Ask Them Questions I'd Never Be Allowed To Ask Them If We Were Casual Friends. It's A Completely Constructed Kind Of Situation.

If You Can't Swim, The Idea Of Being In Nine Feet Of Water Is Terrifying, Much Less The Ocean.

It Feels So Exhausting To Be So Bad At Something I Loved So Much.

There's This Belief That Some Things Can Be Taken Seriously In An Intellectual Way, While Some Things Are Only Entertainment Or Only A Commodity. Or There's Some Kind Of Critical Consensus That Some Things Are "good," And Some Things Are Garbage, Throwaway Culture. And I Think The Difference Between Them, In A Lot Of Ways, Is Actually Much Less Than People Think. Especially When You Get Down To How They Affect The Audience.

Flying To Me Isn't Scary, It's Just Incredibly Boring. And I Guess I Have A Fear Of Boredom, So In That Regard, I'm Afraid To Fly.

I Really Hate Being Sick. It Seems Inevitable That At One Point, One Of These Predicted Epidemics Is Going To Be Real. So Often They Come Up, And There's People Like Me That Are Freaked Out, And The Majority Of People Are Just Like, "you're Being Idiots, This Happens Every Other Year."

Do You Know People Who Insist They Like 'all Kinds Of Music'? That Actually Means They Like No Kinds Of Music.

Because I'm 44, I Feel Kind Of Lucky That I Lived Through This Period Where I Started My Career Where There Was No Internet At All, And Now When I Finish It, There Will Be Nothing But The Internet.

I Love Sports, But I Don't Like Live Sporting Events, Because I Don't Like Sitting In The Crowd. I Like Listening To Records, But I Don't Like Going To Concerts, Because I Don't Like Standing In The Crowd. I Guess I Just Don't Like Being In The Crowd Itself.

Being Interesting Has Been Replaced By Being Identifiable.

People Are More Interested In Reading Bombastic Ideas, Whether They're Positive Or Negative. Part Of Me Has Sort Of Lost Interest In Doing Criticism Because Of That. I've Always Realized That Criticism Is Basically Autobiography. Obviously In My Criticism, It's Very Clear That It's Autobiography, But I Think It's That Way For Everybody.

I Hate The Point Where You Have To Get Off The Ladder, Or Get Back On. I Don't Know If That's A Fear Of Heights, Or Literally A Fear Of Falling. I Want To Be Afraid To Fall. That Seems Like A Good Fear.

I Love The Way Music Inside A Car Makes You Feel Invisible; If You Plan The Stereo At Max Volume, It's Almost Like The Other People Can't See Into Your Vehicle. It Tints Your Windows, Somehow.

I Almost Never Get Lonely. I Love Being Alone. I'm Glad I'm Married, And I Love My Wife. But There's Never Been A Situation In My Life Where My Unhappiness Was Based On Loneliness.

As An Adult, The Only People Who Care About Horror Movies Are Academics. No One Loves To Talk About Horror Films More Than Somebody With A Ph.d. In Cultural Studies At A University.

If You Stare Long Enough At Anything, You Will Start To Find Similarities. The Word “coincidence” Exists In Order To Stop People From Seeing Meaning Where None Exists.

In The Far East, It's Very Normal For People To Wear Masks In Flu Season. I Don't Know If I'd Ever Do That, Though, Because I Don't Like Having Things On My Face.

If Somebody Asked For The First Draft Of Something I'd Written, It'd Probably Be Pretty Close To Whatever Got Published. I Get Enjoyment Out Of Writing, But I Get Absolutely No Enjoyment Out Of Rewriting, So I Don't Do Much Of It. The More You Work On Something, Certainly, The Better It Gets. But There's Also A Pretty Clear Law Of Diminishing Returns.

Science Fiction Tends To Be Philosophy For Stupid People.

A Homeless Man Once Told Me That Dancing To Rap Music Is The Cultural Equivalent Of Masturbating, And I'd Sort Of Fell The Same Way About Playing John Madden Football Immediately After Filing My Income Tax: It's Fun, But - Somehow - Vaguely Pathetic.

People Who Are Wrong During Particularly Important Moments Inevitably Spend The Rest Of Their Lives Trying To Explain How Their Wrongness Was Paradoxically Correct, Or-at The Very Least-why Their Wrongness "felt Right At The Time," Which Is Very, Very Different From Being Authentically Correct.

Everyone Knows History Is Written By The Winners, But That Cliche Misses A Crucial Detail: Over Time, The Winners Are Always The Progressives. Conservatism Can Only Win In The Short Term, Because Society Cannot Stop Evolving (and Social Evolution Inevitably Dovetails With The Agenda Of Those Who See Change As An Abstract Positive). It Might Take Seventy Years, But It Always Happens Eventually. Serious Historians Are, Almost Without Exception, Self-styled Progressives. Radical Views--even The Awful Ones--improve With Age.

I Like Storms. I Would Say I Actively Like Stormy Weather. I Would Not Be Afraid Of Them. I Think That If I Had Not Pursued Journalism, I Think Storm-chasing Would've Been A Really Fun Career.

Every Possible Opinion Is Authored About Everything. What's Going To Eventually Happen Is Someone Will Look Back On This Period And Have To Sift Through It. The Overwhelming Majority Of Those Opinions Are Going To Be Ignored, Because If Every Opinion Is Being Offered, Really No Opinion Is Being Offered.

The Only People Who Can Ever Put Ideas Into Context Are People Who Don't Care; The Unbiased And Apathetic Are Usually The Wisest Dudes In The Room. If You Want To Totally Misunderstand Why Something Is Supposedly Important, Find The Biggest Fan Of That Particular Thing And Ask Him For An Explanation. He Will Tell You Everything That Doesn't Matter To Anyone Who Isn't Him. He Will Describe Paradoxical Details And Share Deeply Personal Anecdotes, And It Will All Be Autobiography; He Will Simply Be Explaining Who He Is By Discussing Something Completely Unrelated To His Life.

It's Possible For Me To Imagine A Generation Of People Maybe Two Generations Removed From You Who Might Decide That We Have An Adversarial Relationship With Technology.

What Is Going To Happen In The Course Of My Day That Will Be An Improvement Over Lying On Something Very Soft, Underneath Something Very Warm, Wearing Only Underwear, Doing Absolutely Nothing, All By Myself?

-- And It Occurred To Me That People Who Don't Talk About Themselves Are Limiting Their Own Potential. They Think They're Guarding Themselves For Some Sort Of Abstract Dange, But They're Actually Allowing Other People To Decide Who They Are And What They're Like.

The Biggest Problem In Rock Journalism Is That Often The Writers Main Motivation Is To Become Friends With The Band. Theyre Not Really Journalists; Theyre People Who Want To Be Involved In Rock And Roll.

Soccer Is Like Punk Rock: The Product Is Not Necessarily Terrible. The Problem Is The Fan Base.

Internet Porn Makes Everything More Reasonable -- Once You've Realized There Is A Massive Subculture Of Upwardly Mobile People Who Think It's Erotic To See An Asian Woman Giving A Hand Job To A Javelina, Nothing Else In The World Seems Crazy.

Every Relationship Is Fundamentally A Power Struggle, And The Individual In Power Is Whoever Likes The Other Person Less.

Let's Say Donald Trump Loses But It's Close. That Could Change The Whole Way The Job Of Being A Politician Shifts - That To Succeed In Politics, You Have To Be A Caricature Of What A Politician Is Supposed To Be Like.

Without A Soundtrack, Human Interaction Is Meaningless.

The Essays Are Different Because Ultimately It's Things I'm Interested In, And I'm Really Just Writing About Myself And Using Those Subjects As A Prism.

I Feel Sorry For People Who Have To Edit Me. Which Is Why Book Writing Is By Far The Most Enjoyable. Really The Only Thing It's Based On Is Whether It's Good Or Not. No Book Editor, In My Experience, Is Getting A Manuscript And Trying To Rewrite It.

The Sims Is An Escapist Vehicle For People Who Want To Escape To Where They Already Are, Which Is Why I Thought This Game Was Made Precisely For Me.

When I'm Walking Around, I'm Usually Drinking Pop, So I Can't Have A Mask On. That's Why I Couldn't Be A Surgeon.

The Debate About Climate Change In Many Ways Is Tied To The Petroleum Industry. If The Value Of Petroleum Was Considerably Less Than It Is, And The Value Of Coal Was Considerably Less Than It Is, There Would Be Much Less Debate About This.

Why Don't I Like Crowds? I Suppose The Worst Possible Thing I Could Say Is That I Don't Like People, And That Crowds Are Just Collections Of People. That Seems Like A Very Nihilistic Way To Look At The World.

It Appears That Countless Women Born Between The Years Of 1965 And 1978 Are In Love With John Cusack. I Cannot Fathom How He Isn't The Number-one Box Office Star In America, Because Every Straight Girl I Know Would See Her Soul To Share A Milkshake With That Motherfucker.

You Can't Go Into The Office And Be A Jerk. You Can't Yell At Your Kids Or Your Wife Or Your Husband For No Reason. That Makes You A Terrible Person.

It Drives Me Crazy To Do Readings Of My Books, Because If I Read Anything I've Written In The Past, I'd Like To Almost Rewrite Everything. If I Could, I'd Completely Rewrite Fargo Rock City, And Every Sentence Would Be Just Slightly Different. In All Likelihood, Most Of Them Wouldn't Be Any Better. Some Of Them Would Just Be Changed Back To Whatever Form They Used To Be, Before I Second-guessed Myself The First Time.

The Essays Are Very Solipsistic And Self-absorbed, I'm Totally Conscious Of That. To Me, Book Writing Is Fun, And I Basically Just Write About Things That Are Entertaining To Myself.

I Hate Motorcycles. Because If I Hit One, Even If It's Not My Fault, If I've Done Nothing Wrong, I'm Not Charged With Manslaughter, He's Gonna Die, Because He's On A Motorcycle. So I Have To Live My Life Knowing That I Killed This Guy.

The Goal Of Being Alive Is To Figure Out What It Means To Be Alive.

It Doesn't Matter What You Can Do If You Don't Know Why You're Doing It.

It Was The Kind Of Love You Can Only Feel Toward Someone You Don't Actually Know.

I Think Anyone Who's Not As Good A Writer As Me Is Absolutely A Hack, And I Think Anybody Who's A Slightly Better Writer Than Me Is Brilliant. So Of Course That Makes Me A Horrible Critic When It Comes To Books, Because I Can't Distance My Own Experience From What I'm Doing.

First, You Must Love Yourself. And If You Do That Convincingly Enough, Others Will Love You Too Much.

When Arthur Schlesinger Sr. Pioneered The 'presidential Greatness Poll' In 1948, The Top Five Were Lincoln, Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, And Jefferson. Only Wilson Appears To Be Seriously Fading, Probably Because His Support For The World War I-era Sedition Act Now Seems Outrageous; In This Analogy, Woodrow Is Like The Doors And The Sedition Act Is Oliver Stone.

No Woman Will Ever Satisfy Me. I Know That Now, And I Would Never Try To Deny It. But This Is Actually Okay, Because I Will Never Satisfy A Woman, Either. Should I Be Writing Such Thoughts? Perhaps Not. Perhaps It’s A Bad Idea. I Can Definitely Foresee A Scenario Where That First Paragraph Could Come Back To Haunt Me, Especially If I Somehow Became Marginally Famous.

I Was A Teenager In The '80s - And Maybe I'm Wrong About This - But It Seemed Like A Bad Era For Movies That Were Scary. It Was Really The Height Of Movies That Were Disgusting.

The Message Of "the Winner Takes It All" Is Straightforward: It Argues That The Concept Of Relationships Ending On Mutual Terms Is An Emotional Fallacy. One Person Is Inevitably Okay And The Other Is Inevitably Devastated.

Relationships Ending

When Someone Writes A Book Review, They Obviously Already Self-identify As A Writer. I Mean, They Are. They're Writers, They're Critics, And They're Writing About A Book About A Writer Who's A Critic. So I Think It's Really Hard For People To Distance Themselves From What They're Criticizing.

Even Though I Wanted To Experience All These Things I Was Interested In, I Couldn't Get Them. So I Had To Think Critically And Culturally About What Was Available.

It Seems As Though Our Ability To Change Technology Happens So Quickly, And Our Ability To Evolve As Creatures Is Still Very Slow.

Ability To Change

I Am Interested In The Possibility That We Are Going To Be Wrong In The Same Way That History Has Indicated That Mankind Always Is. It Seems As Though The History Of Ideas Is The History Of Being Wrong. And To Me, That Is A Kind Of Continuum. It's A Continual Path That Shows We Don't Always Know Something, But We're Always Shifting To A Path That Makes Us Feel More Comfortable In The Moment, Even If That Shift Is Wrong, And A New Shift Is Destined To Happen Again.

The Most Wretched People In The World Are Those Who Tell You They Like Every Kind Of Music 'except Country.' People Who Say That Are Boorish And Pretentious At The Same Time.

And It's Kind Of My Own Fault Too, In The Sense That I've Used My Own Life As A Literary Device So Much. I Think People Feel Very Comfortable Reviewing The Idea Of Me, As Opposed To What I've Actually Written. I Find That Most Of The Time, When People Write About One Of My Books, They're Really Just Writing About What They Think I May Or May Not Represent, As Sort Of This Abstract Entity. Is That Unfair? Not Really. If I Put Myself In This Position Where I'm Going To Kind Of Weave Elements Of Memoir Into Almost Everything, Well, I Suppose That's Going To Happen.

A Lot Of People Involved With Celebrity Journalism Have Interesting Ideas About The People They Want To Write About Going Into The Interview. Then As Soon As They Actually Sit Down With That Person, They Basically Ask The Questions They Think Journalists Are Supposed To Ask, And They Start Viewing Themselves Almost As A Peer Of The Subject. Like They're Going To Become Friends. That's Why Most Celebrity Journalism Is So Terrible.

Important Things Are Inevitably Cliche, But Nobody Wants To Admit That.

Texting Has Become My Favorite Way To Communicate. I Feel Like Many Of My Relationships Are Based In This, Because In A Sense It Feels The Closest To Actual Conversation That Isn't The Phone.

That's Like Comparing Apples With Hermaphroditic Ground Sloths.

If You Don't Have A Job, You Don't Have A Fear Of Losing It. You Fear Having To Get One.

When I Think About The Future, I'm Not Necessarily Arguing It's Going To Be Better Or Worse. I'm Just Saying It's Going To Be Different.

It Has Always Been My Belief That People Are Remembered For The Sum Of Their Accomplishments But Defined By Their Singular Failure.

Instead, We Were Given A Publication Called The Weekly Reader, Which Was Like A Newspaper For Four-foot Illiterates.

Unless You're Shannon Hoon (of Blind Melon), Dying Is The Only Thing That Guarantees A Rock Star Will Have A Legacy That Stretches Beyond Temporary Relevance.

And All I Could Do While I Listened To This Dude Tell Me How Punk Rock Saved His Life Was Think, Wow. Why Did My Friend Waste All That Time Going To Chemotherapy? I Guess We Should Have Just Played Him A Bunch Of Shitty Black Flag Records.

To Me, Fear Of The Future Means Fear Of Technology. I Have A Little Bit Of That. I Still Use It, But I Kind Of See Technology As This Harmful Thing That's So Ingrained In My Life That It Sort Of Dictates And Controls My Relationship With It.

I Honestly Believe That People Of My Generation Despise Authenticity, Mostly Because They're All So Envious Of It.

Women Intrinsically Understand Human Dynamics, And That Makes Them Unstoppable. Unfortunately, The Average Man Is Less Adroit At Fostering Such Rivalries, Which Is Why Most Men Remain Average; Males Are Better At Hating Things That Can't Hate Them Back (e.g., Lawnmowers, Cats, The Denver Broncos, Et Cetera). They Don't See The Big Picture.

I Tend To Equate Sadness With Intelligence.

If I'm Around Spiders, My Fear Isn't So Much The Spider, But My Fear Is That I'm Somewhere Rustic And That Spiders Are Crawling Around. I Must Be In The Woods.

Styx And The Stones May Break My Bones But 'more Than Words' Will Never Hurt Me

I Guess It Really Didn't Even Dawn On Me That You Could Be A Rock Critic As A Job Until I Was Maybe Almost Out Of College. I Knew Criticism Existed. I Read Rolling Stone And Spin. Siskel And Ebert Were On Television. But I Had Absolutely No Idea How To Get That Kind Of Life. And Moreover, It Didn't Interest Me That Much. I Just Sort Of Read Normal Books Growing Up. I Wasn't That Media-conscious. I Felt Like The One Thing I Was Able To Do Was To Listen To A Record And Decide Whether I Liked It.

This Made Her Remember Why People Take Up Walking: It Is Because They No Longer Have Anywhere To Go.

I Care About Strangers When They're Abstractions, But I Feel Almost Nothing When They're Literally In Front Of Me.

Prior To The Early 20th Century, For The Totality Of Humankind's Existence If They Saw Something Moving, It Meant It Was There. If They Saw A Tiger Walking, That Meant They Were Near A Live Tiger. This Was Entrenched In Our Subconscious And Our Unconscious.then That Drastically Changed With Film And Television.

Film And Television

The Last Girl I Love Will Be Someone I Haven’t Even Met Yet, Probably.

It Is Very Easy For Me To Imagine In 200 Years, People Looking Back At Chemotherapy As Proof That People Of The 20th Century Were Insane And Just Morons.

Every Generation Is More Influenced By Technology, Which Is Always Changing Faster.

I Think People's Relationship With The Concept Of Violence Changes, And That To Me Might Be A Little More Interesting.

In The Eight Years I Worked At Newspapers, Even During A Little Stretch When I Was A Film Critic, I Was Never, Ever Doing Exclusively Criticism. In The Daily Newspaper World, Much More Value Is Placed On Reporting Than On Thinking Abstractly About Art. The Eight Years I Was In Newspapers, I Was Mainly A Journalist In The Conventional Sense, And Just Doing Criticism When There Were Opportunities.

Life Is Rarely About What Happened; It's Mostly About What We Think Happened.

Sometimes I Wonder What Will Be The Air Conditioning Of My Dying Days. What Thing Will They Add That Will Make It Impossible To Be Uncomfortable? Because I Do Assume That As An Old Person, I Will Be Very Comfortable. There Will Be Something - A Drug Or Some Way To Impact The Air Around Me - That When I Relax, I'm Gonna Feel Great. So I Do Look Forward To That.

Let's Say Twitter Existed During The Civil War. We Would Have A Better Understanding Of People In The Confederacy Who Were Against Slavery, People In The North Who Actually Felt We Should Just Let The South Be The South. Because The Way It Is Now, It Seems Like We Have This Portrait Where Everybody In Georgia Hated Yankees And Everybody In The North Was Enlightened. That Wouldn't Seem As Clear Cut As It Does Now.

In Baseball And Sex, Cliches Are Usually True: Pitching Beats Hitting, And People Always Want To Be Loved By Anyone Who Doesn't Seem To Care.

Gay Marriage Should Be Legalized In America Because Gay Men Are The Only Men Who Want To Be Married.

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