Co-opts, clichés, and other aggravations. (September '06)

"Familiarity breeds contempt."

I have no idea who said it first, but I'd love to buy them a cookie. A brownie even. Heck, maybe even a brownie from Amsterdam, if that's how they get down.

Now with my respect duly paid, I'd like to offer an addendum to that thought.

Familiarity breeds irrelevance.

I'm just so tired of the clichés.

Driving around Atlanta today I must have seen a hundred women ranging from teens to forty-somethings wearing those ridiculous oversize, white-rimmed sunglasses. Who told American women that the "Maude"-era Bea Arthur look is the way to go? Those glasses look horrendous. They look stupid. They look absolutely frightful on absolutely everyone and yet NOBODY is saying anything!

And how about those quilted handbags that look like they were lifted from a craft show in Amish country? Have you seen these things? Of course you have. How do I know? Because every female over the age of 15 has one! You just paid $80 to carry around a purse that your grandmother would have made for free just to distract her from the cold and insistent hands of her own impending death! But of course you wouldn't carry it around in public if your grandmother made it...that wouldn't be "cool."

I don't want to seem like I'm picking on the ladies here, because mindless societal following is by no means a gender-specific phenomenon.

Guys, if you walk around in a pastel polo shirt with the collar popped up, you had better be named "Cory" and be able to point to the millions you made off of that look in the '80's. Only two kinds of people should be walking around with a starched collar. Priests and Vampires. If you don't fit either of the above categories, you need to pull up your Dickies, take off that lame-ass zip front adidas "retro" sweatshirt, get the hair out of your eyes, take off the aviator glasses, and lay that collar back down where it was made to rest! We went through this foolishness in once already, and I'll be darned if I'm going to sit through another decade like the one that brought us "Adventures in Babysitting."

Oh, and that goes double for leather belts with with big metallic studs. (Rob Halford gets a pass on this one--nobody else.)

Music isn't exempt from the cloning frenzy either. How many post-grunge era bands are out there right now desperately pumping out albums and albums of constipation rock? If you aren't familiar with that term, go listen to Nickelback and tell me he doesn't sound like he's straining to get that party started. I dare you.

I could go on all night, but I want to mention the one sub-cultural phenomenon that brought this to the forefront of my mind tonight.

I was watching a tape of a recent fight event, and some sorry little white trash, trucker-hat wearing, stock tattooed, chain sporting, dyed-hair having walking argument for eugenics comes strutting out to the song "Remember the Name" by Fort Minor.

Many of you have heard this song by now, and in fairness it's a fine bit of work in keeping with the usual stellar standards of Mike Shinoda & Co.

The song came out quite a few months ago, and has since gained in popularity to the extent that every basketball movie, every boxing card, and every MMA event is almost guaranteed to be blaring that tune from the speakers before all is said and done.

In the MMA world, you might get to hear the song four or five times in a single night.

Which brings me to my point.

That song, (and those glasses, and the handbags, and the polo shirts) are all used by people convey a message about themselves. The rap song is about hard work and determination to succeed. The expensive and asinine accessories are about wealth and displays of superiority. The clothing is about social dominance in an era where it's no longer acceptable to pee upon that which is yours as declaration of ownership.

So what's my point?

My point is that the message conveyed is inevitably the EXACT OPPOSITE of what the user is trying to convey.

Want to look like trend-setter or a well-heeled socialite? Wearing the same thing as everybody else is probably not the way to go.

Want to look like a tough and determined athlete? Maybe you should try picking a song that says you spent more time at the gym and less time listening to what every other fighter used for his entrance.

Want to convey an air of confidence and self-possessed assurance? Maybe dressing like a frat-boy cookie-cutter duplicate isn't doing that for you...

I could go on indefinitely about this, with example after example (and please feel free to add more in your comments,) but that would only further dissuade those who need to read this from ever actually reading it.

Just wake up, and think before you buy. We could change the world just refusing to play the stupid games anymore.

Stupid people are inevitably a part of life. They don't have to have any power. If we can't keep them from breeding, we can at least stop them from leading.