In spite of the tantalizing promise that soon computers will do all of our work and we humans will while away our time here on earth in a state of comfort and leisure, we, today, in this Brave New World still find ourselves with things that need doing and the stresses they bring.

No, ladies and gentlemen, our lot in this life is not to loft in repose and await our judgement. In spite of such time-saving contrivances as “dishwashers” and “automobiles” and “email,” we still spend 40, 50, 60 hours a week setting things up and then knocking them down.

And it’s stressful, sometimes, committing to things and then following through on them. And so I have compiled, dear reader, a few tips from my vault of stress relief techniques to assist you in your journey on this earth.

If and when you are feeling stressed out, try any of these out! They have always worked for me, although your mileage may vary.

• Perpetrate a crime against your Internet Service Provider. They almost certainly have it coming, and it will make you feel better.
• Adopt a puppy. All evidence shows that welcoming a pet into your life can only reduce or eliminate stress.

• Make a habit of relying on reliably unreliable people. This way when you are let down you will not be disappointed. You will be hardened against it.
• Throw a party. Surrounding yourself with friends and loved ones is a sure bet for stress relief. Don’t forget the in-laws!
• Find a good rabbit hole on YouTube. You will be able to forget all of your woes for the 10 hours it will take you to stop looking at FailBlog compilation videos.
• Get really, really drunk. What could go wrong?
• Consider a little perspective. We are a handful of ape-humans hurdling through an infinite universe and carry the burden of being self-aware for the blink of an eye in a naturally absurd world. Your problems do not matter, cosmically. Your joys and sorrows are irrelevant against the fabric of time and space. Everything you hold dear, everyone you love, will very shortly be dead and forgotten – nothing you create is durable at any honest scale. The sum of human experience is a blip in the cosmos, and will be long gone nearly before it began. Feel better?
• If that doesn’t work I guess you can always try the be-all, end-all of stress relief: just cancel something at the last minute. It feels so, so good.

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Ok so birthdays – can we just not? What are we getting at with birthday parties, really? Celebrating the fact that we were born? Literally the least unique thing about us? That’s bunk, and I’m sick of it.

And, I mean, sure.That’s a narrow view of the tradition. Maybe it’s more like we’re taking an opportunity to celebrate each person’s uniqueness, and a convenient time to do that is on the day they were born (or close, for those February 29th weirdos). Maybe we can give birthday parties the benefit of the doubt, and say the concept represents the best of us. Of recognizing the special importance of every individual and what they contribute to our communities as we pass this time whirling through space. Maybe the premise of the birthday party is a beautiful thing.

But then if that’s the case what’s the deal with the fucking song? Can we stop that? Forever? If we can charitably assume that a birthday party is an honest celebration of the individual, then why do we revert back to the least creative tropes of celebration in the western canon?

Birthday parties were designed specifically to amuse three-year-olds, and yet we continue to have them inflicted upon us well into our 20s, 30s, and so on until we finally snap and push away those people who love us and would adore us for a day for the sake of never ever having to hear “and many more” sung again in whatever horrifying key that was supposed to be. And sheet cake? Leave it out on the counter overnight, I say, then send it the Peace Corps to build houses or something.

And what’s with the gift giving? Don’t we have enough shit? We’re the most prosperous nation in the history of the species (maybe)! We want for nothing (except healthcare, a living wage, food security, blah blah blah), and yet we celebrate uniqueness and individuality by grabbing something off a shelf and wrapping it in an old grocery bag so that it can be presented to the Guest of Honor to open publicly while we furtively compare how much we love that person against the other gifts at the table. This is what we’ve come up with.

But it doesn’t need to be like this. You never have to sit through another joyless, awkward, self-loathing hatchet job of that song again. You never have to feel the anxiety of picking just the right gift for your colleague, now, because s/he somehow learned your birthday and gave you a potted cactus at work and now you’re engaged in a decades-scale game of three-dimensional-birthday-Battleship. You never have to pretend to like sheet cake.

Because if the premise of a birthday celebration is to embrace our uniqueness and importance, shouldn’t the party be just that? One day a year where a person can do whatever they want, with no social consequences. Don’t want to answer the phone? Turn it off. Want to be alone? Go do your thing. Want a giant party where people cloy around you and shower you with gifts and sing songs? Great! Do that! Drop a hint or something, or just tell someone you want a party. That’s what that day is for!

But it’s time now to step away from the worst of industrialized Hallmark Holidays. To celebrate uniqueness, maybe ask a person what they’d like, or if they’d like anything at all. It’s their day, we’ve decided, so don’t throw shade. And if you really want to give them something special? Write ’em a card! See a gift that sings their name? Hell – get ’em a present any day of the year simply because you were thinking of them, not because of a transactional tradition for children. And together, if we really put our minds to it, we can put those sheet cake factories out of business for good.

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“Those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat themselves.” – George Santayana

It is a truth so banal it needn’t be said: what once was old is new again, and this is never as true as in fashion. As history churns through its paces we see the same styles, motifs and cues cycle through every couple of decades, and moments after we laugh at how ridiculous we looked, we clamber again to refill our closets with the newest retro flare.

We cut lightening bolts into our hair and wear huge sunglasses and the width of men’s lapels against time is marked by the tidy signature of a sine. We are doomed to repeat ourselves, I know, but for once I ask that we get together, learn from our missteps, and not revisit the dark ages.

There is no decade more depraved of class, more blind to culture and devoid of sophistication than the 1980s. Here, today, only thirty years later we are careening toward the same end.

And so I ask all of us, collectively, please let’s not slip back to the doomed fashion trends of the 80s. It was a dark time then, and today we need light. At the very least I’ve picked out a few of the worst of those trends, with the hope that we might avoid them.

Fashion Trends of the 80s

(that we don’t need back)

Acid Wash Jeans – Gawd they’re awful. Those spider webs of bleach and blue belong on the inside of a bowling ball and nowhere else (least of all snugged tightly around your nether regions). Before is was co-opted to sell $300 axes to the urban loggers of Williamsburg, our generation really did mean to live sustainably. To build things to last. To decrease our footprint and live simply, so that others may simply live. Buying pants that started their lives soaking in solvent is a step in the wrong direction. Let’s quit it.

Pre-Distressed Clothing – And while we’re at it, pre-distressed clothing all together. Back when I grew up you had two options for getting holes in your pants: you could earn them by playing in the dirt or fixing machinery or something, or you could spend a bunch of money and get holes in the knees straight from the store. God that was stupid. Do we have to do this again?

Mullets – Sure, if you’ve got a school picture or a family reunion or you’re officiating a wedding or something, then yeah, cut a mullet. It’s great for a few days or a special occasion, but definitely not something you should stick with.

Putting Bombs in the Mail – I really thought we got this out of our system with Kaczynski. We really don’t need to go back down this road, and honestly you’re kind of derivative. Just quit it.

Sit-Com Laugh Tracks – If the joke was funny we would have laughed. We don’t need help from overbearing television producers, and the sit-com laugh track is hands down one of the most damaging, and long lasting assaults from 1980s pop-culture.

The War on Drugs – If you thought it was racist, ineffective propaganda back in the 80s, hot damn wait ’til you see what we’ve got now! We’re adding the death penalty! Just the other day I was thinking, “You know what? I wish our government functioned a lot more like the Philippines. Nothing says ‘functioning democracy’ like extrajudicial police killings and murdering autocrats!*” The War on Drugs worked really well for suppressing communities by race and bankrolling private prisons, but for stinting drug abuse in the US? Not even close. Let’s try something new.

Super Poofy Vests – You know, like Marty McFly. We’re getting dangerously close with the whole “down sweater” movement. Let’s keep an eye on it.

All Neon Everything – We can file this with  mullets. Sure, there’s a place for neon, like riding your bike at dusk and your favorite niece’s Bat Mitzvah. But let’s take it easy, ok?

The Entire Plot of 1984 – Guys that was a novel, ok? Fiction. Let’s keep it that way.

Members Only Jackets – Don’t start.

A Nuclear Precipice – The Baby Boomers grew up will school drills for how to survive a nuclear attack; they were rightly afraid that All This might end with a bright flash and a warm breeze at any moment. But today most students are so busy learning how to survive a massacre that they have no idea that they should crawl under a desk to survive a nuclear strike. Kids these days, right? They’re totally unprepared for a nuclear holocaust. So for the sake of the kids, let’s try to stay away from nuclear brinksmanship, ok? It’s tacky.

 

*this is actually not true I did not have this thought

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Gambling is a funny thing. Like any good vice it’s a thing we all kind of do from time to time, but savor in sanctimonious condescension over those who go too far. And like any good vice it’s dubiously legal, and the rules don’t really make sense.

You can gamble on some Indian Reservations, and in Nevada, but not on the internet. Well, that’s unless you’re in a bar, where you can play video poker but not live poker (except for sometimes) and Black Jack is a definite no-no. Keno is a demon to be feared, but Bingo? Bingo is fine.

You can bet on dogs, and horses, and horses with little humans on top, and horses with little people in little carts behind them, but not on people who do the running themselves. You can’t bet on football, unless it’s fantasy football, which is still really just football.

But one thing we’re all pretty much on the same page about is gambling on children. That’s off limits. Betting on a kids’ t-ball game, or a swim meet, or spelling bee, or whatever, stands out pretty clearly as rock bottom for a gambling problem.

It stands to reason, then, that collegiate sports should probably fall into that same category as betting on pee-wee hockey. After all, the vast majority of NCAA athletes will never compete professionally. In very competitive sports, like basketball, the best players on the best teams are drafted to the NBA after a single season of collegiate play. These young phenoms are 17 and 18 years old – literally children. Gambling on children, even exceptionally talented ones, can’t be morally tenable, right?

But then, doesn’t everyone gamble on children when they’re their own? Isn’t that what designer Montessori schools and college savings accounts are? $10,000 sleepaway camps and the Little League World Series scouting trips? A gamble that the child will blossom and flourish into an adult of means and love enough to care for infirm parents?

Isn’t a week away from the office (oh, the opportunity cost!) for a family hike in the Shawangunks a gamble that the child will learn to love the natural world, or a bit of self-sufficiency, or at the very least to appreciate those high thread count bed sheets back at home?

What decision over the life and rearing of a child is not a gamble? And who are we, as a culture, to say that we can bet on the lives of our own progeny and not the athletic performance of others? It’s a travesty. A nanny-state run wild. If it’s fair game to send your kid to Harvard Business Summer Camp and pump them full of performance enhancing drugs to crush me in life, it’s hard to concede that I should not be able to place one little bet on one little basketball game for a few days in March.

Categorizing the NCAA basketball tournament as off limits to gambling is ludicrous. On what grounds can that argument be made? That the NCAA is a non-profit? That somehow the event is all about sport, and nothing about the money? That’s outrageous. The NCAA is as much a cartel as the Sinaloa or the IOC. Any argument against gambling on the March Madness tournament boils essentially down to the fact that the NCAA can’t control it, and therefore can’t profit from it.

I say let the floodgates go. Sure, we can still draw a line at bookmaking on AYSO games, but let’s stop pretending that gambling on basketball, or on children, is taboo.

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