Human-Loving Misanthropy

I am Pretentious

Sometimes these things happen to us.  We wake up from our mother’s womb and all we want is milk.  That might be what people mean when they say that our tastes mature.  I sure as hell don’t drive home every breakfast lunch and dinner, but could it be that I look for the next best thing.  Jaqcues Lacan explains that a child has a preverbal union with his/her mother.  He penned the term “Desire of the Mother” which explains the unabashed longing for that two-way union between mother and child.  In other words, Lacan believed that an infant saw the world as one entity, and inside this entity were his/herself and the entity’s representative- that being the mother.  In other other words, there is nothing more intimate than the preverbal relationship between mother and child.

Lacan posed a problem, however.  What happens when this child ventures out of the preverbal phase?  As chicken little might say, the sky falls.  Everything seems to Tetris itself into its proper place and, unfortunately, it doesn’t disappear when it makes a solid, horizontal line.  Then, as we mature, we find ways to get back to that preverbal phase: according to Lacan, anything we do, especially those actions considered as “self-destructive” or considered “mature” are ways that we desire that connection with the mother.

Lately I’ve found myself becoming more and more metropolitan, decontextualized, post-modern, whatever you want to call it, I’m becoming it.  From the movies I watch to the premium television I buy; from the books I read to the discussions sparked from said books; from me buying McSweeney’s, The New Yorker, investigating other publishing companies like CrazyHorse, A Public Space, Orlo, Harper’s to the music I listen to per the suggestion of friends whom I consider to be “solid sources.”  And, most recently, my greatest step toward a metropolitan state of being is becoming a vegetarian, but not really a vegetarian, a more pretentious vegetarian: a vegetarian with specific guidelines on the preparation of his meat.

Where did this come from?  Ask Natalie Portman.  Here is what I want you to do, type in “Eating Animals Natalie Portman” into Google and then you’ll understand exactly where I’m coming from.  Then you’ll understand why I ask my girlfriend’s mother where she found her meat, how much frozen water is in it, if she understands what cage-less really means and what fresh air-raised really means, whether or not we can ever know if the animal on our plates was killed in an efficient way and not tortured while its foot was stuck in its grave for the entirety of its life.

I call myself a vegetarian, though, because I don’t want to explain to people the pretentious little secrets of why I do what I do and how I do it.  I want them to accept the fact that my farts are going to smell worse and take the preconceived notion that I’m ruining my image as an American- the carnivorous American who eats meat on Thanksgiving and thanks God before a meal.

Yet, while I write this, when I look at myself taking a step forward, becoming smarter, maturing, helping my body and the environment, Lacan says I’m trying to reverse it all.  I’m trying to stop the flow of time, and, no, I’m not getting lypo, I’m not getting age-reduction and I’m not getting that thins that made John Kerry look like Howdy Doody without the freckles.  What I am doing is trying to find a way back to that perfect union between me an my mother.  It’s nothing Oedipal, at least I hope it’s not.  But it’s a natural state of being: it’s protection of our own longevity.  Why am I not eating meat- to help my health, to help the health of animals, to help the environment and, essentially, to hope that it will create this giant time machine that will take me back to the garden of Eden and be born once again.  The fact of the matter, all of my metropolitan activities won’t force me back into my mother’s womb, it won’t put me back in the garden of Eden, it won’t make me younger but, instead, it will make me older and make me pass the time faster than before from all the research I am putting into what I eat.

So, how do I get here?  Starting with breastfeeding and ending with our impending demise?  I think I just found the chronology of this whole argument.

Today

Wikipedia searching: I connected Bureaucrat with “Steampunk” all thanks to Terry Gilliam’s Brazil and the bureaucracy of the central air conglomerate.

My New Pen Name is Porker Patton: "Why i Ate Myself"

Throughout the history of America, there has always been an age-old question acting like an invisible hand that keeps us all away from cannibalism: “why did I eat that?”  Pop culture has created ubiquitous questions in regards to the food we eat.  Take for example, “why did the old lady swallow the fly when, in fact, it caused a chain reaction thus leading to her own demise?”  or “Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar?”  What about the movie “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape”?  Porker Patton asks the imperative questions when writing the book, “Why i Ate Myself”- which, just like the old lady, led to his imminent demise.  The award winning author for “What I’d look like as a slimmed steak” will ask the questions “Why didn’t you eat the cookie jar” and “instead of what ate Gilbert Grape, what is Gilbert Grape eating?”

The New York Times raves: “Another triumph for Porker.  He really knows a lot about food.”
Harper’s Magazine says: “This sucked”
The New Yorker comments: “I thought his name was Chris”