Sorry, It's NOT ORIGINAL Anymore

If you:

-Firedance
-Play the accordion
-Perform circus tricks
-Play in a down-home neo-folk-style band
-Love being naked
-Are Kinky | Practice B,D,S, and/or M
-Wear spiked bracelets or dog-collars
-Consider yourself bisexual
-Have gay friends
-Work out at the GYM
-Brew your own mead
-Only smoke joints
-Have had an indescribable spiritual experience or commune with the divine that's induced by hallucinogens
-Publish your own ZINE
-Have a BLOG
-Compose loop-based techno songs on your home computer
-Spin Records or D.J.
-Like "every kind of music" (e.g. eclectic)
-Drive a classic/old car
-Espouse Taoist, Buddhist, Hindu, or other misc. Eastern philosophical tenents
-Are hopelessly retro or outre
-Wear t-shirts bearing brand-names or pseudo-nametags
-Want to free Mumia from prison
-Have any item bearing the visage of Che Guevara
-Wear striped leggings
-Have a patchwork pair of pants or a backpack with punk-rock patches
-Have a tattoo of some Celtic knot, Sanskit saying that you yourself cannot pronounce, runes, alternative religious symbols for alternative religions that you do not practice, skulls, faeries, dragons & other common mythological creatures
-Have more than four visible piercings
-Have non-ear / erotic piercings
-Consider yourself Pagan or Wiccan (or worse, a Satanist!)
-Practice Occult rituals and/or sing the praises of Crowleyesque mystics
-Wear Converse shoes and use catch phrases from 80's movies and television
-Suck on a pacifier
-Dye your hair black, blue, purple, green, rainbow or some other shade of glam-punk hair product purchased at hot topic or walgreens
-Cut your own hair
-Wear predominently black clothing or feel wistfully gothic
-Despise intellectuals
-Believe in 'the conspiracy'
-Hate George W. Bush/Republicans
-Consider yourself an anarcho-leftist avant-revolutionary
-Are a man in make-up
-Are a woman who doesn't shave her legs/pitts
-Do shave your pubic region
-Watch foreign/independent films
-Pratice veganism
-Had an abortion (why are you telling ME this on our first meeting?)
-Write sad, self-loathing poetry
-Act depressed all the time and/or cut yourself
-Want to move to Amsterdam
-Attend Burningman OR Hate Burningman


The list goes on! These ARE COOL THINGS; but please recognize that there's 1,000,000 other people who do these things too. There's a whole world outside of your wardrobe. We all know that you've spent hours primping and creating this individual presentation. STOP acting like it's so unique and unintentional! You are so unusual that you have become ordinary. In your apparent disregard for all popular trends, you are exposed as being keenly fascinated and consumed by these very trends (don't tell me it was accidental).

We are often just fed two images: the status-quo and the radically reversed. Republican or Democrat? There is no difference. Two boxes are not much better than one. It's time to really un-limit ourselves. Why do we continue to thrive and believe in this false dichotomy?

It's not that any of these things are BAD or WRONG in and of themselves (I find myself qualifying for many of them); I believe in unlimited self-expression. There's a difference in doing these things and BEING these things. I'm tired of the pretentious, holier-than-thou attitudes that accompany many of these costume balls. You have become a shiny surface that packages a vapid soul. Keep your costumes, lose the attitude. That's all I ask. I could add a whole slough of other accessories to this shortlist. I think that individualism has become an epidemic. Stop TRYING so hard to be yourself! Just be. This is the time for integration, not segregation! You are one of us whether you like it or not. We are all connected in this universe.

Haven't you noticed?

*end rant*