Old People.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
On Saturday, a friend of mine planned a camping trip to Mt. Nittany (if you don't know, I'm not telling). He said about 30 people had signed up. It ended that I was the ONLY one (besides him) who showed up. MY CLASS IS FULL OF WUSSES! I have, though, proven my manliness and honorability beyond a doubt! Sure it rained! Sure it got bitterly cold! But dammit, I SURVIVED and I'm a cool dude for it. I also got to try out my East German officer's sleping bag with sleeves. There was also an initiation for a secret society happening nearby at about 4:00 in the morning, but it sounded pretty boring.
Anyway, an old trustee who was once a member of the secret society came up and hung out with us for a while. He complained about kids today and how everything is going to red screaming hell. I did learn some important insights into the thinking of old people and the traditional conservatives.
It's all about roles for them. They're always complaining about men's roles and women's roles and, implicitly, rich people's roles and poor people's roles. That's what they're stuck on. Women raise the kids and take care of the house and men enter into the same profession as their fathers whether they want to or not. Sure, it makes things stable and eliminates the need to think (something popular with almost everybody), but on the other hand it negates the benefits society could reap from an individual's talents. After all, the United States was based on the concept that people should be free to do the things they WANT to do, regardless of birth. Stick that in your pipes and smoke it, old people.
Yep, he was one of those people who thinks that everything old is good and bitched that people today have no class, no morals, and whatever else. He laughingly related a story from the early Penn State days, when two classes got into a wild melee that resulted in many a broken bone. What the tells me is that kids back then were a bunch of savages, but that was a long time ago so it's apparantly OK. If anybody pulled THAT today, people would be saying crap like, "kids today are out of control". I'd say, kids are exactly the same as always, so sit down and shut up.
The guy also railed against people who were not "cultured". Specifically, he went on a long diatribe about how people aren't interested in training their tastebuds to appreciate the "best" beers, or "best" foods, or "best" wines or whatever. He was aparantly unhappy with the fact that EVERYBODY isn't skilled in the aristrocratic arts that were popular in the Victorian age. Well, on the bright side, he's a chain smoker so he won't be suffering in this horrid world much longer.
He was a smart guy though, and overall a good guy, but he seemed unable to comprehend that other people MIGHT have different interest, or that people have not been EXACTLY the same up until the 1960's. He had lots of cool stories about old Indian myths, but he was just a bit prejudiced against us.
All of this anti-Gen-X shit is annoying. "Oh, kids today have no direction" or "They're a bunch of slackers" or other crap like that is nothing more than journalist sensationalism. Considering how much the rightists dislike the media as a whole, it sure is funny how quickly they'll be its best friend when it says things they want to believe. Of course, everybody's like that. Everybody pisses me off. I'll bet most of it is from baby boomers trying to make their kids out to more screwed up than they were. Good luck, hippies!
I also hit on another chick on Friday, but once again I've gotten nowhere. Could I have turned over a new leaf? Could I suddenly have the nads to go out and get a chick? We'll see, but I'll take odds.