fillet-of-who?

I always meant to write a better goodbye, let’s give this a shot. Better Nate than lever, no?

It’s hard to believe, but now that I don’t write two or three times a week, I.. I… I kinda miss it.

I know I know… “Impossible!” you say.

“All that work that you guys put in with little readership and no pay! How could that have been satisfying?”

Think of it this way:

Think back to college. That philosophy paper? The one due at 8am tomorrow? You stay up late, writing like a frenzied chimpanzee. (That is to say, somewhat incoherent and generally sloppy, much like your college love life.)

It’s now 5 am. You’ve finished your philosophical masterpiece: What Would Jesus Smoke. Better save that to your flash drive.

Even though your printer is out of color ink, you somehow manage to get the damn thing to spit our your 5 pages of awesome. That wasn’t so hard, it only took two and a half hours. Might as well just go to class at this point.

Your peers trickle in. The professor shows up right on schedule and launches straight into the lecture. He never collects the paper. There was no assignment.

In essence, writing a post for Obscure was much the same. We’d make up some shit and hand it in right before the deadline. Our friends (sometimes) enjoyed what we wrote, but in the end, nobody asked for The Ten Suggestions. Nor did anyone ask us to supplant words in Star Wars quotes with the word, “underpants”. It might have been work at times, and it is possible that we didn’t always put in 100%. Very possible. But the fact is, we did it.

You’re welcome. And thank you, dear readers, for your insidious comments and heckling. You’re a wonderful crowd. We sure had a blast.

<3 The Obscure Inq. Team XOXO

An article on msn caught my attention today. It featured Michael Kimmel the author of the book Guyland and brought up the topic concerning how today’s young men are frequently trapped between boyhood and adulthood. The title of the article itself was Boys to Men: Why guys aren’t growing up. As you can guess, the article pretty much pointed fingers at everyone who writes or even reads the content of this site. But before we get too defensive, let’s talk about some of the trends that the article addressed.

In your own experience, does there seem to be a growing trend of career aimlessness, videogame induced non-productivity, binge drinking, girl bashing, and continued dorm-esque lifestyles among our post-college male population? Is there an increase of hook-ups over meaningful relationships? Is it more difficult for guys to break away from their college and high school buddies than it was for our fathers before us? Michael Kimmel would certainly say yes.

To be honest, I’m somewhat inclined to say yes as well. Technology naturally plays a role. Facebook and instant messenger for example, make it much simpler for your everyday schmoe to keep in touch with old friends. Videogames likewise have become cultural pastime catering to a very specific male demographic (Even despite the admirable efforts of the Nintendo’s Wii). And today’s mass communication allows for and promotes the heavy flow and production of pornography and sports discourse across a variety of media. And though I’ve never really discovered the appeal of popular sports, I do find myself guilty of living vicariously through characters found in action flicks more often than I spend time mapping out my future. I for one, even admit to maintaining a conscious resistance to the thought of becoming a full-fledged adult.

Michael Kimmel writes…

“In this topsy-turvy, Peter-Pan mindset, young men shirk the responsibilities of adulthood and remain fixated on the trappings of boyhood, while the boys they still are struggle heroically to prove that they are real men despite all evidence to the contrary”

I’m hesitant to agree that such trends will bring about the fall of mankind, but at the same time I do recognize some valid points. Basically instead of putting in the effort of producing my own opinion, I’m going to leave that to you readers. So what do you think? Are these observations and claims accurate? Or are these notions simply the rants of an aging (and balding) man who belongs to a generation that will never understand Nirvana, has a skewed view of video games, and basically repeats (in different terminology) what every previous generation says about the one after them? I’ll be in my room watching porn.