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Who Am I? Or (Perhaps More Accurately) Who Else Could Be Me?
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Chuck Klosterman |
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The goal of being alive is to figure out what it means to be alive.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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But I still feel like I lost. We all have the potential to fall in love a thousand times in our lifetime. It's easy. The first girl I ever loved was someone I knew in the sixth grade. Her name was Missy; we talked about horses. The last girl I love will be someone I haven't even met yet. probably. They all count. But there are certain people you love who do something else; they define how you classify what love is supposed to feel like. The..
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reality
love
truth
win
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Chuck Klosterman |
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I am ready to be alone.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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Should she stick with the nice, sensitive guy who treats her well (Ben Stiller), or should she roll the dice with the frustrating boho bozo who treats her like crap (Ethan Hawk)? Winona made the kind of romantic decision most people my age would have made in 1994: She pursued a path that was difficult and depressing, and she did so because it showed the slightest potential for transcendence.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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The falling flakes were random and without purpose; the snow was drunker than she was.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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Styx and The Stones may break my bones but 'More than Words' will never hurt me
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Chuck Klosterman |
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Everything said about Gen Xers--both positive and negative--was completely true. Twenty-somethings in the nineties rejected the traditional working-class American lifestyle because (a) they were smart enough to realize those values were unsatisfying, and (b) they were totally fucking lazy. Twenty-somethings in the nineties embraced a record like Nirvana's Nevermind because (a) it was a sociocultural affront to the vapidity of the Reagan-era..
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Chuck Klosterman |
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I remember saying things, but I have no idea what was said. It was generally a friendly conversation." --Associated Press reporter Jack Sullivan, attempting to recount a 3 A.M. exchange we had at a dinner party and inadvertently describing the past ten years of my life."
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Chuck Klosterman |
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It doesn't matter what you can do if you don't know why you're doing it.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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No woman will ever satisfy me. I know that now, and I would never try to deny it. But this is actually okay, because I will never satisfy a woman, either. Should I be writing such thoughts? Perhaps not. Perhaps it's a bad idea. I can definitely foresee a scenario where that first paragraph could come back to haunt me, especially if I somehow became marginally famous.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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If you've spent any time trolling the blogosphere, you've probably noticed a peculiar literary trend: the pervasive habit of writers inexplicably placing exclamation points at the end of otherwise unremarkable sentences. Sort of like this! This is done to suggest an ironic detachment from the writing of an expository sentence! It's supposed to signify that the writer is self-aware! And this is idiotic. It's the saddest kind of failure. F. S..
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humor
blogging
culture
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Chuck Klosterman |
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26c3b5c
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Everyone who loves pro basketball assumes it's a little fixed. We all think the annual draft lottery is probably rigged, we all accept that the league aggressively wants big market teams to advance deep into the playoffs, and we all concede that certain marquee players are going to get preferential treatment for no valid reason. The outcomes of games aren't predeteremined or scripted but there are definitely dark forces who play with our re..
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Chuck Klosterman |
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5eed03a
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Why do we get out of bed? Is there any feeling better then being in bed? What could possibly feel better than this? What is going to happen in the course of my day that will be an improvement over lying on something very soft, underneath something very warm, wearing only underwear, doing absolutely nothing, all by myself?
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Chuck Klosterman |
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edeaa91
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Sometimes I think that the amount of time you live on earth is just an inverse reflection of how good you were in a previous existence. For example, infants who die from SIDs were actually great people when they were alive for real, so they get to go to heaven after a mere five weeks in purgatory. Meanwhile anyone Willard Scott ever congratulated for turning one hundred two was obviously a terrible individual who had many many previous sins..
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Chuck Klosterman |
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In New York, people are unhappy on purpose, because unhappiness makes them seem more complex; in Washington DC it just sort of works out that way.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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Why do you keep saying that " he asked in response "Apples and oranges aren't that different really. I mean they're both fruit. Their weight is extremely similar. They both contain acidic elements. They're both roughly spherical. They serve the same social purpose. With the possible exception of a tangerine I can't think of anything more similar to an orange than an apple. If I was having lunch with a man who was eating an apple and-while I..
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Chuck Klosterman |
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It has always been my belief that people are remembered for the sum of their accomplishments but defined by their singular failure.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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If you stare long enough at anything, you will start to find similarities. The word "coincidence" exists in order to stop people from seeing meaning where none exists."
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Chuck Klosterman |
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The soul is a circle
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Chuck Klosterman |
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Observing someone without context amplifies the experience. The more we know, the less we are able to feel.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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We all eventually become whatever we pretend to hate.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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The deeper reality is that I'm not sure if what I do is real. I usually believe that I'm certain about how I feel, but that seems naive. How do we know how we feel?...There is almost certainly a constructed schism between (a) how I feel, and (b) how I think I feel. There's probably a third level, too--how I want to think I feel.
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reality
naivete
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Chuck Klosterman |
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Everyone knows history is written by the winners, but that cliche misses a crucial detail: Over time, the winners are always the progressives. Conservatism can only win in the short term, because society cannot stop evolving (and social evolution inevitably dovetails with the agenda of those who see change as an abstract positive). It might take seventy years, but it always happens eventually. Serious historians are, almost without exceptio..
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evolution
history
historians
progressives
conservatives
progressive
society
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Chuck Klosterman |
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You want to know what I really learned? I learned that people don't consider time alone as part of their life. Being alone is just a stretch of isolation they want to escape from. I saw a lot of wine-drinking, a lot of compulsive drug use, a lot of sleeping with the television on. It was less festive than I anticipated. My view had always been that I was my most alive when I was totally alone, because that was the only time I could live wit..
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loneliness
aloneness
social
sociology
human-nature
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Chuck Klosterman |
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and it occurred to me that people who don't talk about themselves are limiting their own potential. They think they're guarding themselves for some sort of abstract dange, but they're actually allowing other people to decide who they are and what they're like.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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The message of "The Winner Takes It All" is straightforward: It argues that the concept of relationships ending on mutual terms is an emotional fallacy. One person is inevitably okay and the other is inevitably devastated."
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Chuck Klosterman |
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Mostly, we argued about who which of us was better at arguing, and particularly about who had won the previous argument.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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I doubt that pornography has been good for the advancement of society, but I suspect it's done wonders for the advancement of computer technology.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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Do you understand? Do you see the forest through the trees? Do you not see what I am no longer not saying to you? If so--congratulations! Prepare to have sex constantly.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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The stark, pedestrian images used by filmmakers (probably out of financial necessity) expressed nothing, symbolically or metaphorically. The only purpose they served was to remind me that a huge chunk of my life is completely over, even though I will probably live 60 more years. There are so many things that will never happen to me again, and I never even noticed when those things stopped occurring. And this does not mean I wish I had my ol..
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Chuck Klosterman |
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My mind and gut are never simpatico: Every time I think somebody likes me, she doesn't; every time I think somebody doesn't like me, she does. This has never changed and I'm certain it never will.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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As of right now, I am in love with her, and that love is the biggest problem in my life.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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We're all tourists, sort of. Life is tourism, sort of. As far as I'm concerned, the dinosaurs still hold the lease on this godforsaken rock.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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Necessity used to be the mother of invention, but then we ran out of things that were necessary. The postmodern mother of invention is desire; we don't really "need" anything new, so we only create what we want."
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Chuck Klosterman |
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We would sit in the living room, drink a case of Busch beer, and throw the empty cans into the kitchen for no reason whatsoever, beyond the fact that it was the most overtly irresponsible way for any two people to live.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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We are losing the ability to understand anything that's even vaguely complex.
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understanding
wisdom
thought
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Chuck Klosterman |
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A homeless man once told me that dancing to rap music is the cultural equivalent of masturbating, and I'd sort of fell the same way about playing John Madden Football immediately after filing my income tax: It's fun, but - somehow - vaguely pathetic.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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e28c366
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We argued about how hard it would be to ride a bear, assuming said bear was muzzled.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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ae8c21e
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We assume that all statements must be mild inversions of the truth, because it's too weird to imagine people who aren't casually lying, pretty much all the time.
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lying
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Chuck Klosterman |
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This made her remember why people take up walking: It is because they no longer have anywhere to go.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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When given the choice, we'd all rather be happy now ... even if that guarantees we'll all be sad later.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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When The Matrix debuted in 1999, it was a huge box-office success. It was also well received by critics, most of whom focused on one of two qualities--the technological (it mainstreamed the digital technique of three-dimensional "bullet time," where the on-screen action would freeze while the camera continued to revolve around the participants) or the philosophical (it served as a trippy entry point for the notion that we already live in a ..
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Chuck Klosterman |
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Somewhere, at some point, somehow, somebody decided that death equals credibility.
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Chuck Klosterman |