Pretension: It can happen to you.

Pitchfork Gives Music 6.8

CHICAGO—According to the review, the popular medium that predates the written word shows promise but nonetheless "leaves the listener wanting more."

God, how I love the Onion. Pitchfork, for those who don't know, is known for giving extremely harsh and pretentious reviews for albums, and they rate them on a 10 point scale, including decimals. And if you're an indie kid, you probably take Pitchfork's opinion into way too much consideration. Not that I'm not guilty... the first place I use to check out a review is Pitchfork, and if they say it's bad then I usually believe them. Except in the case of Neutral Milk Hotel's "In The Aeroplane Over The Sea", in which they gave them a perfect 10, and I really don't like it very much. Anyways, read the article.

The cat's out of the bag!

DUMBLEDORE IS GAY!

OH MY GOD!

I AM SO ASTONISHED AND REPULSED! THIS RUINS MY OPINION OF THE HARRY POTTER BOOKS! WHAT A TRAGEDY THAT A CHILDREN'S BOOK SHOULD BE INFILTRATED BY REALITY! EWWW, GAY PEOPLE! I CAN'T STAND THE IDEA OF ACCEPTANCE OF OTHERS! J.K. ROWLING JUST WANTS ATTENTION AND IS BEING TOO POLITICAL! ART HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH POLITICS!

How ridiculous do these opinions sound? Well, they're a lot of the opinions given as comments on the following article: http://popwatch.ew.com/popwatch/2007/10/rowling-outs-du.html

I find it tragic that parents are raising children who are as intolerant as they are. So what if J.K. Rowling saw Dumbledore as gay in her mind? I personally never saw that coming, but it's her series. She can do whatever the hell she wants. Second, one of the purposes of literature and art is to show what is wrong with society, to reflect and to demand change. And who better than someone like J.K. Rowling, who has power over millions of youth? Harry Potter teaches tolerance, love, and also to question the establishment (Ministry of Magic : denial about Voldemort :: today's society/government : denial about gays). So. Take that.

Is Having Two Times As Many Wives Okay If We Live Two Times Longer?

So this is a continuation of a conversation Less and I had that we thought would be worth yelling about.
But first I must apologize for my prolonged absence, summer tends to be an intellectual dry spell for me. Now, I'm back and ready to rant.
Now, down to business. The question is, should new world marriages be subject to or judged by old world morals?
If you think about it, it's a lot easier to uphold a vow to love and cherish your significant other when you only expect to live to 40, rather than 80.
It really says a lot that 90% of Americans believe adultery to be morally wrong, but 22% of men and 14% of women admit to having an affair. Oh thats right, I just remembered, we as Americans are inherently hypocrites.
If you are able to set aside what you have been force fed since birth, monogamy simply isn't part of the human nature.
According to the US census bureau's world population clock as of midnight Oct 18/19 (sidebar, which side does midnight fall on?) we have reached the mind boggling number of 6,625,740,431 people. Why limit ourselves to just one?
In the age when the ethics of marriage were developed, people were limited in their choices in a mate; often bound to their, or nearby, villages. Now, we can hop on planes and get to three dates, on three continents, in three days.
This is where I will leave it for now, its only fair I give Less a chance to chime in.

A Polygamous Future

When I observe the world around me today, I see a world that is changing. "How very obvious," you might say, but our world is changing at such a rapid pace that we are finding it increasingly difficult to keep up. The wealth of information available to us is currently doubling less than every five years, and by 2020 it is projected that knowledge will double every 73 days. From this, it can be concluded that the people we are, our personalities and beliefs and hobbies, will change just as rapidly as a result. My computer tells me that iTunes has to be updated just about every month and my cell phone is outdated despite being only about a year old. With some tapping upon a keyboard and the click of a button, our sense of individual, our perception of self, can be changed on MySpace or Facebook. If we want to be someone else to others, we simply say what we are, and in an instant we have taken on a new persona. Instant gratification and instantaneous change have become the standard of our society.

Now, given this, it would seem necessary that the institution of marriage must change along with everything else. Why? Because if one person can change so fast, it is highly unlikely that their spouse will change in a similar or compatible fashion. It is also more likely that spouses are in very different environments despite being married, and will change accordingly. For example, Mr. and Mrs. Jones may be married and live in the same home with the same children, but for the majority of the day Mr. Jones works at his urban business firm. Mrs. Jones remains in the suburbs, running errands, or perhaps has a job of her own closer to their home. Mr. Jones becomes more and more like his corporate peers, but Mrs. Jones is in an entirely different environment. After five, seven, ten years of marriage they are nothing like the people they were when they took their vows.

So now what? It seems that logically (and almost tragically) that to have one spouse is both impossible and irrational. A few statistics to leave you with...

• In America, 11% of adults are currently divorced, and 1 in 4 adults has been divorced in their lifetime.
• Interestingly enough, rates of divorce for conservative Christians are significantly higher than that of other faiths (http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_dira.htm).
• Baby boomers (33 to 52 years of age) - 34% have been divorced
  Builders (53 to 72 years of age) - 37%
  Seniors (above 72 years of age) - 18%
• My personal favorite: red states have a divorce rate 27% higher than blue states.