You can take the player out of Changeling...

[roseembolism]

[Bad username or site: James Nicholl @ livejournal.com] recently did a poll on which is more depressing: "When She Loved Me", from Toy Story 2, or "Puff the Magic Dragon". It wasn't until I was halfway through that I realized what I had, so I figured I'd repost it.

Puff the Magic Dragon, of course. I mean, "When she Loved Me" may seriously screw you up- it has it all over PtMD for the emotions and intensity. When the singer gets that little catch in her voice, it brings the tears on. But with "Puff", that's not just the end of a relationship, it's the end of the era. Once the ganja is gone, the party's over. It's all just over: Jacky goes and finds some new drugs.

I mean, Jackie Paper right this moment is working late on an anti-youtube suit. It's been twenty-five years since his last Dead concert; he's working on his second house, his third wife, and his first stroke. Paper's too busy to really think about it, but he's catching his breath more when he goes up the stairs, and the secretaries- god they're so young- are no longer giggling at his flirting. Some of them even avoid him now. It's almost like they don't find him sexy any more.

He hasn't talked to his wife in days, and his daughter, the older one from the first marriage, just rolls her eyes when he tries to give her advice, and goes back to listening to that hip-hop crap. Disrespectful spoiled kids, all of that generation. Thank god she turns eighteen next month. She can just TRY to get college money from him. And his younger son is worse. Just last weekend when he had custody, Paper couldn't get any work done because the kid just kept babbling about dragons and pirates and kings. The brat is probably already on meth or something....

Dedicated to all Autumn People, everywhere.

Comments

[haamel.livejournal.com]

Egad, that "cynical" tag comes down the mountain like a ton of lead with this post. ...In a lot of ways, it's really emblematic about the failure of the Baby Boomers, those children of the "Greatest Generation" born into homes of uprightness and proven ability to save the world for democracy. As children, they saw the optimism erode before their very eyes, as optimism disintegrated and the Iron Curtain divided the world into camps of mutually-assured destruction. In a sense, the Vietnam War was perfectly timed, stealing away the young adulthood of multitudes whose worst fears were ripe to be confirmed.

The civil rights era, and the rise of sex/drugs/rock&roll, must have been one hell of a party, but it came with one hell of a hangover. Frankly, I'm grateful to be born of the "out-of-phase" generation, perhaps a saner, sober-er minority. I can only hope that the children of the Boomers are able to avoid the same malaise as their parents...

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

I think that it's easy to get caught up in the baby boomers cynicism and self-centeredness and miss the good things that the 1960s brought about. They may not have had a clue, it may have terminally degenerated at the end, but at least they tried for change. Hell, though hippies and baby boomers annoy me, I think society is better off for the 60s.