Challenges - The State of Leisure

We have a choice: 

Instead of bemoaning the piss poor mental and spiritual state of some of the youth in the United States of America, we should try to spark a fire in their hearts and minds to improve themselves.  However, are there any more stories to be told?  The first time that a corporation creates a smash hit plotline by pressing a button on a computer program, artists are doomed.  You had best pack your bags and head to a cave and hope for inpiration from God.  Given what people are buying now, if you have an ounce of intellectual capability you should go and become a day trader on Wall Street.  There is no money to be made from Art itself, only from its licensing.  I hope your protagonist is emblazoned on lunchboxes, keychains, and McDonald’s Happy Meals everywhere.        

Mass produced entertainment has become the narcotic of the masses, and its waste products are utter boredom and apathy to the point of nihilism.  Without constant stimulation, some people fall into a state of depression that is only alleviated by their next hit off of the comic book express train to infinite bliss.  It is no wonder that Hollywood has gone from the novel to the comic book in search of stories that can entertain this particular market.  Product placement is possible in still pencil whipped frames, with ample cleavage to boot.  I am not against cleavage, but would rather have it described to me in words or a photograph.  It is easy to draw sexy breasts, try drawing little mosquito bites or misshapen milkers once in a while.  The world isn’t pretty, and it is often not size double D.

I once asked a colleague of mine who was discussing a movie, “But what did it mean?”  He said, “It’s entertaining.”  Entertainment as a distraction from life and death.      

Ralph Waldo Emerson, that old and tired philosopher stated that if one is to be a man, he must be a nonconformist.  It has been the same message since Socrates drank the hemlock.  However, no one is buying this tired old message anymore.  Your message is conform!  Tow the line.  Type your internal memorandum.  Measure it word by word for length and consistency.  Forget all about your impending death.  And by all means BUY!  In the end you will have participated in the largest ever mass delusion.  And I too am delusional.