Theme week: Hedonism. And vaguely anti-corporate sentiment!

Upon hearing that my beloved Planningtorock is going to be at South by Southwest this year, I sprang (Sprung! Springed!) into action, and tried to get Zachary to convince me this was a bad idea. Since this is Zachary, however, nothing is ever a bad idea, but in the end, we found out that the cheapest way to do this would still cost far too much money, and maybe result in us getting mugged. In Austin. Texas, why are you our most irascible state? Don't change, though, we still love you.

In our way.

In fitting with the theme of this week, let's see what Webster's Dic(HAHAHA)tionary has to say about Hedonism: "The doctrine that pleasure or happiness is the sole or chief good in life." Well hey, okay. Didn't Oscar Wilde say that same thing exactly? Well, he did, but in defense of Webster, Wilde said a lot of things. Cheesy introductions aside, really now, I struggle to understand individuals who do not, in their way, life lives for their own happiness. Self flagellating monks took doubtless pleasure from their whips and uncomfortable shirts, knowing that their reward lay beyond. Further, I mean, come on - monks? Seeking the chief good in life? Those bros were ALL ABOUT the chief good in life. Thanks a lot for your crappy definition, Daniel Webster. I hope you get what's coming to you.

Anyway. My greatest vice, aside from eating diet foods and bitching about iPods, is music. It is an intensely personal vice - I meet other people with different tastes, and I must resist the urge to rend the flesh from their bones for not agreeing with me, or for having even heard of the bands I like. And I fully acknowledge that this is a stupid thing to think, because music is like TOTALLY OMG WOW a personal experience, and so it is a ridiculous thing to force my subjective assumptions onto strangers. So when it comes to music, I usually just shut the hell up and hold back my tide of bitchfork-like fury against the uninitiated, because no one likes that. The last thing I want is people hating me for silly reasons - there are already so many good reasons out there. I'd feel like I was wasting their time.

So there are things that we must do to preserve our hedonism - our happiness is never a sure thing. We are sensitive to the moods of others, to the weather, to what we ate last night for dinner. Our pleasure is never immune to distortion, and it is always precious and fragile. It is a rare gift to find those individuals who are able to enjoy themselves with the relentless force of a hurricane, or even to be able to ignore the small details that derail more detail oriented minds. Hedonism is so often pegged as a bad idea, but why? If it is the pursuit of happiness and goodness, what's so wrong with that?

I might argue that there are profits at stake. If you convince others that they aren't having a good time, you can provide for them an easy out. Consider the advertising blurb for the Hedonism resorts:

"Sleep in. Stay up late. Give up counting calories. Have a drink before noon. Give up mineral water. Dine in shorts. Talk to strangers. Don't make your bed. Go skinny dipping. Don't call your mother. Let your hair down. Don't pay for anything. Don't leave a tip. Be your beautiful self in spectacular Negril or Runaway Bay, Jamaica."

These are the same manipulations that get us to spoil ourselves and buy a luxury car, or to indulge in some hideous new meat patty and sauce at a fast food restaurant. The above text does not inspire me to be beautiful in any way - it makes me an ugly, self-centered jerk. An easily impressed self-centered jerk. Talk to strangers! Eat in shorts! These are not, strictly speaking, novel. If we are made to think that these things are new and that they can be provided by this service, then our sense of being beautiful and free hinges on paying these fuckers. Don't get me (and my misdirected self-righteousness) wrong, there are some people who probably totally love that place. But they are tools and I hate them. The more we relegate the pleasures of life to a specifically cordoned off area, the more they are removed from our daily life - we become the agents of our own discontent.

So, enjoy hedonism week. Think about what you do for your own pleasure (you sickening freak), and about how different you would be as a person if this were taken away from you. ON WITH THE SHOW.