I am so not cool - and I like it.

While waiting for the geek to finish working today, I had some time in a local bookseller to browse (ie. read articles for free). It led me to some questions...for starters, why is it called the "swimsuit edition" if they aren't really wearing bathing suites, but paint...hmmm. I digress.

I happened upon a mag called Adbusters -which I had encountered before. The cover was graced by my least favorite human, but I didn't let that get me down because it was about her NOT being cool, which made me happy. (I should probably dissect that with my therapist, but right now, I don't care, so there...read on) Its an ad free magazine, except for the spoofed ads they do. Pretty wild stuff.

The article I lit on was the one about cool, which gives a brief history of cool and how cool became corporate...then flopped.

Here's a quote from the article "The Reconquest of Cool" signed "for the wild, Kalle"

"Forty years after the corporate takeover of cool, we find ourselves again in an era of extraordinary cultural and political upheaval. Global warming has us running scared, an epidemic of mood disorders is eroding our confidence, and as the War on Terror morphs into an open-ended World War IV, we are feeling more insecure than ever.

Suddenly, people are waking up in droves from the dreamland of corporate cool. We’re realizing that ever since we were little babies crawling around the TV sets in our living rooms, we’ve been lied to, propagandized, and told incessantly, day after day, that we can find happiness through consumption. That’s why, like rats in a Skinner box, we’ve kept on pressing that BUY button – millions of us marching in lockstep, all dreaming the same consumerist dream."

The answer? I'll let you read their opinion, but I realized that I am not cool! I have not answered to the corporate call that tells me what I should look like, own, smoke, drink, listen to, wear etc. In fact, on a scale of corporate cool, I rate a very warm 1 (10 being the "coolest") I tried the cool factor. I did! I bought an ipod (shuffle) and put my favorite tunes on it (Beatles) and flew home to TX and somewhere between Nashvegas and the the triple G, I lost it on the plane! My cool lasted about 3 weeks. I couldn't really see paying for something twice that I had saved up my fun money for and had not really seen the lure of it. When I want to listen to music, I put on a CD, or an mp3 set from my little flash drive that I can plug in and listen to at home, on my laptop, at work. When I walk I like to hear the noise of outside. When I travel, I people watch, or write, or listen. I couldn't pay for that self-imposed bubble a second time.

Here's why I'm not cool: I have no real sense of fashion. I will not contort my poor toes into heels just so my legs look longer. I'm kinda frumpy most days and don't consider myself particularly beautiful (although the geek begs to differ), don't listen to the Clear Channel music feed of choice when I don't enjoy that style of music, don't like to own much beyond what I need (although clutter still accumulates somehow). But I write good songs, I write good prose, I have good friends, I am learning to know myself and in doing so, get out of myself and serve others, I love well (and when I don't, I recognize my failings and ask for help), I create, I dream better than the movies and I like it. I'm glad I don't have to wake up from the dream of the lie today. I'm sure there are other things I am in denial about, but for today, I am so not hot right now, and that's pretty cool.