TLDNR

“I liked them before they were famous.” The phrase is at once a badge and memorial for early adopters. They are proud of their foresight, but then, tragically, when the rest of the world has caught up, that same pride forces the early adopter to abandon his discovery. He cannot bear to share his discovery with so many people and so he must shun that which he once loved. He will become bitter, he will say that they have “sold out,” and he will shoot the messenger.

I went snowboarding a few weeks ago.  I know, very cool.  As I stood in the lift line, surrounded by kids much younger and much cooler, I was overcome by deja vu.  I hadn’t seen any of these kids before, nor had I been to this mountain, but it all felt so familiar.  It wasn’t until later in the day, when I stopped at a snowboard store, that I realized why everything on the mountain seemed familiar: it was the clothing.  

I had gone to the snowboard store with the intention of looking at new boards and pretending to know what I was talking about – “Now, I heard the laminate on the new Burtons isn’t great in icy conditions.  Have you heard that?” – but instead wandered into the apparel section.  That’s when it hit me: these colors, these patterns, everything about the cool snowboarding gear on sale was the same as it had been in the early 90’s.  Neon greens and yellows, Saved-By-The-Bell-Esque patterns on hot pink jackets, I had seen, and worn, all of this before.  

And we will see all of it again, in twenty years, because it appears to me that cool kid fashion is always looking back and ironically borrowing from that which was popular twenty years ago.  Think about it, in the early aughts did the cool kids not look eerily similar to the cool kids in the early 80’s?  Did they not wear Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles T-shirts? It’s not an exact science, of course, but I remember seeing The Strokes on TV in 2001 and thinking, “Huh, they look like The Ramones.“  So it is with some confidence I say that popular fashion is on a 20 year loop.  And what does that mean for you cool kids?  

It means things are going to get real ugly, real soon.

These past two years have been rough on America. We’ve seen our nation’s fortunes wither and the proud American workforce sidelined by a crippling recession. Millions of otherwise capable and intelligent Americans in the prime of their lives are now unemployed, scraping by on a pittance from the Government. It is hard to see how anything good could come of such a terrible situation. But allow me to offer one idea: we could legalize marijuana.

The problem with legalizing marijuana in the past has not been that the plant itself is dangerous or that the government couldn’t make a killing off of it, it’s that the wrong people were asking. Think about it. When you see a Legalize It protest, who do you see protesting? Dreadlocked white college students, old hippie burnouts who may or may not be aware the Vietnam War has ended, schizophrenics who claim to be the living incarnation of John Lennon. Why would the government ever listen to them? If the government listened to them we’d be watching frisbee on ESPN and being “really unchill and sh*t” would be illegal. The problem with legalization protests is not the message, you see, it’s the protesters. Â

But now we find ourselves with millions of people with the free time, the lack of consequence and, most importantly, the normal clothes and haircuts to work the picket lines. In the past, fear of losing your job or time commitments may have kept regularly employed marijuana enthusiasts away from the pickets lines but that’s not a concern for millions of Americans now. It’s hard to get fired or have your pay docked when you no longer have a job, right? So instead of working on that novel you always knew you could write or eating yet another depressing microwaved dinner, how about getting out, getting loud, and changing the country?

Ever since I can remember I have been introduced to new homes the same way.  I would arrive at the house and the homeowner would give me a little tour.  Here is the kitchen, here is the bathroom, the living room, the guest room, etc.  It didn’t matter what the occasion was – a party for one of my parents’ friends, a first time sleepover at a friend from school’s house, whatever – the initial introduction to the house always followed the same pattern.

Now that I’m older, the process hasn’t changed, except people now like to also point out all the ways in which their house or apartment is better than mine: here’s my new 60” plasma, here’s the guest pool if you want to swim, this is my wine cellar, etc.  But there is one thing lacking in the standard house tour that I first noticed as a little kid.  I was always secretly hoping that it would change when I got older, that it was too taboo a subject for an adult to speak to a child about, but that adults freely dispensed such information.  Sadly, this is not the case.  I am speaking, of course, about toilet operation.  

I am all for variety.  I love that I can choose between twenty-five kinds of peanut butter at the grocery store and watch softcore porn on Cinemax in nine different languages, but one place I don’t need so much choice is in toilet flushing.  It’s as if the toilet manufacturers of the world are each convinced that their flushing operation is superior.  “NO!” shouts Kohler, “holding the handle down for three seconds is the superior way to flush!”

“You fool,” counters American Standard, “a little push followed by a delayed flush is the best!”

“Nonsense!” screams Bemis, “A hard push, followed by a bubbling gurgle and a slow flush is the ONLY way Americans want their toilets to work!”

This leaves you, the consumer, with a myriad of potential flushing options when it comes time to relieve yourself and, of course, the possibility that you won’t be able to figure it out.  This has been the case more times than I care to remember.