I Am A Snowflake

I started writing the draft for this post in July.  Since then I've gathered eleven unfinished posts in my draft box, eleven thoughts I muddled over and discarded.  Sub-par stuff, homies.

Their titles, respectively:

 1.  People Don't Bully Because of Their Insecurities, Dipshits
 2.  The Thing About Cheerleaders
 3.  Dear Memes: Stop Being Middlebrow as Fuck
 4.  ONCE AGAIN, AFRICA IS NOT A COUNTRY
 5.  Drink a Beer In the Shower FTW
 6.  OMG, So Many Baltic Monuments
 7.  Don't Touch Me
 8.  The Wiener Circle
 9.  Cite Your Damn Sources
10. The Trappings of Being Rad
11. All the Famous People Are Friends With Each Other Which Means Everything Is a Conspiracy, Especially Google, I Just Haven't Worked Out Exactly Why Just Yet

So now I will attempt to connect at least six of them in one post:  

Back in October I passed a couple putting up signs around the neighborhood for a missing black cat named Salem. 

Old roommate MoLinder had a giant black cat named Panther.  Around Halloween this conversation would inevitably arise: black cats get fucked with around Halloween because of a, b, and c, where a = magic, b = assholes and c = boredom.  The reasoning goes a bit deeper than that, but I am going to assume (pretend) that anyone who reads this has the ability to discern meaning on their own without having it spelled out for them, and let's face it: life can pretty much be distilled down to magic, assholes and boredom anyway. It's up to us to decide which will define us, as if we want to be defined at all.

I'm totally not into like, being defined, man. I don't like limiting myself to one thing, I want to be free to be who I want to be. And now, upon completion of those sentences, I have assigned myself a label.  Everything is a label, guys, don't go kidding yourself into thinking you're the exception.  We can listen to country and hip hop, we can like action movies and romantic comedies - but then, we are defining ourselves based on what we like.  Is that how we act?  Which determines who we are?

Honestly, it doesn't even matter.

Of course, I am special because everyone is a snowflake, duh, but I still define myself by what I consume instead of how I behave.

I have oddly matched layers with clashing tastes and topography. I know I want serve humanity in life, the point of living is to enrich and subsequently be enriched, although becoming enriched isn't the goal, it's the result of doing it right.  And an enriching life is not, I think, defined by my preference for Coke over Pepsi, and although I drink neither I still have an opinion on both which is fucking ridiculous. Not that I sit around and debate the merits of one or the other, or even think about either on a regular basis, but having an opinion is integral to my progress as a person, therefore I should just have one.

Are opinions consumption because they are something we have? We say "have" an opinion as if we hold ownership over them, as if opinions are something we purchase and flaunt about like preposterous doches in jewelry commercials (he went to Jared, son).

Speaking of segues, here's my problem with engagement rings:

As a middle-class, white, American heterosexual woman between the age of zero and fifty, I have an opinion on engagement rings.

Did you read that?  I have an opinion on engagement rings.

Whatever, so does the rest of my demographic. The Big Bad Media tries harder to target us for jewelry than they do for presidential elections.

Traditionalists want A Diamond and romantic gestures.  Rich Traditionalists want A Something-Cut Diamond, whatever those are (I know one of them is called "princess" but I have spend a considerable amount of effort purposely ignoring the names of gem cuts - not because I don't care, but because I don't want to know - there is a difference). Active moralists want a gemstone with less baggage and blood (pussies, if you ask me - go big or go home, nancygirl - but that doesn't mean you need a diamond, of course, a mere emerald would suffice).  Revolutionaries don't give a shit, and they TELL YOU how much they don't give a shit, and they talk about why they don't give a shit because they've lent the topic a great deal of thought and then sat around waiting for someone to ask them how they felt about engagement rings.

Narcissists - so, of course, me - want an engagement ring uniquely suited to fit them as an individual snowflake with memories and a story behind each facet to serve my gluttonous struggle for authenticity, romance, and self-worth.  This means, of course, I don't want a diamond to represent me,  I want to be A Diamond.

Of course I don't want to literally be a fucking diamond, by the way. It's not that I like diamonds, or that I value diamonds: I value ME. I want ME to be valued. I want ME to be valued as much as I value you, which is, if you actually take the time to read read this, probably a whole lot.

Next order of business: "I want me to be valued." If I was valuable, I probably wouldn't need to tell people about it.

Donald Trump reminds people he is a /b/ illionaire.  Kanye reminds us how valuable his wife is, and I don't know if anyone believes him but I'm kind of starting to. New York City, as an entity, never stops reminding us how goddamn important and special it is.

The only people who give a shit about New York City are the people who (a) live there, the people who (b) lived there, and (c) would live there.  They want to be valued and associated with the mythos, so they yell about how much we should value them like, all the time. And then the people who yell the loudest move there and just continue to be the loudest and the rest of us are like, OH MY GOD SHUT THE FUCK UP.  NO ONE CARES ABOUT BROOKLYN.  STOP BEING TERRIBLE.

What I'm saying is this: The people who want to be defined by magic, instead of assholes or boredom, will get themselves a black cat familiar and name it Salem.  Or Jinx.  Or...Panther?

Sure, Panther was so-named because he's enormous, and he was given to MoLinder, she didn't necessarily choose him.  But they belong to each other nonetheless, and MoLinder chose a name that connotes with a badass jungle predator.  Asshole.

So the reason black cats get kidnapped around Halloween is the exact same reason people adopt/purchase black cats, and it's the exact same reason why they name their black cats Jinx and Salem.  They are boring assholes, but they want to be magic.

Someone with true magic would probably name the thing "Matt."

In the end, this post is about basically nothing on my list up there.

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