andyprickett.com

If you grew up watching the Brady Bunch, like I did, then you know of what I speak.

My website is about to go through puberty.

I hate the way it looks, so I’m gonna change it. They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but, what if the dog decides to teach himself? Like many things before, I am teaching myself how to do this.

This is also a weblog entry about how I don’t have time to do weblog entries: too busy, man! Doing what? Changing. Changing diapers, to be exact. And other less important but more time-consuming junk.

Lots of fun coming your way, just you wait and see. In the meantime, check out this video. You’ll notice its linked in from a site on my blogroll, hypebot.com. If you are a musician, then immediately put this site into your RSS feed, or get left behind as the world changes without you.

And remember: change is about the only thing you can really count on. The more you fight that truism, the more your life is ball of chaotic pain.  Unfortunately, I know this all too well from experience.

I’ve been kinda tied up for awhile with some stuff. So, this is what’s been on my mind as of late.

One of the many things I mull over endlessly is the concept of Freedom. All the way from, “does it even exist?” to “don’t tread on me, beeyotch!”, or something along those lines.

The following argument won’t necessarily hold up in logic court, so let’s just say its something I’m mulling over, and proving/disproving in my head:

God = Love

Love = Freedom

Freedom = Responsibility

Whether God is an old dude with a beard sitting in the clouds, an eternal ‘Mind’ that created everything but not necessarily Jehovah, or the effects of electromagnetism on your brain (anyone watching Lost?), let’s just call this concept of ultra-consciousness God. Someone/thing else exists outside of us, and either brought us into existence, or at least is there as some sort of moral compass. Biblically, God is Love; simple as that. But if the whole God/church thing bugs you, then most likely you at least subscribe to some sort of Golden Rule of living which I like to refer to as the “everybody should just be cool to each other, dude” sense of morality. Don’t wanna get into all that here, but, this concept of goodness to each other isn’t too difficult: peace and love, baby. Why are peace and love cool? Well, see above (no pun intended). It comes to us from our higher consciousness, the ‘gift’ that makes us….us.

Ok, that part sucked. Tough stuff to tackle there, and I still tweak on it all the time. Let’s move on. Love = Freedom. “If you love someone, set them free.” If that sounds like the opposite of Love to you, then you need to figure some stuff out. I like to tell the young and hooked up that a good sign that you actually love someone is at the moment you realize that if they genuinely decided they were better off without you, you would be genuinely happy for them. You truly just want what’s best for them, even if that means they choose not to love you back. Love can’t be a prison in any way, it has to be a choice for both people. Hence, the whole Freedom thing. True Love is choosing to love someone, and allowing them the Freedom to choose whether or not to love you.

So what do we do with all that Freedom? I’m sure we’ve all heard some punk kid say, “Its a free country!” right about the time when they were hoping to get away with breaking some sort of rule or doing something lame to someone. This is where we start to see a circle that takes the concept back to the top. If I’ve got Freedom, and I believe that we all deserve the same Freedom, then I have the Responsibilty to not infringe on other people’s Freedom. Not everyone is real keen on this, so, we gotta set up rules and laws to help keep people from screwing with other people’s Freedom. As a friend once put it, “Hell is everyone getting everything they want, all the time.” Try to picture everyone going around taking whatever they want from each other, and killing each other over it, etc. etc. We have the Freedom to make those choices, but, because of their infringement upon the Freedom of others, we have the Responsibility to choose wisely, or our own Freedom may be infringed.

On a political sidenote, this whole issue of Freedom and Responsibility is the real issue in ‘08.

So, where am I? Oh yeah, Free! And the choice is mine what to do with that. And for me, the big challenge is to not be afraid of that Responsibility.

I have, off and on over the past year, spent some time working inside of Best Buy and Circuit City stores. I work for a company that gets hired by big vendors like Panasonic and Toshiba to send ‘reps’ into the stores and ‘assist selling’ or just provide information. So, I get paid pretty well to talk tech with people.

So there I am, with my Toshiba shirt, and my Toshiba badge, in grey and black (remember, everything in Best Buy is blue), hangin’ out in the computer department. And all day long I am met with a stream of people who come up, look me over very carefully, even take the time to read my badge that says Toshiba, and then proceed to ask me a stream of Best Buy -related questions. Most of the questions are reasonable (where are the wireless routers?) Some are not (where are the Games? “underneath the giant blue sign hanging in the middle of the store in clear view that says ‘Games’). Fortunately, I know most of the answers. But, you should see their faces when they finally realize that I don’t work for Best Buy and can’t ‘ring them up’ for whatever they want. Some laugh. Some get pissed. But overall, they realize that they just wasted some time because they didn’t take the time to ‘meet’ me and figure out my scene, they just started barreling in with the questions.

Now, I understand that my presence there is misleading, and that I can’t blame them for thinking that I work there on first glance. But what about 17 glances later? An entire conversation? I try to head them off if I can with an “I don’t work for Best Buy,” but I’m usually just talking over them as they start airing their needs. And, needless to say, there are some interesting cultural differences between the way people treat retail workers that fulfill some very funny stereotypes. Which I love. Because stereotypes are funny, and largely true, whether you like it or not. I fullfil many, right this moment.

My first job (besides the junior high paper route) was like this, too. I worked at Disneyland, in the Merchandise department in Fantasyland. At the time, they still had the same cash registers from the 50’s or 60’s. Old, with the big typewriter type buttons and the spinning slot machine numbers. You had to add the tax in your head based on some small numbers that were underneath the big numbers. Anyways, all day long, in an endless stream, and in the summer a thousand times a day: “How much is this?” In every accent. With every inflection, from belligerent to self-effacing. The main item this was asked about was the standard, white Mickey sweatshirt. It was the biggest seller, and was all over the front of the stand. The catch? It had a giant sticker on the front that clearly said “$18.00″. Giant.

Eventually, this recurrent scene caused me to lose my mind. I had to quit, because I began to loathe the masses. Lost faith completely in the general populace. All my claims of ‘having a heart for people’ were losing ground as my thoughts turned to bitter disdain. Now, 20 years later, I’m tweaked by this way less. My understanding heart for people has actually grown, due largely to having to learn to accept myself and my own blunders. Remember, you become what you hate, so be careful what you hate. I have been the hapless consumer myself enough now to get some perspective.

But what does this mean on a bigger scale? Is this a metaphor for mass consumerism overall? Is this why most people like ‘bad’ music–they just aren’t…listening? Why movies that have ‘talking and stuff’ are boring? Are people plowing through life so fast and furious that they are blinded to the obvious? Is this why big corporations that ‘target’ certain ‘demographics’ have to strip things to such a low common denominator and literally shove it in your face over and over until you respond? Is this part of the reason that you will see two people cuss each other the fuck out in a parking lot over a parking space so they can hurry to get inside an overly crowded store to buy products they don’t know about for people they want to give the impression they care about all because the ‘Holiday’ no one’s allowed to call Christmas anymore has been commercialized to the point of non-recognition, when in actuality, nobody really understands its historical context but are operating on traditions that are very recent, historically speaking, and have little to do with Jesus anyways?

Sure.