"Rigorous and objective" (if at first...)

John Young jya at pipeline.com
Sat Nov 17 12:48:07 PST 2001


If you're over 30-35 all your best stuff was done in the old
days. After that age you may think you're capable of good
work but that's just the voice of experience taking the place
of genuine challenge when you have to solve problems
to survive rather than steal from youngsters and call it
your own or worse, claim it was stolen from you. The 
older you get the more you succumb to the narcotic
of experience, and you really think you a smart son of 
a bitch rather than a nodding dopehead dreaming of
the glory days.

But nothing narcotizes like success except having
no need to deal with the unexpected. That's why loners
and hermits have it right, hate the world, shut out
all attempts to socialize, concoct deeply satisfying
explanations for why the solitary lifestyle is a winner
rather than a loser.

Attack anybody who disturbs your fantasy. Avoid
mirrors, families, any reminder of what you used to
be before climbing up into your dark hole of
self-satisfaction.

This is a voice of experience screaming at you
the truth you dumb motherfucker, you, you, newbie.

Newbies scare the shit of of oldies, seeing in them
certain disrespect, ridicule, erasure. Even when
newbies try their damnest to learn from the oldies
the venerable farts can't bear to be used as
stepping stones -- as if they never did that, and
are not now robbing the newbies under guise of
disdaining them.

Best thing about cpunks is nobody is over 30-35.
Most way healthier than that or wisely pretend to
be.

Meanwhile the Net geezers are agoing sclerotic
heading boards and advisory panels, doing nothing
challenging, burnishing each others' reputations,
fencing what they thieve from students and prowling
the Net for easy pickings.

Mostly, though, checking on the times their names
are cited. Boosting that with neat tools purpose-built
for backdating and touching up wild-age rants into 
golden-age nuggets.





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