September 6, 2000
The Vulture
Vol. 3, #1. Or not.

Title: Where the hell did this come from?

Well, I'd be the last to expect this old rag again. After four years without a thought to the V, I certainly wouldn't have guessed I'd be so...what's the word? inspired? by reading through the archives, still hosted on the web lovingly by the former editor-in-chief. God knows it's a lot of immature drivel punctuated by short bursts of almost-impressive writing. What exactly were we trying to say? Probably "fuck you." That's usually the gist of any message a high-schooler comes up with, however subtly shrouded it may seem.

In fact, "fuck you" may turn out to be the hidden message in this, the first issue of the Vulture to see the light of day since 1996. It just wants to go that way. And who am I to stop it? After all, the original Vulture had a dual purpose: it was a protest against tabloid news, and a soapbox for freedom of speech. Or at least, it tried to be. We were such hypocrites.

They (you know, Them, Those) knew who we were within minutes of publication of Volume 1, Number 1. I guess we were too arrogant and pleased with ourselves to make any _real_ effort to hide our identity. Too busy watching ourselves through the eyes of our superiors, and to a much lesser extent, our peers. So we held back so much of what we wanted to say -- hinting, suggesting, never coming right out with a seriously negative commentary on anything that could even imaginably be connected to our school or anyone in it. With the possible exception of the last article in the last issue, and even there, I pulled most of the punches. Doesn't even mention the school by name. I would've liked to devote the entire last issue to a reprint of Sam Taylor's Valedictorian speech, but that would've certainly brought the hammer down. Plus I didn't have his permission, which made it an easy decision. So nice when you can pass the buck to resolve a dilemma.

The Vulture Staff. Some of the most creative, most enlightened people I've ever met. Hellish getting them to meet a deadline, but how could it be any other way. Our pride in our creation and ourselves was probably what doomed the V to being the watered-down skulking thing that it was. We were straddling a fence between Continued Existence and Taking a Stand, and we opted for the former because it was more fun to have an ongoing project that aroused little controversy than it was to crank out a one-time Abby Hoffman-esque rant and have it quashed in hours. We desperately needed a creative outlet, and the Vulture turned into that fulfillment, to the irrevocable detriment of its original purpose. It's hard to send your child into a potential minefield. Better to just avoid that patch of land entirely, and stay home nursing the kid into adulthood.

Amazing how oppressed we felt. Maybe we really were, I don't know. The way things are looking, not just at that old school but in society in general, it's going to keep getting worse. I look at the shit I wrote in 9th grade and I cringe at what looks to me now like unbridled racism. Yet, I _know_ that I wasn't. It's this current and ongoing atmosphere of political correctness that has conditioned us to be so overly sensitive.

Anyway, I digress. Today's theme is...was...supposed to be The Fine Line. I keep seeing it in everything.

There's a fine line between surfing the web and doing "research." A fine line between taking a break and fucking off. Between the inappropriate and the threatening. Between the inconsiderate and the intolerable. Between admiration and love?

I wish my subconscious would quit being so mysterious. It always does this to me. I obsess on things...people...ideas. Almost like a stalker. When it's things or ideas, I don't worry about it much -- collecting shit, reading about hackers, memorizing trivia, whatever. Who cares. But when I obsess on a person that way, I start to question my own motives. Is this a crush? Is it just a reaction to novelty? Just an unusually rapid friendship? A destiny, soulmate, new-agey horseshit revelation? What the fuck? I never _think_ it's a crush, but maybe it is and I can't let myself admit it. Too embarrassing? But man, if it's a self-deception, then it's a good one, because I can't imagine anything less appealing than romance with the obsessee. It's so platonic. Or at least it seems to be!

A real fine line. Romance is overrated in my opinion. Or maybe I am just a lot more repressed than I could ever imagine.

There's another fine line between confidence and competence. They're almost the same word, for chrissakes. If you possess enough of either one, then you don't need the other. Except that I seem to have only a small quantity of each, with 100 percent overlap. Plenty of confidence in the shit at which I am competent, but zero confidence in my ability to deal with the new stuff. It's like I'm making myself obsolete before I can even conceive of what's to come.

Oh boy, here we go. This is the longest chunk of writing I've been able to sustain in a long time without slipping into the self-referential loop, but that just collapsed. In fact, it began a slow death several paragraphs ago, now that I look at it. I just sorta pretended this was another issue of the V, and for a few magical minutes, I managed to time-travel back into that mindset and write, uninhibitedly. But it always gets back to the same thing -- no matter how hard I try to avoid it, this turns into an analysis of itself and I can't go any further. All I can think about is how it reads to another person (who?) and what that person is thinking as they read this, and it's like I have to prove to them that I know this is fake. I can pretend I don't know they're watching, for just a little while -- then I have to let them know that I know. Can't let them have the upper hand; can't let them think I don't know they're there. Yet another instantiation of a lack of confidence. I keep thinking that if I just immerse myself in this loop for awhile, then eventually I'll get over it, but that's self-defeating. Gotta know all the answers, gotta uncover everything.

Do I ever do anything just for the sake of doing it? Or is it always for the benefit of The Observer?

Probably not _always_. I'm pretty sure I stir-fry snap peas because I like to eat them, not because I want to adopt the image of a stir-fry chef. But even there...it's like I'm trying to prove something to myself. "I can cook for myself, instead of buying prefab meals, look how grown-up I am." Which in turn is all part of proving my superiority to those around me, _even when they're not there_. That's how deeply-ingrained it is.

Everything has a Lord of the Flies motif if you look hard enough. There doesn't even need to be any hostility present at all. We tell jokes, and metaphorically, we're impaling each other's heads on stakes even as we laugh appreciatively at each other's wit. It's all a big power struggle, every bit of it. We really haven't changed much since we were squirrel monkeys. We've just shared in a mass hallucination; our lie is an intricate, complex one, but it's still a lie. Even within the fabric of the fib, what drives progress? Fighting and fucking. Porn and war. Games about fighting, fantasies about fucking. They're both just another means to an end: Proof of Power. Win the fight, win the mate, same difference. Offspring is just a physical manifestation of that triumph.

And here's the punchline: my supposed "realization of the truth" that I've been harping on is JUST ANOTHER PART OF THE SAME THING. I'm no better than anyone I scorn. My observation here is simply my own way of asserting superiority. I'm better than everyone else because I see the lie, whereas they just live it; but even as I think that, I know that it's just my part to play in the lie. There's always another layer. A big endless loop, with infinite levels. Remember, infinity plus 1 equals infinity.

Sigh...and now my day is over. I'll save this file somewhere, and then I'll reread it later and it'll be just another part of my part of the lie.

I used to enjoy writing.

-- /dev/null