Stupid and disposable

I was watching this short video on YouTube the other day and it made me a little depressed. I realize now that I will never feel comfortable living in large red swaths of our fair country, the trip to Hooterville is definitely off. 

And it's not just my tattoo on the neck and fat tattooed ankle phobia.

You don't even have to travel to Pixley to see that we are getting not only dumber but much more ignorant by the day. 

And that 99% of the time, stupid, dysfunctional parents will pump out equally if not more stupid, dysfunctional kids. People that resemble the folks in this video. It is quite sad and unfortunate.

Ask a Gen Zer to find the United States on a map and be prepared to cringe. And it is not just geography, it can be history, math, art, science, what have you. We just don't know shit about anything anymore.

Many will blame schools and teachers but I do not. I blame parents and genetics. Parents for not taking more interest in their children's education, not to mention drinking and using meth while their progeny is incubating in the oven.

And genetics because, oh well...

The mean intelligence quotient on this planet is 100. Scores above 130 are labeled as above average or “very superior,” while scores under 70 would be considered below average or labeled as “borderline impaired.” Most people have an average IQ between 85 and 115. Fifty percent of the people you interact with on a daily basis are impaired or less charitably, idiots.

Do you know how dumb that is? Very dumb. Half the people on the freeway you drive with on a daily basis can't solve the "do you put the circular object in the round hole or the square hole?" test. And they are voting and reproducing, folks.

Maybe eugenics wasn't such a bad idea?

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I had an orange charger in front of me blast through the red light with traffic oncoming at Brandon and Mission the other day before they went up to the new mental ward that used to be our hospital. Cars coming at him. The light had not just turned red, it was closer to green. But he didn't care. Not sure if it was a patient or somebody that worked there? It is epidemic.

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There is an interesting article this week at the Washington Post; Why furniture got so bad - Furniture used to last generations. Now it barely survives a move. Industry insiders explain.

Furniture, like televisions and cameras and computers and many other things, doesn't last for more than a few years now.

To understand the decline in quality, first consider what most furniture is actually made of. In the mid-20th century, the more affordable stuff was typically made domestically of American plywood — i.e., thin layers of wood glued together — while fancier pieces might be solid cherry or oak, and could be made in the United States or come from Italy or Denmark. Today, most of what’s on the market consists of Chinese-made press board and plywood, while pieces marketed as “solid wood” might be rubber wood with glued-on veneer.

These changes result from the same directive: “Everyone is just trying to reduce cost,” says CoCo Ree Lemery, a furniture designer who has worked for brands such as Pottery Barn and West Elm, and is currently a visiting professor of furniture design at Purdue University. Rubber wood, for example, is less expensive than most other lumber because it’s a byproduct of latex manufacturing, but it’s prone to decay. Chinese-made wood products are similarly cheap, but the quality is wildly inconsistent.

This is so post boomer, this attraction to junk. Our parents and grandparents had beautiful antique Federal and Biedermeier and Sheraton period pieces with solid joinery, dovetails and through tenons that would last literally hundreds of years and now this. Crap that won't make it a decade.

Chinese junk.

Of course, the modern bauhaus movement that took their design directive from minimalist, monastic worker housing and jail cells deserves its share of blame. While the look might be clean and stark, the construction was mostly shit.

We follow the design fad we see piped to us on television like mindless sheep.

I drove by the thrift store the other day and there was a fifties style modern wingback divan being given away or sold cheap. Not exactly my style but cool. Had the look. And then I thought, well, it might be a modern reproduction that is being recycled and it probably is and I kept driving. The second or third iteration forward lacks a certain gravitas...

And I saw the shift coming when Design within reach and the others started knocking the fifties stuff off with the fake Eames and Wegner. And it made no difference to anybody. That it was only a short matter of time to where the originals had no meaning and it had all turned into junk.

And here we are.