“The bums will always lose! Do you hear me, Lebowski? The bums will always ”
- Paul Wong
- LSA sophomores Lauren Levy (front) and Sarah Leonard hold candles at last night”s vigil as part of Cancer Awareness Week.<br><br>BRENDAN O”DONNELL/Daily
There”s no other film that sums up our post-concerned world like the Dude in “The Big Lebowski.” It”s not just the Dude”s shirking of responsibility that makes him such a lovable anti-hero, nor is it his free-spirited nature that makes his lifestyle the pinnacle of our evolutionary path. It”s not just the Dude”s pleasant calm that makes him a nameless bodhisattva, nor his laziness that makes him the archetype of the modern man. If you please, fair readers, it”s the Dude”s use of the phrase “fuck it.”
When people first started using fuck on college campuses in the “50s and “60s, it really meant something. Unlike the nebulous adjective/verb/noun status the word holds today, when somebody said “fuck”, they had an attitude. They had something to say and they were radical. “Fuck it” wasn”t just laziness. “Fuck it” was the battle cry of the acid anarchists and radical feminists alike. “Fuck it” was the precursor to multiculturalism.
Now, with your patronage gentle readers, This Postmodern World would like to reappropriate a word that used to have some oomph to it. Presenting, in no particular order, and with no particular concern for the fuckables not contained herein, TPMW gives you the tired student”s guide to revolutionary fucking.
On race: Literally. Who cares about racial diversity? Black? White? How about no races?
On racial boundaries: Just stop paying attention, because if you ain”t breedin,” we ain”t moving forward. So let”s get it on.
On gender: Or as they used to say, gender fuck. We need more men in dresses, more women with armpit hair, more men as housewives. Gender is a spectrum folks.
On Hideki: A lot of people have gotten upset about the negative press Hideki has been receiving. That”s because they”ve only met the street-talking, name-recalling Hideki with the big sign. (Note: bigger sign). Most have never been to an MSA meeting. If you are one of these people, you have no idea how Hideki operates.
The man can”t run a meeting. He also doesn”t have a vice-presidential candidate who can do two jobs.
Don”t vote for him. Vote for me instead.
On the Bush dynasty: We have to come to terms with four more years of Bush. And since the Democrats are rolling over on every issue presented to them, these four years are going to be hell. Despite the probable setbacks on gay rights, foreign policy, domestic policy and well, you know the litany, Junior is doing one thing right.
I”m glad someone is propelling us toward environmental catastrophe. Seriously, I think that”s the only way people are going to wake up to the threat of environmental destruction. It”s not until New York is submerged and small island nations disappear from the map that we”re going to do anything.
And besides, a Bush presidency really is mobilizing the forces of progressive politics against him. Ralph Nader was right. Can”t you see them mobilizing?
On “fuck that”: Who needs pronouns anyway? I”m sick of referring to a person, place, thing, idea or act that was mentioned previously or that can be inferred from the context of the sentence. I”m also leery of words that can”t be defined without using them in their definition.
On “fuck sucks”: I”m tired of hearing people say “that sucks.”
What”s wrong with sucking? When we use suck in the pejorative sense, it reinforces lines of power. How is that the sucker is subordinate to the sucked? Think about the origin of this word the next time it comes up.
On work: Nothing in this world has caused more pain and strife for the human race than having to sacrifice the majority of our adult lives to work. In the future, I hope we can see beyond such scams. Why talk about better working conditions when we can have no working conditions at all?
Playing is a lot more fun than working, so fuck it. Workers of the world, quit your jobs! Abolish work.
Sleep in. Take a breather. Do it for the Dude. The bums will win in the end.
Fuck you. Fuck you very much.
Josh Wickerham”s column runs every other Wednesday. Give him feedback at www.michigandaily.com/forum or via e-mail at jwickerh@umich.edu.