The Dharma Bum

by Jaysen Buterin

"A flute with no holes in it is not a flute, but a doughnut with no hole in it is a Danish."

- Basho... or Chevy Chase

Sometimes I really don't know what's more alarming - the fact that they now have college websites aimed at fifth and sixth-graders so that they can start brainwashing kids almost as early as the boob-tube...or maybe Phillip Morris - or the fact that the word "funeral" is an anagram for "real fun." And then sometimes, just sometimes, I'm completely bewildered by the fact that in Bozeman, Montana, there is a law that bans all sexual activity between members of the opposite sex in the front yard of a home after sundown - if they're nude. Although I suppose one consolation to the Bozemanians is that if they wear socks while making whoopee, they won't wind up in a very uncomfortable place...like the backseat of a Volkswagen.

As if it isn't bad enough that a ten-year-old kid has to worry about getting shot in school by a disgruntled pre-pubescent child who raided their grandfather's arsenal; whether or not their cell phone has the same ring as someone else's; or if they'll be able to make it home without getting harassed by some twisted-psycho-pervert-nut bag - now they're expected to have their entire future mapped out before they even start growing hair in new places and acting like drooling Pavlovian idiots around the opposite sex. Curse you fast food nazis, with your drive-thrus and your "We'll have your order cooked and ready before you can even figure out what the hell you want as you gaze like a deer-in-headlights at our menu that was designed by the Florida ballot-making company" ethic! I can already see the wave of the future - fast food will go one better and eat, chew, and digest your food for you...all you have to do is pay at the second window. I bite my thumb at you, you fast food fascists, except for Dave Thomas...I liked Dave - but all the rest of you vultures watch out - it's lock and load time.

Why is the world in such a bloody hurry now anyway? I really don't get it. Back when I was a wee lad, adults would always ask me in that annoying, condescending way that many adults talk at kids in, what I wanted to be when I grew up. Lucky for me I have yet to actually grow up because the answer I gave them then, is still the same answer I riposte with now: I want to be Batman...no, John Lennon...ooh wait, John Lennon whose secret identity is Batman. That's still what I want to be, honest injun (and just for you Sheriff Zac, with a tear in one eye as a lone Whopper wrapper blows sorrowfully in the breeze). Now you ask a kid what they want to be when they grow up and they whip out their portfolio and show you their PowerPoint presentation of their ten-, twenty-, and thirty-year plans. At the age of nine, my ten-year plan consisted entirely of kissing a girl...any girl and, if the gods favoured me, touching her boobs. I'd like to think that I've matured by leaps and bounds since then - but then I'd also like to think that the relationship between Gilligan and the Skipper was strictly platonic, but we all know better now don't we?

Why do we, as a species, feel incomplete if everything isn't mapped out for us in a nice, convenient little planned package installed in our grey matter as soon as we emerge from the womb? People always want to know what you're going to do next: What are you going to do after high school; after college; after graduate school? I don't have the slightest idea as to what I'm doing this weekend, let alone in a year or five. Yet if you let the inquiring mind know that, you get the usual "Oh..." followed by a varying period of uncomfortable silence and accompanied by the sympathetic "you poor hapless fool" look. Life is what happens to you when you're too busy making other plans, goo goo goo joob! John Lennon said that many moons ago. Of course, he was the Walrus...I could be the Walrus, but I'd still have to bum rides off of people.

Perhaps this is all an aggrandising answer to an unanswerable question: How will I be remembered? Personally, I'd like to be remembered as someone who has done everything but didn't know how to do anything. I don't know, maybe some think that if you plan every minute detail, and do as much, as fast, as you impossibly can, then maybe you'll end up in the good column of whatever metaphysical or ontological checklist that awaits us after we depart this mortal coil. Then again, perhaps we just need to remove the proverbial stick from up our proverbial asses. Who cares if you don't know what you want to be when you grow up or if you don't have all the answers? There's only one entity in this existence whose omniscience and omnipotence allows him to know all the answers. That entity is Joss Whedon, and regardless of whatever Internet spoilers the thirty-seven year-old miscreant living in his parent's basement thinks he has miraculously unearthed, a magician never reveals their secrets. And who could be a better magician than the mischievous ethereal entity that actually allowed Waterworld to be made?

Just relax boys and girls...don't do it...when you want to go to it. Take it down a notch. Stop and smell the coffee and if it smells like waffles, well...then just put your head down on your desk and someone will be there to collect you shortly. Slow down. Stop driving like such a moron and cutting across four lanes of traffic just so you can be the first one at the stoplight. Quit body-checking people as you plow your way to your next class or appointment. If you're stuck behind Cletus the slack-jawed yokel in a line, stop breathing heavy like a prank-caller, ease up on the harrumphing, and think of how funny it would be if the entire world was made out of Nerf. If you don't get your Royale with cheese in less than 15 seconds, unclench, ease down that scary-looking vein that's popping out of your forehead, and just wait...it'll get there. You're not going anywhere that's so important that your very being will cease to exist if you're just a few minutes late - unless of course you're going to the Happy Hour Buffet at the Sizzler. So as the sun sets slowly in the west, I bid you a fond, nice and slow, no bloody idea what I'm doing this weekend, maybe I really am Batman, I finally got to kiss a girl and touch her boobs and best of all - she's still in love with me, goo goo goo joob, real fun farewell. G'night kids.