Author: Mark Alexander

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On Age and Aging

“I see the younglings post things like “are you still on tumblr at 30?” and “go take care of your kids instead of reading fics” and i just feel sad because you have a bunch of young people who are terrified of getting older.

They think age is going to change them, into something boring, something different, something grey, and i just want to tell them, reassure them, you will still be the same person.

Isn’t it wonderful?

You will love the things you love for so many years. you will find joy in the same things, decade after decade. you will feel the same inside, through all this time.

Yes, the body will change. Yes there’s more responsibilities, less time, even less energy.

But there’s no magical age where you stop enjoying that specific story, that specific game, that specific hobby.

But you know what also comes with age?

You have less fucks to give.”

I turn 50 in July. I had this HUGE list of things I had to do, that I absolutely KNEW I had to be, before I turned 30, or I was a total failure.

I didn’t do any of those things, and it didn’t matter.

I was CONVINCED that by the time I was 40, my life was basically over. All the fun stuff I liked, all the music I liked, the games I liked to play, all of it was done for some reason, and I would be a Boring Adult.

ALL OF THIS IS BULLSHIT.

I am here to tell you that when you get older, it’s fucking AWESOME. You don’t put up with anyone’s bullshit. You figure out who deserves your time and attention, and you have the fucking BEST TIME EVER with them. All the time.

I still play video games. I still go to concerts. I do everything I can to see and validate and celebrate young people when they come into my life, because I want an entire generation to know that the lies media and advertising tells you about life basically ending at 40 so you’d better buy all the shit they’re selling you is GARBAGE.

The older I get, the cooler and more awesome my life is.

I am still the same punk rock weirdo I was when I was in my 20s, I’m just wiser and more comfortable in my own skin than I was then. Getting older did not do ANY of the things I believed it would do.

If I may offer two pieces of advice on the small chance a younger person than me is reading this: take care of your core strength. When you hit middle age, your body is just weaker than it was, and it’s easier to hurt yourself. It takes longer to recover from injury, and if I could change one thing, it would be paying more attention to my physical strength.

And the only currency, the only thing the ultimately matters in our lives, is choosing to be kind. The world is a cruel place full of awful people. Don’t be one of them.

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Nothing’s Gonna Get Done Anyway

This is the first year since I was in my 20s that I have the entire week between Christmas and New Years off. Granted, it’s earned vacation time and not some holiday gift from the powers that be (the last time that happened was in 1979), but it’s nice not having to go through the motions of doing anything at work when absolutely nothing is happening.

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“Yeah, I know it’s cold, but since there was already snow on your knees it’s no excuse.”

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GPOY

Some days the best I can muster when I’m out in public and dealing with the hordes of unmasked animals, is a selfie-smirk.

Ben takes much better pictures of me than I do of myself. Maybe it’s because he elicits a smile in me when I look at him, such that it is.

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Disappointing

We saw two movies over the holiday: Matrix Resurrections and Don’t Look Up. The former was on HBO+, the latter on Netflix.

The best way I can describe my opinion of Resurrections was that it entertaining but not engaging. I appreciated the way it broke the fourth wall and basically poked fun at itself, but I was not drawn into the story, it seemed overly long, and by the time the fourth act rolled around I really didn’t care what happened to any of the characters and just wanted it to be over.

While Jonathan Groff is always easy on the eye, I wish they’d been able to have the penultimate Agent Smith—Hugo Weaving—as well as the original Morpheus, Laurence Fishburne, return to reprise their roles completely instead of just as momentary flashbacks. Maybe the actors weren’t available? Whatever the reason, in my opinion the film suffered because of it.

When it ended, Ben turned to me and said, “At least we didn’t pay to see this.” (Actually we did, but it’s not like we dropped money at a theater.)

Don’t Look Up came highly recommended via reviews and Netflix itself, but there were many times I just wanted to hit the “back out” button on the remote and call it a day. It’s biting satire on the abject level of science-denying stupidity currently permeating our society; the obsession with social media and “likes.” The cast—while all well known and definitely not D-Listers—prompted Ben to ask who they owed money to in order to have to appear in this film.

The premise is simple: there’s an extinction-level event comet with a 100% probability of impact heading directly toward earth and no one can be bothered to do anything about it until halfway through the film, and then the plan is aborted when its discovered there are valuable minerals contained in the rock and a plan is hatched to mine the minerals rather than deflect the threat away from the planet. Needless to say—spoilers—meteor/asteroid hits earth and everyone dies except the ultra rich who escape via secret spacecraft to the nearest earth-like planet, where after traveling 24000 years in suspended animation, the president (played Meryl Streep), who personifies everything currently wrong with society—steps out onto the new planet and is immediately eaten by the native fauna. That at least was satisfying.

UPDATE 12/28: This actually sums up my opinion of the movie the best.

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