sex, drugs, and cocoa puffs

for those of you reading this who know me, you would probably be aware of the fact that for the past two (or so) years, i've been making an ongoing attempt at finishing my friend leonard, the sequel to james frey's a million little pieces. it's not that i dislike reading by any means; for my whole life, i've made an agreement with myself that i would always finish books that i've started. unfortunately after reading it's predecessor and subsequently discovering that it was, to an extent, fabricated, it was a hard task to even reach the half-way point of the so-called "imaginative story of a real life," without being skeptical and questioning everything i was reading.

i've now reached a stage in my life where i feel as though i'm comfortable letting go of a bad (or what i consider to be sub-par) book, without feeling guilty or even sorry for the author in regards to the fact that i didn't enjoy it as much as he or she would've wished.

today i purchased chuck klosterman's sex, drugs, and cocoa puffs: a low culture manifesto (now with a new middle), hoping that it would be as good as my friends have told me. i've read about 50 pages so far and it reminds me very much of my pop culture course i took last semester in university. it really makes me think about our society today, almost in a depressing manner. i'm actually not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing because after taking pop culture, i find myself being over-critical of everything i witness and am exposed to on a day-to-day basis. or maybe i'm actually not over-critical, but society is influencing me into thinking that questioning society and the media and infrastructure and social classes (etc.) is, in fact, being over-critical -- fuck! this is what i mean; it's hard to distinguish between what is "normal" according to our capitalist society and what is "normal" according to basic human instinct. i don't even like using the word "according" when talking about human instinct because it makes it sound like human instinct dictates things to us, when really there are no rules -- it is what it is and it comes natural to us as living beings.

i'm not even sure if the above paragraph makes sense to whoever is reading this, but it makes sense to me (in my head, at least). i could go on forever about the topic of how our society shapes and brainwashes us -- if you can even classify it as a "topic"; it's so broad. this post is, in fact, beginning to sound somewhat like a chapter from sex, drugs, and cocoa puffs or a piece that's better than my final paper i handed in to my pop culture professor, so i'm going to quit while i'm ahead, but i think (hope) you guys get the gist. 

i'll leave you with a quote from the book... a little food for thought...

"Being interesting has been replaced by being identifiable." (Klosterman, 40)

think about it, think think about it.