I Heart Drunken Discourse

I took a break from logging in the college to check out the movie "I Heart Huckabees" to help clear my head. Though very enjoyable, this is NOT the movie to clear your head. To sum it up, the lead goes to these detectives to find out if there is some sort of connection to these coincidences that have recently happened in his life. His goal is to find out if they have some sort of meaning leading into a spiral of philosophical discord towards this meaning. This is definitely not a light hearted Deuce Bigalo.

I made a strange connection to some of the characters. Jason Swartzman (lead) is the guy trying to sort out the whole mess with Dustin Hoffman (detective) as the voice that shouts every thing in life is connected. Then pops the counter to this theory (some female actor whose name I'll never know) adamant about this life has no connection with anything. Nothing upon nothing.

I use the phrase "Nothing upon nothing" because it is the thing that my buddy declares when we drunkenly talk philosophy. These moments are very rare. Most of the time when we go on a bender we just talk about what's been going on, problems, a movie we just saw, or another rarity that is politics. Politics only come up when around another friend who feverishly behind Bush. These talks really don't help anything; typically resulting in a lot of "what if's" and/or a fight with our own drunken states to recall any trivial piece of information to further our being right. A night with a Bush supporter, a guy who doesn't believe in voting, and a Libertarian can lead to a very weird night indeed.

But sometimes when me and my buddy are along, we have drunken philosophical arguments. His side is that there is "nothing". Every thing in this world is petty or not worth a shit in the long run. Ideas are based on people's own perception of things are based on other people's perception which prove invalid. Nothing.*

Now my argument was that his very idea of nothing came from something he heard. His idea was very real to be brought to Shiner Bock fueled chopping block. We are all something, and our ideas are being mixed together (Don't get me started on my faith in the melting pot. A half white/half hispanic male has a hard time being accepted into some racial cliche. It seems reasonable for a guy of this history to cling onto melting pot values as their cliche. Great. You got me started. Way to go asshole.) to form some sort of blending of issues. Your viewpoint gets mixed up with someone else's standpoints and values to help establish a common consensus.

"It's not shit. It's fucking nothing. Nothing upon nothing.", he would declare after my ramblings. "No one is right and no one is wrong. Our ideas of right and wrong or based on other people's viewpoints which are nothing." He took another swig from the bottle.

I countered.

"Look it could very well be nothing.....to you, but this beer..", I tapped the top of my bottle. "....this cold Shiner is SOMETHING. This talk we are having right know is producing something." I take a long pull from the lip.

"It's nothing. It's fucking NOTHING." He takes a pull............and on and on it goes.

His borderline nihilistic thinking could very well be right (which is nothing 'cause it doesn't matter anyway) or it could be a melting pot of ideas. Who the hell knows. I wonder if the students of Socrates or Plato sat around drunkenly like the armchair philosophies in which we commanded and drank to the ambiance of drunken babble. It kinda makes me want to watch the Matrix all over again.



*Editor's note- He told me a story about one of his high school teachers. His first time in class, the teacher addresses the class by taking the textbook and immediately throwing it in the trash. This was, what he declared,"not necessary" which gave the impression that the curriculum was full of shit (I'm ad libbing here. I don't exactly know how it was worded so Phil please forgive). I know this scenario has probably been played out in so many high school movies and after school specials, but I can only imagine what sort of impact this would have on students and their first impression with this guy. I have this guy to thank for making our drunken armchair philosophies interesting.