"There's a girl in my head
who dreams that I am dead"
Greaser Boy
When searching for a knife, it is important to have no idea what you're looking for. Do you want to be gutted like a fish, or stabbed in the back when you least expect it? Perhaps you want to be flayed alive while gerbils dance like Vegas showgirls in the flashing casino lights of pain running like an excruciating neon sign up and down your neon spine. It is important not to know. That way, when the knife presents herself, you can have the maximum amount fun for the highest, most unbearable-possible consequences. The two go together, y'know.
At least, they always did for me.
In this article, I am going to ask the question of the derelict, Rock & Roll ages: Who makes better knife material?
Shoeonhead, or Wonderhussy?
Both are cute, but as a guy in his early 50s, Wonderhussy is more my demographic. Fun is young, I mean young is fun, but it's exhausting. Young is a game of endless rubber bands, bouncy people bouncing off the walls like a bottle of tequila in the crazyhouse. Your power as an older guy in that situation is to maintain an attitude of complete and total unaffectedness. The stupidity of the events unfolding around you makes it easy. Rolling your eyes becomes as effortless as breathing. Easier, actually. It's easier to disregard the dramatic ignoromics that are the lifeblood of the young, than it is to breathe in those environments. If you have to work to be unaffected, you're affected. But don't worry, just walk around the block a couple hundred more times. You'll get it, eventually.
Wonderhussy is the rock & roll sweetheart with just enough sense to get bored at Burning Man, after attending it for 16 years. That means she's a veteran burner, and knows the value of a good pair of space shoes. You will never have to endure the patronizing sanctimony toward Burning Man that has become as much of a cultural touchstone as Charlie Kirk, or Lindsay Clancy. The derisive comments on the video above make me feel like I'm hanging out with a bunch of rubber young people. "I'd never go to that hellhole," "what a bunch of hypocrites," and the legalistic like. What makes the video above interesting is that it seems that Wonderhussy has outgrown Burning Man. She compares it to Weimar Germany, and Late Rome. She's happy to get back to the pavement after a week in the dirt, put on her American flag sunglasses, and change the clean air filter in her car unnecessarily. She still has a Rock & Roll heart, a flashing Vegas Strip mentality, but has the brains and soul to feel the need to move beyond it.
Knife material, all the way.
Shoeonhead is cute in ways that will never be destroyed, but there's no way to be sure her brains and razor-sharp wit won't be used to carve you into a convenient little breakfast mere hours after your arrival on the traditional, patriotically-American set of her online killing fields, upon which she films deadly content for her YouTube channel, a sprawling farmland where she grows acres and acres of virtual men who fall in love with her because she's hot and smart and not a liberal.
Ancient, primal trap, bro. We've all fallen into it at least a dozen times. I'm a fan, but Shoeonhead always kind of makes me laugh. Not because she's funny, but because I somehow managed to survive the things she reminds me of.
Marrying chicks like Wonderhussy on a whim in Vegas, among other obvious mistakes.
So, which do you prefer? Which knife material is more to your liking? Shoeonhead, or Wonderhussy? I'm in the Wonderhussy camp myself. She seems ready to break free from the iron grip of endless, unsatisfying kicks, and has the experience to be happy doing nothing. Shoeonhead is still in the prime of self-belief, and hasn't passed through the guantlet of disenchantment that is inevitable for anyone who's been around the block a couple hundred thousand times, yet still has enough humanity to get dizzy from the ride. Wonderhussy has a different vibe. She would probably really get a kick out of making someone dinner. Putting on an apron and some space boots, flipping on a blacklight, and cooking up something special for the Rock & Roll sweetheart in her life. It can be crazy, and it can be a little overcooked,
As long as it's true.
Sorry, Shoeonhead. It wasn't meant to be.
So, Wonderhussy, will you marry me? I mean, not for real. Give me a break. But in our dreams. We can get married at Burning Man and take the honeymoon train to the casino'd neon stars. We will ride the merry-go-round of dreams, the earth circling like a mad electric horse eating its tail far below us. We will re-enter the atmosphere like a meteor that burns, but doesn't crash. That way, we can we can both be happy until we wake up. A pattern we are both quite familiar with, I'm sure.
So, will you bury me?
What do you say?
