textfiles/magazines/HOE/hoe-0360.txt

 '##::::'##:::'#####:::'########: VIVA LA REVOLUCION! CERDO DEL CAPITALISTA!!
  ##:::: ##::'##.. ##:: ##.....:: ===========================================
  ##:::: ##:'##:::: ##: ##::::::: THE HELOTS OF ECSTASY PRESS RELEASE #360 !!
  #########: ##:::: ##: ######::: ZIEGO VUANTAR SHALL BE MUCH VICTORIOUS!  !!
  ##.... ##: ##:::: ##: ##...:::: ===========================================
  ##:::: ##:. ##:: ##:: ##::::::: "Lifestyles"                             !!
  ##:::: ##::. #####::: ########: by -> Ashtray Heart                      !!
 ..:::::..::::.....::::........:: 12/19/98                                 !!
 !!========================================================================!!

        Welcome, gentle reader!  As your columnist, it will be my
 pleasure to guide your erudite and cultured mind through the
 scintillating and altogether arousing world of LIFESTYLES!  Those of you
 familiar with this word only through the backs of condom boxes and those
 of you who have become hermits to escape the ravages of modern culture
 may ask, "What, exactly, is a lifestyle?"  A bit of history, then, is in
 order.  In the beginning, back when men still smoked cigars without
 worrying about the phallic implications of such an act and women wore
 corsets in order that they might better approximate the figure of the
 Barbie doll, people lived lives, wherein the men went to work and feared
 communists, the women lived a variant of "Kinder, Kuche, Kirche" that
 involved buying fashionable kitchen appliances, and they all lived the
 post-war dream together.  Wealthy industralists and their families, who
 had the money to hire people to do their jobs for them, could devote
 their time to a wide array of enriching activities such as golf, riding
 horses, and consuming expensive alcoholic beverages, given journalistic
 immortality in a newspaper's "Society Pages".

        However, with the advent of greasy long-haired pelvis-gyrators
 like the Dave Clark Five and the infiltration of rogue weirdo
 intellectuals like Adlai Stevenson all that changed.  The youth of
 America (and probably other countries too, but as an American, I am
 required by the cultural ethos of this great nation to systematically
 ignore historical occurances in foreign lands) started running amuck in
 motorcycle gangs, growing their hair to egregious lengths, spending
 their money on birth control pills instead of washing machines, and
 generally engaging in activities they characterized as "changing the
 world".  Under the mesmerizing spell of cunning linguists like Noam
 Chomsky (well, maybe not him, but he's the only linguist I've ever
 heard of), they came to the conclusion that the terminology of their
 parents was entirely inadequate for the purposes of bringing about a
 new beautiful planet, plus they could really confuse their parents with
 all these new words, and so it was they replaced the word "life", which
 they perceived to be staid, dull, and altogether too monosyllabic, with
 "lifestyle", which they believed was vibrant, energetic, and full of
 zest.

        In the end, however, these brave young prophets of a new age
 realized they smelled sort of bad and really ought to have washing
 machines after all, stopped smoking pot, and became respectable decent
 citizens.  By the time this had happened, however, the media, which if
 you recall your cultural studies courses from college, is run by the
 ponies, had decided the young idealists were really on to something with
 that language, and by using it could remind them forever of the fun
 times of their youth.  As market studies showed that people were more
 likely to buy stuff when they were in good moods, this worked out
 extremely well.  So it was that every newspaper gained a column labelled
 "Lifestyles", usually right before the sports  section, where they would
 print the slowly shrinking comic strips and tell you what you could
 watch on TV.  The "Lifestyles" section has also slowly absorbed the
 function of the Society Pages in the local newspapers, with the
 privileged classes turning to other methods of circulation to advertise
 their business gatherings and cocaine parties.

        This leaves us in the new and entirely modern (or perhaps
 supra-post-modern; the eternal philosophical question "What time is it?"
 has taken on deepened significance in this clime of approximated
 schizophrenia) era of the '90s with a vexing question:  What exactly
 *is* lifestyle?  Is it a successor to the societal functions of the
 1950s?  Is it what TV shows we watch, what church we attend, what we
 eat, who we fuck?   Well, for the purposes of this column and for the
 benefit of befuddled journalists everywhere, "Lifestyle" shall be
 defined as "The study of the development and practice of trends."
 Trends, as defined by the definitive lexicon of 20th century cultural
 hagiography, "The Adventures of Greggery Peccary" by Frank Zappa, are
 exemplified by "the Twist.. or Flower Power"; in other words, a
 prepacked culturally approved way of spending time not occupied by one's
 job, "rejuvenating the national economy and providing for bored,
 miserable people everywhere some great new THING to identify with."
 ("Greggery Peccary" again).

        The "Lifestyle" moniker, of course, comes with the associated
 buzzword (buzzword is, of course, itself a buzzword, an oddity I would
 dwell on further were I William Safire) "alternate lifestyle" or
 "alternative lifestyle".  There is again some dispute over what
 qualifies as "alternative", especially considering the fact that some
 things still considered "alternative" are in fact favored by a huge
 segment of the general populace.  For the purposes of this column, we
 can generalize that an "alternative lifestyle" consists of anything
 Jesse Helms would not do in his spare time.

 !!========================================================================!!
 !! (c) !LA HOE REVOLUCION PRESS! #360, WRITTEN BY ASHTRAY HEART, 12/19/98 !!