INNOCENCE...WHERE? By: Chris Caputo A toast to the end of innocence, a toast to our Blank Generation and lets raise our middle-fingered goblets to the world. What exactly is in us? What diabolical chemical combinations are present in our cranial, compelling our neural synapses to fire in this fully automatic, 9mm fashion? In this world of hypocrisy we can't deny this undeniable dilemma, this over-stimulation of the mind. Smoking kills your babies. Smoking gives you cancer. Smoking makes you less of a person. You'll read this on cigarette packages and feel bad that your buying into your cravings as you suck back the sweet nectar of nicotine and feel the undeniable sensation of it coursing through your veins like white-hot heroin. Somewhere in the back of your subconscious you'll feel bad, but you won't be happy until you spark up another dart. And your kids will listen to cathartic music puffing on light cigarettes wondering how their lives went wrong. What life went wrong? They'll sit in their rooms covered in miscellaneous digital equipment and various narcotic paraphernalia and feel they have it the worst. How about I send you over to Afghanistan where Osama Bin-Laden is hiding out with the constant threat of total annihilation compliments of America. How about I send you over with the Cubans so they can make you their Vietnamese buggering slave of the week. So go and generate yourself with another induction of liquid coke and watch your walls turn green with the illusions of self-manifested depression. Run into your well-structured garage and sit in your Lincoln Navigator with a thick banana wedged into the exhaust pipe and inhale your sorry excuse for a teenage adolescence goodbye. You'll sit in your semen smelling room with Marilyn Manson pumping out 150 watts from your stolen speakers and you'll think to yourself. "I haven't gotten laid in my life, my mom and dad are crack addicts, I like to jerk-off to sick German fetish videos', my life is useless"ÖWell indeed it is useless, but you're the sorry fuck that's going to blow your left hemisphere away. Tsk TskÖ Often times, I contemplate the causes for emotional destitution faced by our gender we so generously refer to as humans. Are you troubled because your toenail polish is fading? Are you weeping because your new Nike's became blotted with the blackness of your anal cavity? And why in Jahosiphates' name are you bubbling in a piss pot because your grandmother tore a thread from your new Thrifty's sweatshirt? Shouldn't you be more concerned about your Crabs, or your concurring syphilis within the bowels of your fallopian tubes? Or the fact that every day of your little existence you buy into 'trends', and 'pop-culture' because your not satisfied with the real you, thus covering your life with a transparent blanket, blinding what is you, and what is real. There are far more important things in this life than the consisting problems with your ingrown toenails. Take for example little Ethiopian children or children of the sort. They would eat a load of feces (well probably), for one morsel of rice. But, of course, everyone doesn't really give a fairy godmothers hangnail about those little skid-marks. In any case, by now your probably wondering why I'm rambling about shit I don't like. Are you saying to yourself 'well if this guy thinks everyone in the world is so fucked up, what makes him so much better?' Simply because my revolutionized testicles has made my existence surpass others! No, no, I am just a simple journalist who has the capability of identifying the shortcomings of society and along with some, have the genitalia to express my thoughts in a mature and educated fashion. Yes, yesÖ It seems a never-ending constant. I go out into public (i.e. malls, movies, work etcÖ) and I see people who work themselves into a load of stress over the smallest of matters. Why bother losing your hair over some girl that called you a bitch? Or some guy that slept with your best friend, its non-stop that you hear these little whispers being tossed from ear to ear: secrets and gossip and rumors. It's all one pointless charade after another. Some little 12 year old wearing a silver sparkly tube-top with the name BRITNEY SPEARS written across the top, and you can hear her from down the hall talking about how 'Joanne' stole her favorite colored shoelaces. Or the little giggles that consume these little bastard children when they cant seem to find a seat in the Movie These little aspects are liable enough to drive any normal person insane.