it appears that now mcdonald's is producing "usher" videos, complete with "gotta get my strip on" breakdown. gotta get my strip on?! now if this were about LIVE NUDE GIRLS UNITE (a lovely documentary about unionization at the Lusty Lady, a nudie bar in SF...check it out, do it!), i might embrace this as a pull quote ("gotta get your strip on!" raves Richard Corliss, Time Magazine...at least it's catchier than "you must see Evita!") but this just left me shellshocked, mouth agape. someone shoot that McG right now!

having just recently burned through thomas frank's "the conquest of cool", a well-intentioned, rather heavy tome about advertising and the counter-culture, anything that smacks of cooptation raises my hackles. this not to say that the spice girls or hip-hop are, by any stretch of the imagination, counter-cultural. the spice girls, of course, were a cooptation, in and of themselves, of the riot grrl "movement" of the early 90's. and hip-hop? almost all of its energy and excitement has been bled dry by the white suburban youth who been rushing to the mall to consume it for almost a decade now.

so what is it that bothers me so much about these mcdonalds commercials? maybe it is the sight of a major corporation trying to seem "edgy" by so obviously "playing it safe". maybe it is the underlying assumption that we are stupid enough to believe that mcdonalds is down with girl power and homies, that this isn't some blatant manipulation to coerce us into purchasing more of their crap. maybe it is the fear that some of us are stupid enough to take the hook, line and sinker. maybe i'm talking out both sides of my ass about something that really doesn't matter just to hear myself talk.

maybe.

but then isn't that what a diary is for? to hash things out. to flesh out half-formed ideas. to put things out there, contradictory or not. i'm fairly certain that most of what i write about on here is chock full of logical inconsistencies, gaps in reason, lapses in judgement, lacking a coherent philosophy or worldview. but then, i'm not writing a thesis; i'm thinking things through. on some level, i'm convinced that even that one year of law school ruined me forever. learning how to see things from both sides makes picking a side and sticking to it seem intellectually dishonest, even irresponsible. of course, i DO have opinions about things, but recently, i've been exploring the notion that things don't really have sides, easily discernable blacks or whites. life is a series of shades of gray. circumstances shift perceptions. what was once the Truth (note that capital T) is now simply A truth. call it moral relativism. i call it "life's not that simple".

or maybe it is.

i'm staying in chicago. although things haven't turned out the way i had planned, i still want the life that i moved here to have. simple, quiet, free. it is only the content of what this means to me that has changed. i'm grateful, in a way, that things have been so challenging. a healthy reassessment of priorites ensued. how this will play out even i am uncertain of.

but then certainty has rarely been a true friend to me. it bred contentment and contentment bred complacency and complacency bred resignation. resignation that was stifling my soul. since june, i've been struggling with the insecurities surfacing around all these new uncertainties. recent events have convinced me that life IS uncertainty and with the door toward certainty closed, the window toward opportunity is suddenly wide open.

is this what they call an epiphany? how trite. but it has left me invigorated, instilling me with a new sense of urgency and purpose. i've been feeling rather dull, lacking that sharp edge, that razorlike sense of humor and insight into the human condition. in a word: ME. sometimes i felt like i had lost myself. and maybe i had. maybe i needed to.

maybe i just need gingko.

but i've never consciously trusted myself. of course, i've done or said many a thing that has evidenced a un- or sub-conscious belief in myself (moving to london, dropping out of law school, leaving san francisco), but not one single action in my life has been a MANIFESTATION of my belief in myself. Do i know what i'm doing? of course not. but I'M doing it, whatever it is. and it is the right decision because it is MY decision. i have a lot of work to do. time to roll up my sleeves and get to it.