Hollow Giants
Written August 16, 2004

Giants don’t belong in Waterloo.

This was the first ridiculous thought that struck me as everything in my house began to rattle, following a boneshaking rhythm. It was a balmy summer night and the only sound was the rapid approach of this behemoth, marked by booming footsteps that amplified by the second.

For my second ridiculous thought, I remembered the fairy tales and was scared: perhaps I had mistakenly schlocked a giant’s virgin daughter and now he was coming to grind my bones and smoke them in his pipe. The resounding thuds were coming from directly outside by this point and my brain was bashing furiously against my skull, trying to escape the high-decibel torture.

I was just about to run like a frightened Tokyo schoolgirl when Eminem saved me. It was somewhat like Godzilla showing up to save Japan from King Ghidora, except not really: instead of clumsily grappling in big rubber suits and falling through cardboard buildings, the token cracker rapper busted out mad rhymes and I realized that the noise outside was the music from someone’s car, not a giant.

If there’s one thing I really hate, it’s those kids who cruise around all night in suped-up rides with the bass cranked off the dial. They’ll drive real slow, displaying their best ‘menacing’ suburbanite-attitude stares to everyone on the street. They’ll check to make sure that you’re suitably impressed with the ten inch subs they’ve crammed into their tiny import trunk. They’ll pose, and then they’ll pose some more.

I don’t hate their cars. I don’t hate their music - well, kinda. I don’t even hate them. It’s the blatant gasp for attention that I despise, the selfish need to impose themselves onto others using the flashy possessions at their disposal.

I won’t blame the extreme bling-bling fixation of mainstream rap for this shallow grave, although I’m sure it’s somehow a factor. No, I’m fairly certain that we are in the midst of a generational crisis here, a spiraling preoccupation with materialistic boasting that has apparently escaped the juvenility of high school and piggybacked its way into all walks of life. If Mr. Overcompensation outside my house is any indication, not even university – where the S-M-R-T people go – is a safe haven.

Ever since we were babies, we have lived with three basic tenets of consumerism. The first is that material goods are constantly improving with the onward march of technology, and we should revere this. The second is that a good consumer is a good person. The third, and most important because advertising touts it so much, is that the things we purchase define us as individuals.

Now I’m not trying to knock consumerism. I drive a badass Ford Tempo and wear trendy Globe shoes. I buy stuff just like everyone else. But we have been hammered with these materialist ideals for decades now, and I think it’s starting to get to certain individuals. Bad Religion summarizes us very nicely: “Cause I’m a twenty-first century digital boy, I don’t know how to live but I’ve got a lot of toys.”

When I see people so tremendously involved in their car or jetpack or cupcake skirt or whatever that it becomes their means of displaying themselves to the world, I get worried. When a guy drives slowly up and down the street blasting his tunes and begging to be noticed, not for who he is but for his ride, some people might say that he has a small dick. I say that he’s a chink in our armor, an icon of our susceptibility to the things we possess. He has been devoured by the third tenet. He has become his car and wants everybody to know.

So pity the fallen but learn from their mistakes. Have cool stuff, by all means, but make sure that the things you consume don’t turn around and consume you. Try not to pedestal the funhouse mirror of popular culture as a model for life. Stay with us. Don’t become one of the hollow giants.

This column was printed without the first sentence, so I'm pretty sure there were a bunch of people who went "Huh?" for the first couple paragraphs. I even had a friend smile knowingly at me and say "I bet you were on drugs when you wrote this, huh?" Sadly enough, I was not.

She also said that it put her to sleep which I suppose wasn't that insulting because she happened to be an Icebreaker in the middle of a week of 12 hour days, but still. It wasn't all that strong of a topic. I hate when I fall back into trivial preaching: be an individual, look out for each other, etc. It just seems useless to tell people things that they should already know, or that have been said before countless times. I'm going to look out for this in the future.