20th Century Fox/Fight Club

As arguably the most masculine writer since Ernest Hemmingway, Chuck Palahniuk has almost single-handedly made reading books cool again — at least among a certain demographic. Luring us in with stories about con men (“Choke”), gangbangs (“Snuff”) and the perils of masturbation (the cringe-inducing short story “Guts”), Palahniuk grabs us by the throat and forces us to reconsider our boundaries. He often keeps readers off-balance by screwing with expectations, like using second-person narration in “Diary”, borderline-inscrutable broken English in “Pygmy”, or by numbering his pages backward in “Survivor.” Reading a Palahniuk work can be challenging and sometimes repulsive, but it’s always entertaining as hell. And though it’s not his best novel (for me, that’s “Rant”), he’s still best known for his debut, a little book called “Fight Club.” Maybe you’ve heard of it.

Adapted into an excellent film by David Fincher in 1999, “Fight Club” has since become a significant part of our culture. There’s hardly a post-pubescent male alive who can’t quote at least a few lines from the movie and who hasn’t wished he was part of some kind of underground organization where men can get together to beat the snot out of each other.

Of course, as soon as we’re all caught up in how great it would be to rebel against the pussified American society and indulge our most primal testosterone-driven urges, we’re hit with the possibility of slipping into fascism, terrorism and the complete loss of individual identity. So, you know, pros and cons.

Watching “Fight Club” is as educational as it is entertaining. There are a lot of useful nuggets of wisdom given to us by Tyler Durden, the unnamed narrator and Marla, the woman we all want/don’t want. Here are a few things I’ve gleaned from my many viewings. Please use responsibly.

1. With a gun in your mouth, you only talk in vowels.

Although I’ve tried this myself (long story), and I could manage some W’s.

2. Days of the week can be determined by the color of your boss’s tie.

Tuesday is cornflower blue.

3. If you ever consider using steroids, think of Bob.

Poor Bob had “bitch tits” as a result of having his testicles removed thanks to all the juicing he’d done. Is this a worst-case scenario? Sure, but is it worth the risk?

4. Losing all hope is freedom.

Like Janis said, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”

5. Catching someone doing something morally repugnant (like crashing support groups) can make us feel very judgmental.

Especially when we’re doing the exact same thing.

6. When people think you’re dying, they really, really listen to you instead of just waiting for their turn to speak.

Can’t get a word in edgewise? Just tell everyone you have cancer.

7. Laundromats can make for an easy and inexpensive source of new clothes.

You have to be quick, though.

8. Your life is ending one minute at a time.

Think about that next time you pray for Friday to get here.

9. On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.

This one’s repeated throughout the film, so take it to heart. We’re all gonna die.

10. An infant through a windshield is worth three points.

For those of you keeping score.

11. Life insurance pays off triple if you die on a business trip.

See? There’s an upside to just about everything.

12. Oxygen masks exist on planes not to help you breathe, but to get you high.

This is the first little tidbit given to us by Tyler himself.

13. Equal parts gasoline and frozen orange juice concentrate will make napalm.

Don’t try this at home, dummy.

14. When passing people in tight quarters, give men the ass and women the crotch.

Etiquette is everything.

15. Airport baggage handlers are known as “throwers.”

Which should come as a surprise to no one.

16. It could be worse — a woman could cut off your penis while you’re sleeping and throw it out of a moving car.

So, there’s always that.

17. A duvet is not essential to survival in the hunter-gatherer sense of the word.

You really shouldn’t even know what a duvet is.

18. Never be complete. Stop being perfect. Evolve. Let the chips fall where they may.

Sure, but maybe don’t go all the way with this one.

19. The things you own end up owning you.

Really think about that one for a minute.

20. Those little dots in the right-hand corner of the screen that indicate it’s time to change the film reel are known as “cigarette burns.”

I already knew this because I had a job as a projectionist when I was in high school.

21. Splicing penises into family films and peeing in the lobster bisque at a fancy restaurant is funny in the right context.

It also makes dinner and a movie more of an adventure.

22. You can’t know that much about yourself if you’ve never been in a fight.

It’s true. There’s nothing like a good punch in the face to initiate some serious introspection.

23. Men will always gravitate toward a fight in a parking lot.

Even if — no, especially if — it’s just one guy beating the hell out of himself.

24. Without Jack’s medulla oblongata, he can’t regulate his heart rate, blood pressure or breathing.

Be honest: How many of you knew that before you saw this movie?

25. Sitting in the bathroom and having a personal conversation with your best friend while he soaks in the tub doesn’t have to be weird.

But it certainly can be.

26. As a generation of men raised by women, is another woman really the answer we need?

More often than not… yes.

27. You can swallow a pint of blood before you get sick.

But that’s still no excuse to pretend you’re a vampire.

28. When listing rules, state the most important one twice.

And just in case you didn’t get that…

29. When listing rules, state the most important one twice.

OK, I think we can move on now.

30. Self-improvement is masturbation and self-destruction.

Again, Tyler’s using a seed of truth to try and manipulate you. Be careful.

31. When a fight is over, nothing is solved, but nothing matters.

This one’s truer than most of us will ever realize.

32. When a girl calls and says she took a bottle full of pills, sometimes it can turn into a booty call.

I wouldn’t count on it, however.

33. A giant dildo on a woman’s dresser should not be considered a threat to you.

Although it should help you gauge her expectations.

34. When trying to hide from the cops, try dancing.

It works surprisingly well.

35. You should reject the basic assumption of civilization, especially the importance of material possessions.

OK, although this is another one of those things I don’t think I can fully commit to.

36. The condom is the glass slipper of our generation.

Thanks for that one, Marla.

37. Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken.

Are we clear on that?

38. The best fat for making soap comes from humans.

For those of you out there who non-ironically worship Tyler Durden… you know this is a reference to the Holocaust, right?

39. Take some glycerin, some nitric acid, some sodium nitrate and a dash of sawdust — you’ve got dynamite.

For trivia purposes only.

40. With enough soap, you can blow up just about anything.

Bet you didn’t know that before you saw this movie.

41. Without pain or sacrifice, we would have nothing.

So think about that when the going gets rough; just don’t burn your hand with lye to prove your own point.

42. Our fathers are our models for God. If your father bailed, what does that tell you about God?

Well, what if he stuck around?

43. God does not like you. He never wanted you. In all probability, He hates you.

That’s not what they taught me in Sunday School.

44. It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.

Wow. Earlier in the movie, I just had to lose hope to gain freedom. This really kicks it up a notch.

45. Leaving the original on the copier will always cause trouble.

Why do we only seem to make this mistake when we’re making non-work-related copies?

46. Threatening to murder everyone in your office won’t necessarily get you fired, and threatening to expose your boss for shady business practices while beating the shit out of yourself can land you a great stay-at-home gig.

Although it takes a special sort of person to pull this off.

47. Checking a woman for a lump in her breast makes for an awkward date.

Especially if you don’t remember ever having slept with her.

48. If people think you were born in a mental institution and sleep only one hour a night, they will call you a great man.

This should be a strong indicator that you might not be hanging out with the right crowd.

49. We work jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need.

It’s the American way.

50. Our Great War is a spiritual war. Our Great Depression is our lives.

This being a pre-9/11 film, the first part really only applies to us Gen-Xers. Part two, unfortunately, applies to us all.

51. It takes one hit to the gut and three hits in the face to truly understand someone’s point.

I bet Tyler and Bender from “The Breakfast Club” would really enjoy each other’s company. They have the same self-destructive tendencies.

52. Starting a fight with someone on the street is not easy.

Has anyone out there ever tried this? If you do, remember that your homework assignment is to lose.

53. If you can make men feel powerful, you can get them to do anything.

Why is it that so few of our bosses seem to understand this fact?

54. It can take a gun to your head before you start doing what you really want to be doing with your life…

… Which is a very sad reality.

55. You are not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your fucking khakis. You’re the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.

I was with you right up till the end there, Tyler.

56. Telling someone they can’t have something gives them the strength to get it.

This is another managerial tactic of Mr. Durden’s, and it proves incredibly effective. If he didn’t hate money so much, he’d make a great CEO.

57. Joining anarchistic/fascist organizations requires a lot of black clothes.

So maybe swing by a Hot Topic before you drop off your résumé.

58. It takes a complete loss of identity to become a man.

Um… wait, are you sure about that?

59. You are not special. You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everything else.

My mom would disagree.

60. When your second personality starts spending more time with other people than he does with you, it can make you jealous.

Insecurities abound, even when it comes to our imaginary friends.

61. Sometimes you just feel like destroying something beautiful.

But that doesn’t mean you should always act on it. If you feel the urge, just step on a flower or something and leave poor Jared Leto alone.

62. It’s important to know what you would wish you had done if you were to die right now.

I was impressed that one of the guys said, “Paint a self-portrait.” That’s an interesting answer. Hey, buddy, what are you doing mixed up with these hooligans?

63. Hitting bottom is not a weekend retreat. It’s not a goddamn seminar. Stop trying to control everything and just let go.

It’s a good point, but I still don’t think it should apply to driving a car.

64. Running around in ski masks trying to blow things up is a good way to get somebody shot in the head.

This should go without saying, but since it didn’t seem to occur to our boys in Project Mayhem, it can’t hurt to spell it out.

65. What your name is doesn’t matter until you’re dead.

And by then, it’s too late to decide how it will be used.

66. If you’re looking for a way to change your life, you can’t do it alone.

This does not — I repeat, does NOT — mean you should create a crazy alter ego to help you.

67. If you’re about to get your balls cut off by a roomful of cops — under your own orders — it might be time to start reevaluating your life decisions.

Any questions?

68. Telling someone they’re going to get a “lead salad” is a weird way of threatening to shoot them.

Hard to believe that hasn’t caught on.

69. Running pantsless through the city brandishing a gun attracts surprisingly little attention.

This is another one of those things I wouldn’t put to the test, though.

70. Don’t fire a gun at your imaginary fan near 400 gallons of nitroglycerine.

That’s just common sense, really.

71. Alter egos tend to smoke a lot.

How many packs did Brad Pitt go through during that shoot? I mean, I know it was the 90s, but damn.

72. Remember: The gun is in your hand.

It makes a good mantra as long as the gun is metaphorical and not one you use to shoot yourself in the mouth.

73. Watching buildings explode while listening to the Pixies can be romantic if you’re with the right girl.

Or probably more accurately, the wrong one.

The post 73 Life Lessons We Can Learn From ‘Fight Club’ appeared first on Wall Street Insanity.

Goddamn, I’m getting old.

I’m on the young side of Generation X, but that’s a pretty meaningless statement, ‘cause none of us are really young anymore. I mean, Jesus, I saw Nirvana play live and it’s been almost twenty years since Kurt Cobain killed himself. Twenty freaking years. Unreal.

Anyway, obviously things have changed a lot since my college days. We only barely had the internet back then, there sure as hell wasn’t any Facebook or Twitter or any of that bullshit, so we weren’t constantly announcing to the world where we were, what we were doing and whom we were doing it with. Hell, most of us didn’t even have cell phones. When we left our homes, we were pretty much unreachable until we got back. That probably sounds hellish to some of you, but it was actually pretty liberating in comparison. And speaking of feeling liberated, we were also free to experiment with drugs and alcohol without fear of our exploits ending up on YouTube, for which I, for one, am extremely grateful.

A lot of people my age give Generation Y a hard time, but I got nothing against you kids. If I came up when you did, I’d probably be eating spoonfuls of cinnamon and puking up Sprite and bananas right there with you. Except for the fact that Gen X-ers look up from our smartphones a little more often than you do, we’re not really all that different. For one thing, we both let the Baby Boomers tell us who we are.

When we were branded “Generation X,” it was meant as an insult. Yeah, it’s a pretty cool-sounding name, but they were basically calling us “Generation Nothing.” We were told that we had no war to fight, no cause to believe in and no frontiers to conquer. At first, it made us all a little cynical and nihilistic, as you can probably tell from the music and movies of the ‘90’s, but eventually, we called bullshit on that, embraced the label and redefined it to reflect who we really were and what we really believed in. Nowadays, I think we’re doing okay.

I’m not exactly sure what the Baby Boomers meant with “Generation Y,” except for that it comes alphabetically after X, which would piss me off if I were one of you. I mean, there are some alternative names like “Millennials,” but nobody really calls you that. Gen Y’s the name that stuck. So, according to the Boomers, your most defining characteristic is that you’re what comes after “nothing.” They say you’re narcissists who have no attention spans and need constant praise just like they said we were directionless and apathetic. And let’s be honest, as a group, you’re living up to their assessment, just like we did. They defined us with negativity and we let them. That shit ain’t right.

So, I guess what I’m saying is that we can’t let the older generations tell us who we are. It’s their way of trying to keep us down. As each generation reaches adulthood, the older ones try to tell them they’re still kids in an effort to keep themselves as the ones in charge. And since that’s still the Baby Boomers, it puts X and Y in the same boat. It’s up to us to either accept their labels, refuse to grow up and let them continue their reign, or maybe put away some of our childish things away, take charge and not only prove them wrong, but make them sorry.

You’re goin’ down, Boomers.

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Not so long ago, “friend” was a title that had to be earned. If someone was your friend, it meant that you had spent time getting to know that person on a deep level, that the two of you had interests in common and at least some degree of personal chemistry. A friend was someone you hung out with all the time. A friend was someone you would gleefully humiliate in front of a crowd one minute, then back up in a fight the next. A friend was someone you stuck up for. Someone you could count on and who could count on you.

Now, we don’t even have to really know a person to call him a friend. Fucking Zuckerberg. He didn’t have any friends of his own, so he took all meaning out of the word.

I’m just kidding. It’s not all his fault. It’s mostly yours and mine. Zuckerberg gave us the gun, but we’re the ones who pulled the trigger.

Shimi Cohen’s new video “The Innovation of Loneliness” lays it all out in a pretty entertaining way. The rise of social networking has actually diminished our real-life social activity to the point where we’ve all completely isolated ourselves from the world. We feel like we’re all a bunch of social butterflies because we’re always texting and tweeting and posting and whatever-the-fuck-ing, and it feels like we’re always surrounded by people who care about us and are hanging on our every word. But the truth is, when we do those things, we’re usually alone in the physical sense, or at the very least, shutting out the world and the real live people around us.

So get off your fat ass and do something real. Stop judging yourself by how many Facebook friends you have—that doesn’t mean shit. In fact, go ahead and delete everyone you’ve never met. Now delete everyone you haven’t talked to in over a year. How many “friends” do you have left? Yeah, that’s what I thought.

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Aw man… I have a feeling some dumb little bastards are gonna get themselves kneed in the nuts this weekend.

VitalyzedTV, a YouTube channel that describes itself as “Russian Dude With A Camera and Some Wonderful Ideas,” released a video a few days ago that’s getting a fair amount of attention. It’s called “How To Get Girls To Kiss You,” and it’s a hidden camera sort of thing that features a guy whom I guess must be “Russian Dude” going up to supposedly strange women and getting them to make out with him within seconds.

Basically, he swaggers up to them on the beach, on the street, in a coffee shop, wherever, and says he wants to ask them three questions. First he asks if they have boyfriends and if they find him attractive (not necessarily in that order), then, if he gets favorable responses, he asks, “What would your excuse be not to kiss me right now?” Or at least he tries to say that. He bungles the line almost every time. Anyway, then he leans in and kisses them and they kiss him back. And I’m not talking about little pecks, I mean full-on Frenching.

It’s pretty amusing, and I’m sure there are some guys out there who think it’s real, but I’d be pretty surprised if that were true, because it seems fake as shit. The girls just aren’t very convincing, I’m afraid.

For one thing, most of them have the same answers to his questions. When he asks if they think he’s attractive, they almost always say, “I guess,” and when he asks if they have a boyfriend, they say. “No, why?” which seems like a strange response to me. Why do you think? Haven’t you ever been hit on before?

And when one girl has the nerve to go off-script and improvise, he gets a little rapey with her. I mean, c’mon, Russian Dude. It’s one thing to lean in towards a girl and see if she goes the rest of the way, it’s another to grab the back of her head and jam your tongue down her throat. She even said no and fought him a little. If that particular girl hadn’t given the worst performance of all of them, I would’ve been tempted to call the police.

Oh, and by the way, after skimming the comments on VitalyzedTV’s YouTube channel, apparently that girl is a porn star named Katie Cummings, which is a pretty big tip-off that this thing was cooked. But sadly, for every non-believer out there, there’s some dumb jackass who comes to Russian Dude’s defense, praising his balls and declaring him king of the pimps.

Now, don’t get me wrong, because I’m a big believer in “anything goes” when it comes to arts and entertainment. I don’t like it when people blame music, movies, video games or YouTube clips for people’s bad life decisions, but I kind of think Russian Dude should’ve added a “don’t try this at home” tag to this video.

In real life, this technique might actually work about zero to five percent of the time, depending on how good-looking you are. The rest of the time, you’re going to get pepper-sprayed or arrested for sexual assault, so I’d advise against trying it.

But I mean, God bless the guy, he’s got a million subscribers watching him realize his “Wonderful Ideas” so he’s clearly onto something. I guess he’s trying to do some Andy Kaufman-type of comedy and is at least partially pulling it off.

So watch the video for it’s mild entertainment value, but please do not put it into practice. Approach women with confidence, yes. Lead with your tongue, no.

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The overall shittiness of contemporary American parenting never ceases to amaze me.

A medical journal with the spelling bee nightmare of a name Psychoneuroendocrinolgy (actually not so bad if you sound it out) has published a study conducted by the University of Illinois linking a high-fat diet to ADHD and learning disabilities in mice, and therefore children.

The basic science of it is that a steady diet of cheeseburgers and donuts affects dopamine metabolism, which leads to anxiety and a whole bunch of other problems. And this isn’t an issue that develops over time, either. At least with the mice, it started happening almost immediately. Within a week, they were burrowing and running on their wheels a lot more, but they refused to go out and explore open spaces and couldn’t figure out how to get through a maze. Translated into kid behavior, that means when their not sitting on their fat asses on the couch, they’re bouncing off the walls. They also won’t leave the house, and even if they did, they probably couldn’t find their way back home.

Okay, I’m going to rant about this a little. When I was a kid (which wasn’t that long ago), we liked video games and Doritos, too. We also liked riding our bikes and playing football. We loved eating at McDonald’s, but our parents wouldn’t let us do it every single damn day. It was treated as a reward we got for eating our vegetables most other nights. Kids who were fat, kids who had learning disabilities and kids who had to be medicated out of their hyperactivity existed, but they were rare. Now, it seems like they’re all over the freaking place. Why don’t all you parents out there make those fat little bastards get up and do something every once in a while? The results of this study—which essentially boil down to “fatty foods are bad for you”—are not news. If they found that these problems were caused by something like, I don’t know, sunshine and exercise, then that would be worth talking about. But if you’re stupid enough to allow your kid to eat crap all the time, you deserve to have to deal with an overweight little psycho. Your kid, however, deserves better. Set some goddamn limits every once in a while, okay? It’s your responsibility to shape your child’s mind and behavior. I don’t care how freethinking you believe you are, you can’t let your kids make their own choices. They will choose wrong most of the time, and they won’t learn from their mistakes until it’s too late.

But say you have no interest in having a genuinely intelligent, physically fit and socially well-adjusted child. Say you’d be content with just the appearance of that. Well, there’s good news! Because the study found that giving the mice a good old-fashioned dose of Ritalin made their learning and memory problems go away. Of course, getting them off the high-fat diet did the same thing, but most of you out there are probably more interested in the pharmaceutical solution, right? Look, I’ve seen what Ritalin does to kids. I’ve even tried it myself. And yes, while it might make you sit down and pay attention, it also makes you incredibly boring and saps you of your creativity.

Okay, maybe I’m being a little hard on you parents, but you need to hear this kind of shit every once in a while. Get outraged and prove me wrong. Otherwise, in twenty years, America is going to be run by a bunch of fat, drugged-out zombies. Then we won’t be able to defend ourselves, China’s going to take over and it’ll be all your fault.

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Pirates are assholes. If they’re not hassling Peter Pan, they’re taking over French yachts or worst of all, bootlegging Hollywood movies.

Seriously, though, media piracy on the internet is a big problem that affects the economy as a whole and most importantly, people’s day-to-day lives. The public at large doesn’t have a lot of sympathy though, because they think everyone who works in movies is a fat cat, eating caviar while sitting in a bathtub full of champagne and snorting coke off a twenty-year-old’s titties. But I’ve lived and (sometimes) worked in Hollywood for years now, and I know what kind of money people who make movies really earn. And just like in most every other industry, there are some people who make ridiculous amounts of dough, and then there are the rest of us, who fall somewhere between “struggling” and “doing just fine.” And those are the folks who are getting hurt when you download The Hunger Games for free off some Russian website. So go ahead and live with that.

All that being said, while I don’t support pirating movies, I sure as hell understand it. Going to the movies costs way too damn much these days. Maybe I’m naïve, but I believe most people prefer to live honest lives. If you charge them a fair price, they’re usually content to pay it. But if you’re charging too much for what your product is worth, your customer feels taken advantage of, and then you’re going to start having a problem. And that’s what’s happening with movies today.

I feel like the recording industry has already lost their part of the battle against media piracy. With services like Pandora and Spotify, you’d never have to pay for music again if you didn’t want to. But the industry brought it on itself. Right before the whole Napster thing happened, they were charging twenty bucks for a CD over at Tower Records. That’s greedy as hell. If you’re gouging people and then they’re presented with a free alternative that’s accompanied by minimal risk of punishment, which one do you think they’re going to go with? Hint: Tower Records doesn’t exist anymore.

So, I firmly believe that the movie industry could save itself just by making going to see movies more affordable. But things almost never get cheaper. The idea of lowering prices is madness, right? So instead, they do stupid bullshit like this new initiative called the “Six Strikes” or “Copyright Alert System.” The five biggest internet service providers and the entertainment industry are banding together as one to strike a blow against piracy. Or at least they think that’s what they’re doing. Basically, their plan boils down to this: if your ISP detects that you’re sending or receiving copyrighted material, they will send you up to six warnings asking you to stop. If you don’t…they’ll slow down your internet connection.

Yeah. That makes sense.

Let’s say one afternoon, I walk into a 7-11 and steal a Snickers. They guy behind the register says out, “Hey, it’s not nice to steal,” but doesn’t try to stop me or anything. The next day I do it again. He says, “Maybe you didn’t hear me yesterday, but what you’re doing is wrong.” But I keep coming back. On days three and four, he demands a verbal acknowledgment from me that I know stealing is illegal, even though I keep doing it. Then, on the fifth day, he says, “Okay, I know we understand each other, so this is your final warning. If you come in here and steal one more Snickers, there will be consequences.” The next day, I show up to steal my Snickers and I see that he’s put boxes in my way, making it slightly more difficult to commit my daily crime. I can still steal the Snickers, though. It just takes me a little longer to do it.

You can just tell the whole thing was thought up by a committee, and at least three people on that committee were lawyers. It’s never going to work. It will never scare anyone, and honestly, I don’t think an ISP could get away with slowing your connection down, anyway. And even if they did, you’d just cancel your service and take your business elsewhere. Plus, this is the kind of thing that only targets the casual illegal file-sharer, anyway. It will have little to no effect on distributors of the protected material and instead seeks to punish the little guy. Jill Lesser of the Center for Copyright Infringement (a name that makes them sound as if they’re actually in favor of copyright infringement) seems to know the system lacks any real balls, insisting that it’s meant to educate rather than punish.

So, pretty lame. I bet this whole idea just fades away before it even gets close to coming into wide practice. Try again, Hollywood.

[Image via Shutterstock]

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