The Lipstick Page Forums Beauty & Fashion Blog: January 2008 . thelipstickpage

January 9, 2008 2:12 PM, Dain said...

Lol, people on the West Coast keep to themselves? Coming from the dog-eat-dog Northeast, I look at the West Coast and think, man, people are so much easier and nicer there, if somewhat less educated, as a whole.

January 9, 2008 6:35 PM, Colleen Shirazi said...

Well...Southern society is unique. I've been to the Northeast, the Midwest, and I've lived here and in Washington State for a while. The one place I've never been is the center of the country...Wyoming, Nebraska, Colorado...when I came out here, I drove across the Southern part of the country.

Southerners are very social. If you're taking a walk...which is what we used to do over there, there wasn't anything else to do...you would say "Hi" to everyone you passed on the street. Of course that wasn't true in the bigger cities, but even then, there was this sort of social acknowledgment...if you didn't actually say "Hi," still you sort of acknowledged the people on the street.

It's hard to get used to not doing that. Californians do keep to themselves.

Well...on the entire East Coast, North and South, people tend to judge you by what books you've read. That's not really true out here...here, people tend to judge you by what you've done. I think it can be said people come out here, rather than being born here (it's a generalization, bear with me)...it's a kinetic place, people expect you to pursue your dreams, whatever they are.

For example, you could say software was pioneered out here. Why here? Why was Hollywood developed out here? If it's something new, chances are, it will begin here. If it's something established, like advertising or literature, it's bound to fare better on the East Coast, because of the longer history.

January 10, 2008 5:48 AM, Dain said...

I dunno if it's so much that people judge you by the books you read, it seems to me that in the Northeast people judge you, period. There's an atmosphere of sophistication and money and education compared to the rest of the United States, but I daresay it is mostly because it is so much older than the rest of the country. At its worst, people are extremely critical of each other, and very jealous of what they have.

January 10, 2008 12:25 PM, Colleen Shirazi said...

Eh...you're going to get some of that everywhere, although I think I know what you mean.

It can be a good thing about California...for two reasons. One is that people come from everywhere. It's difficult to have one standard for anything, because which standard are you going to use?

Two is the earthquakes. People can, at times, live for the moment.

And...it can be an age thing. Younger people tend to measure themselves against everybody, they feel compared. The older you get, the less you do that. Or, the less you should do that. You should have your own concerns by the time you get to be my age...you just want to have a regular job, you take the money home to your kids.

January 10, 2008 3:50 PM, Dain said...

I think you're right about the age thing. That may be it. You know, the "boarding school" mentality.

January 10, 2008 8:58 PM, Dain said...

You know, I had a thought. The great American virtue, if you could boil it down, is that sense of possibility, that crackerjack sense of entrepreneurship. That, more than anything, brought all the great talent from the world over, which built up the capital that gave America power. But now, America has power.

I don't know, I am very young, and I look at my options:

(1) Academics? Such bullshit. I can understand elitism, hell, I'm an elitist, but I really despise most academics. There is such an inflated sense of self-importance, combined with raging insecurities that drive people to intense criticism of each other. Agh... It is hard to explain. There is an attitude (which intensifies the higher your degree) that one is above the human condition, by virtue of brain, clean and removed from the mess of the masses. And yet they are so snipey about each other!

(2) Work. Sounds even more bleak. At least I wouldn't be bored in academics. Or required to keep natural bedtimes.

(3) Volunteer. I am simply not a good enough person, I think.

(4) I guess I may just have to be a starving artist after all.

Ja, ja. I think America has lost its urge for potential, for possibility, though this is a very generic statement. It's decadent: it laughs at change and seeks novelty instead, and it is really frustrating, because one buys into the myth.

Some of the charm of Southern culture is that it hasn't lost quite all of its fantasy. New York, evidently (I refer to the "furor"), is quite a different matter.

January 10, 2008 8:59 PM, Dain said...

Oh, and I forgot:

(5) Marriage. Gah! No!

January 10, 2008 9:18 PM, TheLipstickPageForums.com said...

I'm afraid our blogger account isn't publishing. You can add comments through this form of course, but the comment count on the posts won't increment.

Weeellll...work has been devalued in our modern-day culture. Say ten years ago, people talked about work incessantly...now, all people seem to talk about is getting rich. It's not the same thing.

I do feel America is a great country, but in an experimental sense. It's not always easy to have faith in experiments. We do things differently; sometimes people agree with it, sometimes they don't. I think, what makes us great is the simple fact that anyone can be an American.

That is not true everywhere else...if you move to just about any other place on Earth, you will be an outsider. Your kids will be outsiders. Depending on the place, your descendants may never really belong. What really is an American? Nobody can say.

So it's like...if everything craps up for you, you can still try to emigrate to America. Your life here is what you make it to be.

No, don't get married until you make your own money.

Oh, the South... We lost the war. We had only one war and we lost it. After that, we had to carry on. So Southerners have an inner strength. And, either an extreme cynicism, or extreme belief, which are two sides of the same coin.

--Colleen, too lazy to log in