Dying Young and Stupid

Those who know me know how tiresome I find "young" culture---that is to say, the weird cultural push to remain "young," free from adulthood and adult responsibilities as long as possible. Mostly it's music that perpetuates this ridiculous mindset: fun, Taylor Swift, the horrible Ke$ha, and many other insipid artists sing about youthood and youthdom and other youth bullshit, and how we should avoid growing up or something. It's just awful. 

Anyways, the Eternal Adolescent club has an insufferable new Agony Aunt, and she dispenses advice based upon her own never-grow-up lifestyle:

There was a crucial moment in the life of Kelly Williams Brown when she realized that she had not made the necessary leap into adulthood: she was moving into a new apartment, and her furniture, made of particleboard, disintegrated in the rain.

Putting this memory behind her, Ms. Brown, a 28-year-old advertising copywriter in Portland, Ore., has set out to become a kind of Dear Abby/Martha Stewart/Yoda for millennials.

Her new book, “Adulting: How to Become a Grown-up in 468 Easy (ish) Steps” (Grand Central Publishing), is meant to help her peers navigate the rocky shoals of maturity, to guide those 20-somethings who are just figuring out that radio silence is not an acceptable breakup technique, and food does not spontaneously manifest itself in the refrigerator.

“One of the most jolting days of adulthood comes the first time you run out of toilet paper,” Ms. Brown said. “Toilet paper, up until this point, always just existed.”

"Food does not spontaneously manifest itself in the refrigerator." Sometimes I wonder if my generation is so pathetic enough to actually have trouble with this concept, or if they're just faking it because it's funny. Either way, it speaks poorly of them. No, food does not spontaneously manifest itself in the refrigerator. Also, you have to cook it. But I'm sure that's a subject for another hilarious chapter, wherein the protagonist burns the scrambled eggs at 2AM and ends up eating a stick of butter on the couch, or whatever Lena Dunham would do.

Also, why does it take someone until their twenties to realize that toilet paper is a commodity which needs to be purchased? As a joke, that's unfunny and uninspiring; as a real phenomenon, it's a striking commentary on self-imposed hopelessness. No wonder everyone calls me an old man; I've been buying my own toilet paper for years.