Your Dreamy American Life

What could possibly be more delicious, fresh or wholesome than the Dreamy American Life? Smell that grass? Bluebird twittering in your ear again? Why hello Mr. Whitman, what is your hand doing there?! Yes sir, the Dreamy American Life is a rock of gibraltar to them that hold fast to it, and to all the others fie for shame! Please take note, although your Dreamy American Life may look and feel remarkably similar to your own life, remember it is not the same. These are teeny tiny replicas rendered at 1-100th of the size and seeing as they are wrapped in cellophane, unlike your mind you filthy tramp, they cannot be soiled.

DREAMY AMERICAN LIFE

1) URBAN PLANNING: As the old saying goes, you are where you live. Literally. So why are so many of the places where we live so abysmally sad? This idea is very simple. Bring Back Urban Planning or BeeBUP as I have just this moment started to call it. BeeBup is not a wholly original idea, in fact, some will tell you that Urban Planning never really needed bringing back because it really never left. They are lying. Some will tell you that the phenomenally publicised town planning charettes from katrinarita have vaulted Urban Planning back into the public consicousness. I say Bobblecrap (although I usually say that anywat). Urban Planning has long been the ugly stepsister of architecture and the point is not to give it a place of glitzy popconch glory but rather to start a program that stelthily creeps into the minds and bodypolitiks of suburban neighborhoods and rural hamlets. Yes I know the Congress of New Urbanists have been offering up the koolaid for a while, but if i wanted to Congress with a higher authority, I'll read the KamaSturatra. Urban Planning comes from a different place somewhere more organic that should filter softly into the minds of a thousand town council members and village elders the world over. Ao here is my proposal...START A CAMPAIGN TO SPREAD THE WORD OF URBAN PLANNING THROUGH FORTUNE COOKIES. There is no more appropriate means of mass communication I know of.

2) Conscription: Many countries have mandatory military service. I suppose this builds national pride and a sense of defending one's country. Fine. Whatever. Maybe. Try this one on for size. ERASMUS Conscription. ERASMUS stands for: European Community Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students. So instead of teaching young people how to shoot a gun or operate a tank, why not teach them how to navigate a global life, how to work within forgeign cultures, how to appreciate all kinds of different ideas. This would increase national security tenfold becuase it would breed understanding and real communication between nations on a broad scale. Imagine if every single American were forced to spend a year working abroad in a foreign country. Most Americans can't even find Canada on a map, much less Zaire. It would be great PR for any nation that participated - because although people are unique and have strong national identities, when it comes down to it, people are people are people: eat, sleep, love, hate, piss, shit, live, die. Mandatory ERASMUS Conscription would help the next generation get to the core of what it means to be human. Now that's a Dreamy American life!

3) Dreamy American Land: A corporate training event to beat out all coporate training events. Imagine a place tucked away in the woods. A campus of sorts. It would have various buildings, houses, shops, activities etc. But, this campus would be staffed by actors who have been given a new set of rules to live by. This micro-world would function like no other place on earth. Corporate teams that came to Dreamy American Land would have to figure out what was going on in order to interact and succeed in the world. How do you get people to talk to you, what does their language mean, how do you get tickets to the movies would all require discovery. They would have to work at sharing information about how to do things, how to interact with the 'natives'. It would be a corporate training experience like none other. Maybe Steve Case will tackle this one when he's done with Revolution?

4) Sleep Retreat: I think you can figure this one out on your own, without my sassy, inane commentary that makes your scalp itch (I know you thought it was dandruff). If you can't, you probably should be watching Fox News, or reading New York Magazine, or staring blankly into space.

5) Buy Evaporated Air:

From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no man lives for ever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.

Algernon Charles Swinburne