Snarky Behavior

Taking Chances, Making Advances
Experimentation: it’s all good
By Jon Host, ex-staff writer

A golden era has come and gone; the cavalier attitude that once flourished in this country now only exists in poorly conceived movie plots and late night MTV programming. The American populus, which at one point engaged in such gallant activities as picnicking, frolicking, and revelry, now instead vicariously experiences fun through the E! channel (the E! stands for Entertainment). The Sports Utility Vechicle has been converted into a stylish mini-van. There is a ban on nuclear testing. Even our own president, a bastion of integrity, is castigated for innocent college-day experimentation. Americans have nurtured a conformist attitude, where risk-takers are scorned for their unnecessary and dangerous deviations. We have turned our backs on a pragmatic background; a history full of innovators, trend-setters, and trail-blazers.

Experimentation is essential to progress. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” observed Benjamin Franklin, himself an eccentric risk taker and hemp advocate. Chances must be taken in order for advances to be made, even when the results may be sometimes disastrous. We must make mistakes before we learn from them; it is the “try, try, try again” mentality which drives success. One must be ready and willing to explore whatever confronts him in life. Where would we be today had Louis Pasteur been afraid to touch a cow’s udder, or if Anhieser Busch had been respectful of prohibition laws? We’d be unpasteurized and sober, that’s where!

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that everyone should go out and learn his or her own lessons through experimentation. For instance, I don’t have to try heroine to know that it makes you high; I can instead just ask my friendly neighborhood dealer about its effects. And when I was at a club, and a strange looking fellow in leather whispered an unusual offer into my ear, it wasn’t necessary for me to try what he had proposed to know that I wouldn’t really be into it. My point is this: if two college girls want to explore their preferences together, then so be it. And if they want me to watch, and to video-tape, and to post it on the internet, then more power to them.

Robert Frost wrote in his poem The Road Not Taken, “I took the road less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” Apparently, Frost believed that he chose a non-conformist path in life by pursuing a career in poetry. In truth, Frost was no trail-blazer; he even admitted that both roads looked just as worn. In my opinion, Frost would have been taking a real risk had he bust out a machete and started hacking away at “the undergrowth.” True, he might have gotten lost or drowned in quicksand, but he just as easily could have found El Dorado, or even better, one of those hidden cabins with a spa full of babes like in the Budweiser commercials. Then he would have had something to reflect back upon. I mean, how intrepid does Marco Polo really seem crossing the Silk Road after comparing him to Columbus, who had the balls to sail off the edge of the earth, not to mention score with the queen of Spain?

I encourage everyone to dabble, dilly-dally, and explore. After all, when you’re telling stories to your grandkids some day in the far future, they are not going to be impressed by your high school GPA. They’re going to want to hear the story about the time that you defecated on your Congressman’s doorstep, streaked across a Dodger game, or acquired a venereal disease from a toilet seat in Mexico. Be proud of these behaviors! I mean, at least you can say that you got Chlamydia while on Spring Break in Acapulco. Unlike yourself, boring guys, who get The Clap from a Los Angeles street corner, can’t openly share their story with others; especially not with the grandkids.

Ok, somehow I seem to be losing my point. I’m not saying that one should be proud of the stinging sensation he feels while urinating. Nor did I intentionally imply sexually transmitted diseases to be an appropriate topic of discussion with one’s grandchildren. Let’s simply forget that I brought those things up at all. Let’s instead refocus on the real argument here- taking chances and making advances. With the end of Manifest Destiny and the Cold War, Americans have a lot of pent-up necessities to satiate. These inherent desires can either be expressed in an unhealthy manner, in such activities as LEGO porn (as seen in the above picture), or they can be fulfilled in a more salubrious fashion, resulting in invention, pride, or other beneficial accomplishments. A puritanical denial of our own nature is wrong in both principal and practice.

One should be able to live a life conducive to filling the pages of his or her respective biography. Without the allowance of experimentation, our lives would be reduced to indistinguishable resumes in an applicant pool of the entire world.