The ERADICATOR

Somehow the following entities survived the turn of the century. Here are my suggestions for what should phased out for a russer world.

1. College.
The perfect place to whittle down all your aspirations, hope and love of life into a slick marketable package who knows how to create an excel sheet. The only thing worse than spending $100k + to secure a spot in the "workforce" you couldn't care less about is realizing that millions of drunk idiots in t-shirts more interesting than they are do same thing every year. Now in my fourth year of being talked at and told to regurgitate information for a letter grade that will supposedly determine my future, I realize the only things I've learned are:
1. the world is in bad shape,
2. I could've spent this time and money doing more important things, and
3. saturated fats are solid at room temperature.

Could've bought that information for 15.95 at Borders, or absorbed it from a Romantic Comedy major motion picture starring Kate Hudson.

2. The News
The news needs to stop. No, I don't mean newspapers (useless) or TV news (even worse). I mean the wide variety of "newsworthiness" that occurs. Things in general , i.e. human history, seem to have been going consistently bad since the start of time. So I propose we try something new. Or rather, don't try something new. Stop the war, stop diverting Mexicans' food source for our cheap ethanol, stop the World Bank from holding developing nations as indentured servants. Then we can all (as in humans, not only white, college-educated Americans) pursue what we'd like to and things might actually be pretty great, or at least not cripplingly awful.

3. Chick Lit
I find it personally offensive that I might be labeled a "chick" and thus inadvertently identified with this crime against literature, chicks and non-chicks. When a literary genre exists solely to either augment or diminish its readers sense of accomplishment based on their ability to recognize a "new" brand of jeans or stilettos, it must end. This genre is would be laughably inconsequential were it not so damn popular with the apparently mammoth population of idiots that stumble into bookstores before vacation to pick up US Weekly (poor Owen! Seriously, but that's a different story) and something like a book that they think involves "reading." Here's to public humiliation of all those who write and read books with hot pink and lime green covers, featuring a cartoon stick-figure weighted down with shopping bags/martini/miniature schnauzer/suave boyfriend. Sadly, a somewhat large percentage of these authors are ivy-league graduates (I don't care enough to google up a real number), which only further proves my point for number one (1) on this list.

4. Clothes
This one is self-explanatory. See above.

5. Irony
Seriously, this has got to stop.
I know people now like to toss around the term "post-ironic" to describe our current place on the cultural theory time line, but it seems they themselves may be ironists as well, as irony is the language that continues to eclipse sincerity as our primary, and "coolest" means of communicating. (If you think I'm wrong, watch a commercial for hamburgers or soda. Chances are it's finely tuned to appeal to our ironic side of our money-spending sensibilities. Or more precisely, the "it's so crazy it's like the opposite of an advertisement! Geico totally gets me! I love car insurance!!!" side.) This is clearly evident in contemporary style and humor.
Now, I like saying the opposite of what I mean as much as the next morally bankrupt product of our twenty-first century American culture, but what are we really saying if we don't mean any of it?

Since I asked:

It seems that within the context of environmental collapse, economic crisis, political ridiculosity, the fact that America seems to be falling fast while taking down as much as it can with it, the current developed/developing world paradigm of exploitation and neglect, the T-word*, undefined roles of gender and place of self, and a million other uncertainties/reasons to want to head right the hell out of here, (before realizing that there is no better off) Irony as a cultural mechanism reflects the unfathomable situation we're in now: everything could disappear in an instant and therefore nothing means anything.
But irony itself is a response, not a remedy, and it seems that we can't fix anything if no one is saying anything.
Stewart and Colbert are doing a thorough job reacting to the inanity of it all, but we've got to wonder when irony itself is a legitimate political tool. It's only the first step in regaining any sense of stability or "truth," that great postmodern non-entity, which we seem to be 180 degrees from right now, hence having no reason to do anything.

Talk amongst yourselves.

This all being said, I am already cringing at how sincere this all is, because it's so uncool. Also, sincerity can be attacked, it can be "wrong". Irony is bullet-proof.

*----orism

Also, two examples of what is not irony, but is often mistaken for it:
1. High postmodern literature such as Dave Eggers' Heartbreaking Work. Most definitely a novel means of expression, but completely sincere, therefore not ironic.
2. Coincidence. For example: If Devendra Banhart, who is heavily influenced by (some would say a rip off of) Marc Bolan of T. Rex , were to die in a car accident after his wife drunkenly drove into a tree, just as Bolan did in 1972, this would not be ironic. It would just be weird and a guarantee that Devendra's albums and paraphernalia will increase in sales and make millions (at least tens of thousands) until the end of time. Which, don't forget, could be next week.