Any decade worth recalling has its signifiers. The little fragments of pop culture that we can all collectively agree hark from that day of yore. The 20s had flappers, the 30s had hobos, the 40s had noir, and the 50’s had a frozen smile covering alcoholism and despair. We are now entering the closing days of this decade, the aughts and this writer wonders what future generations will be lampooning, or worse reviving. God knows we don’t lack likely targets. If we don’t decide our signifiers now, we leave it up to future generations who will bring their own distortions and misconceptions vis a vie their own decade’s foolishness. If these perceptual distortions from the future are left unchecked they can and will render a perfectly adequate decade into an unsavory goo of either quivering sentimentality or bitter regret. I for one don’t intend to let what happened to the 70s happen to the aughts, deserving as they might be.

This is the point in a proper magazine, like say Entertainment Weekly, where I would cover the litany of our shortcomings. I would explain in detail how the current crises in world financial markets came from a pathological optimism that engendered a permissive borrowing and lending practice that lead a great many people and institutions to borrow more money than they could ever hope to pay back. I would say that our presence in Iraq is emblematic of a philosophical stance that empowers perception over reality, and furthermore protects particularly vulnerable perceptions from any dangerous and confusing facts. I would say that this is the same thinking fallacy continues to treat fact and opinion as equals, and will continue to do so for as long as we teach argument instead of thinking. I would say that new technologies have vastly increased all media’s content, while the value of that content has remained stagnant, so that what is good is lost in a sea of dreck. Finally I would say that we have traded our fifteen minutes of fame for fifteen minutes of shame. But this is an improper magazine so we’ll just skip over all that crap. I’ll just say that we are living in an era that contains more gleeful profanity, sanctimonious piety, and social revolution than any since restoration England.

So keeping all this in mind, what are the material manifestations of our time? Certainly Aerosol colognes such as Axe will be honored by future generations. Cologne originated as a mask to the rank odors of the late middle ages, a foul amalgamation of unwashed farm laborer, rancid meat, rotting feces, and wet dog. Axe is a mask as well, primarily to rank odors of the frat house (imagine the middle ages but covered in beer and Jello), but also to a deep sense of inadequacy. It is be our wide lapels, a stupid, counterproductive representation of the unencumbered id. Reality television is another creature that one hopes is particular to our era; I hate to think that it can survive much longer, at least at this current level of popularity. I won’t say that reality television is entirely without merit, it does provide some release for otherwise unemployable actors and the borderline lunatics that it casts as the players in “reality.” Still, it would probably be for the best if we swept those dregs back under the carpet. So-called “irony” is another huge player in the popular culture, to the point were people can ironically enjoy things that they actually hate, like reality television. But it’s not really irony; it’s more of sarcastic cynicism that covers a dearth of passion, a collective ennui that insulates us from disappointment while preventing any real joy. But all these, and the many others I’ve not listed are dwarfed in significance by one facet of our society. A gleaming jewel that is both unique to our time and the overarching metaphor for everything else. I speak of course of the “bad girl” phenomenon. So please accept my apologies, I’m going to beat on Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, and the rest of that cadre of dissipated messes one more time, it’s redundant I know, but nonetheless.

Certainly it’s hard to recall another time when starlets were so publicly eviscerated. It’s gotten to the point were a girl can’t even get reasonably hopped up on the delightful mixture of Valium, cocaine, designer vodka, and hallucinogenic toads without the resultant limousine orgy/vehicular manslaughter getting posted on u-tube. Compare that with Marilyn Monroe, who had an affair with the President of the United States of America, an extra toe on one foot, and was a heroin addict. All this and we still don’t have any footage of Marilyn falling down stairs and sleeping with the plebes. Perhaps it’s because Marilyn was ahead of the times. These starlets represent a certain nihilistic hedonism and conspicuous consumption that, while certainly present in Marilyn’s era, has never been more popularized than it is now. That combined with the devaluation of privacy and the phenomenon of fame without substance and it’s enough to make anyone shave their head. One can hardly blame these women for being what they are; we have created them with our love of tawdry ignorance and scandal. In another time someone who wanted to be an entertainer might have learned to sing or act, but we are bored by art so they gave us a train wreck