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I have come to the conclusion that there are some pursuits in life that are best left unpursued, and have noticed that the people with the most money are usually the slowest to realise this. I've never personally known anyone who possessed great riches, though I once met a guy who owned exclusively water-side property in 3 states. I once met another guy who was on Neighbours then went on to bigger and better things. He drove a brand new Aston Martin DB-7. I can only assume these men whose names I can't even remember wipe their ass with silk. This is the extent of my networking and befriending the rich and/or famous.
Flea, on the other hand, knows the guy who owns Sony Records in the UK. He also drives an Aston-Martin, the difference being he purchased it with funds from a £99 million bank account. He brought Missy Elliot (whom he personally signed to his label) to his Dubai nightclub. He did not do this because people from Dubai are Missy-mad, because Missy has a 'thang' for Arab men, nor because he loves Missy so much that he just had to see her perform for him that very night. He did this simply because he can. He (in effect) owns her, and is apparently rather indifferent when it comes to the musical preference of the masses.
Before Flea told me about this guy, all I knew was that this fellow was wealthy. I asked him what it was that distinguished this man from other wealthy men - anybody rich might have a 24 carat gold crockery set, but nothing screams ridiculous wealth like your very own inter-continental RnB popstar.
Oprah, probably the richest woman in America, has a ruby and diamond encrusted toilet seat. Think about that the next time you're leafing through her drivel that serves so well its sole purpose as a massively circulated vehicle for shameless product placement. Similarly, next time you inadvertantly stumble across her 'talk show' (talk implying actually conversing rather than self-depracating soapbox banter) and you see her pretend to relate to some under-privilaged member of Middle America, remember the multi-million dollar porcelein that accommodates her fat ass. Remember it well.
Ask yourself why. What's the use of a jewel encrusted toilet seat? Does it make any of your motions that much easier? Does it alleviate that offensive problem that plagues each and every commoner whose shit still stinks? Does it make her any more likely to remain on the throne longer than necessary considering how much its worth? Does it really make her anymore happy or does she remain unfulfilled (an obvious pre-requisite for such a frivolous possession)?
Rich people with too much money are always finding new ways to make themselves feel better. Some buy jets and deck them out in leopard skin interiors. Others purchase football teams in order to appease whimsical childish fantasies; the list goes on. One might argue some seemingly impossible possessions have an actual 'use' value. For instance, a jet will get you from one performance to another whilst on tour. Owning a sporting team means you never risk missing tickets to see a home game ever again. Bill Gates' heated driveway circumvents mother nature's wrath when it comes to snow - I hear he's never late for an appointment. However, I fail to see any use a jewel encrusted toilet seat has beyond that of its unordained counterpart.
You see, when that tycoon bought the jets, he gained immediate gratification. He wanted it, so he purchased it. Why? Because he could, and he ultimately feels much better for it. Watching your driveway melt snow before your eyes whilst every other sucker hires a snow plough would, I'd imagine, be very satisfying. Looking at jewels between your thighs while evacuating the contents of your bowels or bladder would be more like sex with a eunuch: you might imagine that you will get some sort of satisfaction, but ultimately this is really quite impossible, and you had to look stupid in order to realise.
As I'm sure you've come to realise, the pursuit I talk of is difficult to define. It is the desire to be simultaneously content and happy and fulfilled and gratified and a million other pleasant adjectives. Religion, exorbitant expenditures, and surrendering your soul to creativity debilitating mainstream culture all serve the same purpose, and it is for this reason they all fail in the same way.
Sadly, its not only rich people who try to have sex with eunuchs. Average, regular people do it all the same and, funnily enough, experience the same result. My niece bought the N*sync album on special. I asked her why, and she said simply because she likes them. I went to great lengths trying to explain that her unedifying procuration of banal mind-numbing deviance inducing fantasy only served to further alienate her from the very ideals and values she had learned, to replace with hedonistic yet epicurian existentialism. I concluded with my analogy that she, like so many misguided others, was unwittingly trying to have sex with a eunuch. She just looked at me funny and asked what a eunuch was. I said I'd tell her when she turns twelve.
The way I look at it, when my niece is out shopping for a CD, she is thinking (and seeking) the very same things as Oprah when she shops for additions to her bathroom. I predict that my niece will be left inevitably malcontented with today's purchase. Like Oprah, who won't remain satisfied with her toilet seat and will seek matching taps, basins, and towel racks, my niece will end up getting Backstreet Boys next, and then some Boyzone, Take That or Robbie Williams. It won't be until she devours New Kids on the Block that she'll realise what took Buddha half his lifetime - even sex with a eunuch is better than abstinence. Because its the pursuit of the chase that provides what we seek, and not the actual end product, be it a million dollar pen that writes in space, or an MTV inspired assault on our intelligence. While we may learn to regret a particular purchase, the reasons why we purchased it in the first place remain, and the cycle perpetuates itself, and the world goes on, and my auntie tells my mum, and I get grounded.
Article by Zeke.
