"please repeat after me. The problem is not overpopulation. It's overpopulation by the wrong people. And congratulations! You are a monstrously beautiful soul too big for your own body! And you finally realized that you are completely different than what you think! And you are more exciting than you can possibly imagine! In other words, you have acheived a horror of imitating yourself, and are ready to submit your life to a little multiple choice! It goes like this:

How does it make you feel when I command you to profess profound secrets to ppl who are not particularly interested? Does it make you want to
A. Cultivate a healthy erotic desire for a grotesque older person.
B. Help your friends glamorize their pain.
C. Burn down the dream house where your childhood keeps repeating itself.
D. Visualize jesus christ at the moment of orgasm.
E. Steal something that's already yours.

C, of course, is the right answer. But then, how could you have know, despite all that we have been through today? You are still too busy worrying on deep subconscious levels that you are still a nobody.

But relax. Don't worry......"

"There have been times when I have considered myself interested in
near-future tactical analysis, or prophecy. Some of my predictions have
been startingly accurate, but most have missed the mark, specifically my
calls that the year 2001 would be a good year, in which the plans people
had would come to a positive fruition. The truth is thta for most everyone
I know, this was the year that things fell apart, and I don't at all mean
that in the obvious international way. That's not what I'm talking about.
I would like to be able to tell you that next year, 2002, will be better,
but I don't think it will be. I think it will be the year of recursion, in
which the complete fear of anything novel or innovative will lead most
everyone to fall back on prior answers. It will be the year of sequels,
the year of "best-of" collections, the year of twice-picked nostalgia. It
will be the year where everyone has lost the energy or interest to really
listen, to really thinnk about anything, and will pull themselves away
from any fundamentally radical shift, so that we will fixate on the
illusion of change, wherein the big drama will come from a new hair color,
or a new piece of fad-tech. It will be a year when your attempts to call
the people you love will be destined to end up in voice mail where you try
to hang up before you incriminate yourself by crying on tape. It will be
the year when you really just can't deal with anyone anymore and you know
in your heart you need to find some space to heal. It will be the year you
change your mind on the idea of the gated community, of end-to-end
biosafety transportation, of talking in hushed tones with your new friends
about how you hate to admit it but maybe it's *good* that your children
only see children of their own race. It will be a year lived close to the
ground, terrified of not having your cell phone with you, constantly sore
in your neck for reasons you don't want to think too much about.
2002 will be another bad year. That is my prediction."