What's this "Shitstem" you speak of?
A while back Dan and I we had dinner with an old friend and her boyfriend. The boyfriend had the interesting distinction of being a roots anarchist. He was the only person we've ever met who was actually raised up anarchist. With anarchist parents. This sounds pretty cool, but this particular evening the mindset proved more annoying than anything else. Our friend (who happened to be pregnant at the time) had wanted to reach her boyfriend in transit to confirm the dinner plans. Unfortunately he didn't have his cell turned on, and he hadn't told her where he'd gone or with whom. We ended up eating without him, and when he called to find out what was going on he got an earful from his pregnant GF. This was met with an equally strong earful of phrases like "You're acting like we're married" and "You can't tie me down!"
The anarchist finally arrived at our place for dinner, and he turned out to be a bit more subdued and shier than I expected an anarchist to be. In retrospect, this must have been merely his lack of engagement in bourgeois social mores. He didn't engage in conversation with the three of us, so much as sit to the side and make philosophical pronouncements every once and awhile. When our friend related the details of her prenatal exam that morning—the shocking news that the birth center reserves the right to conduct random drug testing throughout the pregnancy—the anarchist looked up from his ginger bear and made this proclamation:
"That's the shitstem, man."
Get it? It's like shit + system. The shitty system. The shitstem. Everything you hate about Big Brother and world's institutions all rolled into one perfect word.
Over the past five years Dan and I have used the word shitstem to describe all cases where any institution seems to be acting a bit paternalistic. Unpaid breaks at work? it's the shitstem. No streaming olympic coverage? the shitstem. I used it the other day in a blog post (very appropriately, I might add) and Dan pointed out that our readership might very well have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about. Also to make matters more confusing I spelled it like it's pronounced, shitstom, because spelling conventions are obviously the work of a vast malevolent conspiracy. In other words, the shitstem.
comments
dude sounds lame
Ha! Yes, it was a little lame. But in some ways.... AWESOME.
Do you have to be antisocial and poorly integrated to be an anarchist?
I sure hope not, Luke. For our sake ;)
You wouldn't say that Dan is antisocial and poorly integrated. At least not to his face.
I didn't know he was an anarchist. Which I suppose is a good sign. An anarchist who tries to convert others is a contradiction, anyway.
We were thinking of calling our blog "Hippy Christian Anarchists" but written that way it tends to read like "Christian ANTICHRIST!" so we're going with a different tagline...
anarchists are still allowed to have human compassion. conversely, being anarchist doesn't excuse you from being human.