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Friday, October 18, 2013

Matt Forney Can't Go Home Again


I think there is a general consensus that Matt Forney is a Terrible Person, no?

After reading one of his recent posts, it's also clear that he is a Complete Wuss.

In "The Kingdom of Heaven is Within," he recounts a terrifying experience in which, while visiting a convenience store in upstate New York, he is forced to interact with a black guy.  Forney knows the black guy is "a bum" because he is "clad in a plaid shirt and dirty jeans."  Forney assumes he is being "hustled" because he is "dressed like a rich guy."  (Now I've seen at least three pictures of Forney, and in none of them does he look like someone who has more than two nickels to rub together.  If this guy was indeed targeting Forney in order to menace him, it is more likely because he sensed Forney's fear, which made him seem vulnerable.)

 Forney reports that his old Rochester neighborhood is becoming gentrified, whilst the "sprawling ghetto" surrounding it is being invaded by "scum" "emboldened" to "terrorize" nice [white?] neighborhoods.

As far as I know, Forney has only lived in three states: New York, North Dakota, and Oregon (and the latter two quite briefly).  However, based on this vast experience, he can declare that the entire nation is quickly morphing into one huge coast-to-coast Portland.  [Sigh! If only!]

Forney feels himself to be a stranger in a strange land... "like a soldier [!] returning home from a war to find the same people doing the same things, still going nowhere in life..."

The reader wonders how a few months tasting the music scene and railing about fat girls in Portland equates to a tour of combat, but the part of "still going nowhere in life" would seem consistent with Forney's own lack of direction.   

Forney muses, "While I'm a success in my personal life [again, I really need some photographic evidence here], there's one urge I'll never be able to fulfill: the desire to belong."  

I'm such a softie that I find Forney's claim of "personal success" heart-breakingly delusional. 

Anyway, having had this epiphany -- that he will never belong anywhere -- Forney announces he will be undertaking a second hitch-hiking trip, even though "the optimism, the joy of discovery is gone" (since he already knows the whole country is actually just Portland after all).

It's not simple curiosity or desire to visit "California, the Grand Canyon, the South and whatnot [sic]... " that sends ol' Forney down that ribbon of highway, but rather "a compulsion to insert myself into stressful, life-threatening situations... because I'm a junkie searching for an adrenaline high."

(BTW, unless Forney is planning to bungie-jump into the Grand Canyon, I can assure him that a visit to our national treasure is actually a pretty low-risk venture.  I was there a few months ago, along with about a dozen other seniors in various stages of decrepitude.)

Then Forney adds, "And because if you feel like an outsider no matter where you are, one place is as good as the next." 

Oh really?  Cuz that's not been true in my experience.  For example, having lived in both Italy and Saudi Arabia, I can attest that I found Italy to be a much better place to be an "outsider" in.  Just take my word on this.

Forney caps this post by musing, "If you romanticize this kind of thing [?], I'm pretty sure you're missing the point."  Of course, romanticizing his own lack of direction, his inability to connect with people, to establish or even maintain relationships, is exactly what he is doing here.

Now why do I call Matt Forney a wuss?  Well, I'll have you know that I myself was rather an adventurous traveler back in the day.  For example, when I was twenty-two -- younger than the intrepid MF himself -- I traveled solo from Kabul to Istanbul on buses and third class trains.  ("Midnight Express," anyone?) And I was a girl.  Sure, there were some tense moments, which made for great "stories" later, but I can proudly declare that I never "lost" my "bearings" the way Forney did when he was approached by a black man on a busy street in Rochester in broad daylight.

4 comments:

  1. I see Matt Forney's no longer living in Portland (something for which I'm sure the residents of that fine city are exceedingly grateful). Funnily enough, I can thank him in part for a decision I made to check that city out myself during a recent two-month holiday in the States - while it wasn't originally on my itinerary, his giving it his seal of disapproval (and, more seriously, numerous people I knew who'd been there themselves telling me I should pay the place a visit) made me think there might be something to the place; after all, if a dingleberry like him hated it... (And, yes, I was glad I went there.) On numerous occasions, I thought I'd spotted him, although in retrospect, that was probably just my imagination.

    On the subject of my trip, I also spent some time in what I believe is your neck of the woods - Seattle - having a brother who lives there now (with his older, not-at-all-submissive Asian girlfriend). That's a nice place as well, although you have my sympathies for having to share a city with the likes of W(T)F Price and Mark Driscoll, the latter an obnoxious megachurch pastor whose whole shtick seems to be "Jesus made me more manly than you." I also spent some time in Washington DC - home of Roosh and Roissy - and enjoyed myself greatly there as well (perhaps because I spent absolutely zero time in the place trying to use MAD PICKUP SKILLZ to pick up naive, emotionally damaged young women in bars).

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    1. Ah, you should have told me you were coming. I would have enjoyed buying you a drink and showing you some of the sights!

      Maybe next time...

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  2. Damn. Oh well, I'll probably be coming over again in a few years' time, to see my brother and his partner if nothing else. While I was there this time, I saw quite a few noteworthy things, among them the EMP Museum, which I was appalled - appalled I tell you! - to discover had a section dedicated entirely to women in rock! Such a naked and unabashed display of obvious MISANDRY had me instantly frothing at the mouth, and launching forth with a most impassioned spiel about the evils of gynocentric feminazism, something I did endeavour to warn the hordes of brainwashed Blue Pill betas around me about. My attempts to impress upon them the dangers posed by this pernicious, crypto-Stalinist ideology and its omnipresent agents were sadly doomed to fail, however - their rationalization hamsters were clearly too strong, and spinning too furiously, for my message to get through. "Look, you fools, you're in danger!" I did cry as they continued to regard me with wide-eyed, slack-jawed incomprehension. "Can't you see?! They're after you! They're after all of us! Our wives, our children, everyone! THEY'RE HERE, ALREADY! YOU'RE NEXT!" At which point, a couple of the feminazis' sinister mangina minions - terrible, soulless creatures who, it is said, are created from the boogers that Satan himself picks from his left nostril, and whose crotches are rumoured to be as smooth and featureless as a Ken doll's - did materialize beside me; seize me in their inhumanly strong grips; and escort me at great speed from the building, pausing only to issue stern instructions to the person at the admissions counter to NEVER let me in the place again. They cannot silence me, however, FOR I HAVE TAKEN THE RED PILL! Verily shall they whimper, cower and otherwise abase themselves like the mange-ridden, loose-bowelled curs they are when I unleash the full force of my ALPHA DOMINANCE upon them! BWAHAHA! Um, yes, quite.

    Seriously, though, I did have a good time in Seattle although to my great regret, I never ended up taking a ride on the Ducks, something I'd been most keen to do (not least because my brother had often ranted, in a most amusing fashion, about how silly he thought they were, thus causing them to acquire something of a FORBIDDEN ALLURE for me). Oh well, maybe next time.

    BTW You wouldn't happen to write reviews on Amazon under the name Belqis, would you?

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    1. Re/ your last query: BUSTED!

      Re/ the EMP: I haven't been inside that visual monstrosity yet. Ditto the Duck. That's why I like to show out of town visitors around -- it's the only time I am likely to see the sights myself.

      Glad you enjoyed your visit.

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