In the nineties, we sang angsty and angry ballads about changing our world, about the decay of life around us. Ironically, we were never more alive. How do we document real life, when real life's getting more like fiction each day?

It's 2011. Nobody wants to document real life anymore. Real life is getting further and further from fiction. We won. We changed things. Dichotomies broke down, things lost some clarity, lost some of the "us" and "them". But at what cost?

It's wonderful that we're moving away from all the terrible things we do to each other. It's great that there's become less of a "them". But in doing so, we've lost the "us", as well-- it was defined by the "them".

What these Zoloft-fueled, 3-in-the-morning thoughts really come down to is, if someone were to document real life today, what would they say? They'd tell an empathetic story of mixed feelings and compromises.

Give me back my absolutes, my caricatures.