Generation Jones

At long last, I learn I'm not a "Baby Boomer" after all. I'm a member of Generation Jones, a sort of mini-post-boomer generation. Not named after Greatest Generation's Bob Dylan's Mr. Jones, who did not know what's happening, but apparently named after the fact we're "jonesing" after the success of the older boomers, which we were destined never to emulate. Boomers, who are people born from 1946 to 1964, comprise a huge and silly group of people.  Splitting them into real boomers and people like me makes sense.

I left college after ten years of industrial unrest, directly into Thatcher's first term.  The West literally collapsed into neo-liberalism the day I graduated from college. I've always hated being lumped in with the people who went to Woodstock, merely on the basis of a handy label, and now I have an even more handy label to get out of it. I'm Generation Jones, someone born from 1954 to 1965, or as some people say, born from 1957 to 1965.

Suits me. However uncomplimentary All The Young Dudes is, it's our anthem.

New: Die with Zeke: the paleo die-et

I have a dragon called Ezekiel J Emanuel; he's called that because I found a Hah-vahd name-badge for him lying in a Cambridge, Mass. parking lot. He's worn the badge for the last twenty or so years.

(His polar bear friend is Scott of the North West corner.)

This means that every now and again, when the "bioethicist" Ezekiel J Emanuel (Zeke to his friends) comes up in the news, I have a look to see what he has to say, and I let my dragon know.

This week he's in the news because he's decided that when he's 75, he  does not wish to receive any life-prolonging medical care. He wrote an article about it in the Atlantic, and was subsequently interviewed on video by James Hamblin, M.D. who is something or other at the Atlantic. Hamblin looks way too young to be an M.D. and is nervous at interviewing the "most famous" person he's ever interviewed (hear that, Dragon Ezekiel?).



So this was my first look at the famous Original Ezekiel J Emanuel. Thinking that life is more or less over at 75 is hard to justify even from a historical standpoint. (In the written article he gives historical life expectancies at birth, which is a biased and pushy way to present the data.) He's also, weirdly enough, against people with terminal illnesses choosing for themselves when to die. He gives the date he will be 75 as 2032, which means he's around my age: He looks mid-sixties. He's really rich-looking in a very off-putting way. He can't stand cats. It may be just me, but he rubs me up the wrong way.

But most dislikeable of all, there's a bit at the end where they bet each other whether he'll change his mind when he's 75. If he changes his mind, he'll buy Hamblin dinner. If not Hamblin buys.

"We'll go to Per Se in New York, is that a deal?" says Zeke.
"I don't even know what that is," says the teenage M.D.
"You obviously don't have enough money and you don't take a serious enough interest in food," says Zeke, cementing my dislike of the man.

You can afford dinner at Per Se and you'll kick it in the head when you're 75?

I hereby append the Immortal Words of Dave Barnaby. *



(* "Well, fuck off then." - Dave Barnaby.)