Stupid white boys

I just watched Into the Wild, the Christopher McCandless story, and once again I am stunned by the idiocy some white boys are capable of. I mean, all PC bullshit aside, when it comes to things like running off to live in Iceland armed with a wet t-shirt, a sack full of books and a half dozen twinkies, white boys got the monopoly.

Sean Penn romanticized the crap out of it but what it comes down to is a guy of above average intelligence but an utter lack of common sense decides to head off to Alaska, without a compass or any real survival skills, and with no means of communicating to anyone should he say, oh, fall off a cliff or something. I mean I get the whole "society is the root of all my problems" theory. It's a lot easier to pretend you're unhappy because of your upper middle class suburban raising and your mean ole dad who yells a lot, than to just admit you're a spoilt jackass who has read Jack London books one too many times.

I do have respect for anyone who can toss aside a steady paycheck, the comfort of a permanent home, and weekend steaks on the grill, for a life of total freedom. However, I fail to see how a guy who managed to starve to death while living beside a river full of fish is some sort of hero. He wasn't even smart enough to wander up and down the river looking for an easier crossing... because if he had he'd have found a friggin tram just 1/4 mile down from where he took one look and said oh hell and went back to die in his bus. There are plenty of folks who run off to do what he did, the difference being they took the time to actually learn how to survive in the wild, and they succeeded. This is no doubt due in large to the fact that they were not suffering from overblown egos and delusions of grandeur.

I was reading a heated argument on another site that basically consisted of, you couldn't do what he did, oh yes I can, no you couldn't, back and forth. I don't get the issue here. Of course I can wander off in the wilderness and starve to death. Just because I'm not asinine enough to do it doesn't mean I'm a puss. And even if it does, well at least I'm a living, breathing puss and that beats being a dead dumbass any day.