this is your life

Thanks to a reputable DBZ website and an AMV, I now have a new obsession: the song "This is Your Life" (really more of spoken words than a song) by The Dust Brothers - part of the Fight Club soundtrack.  To watch the most excellent AMV (even by kim's standards, and that's saying something) click on it in the "and all the world drops dead" link list.  And damn, all I have to say is that I need to watch Fight Club. 

and you open the door and you step inside
we're inside our hearts
now imagine your pain as a white ball of healing light
that's right... your pain
The pain itself is a white ball of healing light
I don't think so

This is your life, good to the last drop
Doesn't get any better than this
This is your life and it's ending one minute at a time

This isn't a seminar, this isn't a weekend retreat
Where you are now you can't even imagine what the bottom will be like
Only after disaster can we be resurrected
It's only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything
Nothing is static, everything is appaling, everything is falling apart

This is your life, this is your life, this is your life, this is your life
Doesn't get any better than this
This is your life, this is your life, this is your life, this is your life
And it and it's ending one-minute at a time

You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake
You are the same decaying organic matter as everything else
We are all part of the same compost heap
We are the all singing, all dancing, crap of the world

You are not your bank account
You are not the clothes you wear
You are not the contents of your wallet
You are not your bowel cancer
You are not your grande latte
You are not the car you drive
You are not your fucking khaki's

You have to give up, you have to give up
You have to realize that someday you will die
Until you know that, you are useless

I say let me never be complete
I say may I never be content
I say deliver me from Swedish furniture
I say deliver me from clever arts
I say deliver me from clear skin and perfect teeth
I say you have to give up
I say evolve, and let the chips fall where they may

This is your life, this is your life, this is your life, this is your life
Doesn't get any better than this
This is your life, this is your life, this is your life, this is your life
And it and it's ending one-minute at a time

You have to give up, you have to give up
I want you to hit me as hard as you can
I want you to hit me as hard as you can

Welcome to Fight Club
If this is your first night, you have to fight

oh my god.  I need this song (and have been listening to it non-stop, I'll have you know).  It also goes with Ilium... particularly this stage of Ilium, before things get really serious and they really are more participating in a kind of Fight Club.  Acmon, for example, has been told that he'll make a fine Centurion, but not much else.  Everyone (and by everyone I mean the main characters) is figuring out why they want to fight, why they enjoy fighting.  Sciron likes to prove himself better than others because he has an inferiority complex that comes out of being a poor farmboy.  Acmon just finds it thrilling and exhilarating.  So does Passalus, but Passalus also does it for the pain it causes his opponents.

At the same time, you realize how fucked they really are, when violence is their life, and it "doesn't get any better than this", when fighting becomes more important than other people, than their own lives.. etc.  In short, I am in love.