five-post friday: 3 generation x conversations

Here are some links to some recent blog posts with Generation X themes, including a suggestion for a very Gen X Valentine's Day movie.

If you're the least bit interested in astrology you'll want to check out a post by Theodore White, Game's Up: Time for Generation X to Take the Driver's Seat. Even if you're not interested in astrology, White's summary and analysis of current global economic conditions is an important read. This is a long post, but I came away more informed, and honestly a bit more steeled in regard to the future. I feel like I should start stocking my basement with can goods and toilet paper. Here is an excerpt:

The abysmal failures of the Baby Boomer generation across a wide spectrum of public and private institutions, financially, culturally, socially, and politically, threatens to cast the United States, and the world, directly into the pit of economic depression we were all told was coming in 2008-09.

This mess, left by the Boomer generation onto the three generations (Gen X, Gen Y & Millennial) could easily make the decades of the 2010s and 2020s much more challenging than they would have been without the Banking Crisis.


During the 2010s, all of this will fall on the laps of Generation X, the first waves of those born between 1961-66 will have to step up to the plate to replace the Boomers who caused the economic crisis, and remove them from policy-making positions that have been egregiously abused over the last 18 years of their time as the establishment...

Leah McLaren has written about Generation X's dry-eyed realism and the resentment X feels toward Baby Boomers in her post, So You Thought Generation X was angry? (You ain't seen nothing yet...) I always feel a little bad when I print stuff so negative about Baby Boomers. The best women I've ever worked with were Baby Boomers. I miss them, and none of this acidic commentary applies to them! =) Here is an excerpt: 

In essence, fragmentation means more people living alone, working alone and, to use a hippie phrase, "following their bliss." The problem is, all this radical self-involvement doesn't help young people coming up through the ranks or society as a whole. It's good for one powerful generational cohort: the boomers. But who will pay the price? Their children, who, in fact, are already paying it.

This next one is a bit more on the brighter, lighter side of life. It's by Gregory Weinkauf and appeared on the Huffington Post. Better Off Dead: A 25-Year Anniversary Valentine is a tribute to the "unheralded gem of total 80s radness." Better Off Dead is a movie starring Diane Franklin and John Cusack. Weinkauf suggest watching it for Valentine's Day. Here is an excerpt from his post:

Now, not to worry. I totally get that Franklin, while supernaturally adorable, has become an adult with a life and family, and more power to her. And nonetheless here's an appreciative Gen-Xer sending a totally indulgent birthday wish and benign Valentine to a girl so iconic in his teen years that she became emblematic of everything sweet, saucy, French and wonderful -- all the way through Amélie and beyond.