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It is an indisputable truth that only the very attractive can be truly cool. Physical beauty is a fundamental requirement for arriving at the sublime balance of grace, nonchalance, and wit that defines coolness. The ugly, the dumpy, the plain janes and johns, may attain a certain back-bench coolness by surrounding themselves with the beautiful, but these people are never truly cool. They merely obtain a certain scare-quote qualified "cool": the coolness equivalent of the "normal" lives experienced by retards and the disabled.
Kerouac (handsome) was cool. Neal Cassady (rugged good looks) was cool. Burroughs (schmendricky, schoolteacherish) was "cool". Gary Snyder is a dirty hippie. Try as they might, the unattractive can never achieve the glow and magnetism of the cool. They are just too damn ugly. Sinatra (handsome) was cool. Dino (cute) was cool. Sammy Davis Jr. (funny-looking) was "cool" (Not even being Black was enough to push Sammy though to the realm of coolness).
And yet the real business of hauling humanity out of the dust of the savannahs, through the marble pillars of Greece, the cathedrals of Europe, the halls of Versailles, and the glass towers of Today, into the far reaches of space, outer- and cyber-, has always been the work of the unattractive. Socrates, Beethoven, Dickens, Picasso, Bill Gates. Them's some ugly motherfuckers.
The eternally frustrated desire of the homely to attain some of the effortless style of the cool is what drives them to strive, create, achieve, and conquer. In other words, to carry on with the real work of history. Politics, as the saying goes, is showbiz for ugly people.
It will not always be so. The day will come when genetic engineering allows us to create a race of flawlessly beautiful humans. People will pass their time making love to random passersby, exchanging clever catch phrases, modeling on the latest fashions for one another, and attending parties where everyone is an "A" list guest. Men and Women who once might have turned to science or art to earn their place among the shining, beautiful creatures will be a thing of the past. The churning gears of History will come to a final and everlasting stop. One day a race of hideous aliens will descend from the skies, intent on conquering the Earth, stripping it of its resources and enslaving its inhabitants. These bug-eyed shock troops from from the stars will will step forth from their invasion craft and stop dead in their sucker-footed tracks at the sight of the gorgeous, supremely cool, denizens of this world. The leader of the aliens, a particularly grotesque lug, will step forth, death-ray in hand, and utter a single phrase: "Hey, can we hang with you guys?". Let that day come soon.
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