Things you own, end up owning you." That little Tyler Durden observation provides today's stimulation of the gray matter.

Just in case you've been enveloped in goo the last couple of months and don't recognize the name, he is protagonist/anti-hero of the movie The Fight Club.

This is a flick about a lot of things -- extremes, fascism, machismo, masochism, conspicuous consumption, reality, and loss and redemption, among others -- but mostly its an indictment of life in the early days of the 21st century, and the lengths one goes to, to find significance amidst all the insignificance.

That metaphorical indictment goes something like this: much of present existence is composed of actions meaningful only towards the accumulation of stuff. The more you have the more you want. The stuff doesn’t add to life any, other than to say you have it. But being able to just say it becomes the end-all.

So who owns what? Or is it what owns whom?

Know someone who works two or three jobs so they can say they live in a $500,000 house in a pretentious neighborhood and be seen driving their Range Rover -- though they won’t take it out in bad weather for fear of marring the finish?

What’s the point? They’re working so much they hardly know whether the mansion’s toilet seat is Formica or solid gold. Might as well live in a refrigerator box, and use a tree for a toilet. And worry about marring the finish on a Range Rover? Used correctly it shouldn’t even have a finish.

Then there’s the opposite extreme of the metaphor, illustrated by Tyler’s remark “It’s only after we’ve lost everything, that we’re free to do anything.” Of course you are. But then you’re so bitter about being so stupid, the only thing you want to do is commit bedlam --- witnessed by Project Mayhem in the film.

Must be some happy medium between these two extremes.

Additionally disturbing is the portrayal of how easily indifferent heads swivel toward the charismatic. Any abuse, degradation, and lunacy are apparently worth suffering if that enigmatic wake eventually pulls you along. Metaphorically insinuates the populace is so ignorant and devoid of their own ideas, they’ll follow anybody with a clue, albeit even if it’s a small, poorly articulated, anarchic one.

Equally appalling is the depiction that men only feel like men when they’re pummeling one another repeatedly about the head and face. The movie extends this metaphor to encompass the sum of male emotional satisfaction: pain -- inflicting it and experiencing it -- is the only self-realization and emotional release. How stereo-typically visceral If I didn’t know better I’d assume this movie was scripted by a bigoted, misanthropic female.

On another level it begs the question whether we are only what we do. And if we are then William Burroughs was nothing but a hopeless junkie, Hunter Thompson a loud-mouth alcoholic, Van Gogh a self-abusive lunatic, and Salvadore Dali a misogynistic, eccentric fetishist.

There are numerous other layers to this movie. Unfortunately their subtle irony will mostly go unwrapped, as will the film’s real message: none of this is the way to self-actualization. But so many of the lemmings will replace the Fight Club’s inherent philosophy with the thrill of the fall from the cliff face.

Course that’s just this freak’s skewed perspective.