[260] Oblivious

How can you miss it?
You can practically taste it.
How are you? HOW THE FUCK ARE YOU!?

Oblivious nimrods stroll on by to the beat of their own dumb…thoughts?
I shudder at the implication.
We the people of this tuned out nation missing the train standing at the station.
Oblivious is all that describes you.
The ubiquitous ridiculousness of your being unable to maintain a stable awareness of the world in which you are hopeless to collapse into a function is beyond me and certainly beyond you.

Wave goodbye to your mind’s eye that may clue you into to the subtleties like the rocks I would use to wake you.
Condemn you to the stone-age where a consumed slave state you embody would reign supreme.
A being vile and obscure the only remedy a watcher from on high could take would be annihilation. It’s not like you exist anyway, right? I’M SPEAKING TO YOU!

Or more what you would be, could be, should be if even the moral precepts are to be believed. Conceived in minds you’ll never know or know you should know how to understand.
A sham and shallow pride you imbibe, smile wider honey, I want to get your teeth just right.
The biting and grating in my head makes me yearn for something more, something pure like what keeps your tongue from spewing bile in my general direction.

Never a time for reflection, rejection stinging the puddles you haven’t jumped in.
Affection shared for all that was never there, never cared, unaware.
Oblivious to how obsequious you are to the tides and the ebbs and the flows of the two tone time changes.

You aren’t different, you aren’t special, and I hope it haunts you, a daunting reminder as to why you get blinder and blinder as it sinks beneath your skin. As you grow fonder of your deepest sin, taking for granted what you’ll never acknowledge lies only within.  

[259] Random Rhyme Time 4: A Holiday Ejaculation

Commercialism, change the channel, a panel to discuss the merits of your wardrobe. Wartime, get in line to fight for greed, you need that new tv, you bleed for the opportunity. I scream cus I hate you, ain’t nothing new. What you see before you is lies, how you trust your eyes is beyond me. How you trust your ties, just wait n see how they fuck you, out luck you, run you over and duck you. It ain’t real and won’t make you feel any better bout yourself or your ills.

But keep it flowing hunny, it’s only money and in time your mind will subdue your doubts with the chim chime of the register. Beggin her to put down your card, put the flames out. Prayin she aint devout like a mega church. Stuffing your life into a closet, still fits, the doors broke and I ain’t got the two dimes to fix it. This shit, not comfy and warm just tattered and torn like your heart from your chest, some alien newborn. Your teeth too white and your hairs just might slip out of place like yo nipple from your tit job. Not rim job slut, ain’t no time to be witty, we conclude this hearing bout yo saggy ass titty.

Pause. Reflect. Reload the check book, eject and look at the mess you just made. Quite the sticky situation I’d say. How’s it taste? Worthy of a turkey baste? Many thanks on this day to appreciate aye bay bay baby batter, up, the bird, flies to third, dinner was great! I’ll take it from hur. Turn and cough, oh now that’s where we get off, what a treat, footsy time under way, uncle Ray? Weak sauce.

Who’s got the time? We best get going now. Can’t be late for the showing how, we’re oh so proud of the lessons we teach our little bastards running round. Let’s dig a hole you pick out by the finger full, that ain’t dirt under your nails, just the whole wide wonder world. Nuggets to take, swallow and rake up knowledge, not a lesson for college. Be loyal to your brand, a fanatical fan, writing letters saying you Da Man! Who laid out the script and made you like this, invite this, into your life’s list of shit to own and call your soul.

Consume, it won’t suck like a vacuum, it’ll fill you up, make you full of shit you never knew you’d want. When you’re bloated and tired, dial it back for a while and admire your empire of treasures. Shining diamond necklace takes the eyes off your teeth that don’t see Crest, out they fall, back to the mall for another round to forget what who you are, cus who you aren’t is a person with dignity, with class, who won’t sell their ass on this black market. A target, the victim, woe is me I’ve got the symptoms, I need to do it, it’s my weakness, let me keep this! Sold.

[256] The Bottom Line

I’ll sell you a dream. I’ll make you believe. Try me, buy me, hold me, love me. Make sure your time is spent tryin to find what went out from your life and how it was spent. Not up for you to decide if it was right or wrong, just tryin to get by and buy some semblance of happiness. I’ll sell you a dream, like sweet cream you’ll be smooth and lean like the mean machine that brought you to the show. 99 cents doesn’t that sound great? Doesn’t That Sound Great!?! 99 problems, heart attack to come. It’s a gun to your head poppin off at the seams. What it seems to me is that you could use a, yous a loser, choose a new one, a band aide, a great escape from the scrape to get by.

I’ll sell you a dream. You’ll have buckets of money, yes duckets for hunnies, and peace. Your mind at ease, don’t have to fall to your knees thanking sleaze for this chance to beat your meat. But please, your prey, you must obey and pay it backward. Fuck the mall? FUCK ‘EM ALL! It’s our world son, cashing in, you’re so dumb. There’s a lesson in store, work to be poor, stomp your foot, slam the door, don’t try to defy in spite of their lies, their spiteful lives. There empty tries to find a reason to keep dreaming, their lives well spent pleading, repeating mistakes until you can’t take it, you’re crippled and stripping what you never had from those who can’t bring themselves to fake it like you.

What’s it gonna take to make you, break your foot off in an ass and say thank you, this opportunity is amazing I’m gracious, the pugnacious bastard in me wants you to taste this. Aimin for your head, here’s the pitch, I’m swingin for the fences you never cared to mend. Wring out your throat for a single note of truth as you struggle and plead with your eyes, balling up, bulging out for a moments reprieve. How’s it taste? Like humble pie? So that’s what I’ve been choking down all this time.

[258] Pick My Battles

Here’s a paraphrased excerpt of a line of “reasoning” I heard the other day.

“We can’t prove or show to be true the things revealed to us by Christ or in the bible to be true. It’s only after we accept on faith that what we’ve been told is true that we can start to draw some conclusions. After we accept that Christ died for us, then we can know that it was because he loved us and it was to save us from sin.”

This still shakes me to my core. How about this: “Once I accept on faith that black people are all about of an African cult, I can draw some important conclusions. They are inferior and dirty. I mean look at their skin, it matches dirt! Clearly God was setting us up to draw this inference and guide us away from this lowly race.”

Why is reasoning to be dammed? Someone explain to me in terms that make sense and not “just because people are different” how you allow yourself to say things so abjectly failing. I literally could not draw a closer analogy to what happens when you just accept some premise, let alone a divine one because it makes you feel good or that’s what you’re used to or whatever else.

The sickening idea isn’t that you want to believe in something; it’s that you simply don’t care to recognize that you aren’t making any sense! The obvious logical person in me asks, how can I get upset that someone who isn’t making sense can’t reason that they aren’t in fact making sense? But it then goes further into how they can draw proper conclusions about ANYTHING and EVERYTHING else less this one topic. As a result, faith becomes deliberate and calculated stupidity. I don’t care if you only feel like it influences a small part or every decision in your life, you are choosing, very scarily and clear mindedly, to go against making sense.

You didn’t get into a bad relationship because a god is testing you; you probably just had shitty role models and terrible ideas about yourself. You don’t deserve anything, you’re acted upon by a confluence of forces that you pray turns out into a net positive feeling that you can surmise your life into.

This is impossibly frustrating. What the hell am I fighting for? If no matter what I accomplish, no matter what example I set, it’s all going to degrade into society collectively breaking down and justifying how to pretend otherwise? I’ve truly never understood super villain reasoning like I do now.

“These idiots understand nothing but violence and fear, us vs. them, so I’ll play by their rules and get them to unite against the only thing that provides them the truth they fear is stained by too much reality.”

“Holy shit! They’ll believe in ANYTHING! I should do any number of the same steps that a cult, pyramid scheme, or ‘charitable organization’ has done to bilk them for every penny.”

“So what if I pollute or kill or steal, most people are too lazy to even state they may not like what I’m doing, and by the time anything gets changed, we’ll all be dead and I’ll have accomplished my goal.”

Deliberate and calculated stupidity needs to be eradicated, not excused. You’re not fucking children. OH wait….

[257] I Want, I Think, I Wish, I Need

I want to speed up so I can slow down. I want to be rich so I can act like I’m poor. I want to get in shape so I can eat like a glutton. I want to be moral to spite the immoral, then immoral to spite the doubtful. I want to control the world and to set it on fire. I want to hit and hit and hit and hit and never get out of bed. Every lesson I learn I want to turn on its head and sometimes I think how nice it would be to believe in things that aren’t there. I need to forget that I judge something as boring or mundane before I get the will to master it. I want to know almost everything, but never seem to care to remember.

I want to teach people how to think while being comfortable with them thinking whatever they want. I want to establish honorable distinctions between child and adult, mature and immature, professional and non-professional. I want definitions to matter more and disappear. I want to have it all and give it all away. I want to organize chaotic messes and then create more of a mess. I want my outside to match my inside. I want implicit relationships. I want to steal from enough sources to look unique.

I think I have an immeasurable impact that walks a very fine line of obscurity. I think I would do just fine in too many conflicting situations. I think it’s dumb to respect the cynic and hate the intellectual. I think too much. I think judging people is important, necessary, and clearly at the heart of every relationship. I think being a counterexample is not the same thing as being a hypocrite. I think people don’t want to believe I know too much about them. I don’t think I get enough credit for admitting when I’m wrong.

I wish that lasting change wasn’t something of an oxymoron. I wish I was surprised more often. I wish I could download information into my head. I wish I could be in a dream state for a week. I wish that I never experienced time going by too quickly. I wish it wasn’t about getting by. I wish my money wasn’t already spent. I wish I could understand how I know there will be a tipping point.

I need external forces to distract me and keep me in check. I need to see strong examples of what I believe in. I need to not be the only one trying to humble myself. I need to loathe idiots. I need to show I respect what’s gotten me here. I need to be an example.

[255] Talkin' Bout My Generation

Inspiration Here

I don’t think we dwell enough on implications and consequences. I think the people that do write things like John Cheese and try to wake the rest of the world up to the often not pretty underlying reality going on beyond your fears and ego are vitally important. At the risk of sounding impossibly ironic, I think the current zeitgeist, not just with my generation, giving or taking a few years, is one of entitled self-important bullshit. Peoples’ attitudes anymore don’t simply disgust me, they frighten me. Any sort of explanation that comes in to make sense of why I feel this way I think deserves a pause to take note.

I hear the words oblivious and ignorant tossed around frequently. I use them a fair share myself. Given that we live in a technology and information driven age, it’s fair to assume that by the day we are growing more and more ignorant of the growing number of things that are shaping our world. The one’s currently investigating are swallowed up in the infinite amount of amateur bloggers and loosely defined “journalists.” The ones who’ve had a chance to look back at how things used to operate are pressured to acclimate or become irrelevant. This new hybrid cultivation I can barely bring myself to use the word “culture” to describe seems fundamentally unstable or at least eerily flawed.

What do I mean? John speaks to it in the article. Human interaction, learning from mistakes, and being brought to your knees by a lot of crippling facts about reality. An entire generation, let alone an overall culture that espouses doing the opposite of these things, is going to have potentially very dangerous consequences. People did use to have to work constantly at dangerous or mundane jobs to ensure the very survival of their family. Now, we treat moving back home or working a minimum wage job as if we were slaves. [More accurate would be indentured servant, but still too heavily connotative :P]

Oh, you have to track your shipment to some unknown location in the mall? Your life is super stressful. You mean you spend a full 4 minutes! Trying to teach an Asian kid how to say “pretzel-dog” instead of hamburger? I wouldn’t trade for that if there were a gun to my head. Never mind the inescapable background noise of high school politics and gossip, that’s a given, but it’s truly a wonder how you survive sometimes under such harsh conditions. You might be quick to point out this is just informal conversation, people are really thinking all sorts of things that just aren’t polite. Short answer; they aren’t.

But that speaks more to the older 20’s and 30’s crowd. The worst are the kids my age or younger. They’re informed by the ones who aspired to be “slackers” or anti-establishment. They are mommy’s credit card holder and “only” spent $150 dollars on a pair of jeans and wrist scrunchies. I frankly dread when they come up to the kiosk because I don’t know any words that can beat pretentious, entitled, oblivious, etc. Maybe it isn’t a surprise they’ve developed this “old world money” attitude. They have been given everything and more their whole lives.

I’m most troubled by the culture of ignorance; one that fears even allowing for the words fear, wrong, or mistake. The one where 13 year olds post statuses about their failing love life culminating to a drunk send-off before they kill themselves. How man missed or failed conversations had to go on between him and his parents or friends in order for something like that to even be conceivable? It’s probably safe to say that neither he, nor his parents nor friends even have a conception of love that makes sense. They’ve never been given or shown an example of a relationship that doesn’t end in some movie-clichéd calamity. It can become the norm to freak the fuck out at every scary thing you’ve never been taught to deal with.

Everything has implications, and anything implies everything. If you download a game, you can download any game, every game. If you learn how to make an excuse, you can make any excuse, every excuse. If you don’t learn or forget something, you can forget or not learn anything and everything. And as much as I hate all-inclusive dramatic language, I don’t think it’s a secret why history repeats itself. I think when you look, it’s not hard to see into what people do when they are afraid, or dumb, or ignorant, and the differences therein.

All I’m saying is I’m going to clean up when all those young whipper-snappers lose all knowledge of how to flirt, treat anything as more important than themselves, and put all of their emotional value and self-worth into something so easily disrupted by a well-placed EMP.

[254] Majority Rules

But it isn’t really about me.

Whatever we are, however you qualify yourself or your personality, however you qualify your intrinsic human rights or moral obligations, whatever goals you establish and evils you denote, even your very purpose isn’t about “you.”

You are a slave to your mind. You are the circumstantial electrical firings of the synapses in your brain. Your idiosyncrasies aren’t a deliberate attempt to be unique; they are triggered, unlocked, and practically inevitable given enough time and enough subjects. Your will power will never outmatch your base animal.

And what an animal that is.

“Real” to me is any intrinsically true statement. So many people claim to be real because, to them, the truth of their feelings or view cannot be any more present. I try to create what is real. To put it another way, as much as I can talk and seemingly get random or very hard to understand, everyone can identify a coffee shop….if only eventually. Right now I’m stagnant. I see the end of the road of whatever business I open. My mind is living in the reality I want to create now, and it’s driving me a tad insane.

I don’t really see the point in waiting. Why wait for permission? Why get held up on someone’s weaker stance or lacking morality? Don’t put it to a vote, fucking act. Apparently this isn’t a popular opinion until shit goes horribly wrong. We’re happy to go along like nothing has changed until we recognize signals from out base animal. We’re hurt, we’re hungry, and we’re tired or bored. This is all I see Occupy whatever as. A ton of basically idiots finally getting too many signals from their environment currently designed to endanger their lives.

But I don’t really want to talk about Occupy. I feel like I’m working to make myself tired. Build build build so I can look back and notice all the shit it’s built upon only to grow so tired constantly turning it over in my head for any conceivable way it could’ve gone and not been marred by shit. But it will never happen. I’ll always have to opt for optimism and put up with time wasting, life draining, undignified and amoral happenstance. I don’t know how to feel about this. I barely think I want to continue thinking about it. As if I had a choice.

I’ll never know what you think; I’ll only see how you act. Nothing I’m doing makes sense to me in the context of you; it only makes sense to me with you embedded in my context. So then from where am I coming? I want to enable the ideas? The ideas are fleeting, assumed, fundamentally prone to failure and scarily easily forgotten. What else do you have but them, though? What if your ideas are rooted in something you can’t even define like abstract notions about happiness or comfort or objectivity and “being on the level?” Do you just chug along until enough time has gone by that you forgot what upset you a few months earlier?

Good luck talking to people about it. You might get the splendid opportunity to hear what they always tell you. Good luck writing about it. You might get the special treat of going in circles or retyping ninety percent of a previous post. All you feel like doing is acting. You want to engage and make things sway. You want to make real what is previously unknown or utterly foreign. You want control. Why? Is the idea of not having it that terrifying? Is complacency a deep root of evil? You assume so for now.

Just be worth it.

[253] Where I'm Going, Where I've Been

I feel like the last three weeks has gone by too fast. Switching from sleeping in and staying up all night and being down for any event at any time to waking up every morning to run a coffee shop has put me in a dreadful routine reminiscent of high school. I need to regroup and remember that even though I’m not finding the time as often as I like, I haven’t lost sight of how and why I’m operating. My thoughts haven’t slowed and my ideas still need to evolve per my environment’s lesson plan.

The more I engage with people outside of my finely tuned bubble, the more I want to retract. My throw away statements about the stupidity or evil nature of people were not conceived upon nothing. Daily reminders of why I’ve managed to think the way I do start to take their toll.

I mean what could be greater than owning your own business? Well, when you own it in the mall, you don’t make your own hours. My goal is to have my time. My time is currently dictated by the mall hours and bills. I assure you this is something I will not perpetuate any longer than I have to. It’s also quite the unpleasant thought to realize just how unpredictable the day to day mall traffic is.

I’m fascinated by the sentiments like “starting a business is hard in this economy” and “70% of business fail within the first year, whatever else percent in the first 3 months.” This to me obscures the point. People fail, not business. I would fail if my first inclination was to get a massive loan. I would be failing if, on the days I wasn’t breaking even, I was in the hole for more than a trip to biolife or a part time job. There are stores in and out of this mall every 3 months, not because they don’t serve the “right” food or the clothes, but because they don’t accurately depict how good or bad an idea it is for someone like them to be selling a product.

My worst case scenario is a small amount of debt that literally could be paid with a part time job in a matter of 3 to 6 months. And, in that scenario I still have a kiosk that can be transported to better places. And, though horribly annoying shit may plague me at this mall; it won’t go on longer than a year. I say this not to brag, but to hopefully persuade people that the only thing separating success from failure, “good” from “bad” is a little common sense and honesty. When you pick a goal that highlights your morality and practicality instead of espouses greed, it takes away all of the alleged stress that’s supposed to come with starting a new business.

What gets to me, what has always gotten to me, are the stupid fucking people. It’s when I’m lied to and being made to play into a corporate game. It’s when someone makes it their goal, their habit even, to take advantage. This isn’t to pretend there aren’t diamonds in the ruff, but I’ve got enough diamonds that I want to work with. Little beacons of advice don’t feel like an oasis, they just remind me of a pattern of subjugation and meager peasant dissonance. There are no more rebels or fighters behind the complaints of the mall staff, than there are students threatening mutiny towards a teacher. At the end of the day it’s just a spit ball.

And what good I’d be doing trying to persuade them that I’m after something different. Yes, I want to pay the bills too, but I’m more after the whole changing the world thing. Or, at least a good portion of ideas in whatever portions of the world I make it to. I need to raise my prices? Because I’m not as greedy as you? Because I don’t understand my bills, or rent, or what? Because I need to pretend that making lattes or mochas is especially hard or expensive? Oh I know! The extra 10 dollars I make over the next 3 days is going to help me more than the good will of people who I’ve told I’m not trying to overcharge.

It just gets old. I see the patterns people get themselves into. “This mall sucks! Instead of joining together and putting some pressure on it to respect its vendors and change something, I’m just going to leave or rely on something else.” “These corporate games suck! I’m just going to give up doing what I think I’d like and resolve myself to something simpler.” Yes, fighting is a risk, but when you all stand against some very obvious and unjust bullshit, you move the risk to the people who were asking for it. Granted, fighting isn't for everyone, but I at least have a personal vendetta against resolving myself and becoming complacent. It also kind of sucks when the handful of small vendors have more invested than the majority of inline stores. :-/

I will move as fast as I’m able. When I had nothing but saved cash, the rent paid, and a good portion of my friends on board, I opted for party house. I wanted a place where people could be free to have fun, be entertained, and be safe enough. Of course it got taken advantage of, but that doesn’t mean I somehow lost my goal or forgot why I did it. I want to do the same in business. Run with what works, grow as I can, be an example for those ready to appreciate where and why I’m coming from. I love hearing about things like Panera with the pay what you can system. I want to get to a point where I can do shit like that, make it less about the money and more about feeding people. Maybe less about the “status” of drinking Starbucks (for the record, I don’t understand that even remotely) and more about indulging responsibility.

Here’s the rub. I’ll give it up if my ideas won’t hold in this society. If most people are somehow against saving money, against fighting greed or being needless consumers, or simply refuse to see the utility of being basically a good person who tries to enjoy their time, I’m done. I’ll go live in a shack and teach surf lessons or something. The mental turmoil of resolving that with living in a world even remotely resembling sanity would not be worth it. The real problem is me thinking this isn’t such an unlikely scenario. Prove me wrong?

But to not end on a sour note. Everyone that does enjoy our drinks, and what I'm doing, and has done nothing but been supportive, thank you, and you're exactly what I'm working for. Yes, this current routine sucks, and the some of my interactions with people in the "business world" have sucked, and days where there's seven people in the mall suck, it's the thoughts of what's to come that keeps me going. Like getting to a place where I can be helpful when you're almost kicked out of school or something ;). And I revel in the idea of being the one to remind you that getting drunk and doing stupid shit with your friends is always going to be fun no matter how old or "mature" you get.

I guess the whole point of this was to say that I know where I'm coming from and I hope it's somewhere the people I'm working for can respect. I'll bitch all day, but I won't forget.

[252] Peek-a-boo

I’m going to argue against me being an actual sociopath.

I write this enraged. See. But my rage is stayed to my beating heart, accelerated breaths, and flying fingers. People throw around sociopath like it’s an insult. They pretend it is synonymous with not caring. They think that if they can make it true in their heads then they can get away with volleying too horrible of insults that they themselves could never be capable of if it wasn’t the fault of that person over there. I’d venture that a top reason some people find it so easy to dislike me or flip a switch to hatred is because I won’t let them be the victim. I have no sympathy if you want to wallow in self-pity all the while pretending you’re even trying at getting better.

You can say and you can do. You can think and feel. You can act. I don’t play pretend. Your feelings will never overwhelm me. This isn’t because I don’t “feel the same” it’s because I’m done feeling the same. I don’t need to cry, scream, or name call. I don’t expect you to be exactly like me, but I do expect you to respect yourself enough to not lose control. I fight for control. I can’t begin to explain how persuasive I can be in justifying not giving a fuck. In breaking down to a take no prisoners attitude. I have to constantly work to not let what I know to be harmful be used in spite and anger like you so callously use on me.

I won’t feel guilty until I’m making the decision to hurt you. I’ll never persuade you. I’ll never teach you. If you want to fuck the same things up time and again, that’s your fault. For every one person that might have severe mental or chemical impairment there’s a million whiney bitch ass niggas who need to grow the fuck up. I won’t suffer your stupidity, your hatred, your stress, particularly via means of your pious scorn or guilty conscious. You have the capacity to harm in mind shattering ways. It’s only because you’re too fucking stupid to understand that I abstain from making your miserable world any worse.  

[250] I Wanna Sex You Up Baby

I’m amazed at what people will tell me they do or don’t understand when I explain something. Well, they never actually grant me their understanding; that seems to be reserved for after they’ve broken up or when they’re alone at the end of the night wondering how I can just be so backward and weird. Without much surprise, I’ve found sex to be one of the most hot button and contentious issues, and I’m positively dumbfounded as to why.

First of all, I’m a big believer in relationships. I don’t think that word gets to be hijacked by monogamy. It is logically sound to say I have a relationship with each and every one of my friends. For a relationship to matter for me, it involves two individuals. They need to be people, with perspectives and reasoning skills and personal feelings about things. No shit 101. You’re not exactly like anyone else, your history is your own, your thoughts and decisions are yours to make. I try to respect that, foster that, and be an example of that.

Sex is a game. Sex is serious. Sex is potentially dangerous. Sex can be emotional or not. It can come easy or be one of the biggest issues in someone’s life. Sex is fun, fairly simple, and enjoyed by practically everything that’s ever lived. I don’t know why some people have a hard time believing that it can be all of these things or that I somehow don’t grasp all the things it can mean.

When I talk about sex, it’s usually in jest because it tends to err on the positive side of things I think about. It isn’t to belittle it or demean the different circumstances in which people are having it. In the same vein, I’m usually met with people who say “I just don’t understand you!” or “I don’t agree” or “How can you do this or that, doesn’t it mean all these things I’ve just put into your mouth?!” I secretly hope someone ever tells that last one word for word.

Classically, I hear one of two things; sex is important because it denotes someone you love or that fact of your love or, it’s just “different” or “special” than anything else you do. It’s used as a separating device apparently.

Here’s where I take issue. Sex fundamentally is a reward system developed in order for things to propagate. Any moral or emotional flavor that your sex life has is injected by you. If you want it to be dramatic, you can make either/or statements about its significance. You can equate it with love. You attach the feelings you get from it to the flurry of memories and interactions you’ve had with the person you’re having sex with. I don’t regard this as a bad thing, necessarily. What bugs me is when the opposite of this process is regarded as “bad” “naïve” “reckless” “empty” and assumed about people who don’t describe their sex lives in romance novel terms.

I’m one of those people. I think sex can be important, I understand it’s like a pinnacle for some peoples’ relationships. I know how it’s been used to fuck over and manipulate a number of my friends. Yet, I somehow persist in my venture to be turned on and sexed out. I don’t play with people’s emotions. I don’t lie about where I’m coming from. I don’t base my relationships or regard them in the amount of sex I’m having or not with someone. I don’t really understand how anyone could.

“But Nick, you’re an emotionally crippled and cynical bastard, how could you possibly have soul enough to truly empathize with the plight of my feelings for the one I love and choose to make my only sex partner?” This frankly is horrendously condescending and mean. When I’m mean to someone I identify something they care about and try to reduce it to something that I actively try to make them feel bad over. I genuinely care about my relationships and when depicted as the kind of person above, it’s more than a bit annoying.

Your feelings exist in the vault that is your mind and body, but that doesn’t mean feeling is somehow reserved for when you are experiencing it the most. I would love the chance to defend my friendships or relationships or fuck buddies or whatever the fuck else that I’ve worked on creating in my life. It’s because I base those things on principles and ideas that come before sex; honesty, happiness, comfort, intellectual stimulation, fun, trust. You know, things that healthy relationships and friendships are based on. Whether sex comes into the equation or not, if you don’t have those things, you’re doing it wrong.

“But Nick, sex is still ‘special’ and ‘different’ with the person you love.” Then explain to me how! I get that you get a rush or are more emotionally involved with that person at that time, but explain to me how there is this edict about life that “special and different” make any sense beyond your personal attachment. When I hear this it’s like someone telling me that animal rights are more important than gun control. When asked why they think this, they simply respond, “Animals are special!” “I think about them differently!”

I’d rather not have sex with someone who thinks it can only be about getting off or being a one night stand. When asked the point of one night stands, if your answer is anything more than “to get off,” you’re doing it wrong. And if you don’t understand getting off, what is this ever growing queer (not gay) nature of the loving sex you’re allegedly having? If you can’t have fun with it, regard it as spending time with someone you’re attracted to, or respect it as something you don’t engage in with “just anyone at any time” then I don’t want you having sex with me. That’s fucking weird. Try masturbating to a paper towel roll, randomly, not even when you’re horny where it might work. That’s basically how I feel about trying to engage in sex for the sake of sex alone.

People are attractive for any number of reasons, not all of which solely reside in them. If you can call two people hot or funny or whatever then you have to understand what I mean. For the laundry list of cool things I can say about me, I know other people are funny, cute, relatively not fat, and potentially intellectually stimulating. This doesn’t invalidate or diminish who I am or how we relate to each other. I can think of nothing worse than thinking of our friendship sacrificed because there wasn’t room for you to figure out why you find two people cool or attractive. Jealousy in a scenario like this serves a purpose. It means you give a damn! It doesn’t mean you hate or are willing to hurt someone, it just means you recognize what you have matters. It should help you protect it and prompt you to raise any concerns you might have, not send you spiraling out of control.

I have been, can be, and will probably go on having emotions. They’ve been, could be, and probably will continue to jump in a fairly familiar realm that yours can dwell in as well. I don’t enslave myself to them, which doesn’t make me cold, it makes me an adult. I don’t make excuses for them, and I don’t like to pretend that my experience with them hasn’t given me at least a modicum of helpful or useful advice when it comes to sex or relationships. Yes, some shit you have to go through by yourself, some people will remain ever interred by their first or parent’s notion of sex, and some people will continue to use it in all sorts of odd or manipulative ways, but stop pretending the conversation is between two extremes. And stop pretending you don’t understand me or my position when I so clearly lay it out like I laid your mom, who “loved” it.  

[251] Philosipheyes

What matters?

Your perspective? Your will? Your obligations? Your sense of morality? Your struggle? Look at me, starting so selfishly; my bias might be showing a bit. Is it really my bias, or is it just symptomatic of subjective reality?

“If one tethers one's heart severely and imprisons it, one can give one's spirit many liberties.”

-Nietzsche

I think I imprison my heart with ideas of objectivity. I wait and see, watch for cause and effect, then play accordingly. My “spirit” therefore is free to simply do whatever it takes for me to draw a desired effect. But does that matter?

I’ll never know explicitly what someone else is thinking. Even when I exhaust my words people don’t even believe they know what I’m thinking. I can’t account for the probability of something going wrong, and I’ll always be using incomplete information when I make an assessment. To what degree, in what realm, to whom does it concern where and why I do things? I think even pushing yourself to hint at asking those kinds of questions is perhaps a fundamental role people’s gods fill.

And why not? Does it necessarily feel good to think that you’re unstable? Is hovering doubt a comforting a feeling let alone message to espouse? Perhaps not. Should you become arrested by your ideas then? Be unable to even qualify the word unstable or respect the notion of the ever small “you” amidst the noise? I chalk it up to intellectual stimulation. When you go to the top of a building and look over unable to help yourself from thinking what it would feel like, look like, or do to other people if you were to jump. Do you really want to jump? Not if you’re reading this.

And I think that’s what I do. I let my mind go to scary uncomfortable and downright despicable places simply because I can, or it does, or I can’t pretend to know of a reason or method to stop it. Having not gone insane, majorly snapped or hurt anyone, nor with any plans to do so, I just keep on thinking like a so-self-described sociopath or psychopath and carry on business as usual.

But why? What keeps me able to focus or respect, to even a marginal degree, others’ feelings and my position in society? Why do I recognize and try to exploit and grow opportunity? What capacity for positive feelings do I have that overwhelms a general proclivity to destroy or play with to the point of absurdity? Why are my rules, my chains, or my tethering ideas the ones that remain at the top? Maybe because they aren’t mine? Another argument against free will?

If it all boils down to feeling, then why bother with intellectual exercises? If you feel a certain way and you want to feel that way, the only “logic” you care about is the one describing your capacity to do so. Not very helpful for the rest of us, but someone will pat you on the head and send you on your way because they have feelings too and know just how rough it can be. Yay…If it all boils down to logic, you shoot yourself in the foot. You don’t know anything, technically, and what you do know undermines your very being well before said being begins to use its logic. In comes the all-important context.

Maybe I just need to overcomplicate things in order to make them simple. I’m opening a business, right? I have these weird dreams and prospects. Does it matter if I die rich? If I became a notable humanitarian would the lives I influence amount to something “meaningful?” Be it 2 or 200 years after I’m gone, if some problem I rallied against in life is still rampant, how much respect am I supposed to give to my influence or ideals? For evil to prevail all it takes is that good men do nothing. But I don’t believe in evil! I believe there are things that destroy and hinder goals. Goals I have that can be described as fostering well-being or happiness in this species. But, my goals are, technically, arbitrary. They’re assumed in light of my context. Whether I want to help the poor or cure cancer, it’s all stemming from some primal urge to not feel bad. I can’t destroy my mirror neurons, nor can I forget what it’s like to fear or be angry at some injustice, so I’m hijacked to keep an eye out for “evil” as it manifests.

What happens when I put myself in a context that no longer fears or is angered by what is “supposed” to trigger me? What kind of people are the ones that don’t fear death? Martyrs, who can then do things like crash planes into buildings because “logically” it gets them and their extended family into heaven. What if you can no longer get angry at people for their proclivity to injustice; your empathy literally running out? Are you now lazy, uncaring, or maybe just exhausted and in need of a new cause?

We’re clay. We get molded by our experiences and the environment we’re subjected to. Maybe my mind goes to “dark” places because I know it is other people with minds exactly like mine that can do the things I haven’t been moved to. Maybe in order for things to matter they need to be shaped by your understanding of the symbiotic relationship between your thinking and feeling. Maybe I’m just stream of conscious-ing myself away from the point, which is to keeping putting things in the context of “what matters.”

I can have all the positive hopes and dreams for the world that have ever existed, and be working to enable them every day, and to the people who don’t understand, agree, or care that doesn’t matter. If I’m working for them, why am I qualifying it as something that matters? Because I’m so moral? Because I was put in such a gratifying position until it spilled over into not-so-heavily-masked compassion for other people? But I don’t believe in morals! I believe in means. So I just need to expand my context. I need to identify more squares on the game board. I’m just playing a game where those kinds of people exist and those kinds of problems can perhaps not be problems or not infect you and your style in the way they’re designed to. But again, that perspective, primarily, if not only, matters subjectively.

I think my biggest anchor resides in ridicule. For while these seemingly random and stream of consciousness blogs help me sleep at night, it’s way more fun to look back and go “you asshole, shut up and watch tv.” It just feels right to genuinely be interested in helping a problem, have it go on too long and switch gears, make fun of it and myself for my role in it, and then move onto the next one. I can only take myself seriously to the extent that what I say or do has perceivable consequences. The harder they are to see, the bigger I want to act. Maybe this is why I find it so hard to take others’ problems as seriously as they appear to be taking them. I just see someone who’s usually got good friends, good eats, and a place to live, and they remain locked in a mental battle. I see myself as someone who, if not immediately resolves an issue, finds peace with it through writing or discussion, while they make an issue the center of their life.

So what matters? My ability to make a big show and validate the idea that things happen and happen for reasons if that reason is only me and my intentions? A person’s center-of-their-universe problem, and their endless digressions analyzing every conceivable angle of it? At this point, it just seems like the very act of anchoring your mind in something is all that really matters. Quell the crazy by rooting it in less crazy. Or over-intellectualize and obfuscate the burden of denoting and defining crazy. Either way, you’re certainly doing as you think and feel while abstaining from what you “agree to disagree” (grrrr) about. It’s kept you safe enough so far.

[249] Overflow

I don’t want to live believing in things that aren’t there. I have too many ideas and dreams to count for my life and how I want to live it to leave any room for the mounts of shit that gum up the works. If we have a bullshit friendship, I’m either going to end it or marginalize it to the point of forgetting it until someone brings up your name. If there is no hope for my psyche and the business world to coexist, I will drive myself insane making sure that’s in fact the case.

I have a scarily dark view of this world. I use the word scary because it sometimes genuinely scares me the things I can argue, fairly persuasively, in favor of. I say dark because I sincerely feel like a cloud surrounds my head at times and gears all thoughts into a swirling chaos of irrelevance, uncertainty, and hopelessness. While I’m hardly dominated by these modes of thinking, they are never really hidden, ignored, or non-compelling.

I’ve said in the past that I don’t want to live in spite. I want instead to espouse ideals more than simply be the black to the white. Maybe I’m characterizing it wrong. Maybe my spite is the necessary “balance” to the shit I’m willing to take. Maybe my hatred isn’t me manifesting some personal evil or forgone conclusion about how my finally insane brain will need to express itself in order to prove a point or send a message. Maybe the “struggle,” as I’ve so characterized it, is the only way for things to ever really be.

For as much as I like to think I know, sometimes I don’t even give myself enough credit. I know people, who you pay money for a service, should do that job well and respect your time. I know they should answer their phones. I know you should find out the truth of your employees actions before you try to sweep their responsibility under the rug. I know that whenever you try to make your burden someone else’s problem, you disrespect their very life. Somehow we’ve enabled people to feeling entitled to continually pass on the responsibility.

I can’t take thinking I’m to blame for everyone’s fuck ups anymore. It’s not my fault the electrician put the electric box next to the plumbing system that may one day decided to clog and flood after explicitly telling me that someone coming to inspect the kiosk would “freak out” if they saw that. It’s not my fault for trying to like and trust in someone who with the flip of a switch can turn passive aggressive and adopt an “oh well” attitude. I do not need to take on the responsibility of feeling shitty when I’ve been trying to pursue a path that enables and celebrates instead of exploits while only having the pathetic tools (read people and policy) the world at large has given me to play with. My response to self-loathing indulgent bullshit is to try and calmly and deliberately dictate where and how things can change and then do everything in my power to show what the fuck that change looks like.

Fuck you for perpetuating a world that facilitates me getting like this. Fuck me for letting it in if even for a few hours. I’m not going to stop hating fucking idiots. I’m not going to stop railing against shitty work, shitty leaders, and shitty ideas. I know so goddamn much that it includes the source of what would drive me insane or psychopathic as well as what will always talk me down. You don’t even know how to respect yourself enough to give a damn. You don’t create, you don’t contribute, and you better fucking trust that one day I’ll make it so you won’t matter, and at the very least it won’t be at the exhaustion of my thoughts.

[248] Empty

Let’s see how I can jumble all of my thoughts tonight.

I don’t always mean to come off as dismissive. I’ve adopted a particular nature that seeks the taboo, the novel, the perverse, the “morally ambiguous” at times. I feel I am a direct result of reacting to my environment in a way that doesn’t put ridiculous amounts of stress upon me, and direct statements or rules about how and why I’m going to behave certain ways. Many times these rules are established after perhaps years of a mental battle or struggle that finally “resolved” into an aspect of my disposition.

I have the conflict of wanting to be understood without making myself easy to understand. I don’t think that everything can simply be explained, despite how brilliantly it is laid out, and another person will go “okay” and forever their life is changed. At the same time, I hate to think, and am frequently annoyed by, the notion that so much time and pain need to be spent in order for some things to be figured out.

It’s not so much that I think I have any one person so well figured out. I would never presume to be explicitly in someone’s head. I do like to show how there are ways of dealing with things that have proven to help others can help you as well. More often than not, they’ve helped me. At the very least, I like when people are able to actually put words to what they think is an actual problem. The odd thing being, hardly one is ever clearly dictated.

There’s always a problem. Something is always wrong, be it with your money situation, your relationships, your grades what have you. Your perspective on the very word “problem” flavors all of it. I have a problem, a potentially serious one with my plumbing in the kiosk. I genuinely want and am capable of going to the plumber and saying “You mother fucker, how can you justify setting this up a certain way, any idiot can tell this could flood, fuck me, cost me money. Not only are you irresponsible, you never pick up your fucking phone and your stupid fucking wife, regardless of how sweet she can sound on the phone, is so far up her own bullshit agenda is writing me off making it all the more difficult to get my shit up and running and pay my fucking bills.” And it feels that way, and I feel angry.

These are people I’ve paid $1000 dollars to. If they aren’t satisfying what is clearly reasonable to assume as their responsibility to do a job that doesn’t put me at undue risk, what am I left to do but get angry? How do I respond to someone who puts up their hands and goes “I don’t know what to tell you?”

I don’t think people have the best intentions. I so very rarely “focus on the positives” I could literally bang my head against a wall at points until the throbbing and utter disgust overwhelm me past the point of thinking anymore. Every step of the way is a battle. It’s not the fight I hate; it’s the fact that it’s unnecessary. It’s the fact that I genuinely don’t want to be filled with this practical and pragmatic calculating hatred, and yet people “ever so accidentally” give me every reason to maintain it. Everyone plays dumb or innocent.

It’s this shadow of blatant stupidity and denial I want to be rid of. It’s this passive aggressive “polite” conversation that spits in the face of reality. It’s these empty platitudes you get served and swallow so that you can gain an inch. How much shit I’ve had to take just to sell coffee? Should I really be humbled by the pursuit of running a business that no matter how much you’re willing to work, literally other people’s “busy schedules” and callous treatment of your time will dictate your success? Unless you physically compel them or pour money at their feet, nothing gets done in any way resembling a smart, correct, or efficient manner?

It’s more than sickening; it’s demoralizing. It literally sucks my will to put any effort into caring about shit. I understand the game, I’m playing the game, but I can’t sustain myself on this game. I need to change something or remove myself from it. More than I’m averse to pain, I’m violently hurling myself away from feeling hopeless. Whether it’s talking about friends opting for long term mental turmoil and significant emotional scarring or every “too telling” interaction I have with someone I have to cut a check to, the hopelessness is just…

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Money. Not even what it does, just the emotional gratification it imparts. It doesn’t matter how much you have, all that matters is what it elicits in other people when you use it. My manipulative nature understands this and compels me to put up with too much bullshit in the name of what I see myself doing with money. Do I think I can buy people’s moral servitude? I already know what they’re willing to put up with, what they’re capable of, what I’ve been capable of putting up with. I must know it for certain. I can achieve any end. I can calculate, specifically to the last dollar, how much it will cost to run an agenda. And as quickly as the money shifts, when the emotional tit has been sucked dry, it’ll be on to the next ripest bosom.

We aren’t moral creatures. We’re creatures. A creature will put the electrical box next to the plumbing which might have reason to clog/flood over time because another creature doesn’t really care or (if the benefit of the doubt is to be given) never learned that drains can and always do clog. Creatures will expect your rent due despite a full understanding and appreciation for the extenuating circumstances having nothing to do with your negligence or laziness cause you to open late. Creatures will try to pawn off the blame of their employees for damaging your property in the face of said employees admitting to your “mere speculation.”

As my struggle with definitions that put anything “human” into humanity carries on, I’ll always think back to the relationships I’ve built and work on. My warning sign will be when I go into isolation and want nothing to do with the only things that ever pull me out of these horribly fucked up sadistic empty shithole places. I fucking hate everything; including the shit I’m under the impression I “have to” do in order to keep pretending I’m capable of changing any of it.  

[247] Domestic Abuse

You’re boring. I love you.

You tawdry fiery fiend.

I’ll have a bite. I’ll cut you.

I’ll eat you piece by piece.

You’re so mean yet debonair

Eyes go wild but locked in stare

Take me by my fucking hair

No you dolt I shall not share!

Sex and violence, one more round

Bounce it like a trampoline

A laugh, a tear, what’s that sound?

Take it bitch, it’s time to scream

What’s wrong with you, you sick sad freak?

All she wanted was a peak

Another body you made leak

Another soul gone, mild, meek

Time it better sugar daddy

It’s no time to brag

Grind her up like burger patty

Chores are such a drag

Getting late, must move quick

Click clock, tick tick tick

Such a heavy little prick!

Lake or dirt, take your pick

A drink it is, goes down smooth

Showed you how it’s done

Something stuck, oh my tooth

Indigestion

[246] Winging It Like A Boss

In the face of uncertainty, I want to prove that doing what’s “obvious” or moral will more often than not result in a desirable outcome.

I’m not exactly “winging it” with this coffee shop, but I’m kind of winging it. My entire problem solving process goes like this: “Hey, this is a problem…Oh, that’s what I have to do to fix it?...I did that thing so now the problem is fixed.” Scene. I believe in objective reality. This means that I bank my decisions on a common language and common perception of cause and effect. If history is anything to learn from, (it is) I’ve been lucky enough to be born into a world where lessons that take some people their entire lives to learn are neatly laid out in Cracked articles.

I want to spread the wealth around. I’m a dirty “Socialist” for all you idiots who have no idea what you’re talking about. I live an embarrassingly good life and remind myself of this every day. Spending money sucks, and fixing problems that should never have been problems sucks, and not sleeping sucks, and always feeling under-prepared sucks; I still live within the means and in a society that lets me try. I have an opportunity to make an investment in that society and in myself. What’s good for the people that help me with that is obviously good for me.

I have no idea why some people find this so hard to understand. If I was a billionaire, you could take 99% of my wealth and I’d still be better off than most people, let alone 90% after my first 10 billion. Yet, this is the paradigm we live in, where even the idea of enabling people to work, instead of sit around and wait to rebel, is met with anathema. It really makes me wonder how society is going to mold my ideas about business. Of course I started a business to turn a profit. I want to be self-sufficient, efficient, and personal. If those ideals can’t sustain me because the laws in place are designed to generate profit through exploitation and complicated legalese, where’s my place?

Of course I’m willing to try, given my half constructed kiosk sitting in the mall. I’ll kindly ask for patience while I make a few sales and then buy an espresso machine. I’ll try to engage in mutually beneficial advertising campaigns with other small business owners in town. I’ll use the eco-friendly cups and as fairly-traded coffee as possible. I’ll even start paying all of my taxes one day when it’s shown to me the money is actually going towards infrastructure and environmental care. But alas, I’m sure I’m just a naïve idealist with my little shop. I have no idea the minds of the big kids and how things are actually supposed to run. (The “asshole” way)

I’m genuinely concerned and confused by a dumb society. My ideals go out the window when you can’t get past feeding or housing people. And that’s certainly the state of many places in the world and for a growing number of people here. I need a good portion of people to be better in the same way I’m trying to express what I can show to be better. Otherwise, you literally will be a drag on other people.  I don’t want to just succeed in making money; I want to succeed in generating value. I want to excite, motivate, and make people smile. I want to teach and idiot proof things. I want things to be learning and growing opportunities instead of looming risks attenuated only by the fervent “good luck” sentiments of your friends.

If anyone is proud or happy for me, don’t forget or pretend that you don’t impact what I do. You teach me, you challenge me, and you motivate me, usually more often than you frustrate or scare me. My friend circle is part of society-at-large. I hope that I can affect you back in ways that let you stand for the ideas you know will make the world, if only in your circle, better.

[245] Plotting

I want to talk a little about how I plan to take over the world.

The first thing to be done, as far as I can see, will be to draw a map. If you’re going to correct or change the nature of something, you should understand how its pieces fit together. Problems are interrelated. Poverty exists because somewhere someone is profiting from someone being poor. While it isn’t a horrible idea to start a homeless shelter or something comparable, it isn’t really addressing the core issue. We start wars that have everything to do with energy. We have ridiculous fiscal policies that are directly related to misunderstandings and failures of our legal system and privatization. If you can explain where the money goes and identify who is profiting, you can then know how you need to move your chess pieces.

Luckily, we live in the information age. My only hope for humanity comes from Google. Let me explain. Because information can be stored, copied, compiled and manipulated with clicks of a mouse, significant amounts of it can be distributed very quickly. This is very important for a number of reasons. One, it makes it hard to pin down where and how something started. The number one concern I have is for the safety of myself and the people I care about. If I can get the information working instead of making myself a target, I succeed where many fail when they invent or try to change something.

Secondly, if it is to be believed that people are getting less and less likely to pay attention to anything for more than a few minutes (of this I have many doubts) it allows you to understand things in terms that can stand against even the most vigorous Colbert interviews. You can make qualiasoup-esc shorts for Youtube. You can make inforgraphs. You can compile all the links and resources in easily researchable and clickable ways. Surely, I shouldn’t have to sell you on what the internet is capable of, but I think it’s important to lay out some of the specific ways of outreach.

I want to act like a virus. If you’re going to change something, why not play by the rules that are already getting a response and shift the tides without causing too much of a fuss? When religions were trying to take over the one that came before it they adopted the myths and gods of previous traditions into their own framework. I think I might have enough sense of the American ethos to spin an idea that would make sense in couch-potato terms, or over-worked and under paid terms, or “if only I had the time” terms. Expediency and convenience are a lot of peoples’ guiding light. It’s unrealistic to blow up or boycott gas stations, but if you give each consumer a tool to manipulate and get the most out of the gas they inevitably have to get, you’re winning.

I have a hunch that the more you teach and trust people with, you’ll be “surprised” at how well things can actually run. What’s the alternative? We keep killing the planet, we keep funneling money to the top 1%, we continue to lament all the time and effort lost, and ideas for real change stay firmly locked in documentaries. It gets really old hearing the potential disaster scenarios by enabling and trusting the public. The current state of the world, as my one friend Chet pointed out, is that we have weapons that can wipe out all life on the planet. Explain to me how it gets much worse if we’re talking in terms of potential. Here’s a clue, no matter the state of the world you shouldn’t trust anyone or anything implicitly. Luckily, I don’t play by the rules of trust and forgiveness and stick to results instead.

With my map, I want to identify the clogs in the system. Where will a little information or a little money get things running smoother? There is no end to the problems people face, so how can you fix all of them with the least amount of effort? What I’m learning is that you have to do the Googling for other people. If one can’t recognize or care to acknowledge a problem, you can’t argue or expect anything from them. I’m also trying, with much effort, to learn the amount of informed and willing to fight people that are simply waiting to be enabled properly. A shared burden looks less and less like a problem over time. A ton of people all fighting the same battle from their computer screens is important, but not the kind of impact I’m looking to create.

This brings up another strategy of mine. I will make acts become visible while remaining invisible. I want to be the billionaires of today you’ve never heard of without the burden and anxiety of protecting my empire. I want to have my representatives in the media. I want the “small” changes and adjustments I make around the country or world to make the news. And from what I’ve seen of the news I should be accomplishing this accident let alone with the plans I’d lay out.

Power is simply the control and manipulation of resources. Living in an age where information can reach around the world and back in seconds means the old power paradigm is dying. What are considered to be “resources” will shift and someone will move in to commoditize it. In my view, nothing is more powerful than workable information. This is something that costs arguably nothing. Well before we started making fumbling economies and playing with numbers we don’t understand, our goals were to eat, sleep, fuck, and stay alive. I don’t think the world has to burn over and over again for people to start forming a better perspective of what they are doing with their time and information. You don’t care to wage war when everything you need is available.

For the record, big bubbles on my map will be health/food, education, the environment, and poverty/income disparity. If you or someone you know thinks themselves informed or passionate about one or more of these issues, I’d like to hear from you. It needs to be more than merely teaching people. Getting hands in the dirt is the only long term practical solution in my view. The alternative being us staying perpetually misinformed or disenfranchised being passed around by corrupt corporate ethos. I’d also like to state that this blog exists so that when people say “I never saw it coming” or “I didn’t realize Nick P. was actually serious” we can still get the required amount of irony life so obnoxiously demands.

[244] It's All About The He Said She Said

Watching Morgan Spurlock’s old show 30 Days is arousing many a thought in me. What I can state right off the bat is how bad…terrible…atrocious people are at arguing. It truly boggles the mind how little someone can know about something and then passionately rally in favor of their opinion. (Insert irony now.)

In case you don’t know, 30 days pits one “I hate this or that” kind of person and puts them in the middle of whatever they hate. If you’re a minute man, you get put into a house of illegal immigrants; an atheist gets housed with Christians etc. What you get is 25 days of arguing, and usually about 5 where the person opting for the experience finally appreciates that other people are human and everyone wants the same things.

What kills me is that it’s the exact same problem that all of these people face. They all get passionate and start yelling the same catch phrases over and over. Then they get exposed to more and more reality, and they leave, still pretty stupid, but with the confused look a dog gets on their face when they really thought you threw the ball.

To me, it shouldn’t take 30 days of yelling stupid things back and forth to get people to understand something. Call me naïve, I must be. What kills me is that most of these candidates that volunteer themselves for the 30 days aren’t even just kind of passionate about their hatred for the other side, they’re pretty ill-informed about life in general. The christian living with muslims doesn’t know what wasabi is, the mom who binge drinks to teach her kid a lesson doesn’t know what a roofie is, and the straight guy who takes his shirt off in a gay bar doesn’t understand why some of the guys might get the idea to hit on him.

If I really want my ideas to take over the world, I’ve got my work cut out for me. I somehow need to act as dumb as everything around me, yet engineer the words or the situations to play out in my favor. This could be as easy as implementing public policy, to as hard as learning about the specific backgrounds and dispositions of a specific group of people. It’s doable, but fuck.

What bugs me the most is that I don’t necessarily consider myself special or somehow more privy to knowledge than the middle class people I yell at on the idiot box. Why am I able to read, google, take time out of my day to humble myself and be honest about what I do and don’t know, and these people can’t? It’s not like my parents had long intellectual-esc talks with me growing up. I didn’t kick it with the wise janitor in high school. What allows me to seek and respect ideals that, while obviously selfish, simply exist beyond my ability to get pissed off and whine about how I feel? Maybe I can put it in pill form…

For as willing as I am to argue or spend time writing these blogs, I more often than not just shut the hell up. I don’t actually like to look foolish, which is why I try to stick towards saying things I can defend. How do you teach shame and humility? How do you stop people from feeling so damn entitled? No matter how many times you scream “It’s my human right! This is absolutely true!” You’re still wrong. At the very least, you should be honest about your ability and likelihood of being wrong.

It really is a war of ideas, and if you can actually be made to see the state of the world, look at what they reap. It’s apparently the best idea to be a screaming child your entire life, completely unaware or scared of reality, getting by with your fingers crossed that your meager existence will be rewarded because you feel good about yourself right before you die.

You’re only entitled to death. You don’t really own anything. Every single idea you’ve ever had is influenced by something previous. Maybe if you weren’t so entrenched in your hateful ideas, you could flow into a place of understanding without everyone looking this stupid along the way.

But hey, majority rules and if stupid’s in, it’s here to stay. And less we forget; it’s not like you ever had a choice.

[243] Bcuz It's Ez

It’s been too long. Check It

“God.”

When I hear people say this word, I literally have no idea where they are coming from. No, I don’t feel like I’ve been forsaken or am somehow “spiritually bankrupt.” I’m not inexplicably stricken deaf when they utter the sound. I’m simply flooded with the torrent of meanings that have ever been associated with the word. My mind flashes to every incoherent story or scary justification I’ve ever heard. If I’m a person who seeks even a meager understanding of things, it’s words and concepts like “god” that lead to nothing.

And that’s why I’m an atheist. I hesitate to even say atheist because of the weird instance in our language that allows for a word to exist denoting an absence. I’m also an asantaist, afairyist, etc. More importantly I think it’s important to talk about what you are over what you aren’t. Who cares what you don’t believe in? You’re hardly going to act in the name of it, justify your actions by it, or ever think a harmful or helpful thought as a result of it because the “it” in question isn’t even there.

I shy away from the entitlement people try to claim from words like “rationalist,” “bright,” “intellectual,” “humanist,” “free thinker,” “gnostic,” “agnostic,” etc. These seem to be incomplete and can be used as something to hide behind when you don’t understand something. Or, it makes another point of “us vs. them.” It’s as if somehow they’ve reached the end of their understanding and now this semi-arbitrary title suits them until they can’t help but think again.

I’m human. Even if you and I don’t know every detail of what that entails, you can at least draw a stick figure. I represent something. I’m made of things. I have intentions and act upon the world. All of my power or knowledge to do something comes from simply being human. Everything about the world, or at least “my world,” is contained in my consciousness at any given moment I choose to recognize it. At times, it seems like this concept is harder for people to understand than any abstract notion of a god.

The simple idea is that there are rules. It’s a game. If I don’t feed myself and wipe my ass, I’ll die smelling of shit. If I want to achieve a different end, I’ll play by the rules. It’s at this point a religious person might say something like, “I have rules too, and if I don’t follow them, I won’t get into heaven.” There is a simple, ever so simple, reason why this isn’t a counterpoint. I didn’t make the rules I have to follow. You, or someone before you, did. In the realm of pragmatic objectivity, nothing you think matters. You still get to die if you don’t eat, you still get to smell if you don’t wipe. Every story about before our existence and after our death is made up.

But people are so insecure. How could I live with myself if I thought I was so insignificant? Here’s a thought. Try it. See how long you really go thinking you’re nothing but shit and that the people you care about don’t matter. See what happens when you think you’re actions have no consequences. I’ll literally put money on that not lasting a day. I don’t feel comfortable with excuses. You either do something or you don’t, and while there are a million ways to describe it, few of those ways actually speak to what happened or didn’t. Distinguishing what makes stories relevant is of the highest importance to me.

I speak of patterns. When I question someone’s beliefs, I hear the patterns. In fact, peoples’ response patterns are so prevalent, you will see them throughout history, in every “rage” thread whining about how illogical Christians are being, and you can even predict what someone will say if you know even a modest amount about their background. I think it is patterns that destroy the world. When we get into habits that “feel right” or that we’re used to and just carry on until something bad happens ever wondering why and how it did.

I think belief in god is a bad pattern.

I don’t need, nor want, nor justify for someone else an external excuse to do something. I cannot deny what harm comes from disassociating yourself from your responsibilities or decisions. Do you feel the urge to defend yourself? From what? Are you special and different? Does your conception of an Almighty Force trump literally everything that came before you? I doubt it. You’re not even in the above video :P.

I am humbled by humanity. I get to be reminded every day how little I understand or know. On the other side of the coin, the things I’ve worked at, the consequences I enable, tend to go as expected. I get to slowly shape the world, piece by piece, into one I find more agreeable. I get to think about death in a way that makes me appreciate life more than fear what happens when it’s present. Most importantly, I get to remain internally and externally consistent. If I woke up tomorrow with just a hate filled rant about gay people, or thought oil was our ticket to saving the planet, or volcano ghosts where going to take over Los Angeles, hopefully, you’d be confused as fuck.

We let kids believe in things that aren’t there because we empathize. We understand the need for companionship and how crappy it can be to feel alone. We understand being afraid of questions and the unknown. My refusal to treat people like kids puts me in the “most distrusted” group in America? My insistence on developing a consistent language for our shared human experience is the worst thing you can conceive a person doing?

Eh, it’s not like you have a choice or anything so I’ll just keep doing my thing and I guess you’ll just keep doing yours.

[242] Just Freakin' A Bit

Do you even fucking realize? I want to be blatant. I want to be belligerent. I’m seeking to be called out on all my shit and then some. I need fuckers who appreciate where I’m coming from. We are privileged. We have to worry about statistically nothing. Does this compute?

Where do my goals come from? Why do I say things like, “I want the world, if only to fall marginally short and just end up with Europe or something.”? What the hell kind of personality do you have to have to make it justifiable to want to change the world? I think I’m just a sick, ever so sick, egomaniac that will die with his ideal just like every other fucker who’s thought themselves insightful.

What happens when I give up? What does it mean when I literally only strive for money via the social manipulation that makes it manifest? What happens when I take all the intent I have for the world and boil it down to something simple like greed? I’m so fucking desperate for conversations on the level of why these aren’t worth it.

The ever going problem and blessing (so to speak) is that I know just how much is possible. Possible. Not guaranteed. Not some pact between smart people waiting ever dormant for the “right” moment. I just simply know what the fuck can happen and how. It drives me fucking insane.

I want to be cool about it. I want to play things off. I want to pretend just like the rest of the world. I’m still fucking sick. I’m fucking plagued by it. I can’t just forget. I think it’s the reason I can justify the kind of terrible person I could be. These are unpleasant thoughts.

In more ways than one, I want what I already have. I want no less for the random billions of people I’ll never get to know. I have no fucking clue why I would or could give even give the ever loving fuck for someone so random like that, but I do. I fucking hate it.

I just want your moments to count. I want you to be reminded of who you were in relation to who you are now or could be. I don’t want it to be such an endless struggle. I don’t want it to be sad. I have no fucking idea how I’m to go about this.

Pathetic bullshit rant aside, just know that I feel hopeless while knowing I have all the potential in the world.

At this point I’m hardly convinced I shouldn’t say “fuck it” and roll with whatever, whenever.

[241] Engineer Sincerity, Depravity

Honesty is a funny thing. It changes the nature of what you’re trying to be honest about. It’s going to change this blog as I figure out what the hell is on my mind.

I write for me, for clarity, and to maybe in small, ever so small ways, influence someone who reads me. I talk about religion, personal squabbles, from time to time political crap. I used to just endlessly complain about things until I no longer had a headache. Granted, that may still happen, but it’s not the norm anymore. I have a problem where I never feel like enough has been said. I take things that people want to remember as “a fight” or “a platitude” and go on for days about the implications. My attempts, I suppose, to relate to this simple method of understanding is the random rhyme times or poetry. I’ll sort that under ironic.

I hate and love patterns. I love their utility. I hate when I see someone stuck in them. I hate to think of myself as simply being part of a huge one. Perhaps to some it’s some token of relief, “oh hey, it’s all planned out for me I can sit back and ride it out.” I have this searing desire to blame people for their actions and find pride in objectively accounting for how and why I behave. I’d like for there to be an inherent respect for using this chance to think about things to actually matter even a marginal degree more than those who say “fuck it” and scurry about haphazardly.

Logic is cold. When things behave in calculable ways, they just do. It doesn’t matter how you feel about math, things are going to play out according to the numbers, at least for this universe.

I don’t believe in free will while acting like I do.

As a result, I judge, while having very little faith in my judgments past a meager point. It keeps me perpetually confused, yet not necessarily frustrated. The problem is I want free will. I understand the implications of believing in free will. It would tie up a lot of loose ends about the battles I’ve engaged in or the decisions I’ve made. I just can’t convince myself it is real. If anything, I do things to perpetuate an illusion.

The illusion of free will is itself an illusion.

I thusly restrain myself to capacity. Let me explain. Because I can feel pain, I work on creating an illusion that keeps it minimal. Because I hate certain patterns, I mold my illusion to surprise me. I engage in this for the deliberate randomness. In this sense, I engineer keeping myself happy and sane. If there is a ridiculously high limit to what I can create or control, I try to find it. I keep going until I get bored or find “good reason” to stop.

A significant issue with this is when I involve other people.

I’m a loner primarily for the utility of trying to refrain from being deliberately evil. This is fundamentally why I seek out people who don’t just like me or get along well enough, but genuinely understand how and why and where I’m coming from. I can’t hurt people who know what I’m doing. And no, it’s not enough to act like you know, or assure me that you know, like recognizes like. When a psych experimenter goes into the doctor’s office pretending to have schizophrenic episodes, there’s a reason he fools the doctor but not the real schizophrenic sitting in the hall.

I admit I’m a social primate. I like hanging out and drinking, talking, fucking, gaming, Frisbee, and the occasional pissing contest. The conflict is whether these are the goals or the distractions. I think they’re both. Then you go a level higher, justifying the means, or lack thereof, for the ends. How much money do you think I need to make to drink, talk, fuck, play games, and continue on my quest to watch all the media on my hard drives? I’ll tip my hat to my relative ingenuity and perspective to say, not that much. But I hate hippies. I know that I would feel lazy and that I’ve wasted my potential. I mean, even having the idea of potential is part of my acting like I have free will. As long as my ideas about potential stay…stable…there’s still hope right?

You’ll learn it’s not your job to save the world. Excerpt from here. (now broken)

But it’s my world. And my world is worth saving. Once I learn this nugget, I’ve grown complacent, resolved to my fate. My world involves all sorts of people from those marginally helpful to the ones who are utterly destructive. I have very explicit goals and ideas about how these peoples’ behaviors influence my world. As a result, I need to change them or myself accordingly.

I know I can change people, but act like I can’t.

I want to be an arbiter of fate, not dictator. That would just fall victim to the pattern problem. It’s hard to look at social psychology, history, or mirror neurons and make the case against the potential for influencing people. We think because we can scream “you don’t know me!” and it actually convinces people, that we’re somehow insulated from everything before and around us.

This is me veering off topic. Any master plan I had to take over the world would have to make a priority out of nuance. There’s no way to account for every interpretation, but theoretically you could build in mechanisms to address the fallout. At the very least, try to protect yourself. This is me veering back

I like people, for a while. Thus I hate them, for they are the source of all my “misery.” My capacity for hatred should not be understated. Now, on the surface, even I want to call this projecting. This isn’t a bad thing. If I have very specific things that I hate, of course it’s because I recognize my own capacity for them as well. But, more of course, it’s because of the destructive nature of certain position. It’s not your pride or laziness or fear in and of themselves that I hate. It’s when you don’t yet, or moreover care, to learn when and why they’re bad things.

Maybe because I don’t see my potential for ever “getting over” being deliberately evil, I get frustrated when I see other people refusing to change. This compounded with my lack of belief in free will, creates a perfect storm of timidly pointing the finger, essentially back at myself, relying on a naïve hope about potential that can break the cycle. Yet, I never feel like a slave. I don’t go out of my way to cause harm; I just know I’m prepared to. I reach a point of “overtly compelling feelings” and simply make a decision. Or, at least, feel like the decision is mine.

So then the idea is to convince people they have a decision, even if it “should” only be in the service of goals on one end of a spectrum. Self-interest only works when people feel like they’re going to die and don’t actually want to. Social welfare only works when you even understand how much you’re getting from “the system.” Get your government hands off my Medicaid. I think this is why I opt for a “tough love” position; essentially forcing people to act in their best interests, the ensuing drama of not doing so not being worth it.

I’m left with just working with whatever is on my mind. I’m not trying to lie, but I feel I’m going to inevitably make myself look like a liar. I can state a goal or something about my character and still hold tight to the idea that the only truth is change; the rate and nature of which to be determined. Fate is more than just convincing yourself of an idea; it’s the moment to moment commitment to that idea. Maybe you’re only free when you realize your commitment to each moment.