[237] Little Victims (incomplete poem)

Let me take you on a roller coaster ride.

I take it back.

Let me take you to the place I love to hide.

And just like that,

Never mind

Are you bored, my dear?

I try to excite.

No no, you’d never shed a tear

Walk alone at night

Ever clear

A fantastic array you can paint

Or maybe quite daft

Holier than thou, but never a saint

No need for a draft

It’s faint

[236] Flaws Paws Laws Flaws

I think as long as people either refuse to change, or choose to be hopelessly slow in doing so, I’m going to make myself more comfortable with treating them how I feel about them “instinctively.” Now, I’m not so naïve as to think that feelings are the governing factor, I’m just instead putting more stock in others’ perceivable actions. The flurry of thoughts that get me to make that “off” joke or that semi-condescending look will just have to hide a bit less. I have a lot of trouble trying to resolve myself on how to assess people. As long as I don’t want to project helplessness, fear, and such an overactive ego as to suppose I can’t be wrong, I’ll have to find myself impossible to accept it in turn.

I want to stress that it’s not because I want to be mean. It’s because I don’t want to condone ignorance and excuses. There’s so much about our culture that more than bugs me, and it tends to put me on the outside. This is perhaps another thing I need to better resolve myself to. I’m not lonely, but I do think I’m alone. Much of what I do makes this a deliberate position. I do it because I think it keeps me honest. I think I engage in so many conversations with people because I’m ever searching for more objectivity. More respect for an objective standard than a comforting credo. For every person I think may hint at this understanding of reality, I also engage with, overhear, or am forced to be made aware of hundreds who don’t have a prayer.

I find every time I try to define myself, it comes up lacking. I tout phrases like “on the level,” “real,” “objective,” or “deliberately aware.” The deeper I dig into the arbitrary whys, they start to fall by the wayside. I think ultimately I’m just trying to point to things, illuminate, or expand upon necessary or obvious circumstances. When someone is sad or struggling with some issue, I don’t need a super computer brain to come up with “cosmic gems” of advice about relationships or your capacity.

Things have patterns. I forgo delving into some psych profile about one of my friends because I’ve had enough all react in foreseeable ways to the information. Double blind exists for a reason. I bar myself from “caring too much” because anticipating the letdown is more fulfilling and meaningful than perpetuating what I can only perceive as a child’s dream. What’s more self-fulfilling though? Allowing something to happen, or deliberately acting in defiance? Couldn’t such an opportunity lie between two people who’ve reached this same impasse?

I think my biggest problem is not really knowing how to make people genuinely happy. I know how to give people everything they need and “want” and know exactly how to watch them get bored with it. I know how to watch people revel in their “disease” or “love” or personal heartache, not so presumably, because it makes them the center of the universe. I don’t like to believe that people like to cry or struggle or be illogical, but nothing about what they generally say or do speaks to any other reality. “Logic” is a standard of personal responsibility, not a zero-sum game between your feelings and mind.

[235] You Deserve It

You know, you fucking deserve it. You get and deserve every fucking thing you ask for. I’m tired of being pissed off for people. I won’t hold your fucking torch or belabor your cause. You’re weak. You’re complacent. You’ve accepted “how things are” instead of dictating how things are going to be. Fuck you. Fuck you so squarely with a massive dick I can’t even put it into words. You’re fucking pathetic and hopeless.

I have this problem. I tend to believe that I’m a rational actor in this game I like to call life. My decisions matter. My perspective influences how and why I do things. Apparently, I’m utterly fucking alone on this premise.

I can’t do it anymore. I can’t hope for you. I can’t believe for you. I can’t take up your cause. In fact, I’m so disgusted by what I’ve heard tonight, I will work in stark contrast to your cause. I will debilitate you in the manner in which you expect. You weak pathetic fuck of a person.

I have no patience for people who think they don’t matter. I don’t want to hear you bitch. I want to hear what the fuck you are doing to change something. I don’t want you lamenting your last fifteen years of work or complaining about how shitty your manager is. I want you dictating how they should and are going to behave if respectable people are expected to work the fucking job you are working.

Nothing will elate and then completely depress me than the exercise of talking to fucking people.

You minimum wage burger junkies working to get your kids through school are complacent. You are scared. You have no idea, and worse, no inclination or will to fight a shitty and dishonorable paradigm in which you work. That’s your fucking fault.

I hate you. I fucking hate you. I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I fucking fucking hate the ever loving fuck out of you. You dangle the idea that I can have hope in you and then fucking shit on it when it matters. I fucking hate you. You are the fucking reason shit never changes. You are the reason the world will be marred in shit. You are the weak fucking link that needs to die off and leave room for the fucks that actually believe in themselves.

You’ve allowed yourself to be beaten by “The system.” You make excuses. You deny. You fear. I fucking hate you.

[233] I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends

I wish the world was smart enough to realize that it doesn’t need to freak out. It almost always doesn’t need to stress or fight, or even be confused. I want to be a part of a new social game. I want people to rely on each other because they know how and what to be relied upon. I don’t want leeches. I want investors. I want lessons to be taught in the kind of people you can trust and ones you can’t. I want people to be honest with themselves about what they are capable of and what they aren’t.

Say the economy tanks again. Say people are doing here what has been done throughout history. They buy up all the Walmart resources; they buy up guns and try to stockpile gold or some other form of local currency. If America wants to continue to be an example and a standard, I think the best they thing they can do is not freak the fuck out. When you think you can’t pay for something or can’t support someone, start with refraining from freaking the fuck out. There is no nobility in dying alone, and there is even less in ensuring the death of those around you because of your petty or naïve sense of selfishness.

I really don’t think, even now, people understand the utility of cooperation. I think the idea of things being “fair” is naïve. When you cooperate, whether it is for one or the group, you’re espousing an ideal that goes beyond a naïve conception of fairness. After all, how many times can you hear the adage that life isn’t fair? How much less can you care about the starving kids in Africa before you forgo “fair” as a mantra around which to construct the meager morality of your life?

I think people need to resolve themselves with the idea that they are going to get squarely fucked. Not just inconvenienced or provided with some opportunity to grow and learn, but squarely and supremely fucked. Too often, you won’t have the money, the cure, the answers, the resources, or maybe even the will to endure some level of bullshit. This is where I’d like to come in. This is where I’d like to encourage like-minded individuals to join me.

I’d like to die being more of an enabling resource than a hindrance. Helping people doesn’t mean you have to open yourself up to abuse or that the people who need the help are looking to abuse. It isn’t rocket science to figure out when the help needs to stop or start. Here’s the secret, try not being a fucking idiot.  

It feels good to help people, and it feels good to be able to trust that someone is there to help. Things really don’t need to come with strings attached. I start beaming smiling at the idea of just helping or contributing for the sake of helping or contributing. Making someone smile or relieved because that is an end in and of itself. I find life too…empty, lonely, and depressing, if I don’t try for these ideals.

My idea is to make a specific goal of making life simple. If you have a question, ask someone. If you have a problem, make sure you line up the kinds of people that can actually help you with it. If all you have to invest is yourself, then do it and use that to trade or try to equate what you wish to get from someone else. Don’t feel alone, it’s unnecessary and rarely helpful.

I’ll keep making the appeal. If you make your problems known, I want to see if there’s anything I can do to help. Maybe when everyone realizes there are simple answers, we can start to understand problems in a different way. Maybe when we daily actualize the capacity of people, we can stop superficially hoping and instead objectively justify where our reasons for believing in something lie.

[234] Spilled Over

This has no point, no continuity, and is purely because I’m drunk and bored :p

Games can be fun. They can be taken too far, but they can be fun. After all, I run this whole life thing as a game. I try not to be too far up my own ass, but who’s to say sometimes haha.

It’s hard to state how much disdain I have for some things. I don’t let it weigh me down by any means lol but when my aunt, for example, has 400,000 in cash to deposit on a new house and I need maybe 5 grand to comfortably start this coffee venture, and I can almost certainly hope to hear some level of scrutiny and bullshit about lending me the money, the depths of my hatred tend to peak out.

I love opportunities to shine a light on the utter bullshit that consists of our life. Here’s some more from my “family.”

As previously stated, I have an aunt who is hella richer than I ever conceived. $400,000 cash on a new house, $90,000 on a new Mercedes, and get this: My dad asked either her and/or my uncles for $500 bucks to help pay some of the utilities because work is slow. Here’s where we enter the world of perspective.

My grandma, my uncles’ mom, aunt’s sister has been brain dead and dying in my living room for about four years. My uncles have “kinda” showed up to oversee her over the years; my aunts have practically never come to take care of their sister. My dad and step mom have taken the burden. My dad works as an iron worker, which means getting up at 4 in the morning to drive up to 2 or 3 hours away to a job site, and might get home around 9 or 10 before he has to go back again.

What assessment of my dad’s effort do his brothers and aunt have to give?

He’s a slug. (Their words.) “What the fuck are you doing with your money?” How can you expect me to pay for your living expenses…yada yada.

My uncles, who when they come over, are leaving the faucet running when they think it helps my grandma use the bathroom, do their laundry in my dad’s washer and drying, use the internet, watch the same ten programs on the history channel on cable…I just utterly hate everything about this situation.

Why have I played along? I wouldn’t mind a loan. I don’t dramatically need their money or anything, but I don’t want to live off of ramen noodles for the next year. Both my uncles have been primarily single their entire lives with better than average jobs and almost nothing to pay for beyond rent. My one uncle was living with my grandma until he was like 40 or something. I have realized that a couple hundred bucks a year a few cubs games aren’t worth not calling out the bullshit. But then again, I tend to have the balls to actually speak up.

It’s sick to get texts and calls from my dad who so endlessly believed in ideals about family only for them to be utterly shattered during times their true colors really show.

It’s peoples’ odd and sick games that are the reason things will never get better. It’s only one thing to know how to fix something. It’s only anther another to have the will to fight for change. At the end of the day, you will have someone literally one degree away who can fix practically any problem you could encounter, and they will still give you shit or deny you.

I hate wasting time. My stupid fucking hippie architect spending way more fucking time than I ever conceived getting these plans. My friends thinking college will last forever. What’s funny is how little that matters. I set a fucking goal. I will open a fucking coffee shop September 1^st, and regardless of what it costs me to build a kiosk or figure out my product, that’s what’s going to fucking happen. Who else feels so fucking powerful making a statement? Who else will make it come true?

I’ve had way too much on my mind lately. Do you think it’s funny or perhaps odd that I literally want to vomit with the degree and compulsions of my thoughts? I’ll go with odd because I’m never laughing when it happens haha.

It weirds me out to think that I have to live in spite of the world. That I would have to do things because you don’t believe in them instead of because they are the objectively correct and obvious things to do. It makes me uncomfortable. Granted, I’ll fucking live in spite. Fuck you and your ideas, especially if they are utterly shit ideas. But, I can’t help but feel a sense of loss or hopelessness because that’s what I have to resort to. Lol oh well I guess, fuck you. I suppose their’s a false duality or something here, but we’re speaking more to the feeling than the endless amount of labels we can ascribe to resolve feelings.

I’m nothing until I need to be. What the hell does that even mean? I don’t want to be a threat until you think I’m not one. I don’t want to be condescendingly right until you so hopelessly think I’m wrong. I sometimes if not semi-primarily don’t want to try until you think I won’t. This is fucking odd.

It’s ridiculously, if not almost and practically impossible to try and hold an objective position. I can never get overtly frustrated, or, I can never care that much, because I see and respect the end game. No, it’s not “death equates us all” for you despotic lazy mother fuckers. It’s localizing your priorities. I just don’t care about what you do. I can’t. I will never be able to be persuaded to. It’s hard to even conceive, outside of brainwashing, a scenario in which I would give a shit. And yes, this is vague, please feel free to comment or ask if you don’t get what I’m getting at. (Hint: general life philosophies, nomenclature, and method of being.)

I want a good reason to stop hating. I understand I’m capable of persuading and deceiving myself. I also grant how ridiculously happy a disposition I currently maintain and work to continue. Ideas?

I hope, I hope I hope, I so freaking utterly hope you understand what it means when I choose to be your friend. I literally need some reflection of the, ill-named, ideals I have about life reflected back at me. I need to be kept in check. I need to see what I’d like to believe about myself in the company I keep. My reality is a choice. I was born into a “family” but god for fucking bid be it that I’m constrained to that circumstance. I choose my shit. I work towards my shit. I’ll fight and defend what the fuck I actually come to respect.

I wanna be dramatic. I want to be loud. I want to be overcome by things I can’t put into words. I want to fight and I want to fucking scream. At the very least it’s exciting, and at the most, life altering. I’ll use my hatred. I’ll respect my happiness. I’ll die defiant and laughing.

[231] Death To America

I want to see certain people dead. I want them punished for thought crimes. I want them to feel the impact of letting their blatantly destructive and psychopathic thoughts provoke or inhibit their actions. We’re protected from our potential to think in this country. We all get to wear the same clothes and hide how little money we have. Wouldn’t want to let troubling ideas about poverty in now would we? We get to go to supermarkets and pick from an endless stream of food that will certainly still be there next week. Who could be hungry with so much abundance? We get “debates” about some of the most serious issues facing our planet which help to confuse yet superficially involve us just enough to feel “informed.”

I don’t want to die. This is my starting point. Before I want a business, before I want to enable my friends and be creative and spend my life blissfully unaware of how many honey bees are left on the planet, I don’t want to die. Whenever I learn just a tad bit more about some massive company or environmental issue or, god forbid, a comment from a politician, I’m depressingly reminded of how this may not be just a taken for granted meager goal. Bad ideas, your ideas, can and will kill people. If I have to force feed one idea into every person I meet, I want them to appreciate that one.

I just got done watching Gasland and Collapse. These are two documentaries about fracking and oil. I am just floored at the amount of things that can be going wrong at any one time. I wrote once that I wondered why people couldn’t just be “fill in the blank” problem, but instead compounded their stupidity with failure after failure really trying to convince you of your naivety in befriending them. At least that terminates to just being annoying or some fight. When a company is destroying the planet, it isn’t like they just cut down a few trees or accidentally squashed a rabbit with a tractor. They kill ALL the trees, poison ALL the fish, contaminate the air, their employees, and the animals that are destined to be your next burger.

You know when I say things like “this isn’t my opinion” and “I think?” I should make a greater effort to reference or link to the reports and documentaries so you can maybe understand what I really mean is “the numbers say” “common sense says” “so and so actual scientist points out” and “you’re dumb if you try to argue against…”

Do you understand even the concept of interconnectedness? There is no just doing one isolated thing. You are jointly personally and collectively responsible for everything. When you hold even one horrendous idea, it colors everything you think and say. When you become so emotionally invested and argumentatively entrenched in an idea, and absolutely refuse to change or understand even one reason that you should, you’re the kind of person I want to see dead. This is not the same as saying I’m going to go out of my way to kill you. I just want you to experience the consequences of your thoughts.

But let’s make this more pleasant. Oh don’t worry; I’ll get back to dramatic in a minute. Let’s run with dual personal and collective responsibility. If I’m to understand my position in life correctly, much of my present happiness relies on the unseen, untraceable, massively complex interplay of the world at large. My food, shelter, entertainment, and less I forget porn are practically handed to me on a silver platter. Therefore, while I want to see bad ideas punished, I don’t want to fall to my own edict by genuinely thinking that death always is or is even necessarily the best method to go about fixing things. While it can be effective, it doesn’t translate well as an acceptable option.

So I can blog. I can learn. I can read more, grow my fat pretentious head and struggle to contribute. Key word there is struggle. Do we forget that people lie? They do it comfortably, to our faces, to our congress, at the expense of themselves and others all the time. It is these people that we are struggling against. It’s when a scientist has to defend facts about environmental impact against a lobbyist or hopelessly ignorant politician. It’s when an investigative journalist gets threatened or mocked by fanaticized media outlets. But it’s especially when we don’t even voice how and why we support something or someone.

I read statuses all the time about shitty days, forgetting phones, delicious food or some random comment that you “probably had to be there” for it to be supremely funny. I get maybe two or three friends who post about things they support or people they respect. Does this mean you don’t care? Probably not, but it does mean there is something going on culturally or personally that is either distracting, fear inducing, or generating what I think may be a dangerous level of apathy. I want you to be an expert in something and flood facebook with what you think is most relevant and most helpful. I would love for ideas about how and why to share information to change.

I want things to change because I’m capable of identifying problems. Something tells me you might have a knack for it too. For example, is it a good thing to pollute drinking water? No? Good answer. So when someone can light their water on fire because of fracking in their backyard, we can agree a problem exists. I think every problem we face is this simple. I would even invite the exercise of breaking down moral questions and ideas into economic and psychological terms. Our well-being absolutely rests on keeping a balance between what we fuck up and what we do right. It depends on us actually understanding and knowing the consequences. It’s not how we feel about the subjects; it’s what we can show to be true. The fundamental laws of nature are at play and will react.

What are your priorities? Is it just getting out of school, or finding a job, or becoming the next leader or member of some group? Do you want to resolve some conflict with your boy/girlfriend or family member? Do you want to keep hidden some secret? Do you care more about the injustice to Cambodian tree frogs more than life itself? Are you concerned that maybe you haven’t even sat down and prioritized what the hell it is you’re doing and why? Would you still manage to respect yourself if you were honest with what you would find and are currently finding to be answers?

I’m always asking because I’m frequently shocked and dismayed by the answers. I get people who are confident and comfortable telling me they want to be ignorant. I don’t really care what the topic is, the capacity to feel comfortably and confidently ignorant scares the living fuck out of me. That’s my competition. I get people that just want to grow balls enough to tell their parents about a tattoo. I get people who are concerned about problems that I can’t even define because they are so particular or nuanced it would take weeks or months of study to find a clue. There’s the “kind-of-right” people who may hold a view I can agree with or see some logic to, but have convoluted, contradictory, or simply back-assed ways of arriving to their position. “I’m an atheist because Mark chapter 5 conflicts with Luke chapter 2, and because all Catholics are pedophiles.”….so close.

I need help. I don’t have the patience for scenarios like the example of above. I can’t learn every detail about every problem alone. I need help drawing the interconnectivity map so that we can isolate the specific problems and actually change things. I want to stop hating everything and everyone and be a part of something greater than any one hero’s effort. I don’t want to see our food run out, water get rationed, or the atmosphere disappear before you’ve found the motivation. If you could maybe do me a courtesy as well and defriend me, tell me to fuck off, and/or disappear if this is too hard or dramatic a proposition for you.

We are a society that champions death. How often are we collectively cheering for something? I don’t see 100 statuses hoping to usher in the new clean burning fuel into their cars. I see cheers and hear fireworks for when 10 years of death and economic strife “culminate” in the alleged death of a “mastermind” who said, “use box cutters to run planes into buildings.” Sending such a dramatic message about greed and hypocrisy is worth noting beyond racist country songs and redneck pronouncements of your target shooting proficiency. There are STILL people who would deny or never care to know how we used to support Osama amongst the myriad of other random thugs and dictators around the world.

We don’t want peace. We want our naïve ideas about peace. We want to be idealists and to simply state our ever-lacking opinions. We want to leave everyone blind with an eye for an eye. We want everyone to know how angry we are and for them to play along like it isn’t a reflection of how sad we are. We want to stop being bombarded with this seemingly endless stream of problems and wait around for “them” “they” or “someone smarter than me” to fix it. We want to be right beyond reason because it makes us feel good. We want mommy and daddy to pick up after us. We want to create personal drama to feel involved and important. Fuck your feelings and fuck you.

I say death to America because America is killing itself, and the rest of the world, with its bad ideas. The country started for reasons. It lasted and progressed and became an example by extending and fighting for freedom and equality. It used to respect science and had its points where the environment mattered as well. We currently get so caught up in buzz words and catch-phrases that identifying, let alone solving issues, seems non-existent. Obamacare, socialism, death-taxes, death-panels, and drill baby drill are not acknowledging the failings of health care, taxing the rich appropriately and preventing an economic collapse, or protecting the environment. We don’t punish the liars or the propaganda. We punish ourselves and the people we pretend to care about.

I want to stop playing this kind of game. I want to start from “Look, I know you’re an asshole, ignorant, non-caring, lazy, afraid, and eventually going to kill me, so these are the conditions you have to play under in order for that not to happen.” Your “rights” are as valuable as money. They exist when there is an illusion of control and order; it’s only when enough people adopt a relative standard. Your quality of life is up for grabs. More importantly, so is mine.

And clearly, I have no capacity to be a diplomat, so I could use an expert in that as well.