[314] As Straightly As I Can Put It Up There

 To be, or not to be, those are the inclinations. I feel for like an exceedingly long time, I’ve had every topic under the sun actively on my mind, with no real way to approach them. But, alas a moment of clarity ensued, and in a stout matter-of-factness, I’ll begin exploring.

I think there’s an undeniable psychological impact tied to money. Look back not 2 or 3 blogs ago and I’m sure (maybe) I’ve made reference to or status about having $10 in the bank and slowly picking away at the cans of salt to eat in the pantry. Fast forward with a part time job and side jobs, I feel like the king of the slums; this even more so because I don’t have any debt.

I think about the projects I want to do in the future and the potentially sickening amount of money it would take to do them well. Then I think about the bureaucracy and greed that positions money into the hands of powers with concerns deliberately antithetical to mine. Then I think of the little rays of sunshine meant to boost or disguise actual moods or perspectives trying to reinforce that the world is still good from time to time. Then I inevitably get stuck thinking about time, and how maddeningly long it takes to change things even and though they will always eventually.

Then I try to scale problems up and down. Will I run into a lack of data, a bad philosophy, a saboteur, the cash runs out, the timing is off, or did too many players break too many legs? Should I focus on how I feel? How I fit? How it translates? What I thought going into it? Is it my perspective or intention that matters? Is it my message or what people do with it? Is it either/or, and if not why have I resolved myself to something so obscure?

I rely on cause and effect. Just as being broke was my choice, an inevitability of listening to the sick feeling in my gut at the idea of applying to be told to ring out drunks and move boxes from one end of the room to another, taking the cash and “stumbling” into various other opportunities were choices as well. I haven’t cured what I feel; I simply pick what I’m going to do about it.

I’m not necessarily worried, but I think this is going to get me in a bit of trouble. When I stop feigning a concern for the consequences, well, practice something long enough…I feel I will be more explicit in petty things and more aggressive in things that matter. The trouble is simply picking up all the ruffled feathers.

I think I’ve adopted the ultimate freedom in “winging it.” I’ve been trying to analogize this for weeks. Absolute control of reckless abandonment. Steering the stream sweeping you along. Resolved to the infinitely possible. Real hippie shit, right? But in a weird way, I feel I give myself more room to wiggle by constraining myself to different aspects of my previously peripheral worlds. I don’t know if they felt so suffocating because they’d grown unfamiliar, or if I hadn’t had a chance to experience them with the hat of new experience. Reliably, I don’t feel complacent.

The idea of an “infinite consequence” intrigues me. It would hint at a purpose, maybe even a soul. I think some of my moral sensibilities stem from a concern with this idea. Why I sneak in a good deed for a random stranger from time to time. Why I’d like to believe I’m only corruptible to a certain point. I wonder if there are real capacities and propensities more than just probabilities. Are we doomed to be stupid and evil and inventing new ways to draw cartoons face palming? Or is that just the most likely from the context? I’m so disturbed by context.

[313] Undercover Brother

To be human is to struggle. It’s the core of life. You have to find food and companionship. You’re lucky if you’re entertained or just weren’t born with a particular defect. I’m shaken to my core when I see what people are meant to cope with. Everything about our psychology and decision making seems to be rooted in various coping mechanisms. We desperately need to escape; we absolutely need something to believe in that is greater than our current lot in life.

For the first time since it aired I started watching Undercover Boss. CEO’s taking on the minimum wage jobs and finding out the working world little resembles bitching people out over the phone and holding meetings. I’m disturbed by it because I find it emotionally jarring. It uses the emotionality of hearing about the health conditions of an employee’s family member, or will detail their financial woes. At the end the CEO usually gives a raise or a check, there’s plenty of tears, and we’re supposed to believe “things are gonna change round here!”

I read a critique of the show explaining that even if the CEO decided the employees needed higher wages or truly did find a new appreciation for what happens on the ground floor, the company the reviewer was talking about was publicly traded. The board decides just how much labor they think needs to be squeezed. The financial, business, and government institutions loom in the background despite the CEO’s “Christian principles” or how many tears they cry for their associates living in homeless shelters.

Everyone has that story though. Everyone has a sick relative, is in massive debt, or found an asshole to marry or knock them up. Everyone needs just a little bit more money, a little bit more time, just one person to look out for them. I feel like it’s dumb to even ask “are people happy” when the closer you look you wonder what would ever give you the impression that they should be. Are these CEO’s not small-minded enough to realize that no matter how much money thrown at specific employees they met, they’re not fundamentally changing the lives of thousands of other employees? They’re not changing the business culture, they just went into it to find out why Connecticut stores were failing only to be blindsided by real people with real problems.

If all you can do is cope, how insultingly silly does it sound to try and talk of happiness? So many, too many people are willing to work ridiculously hard to even scrape by in life. I don’t see a culture that respects or understands that. These businesses all talk about their hundreds of stores and how their poised to get even bigger. I know the amount one store can waste, let alone what’s just numbers on a balance sheet when you manage hundreds. But that’s business culture. Get bigger, make more money.

One of these CEO’s turned alcoholic before we switched to a new CEO role. Even at the top you can find time to ignore your family and get down on yourself. But I wonder what “hell” he had to go through being able to afford the kind of health services that would allow him to carry on in life.

I try to get people to focus on the reasons they should be happy. I want someone to actually espouse something. I don’t want to hear a survivalist mantra; I’m fairly convinced that’s more genetic code than positive philosophy. But how can I expect it? What tools besides my “ignore all the fucks guide” to my thoughts can or should I contribute?

But this is why I’m after culture. I think there are a lot of people with a lot to give and that the better demons of our nature, when ignored, carry on in a demonic fashion. It’s not just equal pay, it’s a fundamental understanding and respect of what it means to be human and work hard. What it means to earn something and respect that someone deserves it. These CEOs can’t operate a forklift, but because they can bitch a little louder about shipping discrepancies, they deserve 100 times more an hour?

As someone who considers himself always happy and always angry, I feel like a fool. If both make sense conditionally, and the conditions exist at the same time, how could I ever advocate for one without the other? If the happiness and pride you take from your shitty job keeps you going back to it every day, and you stay fed, or your kids are provided for, what else should I expect? But what does it say about life that we’re, theoretically so advanced, that we still have to treat our special times as “an escape?” Nothing in my life compares to the average person’s day to day level of bullshit, and if it does, I’ve somehow managed to boil it down to something or another about balance that shuts me up for a few weeks at a time.

This feels disconnected. There are so many angles that speak to the culture I want changed; the shitty ideas of growth “because,” the fact that you can’t shoot a t-shirt into a crowd and clothe a stadium, the idea that because people are sick it should cripple you or your family’s life. You can have a full time job and still have to live in a homeless shelter. You can know the inside out of your factory and get paid like you genuinely aspire to nothing more than being “kind of homeless.” These are systemic problems, these are culture problems, and they are universally understood as something people wish would change.

You have to undermine the power, provide an alternative, and market ideals that speak to more than the desperate part of a human’s psyche. The bad they’re swallowing isn’t what rounds out the good they teach and preach. So maybe the happiness they muster comes from many places. Maybe there’s an appreciation for their ability to feel it at all. Or maybe it’s just where you go when you hit the bottom. I mean, desperation can be a motivator, but it shouldn’t be an institution.

[312] Land Hooooooo

I will say this as concisely and honestly as I can. I do not seek to judge, I do not pretend to have all or perfect knowledge, and I am not after a fight. I’m writing after many conversations and avenues of feedback, and matching those against my own observations. I hope before feathers are ruffled a conversation can be had, and if it is shown that a ship may be headed in the wrong direction, we can steer it back.

I feel the group dynamic changing. My current theory is that it boils down to how the boys treat the girls. I think there’s a lot of side bar conversations about what someone feels verses where the other person is coming from or if there’s just some over thought or insecurity playing into things. But, ultimately I think those pale in comparison to a kind of respect that seems to be slowly eroding.

I’ve got it in me to be as big a perv as the best of them. Lately though, I find myself turned off to how I hear girls in general talked about, or the endless awkward encounters they seem to find themselves in when relating to our group. I think there is a distance being put between our girl friends’ feelings and the sort of “we’re so hot” persona. Whether it’s an in-group out-group thing related to climbing or fitness, I don’t know.

I can see an overzealous attitude or misplaced confidence push “the group” apart. Particularly when it comes to roping in our girls as one’s in a queue in between Okcupid hookups. I feel like there has been a steadily increasing creepy factor that shrouds the guy/girl interactions. Whether it’s Asher-esc touching where no touching need be, or lingering hugs and deep breaths just because someone’s going to bed or entered the room, there’s a subtext. It’s like Mad Men, enter a room, pour a drink, invite someone into the room, and pour another drink; I’m hammered just watching before 10 am.

I now worry about introducing new people into the group. Where once I was ridiculously proud and interested in what a new cool personality would do around a bunch of cool people, I’m significantly more worried about “the sharks circling.” If I say “hey, I messaged Jen and brought her around” the awkward what-the-hell-are-you-talking about response is to say your percentage match is higher or you’ve spent more time texting or making out with her. I’m not trying to compete, I didn’t message her to eventually fuck, and that gets kind of lost when everyone’s initial response is to caveman the conversation to some level of “dibs.”

I’m concerned because I think the people most likely to pick up on the how and why things are changing are the same one’s we don’t see around as often. I’ve at least been the asshole long enough who can watch and predict that if shit got too wrong I could cut ties and go about my day. But the nice people and the emotionally involved people or the willing to make excuses for you/us people aren’t even up to it anymore.

Confidence, a concern for your health or appearance, and even a good group of friends are no substitute for humility. I don’t even want to pretend like I’m trying to point fingers because I can conjure a good ten reasons, for each of our friends, completely outside what’s been witnessed or talked about that can speak towards how different things have played out. The only “secret” to getting along with people or having a satisfying sex life that I wish wouldn’t get lost is a sense of honesty and respect for how you’re spending that time and who you’re doing it with.

[311] Batting A Thousand

So I’m one of those cool kids. As in, I can “understand” where the other cool kid is coming from and reach this copacetic middle ground where we mutually respect each other’s place in life. Except, fuck them.

For as much as I run a little ringer on people, I really can’t stand when people try to turn it on me. I’m good with being a hypocrite as far as shit’s concerned. Where do you get off me calling you on what you’re doing and your refusal to acknowledge that I’ve seen through you’re little scheme. You little bitch lol.

I feel like I am perpetually open to misrepresentation. It’s frankly habit by now. It really doesn’t matter what you say or how you say it, people will decide to understand you in their terms, and it’s your responsibility to “respect” those terms and follow some form of suit.

Why do I crash “random” peoples’ conversations?

I’m not seeking something new. I don’t think I’m going to learn of some perspective. I really feel like I do it so I can feel sad. So I can connect with the tumultuous failings of people and sort of “re-up” just how fucked it is to think differently than I do.

It sucks because I really feel bad for people. Weird right? I’m all “fuck you and shit” and yet I have this like pain in my stomach that’s like “this can’t be all.”

I don’t like other alleged “cool kids.”

My disposition isn’t terribly of choice. I feel like I got here from thinking too goddamn much and over intellectualizing a process that is only concern with whether or not you manager to nut enough times in some chicks vagina. But at the same time, there’s some semblance of respect given the implications of acting like some amoral node that disregards what it means to be human.

I do get angry. Like, super angry. And I really don’t know how to translate that in a way that doesn’t make it “personal.” Because, it kind of is, but in a more important way really isn’t. I don’t pretend like I’m better. I’m not on some thrown. I’m just confused that we don’t do what makes the most sense. And ya, it pisses me the fuck off.

Just talking to this Indian kid about his experience with relationships tonight is enough. It’s so unbelievably sad. There is no guidebook from taking him out of how bad he’s been fucked. And he’s going to make decisions about life and love from how he got shit on as a teenager. My god. The idea that we’re literally handicapped by the stupid shit we may or may not encounter as kids…

As long as people aren’t happy, fuck us. I don’t want a species to keep on and evolve that’s perpetually sad and despotic. The reasons I don’t believe in us is because of our default attitudes toward life. For every optimist you’ll find a hundred thousand circumstantial pessimists It’s not conversation and logical debate that changes them. I feel hopelessly naïve in believing they might’ve worked.

The secret is not killing yourself. If you find a platform to do what you do that overwhelms the objectively reasonable positions you may take on ending your time here, you may as well be a “god.”

It’s hard to swallow how stupid you are. Like, why the fuck bother inventing words and thinking about things, right? But, at the end of the day, you just have your stupid ideas and your stupid reasons that pretend to grasp the entirety of your position.

[310] Because Guns Are Stupid And I Fucking Hate Everything

Guns were designed to kill. (Pausing to hear the counterargument). If you chose to argue in this space, please stick something big enough to cause a break or bleed in your asshole.

I could give two ever loving fucks, really just ask, if your hobby is to shoot things responsibly. You happen to like something meant and designed to kill, potentially en masse. I don’t give a fuck how much it costs you. I don’t give a fuck if what you had was previously legal and now it’s not. I could cry a fucking river (and that’s a lie) about the paperwork or time you have to spend reloading when your life could be made a pinch easier with a 16 round magazine. AND GOD FUCKING FORBID I CALL IT A CLIP!

On the table currently it is guns, but it doesn't matter. Always there will be the ridiculous, uninformed, emotional, brazen “fuck you” position that stands as an “equal” to what common fucking sense and experience has taught us. I’m so fucking tired.

No one is taught how to argue. People genuinely believe that if they feel strongly enough about something, that is the be all end all precursor to something being legitimate and mattering. Look at Sotomayor's commentary on the Daily Show. “I’m amazed at how passionate everybody is.” She didn't say whether or by what means they would be judged right or wrong. She simply marveled at their “passion.”

So quick are people to offer up their perspective. As if they matter. As if their opinion has the information and nuance to change something. They are nothing! They hate the fact they are nothing, and they scream so loud so that you can make them something. They aren't reporting. They’re sensationalizing. They’re personalizing. They’re actively degrading the lesson and the message in order for it to conform to their conception of entertainment.

I fucking hate everything. I hate the lie. I hate the backdrop we’re supposed to operate under in order to get along with each other. I hate the bastardized conceptions of friends and relationships. I hate the wasted time. I hate the unnecessary stress. I hate the pursuit of what was never personally called upon for the acceptance of what was never personally respected.

Do you have any idea how odd it is to try and survive in a world where you don’t genuinely believe people have a legitimate argument and chance of existing? I so hate the world that as a person, if I was somehow wrought with the ideas of those I hate, I would tell you to exterminate me. I’m so under the impression that you have a choice that you have a fucking ability to step back and assess a situation, ESPECIALLY IN THE GOOGLE AGE, that there is no excuse for sounding like an ignorant peasant “humbly making their way through the world.”

It’s because of this I will always be a loner. I will only and ever connect with people who grasp just how far removed I am from any form of contentedness or happiness with how the majority of life is conducted. So much doesn't matter to me. It is too easy for me to forget people. It is kind of scary just how far I think I would go to actually prove a significant point to a vast amount of people.

I just wish you’d wake up. I wish I didn't have to hate you. It feels like a moral obligation. If there isn't someone so disgusted with the world and the place you hold in it, how dare I consider myself a moral being to exist in it. Please, believe and know my hatred. Dream about how horribly one of your friends thinks about our places in the world. Maybe think about changing something. Maybe give a voice to the same kinds of shit that YOU see wrong as well. Take me from my solipsistic island and start an actual movement. Until then, it’s all fucking stupid, I fucking hate everything, it’s all a joke and pathetic circumstance, and I fucking hate you for pretending otherwise. “Fuck off and die” would only seem appropriate if I ever conceived of you of living.

Sure, I'm taking out my philosophical frustrations on whomever chooses to read, but that's really not the point. Just stop lying. Just stop pretending. Just treat things, and people and yourselves like you should. I'll never express how much I long for death in a world where people pretend otherwise.

[309] The System Is Down

I don’t think I’m smart. It’s simple really. I think I’m significantly more persistent, comfortable, OCD, disregarding, disrespectful, and “honest” than smart. Maybe if there was an equation you could fuck with those variables and get somewhere spelling s.m.a.r.t. but I’m skeptical.

For as much as I rabble on about perspective, I feel I hardly ever nail down mine. I think I have a certain professional courtesy and fear of having to deal with the fallout of my disposition. Instead of letting things “get old” I hold out for when I can make things “exciting” or perhaps marginally memorable.

What do you really want to learn about yourself? To what sickening degree do you want to embody what it means to be “human?” I think it is the massive revulsion of reality that prompts a significant portion of people’s day to day actions. Who wants to belabor the circumstances under which they would kill? Who wants to feel the excitement of a wanton affair that would “technically” cheat them of their previous love affairs? Who wants to intellectually dance around the supposition of intellectually dancing?

So I don’t think I’m smart. I live in a world where when I make a metaphor, you understand it. When I say a word, or make a rhyme, or levy a situation against another, you see, or have the capacity to see every, be it ten or none, angle I imagined. Then I just keep on going like there’s no room for clarity. Maybe once in a blue moon I get feedback. Maybe I get someone to challenge or ask a question. But really, that’s reserved for blogs about sex or personal call-outs of particularly insidious behavior.

I’m having trouble understanding what I would do if I were smart. You’d think someone with my ego would have found a way to amass a fortune, have subjects for his every beck and call, and maybe even his own kazoo. You’d think I’d be out “fixing” things, or maybe you wouldn’t. I would, but that’s my retarded opinion. You’d think I’d avoid fights or cater to peoples’ feelings. You’d think I’d devised a way for me to project a life, demeanor, and method that would make it so you understood what I thought. But that’s only if I were smart.

I know what I want, and I think I know how to get it. My terms are strict. If I hadn’t tasted what it was, I wouldn’t bother speaking of it. I think I am creepily equipped to enact what I want done. It makes me nervous to say that. I think if you even bother with my presence or friendship, you are more than capable of grasping what it is. I would love to converse further with anyone willing.