[391] Spatterings Pt. 1

This could be several blogs, so I'm going to just split it into sections. With so much time to reflect, and actually having access to the news, on cable, ick, there's too much crossing my mind to wait or try to compact it into some mega post.

My god is the news horrible. I really truly didn't appreciate just how bad until it was on screen at all times no matter where I went. If you watch the news, stop. Never put it on again. It's making you stupid. Not like, “I'm not getting the full story” stupid, like “this is how people are expected to talk to each other and about things” stupid. It makes me want to throw things at the screen.

3 independent autopsies? Is this because we've lost all semblance of what's to be trusted and reliable, or because it sounds “fantastic” that 6 bullet holes needs 3 different medical examiners to explain that bullets all over your body, including your head, likely meant you suffered and do indeed “cause the blood to flow out.” That's almost a direct quote. Someone was on television explaining that there are 2 ways you can stop a human. Incapacitate them, or make it so their blood runs out.

Every other statement is a random speculation, arbitrary question, or simple “non-statement” amounting to the kind of crap you see above. If I tallied the amount of times a “reporter” said “I don't know” my page would be black with ink. This is only so striking given how much they don't know to then have words to fill every second of screen time.

“Should Obama go there and fix everything?!” Yes! Just like he should be airdropped into Gaza and finally bestow peace to the Middle East. Duh. This is the level of discussion! 100 people have provided conflicting testimony on the shooting, so we'll be here to reiterate that fact for the next several hours. Here's officer Friendly's best friend explaining how he's never been racist or even killed a mosquito his entire life. Repeated over and over and over and over and over and over and over and, I'll give you a guess.

CHANGE PLACES!

The death penalty. People think it's between two sides. Either you're something of an over-sympathetic pussy with no capacity to empathize with the family of the deceased, or you're a blood thirsty monster who would see society devolve into anarchy and chaos.

To me, it's people deliberately avoiding parts of their perspective that would speak to all the extra they are saying in “simply” advocating for one over the other. At the level of the interpersonal, who isn't going to empathize or understand vengeance? Who wouldn't want to kill right back? At the level of society, why do you think that places with the least advocacy for violence or vengeance also tend to have the least amount of murderers? In a way, the more you need to kill the person who's done you wrong, the more you're setting up families to go through what you just have later.

But this speaks more to an overall absence of social competence and cohesion to me. Crazy people tend to have histories. Every kid who grew up in an emotionally abusive home or joined gang life did so for reasons that, in part, hark back to the environment that's been set up for him. Most horrible things and habits of humanity boil down to economic and conditioned responses. This isn't an argument against personal responsibility. But it seems you don't credit your own capacity to hold yourself responsible when you understand another person to only be another immoral manifestation of the devil.

This topic continually interests me because I have no sympathy for people who kill others, deliberately or otherwise, but I consider myself so much better than them as to espouse something independent of what horrible things I'd like to do to and see them experience. Even more than that though, upon a bit of further reflection, I don't really want to do anything or see them experience it. It doesn't speak to my bottom line. I think we shit all over conversations that are complicated and detailed and potentially powerful to carry longstanding consequences. To watch myself capitulate to “angry monkey” status is headache inducing.

This involves a conversation about the justice system, social psychology, personal responsibility, the economy, and general conception of the dialogue and methodology surrounding whether or not a death sentence is carried out. Or, you know, an eye for an eye. What are we, fuckin' saints?

MOVING ON DOWN.

We must be saints! Lest we forget the ice bucket challenge. Let's part with the things that don't matter.

Of course no one is denigrating charity. Of course it's not a pissing match between who's suffering more and from what. Of course “bringing awareness,” on the surface, isn't an ignoble endeavor. And of course I'm not going to dump water on myself if given the opportunity to signal anything about my morality.

I am on the side that isn't terribly impressed or happy with these challenges. Why must charity, awareness, or advocacy have to turn into a “viral phenomenon” before something is done? Why does there have to be tears and a poster child with the disease of the month before it registers that people are suffering, constantly, from any number of things, disease related or otherwise? Why do we flock to showy campaigns instead of build into our system a way for significantly more money and accomplishments to be realized?

I do think it's more distraction than action. Yes, money went out. For this short period in time some money will be lumped towards some cause more frequently than it did otherwise. We still don't really give a shit about the different diseases that may one day plague us or the fact of suffering as a result of national policy or waste on other things we spend our money on. These videos allow us to feel like “we can all just take it for granted that we really are nice! We really do care!" Even if our bleeding hearts can only do so for the length of a YouTube clip.

To me, lazy and superficial trump happy-go-lucky show of solidarity. Let's find a way to help 'disease' before a teary-eyed ALS patient is used to distract us further.

[390] Inspired By Robin Williams

The fire is still hot on Robin William's death. This is something that seems to encompass so much of what I think needs to be talked about, I'm going to risk adding to the fanfare and out pour as if to capitalize on the moment.

If you haven't seen it David Wong tries to explain why funny people kill themselves. I don't disagree with the article, but I think the habit of classifying people as “funny” or “depressed,” in general, steers us in a very specific, and I would argue unhelpful, direction as far as the conversation goes.

Take a look at the comments section if you're subscribed to Cracked on facebook. Immediately there's the person who proclaims “Not every comedian is depressed!” as if that's what Wong was saying. Of course the defenders of “The Point” come in and let her know how badly she's missed it. Then there's the people who need to list off all the names of dead comedians who've suffered depression and anxiety. Like it's now a pissing match between who can come up with the most “healthy” and “troubled” comedians and settle the debate once and for all. There's the people who will tell you how amazing and caring and all around wonderful Robin Williams was. Every phone number to every help line in the world is listed somewhere so we can reach out if we're close to the edge.

I should add a disclaimer, I've handled discussions of depression poorly in the past, and if my phrasing or perspective sounds so “YOU STUPID FUCK YOU DON'T KNOW, YOU HAVEN'T HAD IT, YOU DON'T GET IT!” Let me just say it's bound to happen and I'm not really trying to discuss depression or what it's like to have depression or my story as it relates to depression. Depression is a factor in the digression because it's big and everywhere and related to comedy in a particular kind of fashion.

I think the conversation should be centered around the difference between “distraction” and “appreciation.”

I think a lot of funny people remain secretly sad because a lot of people use them as a distraction verses appreciating where they are coming from. The comedian can also be said to be using the audience as a distraction as well.

I think nice people have it rough. I think they are almost destined to be a martyr for what perfection is supposed to look like. The immensity of the drive to push you to be a little nicer, understanding, or lend a helping hand seems to frequently come from having to battle, if ever to overcome, a lot of bullshit first. I think there's much to be said about how your perception molds that bullshit or why you would go out of your way to be nice or learn how to be funny.

What's the cliché? Assholes live forever. Assholes seem to know something in their bones that never let's them get “too sad” because the world “out there” is hardly the nicest thing they could imagine, but you can scrape the bottom and still find a reason to live. And then perhaps that's all they believe in. That's how I work at least. I'm not “shocked” this “funny, amazing, good spirited, beautiful soul” killed himself. I'm certainly not happy about it. He easily was top 3 funniest people on the planet to me.

But he was plagued in a way I am not. I don't have an “addictive personality,” which I think is often a bad way to label getting into a habit of avoidance. I don't have “depression” which I think is flavored not only by culture, but goes into overload when you incorporate substances or something as vapid as the entertainment industry. I think nice people like Robin Williams, as kind of horrible as it sounds, need to become bigger dicks.

You're lucky if your sweet nature gets you the kind of authenticity reciprocated. I don't do well with nice people. I need to see edge and anger. I need to see that you're not impressively sad about his loss, but maybe infuriated that someone can go 63 years of having the same thing and getting the same comments and “help” and it wasn't enough. I wonder if depressed people were just hoping you'd share the suicide hotline one more time. I wonder if Robin Williams didn't just set a benchmark.

And none of us knew the man. But we know ourselves. We know friends who suffer like he did. We know a lot of the problems they face are the ones we face, but for our worse memories or dickish natures we carry on a little lighter. Focusing on rehashing the buzzwords related to depression misses the point. Focusing on the hidden tragedy of comedians loses it again. Passing the suicide hotline around like a hot potato isn't the kind of lasting staving off or fixing of the problem.

Certainly no one wants to say “some people can't make it.” You'll never be in their head. You'll never figure out the right combination of words to convince them that what you feel and think about them matters more, and it's selfish and horrifying and the worst thing they could ever do to you. But I would think, if it were me, I wasn't able to feel it. My pain outweighed yours, or what I imagine yours will be. I can prove it. Wong points out that you can learn control when you take the funny reigns. Maybe you don't even have to turn dickish, you just have to finally prove you have control of anything, even if it's just a moment of losing the ability to ever do so again.

I want people to see him as a man first. His historical contribution to comedy and culture are as far-reaching and influential as anyone has achieved. But it wasn't enough for him. Do you think we'll figure out why? Do you think we'll be able to save the next one? Are we aware that we only ever get to hear the survivor's tale? If we're going to tackle depression, if we're going to appreciate our capacity for humor, and if we're going to give people reasons to live, I think we need to treat the conversation better. I think it needs a kind of authenticity Robin Williams wasn't finding no matter how often he offered.

Bobcat Goldthwait tells Joe Rogan Robin Williams real cause of death - Lewy Body Dementia

[389] Pivot

To even construct a sentence is something of a wonder.

Every adjective, noun, and verb have some relative connotation. Your mind condenses the whole of your experiences into a workable function. Be it the voice in your head or the directions to act, conveying messages is as taken for granted as breathing.

We get to layer our labels! I didn't just tell you something, I declared it. You weren't asking me something, you accused me. Is it any wonder conversations either have to be simple and polite or immediately turn into fights?

I think it's a good habit of communication to avoid and disavow ambiguous language. Granted, inevitably you're going to be talking about something you don't quite understand and haven't found the words for, but there are ways to make that conversation go from being difficult to impossible.

Take the word “soul.” You can find any number of books or websites that advocate for your soul. They'll tell you how to make your soul fulfilled or why your soul is incomplete. They'll say your soul is damaged or it can be saved. I, for one, have no idea what a soul is, even if I'd like to believe I know what they're getting at.

I'd rather empower words that are supposed to mean the same thing. What if we stopped using “soul” and started using all the words that comprise it like “personality,” “well-being,” and sense of “happiness.” That brings it back to Earth. You can adjust your personality or recognize traits of your personality while your ever-ephemeral soul slips past. You can make your happiness about your next meal or making someone smile. You can tie your well-being to actions that keep you healthy.

I think people use the ambiguity of language and I don't think they admit to the amount of things they get away with in doing so.

Just today I read someone accuse someone else of “being outside of reality” while they were arguing politics. Truly, if you believed someone was outside of reality you wouldn't spend your time pretending they knew what you were talking about. What would words mean to them anyway? You might as well throw at them a bowl of alphabet soup. There's a shift away from “the topic.” Politics is certainly a broad structure from which to discuss something, but it doesn't include people speaking Martian languages.

The idea of caricaturing has been heavily on my mind. Many things come across as total jokes of themselves. Debates are screaming matches. Republicans become Nazi's. It's all about the he said she said as if these back and forths don't take place via text...which can be quoted...and immediately sourced. Maybe it's reality TV or your “nerdy” blog post, it all becomes this game of who can be more ironic or self-aware than the last guy. It's how you always know the book was better.

I think this shift is as much a habit of people as it is engineered. You don't volunteer information that would make you look weak. You buy into the beautiful scenery that accompanies an advertisement for shitting easier. You can feel when something gets too far from where it began. You just have to be paying attention to what you were after in opening the dialogue.

But there seems to be the problem. I don't think people know what they're trying to say. Years of therapy are sometimes reduced to “I am afraid of sex.” Why would it take someone years of their life to come to that conclusion? It was hidden in the wrong language. Often people are touted as stupid, evil, or in a severe state of denial. I think those often reduce to becoming conscious of the pitfalls in our language.

It certainly doesn't help when a compelling emotion provokes you into saying or doing things that take the point ever farther away. And how do you think we can hope to wrestle with or discuss those feelings when they suffer from the same problem? Are you sad, or depressed? Are you jealous or feeling a sense of loss? Are you angry, or perhaps terrified?

I think you can establish pivot points. You can create rules for how you're going to engage in certain conversations, with certain kinds of people, with specific people, or with yourself. I use writing as a way to ground potentially scattered and incomplete ideas somewhere so I can look back and remember why I stopped or started some behavior. If someone pokes me and wants to discuss politics or religion, I root myself in first defining terms and clarifying language and intent. 20 minutes spent explaining to me all the cool things that will happen to my soul when I die is dramatically wasted. So is trying to rationalize which President is most responsible for “how shitty things have gotten around here.”

Do you have a form and a habit? Are you comfortable just ignoring all the confrontation altogether? At the very least, because this can be done silently and secretly, can you recognize how quickly something goes from pivoting around a subject to traveling so far away you forgot why you're even playing? If you can, so many conversations get immediately boring. So many fights dissolve because you'll find no reason to care. Not because you don't care about the topic, but because you don't want to waste time pretending like you don't with such banal squabbling.

A calm disposition is often a learned one. It's a conscious decision not to hit people and yell. Extend that consciousness onto how and why you talk. Figure out why you're provoked to act one way over another. I think then you'll start to feel like you have a place in the discussion and aren't just walking headlong into the dizzying array of worthless opinions. My hope is that it would also give you the confidence to speak about what's on your mind as well. Playing it safe is not the same as playing it smart.

[388] The Future Is Now

The future is in collaboration. Like, I goddamn love HitRecord and if I was gay I'd give Joseph Gordon Levitt a firm pat on the back. With my dick.

I've been tasked, which is to say, I've given myself the task, of laying out a horrendously presumptive proclamation about what the little engine that could would look like under my vision. This means, I'm to predict the future and carry on as if the plethora of “OH FUCK THIS IS HORRIBLE SHIT, SHIT” can translate into something profitable and worthwhile no matter how bad shit gets.

So drunk-ish outline it is!

Food. I think with the massively horrible direction we're going when it comes to the destruction of arable land and ability to stay outside, we'll need to go back to our roots and have structures for vertical gardening that are completely independent of big box stores. Let alone the problems of dying bees, genetically modified (maybe for the better?) crops, or super weeds and bugs that result from out current push to commoditize.

This means, I want an extremely cheap, easily assembled greenhouse with the knowledge/direction to teach the stupidest poor cousin fuck next door neighbor how to feed themselves. See, I have to couple my hatred with respect for the individual, no matter how inbred.

Transportation is next! Holy fuck are you excited, I mean, you saw the exclamation. I think we should stop treating getting from one place to the next as a commodity. Let me get some Tesla buses that can operate on the cheap and cart drunk fucks home or people to and from their fleeting jobs. This is likely only profitable from the perspective of subsidies in the short term, but after the expense of the bus/battery, you treat it like the subway. Pay a bit, we get your ass where it needs to be.

Arts and entertainment! You thought I was a simpleton fool and cynic! You fucks!

One of the earliest ideas I ever wanted to come true was a music center where you could learn to be a world-class musician for simply being a night owl. A woodwind brasswind with customers. When the world gets automated and there's literally nothing left for you to do, the best we can hope for is higher and higher peaks of artistic achievement. I want to make a place and space that allows for the magic of creativity and beauty to shine even when I barely believe in such highly subjective and connotatively packed words.

So that's 3? The coffee! I made 100 bucks in 4 hours. There will always be room to exploit a little extra cash when people are lazy. On hold doesn't mean I created something that's total shit or can't work. And I can put a van out in less than a week in any city. That's just a matter of spending cash and a little trial and error. My engine of service to investment is easily foreseen even in my slack-ass effort so far.

And last, but not least, fuck cliches, in active pithy involvement with apps and your environment!. What the hell do I mean?! Sooner than later your phone will be an interface with the real world. You won't have to open an app to tell you the bread you buy kills kittens. You'll just be informed conveniently from whatever the fuck you're wearing. This means, to the degree that you can gain a consumer's trust in how those metrics of reliability are formulated, you can make money! So, LCA (look it up you lazy bugger) your way to fame on the future road to fame! Proof reading doesn't make that sentence any more sensible!

But this is the drunk version. I need to go fetch ever-changing numbers. And, the best part, literally everything I say can be total bullshit and I'll still make money to invest and play with because there's always stupid ways to make money! Man this life thing is easy.

[387] Put Your Dukes Up

Why do we fight?

Immediately there are easy answers. To defend yourself from harm. All-consuming fear that makes you lash out uncontrollably. Insecure conditions leading to competition for resources. At the basic animal level, the picture is pretty clear. We're still programmed to “win or die.”

I suppose I'm more intrigued by the more trivial realm. We battle with ideas. We don't all get an hour-long spot with a moderator, and often there reaches a level of emotional investment that the more I contemplate it, the more I wonder why it's there.

Perhaps I'm just losing a sense of self. The more I learn, almost in fact with each thing I learn, I become more and more aware of how many branches led up to that thing. It's easy to simply theorize, “well of course everything is connected.” The picture becomes eerily clearer though with each new puzzle piece. Significant parts of you are tales of history and politics you find yourself intimately familiar with.

I suppose you have to have a charge. Something that is tied to a need maybe. If you don't express your idea, you'll go through very real emotional pain. You'll suffer depression or anxiety. Your body now physically reacting and making you push. You're not just convinced something is true, you think that the implications are so big they have a direct line to your well-being. Your fight is to keep something from dying.

There's a pattern in debates. Whether I'm watching a philosopher and linguist meddle over the usage of the word “creativity” or two girls fight about whether there should be feminists, almost immediately the same things happen. Semantics. You're rarely even in that much opposition to anyone. If 20 minutes of an hour debate is devoted to “well when I say cunt bag I really mean raving lunatic,” you know, to assuage fears of appearing sexist or something, I feel the goal of the dialogue wasn't clear from the onset.

You've not only got the wordplay at the level of the topic, but you've got the political game of what you can get away with characterizing the other person as. Can you show them to be grossly misinformed, yet make it sting like you've called them an asshole? Probably not, but every other explanation you're gonna try. And if you like your combatant, or he's also a high minded intellectual who's barely present during the proceedings, you'll direct the volleys towards their weakest ideas or worst representatives of their camp.

It appears as if the real winner, every time, is the one who can get away with explaining their position whilst at the same time showing, either through body language or an inability to focus on whatever the main point was, that they're not really that emotionally invested. The facts speak for themselves as translated through their disposition. In the right crowd, skilled orators don't even need to be right.

It's why I sort of got bored with arguing. I think there needs to be a kind of shorthand impersonal form you should fill out before you ever get started. A clearly stated goal, a mutual acceptance of the question to be debated, and a sorting program to quickly skip past the built in stumbling points.

When you learn we're having the same religious “debates,” in practically the same words, that started thousands of years ago, it gets immediately boring. You know it's smarter to take up another method if you feel the compulsion to show someone they're wrong. But again, what's in it for you? Why does it initially stress you out? Why does it come packaged emotionally charged first, then you get too used to it, perhaps to the point of eventual complacency?

I suppose for me, it boils down to a perceived importance of ideas as they pertain to well-being. I argued religion because I saw religious friends justifying an abusive relationship of someone I cared about. I learned everything I could because I tied myself up in a crusade centered around her. These religious lies and happy-faced justifications had dramatic and inexcusable consequences. I couldn't “act” in a sense and like kick his ass or something, so I armed myself with knowledge to try and pull back the veil.

When I removed myself from that situation, the biggest fight I had in years involved business partners and assumptions. I was defending my hundred miles an hour thoughts about what I could achieve, and no one was going to take it from me. My partner at the time seemed motivated to undermine the foundation we built for it. This I arguably saw coming, it's detailed in a string of blogs somewhere, but I don't really yell, so it got bigger than I was anticipating.

Then other than getting attacked by the dooshy gay kid while being super drunk or the inevitable lover's quarrel, I retain my general low-key style. For anyone who's seen me drunk and engaging with something I find perplexing, I stress that asking a lot of pointed questions I don't equate with fighting. Which, it occurs to me, I've sort of lost the drive. Until two nights ago when Malibu's Most Wanted decided to sucker punch me at random, I wouldn't have thought you'd survive attacking me. I was more concerned with picking up my glasses.

It's not that I don't care, it's that I don't feel I have the right tools. I use words and videos and books. I simply want to aggregate and sort. But I don't have the people who operate like that. Or, I haven't incentivized them correctly is the more explicit statement. Combine this with perhaps too much security? Malibu got 3 shots to the head, but I certainly wasn't on my way to the pavement. I know I'm not made of glass and I know what I'm capable of.

I know leading by example is best. I know plugging people into an environment churns out the most immediate results. I know there's a way to engage with information that makes it proactive and useful and not a semantic nightmare. And apparently I know that none of that matters right now. That's why I'm not really fighting.