[430] Urban Sprawl

Do you ever just drive around neighborhoods?

I’m from Northwest Indiana. The region. Chicago if you know nothing about the United States. Gary if you live far enough away from the Midwest to use the term “flyover state.” I’m told the population is around 1.5 million. This means there are a lot of neighborhoods. There’s just “a lot” in general. And after the last few hours spent driving around, I can’t escape the feeling of it meaning “a lot of nothing.”

If you’ve followed me long enough you know I have a strong sense of self. Call it an “ego” for lack of a better word. In a sea of at least 1.5 million people, I managed to conceive of myself as “better” than what I came from and have lived within for most of my life. I constantly ask why. I start to think you can only do so when you have so many examples to reflect on and interact with. It’s when you attempt to seat yourself in the “honors classes” of everyday activities which of course I had to take.

People I think generally and genuinely mistake my “ego,” endlessly in quotes, for something naïve. I think it’s just the perpetual result of trying to answer questions. And I don’t just mean hearing “an answer” to something. I mean pulling out the meat to the hopeless, but finally not contrived, answer.

Why are you working so hard? “To take care of my family.” Bullshit answer. Taking care of your family comes with the territory. You’re working so hard because you haven’t connected the dots to how people in power fuck you, and you don’t genuinely believe you can do anything but. Why do you want that car? “It’s nice, stylish, and I’ve dreamed about it since I was a kid.” Bullshit. Besides wanting to show off, part of your emotional well being has been transferred into what you can consume. If you don’t get that car, you may get irreconcilably depressed and angry.

Cars accompany every house in every neighborhood. One striking thing that I’ve never been good at is telling them apart. For a solid 15 years there was “car,” “truck,” “van,” as my categories. I think a Corvette was the first thing that stood out to me. I tend to shy away from asking people why they want things, but I never felt myself inclined toward one over the other. When I could drive, I wanted to get from point A to B. I was given the option to pick a car, ended up with a Mini Cooper mostly because it was in the magazine on the table and my dad, who offered to buy it, suggested it first.

I’m still confused as to what makes people pick things. Vans for kids I guess. Trucks for workers. Priuses for people who want to be politely pretentious but don’t read enough. “Stuff,” in and of itself, hasn’t ever really meant anything to me. It needs to have a purpose, an endgame. I collected Pokemon cards not because kids and monsters, but because my dad told me a story of beer cans he collected that would have been worth thousands had my grandpa not thrown them away. They’re still pristine, holographics double cased, in my closet. Same reason I bought a lot of Marvel Legends around the first Spiderman movie.

The first time I wanted a car was when Tesla hit the scene. You know why? It’s objectively the best, safest, and makes the most sense as far as sustainability. I just want the best. It’s “obvious” why “anyone” should want it. I don’t care about the packaging, the pitch, or what you think about it. I’ve seen one get hit at 70+ miles an hour and I think the car started laughing. For someone who’s flirted with semis and gone over the side of a mountain, that’s my car. Do you really want less for yourself?

“Little boxes made of ticky tacky.”

My area is heavy. You get your mortgage. You get your car. Whether you live in the area increasingly marked by cigarillo wrappers in the yard or next to the gated community as far back into rich white-ville as Broadway can get, you’re parked next to your neighbors. There’s a code of conduct. You’re not getting noisy. You’re not topping out the speed on your expensive car. You’re shopping at the same mall, hitting the same chain restaurants, and shoveling the same shit snow.

We used to drive around at 3 or 4 in the morning when the lights were off in all but a couple houses. Go around 7 or 8 and you’ll see, rich or poor, you’re all sitting around your TVs watching the same things on your 55 to 70 inches. Whether you spend 80 hours a week in your office-esc job to afford your faux-rich house or have to spend all day iron working like my dad, you seemingly aspire to the same things described by however you choose to interpret this area. I’ve never wanted to travel more, and I’ve never really cared to travel until tonight. And I say that in the face of my friends who’ve traveled and haven’t found anything “more” in other countries than I seem to find now. Which, by itself, just seems like traveling isn’t the answer.

I genuinely want to know “why” all the time. I want to know why you picked that watch. I want to know how you consider your place in your job. Obviously, my closest friends are the ones who own their shit circumstances and describe their shit circumstances in shit terms first. We all have dreams. I don’t need another “hustle until I make it” bullshit well-wishing wide eyed fuck all story. Because, if one of the most frequent responses I get to when I write about you or “argue” with myself is “that’s fair,” the consequences of my reasoning only seem to extend as far as me.

My favorite shirt isn’t because I look good in dark colors, it’s because it doesn’t show sweat stains. I didn’t know I could have a favorite shirt until it was gifted to me. I torrent because it’s fast and convenient for watching 60 different shows on different networks from different countries. Fuck Comcast, but my actual “why” reason boils down to utility and poverty. Things I can’t afford, I don’t buy. Duh. I don’t work normal jobs because I feel a spiritual suicide in perpetuating, deliberately, the killing of my time, consumerism, and (at least at Steak n Shake and the liquor store) alcoholism and clogged arteries via filthily prepared food. I feel it or there's utility. And I ask about what you feel. You usually don’t really answer.

And people don’t want to believe they sort themselves. They don’t want to believe they fell for it. “I’ll get rich and do better than my parents!” “I’ll get the nice house, car, and tv!” “One day I’ll save for my grand vacation!” But you do it in a way prescribed for you. The plan has been marketed. I knowyou don’t ask yourself what you really want because you want what every single house, big or small, wants in every neighborhood I’ve driven through over the years. At least, that’s what 1.5 million people have persuaded me I don’t, specifically, really want.

I’m at home talking. I’m at home experimenting. I’m at home drunk with people who aren’t going to resent me for being able to throw the party. I want “truth,” even and especially when it’s fleeting. I want “freedom” even if it’s just to be one of the only two people spending weeks at a time walking and driving around every night contemplating and discussing. (At least, we haven't bumped into you) I want “sense” even if it only has to extend so far as to get everyone fed and we refrain from blowing shit up first, maybe protecting the planet could follow. I like to indulge. I like expensive shit. But I love genuine work. I love honesty leading to accountability. I love possible explanations over excuses. And I don’t even believe in love.

We have our whole identities wrapped up in areas just like mine. We become what we’re obligated to. You pick, or are forced into, a shitty job; you’re now described by your shitty job. You get that abusive boyfriend, now you’re “just another battered wife.” Single mom? You can be scared or relieved by how many people have empathized with the “suffocate it in its crib” thought. Educated and in debt? Old and losing your grip? So much of your world becomes the conditions imposed on you instead of the choices you’ve freely obligated yourself towards. That’s class warfare. That’s why the language at the bottom doesn’t match with the idealized retooling from the top.

Stop trying. Pull out. Come hang out with me and do a drug trial. In 2 days I’m going to start a 3 week stay for $5900. What if I had 5 friends do something similar and we started a fund to invest and then structured our lives to live off the dividends? 30K in 3 weeks isn’t a bad start. Can you honestly assess yourself as a reliable dreamer who understands the utility of contracts between strangers? That’s all we’d really need to get started. You know what I can do with that money alone? Sit on it. You know what I’d like to do? Perform a million little experiments and business ideas. I’d like to free up your time so I could spend it with my friends instead of in my basement.

But I live in a fantasy world. I wander the streets of your homes. My complaints aren’t even first world, they’re at the hippocampus level. My whole life has been trying to exceed, or understand, or make the best of, or “get to the end” NOW. Never fear, something always follows. And it’s better than whatever “thing” was acquired in service to the moment. I want so much of the world that death feels like a sweet release. What’s everyone else waiting for? 

[429] Time To Kill

I don't know where it came from, but I've always been semi-obsessed with time.

Take second grade. We had transparent problem sheets in different colored bins with ten each lined up against the wall. Every time you filled one out correctly, you got a dollar. The same reward applied for every time you could recite a larger and larger set of state capitals. I think I got them all done the first month. Or maybe that one is easy to blame on money.

So how about 4th grade. We had timed 100 question math quizzes. You started with addition and moved your way up to mixed adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing. 9 times out of 10 I was the first one done. These had nothing to do with our grade, we got nothing for them, but I was first and I didn't even imagine we were playing in the same league.

I felt powerful as a child. I had a consistent positive feedback loop of success on a metric that everyone had to be judged by. In 5th grade, if my teacher decided to write the day's lesson plan on the board, I would complete it before the bell for first period rang. It's like something was constantly provoking me. If I could do it now, why the hell not? What's next? What's really taking you so long?

I had a number of people tell me it had to do with being “smart.” I just got things in a way the other kids didn't. But, I call bullshit. There were definitely other kids who “got it” like I did, they just weren't obnoxious. The difference isn't one of capacity, it's one of positive anxiety. I wielded a resource that, I probably didn't consciously appreciate to the full extent then, that left an impression on me and peoples' perception of me.

While it's not bursting with the youthful exuberance of the past, I still have that sense. If I can do it now, I've never felt something was stopping me. It's how you read 12 books in a week. It's how you beat video games on their hardest settings in a couple of days. It's how you go from having zero money and zero real idea of what you're doing and open a coffee shop in 6 months, 3 if you condense how long it takes other people to answer emails and do their jobs.

I consider time a weapon. Much as you can defend yourself with a sharp blade, if you use it unwisely you might chop your leg off. When you have time, you get the opportunity to observe, think, and do more. The time I saved, or attempted to save, in elementary school allowed me to develop a habit for reading. I was able to do extra tasks around the school or for the teachers and earn more “starbucks,” our in class currency, to buy things on field days. The quicker I read the entire book list in 7th grade meant I could get my 8th grade required reading done a year in advance. This switches when you get to college of course as drinking takes precedent or high school when jaded loses all meaning, but the sword is always holstered.

I'm concerned because what was taken for granted as positive anxiety to motivate me to move and change and accomplish is turning into something darker than I ever cared to experience. I kicked it back into high gear with business starting. What they don't tell you about is so drastically more important than high fives and well-wishing, or often random arbitrary tales of caution.

For one thing, they don't tell you that nobody operates like you. In school, it's a one man show. It's your grades. I might have to wait for the teacher to put the assignment on the board, but as far as what's expected of me and when I can consider it done and done well, the last word or period wraps it up. The story changes as you load more people in your boat. Secondly, they don't tell you that nobody cares about you. As “adults,” you're expected to take every punch or shut up and do something else. It's your responsibility regardless. You made a choice! after all. And apparently there was a meeting where we all chose to do nothing well, and do it to our heart's discontent. But mostly, nobody clues you into the searing hatred bubbling just underneath the surface about what you're doing or how you're doing it. They hate that you're doing what you want. They hate that you're happy about it.

When I opened my business, I was leaning on a 40 year old who had to move back in with his parents architect for my kiosk plans. His first concern was not getting back to me in a timely manner. I was “negotiating” a contract with a 50 year old crotchety mall middle manager. Nothing about whether or not I ended up getting in the mall was going to influence her paycheck. I didn't “convince” or “ask” to be promoted when I was running through theaters, I expected it, and they knew I expected it. I left the managers at Target with no real choice but to give me the power to fuck up your credit because I was cutting into their tasks. The assistant librarian was pissed off at me for stating I should just move on to the 8th grade books.

Now, I'm old enough to not take it personal. But increasingly, I'm losing even the presumption of empathy. I phrase it in a way of having so much time to sit and watch or learn and experiment, that I've all but obliterated my capacity to even consider people “human.” There is no “it gets better” moment. I don't want you to think I'm overstating this. I've been able to watch in school, business, and general interpersonal relationships how low the bar sits with my telescope from the moon, but you're the aliens.

I want to pick back up the weapon analogy. Give it to a religious zealot. They swing it around slicing and dicing you with bible quotes if you're lucky, lobbing off your head if you're not. Ideologues wire their swords to explode on poor people. The more time they spend doing so, the more rehearsed, the more comfortable it feels and that kind of terrorism becomes normalized. Wield the sword in service to any kind of conditional power. I'm at the behest of the people who have a skill I don't or own a spot I want to reside on. Am I irresponsible with my time for attempting to engage with them? Was I simply sold a bill of goods about what to expect from them? Are they just in a battle I was never meant to join?

The poor level of conversation in society has been one of my poorly beaten dead horses. I walk the halls of this study center and I've encountered one conversation that wasn't related to violence, religion, or pop culture. Practice makes permanent, and the more you recite your superficial understanding or double down on provoking or “being real” towards the violence, one day you'll wake up at 50 with the emotional maturity of a 10 year old. I can't count how many allusions to prison have been made, arguments with spouses over the phone, or general gossip that, at some level is inevitable when you're living with 60 people in a hallway for 2 weeks, but is borderline impressive when I can see it winning against high school.

Meanwhile I'm over here planning to call every insurance company in the country, every wedding planner in the state, and attempting to suss out how my relationship to time has molded me since childhood to completely alienate myself from the gen-pop, and what that means in relation to expectations and power. Aren't I supposed to feel like proud or something after that sentence? Isn't there supposed to be an emotional reward for carrying pretense into everything you do?

I asked my friend how he conceived of power.

He said, “For me to exert power, typically means exerting influence into the decision making of another.”

I specifically asked him because he's one of the 2 believers I know who will speak honestly when they come up against the limitations of their thought process. That is, he never disagrees with me “because.”

What bugs me about this answer is that, for me, it's extremely weak. Decision making, as far as I've been able to observe, is extremely incidental for most people. They weren't born a particular sports fan, but every decision to buy memorabilia, tickets, or watch “the big game” is one pebble into the stream perhaps your parents started pouring for you, a brand manager before them. If I tell you “don't think about elephants,” the fact that you do has nothing to do with my exertion. Or, I don't feel exerted.

For me, power is fluid. It flows in the same way time does. Until you're paying attention, you're getting battered around by an irresponsibly wielded weapon. My thought then is, perhaps my contrarian personality influenced why I always needed to be on my time. The teacher was wrong in thinking I needed all day, my parents were wrong in thinking I needed that kind of school, and my managers were wrong about the reach of their authority. I'd endlessly listen to friends who were wrong about the capacity of their “love,” the reach of their “passions,” or the consequences of their “drama.” The world outside my head has never made an emotionally compelling appeal that didn't start from an irrational provocation or angry place. It's never made sense. I lightened up a bit after I started drinking and took shrooms or acid a couple times, but make no mistake, people made sure to fuck the fun out of those too!

I'm worried about what I'll turn into, more than anything specific that I could do, once any sense of compassion is gone. If I estimate correctly, usually when I write an in depth blog about how the tide is changing in my head, it's not even 4 months later I'm living out the consequences of the switch. You hear about how hard people are struggling or how the powers that be are killing us. Not once have I thought a wish and a prayer could fix anything. Not once have I not conceived of at least 10 questions that could be asked and sought after about whatever problem. I've never been confused about who to blame or why. A handful of warmongers and billionaires aren't supposed to placate the response of 300 million people; unless those people are wagging their swords like they wag their dicks.

And until recently, not once have I wanted to fall in line with the rest of the walking dead. Which would only be to preserve the last kernel of respect I can feel slipping. Don't be fooled. It's easy for me to hate. I can feel myself loosen up at the thought of going back to treating people like cattle. I'm not a martyr and don't care to claim the stress of ignorant hope and beliefs. If I feel like my whole life has been molded by being incidentally fucked by the people around me very independent of my ability to try, learn or care...what happens when I take my moon-shooting habit and turn it against you? I've argued indifference as the worst position you can have about people. At least I'd maintain reasons for my behavior. The passion to destroy is still a creative passion. I'd just make people what they try to make me. Incidental.

I've been fleeing this mode of thought for so long. Maybe it's time to accept and fight.

[428] Do Or Do Not

I think there's an important distinction between types of people that isn't often talked about. When attempts are made to talk about it we tend to regard people as “optimists” who contrast with the “pessimists.” I think the distinction has less to do with your positive or negative outlook on life. I think the distinction lies in how you are socialized to think about your circumstances. That is, it's the difference between people who “want to live” and those who are “waiting to die.”

I get hung up on old movies, shows, and documentaries about bands and political theater. You get the impression that there is a genuine underlying cultural sensibility and understanding. Regardless of what you can say about misogynistic and civil rights failures, people seemed to “get it” in a way that I absolutely cannot find today. This is surely part media bias and rose colored glasses, but at the same time, I think it's the same reason I tend to get along with older people in general if not old women in particular.

Old women seemed to be socialized to “take care of the family.” A very life affirming, always on the go, navigate a million moving parts including your children's needs, husband's emotional distance, and whatever the neighborhood gossip or family secrets. Men were just expected to work and provide. Being tired at the end of the day and teaching a few life skills was tantamount to good parenting. While I was antiquing the other day, a couple of older women lamented that you can't just get into a fight now-a-days without getting sued or put in jail and, no exaggeration said, “in my day things were different.”

It's often talked about “the simpler times.” When what you knew you knew and what you didn't you didn't. Information wasn't being uploaded to the cloud to be checked and debated endlessly every minute. You didn't have a million TV channels and competing sources for your attention like the 1000 people you follow on twitter or the hundreds of friends and their meme pictures and statuses. I genuinely think from a psychological standpoint, this was a better circumstance than what we have today.

I think this because I consider myself an educated person without a fucking clue as to what I should be doing. I spend so much time “doing everything” and absolutely none of it has felt like the “right” thing to do in anything but philosophical or health terms. That is, I don't want to be a wage slave if I don't have to, and I respect my time to a greater degree than my money. I feel a genuine sense of responsibility towards the world because I chose to adopt a stake in it. How I got to a point of adopting that stake is a long and complicated picture that I don't think the modern era makes clear.

Today, if you can even define “friend,” when you don't like them you click an "x" and add a new one. We'll have more jobs by the time we're 25 than our parents had their entire lives. What does that do for your conception of a relationship? A relationship to your job, your town, neighbors, coworkers, or how you conceive of your work? I used to think the words “union” and “collective bargaining” went hand in hand, but with union membership at like...7? 8? percent, and if you poll people, you'd think 1900-1935ish didn't exist in this country. We've destroyed respect for your effort, time, and health.

I was listening to a Jack White song where he says something like “we're not entitled to a single damn thing.” If that's true, does that mean we don't owe anybody anything? Because surely someone is entitled to my basic respect for their being. Perhaps you only get the idea of entitlement when you subscribe to wanting to be alive in the first place. But what is it to entitle something? You are held in trust. You should be living up to said title or taking responsibility for claiming ownership of something. Do we just overwhelmingly abdicate responsibility and therefore feel like we don't deserve things?

I've been wanting to shit on myself for trying. And I feel like that has way more to do with the overall culture than with me. It's that no matter what you're doing, you're being punished. I got the degree, for an exorbitant amount of money. I'll let you talk to my fellow graduate and friend what it feels like to apply for 100+ jobs, in the same field, and get nothing for it because I skipped that headache and went for opening my own business. There again, punished for not being able to afford a lawyer with better advice, or a lawyer to sue when you were lied to and sunk costs, also by “the terrorists,” often mislabeled as Islamic extremists, who gouge you on insurance, rent, and of any scraps of self-respect you might have left. You're certainly being punished in a minimum wage anything. And now, I'm finding a way to punish myself in the stress of trying to rely on my blood pressure and drug studies to even begin something resembling savings or investment.

And I'm still supposed to remember that by not being in debt and having my bills paid for a year, I'm doing better than nearly everyone on the planet. At such point I'm supposed to what? Bend the knee and thank the gods? It isn't about me.

It's concordantly hard to deal with having, barely, examples of people who “represent me” in the public eye. As far as the political realm there's maybe 4; Warren, Sanders, the Seattle Green chick, and Nader. With celebrities, Michael Moore on a good day and I suppose Russell Brand is a little batty, but he speaks true shit and gets his hands dirty.(edit 2024. Oh, how people change.) Writers like Naomi Klein, Chomsky, Hedges (most of the time), and Taibbi. I can give as much shit about Bill Maher as your fundie uncle, but when he's lucid I can nod along. Mostly, I prefer Jon Stewart or Colbert, and increasingly Oliver if we have to leave real reporting up to comedians. Thankfully, albeit very recently, Vice's HBO show is filling such a massive void their facebook editorials should feel ashamed of sharing the same name.

But each name or organization I could point to feels like a pebble. They belong to the old women, and me, who have the time to read their books and “educated liberals” who can laugh more than cry about what's being reported. It's for the people who can afford HBO or aren't so baffled by technology they can figure out torrenting is easier than Yahoo Mail.

My world feels so small. It's why when I like my friends, I really like my friends, drunk “fuck everything” blogs aside. It's why I'm really sad when one of them gives up or becomes too busy or writes off my genuine concern as “just what Nick P. does or thinks.” I'm pushing a full stop when it comes to existential exploration and the exhaustion that comes with putting yourself out there so often to ill or non-defined ends. I don't want to be Nader publishing a book about all my letters that didn't get answered and call that not giving up.

Literally all I can do is wait and learn more. But even if I figure out something new to try, I feel like I'm going to be doing it alone, and setting myself up for a new punishment. Still none of those personal wins or promises to yourself are gonna matter. If I don't consider it about me, I can't endorse you making it about you. But, I want to choose life. That includes how our culture helps or hurts, even and especially for those who feel like they're stuck waiting around to die.

[427] And I Just Can't Hide It

I'm too excited to sleep.

I shit on the word passionate. It's a cover up word meant to obscure details. When I'm in the heat of moments where, try as I might, I'm absolutely not falling asleep until I'm done writing, it has nothing to do with my “passion.”

I'm an idea man. I'm a million questions. In the course of a day I have 10 to 15 things accidentally I'd like to put together or have already laid out plans to hit the ground running if I had the cash. Whether it's further exploring real estate or renting, kick starting the coffee, exploring green technology and living, food, recycling, teaching, middle-manning any number of tasks from business start-up step by steps to initiating co-operative and actual owner based businesses, it's all doable, it's all budget-able, and the only way I can get excited is after looking up the numbers.

I lamented earlier today the lonely world of the entrepreneur. It's really hard to explain to someone how much you learn and how little you actually fucked up when they look at your ventures. Other entrepreneurs get it. They've gotten lied to, had to sign a contract, had to pay the insurance, had to meet a deadline, had to get and stay open at all costs so as not to fuck themselves for 5 years instead of a few months. There's sometimes no bigger charge than talking to someone who truly empathizes with the real world fuckery that you experience for actually trying.

I sat through another pyramid scheme presentation today. A middle-man insurance company that wants to pretend to be your investment broker. They want to attract young motivated people to work for them, and keep played “expertise” under thumb to keep funneling their effort up the chain. The guy at one point even explicitly said “some people wanna call it a pyramid, I call it keeping on good earners.” He pulled numbers out of his ass about what you can earn by investing and meeting unrealistic market conditions. He assured you you'd be in on the “rich people funds” that “previously only allowed 250K and above earners.” He's got the secret, you know, so that you can piggy back...so long as you pay him monthly for it and ignore the finer points of a complicated investment portfolio, or the general scam of insurance. And don't you dare call him a middleman.

But I get excited. I've sat through so many presentations like his because I was gunning for my own business at sixteen. I already know the bullshit of Amway-esc structures whether they hock energy drinks, “healthy” smoothies, knives, exploitative brokerage structures, or yes, even and especially your life insurance and investment scam. I can anticipate his presentation, pick apart his language, ask the appropriate questions and then, certainly feel dead inside that this person preys on ignorant peoples' pensions and savings (what's left of them), but endlessly excited that I learned how fucked up the philosophy he's selling is 10 years ago. I never interject unless they fuck up and ask me a question though.

I'm excited that I have the opportunity to even get rejected from drug studies and not shit myself because my rent's paid for the next year and a half. I can explore, annoyed, but not fucked. I'm excited that I'm looking for a few couple thousand dollar acres of land here and there; I could start the path to build something on it personally from scratch for cheap. I'm excited I already know personally people who do all the paper pushing behind the city council desks in Bloomington. If I put a plan together, they'll ask a few questions and almost assuredly sign off on whatever it is I want to do. I love the idea of one day celebrating so hard I hurt and throw myself into something because I lived the moment over and over in my head for years until it finally came true. And it came true because I counted, I tried, I learned so goddamn much that even the things I fucked up you're hard pressed to really blame me for considering the scale or scope of what was accounted for.

I get these moments from time to time. When I get on the cusps. When I can watch the bank account grow. When I've shifted gears into a new line of thinking and start to see the consequences manifest. This is my lifeblood. This is why I bitch and bitch and bitch and bitch and it never matters. I'm not bitching in “my life sucks” terms. I'm bitching about what's fucked up and needs to be bitched about, and now I get another chance to show you how I can do it differently. Now I'm dreaming again. I have to be on the road in 3 hours and nothing is going to get me the ounce of sleep I need until I express how goddamn genuinely excited I am at the prospect of kicking so much ass.

And it's because I want you on board. Little differences. You want to own and explore something, I want 10 percent, or 2. It needs to be yours but I want to keep building. I'll open a hundred coffee vans that you own if it means I get a dividend that keeps me exploring. Everything about the modern system works the completely opposite way. You're an indentured servant. I don't want slaves. You need to serve yourself in serving other people, not give me complicated bullshit language that justifies exploitation.

I'm excited because I don't believe in anything. I don't hang my hat on a prayer. I don't cross my fingers. I don't hope. I don't even really care in an important philosophical sense. I just like to see things come true as I say, predict, and can shove down your ever-doubting throat. It's exciting to be right. I'm in love with getting what I want and work towards. All I do is count, read, ask questions, and wait. And this impossibly idiot proof formula brings me more joy than anything else in the world. Now let's not crash from sleep deprivation on the ride to Madison and shit all over this whole thing.