[1007] The Long Com

I want to explore what I mean when I say I want to experience “everything” by way of popular culture, TV, or more. This isn’t true, obviously, on its face. There are plenty of popular things that I have no interest in, but happen to catch because, maybe the mood is right, or I’m otherwise not focused enough to care what’s whizzing past my eyes or in the background. Over the last 5 hours, I’ve caught myself “holing out,” where I find myself falling down an infinite series of thoughts regarding actions I can take in service to this little “project” I’ve been engaging in; I’m building TV channels.

It’s another “weird” and “particular” thing that I’m doing that I can’t really discuss or share with anyone else. The closest analogues are going to be whatever Netflix cultivates for you, or your particular set of subscriptions on YouTube. Everything I’m using for my “channels” has been downloaded, renamed, shuffled about my hard drives, and been a kind of time investment that courts a confused dog head tilt. The “purpose” also feels terribly obscure until I get this contented feeling as my vision comes to life. Were I a programmer, I could probably build something to do what I’m doing by hand in a manner of moments. I’ve tried to find and pay for someone to do what I want for these channels in the past.

I’m organizing and ordering my shows to play in order and by how I conceive of them per my interest and emotional salience. Given there’s an incredible amount of TV, most of it is only going to resonate at the level of it’s structure. When an individual show sticks out, I get an opportunity to reflect on why. I’m searching for thought-provoking surprises and insight into myself. I just watched the first episodes of about 30 different shows over the last few days from I Love Lucy to the modern One Day At A Time. I went on ahead to complete One Day At A Time, as well I noticed Malcolm in the Middle stuck out to me.

Something is invariably lost in watching an older-than-you show. You can’t experience what audiences at the time did when something was “revolutionary” for its era. What you can do is gain insight into how long certain themes have been on people’s minds, and see how far we have or haven’t come in dealing with those issues. I don’t underestimate the impact of TV on its ability to mold minds, particularly with the current circus and psychosis we’ve been going through with fascism flirtation lately. I’ve listened to a number of Trump biographers and historians who are convinced without his TV shows, he never would have been president.

What resonates with me about any particular show? Is it familiar? Is it personal? I vibe with Bernie Mac and Malcolm because it feels more “real” than most shows. Ms. Pat is a modern analogue. One Day At A Time and pretty much every Norman Lear show aimed to have real discussions where a lot of artifice and cheese would otherwise dominate. We all want to bask in the glory of some lie or another, even if it’s that our preferred TV show is more or less “real” than the drama we experience in actual life. You don’t really find a tension-ridden, yet still happy and respectful conversation with fascists, no matter what the last episode of One Day At A Time suggests. It, like all TV, leaves you with a dream. They suggest you can always fade to black with an open-ended imagination and “perfect family” in tact without feeling the consequences of things going wrong or staying neglected.

Perhaps that speaks to my interest in TV broadly. The more debased and simple our media, the more we can surmise that the population lusting for it is basic and simple-minded. I can’t really stomach most of reality TV, and haven’t been able to since I was a child. My mother was almost obsessed with Anna Nicole-Smith. She liked 90210. She’s an absolute lunatic pushing 60, and was emotionally immature and abusive to me growing up. Does “dumb” TV “cause” that? Of course not. Could I design a test with better-than-average predictive capacity that assessed your TV watching habits and the health of your relationships? That’s something much further down my rabbit hole, but it’s not hard for me to imagine.

For a good portion of my life, I thought I only watched “good” things. You know, the preferences of a young boy with goofy comedies and action movies with the biggest stars. Subtitles? Miss me with that. Slow, conversational, or romantic things? Boring. You get older, and you realize more and more not just the appeal, but what each “weird” or “different” or “bad” movie is attempting to speak to. You find yourself drawn to rom-coms? Maybe there’s an immense loneliness. Or maybe there’s an intense childhood naivety that’s positively inflamed with each stoked memory of the beautiful faces tacked to the first time you saw them. Was your first crush Anna Chlumsky from My Girl, or one of Kevin’s girlfriends from The Wonder Years, or Topanga? Or were you not a straight white guy like me? [2022 gotta qualify everything!]

Now, I watch TV from an analysis and almost researching place. If I have no interest in The Flash, or the vast majority of what DC has ever produced, I want to figure out the qualitative difference for me and the culture at large why I’ll put up with the weaknesses and cringe moments of Agents of S.H.I.E.LD. but struggle, if not almost get angry, at any isolated 10 seconds of an Arrow or CW show broadly. A line from Bill Maher recently was about not forgetting, “We’re entertainers, and what we create needs to be entertaining,” (not a direct quote.) Your brain has been worked on a great deal to be persuaded that a certain style, format, word choice, and subject matter is entertaining. One way you can observe that is by watching TV that all “fits” in its genre or style across time. The Black family, Latino family, Asian family, white families, rich people, poor people, working-class people, gays, country folk, city folk, and even dinosaurs and aliens all speak the same language!

You get a Larry Sanders who breaks the 4^th wall and then you get to ask if it’s a case study in subversion or a meta-subversion of the impetus to think for yourself and individuate once more. Is any real insight or success built from an individuated voice? Is it just the dawning of familiar clothes and walking down familiar streets reminding us all that we’ve been here before, will be here again, and don’t need to worry about ever moving or changing into something new or unfamiliar?

There are “individual” voices. People stick out from the baseline, and they get famous or infamous. I’m a fucking individual, whether I can chuckle at an array of sitcoms or not, and whether I occupy a dozen cliché boxes about men or otherwise. I think it’s often read into a certain kind of dignity and obligation when one invokes the “individual.” Individuals are supposed to be “aware” and “real” and it’s the individual who will recycle and sacrifice their comfort or benefits of joining the herd to stand for a beleaguered minority opinion. Being an individual has no inherent dignity in and of itself. See: Kanye West.

Marc Maron, Al Jackson, Bert Kreisher, Kyle Kinane, Jessica Kirson, and others are individuals who have provided me pain-inducing laughter. Are they not popular or good at what they do by tapping into universally-relatable themes? Are they not mining the stories from their lives and shaping them around comedic timing and language? I barely, if ever, remember what any given comedian was actually talking about, no matter how much they’ve made me laugh. I’m immersed in how they’re telling it. I notice the difference in how Bert Kreisher tells a story from the first time I heard it, to the 100^th time he has to perform it, and how it does or doesn’t make me feel each time I hear it.

We know internally that a certain pacing, structure, predictability, and familiarity sell. It’s why we buy tickets and subscribe. It’s why we find ourselves perpetually frustrated when “I thought!...” doesn’t match up with reality. Our thoughts are continually subverted by different narrative structures ever-aligned with what’s most entertaining. You get generational trauma from habituated denial and abuses going unaccounted for. You get generational stupidity from the habitual subversion of any accountable and meaningful engagement with the information patternizing your mind.

I’ve drifted a bit away from the exploration of the hole I find myself in. What does it serve me to develop a “deeper” and “more comprehensive” opinion of media across ages? Why occupy my “idle” time with The Golden Girls and not another phone call looking for a referral for my new business? It’s not an either/or and is a different class of ways to engage my time, but another way of phrasing it might be, aren’t there considerably more useful ways to exercise my time? Doesn’t my business mean more to me than seeing what generic caricatures are arguing about?

I’m someone who recognizes how little interest he has in TV the moment there’s anyone to do something actually real with. What I seem to discover over most minutes of most days is that those opportunities don’t exist that often for me. What’s “actually real” mean? Exchange with other conscious entities. Whether it’s conversation, dinner, traveling, or vibing to the same tunes. When you don’t have that, or you don’t recognize the quality of it, I think the TV characters take on a new perverse kind of meaning. They are where you find a happy home. They are where you find a reliable and consistent setting. They are where you find trust, growth, resolution, and predictability that is otherwise never on offer unless you’re courting familiar misery.

I don’t watch TV while you’re sitting next to me unless I’m trying to introduce you to something I find compelling; unless I’m trying to share something. Why I’m sharing it is most often to see if you’ll laugh too or have something interesting to say about how the drama is portrayed. My TV-watching habit may have started as an OCD accounting for things I enjoyed when I was younger or desire to claim more of that “everythingness” I’m after, but it’s turned into this preoccupation with trying to “connect” with people in the only way on offer. I can’t pretend to care about my regional sports team to the extent people do, but the disconnect and superficiality is deadened when it comes to shows we may have both seen. It was good, wasn’t it? Like that throw to 1^st base…or that comment from the new demagogue.

I think creators need to bear in mind the contexts on both sides of their own mind. “You,” eager to breakout and make a name for yourself, and “you” modeled around your heroes and cliches of your preferred mediums. What do “I” ever want to say? I’m mostly discovering that with each new thing I write, after whatever I’ve watched pushes me to do so. I have ever-vague, until the decision needs to be made, concepts of what I value and think I/we need to survive. So I watch TV indefinitely until you call me to do literally anything else. I know, through examining my own circumstances, that you aren’t feeling like you’re doing anything particularly more or less “meaningful” than me, or your version of watching TV, so you feel like there’s nothing to exchange. Like there’s nothing to protect or insulate from the influence of our different contexts. I think this is an ongoing torture and tragedy of what it means both to us as individuals and our potential relationship. Our obligation to use our voice is indefinitely sublimated.

In fact, this blog is what I want from all of my TV watching. I want to find what moves me out or away from the task of building a 150-show channel and spending money and time looking for programmers so I can keep a running dialogue of family-friendly and network-approved ways to not-discuss things in my head. Why do I need their jokes? I’m not hearing any of yours. Why do I need their drama? They engage and resolve it in a way you don’t and seemingly never will. Why do I need their structure? We’re not building anything together. Why do I need their family? You want nothing to do with me, as such. My character needs to fit into a narrative you can stomach and summarize. That I’m still being written, and doing the writing, doesn’t work because it naturally obligates you to do the same. You might whisper that obligation to yourself in private, and then proceed to never do so, so then it’s any wonder why I’m able to conjure so much resentment and silence.

A TV character is always going to have the right thing to say. Right for them. Right for the era. Right for the family dynamic. An arc begets an inevitable conclusion. We don’t engage the consequences of an abstract “perpetual conclusion” we’re living within. This moment is that conclusion where you take responsibility and obligate yourself to a purposeful engagement with the world, other conscious beings, or not. This moment you seek inspiration, or you don’t. This moment you’re living in service to your highest ideals, or you’re at the mercy of the neglected end of so many consequences. Evidence of your awareness of this moment is in the utilization of your speech. When you don’t speak at all, you conscript us to death. Perhaps the most sincere and impactful TV producers recognize their feeble attempts to communicate this in any other manner than the familiar formats so practicality requires acquiescence.

Perhaps, whether it’s the cheesiest TV show or the most convoluted yet on-point philosophical digression, the question of what drove it to exist and the impetus to understand it for how it impacts the culture or individual remains the same. I don’t think you can understand either unless you understand both. How does your individual move and orient in the world? What is that individual over there attempting to move you or orient you around instead? Are you or they malicious, ignorant, or both? Are you or they consistent, and in what? Will you allow a de facto ignorance to let you off the hook for taking more responsibility, using your voice, or seeing clearly the mess you’re making?

I’m not going to find “me” or “my personality” in a TV show. I’m not going to join the family. I’m not going to let myself off the hook of building what I know I need or speaking to what I think is missing. I need accountable individuals speaking to how they’ve brought themselves a little bit more stability, predictability, trust, and meaning into their day. Where do you think I’ll find that?

 

[911] TV Made Me Do It

It's getting late and I'm feeling sickly after doing 50 squats on a plasma donation day, so I'm gonna talk about TV.

I've been thinking a fair amount about how and why I watch so much TV. The easy answers pertain to the mild compulsion to complete things broadly, the informal "points" that seem to accompany the binging or gaining of familiarity, and the general mild interest I maintain for anything I haven't seen yet.

I started watching TV aggressively when I found myself with considerably "too much" time on my hands after college. I had money in the bank and no worries about bills from doing the drug studies (also little to do beyond watch TV in those). None of my friends were particularly not-busy nor interested in making any more time to do things together than they did. When left listening to my internal body clock and with nowhere to be, I'm immediately up all night so there's certainly no better time nor excuse to find a screen, right?

I remember thinking to myself I only watched "good" shows. There was a certain dignity in it for me. The critically acclaimed, show-up-on-every-list type shows. I never got the inclination to watch things sped up. I just would have felt a kind of foolish or missing out if I couldn't marvel at The Wire.

It moved into a space of trying to understand the shows my parents watched and making up for the cartoons I never got to see all of growing up. I think around the time I started watching ER is when it occurred to me to start speeding things up. 331 episodes are not carried by particularly thought-provoking or plot-moving intricate details.

I broke my thought process of only watching "good" shows with Arrow. I know people who were really into that show and I still have no idea why. I wanted to be able to argue details. I wanted to mock and joke more effectively. I wanted to see if there was something there that I was perhaps blind to, but I doubted it. The same can be said for Twin Peaks which I've authored pages of arguments against all for nothing when I discovered a fan video detailing just what it is Lynch was after. But the "fight" with an ardent, if equally oblivious fan, was fun.

A lot of progress recording sites were experimented with and Trakt started getting its legs. It compiled lists of the "Top 250" movies or shows of all time. It would start telling me what was coming or what else was getting an unnecessary reboot. I could turn watching TV into a collecting exercise. If you don't know, I used to obsessively copy down animal names into a notebook, filling every inch, searching through encyclopedias, and parents' friends' books when they doubted my efforts. It feels good to click the little check mark and shame the non-believer.

I started developing an affinity for certain actors or story-tellers. I could start to discern when someone was trying for something verses working for a paycheck. I started getting a hint of feeling like an "insider," who knew little details about career paths or projects. I wasn't getting nearly as obsessed as I was about animal names, but it's gratifying to chase an instinct down a google rabbit hole and discover you were able to recognize an individual's voice or be right in who they claimed to be influenced by.

Part of me also wished to prove a point about time. There's so much of it. Over the period of years where my friends were becoming less social fun and exploratory and more hyper paranoid and focused on how to "adult," I felt like I was carrying a certain kind of flag for the existence I have now, and I wanted to prove I could still do all the little things in service to it, watch as much TV as they played video games, or significantly more, and still move towards what examples I'd prefer stood out about my pursuits and goals. I'm not butt-hurt people spend their time otherwise, I'm ashamed they don't also get at what they said was really important.

I wasn't just watching TV, or when I had to, working all day and night to get things moving here. I was getting myself immensely stressed out about the state of the world reading article after article. At one point, not unlike when I obsessed over religion and would respond to things with book-length answers, you could name a country, and I could name a damning thing or several about it. I remember an instance at Sports where I caught myself off-guard in how much I was talking about Malaysia when prompted. TV offset that to some degree.

I weened myself down from reading about the world, at least from "news" sources. More time for TV. I completed lists. I got used to the idea of subtitles, in fact preferring them for things better watched sped up. I would marathon anything explicitly recommended. Awards lists, "cult classics," whatever shoddy hipster website said was underrated or niche. I wanted to know what shows meant the most to individual countries. I wanted to know what movies or characters other characters were referencing. I wanted to see every series or project the characters from my favorite shows got involved with. You think I watched Suits for Suits? I really liked Suits, but Zoë, dammit.

I learned that my reformulated concept of "good" shows causes me to slow them down. The dialogue feels like it matters or the jokes deserve the timing. The scenes are begging to be taken in and the plot, inevitably recycled in some manner, tastes a little different in how the actor is portraying it or the line was tweaked. It's how you can get nuances in "cop show" or "angry alcoholic/smoking white guy." It's how I'm confident in agreeing that representation is important, but woke or purely identity-based storytelling can still be boring as fuck if the characters, ethos, or perspective doesn't transcend superficial presumptions of value and avoid reducing to cliches. Luther, Atlanta, The Mindy Project, Broad City, Ramy, and the first few seasons of Girls figured out something Insecure, Master of None, Lady Dynamite, and the back half of Girls did not.

Currently, TV is something of a meditation. Maybe I'm reaffirming my view that a good portion of what exists on thoughtful-nerd-TV shows are shameless rip-offs of The Twilight Zone. Any time there's "family" magic that keeps a show running is something of an interesting miracle to think about why those people in that setting or with that set of writers in this era. There's still plenty of the compulsion pushing me through sped up third-spin-off series like Power Book III and The Flash (I managed to refuse the shitty DC rabbit hole, mostly.) But I can put them on while I drive or clean or weed whack.

I'm currently at, approximately recorded of course, 43,532 plays of 1,082 shows and 2,892 movies. I like to play with the numbers. One movie a day for 8 years is all it takes to catch up. Combined is 1,194 days worth. And I keep the bills paid, chores done, yard work, read/audiobook, podcast, and spend a solid amount of time listening to music or meandering about town.

I like to think about what's my favorite and why. Inevitably, it's what has a prayer of staying on my mind for any length of time. Right now, that's Rick and Morty, Mr. Inbetween, Last Week Tonight, Dave, Mr. Pickles, One Piece, Impractical Jokers, and Ted Lasso. I like to think I've found a place for each individual show like I've tried to cut out for each person as an individual. I want to be able to discern the voice and respect the slight skews in the perspective. We're constantly iterating and reflecting different things about our eras and headspaces. Maybe you find that vibe from looking at art or unpacking layers of music, but I think at bottom, for the true connoisseurs, we're all looking to connect with the same thing. Or even just connect at all.

I don't feel guilty about "wasted time." I'm not watching TV "instead" of otherwise respectable adult or responsible things. I'm sticking it into all of the cracks that would otherwise be filled with something equally absurd or "unproductive" as if I have some quota to fill before I die. It's free. It's considerably less interesting, even my favorites, than if you elect to actually go bowling, eat dinner, or talk about and help create what we may do together. It's a tool to keep me from anchoring myself to something that might be considerably more mentally or physically taxing. I know I'm obsessive and know how it can work against me.

I take a lot of pride out of knowing "something" about topics, even if it's just to like or dislike. I like the enthusiasm bubbling up when you tell me you're considering watching one of my favorite shows. I'm not memorizing air dates or converting my speech into a series of one-liners from shows, but sometimes something will stick and show up in a blog or just keep replaying in my head until I figure out why. I smile to myself when professions of "I waste so much time!" are made. Like, if you lock yourself into this moment, I promise, you'll start finding all the time you need.

[748] Weeds

I must be weird.

In an interview to work for The Department of Child Services, the interviewer relayed to me a quote from a long-time judge. “A cop can be on the job for 31 years and then retire, and they'll see less trauma than your office will in 6 months.” I didn't blink.

Death, trauma, evil, pain, exploitation, lies, and otherwise wanton destruction or violence make sense to me. I thought I was mis-remembering a video I saw once of Mexican drug cartel members getting beheaded with a chainsaw, looked it up, and forgot it was only one who got the chainsaw, the other a knife. I couldn't recall if the chainsaw grazed the 2^nd guy's arm, but I thought it did, and I didn't see him flinch. Odd as it may sound, I think those, former, Mexican gangsters and I had something in common. They'd clearly accepted something about their circumstances. While I'm still flinching in the face of chainsaws, so have I.

What's striking to me about this disposition is how often and vehemently it's labeled or discussed as “negative” or “nihilistic” or “dark” or “pessimistic” or “inappropriate” or whatever analogue that is the opposite of life, joy, or the pursuit of something affirmative and lasting. And for the thousandth time I've referenced the irony at the base of everything, I think we're striking a bedrock psychological example. Some might find it as easy as asking yourself, how better to stay alive than understand as many ways in which you could die?

There's dying in the fun ways, like as many times as it takes to watch your favorite violent movie. We reenact famous plays where the characters die for love or power. We play fight and die as children. We employ a vague notion of death at a level of embarrassment or shock and intrigue. We make a game out of killing bacteria or shedding old skin in personal hygiene. Video and carnival games pick off people and ducks. Death is playful, when we want it to be.

There's ideological death. “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.” In the face of technological and social upheaval, many a foundation are shaken. Who you were as a believer can be as dramatic a personality shift as the alcoholic turned stone sober from “giving it all up to God.” A part of you that was protecting something died, or a part of you that was never quenched decided to kill. Maybe you were viciously hurt in love and now live in the wake of the sewage of your emotions. Maybe you were neglected and couldn't spell the word “family” or “mom” if your life depended on it. Maybe you're just realizing that no matter what you do, you'll never be the child you remember, and it's time to sober up to the “real world.”

But here again, I think I must be weird. All of that seems very familiar. I didn't really have to explain how we play with death or understand the consequences of polluting someone's mind with abuse or their naive notions of love. I mean, we literally call them “plays.”

What kills me is how (successfully?) we're pretending we're not hyper-obsessed with death. Isn't all of existence speaking to it? Isn't it the root of self-sabotage? Isn't it our addictions? Isn't it our complacency? Isn't it our entertainment, or undue celebration for personal victories, and betraying our pithy grudges? Aren't we alive as a result of all the other things we're willing to kill around us? Personal preferences held up as badges of honor. Friendships unburdened by truth or struggle. Vicious internet opinions, like so many assholes, meant to defend and defame, who? For what? In the first calculations, save the final, where does it all go? It's what we feed off of. It's nourishment.

I think this speaks to the romance narrative of death. Something has to die so others can live. We need to be proper Donner party members. I feel I watch this play out everywhere, all the time. School ate us alive. The mall ate my coffee shop. My aunts and uncles ate my grandparents, dad, and stepmom. My brother wishes he could eat me. Our country was eaten by the rich and vitriolically opportunistic. And we cheered them on because we saw so much of ourselves in them. A concert of Little Deaths, in an endless blinding sequence of pleasure.

Think how closely this mirrors and pollutes the idea of sacrifice. The death of a sacrifice isn't superficial. It's payment. It's respect. All you have to do in order to hijack it is claim you've put up whatever your particular god thinks is due, and bask in the glory. “I worked for everything I have! Fuck the moochers!” You killed your time, after all, in presumably much harsher circumstances and with greater loss than those struggling to get by now. The truth of who you've eaten be damned.

How do we “get better?” Think about it. How will the economy improve? Once we get people to eat more! Eat more Iphones, cars, and prepared meals. Eat your heart out at a generic “job.” How do we fix loneliness and boredom? Eat more Netflix and video games! Eat this new hobby and finely tuned pill. How do we celebrate in spite of every-day personal folly and failure? Eat this World Series win! Eat this master of his craft! Eat this pre-approved algorithm of characters in this most popular genre! As long as something is lined up to fill our bellies, we presume “everything” should otherwise fall in to place.

I'm in a struggle for my life right now. That's what this blog is. I'm 6 months into the throes of “comfort” of a regular paycheck, menial task, and handful of things I'd like to get done each weekend or after work. I've been describing myself as Hank Hill. I've been saying, “We can spring for the extra to get that VIP, we're old!” Am I a function of my age? I have severe doubts about the nature of time for sure, and I suppose in small ways my body feels older, but I'd argue I'm significantly more all of the mess that spews out of me in disorganized angst-ridden energy. So how does that guy put on business clothes and sit in a cubicle? I suppose I'm starting with acknowledging all the different kinds of death, and seeing if I'm buying into them.

I can 8-4 it and still build. I can sit in a cubicle and call it analogous to the living room or basement I'd otherwise be sitting in. I gave myself all the free time in the world, no one wanted to play with me, I already know without a certain amount of money or vastly different group of friends, there's nothing outside and no greener grass. There's ideological death if I've ever seen it.

I've also been working on the narrative that might make me finally bored of TV. I'd like a proper “obsession” to be sure, but any type of work and otherwise worthwhile task makes something as stupid as finishing Arrow out of spite feel more than pointless. I probably still would anyway, as I feel my TV habit has morphed into a bigger point about how many hours are really in a day, but a budding desire for a dispositional death is still there. I don't really get lost in TV or movies like I used to, but then again, that's not really why I'm watching anymore.

I don't know where to introduce it, so it's now. All the death-talk and everything that comes with it being easy makes the appeal of what seems to be so hard inevitably compelling.

How often do you find the people going out of their way to bring about goodness? This is a question that's going to need a few different phrasings. Who goes out of their way to help people succeed? Who sacrifices themselves, in a healthy way, for the benefit of others? Who gets immense joy and pride out of helping? I mean actually helping, not lip service and “good intentions,” like picking the biggest and hardest things they think they can fix, and diving in? Would you even feel comfortable saying something like that about yourself? Or would it be in the form of something personal, like child-rearing? Perfectly noble to want to rear a healthy and happy kid in spite of the broken home they were born into.

“Nice” is something of an all-consuming novelty to me. I let my ideas of nice bite me with regard to friendship. We let it perpetuate myths of people like Mother Teresa or in Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize. Nice is there for the exploitation. At least, that's my instinct that I'm trying to correct. I have and have had actually nice, sacrificial, genuinely good and helpful examples in my life. I've been “saved,” not by God, but by my grandma and my dad. I know there are at least 2 people in life who never have and never will try to fuck me over with their “niceness.” That's fucking important.

The flip side of that is that for every dad I have and dead grandma I have memories of, I have half a dozen other family members not like that at all and significantly more acquaintances and former “friends” who are nothing like that. This is the battle. This is the burden of the genuinely good. The person who lives and creates life because of the celebration of what it can be, not for the exploitation of what it can give them. If anyone less “blunt” or “jaded” or “cold” or “intellectual” or “funny” or “persistently indignant in his railroading and intransigence” is dealing with the same numbers of shit verses nice as I am? Get right out of town. I don't employ my “I don't have hope” mantra on a whim.

Now, for the friends reading this who've bailed me out of something or stood by through a measure of bullshit, chillax, you're deeply rooted in my mind, you just weren't first. And the larger point remains, for every one of you, there's a dozen who've shit the bed in important and consequential ways.

I want to be the genuine article of things that surprise the every-loving fuck out of me if I ever see them in other people. That's in jokes. That's in endless exploration and nit-picking until something is understood and internalized. That's in 7 months of 13 hour days to get off and load up your ill-equipped car with wood to drag out to your pitch black field in the middle of the cold night so you can inch along progress on the thing you actually care about. That's letting go without forgetting. That's recognizing and holding your precious sacrifice out in front of you before you kill it, instead of taking for granted your mere discomfort is enough to supplement the dirty work you've yet to do.

That's where we're at right now culturally. “I'm uncomfortable.” The room gasps and those weak of stomach and will run for the doors. Someone is out to eat us. Batten down the hatches and prepare to be bombarded with waves of insincere pomp and incredulity. Birds chirp, “butwhatabout butwhatabout.” Prepare a victim, anyone, and feast on what falls out. Definitions are for the power mongers! We're hungry, dammit, and if I can't get that house, or car, or job, or the girl, or the right pills, or even just my way, then I'll take every ounce of you.

What's hard to cope with is the idea of being an NPC or non-playable character. In a virtual environment, you sort of reflexively believe they don't hurt anything, even if that's absolutely not the truth. They perpetuate the story. They steal your dragon egg. They present challenges and side-quests. You're the passive agent at the will of what these pre-programmed problems drop in your lap. You're of every consequence. You're not the hero. The hero is the myth. The hero is one who has to literally die and be reborn, which, I'll remind you, isn't fucking possible. You need missions that otherwise random idiots would be wandering around in the dark killing things if they weren't a part of. When you figure out what it is you can provide, you'll stop endlessly feeding.

This is at the heart of what I don't like about “normal” jobs. I don't want to feed off the teat of established norms. I don't provide “easy.” There are millions of people paycheck to paycheck with familiar narratives about what their responsibilities are and how to “fix” or meet them. I have work-arounds. There are endless creative paths to addressing problems across societal and psychological layers. I can do none of them in the environment presently offered. I find people who like to feed off of my honesty or “taboo,” because to embody where it comes from takes work they're not interested in. I give thousands of miles for every inch I try to take back. I'm on a mission to not lose myself across the many worlds I may inhabit. But I'm not in a video game, and I doubt someone's going to walk up to me to try and join my quest.

“A working-class hero is something to be.”

I look for the people who challenge me. I look for the orators I want to be like. I look for the papers I dream of writing and shows I wish I developed. I look for lines in songs that come up time and again. I force myself to think through the words that aren't there yet, and beyond the feelings that make me want to feast on everyone around me. I pursue what I actually picture in my mind's eye. If you're anything less, then you're less. I won't let you eat me.