[xx-7] Death Penalty Blurb

As someone as capable or more-so than anyone else to engage in violence, I do not understand why we pretend to be better than people who kill while rallying around circumstances under which we feel "justified." Who isn't going to empathize with the idea of vengeance if someone close to them is killed? Why does that immediately have to make them a killer as well?

This is a dramatic and destructive dialogue. An eye for an eye leaves us all blind. Blind to the consequences of what we advocate. Blind to our own capacity to carry out atrocities. You'd think an individual genuinely concerned with social welfare and justice would cultivate an environment where things like this are exceedingly infrequent and moments to humble ourselves and reflect. This "kill kill kill" drumbeat undermines our humanity and morality.

Be pro-something. Advocate for things getting better. Instead of reducing ourselves to our basest desires. I'd be concerned with myself the day I'm sitting and watching someone suffer for hours. If you have that capacity, I feel pity. You allow yourself to be consumed in the wanton destruction killers wreak. They take over your mind and your capacity to decide that you can stand for more. You can do better.

Maybe it's because I just got done reading a lot of Chris Hedges, but peoples' knee-jerk reactions to advocate killing are both telling and terrifying. How long does it take to wrestle with the thought about what arguing on behalf of death means?

Violence begets violence. Standards get reduced. The dialogue forms around terms of vengeance, hatred, and spite. You become weak and petty. No one is pitying the murder, but if a lesson from world atrocities can be leaned on, we all have the capacity for evil. This is the point where you work in empathy. You consume yourself when you need to devour someone else.

The simple, almost throw-away, facts at this point. It's cheaper to keep them alive. It's racially biased. Rehabilitation can work. It's not a deterrent. We've killed innocent people. Why is their "accidental" death more palatable than to think of your own? You can measure society's morality in its hypocrisy, and what a vibrant example in some of these responses to this person's death.

[384] Ping-Pong

A few of my working-assumptions about how we interact with and discuss information are breaking down.

I've thought for a long time there's too much information. In the same breadth, I would ask people to speak up. I've been advocating for a dialogue about the seemingly endless stream of potential issues they may have with the world. I've wanted to blame their reluctance to do so on fear and laziness primarily. I'm thinking now that the problem is a kind of conditioned stupidity.

I think the reason I feel myself willing or capable of discussing “things in general” is because I'm after a kind of philosophy and habit, not specific answer to any one problem. That habit involves talking and becoming familiar with sometimes so many topics, it seems like I'm really getting nowhere at all.

I can watch a talk on Disaster Capitalism and learn a, helpful to me in my discourse, fact about Venezuela being the pride of neoliberal ideals until it's implosion. 99% of the people I will ever meet won't even take the time to google what neoliberal even means, so I get nowhere in sharing the talk thinking it's a little more eye opening of the consequences of this failed political system. I was in 7^th grade during 9/11. Naomi Klein telling me now (the talk's from 2007) how the Bush administration creates opportunities for businesses to thrive in disasters requires a long and dedicated memory in the forming of a “political opinion.”

I take in a lot of information, from all over, to primarily see if it has consequences. There's a difference between a million voices, and ten of them predicting things that come true. The problem comes in making those ten the loudest voices. And I think in order to do so, you either need to raise the capacity and willingness of an entire population, or, you have to plug a subsection of that population into a different machine. “Just putting it out there” for “people to finally find out about” is drops in an ocean.

But here's where I think it's a 2 pronged attack. You not only need to create your own system outside or independent of what's happening, you need to disable or inhibit the mess. I can't remember the last time I watched Fox “news,” but it's endless sounding chamber has significantly more of an impact than your well-researched independent progressive podcast. The information in that podcast could be vital to structuring or discussing something, and it's not for lack of effort that it will fall away to obscurity.

I can watch a talk on being suspicious of stories when that's, in a sense, all we really have in “polite dialogue.” I can agree that it shouldn't be a simple story or structured in a dichotomous way, but a story can be true to more things than it's simple failed structure. It's the story of empowering leaders that reinforce movements or caution us of past folly. It isn't Too Big To Fail that people are going to reference when discussing whether or not to implement financial regulations, it's going to be Elizabeth's Warren's soundbites and advocacy of students over banks. I think I have more a semantic issue with the talk, more than the message of being suspicious of simple narratives.

Or say we leave the political and historical realm alone. I go on about relationships as much as anything else. But again, people are flatly reluctant or unwilling to discuss their lives in any other terms beside “personal.” "This is personally gratifying. You wouldn't understand. Why would I consider some other idea or statistic when I'm perfectly capable and happy with the game I'm running?" I provoke not to hear how comfortable you are or justified you feel, I'm trying to figure out how and why you're thinking about something a certain way. Is it because of the sources of your information, a fundamentally bad assumption, the fact of there being too much information? They have implications for how you structure, or bother engaging in, a discussion.

For the years I spent reading and arguing specifically about religion, I was only able to take away habits. I learned to pick out the loser in a debate. I learned the dialogue of people trying to obscure language and inappropriately structure an argument. I learned that I didn't want to be an evolutionary biologist, cosmologist, or geologist, and found it sad that they had to be plugged into “debates” about the age of the earth or incompleteness of the fossil record. It gave me a habit of looking for where my heroes failed me. It tempered my mood when I heard something terribly damming or explicitly reinforcing what I agreed with. You can approach things skeptically without regarding them as arbitrary.

Maybe I'm just coming around to not wanting your voices anymore. When I created my party house, the roommates had a tenuous vote, at best, but rarely was I going to be to stopped in whatever I was doing. I recognize that the world belongs to the movers and shakers, regardless of what's being pushed or who's falling through the cracks. I just still don't think that mode of engaging with the world is sustainable nor resilient. For the many points I agree with in The Venus Project documentary there's none bigger than if you want a different result you have to change the environment people are working in. It's how I got American college party cliches to happen “organically.” I want people to have a bigger vote in how their lives are carried out, I haven't given them a setting in which they can or feel they should.

The biggest issue there is, what's easier than the internet? If you're afraid, do it anonymously. If you're dumb, spend even a week Googling you'll know more than the leading expert in the field did their undergraduate years. I think this just begets how you structure it. Tie it to economies. Tie it to how people become educated or motivated. Tie it to food. There's too many “facts” for people to vote facts, but they'll vote for food in their mouths. They'll vote for a bigger TV and new heart. The internet is impersonal, but people will stand up for their kids or best friends. They'll advocate for their own sob story before they empathize with the plight of someone an ocean away. What if you bite the bullet of creating a “brand” but actually carried out the work you saw needing to be done?

If it wasn't so damn inefficient and amoral.

Other stuff I write

[383] Tricky Language

I have a complicated relationship with language.

There is a significant part of me that throws caution to the wind and frequently chooses to say what's on my mind, however I want to say it, and regardless of what you feel about it. It's the part of me that is desperate for the point to come through more than the specific words. It's the part of me that pokes at and tests your disposition. It's where I have to be when I'm exploring something new or going on a long drunk diatribe saying fuck every other word and inhaling a pack of cigarettes. That place is where anger or confusion tends to trump simple inquiry.

I think one of the reasons that place exists is because I want answers and discussion, but people are not keen on offering them. It must be understood how many hours I've spent attempting polite and reasoned discourse. Often, the situation feels dishonest and encumbered. I'm going after what people fear or what they structure their lives around. It frustrates me to think that a discussion or topic is not beyond their capacity, but instead beyond their honesty.

I need to draw the line between “personal honesty” or “personal truth” and actual honesty and truth.

My conception of honesty is that thing we can't ignore. Or, better said, we know when we're actively trying to ignore it. For every amazing and moral thing you think you can claim in and of your beliefs, it's undeniable that when you believe “anything” for “any” reason, you unleash a whole host of consequences that inevitably fall back on a shoulder shrug and “well that's what I believe!” Any topic and any idea where you can't be shaken, I find that a problem. I find the power and pride in your inability to discuss or defend horrible. Just flat out wrong and dangerous.

Incidentally, it's not just with religious ideas where this battle plays out, but it's easiest to paint my relationship towards them.

The religious people I tend to get along with most are either the ones who say “Yeah, I know I'm basically making this stuff up, but it makes me feel good and there's some good lessons here and there.” They lead with the truth. They're at least advocating for something, albeit a kind of odd faking it. They acknowledge discrepancies and contradictions. It's something of a masquerade. They almost wear their faith as a cape, but you aren't going to see them jumping off of buildings thinking they can fly. It's still bad to me, but at least they feel like mostly their own worst enemy more than mine.

I can also manage to get along when I lie. When I pretend that I respect a shit idea, mostly by remaining silent, we're besties! Because that's the idea that gets lofted to me most often. Just respect other peoples' ideas because people are different and apparently, when you disagree, you're simply going out of your way to demean those differences or make them out to be something terrible when “it's just who they are." This to me shows an extreme disregard for both parties and the capacity for people to change.

It's as if “respect” is used to equate bad ideas and something like race or sex. You're born black or gay; that doesn't automatically make you think a freshly inseminated egg has a soul.

The religious people I tend to very much not get along with are the ones who make factual claims about magical things we can never know. These are people where, if it doesn't somehow reduce to a god or something metaphysical, it doesn't register on their moral sense. It's where any and every thing is possible, because the points don't matter and we're all just here to sing and throw our arms around until judgment day.

So, sometimes, I elect more explicit and potentially demeaning language to draw deeper contrast. Dawkin's opens with “The God Delusion” for the same reason I imagine. It's not “The Comforting Idea That Some People Don't Abuse To Do All Of The Batshit Things I Think Are Dangerous.”

It gets more complicated when I think about the interplay of language and culture. They intertwine and reinforce each other. So, one would think it would behoove you to speak very deliberately any chance you got, no? But therein lies the problem. What's deliberate to you is “left up to interpretation” by someone who's walled off their thought process. I've told religious people I'm not necessarily angry, searching for anything, or have ever had a magic voice pop into my head to help me manifest my destiny. Ten seconds later they're praying for me hoping I can be happy, find what I'm after, and will hopefully hear the same voices.

So then the words I use need to elicit feeling. I can't politely explain to them my reality or frustration over their ignoring me. I don't do good with being provoked with wording, so when I digress “flatly” or “ignorantly,” in a way, I kind of got somewhere if you're a little pissed off. That, or at the very least if you're confused and asking me to clarify.

I try to relate the sheer terror of bad ideas “calmly and rationally” and people don't engage or talk, or if they do, they're very quick to paint those ideas in very rosy language backed not by history or example, but their beliefs. If I get pissed off and call your god a magic sky daddy, it's because I think you're advocating for magic, and most traditions depict that father figure living in the sky. It's as literal as I can be. And then, people still don't really engage or talk, they explain to me how I'm misrepresenting my own anger and purpose with indiscriminate language. I'm also now a representative for every person who's used the same terms or raised the same concerns. I am, in an extremely weak sense, but less so when I ask over and over for us to get deeper and specific.

It's part of the unending irony that I should feel better about or more respectful to the dominating powers. Non-believers still aren't terribly popular in most places, if you hadn't heard. And, at least for me, I don't want to get into pissing matches about whether or not “sky daddy” is appropriate, I want to know if you're capable of engaging with the details, or following the reasons. Can you empathize with “just dealing with life” without the bells and whistles? And if you can't, at least concede that the fear you're experiencing is the same one I can't run away from and feel morally obligated to talk about.

[382] On Disillusionment

I'm interested in how quick the pendulum swings, and for what reasons. Of course I mean between when you're motivated, and when you couldn't possibly care less. I'm interested in this because of how I feel myself respond to something affirmative. How things that are in line with my perception genuinely motivate me to talk a little nicer, work a little faster, and excited to get on the path to learning more.

I just watched this documentary on Ralph Nader. Peeks into history that account for so many things that make our lives better today are invigorating. From the countless hours that a single man put into advocating, training, and campaigning, your life today has been altered in incalculable ways. It's a reminder of your obligations, ability, and potential impact.

I think about the people my age who've become disillusioned. They aren't getting the jobs they want. They're always at risk of getting sick or becoming a burden to their parents. They're bored as shit. Frequently lamenting that they didn't go into a different field or alluding to the external problems that keep them stuck. They feel as if they're in impossible circumstances after a few years of not getting the dream, and primarily for themselves.

Then I think of the people who lined up behind Nader. I think of the teams of people and the amount of legislation that was passed in order to protect human well-being. Years spent researching, writing books, advocating, door knocking, and testifying. And it gets railroaded and degraded piece by piece. Imagine not only having to work hard to get “common sense” things to happen, but then seeing your hard work deliberately targeted and torn down by monied interests. Imagine watching old friends turn their back on you and what you are fighting for because they no longer believe and blame you. Imagine people physically turning their backs to you and shutting you out because you won't play their political pandering game.

Would you keep going? Would you find resolve in some adage amounting to “if I can only help 1 person, then it will all have been worth it!” How many people have figured out or discussed their motivation before they lamented the paycheck or lack thereof? How much of your motivation to change something is tied to how comfortable you make yourself first? You don't need to be rich to read, to advocate, to organize. And that's the brunt of what's striking me so hard.

Nader shied away from the limelight and offers to run for president for a long time. He wanted to drive home the idea that people should be “professional citizens.” He didn't betray trust. He had people sending him all sorts of problems and help me letters, well outside of his purview, but it spoke to the kind of trust he could illicit from his fellow man. I feel like a kindred spirit; even if it only starts in my endless advocacy of people beginning to actually talk about things.

I catch the documentary while I'm in the middle of “The World As It Is” by Chris Hedges. One of the pleasures of writing is that you perk up and get to recognize when something you said is being echoed in different examples and tweaked words, but no-less your point. The idea that “how do we fix it if we don't know how to talk about it” is prevalent. Hedges consistently praises Chomsky for his attention to detail and pages of digressions into the minutia of some conflict. Chomsky's not writing to be relevant 100 years from now. He's testifying to the truth that wins debates. He's giving you tools where and when they're needed that the other side is too lazy to find or determined to avoid.

There's an idea of scholarship speaking to genuine emotional outrage for your circumstances. It's not just storming the street with a pitchfork. You're armed with the knowledge that you're right, the details matter, the consequences carry, and your obligation to the world and future are worth the struggle. That's another reason I want people to speak up. I want to feel that you're obligated to anything. Even if it's just a call for an answer to a question about something important. I want us to find more room to be each others' keepers, and not squander the opportunities to connect or brainstorm. The right ideas are always there, but do you feel them. The people who are crazy sure feel them, and that's why they move into positions of influence.

The day where we're all just comfortable enough to start on our high-minded liberalism's idea of how to change things is not going to happen. I'll never catch up to the intellectual dedication and rigor of people like Hedges, Chomsky, and Nader, but that doesn't mean my voice doesn't matter. It doesn't mean there isn't an uphill battle that is always worth the fight. Your testimony matters. Your voice gives someone else license. Exercise it.

It can't be done alone. You can be isolated, you can be demeaned and painted in various lights. But that only becomes a problem when you make society's problems yours and yours alone. When they need a champion who isn't given a loud enough voice to remind people that they're the champions. Our biggest, baddest, business as usual corruption factories are made out of individuals. They're “truth” is in morally bankrupt greed and corporate culture. We need to speak more truth to power. We need to hold ourselves accountable to the system that has fucked us, but a system that we help stay that way.

Just talk. Just start telling me what you see or what you'd want to do. Or what you're doing. Or why you think there's nothing to be done. Talk.

"I don't care about what they say about my legacy. What are they going to do? Rip airbags and seat belts out of cars?" - Nader.

[381] Glutton For Punishment

I had to pause from reading an article describing how critical thinking is being degraded and threatened because I'm struck with a thought that needs to be explored.

I think I secretly want punishment and consequences. If you know even a little about my background, the responses to my brother and I's wrongdoings as children were not always met with a reasoned and equal response from our mother. The gutting of stuffed animals or wanton spatula, wire hanger, and belt swinging are not the kind of consequences I mean.

I really am haunted by my drunken escapade at the pool. But there's nothing to hold me accountable. I didn't get arrested. No one came over and explained to me that I was being an asshole. My friend I was with is willing to forgive and carry on. I feel like I'm on a huge playing field with no rules. It occurs to me how often writing is me trying to establish what those rules should be.

I'm sure I've related this to why so many people think there's some form of cosmic justice. That god will punish the people who get away with all the things they find deplorable. For those unconvinced by such voodoo, the responsibility to turn inward and slut-shame ourselves is an intricate dance. If you give up on yourself, if you lose an ideal, it can set your life in an entirely different direction. Good or bad, that's unfortunately up to you to decide.

So I keep hammering away at asking “what is it that we're getting from culture?” What are my take away lessons? If I can face next to zero consequences for little things like drunk on an empty stomach, what does that say about significantly bigger problems? What does that say about our willingness to engage with or punish the consequences wrought from corruption or pollution? What does it say for our capacity to recognize and ability to talk about how things are wrong?

I think this may speak to why I antagonize as well. I want to know what it takes. When is the breaking point? I already know that I can do next to nothing and get the shit beat out of me by a crazy person. What I don't know is how far your “polite and professional” (read: superficial) manner will extend to corrupt how we understand each other as friends or when you'll be motivated to act. Reading and talking only get some people some places some of the time. So then I take it upon myself to keep poking.

I think you want a form of punishment when you realize that the consequences of not having it spell a dramatically worse story. And I think it has to start at the interpersonal level. You get nowhere trying to heard masses of people and their ideas into uniformity. But you know your tribe. Or if you don't, you have a significantly better opportunity to try and get to know them before you think you can handle the politics and history of somewhere else.

It's just weird for me to feel like I have to pull it out of people. Like I have to make the landing soft when we're just discussing objectively bad things, in particular when they pertain to my behavior. Maybe I need to be angrier at myself about it than you, but you're still allowed to be angry. The whole idea is to have a more explicit and expressive dialogue afterward. Figure out how to do it better, if at all, the next time. Forgive and forget has never sat well with me, leaving aside inevitable lapses in memory. To burden yourself with a memory is not the same as holding a grudge. How do we go about making situations better if we lose the ideas of how they went wrong?

Meditation: The Four Stages of Learning
1. Unconscious incompetence.
2. Conscious incompetence.
3. Conscious competence.
4. Unconscious competence.

[380] Weighting Time

“You're gonna carry that weight.”

I need to get better at being silent. Of course, I'm going to do this by writing about how and why. It occurs to me how often it happens that I'm confronted with “utterly perplexing” assessments of my behavior and/or words. I know where they came from, but they are part of a larger air that I think I embody and forget the consequences of.

Each time I call myself jaded, I'm finding it carries that bigger message. It's hopped on and reinforced in peoples' heads. They think I can't be happy, or that I'm stuck being a furious ball of hatred or something. I forget that my “flat” descriptions of myself, in service to trying to find better language, have deeper resonances. It might be less me forgetting and more being unaware specific words went so far. Either way, I confuse people who frequently think I'm after a pep talk or advice.

Another example is every time I've been told “I'm afraid to let you meet my parents.” Overwhelmingly, parents have been fairly impressed or laughing with me. To my knowledge, I know of no parent who openly holds a grudge against me for what I've said or done. But, the larger, “Nick P. is the obnoxious one” idea is more than just a cliché label for the sake of organizing friends. The sentiment is about the same for “I couldn't imagine you babysitting,” “you wouldn't really be suited for this job” or “oh god! My friend so and so would definitely not get along with you.”

As it's projected out, it also sinks in. I talk myself up. I do things that I feel are big and representative. And I have an idea about a certain relative standard I'm haphazardly upholding. So things like dips in responsibility really resonate. Of course, being drunk and obnoxious and weirding people out once or twice a year might not sound like the biggest sin. But, I'm stuck thinking shit like that should never happen “for a guy like me.”

And that's wrong. Because I'm just a stupid human. I get anxious about not being anxious enough. That's pretty dumb.

What bugs me more is that I know how to adopt both sides of a coin. This dualistic or pluralistic perspective is the root of, the horribly named and understood as, “not caring.” I've had really good friendships that broke apart and were shit on and I really liked, and then moved on. I've started things and worked my hardest and been fucked in so and so many ways. And then did the complete opposite thing. I kind of exist in a void. I really do feel like I'm mostly watching. I'm aware of and “concerned” with the consequences, but having exercised too much time in life, I can kind of state that it doesn't matter like it “should.” Win or lose, you're stuck playing the game.

At this point, I can't tell if it's an erosion of ideas I've espoused about culture and culpability, or an overbearing sense of pragmatism.

What I do know, too well, is my capacity and potential. Those are what I morally negotiate with. What happens in the outside world talks to the different halves of that equation internally. Maybe stated more simply, I'm a product of the cultivated environment. It's vitally important I respect that environment. It's equally important I'm held accountable to that environment. It speaks to why I'm not allowed to shut up, even when I might do myself a favor in silence.

The problem with “be the change you want in the world” is that the things you feel, the changes internally that you're no-less being, and maybe want other people to emulate, are stuck inside. I created a party house where people could routinely get “obnoxious Nick P. drunk.” That atmosphere and mutual understanding made it a “good” or “acceptable” thing to do. Granted, I don't know what anyone else at the pool was thinking during my shit show, but I sincerely doubt it was the kind of shared understanding from back then. My overwhelming reaction to people's embarrassment is “eh, next.” Apparently, infrequent too-drunk me thinks everyone should afford themselves the same disposition about my folly.

“It's as big or small as you want to make it.”

So I like to make things into little stories. Little thought explorations. I think if the weight of “guilt” or “shame” gives you a voice about responsibility, then I'd say you made it just big enough. If for the subsequent 4 weekends that month you have similar embarrassing experiences, I'd say your ideas about it are a tad small.

Pretty sure I just made a solid case for drinking alone, heavily, and then not telling anyone about it.

[xx-6] Why Not

March 5th, 2011

I think most people hate themselves. I think they scrounge to find activities to distract themselves. I think they hope and wish the next thing they engage in will make them really appreciate life. I think people are marred in a perpetual shit storm and have no clue how to get out of it. I think that these feelings of loss and restlessness prompt them to engage in any and all sort of activities to supplement what they think they aren't getting.

I wish I had a better view of people.

I see everyone. The "strongest" and "weakest" always running from something. Always capable of making an excuse. So protective of their ego or feelings that the truth is all but a myth. It will always bother me. I don't presume to have an answer.

There's so many reasons to hate being alive. It's a tragic and ironic comedy how we live as humans. Own that fact. Own how terrible we are and can be. Own how little you care. Own how much you aren't living up to your potential. Deal with the fact that you feel for things you'd like to believe you shouldn't. Reconcile how shitty your friends can be. Understand the evil you are capable of.

I need more people like me. I don't need friends. I don't need an ass ton of cash. I need people who are in every moment. Who can't escape because they've chosen to realize it all. I need such a dramatic feeling of potential and realization that it causes instant and persistent change. I kind of feel I'm going crazy. I don't want to suffer people. I don't want to watch people suffer themselves. It's too easy to hate everything, everyone, and yourself. Way too fucking easy. Grow a fucking pair of balls and be someone.

I wish I could translate to people how much I don't care who or what they are when they elect to be a weak fuck up. I encourage people to kill themselves. Isn't that fucked up? What kind of human am I? I don't care how many times you were molested or beaten or harmed, your current situation is this. What the fuck are you doing with it?

I get shaky. I sit and hear myself digress and my hands quiver at the keys because of how...."what the fucking fuck"....I feel about shit. It can only be digressed upon in drunk digressions at steak n shake? It can only matter in a marginal conversation from time to time? I want to fucking break something. I want to beat someone's fucking head in.

The worst thought is resolving myself. God fucking forbid.

[xx-5] One Liners

May 20th, 2011

God, it must suck to be ugly.

It isn't that any one thing is hard to do; the hard part is putting up with the idiot people involved.

When in doubt, you're probably right.

Sure I'll believe, I'm just not gonna try too hard.

Being profound is hard.

If your mind is an extension of your body, then what form of mutilation has triggered my series of thoughts?

If your body is an extension of your mind, then holy fuck I'm imagining myself.

Try to be funnier.

No matter what level of ability I have to dictate my world, unforeseen and incalculable circumstances are still going to fuck me.

I think being normal is fine, it's thinking normal that fucks you.

Now it's time for the fun part.

It's easy to know you're right, but seemingly impossible to get why someone else is.

It's not that serious, own up to your insecurity and work the game differently.

Don't isolate yourself out of habit; strategically, of course, but you really don't get it as much as you'd like to believe.

Give a damn.

I don't want to forget or forsake, I just have to.

Appreciation is a daily battle.

I'm so tired of understanding myself, I can't help but to wonder what the hell everyone else is thinking.

The fun part is over, by the way.

How unsettling, that when you have nothing to say, there's still something to say.

[xx-4] Not Exactly Empathy

I know when I have a problem or stress is just bringing me down, I turn to magic. You see, I may not be able to say it out loud, but truly, the most important thing in the world is how I feel. I know that the forces of nature are actually construed in ways that revolve around me. When I'm sad, it's just part of the plan. When I'm angry, it is righteously held. When I'm happy, I've been divinely imbued. You can't know what's going on in my head or in my heart so how dare you think that my magic isn't special? As long as I can take words and make them mean whatever I want, language is arbitrary after all, then you trying to convince me of something different is not only pathetic, but insulting.

I stand on the shoulders of giants! Look at my quotes, and books, and arguments! Not that I really need them though, right? I think the best part of my system is that it can be yours too! You can have your very own magic. I promise to make a pact with you, I won't question yours if you don't mine. Deal? I can't promise I won't do or say things that contradict this pact, but that's okay. My system of magic allows for such discrepancies. Remember, I'm part of a plan, and to contradict is just a meager word, nothing more. Who knows what I would do if that weren't true? How could I bare to have no reason for anything I do?

It's not like I'm hurting anyone. What is real harm anyway? This is the only metric by which we judge the value of something still, right? I'm certainly not hurting myself. What could possible be harmful about unwavering conviction? Especially with how utterly amazing it makes me feel! I understand, well not really, if you don't want your own magic. Sometimes people like you are just here for me to learn from. It can be really hard to accept the absolute truth of my magic and how you need to resolve it with yours. You sure do get snippy when I try to help you do just that. The wonderful truths to unfold if you'd just accept the premise!

Do you like anything or anybody? Don't you see how laid back and assured I am? Look at all my friends! Look at how much love I have to give and how much I get back. It's like I have an infinite capacity to experience everything the plan has in store for me. Oh, now I'm making it sound too rosy. Of course there are hard times, really hard times. But they don't really matter once they're over. Every problem is really an opportunity to make a justification. As if I have to justify the plan.

I bet you are pretty afraid and alone. You probably suffer from a lot of anxiety and paralysis. I understand. I used to worry about what every little thing meant or how it fit into the bigger picture. HAHA no I didn't! Why would you even do that to yourself? It certainly can't make you feel good, the obvious point of existing. Because there is a point, and you can't prove otherwise. Oops, there I go again pretending I need your proof of anything.

Just never forget I'm here for you. What I mean is, my plan includes you. Or more, if I have to suffer your existence it's going to be a meager spot of annoyance of my self-contained joyride. I will hope sooo hard, like sooo hard, every night for you to change, even if it takes my whole life. Isn't that fantastic!? I won't make too many passive aggressive comments or condescending looks if we ever glean over this topic again. At least not anymore than you.

[xx-3] Maybe, Maybe, Maybe Oooooohhhhhh

Maybe I watch them burn.
I elect my fate and therefore theirs.
Maybe I refuse to turn
From punishing what they fear.

Maybe it's out of my hands.
God and country take the reigns.
Maybe I take a stand, while
Denying you know the pain.

Maybe it's too chaotic.
Scramble for a chance.
Maybe you're idiotic.
Watching how you dance.

Maybe it's a game.

Rolling dice and praying
Barely hiding shame

Playing by abstaining.

Maybe you're a joke.
Does it make you laugh?
Maybe I am too.
Choking on your past

Maybe your dick is too hard.
Looking to try something new
Pursuing a broken shard
of what's barely one to value

Maybe we're addicted.
Maybe we're confused.
Maybe spacing out
Maybe we're abused.

Maybe there's a choice.
Leave the rest to waste.
Maybe it's a fire
You're not afraid to taste.

Maybe you can win!
What would that unveil?
Maybe you can spin, yet
Another fairy tale.

[xx-2] Random Rhyme Time 2

Well she's blowin on my twitter while I'm sittin on the shitter I say "you are not a quitter" even though she is a spitter. I kinda wanna hit her but it just might make her bitter and I realize, yes I think, I don't wanna make a stink. Irony? I wonder happy to avoid the blunder. She pulls back into a stumble and her stomach starts to grumble then she vomits on the spot which I can't help think is hot. She looks at me disgusted for although I have just busted, right before her very eyes, I again am on the rise.

I ask her if she'd please like to go back to her knees, never mind about the floor you silly filthy little whore. She licks it from the side and a smirk I cannot hide, from the bottom to the top, no she doesn't waste a drop. She'd continue on in stride, but I think it's time to ride, so I put her on my lap willy winding through her gap. "I like you in my hole, drop another in the bowl," and in such a sexy voice I don't really have a choice.

I ask her what she likes and she blushes with a grin. "Maybe once it's in my ass and wiped upon my chin." I slip into a puckered bum, it smiles and lets me in. Don't bother with forgiveness god I quite enjoy this sin. She rides into the night and well on to the early morn. We go on oh so long, neither realized she was torn. It starts out with a tease slowly dripping down my thigh, and although I quite enjoy this flow, she begins to cry. It's hard to say exactly what came pouring from her butt. The flavor on my tongue reveals a salted planters nut.

[xx-1] Random Rhyme Time

There will always be noses to pick and asses to scratch, and if you lose a dollar don't stay too attached for the world is your oyster, make no mistake, that as long as you live there will be much to forsake. Don't gripe just wipe the shame from your eyes and sit on down for momma's sweet apple pies because you're safe from harm if you keep your charm and wit that needs not give a shit.


Wake and bake, toke you joke, and smoke that rope like a hoe needin soap. Bend on over and take a bow and never mind your marriage vows, for the stage is yours to blow off chores and dance as if squirrels run rampant in your pants. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways that your greed and hatred pays, bans marriage for gays, and oh no bro don't taze.


Don't try, but to lie about your cries about life and watch as you fail by trial and the knife. Can't stand but to band to a meager soul, your fans, grow fat off the land too gone to lift a hand. You're a holy roller, son, perk up and take note for the jobs not done and there's no slit in your throat. Just your self-inflicted angst over things you cannot change only to become estranged from what once was and never will be again.

Your clothes are tattered, your spirit is shattered and none of it mattered, to you, to them and you can't explain just where things went wrong. Sing it loud and sing it strong you're stuck in this place like an ill-tempter thong and while you may think it wrong to take pride in stride and fuck by luck you'll never reach your goals most hated hockey puck.

[379] Beauty For The Beasts

::In the style of "Be Our Guest"::

How's it goin'? How ya been? What's your story? Tell a friend!
Don't you know we're all just dying. Waiting patient, laughing crying.
How's it going!? How ya been!? Heard that song that never ends?
Let's go dancing! Hit the town. Till the sun comes back around.
Have ya heard? Don't ya know? We'll be covered head to toe!
It's the nicest and the greatest. Put that down! It's not the latest!
Can't you see? Won't you say? That the hour is light and gay.
So much cause for celebration, here's another grand ovation!
No holding in! I must explode! Can you handle one more load?
We'll get glitter, we'll get glue, be sure it all gets stuck to you!
How they bitin'? Why ya fightin'? Can't you see this much is true.
I want this and I want that and I want every bit of you.


Tell me once, now say again. Oh I don't know, try asking them!
It's not my bag, it's not my baby, here's my number, call me maybe.
Where'd you go? Won't you stay? It's all still here why can't we play?
The moment's gone, who saw it coming? I can't help myself from running
Into walls. Into bars, help I'm trapped and earning scars.
It hurts so bad I've lost it all, not quite the fit for the cabal.
Where to go? What to do? Can't even stand to look at you.
How ashamed and undeserving so then why so strong a yearning?
What did it mean? I cannot say. To stack cliche upon cliche.


The walls are caving I am raving as a mad dog before bathing for the filth is only saving my small sense of self that's fading. Broken now can't even cry, so has it all just been a lie to get to every end by any means. The humble monster of my screams. I neeeeeeeeeeeed...

[378] Tone Deaf

This has to start somewhere.

My voice has changed. Because I can't figure out how to explain it, I'm just going to run with examples.

A few short years ago, I would have been the guy yelling “you deluded fucking crazy Christian fucks!” at the Mormons I've sat and talked to for several hours on several different occasions at this point. I wouldn't have capitalized Christian because...passive aggressive shows of disrespect work? I would have never heard one of the most hilarious and telling things I've ever heard out of a believer. “If I wasn't a Mormon, I think I'd definitely go for the Muslim thing.” What a missed opportunity that would have been.

I've been told by Rin that I handle or engage with conflict in a more understanding or empathetic way. Most of my life has been a policy of no-holds-bar, it doesn't matter what you think, here let me lay it out for you kind of posturing. There are certainly limits to self-awareness, and while I can certainly see that voice in my old writing and agree there's been a switch, at the time, I genuinely believed in how I was saying something. At least my problems were relegated to the level of interpersonal discussions.

As striking as the tone difference is, I'm hit with a demoralizing wave concerning how much hasn't changed. The same shit I complain about your relationship, politics, or awareness of responsibility all play out exactly as the first time they pissed me off. It's the idea that they'll never get better. That me bitching, me pointing it out, me trying to get a different dialogue about it, literally means nothing. Well, except to me. I can sit high-minded and wise for having the balls to put it out there. You know, lonely and self-satisfied. It's where we all aspire to be, right? Anyone? Hello...?

I lament not getting feedback because I used to. I used to get nearly everything I wrote commented on. It turned into a discussion. I got to be called out or questioned. I don't know what to say about the idea that for all the people commenting and discussing, they're mostly people I don't talk to anymore. One or more fights, also semi-chronicled in blog form, picking apart the seems of what I thought I liked and could trust in my relationships. Best friends, business partners, general co-collaborators in some endeavor are now all but strangers.

And I mean, I'm 25, for a little while longer anyway. We're talking about 5 or 6 years. Hundreds of people. Just blips. Just remembered through their comments. It's not like I'm the last one alive of my generation or something. But huge swaths of influence, identity, and engagement is “past” where I'm supposed to conceive of myself today.

I'm terribly interested in the idea of “well, I don't feel different.” I can actually read, in too many details, how I am different, and still say that I pretty much still believed what I was saying. I still think religious types are deluded. I still think most of your relationships are a joke or unhealthy. I think the biggest change is that I just don't think I can really do anything about it besides talk. Yet when you feel amazingly redundant but no less relevant, you want to air on the side of shutting the fuck up.

It's the problems and drama that focus you. I don't like the idea of “getting specific” when it comes to thinking, or thinking about how to think, or how to talk. We so easily conceive of people being smart or motivated because they simply decided on one thing over another. What a shit way to go about conceiving of people.

Why do I still have some of the same friends before, during, and now after college? There must be independent personality traits or a kind of awareness that allows for those friends to have seen through too many angsty fuck yous, no? A mutual pursuit of truth perhaps? A respect for what's put out there, even if the phrasing needs work. Inevitably, my personality, or writing style or what have you, seems to draw very stark lines between who I get along with and why. I like this very much, but what I think it says about people I don't get along with feels resoundingly disturbing.

My goal has always been to, at the very least, speak to what I think is fucked. The “same old story” cliches and responses kinda suck my will to live. Over time, the goal has sort of morphed and been added to. To try and account for why our discourse, or sometimes lives, break down into these cliches. Try to get people to use their voice. Try to inform a perspective so it can be a hot little ball of anger and still manage to remain constructive. That, or at least refrain from being destructive.

The point is that there's always something to say as long as it remains fucked. You're fucked. I'm fucked. Stop being afraid of it and join in. Engage and get sad, or angry. Feel as defeated as I am and maybe we'll flirt with empathy and understanding. We're all smart. We're all busy. We've all laid down some foundation we think we can ride off into the future on. It's wrong. It's temporary. It's small-minded. We need better ideas about what we put into the hive mind and about what it's telling us.

And if it takes one self-described smart person as long as it has me to change something simple like “maybe don't lead with cussing them out,” I shutter to think how we endeavor to overhaul the amount of things I've brought up (reiterated) over the years.  

[377] Cement Shoes

When is stasis the correct choice?

For longer than I care to think about, I've been struggling with why it's felt so good to do “nothing.” TV shows whiz by, books and articles get noted, and my hands feel sprained from drumming. I've done a few deliveries with the van, but I'm not out on the beat handing out flyers all day like I thought I would. I'm just confused why I don't feel bad about it. I think it has something to do with abundance.

David Wong speaks to the amount of crap that already exists and the kinds of bullshit pretexts we operate under to “keep the motor running.” I've said the world feels cheap and bland. It simply seems like too many people are “doing things.” Instead of thinking about whether they are good or bad for themselves or the world at large, you just keep your head down and do it.

I don't want to be a content provider. I've written nearly 400 blogs that I don't consider content. It's organization and redundancy. It speaks to why “I've never done anything” with my reading and writing. We're at a point where I'm not really making a calculable difference in life by simply “putting it out there.” There's this ho-hum air people express because they're starting a business, they're working on a novel, they're keeping up the fight until they break through. Pardon me, in my ever most modest, but I am trying to make this little light of mine shine on our collective proverbial sun.

Nothing is really a secret. I'm haunted by the creepy one-legged crypt keeper at the Carpenter office who chuckled to himself after saying “kids these days think they invented sex.” In his infinite wisdom, it's like he's peered into the last thousand conversations I've had over the years. Or wait, it's not like that at all. Actually, all of sex, in every incarnation and in every way it can be talked about has even evolved passed the word “sex” and has become “Japanese.” But the only way he can get a laugh out of himself is to remain ignorant of “how the kids think.”

I think this is how I start to associate things like pride with ignorance. Why I'm quick to denigrate what, on the surface, is very positive and life affirming. I don't mean simply having respect in yourself and enjoying what you do. I mean something akin to piety. Almost as if you've been handed a mandate from heaven. A perch to look down on the ignorant masses who can't see through the fog.

I think our “doing stuff” habit is a distraction. Like, I genuinely don't think I have a “better” take on the world at large than the people I read every day. That's why I'm not going to put something out there that isn't simply a condensing and reflection of what they've said. That's why I don't feel like I'd deserve to get paid for it.

But stasis. Why stasis? Why sit and read and write and play instead of job and money and fake smiles? I think if you lament and hate “the system” to the degree in which I do, it's hard to see yourself perpetuating it. You'll end up on the “dark side” as Wong puts it, but what you've done to yourself or the world around you on the way there is just as important of a story.

It could just be exhaustion. Maybe catch up on a few years of sleep and then hit the ground running later. I don't know, it's not like anyone, save a couple, really care what I do anyway.

[376] Artsy Fartsy

I suppose I write this in perfect irony.

I want to criticize "the arts." I can't escape this feeling that art, and in it's expression, whilst being talked about in magnificent ways and depicted in grandiose fashion, is often the crowning achievement of our ability to drop right out of reality. I think it's exploitative, even when it appears to be trying so hard not to be.

Take, So You Think You Can Dance. As with any competition or reality show, there's money to be made in showing off young talent. But what are we really doing when we watch these kids? Deaths in their family are described, surely to try and stir up tears for the judges and audience, before they perform. Are we meant to empathize, be entertained, or simply emotionally exploited and primed? One girl grew up in a trailer park, essentially said her mom prostituted herself for drugs, and had her family split up into 10-15 houses over the years. It's treated as a nominal fact of this "wonderful dancer who's overcome all odds!"

I think these depictions are dangerous. For every girl that makes it to that stage, there are thousands who turn out just like mom or worse. I understand the purpose of the show is not to speak about broken homes. I don't think you see a "soul" of the show being about the pure expression and talents of an individual, when you play up the horrible circumstances of their past for ratings or mini-celebrity-esc status within the show. "Oh, that's the trailer park girl! Bless her heart..."

Things like this are designed to exploit the naive energy and dreams of children. We dress them up and put them on stage to take our minds off of the problems we created for them to overcome. We're obsessed with these kind of hero stories. We're obsessed with the struggle. Not why it's a struggle, or how we can improve the struggle, just the idea of struggling. If we can just see it depicted in one more hapless soul like ourselves, but only if it's deep behind their shimmering smile and perfect pirouettes. They've certainly inspired us to think that it can't be all bad, yippee.

Or think of the starving artist. When someone is "so dedicated" "so bold" "so passionate" that they suffer long and hard, perhaps their entire lives, so that you can see through whatever medium they've chosen to show how full of feels they've been. It's not that I don't like a pretty picture. It's not that I don't think people need to express themselves. I've gone to an art gallery and seen a dick shooting semen in one continuous stream blown up onto a 6 foot canvas in black and white. I struggle to think that with less than an afternoon of practice, and the right filter on my phone, I couldn't reach the depth of that photographer's...that artist's...talent.

It's personal. It's the most personal thing you can do. It's loving a song so much you learn how to play that song. If your rendition of it brings tears to someone's eyes, you first wanted to prove to yourself you could do it. People feel personally affronted when they learn their favorite band was so oblivious they wrote your favorite song blacked out in 5 minutes on a bathroom stall. How could something so deep, meaningful, or have the power to pull you from the brink be essentially drunk blathering? You extracted meaning. You didn't read it like a book for factual information.

I think how we talk about art, and how we conceive of artists, or our time spent pursuing it, often hurts us. I stress, I'm not against music, pictures, or dance. I simply think they're hijacked, like most things, to trap our minds into ideas about perfection, beauty, and youth that don't do us any favors.

Or think of "talent." Sure, there are some people who "just get things" quickly. Math whizzes or just mimicking someone's sound or body movements. Doesn't the overwhelming amount of talent in the world come from practice? Time dedicated to repeating a craft over and over again? If you call most talent practice, then you start to maybe see what it is people are constantly practicing.

But talent is so light and free. It's an arms length away like "oh, I could never dance like that, I'm not naturally gifted like that person over there." In a single breath, you exalt the performer and reinforce complacent awe in most of the watchers. The one kid who's "inspired" by the show will gladly line up and take their turn to get exploited during the next round of auditions. Their struggle over the haters and doubters used to keep the cycle going.

I just think we have it backwards. Like, let's get everyone fed, stop killing children in drone strikes, and bring the planet back from making us extinct, and then I will loft all the praise you can handle about your ability to jump and point your toes.

This is why I derive no real "guilty pleasures." It's just guilt. All the time. And a paralyzing fear that I'm going to never figure out a way to fix it, especially given that I can't even really discuss it. I mean, what we do to these young dancers, we do with kids in the military. Nothing like the dumbest and dick-headed-est jock in school to knowledge slap me about the importance and meaning of the military. Or sports. Who's more enthusiastic than the guy who could have played with so and so if it weren't for his bad knee? Let the kids run around, let's regale ourselves with their struggles and hijack their practice then take the greatest pride when they represent our deepest desires. Actually doing something we wish we could. Actually believing something about what we no longer can.

We exploit by nature. That's why we're losing the planet. That's why we get into unhealthy relationships. That's why everything I hear and everything you say is sometimes absolutely stuck being layered in some level of bullshit. Like, it's not even always deliberate. But it's fluid. It's normalized. And most simply, it's one more on the list of reasons I don't ever see us getting better and don't think we'll last. It's so easy to dignify someone else's personal pursuit of self-actualization and happiness because, dammit, we're selfish kids too!

Next entry: Cement Shoes

[xx] How to Read My Blogs: Here's the Front Door

I write for me. And of all the stuff I've written, these are some of my favorites.

My topics of choice are culture, relationships, and my ever-present perception.

Sometimes it's a jumble, sometimes it's specific. I write sober and sometimes drunk.

I write to suss out language. I want to get as specific as possible and love to have as many examples as I can speaking to my point.

I ask questions I genuinely want answered or people to speak to. I try hard to be a robot.

Infrequently, I put together rhymes and poems.

[375] I Can't Hear Myself Think

I'm shooting for long and something of a ramble. Save yourself the time.

I hope to layer cliché upon cliché until I can balance the word meta on a turtle. Also, to make obscure references/metaphors to answers about what holds the Earth in place that don't quite work.

It's wrong to say “I don't care.” It's very wrong to say “I'm depressed.” I suppose it's good to get those out of the way quickly as I anticipate this sounding like both.

As I get better at framing my position in ways that keep people older than me from being condescending, the nature of the excuses they offer to help their fellow traveler become clearer. You'll always find a habit. For example, they always have a “secret.”

Some of those secrets include that your views and ideas will change more than you can appreciate until you're older. Things that used to matter “just don't” anymore. You'll realize that all there is to do is focus on things like friends, family, and caring about other people. Sometimes, if not most of the time, you have to suspend your disbelief because it will help make life “bearable.” They used to hate hate hate as much as you. Time will fly by! There's always something new to learn.

Wild and crazy stuff right? It's almost like the veil has been lifted. You mean I used to crave the latest video game, and then one day, almost like a switch was flicked, all I'll be able to care about is the next country we go to war with? Or, how about that lesson plan that tells you to appreciate and care about people. Brilliant! If only we told that to our children before they reached existential crisis mode in college. At least we caught them before that looming mid-life crisis.

To me, it's no secret that simply because you are old, that does not grant you Wise Old Janitor status. In fact, the majority of the stupidest shit I've ever heard my entire life has come from people older than me. That's likely an obvious statistical point, but one I hope still serves to shit on the idea that if your tools for “consoling” someone about what they don't feel are “give it time” you're making a very obscure appeal to authority. That you've experienced more, even if it's strikingly similar, does not mean you grasp the particulars of anyone else's head.

It's worth noting, that this is why I offer habits and contingencies, not necessarily “how to think” advice. You love your abusive boyfriend? All I can really say is that eyes get black when you keep your face within his arm's length. If you don't like black eyes, step back, maybe even several hundred feet. If the pain from black eyes = less than your desire, maybe stop complaining and focus on how happy he makes you.

But look at that example. Isn't spousal abuse pretty terrible? Why don't I give a shit that I could make it sound like the person being abused is so impossibly stupid that I basically want her to keep getting hit?

There's a certain kind of “thing” I don't care about. A kind of reaction. The idea that I could provoke you. I don't respect an inability to read the example and miss the point. I don't respect allowing your feelings or history with the problem instantly making you think I'm the worst kind of human being. And I think all I ever see out of people is their reactions. Not all the time of course; I'd go insane. But overwhelmingly I get their conditioned responses. They're no better than battered wives.

Take this Comedy Attic situation. A rude person would talk and text during the show. A rude person would order the beer, dump it on the floor, and then refuse to pay. A rude person would have called the waitress a cunt, irrationally dammed comedy and all it's followers, and gotten off on making a scene.

I just didn't want to spend more money or drink anything. I calmly explained that if I wasn't Comedy Attic suitable, I could just leave. It wasn't a weird stab at a threat. The house was packed. I literally asked them if I was so in the wrong that I should just not partake in the show at hand. But there is no calm way of expressing to someone that their set up is as bad for you as they think you are for them. Not because I didn't explain it calmly, but because people don't react to you acting differently than they expect you to terribly well.

And part of it harks back to an idea of boredom. I know what happens when I pay for something I don't want and capitulate to a pushy waitress. I don't know what happens when I get a chance, so to speak, to explain what I don't like about the situation, and to the head honcho no less.

At that point, it's an adrenaline rush. It's not anxiety. My heart races more often than I care to think about. Races like when you get called to the principal's office. It's like I always feel guilty of doing something before I've done it. I'm living the consequence of calling the waitress a cunt or throwing a bottle at the door. I'm convinced I'm that big of an asshole and I'm very intrigued to see why I'm going to move one way or the other.

That's the kind of disbelief I can't suspend. The one about our worst demons. I don't take any special prize home for realizing my capacity. I just get to shoulder it when my body defaults to “ultra pissed off man mode” about exceedingly innocuous situations.

But I can't allow them not to matter. I'm rather obsessed with the idea of strings. Everything being tied to everything else. We're as much “star stuff” as we are the bonds we form between people. The rules we put in place. The ideas we cultivate and defend. I can't pretend that I don't have something to say.

Whether it's the guy “stepping up” and buying a beer to “not hear me talk anymore.” Or thinking about the owner's motivation in his ticket prices or how he structures his payouts and rents. Maybe he's been given an unfair shake on something like property taxes so he has to do “marginally shady” things in how he runs business. But how do we ever get to a conversation about poorly structured Bloomington tax law if we're squabbling over the merit of squeezing people as part of the “policy.”

I want to shoot to what matters. There are immediately ten ways that situation could have been handled that would have been just as “effective” without ruffling a ton of feathers. The waitress could have ignored me. They could have taken me up on my offer to leave. They could have snickered to each other about “that asshole with the pony tail who never wants to buy anything” from the corner. But none of those happened. And even if they did, we still wouldn't have started on a path to discussing why it became the policy in the first place. In truth, I'm more interested in how much these comedians are getting paid and what it takes to get them on stage anyway.

In that situation, I'm more concerned about ruining my friends' time, or the time of the people around us, more than what the waitress or manager think of me. Now I get to run through that line of speculative thinking. Are they pissed at me? Are they going to bother inviting me out to places? Do they see any merit in anything I've offered as my reasons? If they don't, why am I calling them friends? If they do, are they feeling as hopeless as I am right now? Doubtful. Am I going to get a “time and a place” or “pick your battles” speech? Is this more likely going to get swept under a rug like most things and tomorrow's another day? Cool.

It's something of a traffic jam, but the cars are coming from all directions. Like, out of the sky. Until a big enough truck comes in to pave the way to how I find myself proceeding throughout the situation. Often, it's like I'm watching. Waiting for my mind to give me the signal that of these many balls of potential, it wants to play with the pink one right now. Did you know our brains invent the color...SHUT UP NICK THROW THE BALL!

I think in this...tunneling...this quick shooting down many holes (you hear it too?) speaks to the ambivalence. Like I've watched every possible future but the one I'm experiencing “now.” And so rarely is it ever one of the good ones. But this might be over-stating it.

I think about what makes me happy. I'm not, old condescending people, thinking that it's this “thing” I'll one day achieve after enough gamer points and sexual conquests. I've argued that it's a choice. Like right now, I'm exceedingly happy to dig into the depths of my head. Figure out my motivation. Dissect disagreements. I was happy to piss off that waitress. I would have been happy if I had to leave the room. What makes me happy is actually doing and behaving like I want. I like to see myself speaking to the things I have a very hard time explaining. I can tell you the waitress was a cunt. That doesn't make me happy. What makes me happy is when someone hears me call them a cunt when that's the loudest and most honest thought I have in that moment. I don't want to tell you I hate you. I want to make sure you can never un-feel it.

That's sort of how we conduct ourselves though, right? If we go back to abuse. Your most compelling horrible feelings seem to dictate how you behave. You were abused, so you abuse, whether it's yourself or others. You take your insecurities and, if you can't act in spite, you try to live in denial. Or, you “accept” that you're only going to feel like shit no matter what and that becomes your new baseline. Whatever you're afraid of, whatever you've felt the most, that writes the rules. That gives you direction. In a way, I'm only trying to speak your language.

Whether those fears are real or imaginary, they're real. But, not as real as when you experience someone else at critical mass. A genuine threat to your being. An explicit personal affront to the very fact you exist. That's what I like. That brings me joy. You wonder if your boyfriend still loves you as much as the day he met you? Surely that's an unpleasant thought, but you're unsure. But I can make you sure about something; there's someone that hates you as much as you could hate anything, at least for this fleeting moment. Even if it fails to haunt you, you'll remember it.

And talking like that brings me joy. It's motivating. Not because it's powerful, but because it's as honest as I could be to a person. I can take all my gobble-d-gook about tunnels and flying cars and boil it down to, first one thing is true, YOU'RE A DEPLORABLE CUNT! And we've started down the road to rebuilding.

But this idea of “being in on the joke” like everybody knows the world is like this or this. NO. Fuck no. I don't believe you. I think everybody knows how to make that empty statement and everybody knows how to respond to it like we're all on the same page. I believe we have similar emotional states. I believe we abuse old adages and cliches. I believe we've all had moments of “super real realness where shit got so real you never wanna see me so real again.” But that doesn’t mean anyone knows shit. How do I know this? They never talk about all the shit they don't know. And they don't care to go about figuring it out.

Everyone's got answers. That's how I know they're full of shit. The biggest answer I ever come to about most things in life is “well, we can talk about it” or “well, if you do this, this is seemingly likely to happen.” REDDIT, HOW DO I STOP LOVING THE PERSON I LOVE! Well son, when I was your age, I realized the meat bag who's more bacteria than human was going to die one day and get saggy tits I'd no longer find attractive. I decided to just picture what that would look like now and took off down old road 37. At the behest of my dick, I found someone within my proximity to lay my emotional baggage on. You'll see, it's all gonna come up roses for ya if you can just find yourself so exhausted that things you once cared about you no longer do! Exciting! Upvote my wise! ALL THE WISE!

But we don't talk. Not until we're drunk. Hint why I like to get you drunk. Or not till we're “in a bad place.” What if you're always in a bad place? What if that bad place isn't a fix like, stop putting yourself in front of a fist? What I've learned is you write and write and write, and then you read it back over hundreds of times so that you can at least pretend to be having a conversation. Because that's all that ever makes you feel better.

Next Entry: Artsy Fartsy

[374] Jk Jk

I want to talk about dignity and pride, kinda.

Dignity: The state or quality of being worthy of honor or respect. A composed or serious manner or style.

Pride: A feeling of deep pleasure or satisfaction derived from one's own achievements, the achievements of those with whom one is closely associated, or from qualities or possessions that are widely admired.

I think in order for these two things to exist, we need to keep a very big secret. With dignity, what stands out to me is the idea of being composed. When you're calm, cool, and collected you adopt an unspoken respect regardless of what you're doing or saying. With pride, all you need to be able to do is persuade yourself that what you're doing, or what you're crowd is doing, is worthwhile and great, and you get to reap the glory.

What strikes me, is that when I find myself talking about pride with people, they're very quick to explain how “not full of pride” they are. We'll let the irony sink in. If nothing else is known about our conversation, it's vitally important that they don't think I believe their ego hasn't been severely reigned in and shot in the head out back. Pride comes before the fall, after all. Any idiot knows the humble pie you taste after talking too big a game is simply a risk not worth taking. Not if you're to maintain a level of respect from your peers or society that is.

I don't go into a lot of detail, somehow, about where it is I derive pride or under what conditions I can feel dignified. It's very murky waters that become very clear when I'm in the middle of them. We can take a real world example that has prompted this writing. I went to the Comedy Attic. I was told there is a two drink minimum. I did not want anything to drink.

There are two distinct roads you can take. You can feel dignified in “paying to keep the lights on,” as it was explained to me, and spend the money you don't want to spend on drinks you don't want to drink. Or, you can do what I did, lie and cause a minor fuss about not having money nor wanting their drinks. Do I feel dignified? In a sense, but I didn't go to the comedy club to find a waitress to fight with.

What's interesting to me is the pride the comedy club owner has. I'm also in the game of starting and running businesses. I understand there are costs associated. I think there's a deliberate way you can go about accounting for those costs that don't set your patrons, even one of them, up to be an asshole for a pithy grievance. “We need the money to get comedians on the stage.” I've bought CDs directly from said comedians. I do the same thing with bands. I offered to pay a higher ticket price. I just don't want a bottled water nor a beer.

In the moment though, this was not a conversation the players involved were willing to have. This is ONE OF THE TOP TEN COMEDY CLUBS IN THE COUNTRY after all. Who am I to suggest the conditions under which I would feel more comfortable in giving them money? And to achieve such heights and have such a problem keeping the lights on. Comedy, significantly more rough a business than I could imagine. The “gentleman” who said he'd buy two beers to “make me feel better” only to clarify on the way out the door that “I didn't want to hear you keep talking” was a nice cherry. Now, it's not even about how I didn't want a drink, it's that I expected someone else to pick up the tab, as well as have a conversation in the middle of a set. It's easy to see how quickly these things spiral, no?

I offered to leave. I offered to just not come back. The owner insisted several times as we were walking towards the door “that's not what I want, I want you to come back.” Well, this seems like we should either talk in better terms, or I'm going to make the simple decision to not put you in this awkward place. Awkward as you've described, because unfortunately for me, as much dignity as I'd like to see in comedy, it's currently another overly commercialized pit of thousands of people trying to be funny, and if I need my guts chuckled, I don't need to pay for things I don't want to do so.

But it can always be reduced to shitty words and pissing matches. Especially in that setting. I could call the waitress's head a misshaped vegetable I've never heard of that's gone bad. Her hair and head shape...I guess you had to see it. I could have told the owner that he should st-st-st-stick his head up his ass. (He had a stutter.) But that's not what I want, it's not probably what they deserve, and it doesn't speak to the point nor accomplish anything.

I'm sure this is all my fault. I'm sure it's because I'm obsessed with the details. I'm sure it's because, ideally, we'd all understand that my intransigence has nothing to do with genuinely enjoying getting into “heated” discussions with people utterly perplexed by why I'm not convinced by “well everyone else has to do it!” Actual quote. And what an insolent little bastard I'd look like handing out a dollar to every comedian I enjoyed. I'm sure they'd be dying to hear how much my system would save them on lost pencils and printed ballots.

Independent of it all though, that waitress was a total cunt.

[373] Middle Ground Zero

I want to talk about the idea of “the middle way.” I also want to criticize ideas and statements that masquerade as the reasonable adult way of understanding the world.

Initially, I think about the ideal political situation. The idea of negotiating a center that keeps extreme positions at either end, and the reasonable people basically being able to agree on a common premise. In a democracy, it's theorized that rational actors with the perfect information would make decisions in service to their best interests. Clearly, that works every time. I think there are places, like our political realm, where that idea, that there is indeed a middle ground, does a lot of work in misleading our cultural conversation.

Another easy one is health. Would you rather be healthy or have cancer? Why not shoot for the middle ground and we just give you diabetes and a broken leg. It's manageable and not immediately life threatening, right? But no, you'll insist that you want to be healthy. Most sane people would because when it comes to the stark reality of “I feel like shit” it's so very clear what an ideal situation would look like.

I was reading over a reddit thread, specifically this one “hate the liberals” guy's comments to people expressing frustration over Obama's new bill to lower student debt interest rates. Examples of his comments amount to “you were an adult, you shouldn't have signed the loan,” “You're a fucking retard thinking the government owes you anything,” “Education is not free (n)or a right,” “I made better decisions than you, studied something better than you, I don't want to pay for you,” and “you entitled parasites don't seem to understand life isn't fair and that not everyone succeeds.” There are severely worse comments, but this will do for now.

Let's respond line by line. This idea that “you were an adult” seems to say that “now that you're a reasonable and wise individual with no unfair barriers and perfect information, you picked the objectively worst thing to do to yourself in this situation.” I, at least, had about as much choice to go to college as I have to currently work at McDonalds. It's amazing how many parents bought the idea that college meant job and opportunities well before their kids did. It amazes me to think that we'd admonish someone for, what's been touted as the “adult” thing to do, go to college, for incurring the costs that became normalized at all levels of society, in order to do so.

It's not being “reasonable” to lean on the idea that “well, people are adults!” Adults in a context. Or children who are as old as adults who've never been taught or engaged with by a reasonably better interpretation of the word “adult.”

The idea that the government doesn't owe you anything is particularly interesting. In a representative democracy, the government owes you everything. The government owes you its very jobs. If the majority of people with unreasonable crippling debt call on the government to do something about it, the government should respond. This accounting and thought experiment has been done hundreds of times. Things like relocating agribusiness and oil subsidies. Why begrudge the guy who tried to get educated and be responsible instead of writing angry letters to the banks? What did the government owe them? Whatever it was, it's still being paid.

Education not being free nor a right is a statement of fact. But, more to the point, nothing is a right besides the right to die. And then, only if you don't drag that phrasing into the political arena! Rights are bread from understanding and struggle. When you have access, ability, and intention, a “right” starts to manifest in louder and louder fashion. How many blacks and women have been explained to them the rights they don't have in our democracies over the years?

There are things you state because they are true. There are things you state, while incidentally true, only serve to promote the status quo or deliberately ignore other avenues. To say something like “don't touch that pot, it's hot” is not the same kind of factual claim as “don't complain because the government doesn't owe you anything.” The second statement is the kind of folded argument “logic” you get from religious types. “Well, you can't prove there's not a god!” Okay...true, but that usually has absolutely nothing to do with why you think that god doesn't want me to have an abortion. If you don't want to get burned, you don't touch the pot. If you want a different financial obligation, allegedly you appeal to your representatives.

The next lines are about personal responsibility. I don't know how you can talk of responsibility without speaking to what society considers responsible. It goes back to simply going to college in the first place. That's what higher paying jobs expect. That's what they did, that's their standard, and for a great many things, college isn't simply a giant waste of money. But, not only are kids in schools screwed going in, but when they're out, a lot of the jobs they were shooting for, say in medicine, are proving less than useful in paying back their loans anymore than the art student can. There's an underlying societal/governmental problem that makes a truly “responsible” decision, at best difficult, and at worst practically arbitrary.

Finally, the idea that not everyone succeeds and that life isn't fair. Maybe you come across someone who's been in a serious car accident. Do you pull up next to them and yell “life's not fair fucko!” and speed off in celebration of your ability to better avoid being in accidents? Probably not. It's a statement of “fact” that doesn't really speak to whether or not the accident happened on a bridge that wasn't reinforced or a road that wasn't properly paved. It ignores the poor car quality standards that could have reduced it to a fender bender instead of someone bleeding out on the pavement.

There are levels of responsibility and “fair” that we install. Also, we install them for reasons. If you want to speed, you don't argue with the cop that it's not fair he pulled you over. Why make the care able to go so fast if I can't use it! It's fair to assume that most people most of the time should try to drive in ways that don't make it more likely for you to die arbitrarily. We'll leave aside Montana's odd speed experiment, imposing speed limits and seeing an increase in death, with that analogy.

There is a, I don't know what else to call it but “religious zealotry” that people, at some level or another subscribe to that they coat in unhelpful and unnecessary “facts” to try and sound reasonable or advocating for “something in the middle.” These are idealists not because they understand what's actually ideal, but because they are allowed to create and defend to the death what they personally define as ideal. They subscribe to axioms about age or habits of “good leaders” instead of describing the context under which different ideas are formed. They appeal to reputation and common ethics above cause and effect evidence.

These are the people who say one of the dumbest and most popular statements right now, “there are some scientists that don't believe in global warming.” If you watch the episode of “Years of Living Dangerously,” try not to throw something through your TV when the pastor of one of the country's biggest churches argues that “because you haven't addressed my points!” He's neither convinced nor impressed. It's a guy you can't persuade ice melts, but you'll try, until you don't know whether you hate him or yourself more.

The “middle way,” to me, is not making these empty aphorisms about “life” or “how it works.” Nor is it taking a bath in shit, then in honey, and showing off how beautiful you look and awesome you smell. Put the shit in the garden and the honey on the toast. Understand that every time you say “Democrats suck” you're not really saying anything. The middle is about perspective, not leveraging bad or empty ideas against each other. It means you can advocate for equal opportunity without bankrupting potentially vital pieces of infrastructure. It means you're influenced by history and examples that aren't feeling laden anecdotes. It means you can respect when the responsibility is truly yours, you know, like for going to school, and when you should expect the burden for certain things, like how it's paid for, to be on everyone. Every old person on Medicaid who complains about entitled millennials should unironically drop dead on the spot.

“Objective” is not a negotiation. You don't want just a little bit of cancer. In the same way you don't track increasing tuition for 30 years, for no other reasons beyond corruption, and blame kids for “being adults who made the poor decision to pay for an education.”