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Showing posts with label duh moments. Show all posts
Showing posts with label duh moments. Show all posts
5/10/15
That Instant
You realize the best way to clean bones is to burn them! Eureka! There's no magic soup. Just burn the fat and protein chains off of them. Accelerated decay. Duh! Free the carbon. Holy smokes, no pun intended. Sometimes I over think. Haha, eureka indeed. HAHAHAHA finally, fire solves something!
7/26/14
The Changed Landscape of Warfare, Want, and The Spacefarer's Bible
I won't say I will not continue to try to make myself happy. That's foolish and, honestly, a little bit petty and a lot of bit lie no matter whose mouth it comes out of. I do and will (most of the time). Sometimes I completely screw it up and ruin everything for all of us. Life is about that sometimes. Let's begin and find our ending and hopefully put a bow on it so we can assault the next stronghold.
We're a consumer organism. Advancement, the byproduct. That's easy to yank out of the air because it's been floating around there since I was a kid. "We don't make stuff anymore!" "We export everything!" "We import everything!" And on and on and on. It's very easy to get lost in macro markets and who owes whom X amount of ... have you ever watched a history show?
A show where they talk about ancient constructs or modern constructs or ancient economies or modern economies or ancient populations or modern populations? Have you ever watched a speculative show where they talk about what could be at X time in Y space if A and B happen or if C continues to happen or if D changes to a ridiculous extent and ceases to be or metastasizes into some sort of creature all it's own? Have you ever watched the news or an informative program or a program garbed as one that is vested in speculation or sometimes vested in pure facts?
If you have not laughed, laugh the next time you watch one. Not because what they're saying is true or false. Not because what they're saying could be true or could be false and massive death or infinite life may be just around the corner. Not because what they're saying is a ridiculous analogy or because what they are saying makes no damn sense at all given what we know about the world, given how long human beings have been recording information and analyzing information and the fact that even the people that were completely off were still right by a few degrees and it's largely been a war of precision and infomatic attrition.
Laugh because it is hilarious when they tell you the heart pumps enough blood in your life time to fill an olympic swimming pool. Okay, that's not that outlandish. Bad example. Are you laughing yet? Laugh when they tell you the sun produces as much energy as two billion nuclear power plants over the course of their lifetimes in a single second. Laugh when you hear the Hoover dam can power 900,000 refrigerators for ten days with one day of it's output. Laugh when you know a bullet packs the same punch from a .357 as 200 horse power driving a single 30 cm diesel piston pushing a ten mile rod one inch into glacial ice. The scales get insanely arbitrary, but sound impressive.
We're not a consumer organism. Advancement is the byproduct. Want does make excellent bedfellows, though. Maybe it's just the people I know, or choose to know and the ones I choose to not associate with. Yeah there are a lot of consumers. It gets me down. Who doesn't it get down? Silly question. Programs and users. It get's depressing. On this little operating system. It does. I'm not going to lie and even if I did, you'd know. Consumers give the rest of 'Merica a bad rap.
Where you going to put it? What's your percentage of consumer to user? Well, if you must know and you must because we must... 30% - 70%. The thirty percent gets all the play though. Eventually the 70% become dull eyed. The economy does love the 30%, but some of them, many of them keep the seventy employed or at least in cummed.
The other best two words in the English language? You guessed it: "I'm cumming." And no, that's still not three words. Niggler. I'm on to you and your detail oriented cant.
I came to this point what for was for this: (partly to make a cup of tea and nod off to sleep knowing my books are clear for whatever's next but also the following point) driving through an upscale neighborhood, enclave, everything was out for display in the mid afternoon light. Every garage had a car parked outside of it. Every garage was parked outside of high square footage whatever you want to call it, shoulder to shoulder with the one beside it. Parked outside each was a fit human being. Parked beside them was a fit child or bicycle or motor bike or domesticated animal. Parked beside them was a very well attended tree, beside it a clean swatch of cement and occasionally a glittering sign or hydrant. Parked between them was a fine manhole cover. All of it a strange display.
All of it begging to be wanted. Not to be contrarian. All of it unreal. All of it horribly unreal. All of it violently upsetting at it's worst and unsettling at it's least. Who want's to live in a gift shop? Do you really want to know those people? Do you really want perfect? Do you really want to consume that violently? By all means, take care. Take care and maintain and perform and do not give in to kipple. Kipple only breeds more kipple. It's disconcerting.
Yes, my kingdom is of sand and tied together bits, but they're well taken care of bits. That, I do not mind. When you want me to want yours because someone informed you that it is something to be wanted because someone taught them that it is something to be wanted it get's a little gross and wretchworthy. It get's a little arson worthy because I wonder what you'd be without it. If you'd still be you. Ostentaaaaaaaaaaagh! -tatious. Fueling the economy with your fanned feathers.
My own hang up. I know we're a country of makers, producers, writers, painters, builders, organizers, innovators, capturers, battlers, warriors, sportsmen and women, communicators, grifters, flippers, destroyers, and outright creators. Why are the consumers the most flagrant?
I feel bad taking money sometimes. Earned money. I can't remember the last time I outright stole something from someone and didn't tell the person I stole it from what I did and why within 48 hours. That doesn't count as stealing. Especially when I give it in it's original state or better than I left it, right back to them. It's aggravating. I would be so much further ahead if I could steal better. I would like to think. I dunno if that would work out. I don't believe so. I feel bad taking money sometimes and I have to remember why I had to convert to pay for play a couple years ago. Allow me to relate it briefly. It's a very short, kind of funny story.
One day someone asked me to help them move furniture. After another round of my long standing slug fest with who is and who is not a friend, I realized I could not continue to accept a hug and a few beers for my services. The first time I did it, it was a great time and chummy and sexy and kind of fun to laugh and live and love and help build a new space. It was fantastic. It was downright fantastic. The second time was the same. The second, too. The third, as well. The four, you guessed it, the same.
A sensation began to creep in. A very woeful sensation. As I filled the gas tank and counted bruises and counted unvitations to normal events and counted invitations to things I could not attend for lack of fuel and bodily integrity it dawned on me that myself and my peers were no longer fighting the same war.
One of the great equalizers is college. University. Call it what you will. We're all, more or less, fighting the same battles: studying, trying to eat, trying to have money on the side for fun, trying to pay for housing, trying to connect, (some of us) trying to work too, trying to keep up with family. The war has changed and it took me years and years afterwards to identify the change.
I was doing too many favors. Far too many favors. Far far too many favors. My peers and I are not in the same trenches anymore. Not nearly as close as they were. When they fire their rifle their elbow does not knock my shoulder. When I miss a beat and drop my canteen it does not land near their boot heels at all. When I want a smoke I cannot shout for one and catch their ear. When I slop lunch at the mess hall they do not hear my fork and I do not hear theirs when they do the same. We're on entirely different fronts altogether. Not that we're not still friends, bunk mates, and lifers. We're not all infantry anymore.
What I would and have done for them for free, nearly without asking, no longer applies. Changing watch shifts means little to them and the world to me still. An extra half apple means the world to me. To them, it's something to throw in a pocket for later, ya know, just in case. An extra magazine is the world to me. To them, it's something to leave at home because they're operating beneath air superiority and, hell, the whole god damn squad will be resupplied at the push of a button if need be. The war has changed for many and damn near all of them. Not for me, though. Not yet. When a comm line has been shelled to hell I have to army crawl out to fix it, but they don't.
So now, when they ask me to, it's not a favor anymore. It's mercenary work. I hope it doesn't distance them. I hope they understand. If anything, I hope they are amazed I am only now realizing it. Realizing that "smoke em if you got em" still applies, but now, if you ask me for one of mine I will ask you if you have my back when we get back home after we've shared the same trench because when you get shot you get to go back to the forward base and when I get shot, I get to sit down with a bowie knife and a lighter and a rag and a few minutes, and hope it doesn't get infected.
We're not nearly as close as we used to be. I miss those days. I miss loaning out clean dishes with the only caveat being you had to return them. It's pay for play now. On the big stuff. The little stuff, as long as you can promise I will not get shot, I'll still do for you. May not be the same war, but as long as your fighting, I'll fucking see what I can do and keep my own chatter to do or die please and thank yous.
Do not get offended if I flip out because you spent $250 dollars on a fucking chair. A fucking chair!? Are you kidding me? Different theaters, I know, but that could have kept me and my unit supplied for two months. Just saying, mickey.
A clean ship is a very happy ship. Returning to kipple. It really does breed. Kipple makes it difficult to wake up. More difficult even to think once you are awake. It breeds violence too. They never spoke about that part of it. Kipple particles that flake off of the kipple and get breathed in and become a part of your insides and work their way into your nerves like heartworms. The effect isn't the same as a neurological disorder that causes you to lose motor control and not like the effect (if they existed) of ingesting some sort of nanobot that takes over your musculature or even the effect (I would assume) of incorporating some sort of particulate life form or virus that forced signals. Breathing in kipple dust provokes a profound loss of fidelity. It is very important to keep a clean ship.
More importantly, in the vacuum of space, it is critically important to know what is wrong exactly, or as close to exactly, to diagnose the problem effectively and come to a solution quickly. The margin for error is thin. Part way out of the necessity for distance and part way out of the necessity for the fact that calls for support will take a lot of time to travel to the nearest waypoint or planet or orbital station that you happen to be near and an answer will not, regardless of distance, be able to be assumed available before your ships integrity has been completely compromised and you have to either float until you are picked up or hope the entire structure was lost somewhere close enough to another grave yard to piece something back together. The bonus of being a ship builder and engineer by trade and everything else by passion. It gets hairy sometimes.
Whatever planet I'm on, whatever city I occupy, whatever vessel I visit, whatever waypoint I frequent, when I talk about going home, I'm talking about my ship in orbit and my airlock with my key code and my pressure settings and o2 mix. Sometimes I leave I leave the radio on because it's nice to come home to tunes banging through the tunnels.
Admittedly, we've learned to entertain ourselves. There is no slight to the galaxy outside ourselves or Sol. We just don't get along. I remember the shit times and the good times dragging around the inner system. It was pretty fun sometimes. It was pretty hell too. There's a disconnect. I understand that. I'm not going to stage a war against it. The book taking precedence over the rest is the composition of the Spacefarer's Bible. Not to be confused with the Hitchhiker's Guide. It will be a handbook (so I have to keep it short) on how to not screw up when you are responsible for every single last little thing that happens to and for and within your ship. It's taking some precedence. Should I even be talking about it here? I don't know how that shit works. Let's stop cussing so fucking much. How about that?
I woke up yesterday with the realization that since the cessation of communication with my birth parents life has been a very pax by comparison. I had to remind myself not to forget new memories while running from the blacked out ones. I was going willy nilly, erase that one, and that one, n'at, n'at, n'at!!!! I think everything that should be glass is finally glass and god damn I feel pretty nice about it. I will not say mission accomplished just yet, but almost. Not 'til they're dead and I can move freely. Then, yes. Camo theory. The double fake. The triple fake? Off grid: suspicious. On grid: innocuous. Off grid: hello. On grid: hello. Who has the discipline for that?
Do not forget to look up. Every summer I think about and pain over how hard summer is going to hurt me. It's hot. It's bright. It's humid. The days are long. The nights are too short. The world is busy. Kids run everywhere screaming. Teens judge you and you want to knock them down with a well placed baseball to the teeth and then beat their ears in with rocks for having the nerve to say shit to someone they do not fucking know. And the little children run around bewildered at how green everything can be and you want to spin around in circles with them too and pick flowers and the littler ones just scream and cry because they're too hot and the pool is too cold and you want to scream too because it seems like good fun and one hell of a way to get to a good nap for a few hours until it cools off enough to sleep alright if you want to or run around alright if you want until you're too tired to run around and then take a good long nap under the stars or maybe go fishing and start a fire and find some dumb ass tweens to beat to death with a rock you found at the river while they're getting high and being rebels in the woods behind your fishing spot or find the guy who lives there each year or open your mouth in the 10 A.M. sun shower and just look up at the sky and the thunderheads and the moon all up at once and see lightning at ten in the morning. Don't forget to look up when the air is hot and thin at night and the stars come clearer.
I know I'm not a write off or disposable. Scratch that, I am disposable. That I do know. I'm okay with that. The challenge is making yourself indisposable for stretches. Making yourself available. Laying out the factory floor. Not changing the blueprint for the map's sake, but changing it because you've changed. Because we've changed. "WHO DO YOU WORK FOR" shaken by the collar. I work for you. Don't you remember me? I came in during operation sea hawk midway through mission wolf noose. You don't remember me?
Save things for a good time. Save nothing for a perfect time.
///Django Django - "Zumm Zumm" sometimes you yawn and realize you still have 8 bit roots
We're a consumer organism. Advancement, the byproduct. That's easy to yank out of the air because it's been floating around there since I was a kid. "We don't make stuff anymore!" "We export everything!" "We import everything!" And on and on and on. It's very easy to get lost in macro markets and who owes whom X amount of ... have you ever watched a history show?
A show where they talk about ancient constructs or modern constructs or ancient economies or modern economies or ancient populations or modern populations? Have you ever watched a speculative show where they talk about what could be at X time in Y space if A and B happen or if C continues to happen or if D changes to a ridiculous extent and ceases to be or metastasizes into some sort of creature all it's own? Have you ever watched the news or an informative program or a program garbed as one that is vested in speculation or sometimes vested in pure facts?
If you have not laughed, laugh the next time you watch one. Not because what they're saying is true or false. Not because what they're saying could be true or could be false and massive death or infinite life may be just around the corner. Not because what they're saying is a ridiculous analogy or because what they are saying makes no damn sense at all given what we know about the world, given how long human beings have been recording information and analyzing information and the fact that even the people that were completely off were still right by a few degrees and it's largely been a war of precision and infomatic attrition.
Laugh because it is hilarious when they tell you the heart pumps enough blood in your life time to fill an olympic swimming pool. Okay, that's not that outlandish. Bad example. Are you laughing yet? Laugh when they tell you the sun produces as much energy as two billion nuclear power plants over the course of their lifetimes in a single second. Laugh when you hear the Hoover dam can power 900,000 refrigerators for ten days with one day of it's output. Laugh when you know a bullet packs the same punch from a .357 as 200 horse power driving a single 30 cm diesel piston pushing a ten mile rod one inch into glacial ice. The scales get insanely arbitrary, but sound impressive.
We're not a consumer organism. Advancement is the byproduct. Want does make excellent bedfellows, though. Maybe it's just the people I know, or choose to know and the ones I choose to not associate with. Yeah there are a lot of consumers. It gets me down. Who doesn't it get down? Silly question. Programs and users. It get's depressing. On this little operating system. It does. I'm not going to lie and even if I did, you'd know. Consumers give the rest of 'Merica a bad rap.
Where you going to put it? What's your percentage of consumer to user? Well, if you must know and you must because we must... 30% - 70%. The thirty percent gets all the play though. Eventually the 70% become dull eyed. The economy does love the 30%, but some of them, many of them keep the seventy employed or at least in cummed.
The other best two words in the English language? You guessed it: "I'm cumming." And no, that's still not three words. Niggler. I'm on to you and your detail oriented cant.
I came to this point what for was for this: (partly to make a cup of tea and nod off to sleep knowing my books are clear for whatever's next but also the following point) driving through an upscale neighborhood, enclave, everything was out for display in the mid afternoon light. Every garage had a car parked outside of it. Every garage was parked outside of high square footage whatever you want to call it, shoulder to shoulder with the one beside it. Parked outside each was a fit human being. Parked beside them was a fit child or bicycle or motor bike or domesticated animal. Parked beside them was a very well attended tree, beside it a clean swatch of cement and occasionally a glittering sign or hydrant. Parked between them was a fine manhole cover. All of it a strange display.
All of it begging to be wanted. Not to be contrarian. All of it unreal. All of it horribly unreal. All of it violently upsetting at it's worst and unsettling at it's least. Who want's to live in a gift shop? Do you really want to know those people? Do you really want perfect? Do you really want to consume that violently? By all means, take care. Take care and maintain and perform and do not give in to kipple. Kipple only breeds more kipple. It's disconcerting.
Yes, my kingdom is of sand and tied together bits, but they're well taken care of bits. That, I do not mind. When you want me to want yours because someone informed you that it is something to be wanted because someone taught them that it is something to be wanted it get's a little gross and wretchworthy. It get's a little arson worthy because I wonder what you'd be without it. If you'd still be you. Ostentaaaaaaaaaaagh! -tatious. Fueling the economy with your fanned feathers.
My own hang up. I know we're a country of makers, producers, writers, painters, builders, organizers, innovators, capturers, battlers, warriors, sportsmen and women, communicators, grifters, flippers, destroyers, and outright creators. Why are the consumers the most flagrant?
I feel bad taking money sometimes. Earned money. I can't remember the last time I outright stole something from someone and didn't tell the person I stole it from what I did and why within 48 hours. That doesn't count as stealing. Especially when I give it in it's original state or better than I left it, right back to them. It's aggravating. I would be so much further ahead if I could steal better. I would like to think. I dunno if that would work out. I don't believe so. I feel bad taking money sometimes and I have to remember why I had to convert to pay for play a couple years ago. Allow me to relate it briefly. It's a very short, kind of funny story.
One day someone asked me to help them move furniture. After another round of my long standing slug fest with who is and who is not a friend, I realized I could not continue to accept a hug and a few beers for my services. The first time I did it, it was a great time and chummy and sexy and kind of fun to laugh and live and love and help build a new space. It was fantastic. It was downright fantastic. The second time was the same. The second, too. The third, as well. The four, you guessed it, the same.
A sensation began to creep in. A very woeful sensation. As I filled the gas tank and counted bruises and counted unvitations to normal events and counted invitations to things I could not attend for lack of fuel and bodily integrity it dawned on me that myself and my peers were no longer fighting the same war.
One of the great equalizers is college. University. Call it what you will. We're all, more or less, fighting the same battles: studying, trying to eat, trying to have money on the side for fun, trying to pay for housing, trying to connect, (some of us) trying to work too, trying to keep up with family. The war has changed and it took me years and years afterwards to identify the change.
I was doing too many favors. Far too many favors. Far far too many favors. My peers and I are not in the same trenches anymore. Not nearly as close as they were. When they fire their rifle their elbow does not knock my shoulder. When I miss a beat and drop my canteen it does not land near their boot heels at all. When I want a smoke I cannot shout for one and catch their ear. When I slop lunch at the mess hall they do not hear my fork and I do not hear theirs when they do the same. We're on entirely different fronts altogether. Not that we're not still friends, bunk mates, and lifers. We're not all infantry anymore.
What I would and have done for them for free, nearly without asking, no longer applies. Changing watch shifts means little to them and the world to me still. An extra half apple means the world to me. To them, it's something to throw in a pocket for later, ya know, just in case. An extra magazine is the world to me. To them, it's something to leave at home because they're operating beneath air superiority and, hell, the whole god damn squad will be resupplied at the push of a button if need be. The war has changed for many and damn near all of them. Not for me, though. Not yet. When a comm line has been shelled to hell I have to army crawl out to fix it, but they don't.
So now, when they ask me to, it's not a favor anymore. It's mercenary work. I hope it doesn't distance them. I hope they understand. If anything, I hope they are amazed I am only now realizing it. Realizing that "smoke em if you got em" still applies, but now, if you ask me for one of mine I will ask you if you have my back when we get back home after we've shared the same trench because when you get shot you get to go back to the forward base and when I get shot, I get to sit down with a bowie knife and a lighter and a rag and a few minutes, and hope it doesn't get infected.
We're not nearly as close as we used to be. I miss those days. I miss loaning out clean dishes with the only caveat being you had to return them. It's pay for play now. On the big stuff. The little stuff, as long as you can promise I will not get shot, I'll still do for you. May not be the same war, but as long as your fighting, I'll fucking see what I can do and keep my own chatter to do or die please and thank yous.
Do not get offended if I flip out because you spent $250 dollars on a fucking chair. A fucking chair!? Are you kidding me? Different theaters, I know, but that could have kept me and my unit supplied for two months. Just saying, mickey.
A clean ship is a very happy ship. Returning to kipple. It really does breed. Kipple makes it difficult to wake up. More difficult even to think once you are awake. It breeds violence too. They never spoke about that part of it. Kipple particles that flake off of the kipple and get breathed in and become a part of your insides and work their way into your nerves like heartworms. The effect isn't the same as a neurological disorder that causes you to lose motor control and not like the effect (if they existed) of ingesting some sort of nanobot that takes over your musculature or even the effect (I would assume) of incorporating some sort of particulate life form or virus that forced signals. Breathing in kipple dust provokes a profound loss of fidelity. It is very important to keep a clean ship.
More importantly, in the vacuum of space, it is critically important to know what is wrong exactly, or as close to exactly, to diagnose the problem effectively and come to a solution quickly. The margin for error is thin. Part way out of the necessity for distance and part way out of the necessity for the fact that calls for support will take a lot of time to travel to the nearest waypoint or planet or orbital station that you happen to be near and an answer will not, regardless of distance, be able to be assumed available before your ships integrity has been completely compromised and you have to either float until you are picked up or hope the entire structure was lost somewhere close enough to another grave yard to piece something back together. The bonus of being a ship builder and engineer by trade and everything else by passion. It gets hairy sometimes.
Whatever planet I'm on, whatever city I occupy, whatever vessel I visit, whatever waypoint I frequent, when I talk about going home, I'm talking about my ship in orbit and my airlock with my key code and my pressure settings and o2 mix. Sometimes I leave I leave the radio on because it's nice to come home to tunes banging through the tunnels.
Admittedly, we've learned to entertain ourselves. There is no slight to the galaxy outside ourselves or Sol. We just don't get along. I remember the shit times and the good times dragging around the inner system. It was pretty fun sometimes. It was pretty hell too. There's a disconnect. I understand that. I'm not going to stage a war against it. The book taking precedence over the rest is the composition of the Spacefarer's Bible. Not to be confused with the Hitchhiker's Guide. It will be a handbook (so I have to keep it short) on how to not screw up when you are responsible for every single last little thing that happens to and for and within your ship. It's taking some precedence. Should I even be talking about it here? I don't know how that shit works. Let's stop cussing so fucking much. How about that?
I woke up yesterday with the realization that since the cessation of communication with my birth parents life has been a very pax by comparison. I had to remind myself not to forget new memories while running from the blacked out ones. I was going willy nilly, erase that one, and that one, n'at, n'at, n'at!!!! I think everything that should be glass is finally glass and god damn I feel pretty nice about it. I will not say mission accomplished just yet, but almost. Not 'til they're dead and I can move freely. Then, yes. Camo theory. The double fake. The triple fake? Off grid: suspicious. On grid: innocuous. Off grid: hello. On grid: hello. Who has the discipline for that?
Do not forget to look up. Every summer I think about and pain over how hard summer is going to hurt me. It's hot. It's bright. It's humid. The days are long. The nights are too short. The world is busy. Kids run everywhere screaming. Teens judge you and you want to knock them down with a well placed baseball to the teeth and then beat their ears in with rocks for having the nerve to say shit to someone they do not fucking know. And the little children run around bewildered at how green everything can be and you want to spin around in circles with them too and pick flowers and the littler ones just scream and cry because they're too hot and the pool is too cold and you want to scream too because it seems like good fun and one hell of a way to get to a good nap for a few hours until it cools off enough to sleep alright if you want to or run around alright if you want until you're too tired to run around and then take a good long nap under the stars or maybe go fishing and start a fire and find some dumb ass tweens to beat to death with a rock you found at the river while they're getting high and being rebels in the woods behind your fishing spot or find the guy who lives there each year or open your mouth in the 10 A.M. sun shower and just look up at the sky and the thunderheads and the moon all up at once and see lightning at ten in the morning. Don't forget to look up when the air is hot and thin at night and the stars come clearer.
I know I'm not a write off or disposable. Scratch that, I am disposable. That I do know. I'm okay with that. The challenge is making yourself indisposable for stretches. Making yourself available. Laying out the factory floor. Not changing the blueprint for the map's sake, but changing it because you've changed. Because we've changed. "WHO DO YOU WORK FOR" shaken by the collar. I work for you. Don't you remember me? I came in during operation sea hawk midway through mission wolf noose. You don't remember me?
Save things for a good time. Save nothing for a perfect time.
///Django Django - "Zumm Zumm" sometimes you yawn and realize you still have 8 bit roots
6/22/13
4 Years Is a Lifetime, Music, and Summer What?
Sometimes I wake up and it's hard to believe it's been four years since I made it clear of the 24 years that came before when it comes to my parents. When people ask about them, I'm still tempted to say they died. They are dead to me, but just because they're dead in my mind doesn't make them dead in real life, even though it would be great if they were. It's hard to believe I ever did love them. I suppose I once did. My mother anyway. Is it better to be feared or loved? They decided it was better to be feared. It is easy to receive gratitude for putting out a fire. I suppose it is easy to cling to those firemen and women rescuing you from that fire and believing you owe them a life debt. A water debt. A blood debt.
It is easy, until you find out, when the blinders come off, that they set that fire that took your body down to it's foundations. Then it's not so easy. When that sun dawns and the city you've been inhabiting in the dark comes into sharp relief and you realize you've been living downtown for 24 years and didn't know it and from the tallest skyscraper there you can't even see the city limits, you cry. And I did. For years. I wanted to jump back then. Break my heart on the pavement into beads of pomegranate flesh crushed. I didn't.
I walked. I ran. And then I walked some more when my lungs and legs quit. I camped. I broke into abandoned homes and raided food and threw it in my back pack and kept going. I slept on concrete and hid in basements when creatures roamed and cached weapons to defend myself. Taught myself how to use them, because the day you come face to face with the monsters will be the day you are least prepared to fight for your life and the blood in your veins and your heart beat. I walked for years until the buildings and bridges grew smaller. The shells of "civilization" as I knew it grew fewer and far between, and one day I was outside of it all, on a hill top looking back in and I could see the towers so tall back then. I could see the flag poles and radio towers atop the things so massive they crowded out the sky and blanked the stars at night with their ferocious brilliance.
And it's strange to be outside of it. Strange to feel myself breathing. There was a time, right after I took myself away from it all, that it felt odd not to be hurt. I felt like my skin didn't fit. My face didn't feel like my face. It was difficult to walk, like my legs forgot how to do it in this new frame unburdened. It felt strange to stand up straight. Strange to deal with my bosses because I was constantly afraid that they might hit me if I messed something up or forgot to do something or did what they wanted, but they changed their minds halfway and did not tell me. It never occurred to me that people are not supposed to be allowed to do that to other people. It never occurred to me that people are not naturally inclined to do that necessarily. It never occurred to me that there would and could be legal recourse for me if they did. Shedding the things, piece by piece, that I once thought to be absolute truths of power relationships and interchange with "authority".
It was a difficult transition and four years removed from it, it feels like a lifetime away. The longest four years of my short life. I've done so much living, it amazes me and I love it. I love being able to look forward without immediate apprehension. Some days I wake up and my first thought is "so this is what everyone else has been feeling like all this time." I wish that I did still retain the good memories from when I was little. I've spent so much of myself and so much time eradicating the bad ones, but you can't pick and choose when it comes to that. There are huge blank spaces in my memory now. Massive expanses that I should have some recall about, but I don't. Struggle with whether that's a good or bad thing comes up sometimes, but I'd rather recall nothing than wake up sweating at night.
A choice I decided to make. The most vivid memories still remain, both good and bad; the worst of the worst and the best of the best. Every time I speak to my siblings something new and minor comes to light for better and for worse and I forget all over again. Strike it from the library. Continue on my way. I feel like, really for the first time in a long time, like I'm going the right way and ... there's no price to put on peace. Peace at any cost. Call it selfish. Call it whatever you want to. There's beauty in grace and grace is not killing your parents to square your own books.
There's music stored up in there. I have about 120 tracks and sounds and machine sounds stocked up. I really do want to do it, I haven't made the time to learn. Really learn. I'm passion infused about it. I need it. I'm terrified of failure the same way I used to be years ago when I first decided to share and open myself up to criticism. Not just open myself up, but open myself up to criticism on something I thought I was pretty good at. Music is an entirely different bucket. I want to do it, I've taken the first steps, and now I just have to make one foot follow the other. Never did download that manual for the autoharp. It's not collecting dust though. Every few days, I drag it out from under my bed and lay it down and pluck it's strings and see what comes out of it, but I'm happy to be a dabbler. And unhappy to be just.
Beats, notes, and rhythms in my head and the struggle, I know, will be exhausting. It's a problem of effort and I know that's a me problem, not an environment problem. I've had some trouble with scheduling. Trying to keep yourself out of trouble by sleeping on a max schedule will only drive you so far. Eventually you have to step out of safety if you want to accomplish anything. No one ever won a football game by kneeling down in the first quarter. Crunch time is never convenient and I can't imagine the force of the crush that will drive me to try and I don't want to experience it. I'll get on it someday. To do lists grow long like finger nails. Eventually you have to cut it down or at least paint them.
On another note, you know it's summer when the girls are out in flip flops and the guys are losing their shirts. That's the usual metric. Everyone is out in their Ed Hardy tees and old men are jogging, red skinned, down the middle of side streets and kids are pushing their strollers and little carnivals with tractor trailer ferris wheels start popping up. You know it's summer when you can't get a spot to fish on the river shore if you show up any later than noon on a Tuesday. Opening your car door is like opening an oven door and you sweat from the effort of fixing yourself a bowl of cereal for breakfast. You know it's summer when you head down to the basketball court and you'd rather stand than sit when you're not playing because the asphalt is just that hot.
The real tell about summer, though, is when the ladies start to come out doors in shorts and Ugg boots. I have no idea when that nonsense caught on. What I do know is that every year it happens. Inevitably. It makes no sense. I am a huge fan of form following function, but there is no function to it! None whatsoever! I am taking a stand against it. I was walking down to the gas station in the middle of the day and a nub wearing Uggs and a jean jacket strolled by on the other side of the street and I tried to contain it, but I couldn't. I guffawed for a second, choked, and then laughed at the top of my lungs. It's okay though. She's doing her and I'm going to do me. No big deal.
Still though, come on! Really? Watching it from the corner of my eye all I could think about was gross, stanky, lady feet. I don't care how pretty your face is, guy or girl, but if your feet stank something awful or are horribly deformed or even noticeably deformed, that's a deal breaker. Call me shallow. I don't mind, but there has to be limits. Still chuckling while I walked into the gas station I was at a loss as to what planet that was considered attractive.
I'm not the style police. 90% of what I wear serves a function and a purpose and if that purpose or function requires something off putting or ugly, hey... go f#$% yourself. Form will always follow function for me. If I happen to net up some good form along the way it's just the bonus. I love summer. I love the absurdity of it all. I got into a long back and forth with a girl friend about style. Sometimes I do make style considerations when it comes to choosing the best function/form ratio. She was dressed to the nines and I asked her why she would put herself into such nice clothes. Turned out she just wanted to dress up on a Friday. I scratched my beard. She elaborated. "Sometimes I'm just in the mood to feel a little different."
I got it, then. When function governs there's less room for expression. Everything can't be mechanical the way I want it to be or would like it to be. Input equals output not always and it shouldn't always be. Reproduction being what it is and kind of necessary. Hard wiring. And there I go, back to the mechanical. I can't help it. She had a point though. After the conversation I felt myself starting to want to be a slacks and button up guy. She explained that even though she was dressed to the teeth with shiny earrings, they were still her play clothes because if anything bad happened to them, they're not her actual dress clothes. I might try to wear button up shirts more often. Without buttoning them. To pull that off I'll probably need pants without latex paint all over them. That takes money. Maybe not. I love function.
I'll have quiet dreams about wearing dumb slacks and ripping the crotch out of them doing what I do. In the meantime, I'll just do me and wear what I want. I guess, in very short retrospect, I respect that Ugg jean jacket girl. If I see her again I'm still going to laugh. The same way people probably laugh at me strolling down the main drag in clothes with no form, scratching their heads like "did you look at a mirror before you left your house or did you grab the first four garments you could find on your floor and jump out of your door to conquer the world?"
And that's how you know it's Summer.
Kisses. Later on, kids.
///Ladytron - "Soft Power" ...daylight is the enemy... I love the night. Everything smells wet and good at night. I want to sleep by the river again and talk to the fish while the fire goes out.
It is easy, until you find out, when the blinders come off, that they set that fire that took your body down to it's foundations. Then it's not so easy. When that sun dawns and the city you've been inhabiting in the dark comes into sharp relief and you realize you've been living downtown for 24 years and didn't know it and from the tallest skyscraper there you can't even see the city limits, you cry. And I did. For years. I wanted to jump back then. Break my heart on the pavement into beads of pomegranate flesh crushed. I didn't.
I walked. I ran. And then I walked some more when my lungs and legs quit. I camped. I broke into abandoned homes and raided food and threw it in my back pack and kept going. I slept on concrete and hid in basements when creatures roamed and cached weapons to defend myself. Taught myself how to use them, because the day you come face to face with the monsters will be the day you are least prepared to fight for your life and the blood in your veins and your heart beat. I walked for years until the buildings and bridges grew smaller. The shells of "civilization" as I knew it grew fewer and far between, and one day I was outside of it all, on a hill top looking back in and I could see the towers so tall back then. I could see the flag poles and radio towers atop the things so massive they crowded out the sky and blanked the stars at night with their ferocious brilliance.
And it's strange to be outside of it. Strange to feel myself breathing. There was a time, right after I took myself away from it all, that it felt odd not to be hurt. I felt like my skin didn't fit. My face didn't feel like my face. It was difficult to walk, like my legs forgot how to do it in this new frame unburdened. It felt strange to stand up straight. Strange to deal with my bosses because I was constantly afraid that they might hit me if I messed something up or forgot to do something or did what they wanted, but they changed their minds halfway and did not tell me. It never occurred to me that people are not supposed to be allowed to do that to other people. It never occurred to me that people are not naturally inclined to do that necessarily. It never occurred to me that there would and could be legal recourse for me if they did. Shedding the things, piece by piece, that I once thought to be absolute truths of power relationships and interchange with "authority".
It was a difficult transition and four years removed from it, it feels like a lifetime away. The longest four years of my short life. I've done so much living, it amazes me and I love it. I love being able to look forward without immediate apprehension. Some days I wake up and my first thought is "so this is what everyone else has been feeling like all this time." I wish that I did still retain the good memories from when I was little. I've spent so much of myself and so much time eradicating the bad ones, but you can't pick and choose when it comes to that. There are huge blank spaces in my memory now. Massive expanses that I should have some recall about, but I don't. Struggle with whether that's a good or bad thing comes up sometimes, but I'd rather recall nothing than wake up sweating at night.
A choice I decided to make. The most vivid memories still remain, both good and bad; the worst of the worst and the best of the best. Every time I speak to my siblings something new and minor comes to light for better and for worse and I forget all over again. Strike it from the library. Continue on my way. I feel like, really for the first time in a long time, like I'm going the right way and ... there's no price to put on peace. Peace at any cost. Call it selfish. Call it whatever you want to. There's beauty in grace and grace is not killing your parents to square your own books.
There's music stored up in there. I have about 120 tracks and sounds and machine sounds stocked up. I really do want to do it, I haven't made the time to learn. Really learn. I'm passion infused about it. I need it. I'm terrified of failure the same way I used to be years ago when I first decided to share and open myself up to criticism. Not just open myself up, but open myself up to criticism on something I thought I was pretty good at. Music is an entirely different bucket. I want to do it, I've taken the first steps, and now I just have to make one foot follow the other. Never did download that manual for the autoharp. It's not collecting dust though. Every few days, I drag it out from under my bed and lay it down and pluck it's strings and see what comes out of it, but I'm happy to be a dabbler. And unhappy to be just.
Beats, notes, and rhythms in my head and the struggle, I know, will be exhausting. It's a problem of effort and I know that's a me problem, not an environment problem. I've had some trouble with scheduling. Trying to keep yourself out of trouble by sleeping on a max schedule will only drive you so far. Eventually you have to step out of safety if you want to accomplish anything. No one ever won a football game by kneeling down in the first quarter. Crunch time is never convenient and I can't imagine the force of the crush that will drive me to try and I don't want to experience it. I'll get on it someday. To do lists grow long like finger nails. Eventually you have to cut it down or at least paint them.
On another note, you know it's summer when the girls are out in flip flops and the guys are losing their shirts. That's the usual metric. Everyone is out in their Ed Hardy tees and old men are jogging, red skinned, down the middle of side streets and kids are pushing their strollers and little carnivals with tractor trailer ferris wheels start popping up. You know it's summer when you can't get a spot to fish on the river shore if you show up any later than noon on a Tuesday. Opening your car door is like opening an oven door and you sweat from the effort of fixing yourself a bowl of cereal for breakfast. You know it's summer when you head down to the basketball court and you'd rather stand than sit when you're not playing because the asphalt is just that hot.
The real tell about summer, though, is when the ladies start to come out doors in shorts and Ugg boots. I have no idea when that nonsense caught on. What I do know is that every year it happens. Inevitably. It makes no sense. I am a huge fan of form following function, but there is no function to it! None whatsoever! I am taking a stand against it. I was walking down to the gas station in the middle of the day and a nub wearing Uggs and a jean jacket strolled by on the other side of the street and I tried to contain it, but I couldn't. I guffawed for a second, choked, and then laughed at the top of my lungs. It's okay though. She's doing her and I'm going to do me. No big deal.
Still though, come on! Really? Watching it from the corner of my eye all I could think about was gross, stanky, lady feet. I don't care how pretty your face is, guy or girl, but if your feet stank something awful or are horribly deformed or even noticeably deformed, that's a deal breaker. Call me shallow. I don't mind, but there has to be limits. Still chuckling while I walked into the gas station I was at a loss as to what planet that was considered attractive.
I'm not the style police. 90% of what I wear serves a function and a purpose and if that purpose or function requires something off putting or ugly, hey... go f#$% yourself. Form will always follow function for me. If I happen to net up some good form along the way it's just the bonus. I love summer. I love the absurdity of it all. I got into a long back and forth with a girl friend about style. Sometimes I do make style considerations when it comes to choosing the best function/form ratio. She was dressed to the nines and I asked her why she would put herself into such nice clothes. Turned out she just wanted to dress up on a Friday. I scratched my beard. She elaborated. "Sometimes I'm just in the mood to feel a little different."
I got it, then. When function governs there's less room for expression. Everything can't be mechanical the way I want it to be or would like it to be. Input equals output not always and it shouldn't always be. Reproduction being what it is and kind of necessary. Hard wiring. And there I go, back to the mechanical. I can't help it. She had a point though. After the conversation I felt myself starting to want to be a slacks and button up guy. She explained that even though she was dressed to the teeth with shiny earrings, they were still her play clothes because if anything bad happened to them, they're not her actual dress clothes. I might try to wear button up shirts more often. Without buttoning them. To pull that off I'll probably need pants without latex paint all over them. That takes money. Maybe not. I love function.
I'll have quiet dreams about wearing dumb slacks and ripping the crotch out of them doing what I do. In the meantime, I'll just do me and wear what I want. I guess, in very short retrospect, I respect that Ugg jean jacket girl. If I see her again I'm still going to laugh. The same way people probably laugh at me strolling down the main drag in clothes with no form, scratching their heads like "did you look at a mirror before you left your house or did you grab the first four garments you could find on your floor and jump out of your door to conquer the world?"
And that's how you know it's Summer.
Kisses. Later on, kids.
///Ladytron - "Soft Power" ...daylight is the enemy... I love the night. Everything smells wet and good at night. I want to sleep by the river again and talk to the fish while the fire goes out.
8/27/12
Ramping Up
I have been ramping up to this, and I have been a little bit absentee as well. Side by each. It has been tough getting back to here. Circuitous. Among other words and expletives. It has been a very difficult cycle of days. I do not know how else to place it. Everything is back where it belongs. A lot of argumentation internal. It catches up with you and before you know it you are dying while still breathing.
It;s been tough though. But what hasn't? Production has lapsed, but what is avoidable? Art is up however. Graphics. Graphics and graphic design. It;s tough sometimes when people talk to you and say they/re artists, but you know in their hearts they are not. It ruffles feathers and rumples collars. It's difficult to tell them otherwise because, in the telling, you are admitting skill and I have a hard time, still, admitting that I know what I'm trying to do, for the most part, on easels. Given easels.
If you look at your reflection, sometimes what you see is not what you know you could be, given everything that came before; that hesitation, those devils and those guns, are what keeps me from being a shameless self promoter, but are you hiding in the trees?
The point is that it is all an elaborate dream and there is no way you can spin manslaughter 2 into mistaken identities and a lack of coverage or maybe it's just black town. I don't know. Hard decisions. I know how much you are supposed to take, but how much am I supposed to take. Against the wall. Am I supposed to want sex or is sex supposed to want me. Is the BIC pipe a one hitter in the sense that you use it once or is it a one hitter in the sense that you can't light crack twice?
I don't know where to go from here, but I'm not quite sure if I should be so entertained with the idea of the opportunity to leave. Cash money, mother nucca. It just drives the nerves sometimes. It's hard to admit failed suicide attempts. What you can do though is tape up your wrists and throw some fists.
Not to get oxygen necessarily, but just to get inside your britches. Feel your (can't spell it) huch spa. Feel your id on the outside and taste a little blood, instead of digesting it. There's too much blood and sunlight to go around. I am trying to draw a line between pretending and good acting and I am having a difficult time of it.
Sometimes things go down in a fashion that breaks your heart. Sometimes your older sister whiffs on painting your nails. Sometimes things go down in a way that throws shit out of whack. Sometimes the throwing is enough to reframe ideas about things you've been mulling. I don't know if this is better or worse than talking in third person. It is difficult to be concerned.
What was I going for? Chronic masturbation. No, Laughter. Nod your head because I know that I;m right. I'm not the capital G. I'm not nothing either. Hang out with me in the middle ground. I swear I'll love you like I've never loved myself. Andd I won't promise to make you happy. And I won't promise anything more than 18 hours out, but I will. I won't, but I will give you one year with the dragon in one day and rape is a device of the lesser and if you would be considering kissing me now I would not be opposed
to standing there
///track not found - lets get back up on that horse. I'm sorry I left you. Please be kind. I'm coming out of left field in a full sprint out of the clear blue sky
It;s been tough though. But what hasn't? Production has lapsed, but what is avoidable? Art is up however. Graphics. Graphics and graphic design. It;s tough sometimes when people talk to you and say they/re artists, but you know in their hearts they are not. It ruffles feathers and rumples collars. It's difficult to tell them otherwise because, in the telling, you are admitting skill and I have a hard time, still, admitting that I know what I'm trying to do, for the most part, on easels. Given easels.
If you look at your reflection, sometimes what you see is not what you know you could be, given everything that came before; that hesitation, those devils and those guns, are what keeps me from being a shameless self promoter, but are you hiding in the trees?
The point is that it is all an elaborate dream and there is no way you can spin manslaughter 2 into mistaken identities and a lack of coverage or maybe it's just black town. I don't know. Hard decisions. I know how much you are supposed to take, but how much am I supposed to take. Against the wall. Am I supposed to want sex or is sex supposed to want me. Is the BIC pipe a one hitter in the sense that you use it once or is it a one hitter in the sense that you can't light crack twice?
I don't know where to go from here, but I'm not quite sure if I should be so entertained with the idea of the opportunity to leave. Cash money, mother nucca. It just drives the nerves sometimes. It's hard to admit failed suicide attempts. What you can do though is tape up your wrists and throw some fists.
Not to get oxygen necessarily, but just to get inside your britches. Feel your (can't spell it) huch spa. Feel your id on the outside and taste a little blood, instead of digesting it. There's too much blood and sunlight to go around. I am trying to draw a line between pretending and good acting and I am having a difficult time of it.
Sometimes things go down in a fashion that breaks your heart. Sometimes your older sister whiffs on painting your nails. Sometimes things go down in a way that throws shit out of whack. Sometimes the throwing is enough to reframe ideas about things you've been mulling. I don't know if this is better or worse than talking in third person. It is difficult to be concerned.
What was I going for? Chronic masturbation. No, Laughter. Nod your head because I know that I;m right. I'm not the capital G. I'm not nothing either. Hang out with me in the middle ground. I swear I'll love you like I've never loved myself. Andd I won't promise to make you happy. And I won't promise anything more than 18 hours out, but I will. I won't, but I will give you one year with the dragon in one day and rape is a device of the lesser and if you would be considering kissing me now I would not be opposed
to standing there
///track not found - lets get back up on that horse. I'm sorry I left you. Please be kind. I'm coming out of left field in a full sprint out of the clear blue sky
5/16/12
The Super L33t Effect
The l33t effect in salary capped sports, and to a lesser degree uncapped sports, in America is a shame. It has nothing to do with LeBron as a person, or his mental toughness, or what he does in "winning" time, or crunch time, or whether or not he steps up in big moments, or is "passive", or whatever. The only thing it has to do with is the perception that you have to, absolutely have to be paid requisite to your abilities and relative to your peers at all times and to do anything less would be an admission of some kind of failing in your skill set, relative to everyone else playing the same game, and is absolutely unacceptable.
I mean, I get it: professional athletes are competitive in every aspect of their game and it makes sense that the competitive "I am the best, I will get the best" mentality bleeds over into other aspects of their lives. I wasn't terribly shocked when Tiger Woods slept with other women. The guy's a competitor. Were you really shocked back in the day when Tanya paid that guy to smash Nancy's leg with a hammer? Did I get those names in the right order? I hope I'm remembering that correctly. Anyway, when athletes do ridiculous things, why is anyone terribly shocked? 9/10ths of their lives is spent growing up in their sport and continuing that sport on an adult level against other people who have devoted the greater parts of their lives to the same game would, could, and does warp them with respect to 9 to 5 human beings who don't do what they love (not even close) and who haven't been doing it since they were old enough to... I dunno... carry a plate from the kitchen to their table and back when they were done eating.
What I've been thinking is that the LeBron effect basically makes it harder to win as a team, rather than easier. Maybe call it the A-Rod effect, or don't. That wouldn't be all that accurate as there aren't salary caps in baseball. You can throw away as much money as you want depending on your market. It's still there though, but a shadow of what it is in capped sports. In salary capped leagues the ultra l33t athlete effect is real. Basically, you are awesome. Well, I should start off by saying "this is where it starts." So, basically, you are awesome at what you do. Top twenty in the country. In the top fifty human beings on the face of the Earth at whatever thing it is that you do.
However, the only way you get to do it, is by signing on with a team and the team only has so much money to spend. On top of that, there is already an established amount of money everyone else who can't do it as well as you gets paid. So you have to be paid more because you're better than them. It'd be like a CEO of a grocery store being paid bagger money. The money establishes, or rather, confirms hierarchy. Pay grades are like school grades in that way. The problem arises when you are so good that a team has to pay you so much money that there is none left to pay the baggers or cashiers or maintenance staff and the grocery store eventually folds, but damn there was a good CEO leading them straight into the ground. You could take less money, but taking less money would be the same as saying "I'm not the best at what I do and I want to acknowledge it publicly."
The super l33t effect basically rots out the infrastructure, completely blows it out. So as contracts inflate, the model of a few super l33ts surrounded by dreck grows less and less tenable. I guess what I'm getting at is this: every time something goes wrong with the Miami Heat NBA team and the finger pointing starts up, I cringe a little bit. It is a no win situation for that team and everyone involved. If they do eventually win a championship or two, it will be great, but I think it will be the last time, at least for the foreseeable future, that any general manager will make moves that will eat the massive majority of their available folding money on a massive minority of their players (the elite few on the team). It's a bit ridiculous. It's a self perpetuating system. If LeBron could take less money to bring in a better supporting cast, would he? I guess that's up for debate too. But, we'll never know. So screw it.
Either way, athletes are paid way too much money regardless. Average people aren't paid enough. And God, if he exists, is a Steelers fan. That is all.
I mean, I get it: professional athletes are competitive in every aspect of their game and it makes sense that the competitive "I am the best, I will get the best" mentality bleeds over into other aspects of their lives. I wasn't terribly shocked when Tiger Woods slept with other women. The guy's a competitor. Were you really shocked back in the day when Tanya paid that guy to smash Nancy's leg with a hammer? Did I get those names in the right order? I hope I'm remembering that correctly. Anyway, when athletes do ridiculous things, why is anyone terribly shocked? 9/10ths of their lives is spent growing up in their sport and continuing that sport on an adult level against other people who have devoted the greater parts of their lives to the same game would, could, and does warp them with respect to 9 to 5 human beings who don't do what they love (not even close) and who haven't been doing it since they were old enough to... I dunno... carry a plate from the kitchen to their table and back when they were done eating.
What I've been thinking is that the LeBron effect basically makes it harder to win as a team, rather than easier. Maybe call it the A-Rod effect, or don't. That wouldn't be all that accurate as there aren't salary caps in baseball. You can throw away as much money as you want depending on your market. It's still there though, but a shadow of what it is in capped sports. In salary capped leagues the ultra l33t athlete effect is real. Basically, you are awesome. Well, I should start off by saying "this is where it starts." So, basically, you are awesome at what you do. Top twenty in the country. In the top fifty human beings on the face of the Earth at whatever thing it is that you do.
However, the only way you get to do it, is by signing on with a team and the team only has so much money to spend. On top of that, there is already an established amount of money everyone else who can't do it as well as you gets paid. So you have to be paid more because you're better than them. It'd be like a CEO of a grocery store being paid bagger money. The money establishes, or rather, confirms hierarchy. Pay grades are like school grades in that way. The problem arises when you are so good that a team has to pay you so much money that there is none left to pay the baggers or cashiers or maintenance staff and the grocery store eventually folds, but damn there was a good CEO leading them straight into the ground. You could take less money, but taking less money would be the same as saying "I'm not the best at what I do and I want to acknowledge it publicly."
The super l33t effect basically rots out the infrastructure, completely blows it out. So as contracts inflate, the model of a few super l33ts surrounded by dreck grows less and less tenable. I guess what I'm getting at is this: every time something goes wrong with the Miami Heat NBA team and the finger pointing starts up, I cringe a little bit. It is a no win situation for that team and everyone involved. If they do eventually win a championship or two, it will be great, but I think it will be the last time, at least for the foreseeable future, that any general manager will make moves that will eat the massive majority of their available folding money on a massive minority of their players (the elite few on the team). It's a bit ridiculous. It's a self perpetuating system. If LeBron could take less money to bring in a better supporting cast, would he? I guess that's up for debate too. But, we'll never know. So screw it.
Either way, athletes are paid way too much money regardless. Average people aren't paid enough. And God, if he exists, is a Steelers fan. That is all.
11/14/11
Work and Workarounds
Cued: writing music and word inducing fluids to maybe produce some super fluidity. So lets get through this in one piece, because time is precious and hacks do two takes. I kid. But seriously, there's a lot less to worry about when you know your nose keeps bleeding because you've been snuffling coke. There's a lot more to worry about when your nose keeps bleeding and as far as you know you've kept it clean. So maybe it's just the winter crush I've been sucking into my lungs and things will balance up. Or maybe not. Maybe I'm just prone to nose bleeds. Maybe I've just been sniffing too much paint. Maybe I shouldn't keep sleeping at 48 degrees. Maybe I should stop worrying because at the end of the day, if I finish up with as many body parts and organs as I started with, things are pretty much as good as it gets.
Slugging my way through another work day I got to making conversation. There's only so many times you can walk by the people you don't want to talk to or have anything to do without having to say something. As I walked in the manager shook my hand. Both managers did. And I was immediately accosted by a union lifer suggesting I was buddy buddy with management. By itself laughable. Apparently the managers have never shaken hands with him first thing in the morning in all his 34 years. Which really makes me wonder: am I that much better than them? I've done nothing untoward to provoke a positive response from the high ups. I just do my shit and go home. Apparently having that much work ethic puts me at odds with my fellows and in the good graces of the up and ups. Which is hilarious. When you think about how inefficient things can be, how many times people can spin around in a circle to collect a paycheck instead of doing their jobs, it probably doesn't occur to you that having the ability to walk in a straight line could ever be that much of an asset. I laughed, shrugged, and went on doing my shit. I'm not concerned in the slightest. If anything, I know that if I show up I'm already ahead of most of the pack.
Which brings me to another conversation. I was talking to a guy who is apparently the heir apparent or at least the stop gap when managerial shifts are changing. The guy who's supposed to keep the ship righted, but everyone's been on the ship more than long enough to know what they're supposed to do and get it done without any supervision to speak of. He's "that guy" who's been around long enough to know what's up, but is absolutely incapable of leading effectively for any length of time, and so has been thrown a bone so he doesn't realize he is exactly the same for all of his time and would be better served doing something else entirely that pays better. Probably the reason they don't out right promote me (because I will immediately leverage that shit into a better position elsewhere), but anyway...
...I was talking about a coworker whose name I did not know and talked about him being the guy who makes the dirty jokes. To which, I will refer to him here as the fucking mook, the mook responded before I could finish my thought, "ah yes, you are talking about so and so. I'm the one who makes the good clean jokes." I literally had to stop what I was doing to close and rub my eyes out of frustration and disbelief. The jokes he makes are terrible. I mention off hand that time flies, he rejoins with a long diatribe about scientific principles and a crock of other fragments that essentially end two minutes later with the punch line "time can never actually fly." I had to pause to weigh punching his lights out and the satisfaction that would bring versus the satisfaction of having a job and getting a paycheck. Pros and cons floated around for a few silent moments and I shook my head and walked away.
First of all, the fact that he would not understand that his sense of humor is absolutely terrible and steeped in enough dungeons and dragons dice rolling logic to make me want to hang myself on the hour every hour we occupy the same space is tough to deal with, but I do. Can't get paid if I'm dead. Second of all, the mook didn't even let me finish my thought. I paused for maybe five seconds to move some boxes while he stood around whining about how hard work is, citing examples of exertion fractions of what I did on the regular at my other job (holding my tongue so he could feel good about himself, because I like people to feel good around me), and he chimes in about being more valuable to me because he is the "good joke teller." My thought finished with "and the sex jokes are totally hilarious." They are. That's the thing about associating with older people. They've got smut, slut, muck in the rut down right filthy jokes you've never heard before and hearing these jokes in the family oriented brightly lit grocery store instead of a dark dive bar makes them all the more side splitting. Thirdly, few things pet me the wrong way harder than people that think they're funny. If you've got some albums recorded and played comedy central or some night clubs with success, then maybe you can say that. It's one of those things. How are you going to tell me that you are funny to me? That laugh coming out of my mouth is not directed to what you said, it's directed to what everyone else around me said about what you said. Sometimes it's in line, if you are actually funny to us. But if you are not funny at all, there's a real good chance I'm laughing at their heckling more than anything else.
It just makes me laugh most of all though that this mook tries to posture like he knows whats up. I've been on the new job for a week and already they all know I get shit done faster, more efficiently, and with higher fidelity than anyone there right now who is not also a manager. He asks me to do things and I do them, because I could care less who is actually in charge. I just do my eight and go home. The people I respect are the people that do it as well or better than me. He's not one of them. I'm not trying to start anything. We're breaking down pallets of products to carts and everything is being separated out to the finest scale, wasting huge amounts of time. Things are being left on pallets because "they're too heavy" to move. And I'm laughing the whole way. It takes this dude the entire day to shuffle five pallets. I was doing that in 1 and 2/3 hours where I was working before. People are hunching to catch their breath and rest their limbs and I am dumbfound by how weak they are. Dude is taller and heavier than me, but apparently he just wears his clothes well because he's all dough and his helper is made out of lightly whipped fluff. Tell me this isn't the average fitness level of 22 year olds these days. Seriously, if I got into a fight with someone in the backroom, the entire daytime crew couldn't stop me from killing him if they all fought against me together. I'm not saying I'm super human. I'm saying they're about as functional as cardboard cutouts with souls duct taped to them.
Then he keeps asking me if I need a hand with X and Y and I said yes at first because I thought he wanted to be helpful, until I realized he was using me to dodge doing anything actual. Because I work at a relatively high octane he was basically sucking around in my wake to put in face time. So the next time he asked and said "I would offer to give you a hand but the space you're working in is pretty small" (I intentionally walled myself into the pallets a good foot taller than me with no elbow room so I could get shit done without having to deal with bullshitting this idiot with small talk) I said "you don't need to offer me a hand ever, and yes, there's enough space for me and my thoughts and nothing else." Not trying to be rude, but I get blunt when I'm trying to get things done. Nevertheless, the mook follows me out into the aisles and starts touching the stuff I loaded up and I just walk away. If he wants to work my shit that badly then fine. Have at it. One thing I can't tolerate is people nipping at my work and then claiming it was all them when it's time to hand out kudos. Sure I could step up and say "hey he didn't do shit", but I'm much more the sort of person who prefers to let work speak for itself and hope the people up top can make that distinction on their own: "hey so and so doesnt get a damn thing done when person X isn't here too. Maybe it's all person X?"
Does that actually ever happen? I don't know if they ever do, but I guess I'm just soft spoken. Let the work speak. Like if I get an 85 on my final paper DONT FUCKING FAIL ME BECAUSE I MISSED CLASS TOO MANY TIMES YOU FUCKKKK!@#@##%!!@%!@#. Yeah, that TA phd student who wore the skinny jeans and faux hawk in my media studies class back in 2008 is still on the list of people who are going to be strangled to death with my hands if civilization and law and order give out. Maybe not. Maybe just when I have nothing else to do besides dodge the law and balance the karmic checkbook that is still pretty far out of whack. But thats years off (if I win the lottery, dodging the law is expensive) or decades. Depends on how much I actually get done. Let the work speak for itself.
I realized today that my internal conversations were seeping out when I heard someone say "you unconscionable fat bastard" in my voice while I was walking behind someone. Definitely need to restore some volume control there. People shouldn't have to feel awful just for being coincident with me in space and time. That's just not fair to chance and circumstance. Plus it's not like they made me late for something. Not like the woman driving in front of me on a one lane one way road with cars parked on both sides who cruised at seven miles per hour. I was about ready to ride my bike over her back bumper, right over the roof, and down the hood of her car while flipping her double barreled fuck yous. I was about twenty minutes in to a conversation with myself when I reached the conclusion that I had to go take a dump. What I didn't realize was that I said that out loud, in mumbling tones no less, but someone caught enough of it and absolutely shot me the meanest 60 year old sour face ever. I laughed. At how lemon juiced her face looked. She flipped her cart around and strut away. Point taken, though. Need to guard my gates a little tighter. I can't always control what goes on in the compound, but I can at least try to control who and what goes in and out. Work around it, na mean?
///Four Tet - "A Joy" consciousness is noisy
Slugging my way through another work day I got to making conversation. There's only so many times you can walk by the people you don't want to talk to or have anything to do without having to say something. As I walked in the manager shook my hand. Both managers did. And I was immediately accosted by a union lifer suggesting I was buddy buddy with management. By itself laughable. Apparently the managers have never shaken hands with him first thing in the morning in all his 34 years. Which really makes me wonder: am I that much better than them? I've done nothing untoward to provoke a positive response from the high ups. I just do my shit and go home. Apparently having that much work ethic puts me at odds with my fellows and in the good graces of the up and ups. Which is hilarious. When you think about how inefficient things can be, how many times people can spin around in a circle to collect a paycheck instead of doing their jobs, it probably doesn't occur to you that having the ability to walk in a straight line could ever be that much of an asset. I laughed, shrugged, and went on doing my shit. I'm not concerned in the slightest. If anything, I know that if I show up I'm already ahead of most of the pack.
Which brings me to another conversation. I was talking to a guy who is apparently the heir apparent or at least the stop gap when managerial shifts are changing. The guy who's supposed to keep the ship righted, but everyone's been on the ship more than long enough to know what they're supposed to do and get it done without any supervision to speak of. He's "that guy" who's been around long enough to know what's up, but is absolutely incapable of leading effectively for any length of time, and so has been thrown a bone so he doesn't realize he is exactly the same for all of his time and would be better served doing something else entirely that pays better. Probably the reason they don't out right promote me (because I will immediately leverage that shit into a better position elsewhere), but anyway...
...I was talking about a coworker whose name I did not know and talked about him being the guy who makes the dirty jokes. To which, I will refer to him here as the fucking mook, the mook responded before I could finish my thought, "ah yes, you are talking about so and so. I'm the one who makes the good clean jokes." I literally had to stop what I was doing to close and rub my eyes out of frustration and disbelief. The jokes he makes are terrible. I mention off hand that time flies, he rejoins with a long diatribe about scientific principles and a crock of other fragments that essentially end two minutes later with the punch line "time can never actually fly." I had to pause to weigh punching his lights out and the satisfaction that would bring versus the satisfaction of having a job and getting a paycheck. Pros and cons floated around for a few silent moments and I shook my head and walked away.
First of all, the fact that he would not understand that his sense of humor is absolutely terrible and steeped in enough dungeons and dragons dice rolling logic to make me want to hang myself on the hour every hour we occupy the same space is tough to deal with, but I do. Can't get paid if I'm dead. Second of all, the mook didn't even let me finish my thought. I paused for maybe five seconds to move some boxes while he stood around whining about how hard work is, citing examples of exertion fractions of what I did on the regular at my other job (holding my tongue so he could feel good about himself, because I like people to feel good around me), and he chimes in about being more valuable to me because he is the "good joke teller." My thought finished with "and the sex jokes are totally hilarious." They are. That's the thing about associating with older people. They've got smut, slut, muck in the rut down right filthy jokes you've never heard before and hearing these jokes in the family oriented brightly lit grocery store instead of a dark dive bar makes them all the more side splitting. Thirdly, few things pet me the wrong way harder than people that think they're funny. If you've got some albums recorded and played comedy central or some night clubs with success, then maybe you can say that. It's one of those things. How are you going to tell me that you are funny to me? That laugh coming out of my mouth is not directed to what you said, it's directed to what everyone else around me said about what you said. Sometimes it's in line, if you are actually funny to us. But if you are not funny at all, there's a real good chance I'm laughing at their heckling more than anything else.
It just makes me laugh most of all though that this mook tries to posture like he knows whats up. I've been on the new job for a week and already they all know I get shit done faster, more efficiently, and with higher fidelity than anyone there right now who is not also a manager. He asks me to do things and I do them, because I could care less who is actually in charge. I just do my eight and go home. The people I respect are the people that do it as well or better than me. He's not one of them. I'm not trying to start anything. We're breaking down pallets of products to carts and everything is being separated out to the finest scale, wasting huge amounts of time. Things are being left on pallets because "they're too heavy" to move. And I'm laughing the whole way. It takes this dude the entire day to shuffle five pallets. I was doing that in 1 and 2/3 hours where I was working before. People are hunching to catch their breath and rest their limbs and I am dumbfound by how weak they are. Dude is taller and heavier than me, but apparently he just wears his clothes well because he's all dough and his helper is made out of lightly whipped fluff. Tell me this isn't the average fitness level of 22 year olds these days. Seriously, if I got into a fight with someone in the backroom, the entire daytime crew couldn't stop me from killing him if they all fought against me together. I'm not saying I'm super human. I'm saying they're about as functional as cardboard cutouts with souls duct taped to them.
Then he keeps asking me if I need a hand with X and Y and I said yes at first because I thought he wanted to be helpful, until I realized he was using me to dodge doing anything actual. Because I work at a relatively high octane he was basically sucking around in my wake to put in face time. So the next time he asked and said "I would offer to give you a hand but the space you're working in is pretty small" (I intentionally walled myself into the pallets a good foot taller than me with no elbow room so I could get shit done without having to deal with bullshitting this idiot with small talk) I said "you don't need to offer me a hand ever, and yes, there's enough space for me and my thoughts and nothing else." Not trying to be rude, but I get blunt when I'm trying to get things done. Nevertheless, the mook follows me out into the aisles and starts touching the stuff I loaded up and I just walk away. If he wants to work my shit that badly then fine. Have at it. One thing I can't tolerate is people nipping at my work and then claiming it was all them when it's time to hand out kudos. Sure I could step up and say "hey he didn't do shit", but I'm much more the sort of person who prefers to let work speak for itself and hope the people up top can make that distinction on their own: "hey so and so doesnt get a damn thing done when person X isn't here too. Maybe it's all person X?"
Does that actually ever happen? I don't know if they ever do, but I guess I'm just soft spoken. Let the work speak. Like if I get an 85 on my final paper DONT FUCKING FAIL ME BECAUSE I MISSED CLASS TOO MANY TIMES YOU FUCKKKK!@#@##%!!@%!@#. Yeah, that TA phd student who wore the skinny jeans and faux hawk in my media studies class back in 2008 is still on the list of people who are going to be strangled to death with my hands if civilization and law and order give out. Maybe not. Maybe just when I have nothing else to do besides dodge the law and balance the karmic checkbook that is still pretty far out of whack. But thats years off (if I win the lottery, dodging the law is expensive) or decades. Depends on how much I actually get done. Let the work speak for itself.
I realized today that my internal conversations were seeping out when I heard someone say "you unconscionable fat bastard" in my voice while I was walking behind someone. Definitely need to restore some volume control there. People shouldn't have to feel awful just for being coincident with me in space and time. That's just not fair to chance and circumstance. Plus it's not like they made me late for something. Not like the woman driving in front of me on a one lane one way road with cars parked on both sides who cruised at seven miles per hour. I was about ready to ride my bike over her back bumper, right over the roof, and down the hood of her car while flipping her double barreled fuck yous. I was about twenty minutes in to a conversation with myself when I reached the conclusion that I had to go take a dump. What I didn't realize was that I said that out loud, in mumbling tones no less, but someone caught enough of it and absolutely shot me the meanest 60 year old sour face ever. I laughed. At how lemon juiced her face looked. She flipped her cart around and strut away. Point taken, though. Need to guard my gates a little tighter. I can't always control what goes on in the compound, but I can at least try to control who and what goes in and out. Work around it, na mean?
///Four Tet - "A Joy" consciousness is noisy
10/23/11
Wall Street
> We are Wall Street. It’s our job to make money. Whether it’s a commodity, stock, bond, or some hypothetical piece of fake paper, it doesn’t matter. We would trade baseball cards if it were profitable. I didn’t hear America complaining when the market was roaring to 14,000 and everyone’s 401k doubled every 3 years. Just like gambling, its not a problem until you lose. I’ve never heard of anyone going to Gamblers Anonymous because they won too much in Vegas.
> Well now the market crapped out, & even though it has come back somewhat, the government and the average Joes are still looking for a scapegoat. God knows there has to be one for everything. Well, here we are.
> Go ahead and continue to take us down, but you’re only going to hurt yourselves. What’s going to happen when we can’t find jobs on the Street anymore? Guess what: We’re going to take yours. We get up at 5am & work till 10pm or later. We’re used to not getting up to pee when we have a position. We don’t take an hour or more for a lunch break. We don’t demand a union. We don’t retire at 50 with a pension. We eat what we kill, and when the only thing left to eat is on your dinner plates, we’ll eat that.
> For years teachers and other unionized labor have had us fooled. We were too busy working to notice. Do you really think that we are incapable of teaching 3rd graders and doing landscaping? We’re going to take your cushy jobs with tenure and 4 months off a year and whine just like you that we are so-o-o-o underpaid for building the youth of America. Say goodbye to your overtime and double time and a half. I’ll be hitting grounders to the high school baseball team for $5k extra a summer, thank you very much.
> So now that we’re going to be making $85k a year without upside, Joe Mainstreet is going to have his revenge, right? Wrong! Guess what: we’re going to stop buying the new 80k car, we aren’t going to leave the 35 percent tip at our business dinners anymore. No more free rides on our backs. We’re going to landscape our own back yards, wash our cars with a garden hose in our driveways. Our money was your money. You spent it. When our money dries up, so does yours.
> The difference is, you lived off of it, we rejoiced in it. The Obama administration and the Democratic National Committee might get their way and knock us off the top of the pyramid, but it’s really going to hurt like hell for them when our fat a**es land directly on the middle class of America and knock them to the bottom.
> We aren’t dinosaurs. We are smarter and more vicious than that, and we are going to survive. The question is, now that Obama & his administration are making Joe Mainstreet our food supply…will he? and will they?”
End email. I don't normally respond to threads like this, but I was struck by the flippancy and offered a rebuff:
dear content of email
hilarious. if the reduction of the "food supply" ever gets down to hyper competitive opportunists versus ingenuity and survivability,
wall street will find itself in an afghanistan of its own creation. good luck.
rejoicing in what income i have and living on it too. i get home at 5 a.m. if im lucky. but better than lucky is working a sixteen hour day. i work every hour im given and i take hours from coworkers whenever i can. ive been trying to get expelled from the ufcw since the union forced me to join as a condition of employment. good luck coming down here and eating the food off my plate lol. wash your car and cut your own hair and your lawn and everything else you have that needs washing and doing and guarding and tending to.
you might get some of my "food", but im used to being hungry. eventually my knife and fork are taking your hand. and it will be delicious. and ill leave you to moan and divorce and spring idle bastard children in failing school districts because you wont be able to live in the good ones no matter how hard you work at minimum wage jobs that cut and limit your hours and send you home or on leave when you hit the red line they define and the only release you can have is fucking strangers on wellfare with six kids to net massive child support and other benefits that work the system until she files a bogus PFA when you don't pay on time and the fuzz come and lock you up and you lose that job for "no call/no show" and can't get another one for two years thanks to your criminal record.
and then, hopefully, youll buy a shotgun from a pawnshop and end the dance, wherein your children will pick up where you leave off. hilarious. very much enjoyed. mostly because it's reflective, i guess, of an extremely homogenized community versus an extremely diverse community pressed into a stereo typical mold for easy digestion/dissection. also i am super hungry now with all the talking
about food.
not wall street does not equal an inability to compete and dominate. all it means is "not wall street." life can be just as vicious, demanding, painful, unforgiving, unblinking and violent as downtown manhattan any day of the fucking week for many people who have had a different set of opportunities presented to them. capitalize all you want. break your hands trying to beat down doors. the fact of the matter is it's not a level field, will never be a level field, and for civilization to continue to advance or plateau or whatever there will have to be some kind of hierarchy and class system and learn to fucking live with it and pursue yourself. i think. whatever.
hilarious.
i guess its just funny when people beat their chests and say "you couldnt do what i do" without for a second realizing they couldnt do what i do either.
i dont want to be rich or fat and happy or a gym member who would otherwise be fat and happy. all i ask of you, wall street, is that you dont let your "rejoicing" become an obstacle to my happiness.
End Rebuttal.
I don't hate wall street. But if a person with hired landscapers can frown upon those landscapers billing hour of work incorrectly or frown upon a maid secreting away the homeowners possessions, why can't those of us who keep them employed by participating in the economy frown upon its mismanagement and abuse? When you order your cheeseburger at the diner you expect a cheeseburger, not a thing that has been gutted and cheated to make it more cost effective and time conserving for the line cook to make. Sure, I can't solve differential equations easily, if at all, but the fact of the matter is the people who can more than likely couldn't do my job for a week either before they quit to pursue something easier. So I guess we're even. On an uneven playing field.
> Well now the market crapped out, & even though it has come back somewhat, the government and the average Joes are still looking for a scapegoat. God knows there has to be one for everything. Well, here we are.
> Go ahead and continue to take us down, but you’re only going to hurt yourselves. What’s going to happen when we can’t find jobs on the Street anymore? Guess what: We’re going to take yours. We get up at 5am & work till 10pm or later. We’re used to not getting up to pee when we have a position. We don’t take an hour or more for a lunch break. We don’t demand a union. We don’t retire at 50 with a pension. We eat what we kill, and when the only thing left to eat is on your dinner plates, we’ll eat that.
> For years teachers and other unionized labor have had us fooled. We were too busy working to notice. Do you really think that we are incapable of teaching 3rd graders and doing landscaping? We’re going to take your cushy jobs with tenure and 4 months off a year and whine just like you that we are so-o-o-o underpaid for building the youth of America. Say goodbye to your overtime and double time and a half. I’ll be hitting grounders to the high school baseball team for $5k extra a summer, thank you very much.
> So now that we’re going to be making $85k a year without upside, Joe Mainstreet is going to have his revenge, right? Wrong! Guess what: we’re going to stop buying the new 80k car, we aren’t going to leave the 35 percent tip at our business dinners anymore. No more free rides on our backs. We’re going to landscape our own back yards, wash our cars with a garden hose in our driveways. Our money was your money. You spent it. When our money dries up, so does yours.
> The difference is, you lived off of it, we rejoiced in it. The Obama administration and the Democratic National Committee might get their way and knock us off the top of the pyramid, but it’s really going to hurt like hell for them when our fat a**es land directly on the middle class of America and knock them to the bottom.
> We aren’t dinosaurs. We are smarter and more vicious than that, and we are going to survive. The question is, now that Obama & his administration are making Joe Mainstreet our food supply…will he? and will they?”
End email. I don't normally respond to threads like this, but I was struck by the flippancy and offered a rebuff:
dear content of email
hilarious. if the reduction of the "food supply" ever gets down to hyper competitive opportunists versus ingenuity and survivability,
wall street will find itself in an afghanistan of its own creation. good luck.
rejoicing in what income i have and living on it too. i get home at 5 a.m. if im lucky. but better than lucky is working a sixteen hour day. i work every hour im given and i take hours from coworkers whenever i can. ive been trying to get expelled from the ufcw since the union forced me to join as a condition of employment. good luck coming down here and eating the food off my plate lol. wash your car and cut your own hair and your lawn and everything else you have that needs washing and doing and guarding and tending to.
you might get some of my "food", but im used to being hungry. eventually my knife and fork are taking your hand. and it will be delicious. and ill leave you to moan and divorce and spring idle bastard children in failing school districts because you wont be able to live in the good ones no matter how hard you work at minimum wage jobs that cut and limit your hours and send you home or on leave when you hit the red line they define and the only release you can have is fucking strangers on wellfare with six kids to net massive child support and other benefits that work the system until she files a bogus PFA when you don't pay on time and the fuzz come and lock you up and you lose that job for "no call/no show" and can't get another one for two years thanks to your criminal record.
and then, hopefully, youll buy a shotgun from a pawnshop and end the dance, wherein your children will pick up where you leave off. hilarious. very much enjoyed. mostly because it's reflective, i guess, of an extremely homogenized community versus an extremely diverse community pressed into a stereo typical mold for easy digestion/dissection. also i am super hungry now with all the talking
about food.
not wall street does not equal an inability to compete and dominate. all it means is "not wall street." life can be just as vicious, demanding, painful, unforgiving, unblinking and violent as downtown manhattan any day of the fucking week for many people who have had a different set of opportunities presented to them. capitalize all you want. break your hands trying to beat down doors. the fact of the matter is it's not a level field, will never be a level field, and for civilization to continue to advance or plateau or whatever there will have to be some kind of hierarchy and class system and learn to fucking live with it and pursue yourself. i think. whatever.
hilarious.
i guess its just funny when people beat their chests and say "you couldnt do what i do" without for a second realizing they couldnt do what i do either.
i dont want to be rich or fat and happy or a gym member who would otherwise be fat and happy. all i ask of you, wall street, is that you dont let your "rejoicing" become an obstacle to my happiness.
End Rebuttal.
I don't hate wall street. But if a person with hired landscapers can frown upon those landscapers billing hour of work incorrectly or frown upon a maid secreting away the homeowners possessions, why can't those of us who keep them employed by participating in the economy frown upon its mismanagement and abuse? When you order your cheeseburger at the diner you expect a cheeseburger, not a thing that has been gutted and cheated to make it more cost effective and time conserving for the line cook to make. Sure, I can't solve differential equations easily, if at all, but the fact of the matter is the people who can more than likely couldn't do my job for a week either before they quit to pursue something easier. So I guess we're even. On an uneven playing field.
9/15/10
Why I'd Rather Be Hispanic, Artificial Self Confidence, and a Root
Walking home from a training day for a job I may or may not have a thought occurred to me: I would rather be anything, but black, in today's America.
Sounds ridiculous right? The simple fact is it is still very uncomfortable being black in America. I mean, think about it, people haven't decided whether or not we can even be called black people or if we need to be called African Americans. At least with Latinos and Hispanic people it's not a choice between obviously politically delicate and offensive terms. Or maybe it is, since I've never been Hispanic or a Latino. Seriously though, every time you refer to a black person isn't there a little twinge in the back of your neck that makes you wonder if you're using the right word, or if you would look worse by using a term that throws racial consciousness in the reader's face, even if it's only for a moment?
Think about the stereotypes. If I were to make a mental list of pros and cons with respect to stereotypes, who would come out more favorably? Sure there are local pockets of better and worse viewpoints (border states, places with "little (insert south eastern country)s", and places with very visible very active gang cultures, but across the entire spectrum of America I feel like black people aren't necessarily losing ground, but aren't really improving either whereas other minorities are either receiving more than token attention or are at least viewed more favorably on the whole. I feel a lot like the very "interesting" back story of white America and black America has made the situation a lot like a landlord who needs a renter to pay on time and shut up about the property's needs and a renter who badly needs a place to rent and can't afford anything else. I guess when I think about the stereotypes, I can see positive ones for most other ethnicities that allow some type of positive integration with society beyond sports, music, sex, and street dance (you know, the things people have to do to support families and build generational wealth and own homes and cars and have stable year to year lives and retire) and absolutely none for the blacks in America.
And it's a little discouraging. It's like the problem of integration was never really solved beyond the physical interface and instead of a defacto solution, patches were administered. Patches were slapped on top of patches and policy plaster was slapped on top of the patched patches until people got tired of dealing with it. Or maybe until the job looked done enough from the standpoint of the people outside of it, but as someone who is a part of the structure of black America it's pretty obvious there are gaping holes in perception that continue to lead to gaping holes in... I dunno. I'm getting tired just thinking about it. It's not fixable. I'm not trying to be fatalist or anything like that, I just have to do my part with my kids to let them know that they do belong here.
That's it! I think I just stumbled on an answer. Black history. Being raised with such a heavy bent toward black history and it's burden on modern history and having to live every year with the idea that I'm permanently indebted to a project of acceptance that will be in progress from the day I'm born to the day I die was a mistake. Historical perspective is a good thing. Having historical perspective hammered into me with a distorted and disproportionate focus placed on the "right" and "wrong" expressions of stereotypes within that culture is what has left me with this feeling of malaise. Black history is important, but not more or less important than American history. It's not a separate story. Having the idea that I'm different and special and separated from America by black history has caused much more damage than confidence boosting good. The short term benefit of confidence has been far eclipsed by the long term effect of powerful feelings of isolation.
I guess the simplest branch, the main root of all of this is belonging may not boost individual confidence, but will ease future growth and development of identity. Telling someone they're special artificially boosts their self confidence. Someone learning they are special through time and experience and on their own allows them to build a lasting self confidence that will not be eroded as soon as the encouraging voices are taken away. Not constantly reinforcing a person's specialness and differentiating characteristics may hurt their self confidence in the short term, but will ease their interactions over time because they will have belongingness as the most basic premise of their relationship to the world around them.
If belongingness is the most basic premise of their relationship to the world around them, then they are free to pursue many more avenues of existence without having to consider questions of perception and practice, and while the questions may be there, they will not be central to the person's identity. If a person's most basic premise is that they are permanently different from the world around them they will, when (not if) self confidence fails to motivate action, be forced to constantly answer and ask and re-ask questions of perception and practice in a never ending cascade of attempts to join a world they can never really be a part of basic their most basic premise of existence is that they are permanently outside of and apart from the world at large.
So I guess the root of the problem with black America is really sourced from within every black American home and public classroom in the month of February. But, don't tell them that. They never seem to take criticism well even from "their own people". Trust me, I know. Responsibility is probably the second branch on the tree of stunted potential.
///Four Tet - "You Were There With Me" Just reminds me of thinking about the future sitting at the edge of an apple orchard and watching shafts of sunlight roll like lazy spotlights across empty fields and after the second hour noticing that the little things on the horizon aren't high tension transmission lines, but are the blades of still windmills.
Sounds ridiculous right? The simple fact is it is still very uncomfortable being black in America. I mean, think about it, people haven't decided whether or not we can even be called black people or if we need to be called African Americans. At least with Latinos and Hispanic people it's not a choice between obviously politically delicate and offensive terms. Or maybe it is, since I've never been Hispanic or a Latino. Seriously though, every time you refer to a black person isn't there a little twinge in the back of your neck that makes you wonder if you're using the right word, or if you would look worse by using a term that throws racial consciousness in the reader's face, even if it's only for a moment?
Think about the stereotypes. If I were to make a mental list of pros and cons with respect to stereotypes, who would come out more favorably? Sure there are local pockets of better and worse viewpoints (border states, places with "little (insert south eastern country)s", and places with very visible very active gang cultures, but across the entire spectrum of America I feel like black people aren't necessarily losing ground, but aren't really improving either whereas other minorities are either receiving more than token attention or are at least viewed more favorably on the whole. I feel a lot like the very "interesting" back story of white America and black America has made the situation a lot like a landlord who needs a renter to pay on time and shut up about the property's needs and a renter who badly needs a place to rent and can't afford anything else. I guess when I think about the stereotypes, I can see positive ones for most other ethnicities that allow some type of positive integration with society beyond sports, music, sex, and street dance (you know, the things people have to do to support families and build generational wealth and own homes and cars and have stable year to year lives and retire) and absolutely none for the blacks in America.
And it's a little discouraging. It's like the problem of integration was never really solved beyond the physical interface and instead of a defacto solution, patches were administered. Patches were slapped on top of patches and policy plaster was slapped on top of the patched patches until people got tired of dealing with it. Or maybe until the job looked done enough from the standpoint of the people outside of it, but as someone who is a part of the structure of black America it's pretty obvious there are gaping holes in perception that continue to lead to gaping holes in... I dunno. I'm getting tired just thinking about it. It's not fixable. I'm not trying to be fatalist or anything like that, I just have to do my part with my kids to let them know that they do belong here.
That's it! I think I just stumbled on an answer. Black history. Being raised with such a heavy bent toward black history and it's burden on modern history and having to live every year with the idea that I'm permanently indebted to a project of acceptance that will be in progress from the day I'm born to the day I die was a mistake. Historical perspective is a good thing. Having historical perspective hammered into me with a distorted and disproportionate focus placed on the "right" and "wrong" expressions of stereotypes within that culture is what has left me with this feeling of malaise. Black history is important, but not more or less important than American history. It's not a separate story. Having the idea that I'm different and special and separated from America by black history has caused much more damage than confidence boosting good. The short term benefit of confidence has been far eclipsed by the long term effect of powerful feelings of isolation.
I guess the simplest branch, the main root of all of this is belonging may not boost individual confidence, but will ease future growth and development of identity. Telling someone they're special artificially boosts their self confidence. Someone learning they are special through time and experience and on their own allows them to build a lasting self confidence that will not be eroded as soon as the encouraging voices are taken away. Not constantly reinforcing a person's specialness and differentiating characteristics may hurt their self confidence in the short term, but will ease their interactions over time because they will have belongingness as the most basic premise of their relationship to the world around them.
If belongingness is the most basic premise of their relationship to the world around them, then they are free to pursue many more avenues of existence without having to consider questions of perception and practice, and while the questions may be there, they will not be central to the person's identity. If a person's most basic premise is that they are permanently different from the world around them they will, when (not if) self confidence fails to motivate action, be forced to constantly answer and ask and re-ask questions of perception and practice in a never ending cascade of attempts to join a world they can never really be a part of basic their most basic premise of existence is that they are permanently outside of and apart from the world at large.
So I guess the root of the problem with black America is really sourced from within every black American home and public classroom in the month of February. But, don't tell them that. They never seem to take criticism well even from "their own people". Trust me, I know. Responsibility is probably the second branch on the tree of stunted potential.
///Four Tet - "You Were There With Me" Just reminds me of thinking about the future sitting at the edge of an apple orchard and watching shafts of sunlight roll like lazy spotlights across empty fields and after the second hour noticing that the little things on the horizon aren't high tension transmission lines, but are the blades of still windmills.
7/7/10
Ladies and gentleman, if you please, I have solved religion.
First thing, (I understand if you don't particularly care, but I have to do this so that I don't forget because this also doubles as my change log) I still plan to replace the red bits still hanging out in the post headers and down next to the tags. They are out of place in the new scheme and quite frankly my skills have grown beyond those first efforts and they're kind of tacky. Not to flatter myself too hard, but who the hell else is going to?
Second thing is this: I have solved why religion is so fiercely defended. I know right? It was so obvious, but I couldn't understand before why a particularly nasty and irrational person I knew was so entrenched in their beliefs. Why were they so inclined to condemn behavior in others that they performed on a regular basis? Why did everything they say start with "if they were Godly people"? Why did different words come out of either side of their mouth every single day and somehow manage to avoid internal conflict?
And then it hit me!
Religion to this person, or at least the particular "Christian" doctrine they adopted was basically a hodge podge of the most comfortable elements in the Christian as it related to them and how they framed the world around them. Their conversion, or anyone's conversion, has nothing to do with miracles, but before I fly off to hell on a thunderbolt and a plume of fire and brimstone and "much gnashing of teeth" or however it goes, hear me out.
As much as the people who believe they're just fine treating people with respect and treating strangers with kindness and compassion and charitably is as much as some Christians say they are simply picking and choosing Jesus's nicer words and they are, apparently going to burn for it. Look a little bit closer at these nay sayers of congeniality and you can see them perpetrating the same behaviors, however with greater subtlety, and often not even that. That's when I realized every single person who has had some "religious" awakening wasn't suddenly seeing THE light. They were seeing A light.
What they would count as religion changing them is really them finally realizing what their ground state of being was. Basically: realizing who they already were. The reason why people defend religions to the death is because religion allows them to defend who they are. The guy who wants to go kill Muslims for Jesus says he is doing it for Jesus, but in his mind, maybe his subconscious mind, maybe not that deeply repressed, he is doing it because it is what he as a person wants to do. Jesus simply gives him an out. Even the people who "suffer" for their faith aren't really suffering for their faith. They are suffering because they've realized the kind of people they want to be and they are pursuing that being the same way a man who wants to smoke a cigarette smokes or a person who enjoys rock climbing goes and climbs rocks. For some of these people penance has intrinsic value in their lives because they want to be held accountable. They want to be rewarded with pain because the pain lends them meaning every Sunday.
Religion is like an old comfortable boot. You put it on and you wear it because it's comfortable to you. That's all. If you think as a husband you should be paid tribute by your wife and kids and they should wait on you hand and foot and defer to you at all times even though legislation in America has essentially made everyone equals, you'll adopt a framework that allows you to live that way. If someone brings you "God's" word and it says the man is awesome and women are second class and should do whatever you tell them to, you'll be on that wagon in no time flat. Do you have to confess Jesus as a savior? Small price to pay for total dominance, don't you think? So spout some nonsense and swear up and down by the ridiculous things you don't actually believe because what you're paying for is the peace of mind of knowing that you are justified in the things that matter to who you are as a person. It cuts the same way for other things too, but most glaringly within religion.
So, what else is new?
This:
The above is going to be the main thematic element in the hateitalready.blogspot.com site I'm planning. I thought to myself, "no one wants to read a blog that spends the entire time ragging on other things, especially things that some people really do like." It would be the same as being a forum troll except condensed to one black singularity of curmudgeonly voice. So, I have revamped the idea and I'm going to put a humorous spin on it to make it much more digestable. If there's one thing I learned from watching movies as a kid it was that a spoon full of sugar is fuggin tasty and will allow you to fly umbrellas when the wind is just right, and I intend to take that knowledge straight to the bank.
///Mathew Dear - "R + S"Tonight we'll ride and find gold in their eyes. It shines so bright. I must have it.
Second thing is this: I have solved why religion is so fiercely defended. I know right? It was so obvious, but I couldn't understand before why a particularly nasty and irrational person I knew was so entrenched in their beliefs. Why were they so inclined to condemn behavior in others that they performed on a regular basis? Why did everything they say start with "if they were Godly people"? Why did different words come out of either side of their mouth every single day and somehow manage to avoid internal conflict?
And then it hit me!
Religion to this person, or at least the particular "Christian" doctrine they adopted was basically a hodge podge of the most comfortable elements in the Christian as it related to them and how they framed the world around them. Their conversion, or anyone's conversion, has nothing to do with miracles, but before I fly off to hell on a thunderbolt and a plume of fire and brimstone and "much gnashing of teeth" or however it goes, hear me out.
As much as the people who believe they're just fine treating people with respect and treating strangers with kindness and compassion and charitably is as much as some Christians say they are simply picking and choosing Jesus's nicer words and they are, apparently going to burn for it. Look a little bit closer at these nay sayers of congeniality and you can see them perpetrating the same behaviors, however with greater subtlety, and often not even that. That's when I realized every single person who has had some "religious" awakening wasn't suddenly seeing THE light. They were seeing A light.
What they would count as religion changing them is really them finally realizing what their ground state of being was. Basically: realizing who they already were. The reason why people defend religions to the death is because religion allows them to defend who they are. The guy who wants to go kill Muslims for Jesus says he is doing it for Jesus, but in his mind, maybe his subconscious mind, maybe not that deeply repressed, he is doing it because it is what he as a person wants to do. Jesus simply gives him an out. Even the people who "suffer" for their faith aren't really suffering for their faith. They are suffering because they've realized the kind of people they want to be and they are pursuing that being the same way a man who wants to smoke a cigarette smokes or a person who enjoys rock climbing goes and climbs rocks. For some of these people penance has intrinsic value in their lives because they want to be held accountable. They want to be rewarded with pain because the pain lends them meaning every Sunday.
Religion is like an old comfortable boot. You put it on and you wear it because it's comfortable to you. That's all. If you think as a husband you should be paid tribute by your wife and kids and they should wait on you hand and foot and defer to you at all times even though legislation in America has essentially made everyone equals, you'll adopt a framework that allows you to live that way. If someone brings you "God's" word and it says the man is awesome and women are second class and should do whatever you tell them to, you'll be on that wagon in no time flat. Do you have to confess Jesus as a savior? Small price to pay for total dominance, don't you think? So spout some nonsense and swear up and down by the ridiculous things you don't actually believe because what you're paying for is the peace of mind of knowing that you are justified in the things that matter to who you are as a person. It cuts the same way for other things too, but most glaringly within religion.
So, what else is new?
This:
The above is going to be the main thematic element in the hateitalready.blogspot.com site I'm planning. I thought to myself, "no one wants to read a blog that spends the entire time ragging on other things, especially things that some people really do like." It would be the same as being a forum troll except condensed to one black singularity of curmudgeonly voice. So, I have revamped the idea and I'm going to put a humorous spin on it to make it much more digestable. If there's one thing I learned from watching movies as a kid it was that a spoon full of sugar is fuggin tasty and will allow you to fly umbrellas when the wind is just right, and I intend to take that knowledge straight to the bank.
///Mathew Dear - "R + S"Tonight we'll ride and find gold in their eyes. It shines so bright. I must have it.
6/17/07
people are smart 06/17/07
Subject : "people are smart"
Posted Date: : Jun 17, 2007 1:00 PM
there are few things funnier than commercials that convince their viewers that they are smart. first of all if you can be convinced of your inteligence by a television commercial you are probably not that bright. second of all a commercial is not the authority on human inteligence, inteligent people are. and thirdly its a fucking commercial!!! commercials dont change the smart half of the publics opinion about the dumber half... no offense to the morons out there.
ditech. "people are smart" dream on.
Posted Date: : Jun 17, 2007 1:00 PM
there are few things funnier than commercials that convince their viewers that they are smart. first of all if you can be convinced of your inteligence by a television commercial you are probably not that bright. second of all a commercial is not the authority on human inteligence, inteligent people are. and thirdly its a fucking commercial!!! commercials dont change the smart half of the publics opinion about the dumber half... no offense to the morons out there.
ditech. "people are smart" dream on.
1/31/06
boredom 01/31/06
Subject : boredom
Posted Date: : Jan 31, 2006 7:53 PM
Im a bit bored with things right now. Mainly with writing. I think im tired and sleep y too. Yes. boredom is definitley the word for it. Sooooo in leiu of stuff from me heres some stuff about me from the trusty internet
in the chinese zodiac... i am an ox. in the other 13 symbol zodiac i am a Taurus... i mean really what are the chances?
article here: The OX
Posted Date: : Jan 31, 2006 7:53 PM
Im a bit bored with things right now. Mainly with writing. I think im tired and sleep y too. Yes. boredom is definitley the word for it. Sooooo in leiu of stuff from me heres some stuff about me from the trusty internet
in the chinese zodiac... i am an ox. in the other 13 symbol zodiac i am a Taurus... i mean really what are the chances?
article here: The OX
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