Alright is just something that never happens.

how do you help someone who has been sick so long that the only memories they have of being healthy are nightmares that wake them up at night? its a horrible thing to watch someone waste away. it is scary and sad.

i have probably committed more of myself to this than i should have, but when you care about and love someone, there really isnt a choice is there? i give, sacrifice and compromise because i think it will make a difference. it doesnt.

i see this perfect picture. i see a beautiful girl who is smart, funny and beautiful. i see smiles that come naturally and not forced. i see bottomless potential just waiting to be realized and performed. i see happiness in blue eyes that shine even at night. i see all these things in my head. the reality is far less attractive. the reality is a veil of pleasantries over a pit of catastrophe. its harrowing and debilitating to my state of mind.

i would continue to give and to sacrifice if i was only asked. if i saw some glimmer of hope in eyes that have given up on life. but as it sits, all i have and see tells me that im struggling for something that wont come to be by my will alone and im the only one fighting.

people simply disappeared. always at night.

driving downtown today to do my monthly stops i gazed up at the horrific monoliths we commonly call skyscrapers and reveled in the thought that these are truly the tombs of the modern world. technology has its price i assume. we sacrifice the simplicity of living for the possibility of advancement of our social structure. to become united across the globe and be able to feel closer to people we do not know.

a more unified world creates competition, which is not always good and could be bad, and at the same time separates us from the connections we get when seeing each other in person. the interpersonal interactions are what enrich our lives through physical contact and simple things like the smile of a stranger. we slowly become more desensitized to the physical world and the everyday encumbrances of non-virtual struggle. the simple pleasures of life are the best things about living.

ask anyone with children and they will reflect my feelings. things so basic as paying my electric bill in person as opposed to doing it online add an air of frustration but also an endorphin high of accomplishment. waiting for 6 1/2 hours in line to renew my license plate is another of those things. it makes us slow down and think about things.

that is a lot of the reason i like to work in restaurants. it is my most preferred form of income. the people that come into where i work and get treated not just well, but like a human being instead of just some random number will know what im talking about as well. we take entirely too much for granted when we remove the physical from our lives.

for example: right now im sitting outside at a cafe and writing this. the breeze is blowing and the clouds are shading me from the hot autumn sun. there are people around me all engrossed in their own lives and conversations about whatever it is that matters to them while i click away on my keys and think about these things.

though none of this actually matters because our lives have become existences of conveniences. we are always looking for another way around that would provide us with some ideal of least resistance. i submit to you dear reader that it is these resistances that make our lives much more worth living. these head-scratcher happenings of anger and then release are the simple things in life. these nuances of the real world are what makes life what it is.

so the next time you are out at a restaurant or grocery store or some other form of customer service based medium and you have an exceptional time because the waiter/waitress or csr or whatever really enjoys their job and went out of their way to make your time enjoyable, let them know. give them a big tip or a heartfelt thank you and tell them why. let them know that you appreciate the fact that they gave a little of themselves to you for the time that you spent together and that it either made your life a little better, if just for a moment or a day. believe me, though i work a mostly thankless job, sometimes a smile from someone who seemed a bit unhappy when they came in lets me know that i have done something, not just for myself, but for someone else as well.

back to one

The Double Life of Veronique. quite possibly one of the best movies ever made. it won a great many awards including best actress at cannes film festival for Irene Jacob.

Krzysztof Kieslowski had very unique way of showing the world and its inhabitants and their little idiosyncrasies. he had such a romantic way of seeing everyday life. watching his movies make me realize that i was born about a decade too late and on the wrong continent. i doubt that france or poland or the rest of europe for that matter are still as innocent as there were depicted in his movies. granted, nothing is like it is in the movies. especially not the people. neither in appearance or attitude. irene jacob is so amazingly sexy and alluring in the double life of veronique and in Red.

kieslowski is director who put forth a romantic purity of environment, situation and character. the woman of my dreams is irene jacob circa 1991. if only i could turn back the clock from right now to then.

alas i am too old now though. i feel the weight of memories upon my heart and body. the pressure of too many failed chances at happiness and fulfillment. ive gone from casual imbiber of of temporary trysts to hardened and calloused broken hearted hater of passion. i can look at these movies, now almost 20 years old and appreciate all of the beauty and artistry involved and also know that none of it will ever exist again. i have missed my chance(s).

this is not your grave, but you are welcome in it

so many things i have been wanting to say that i have had no clear picture in my brain or how to give voice to these thoughts. nothing quite says "indecision" like not being able to organize my thoughts into cohesive words.

im quite sure that i sat down with something to write about but that has now changed. i started watching The Golden Compass and it reminded me of the Books. the book(s), just like every other movie based on a book, the written form is vastly superior.

i need not tell you anything about the books for the wikipedia link does a fine job of that. if anyone knows anything about me, you will know why i like these books. i just love the interplay between a fantasy based in a similar and yet very different world to ours.

i have to admit that a world where the Soul exists as a creature outside the body is quite romantic. it would be an amazing thing to no just have visual and definitive proof of the soul, but the ability to befriend it. it is considered an unspeakable faux pas to touch another persons Dæmon with your bare hands.

all this was a bit inspired by the scores of compliments that i got from wearing one of my more... abrasive shirts. the Place that i got the shirt from is no long in business, but it has joined with another company that has some similar items. most notably This One which i also have but is much more tame than one i wore which has pictographical representation of a cross=swastika. kind of like This but more more simple, cut and dry. it warmed my heart to have so many people tell me that they liked my shirt.

perhaps the world is finally waking up to the realization that god is a crutch and a hinderance. that belief in a power greater than the self. power of the self is the only true freedom any of us have. to be independent of a faith that demands guilt and subservience. never will i serve.

in my ocean, the water is frozen

so i have come to discover a very interesting and disturbing fact about myself; i am a hypocrite. its widely said that everyone is a hypocrite of some sort, though most folks are reluctant to admit it. it was a fairly eventful thing when i realized that i was. i didnt want to accept it.

it started out as a a rant that i was about to go off on people for when i have the realization that i am guilty of the same things that i accuse other people of. it has taken me a day to really accept and admit it. i hate it. i dont like it, and yet at the same time, i am quite reluctant to change it. so i cant very well condemn people for doing the same things that i do. it sucks, quite a bit. my pompous high horse seems a lot less high now.

discovering this fact has caused me to examine a lot more about myself and will continue to get me to keep examining some of my more obvious pet peeves.

it is a humbling thing to know that you are just as much of an asshole and hypocrite as everyone else. breaking that delusion is hard and harrowing and i must use it to better myself in the process. i only hope that i can, for i am quite lazy and it would be far easier for me to just write it off and go about my normal days. not that im claiming anymore to be better than anyone else, but i do think that things that are my opinions are well within my rights to express, whether they are of popular acknowledgement or not. i just need to make sure that i dont condemn others for doing the same thing, no matter how stupid they are.

silent, obedient consent...

on any given school night, on any given day of the week, at any given 24 hour gas station, one would find the most interesting and or curious people in the very small hours of the morning. that time when the bulletproof glass sits firmly in place between customer and counter person. it is an interesting time for only the truly bored or desperate are out and about. that makes for a strange conglomeration of people in one location.

such as the minivan full of Meth Heads that i parked next to to go in. 4 girls, 1 guy. it was an odd mix from the start. the girls, women, whatever werent to the point of their addiction that they had lost all sex appeal, though they were toeing the line quite hard. i could see how a John wouldnt mind buying their services at a discounted rate instead of paying full price for a more, shall we say, upscale, woman. and though they had not reached the point of no return yet, it was on the horizon. the friend inside on a munchie/sugar/cigarette run. she was wearing a quite sexy, in any other circumstance, black outfit. her appeal was a constant shifting of sex appeal crossed with revulsion. it was a virtual nightmare to behold as she was sipping her icee swirl of strawberry and coke trying to put a normal soda top on the cup that should have been a domed top and tried to manhandle her overstuffed bag of goodies, that she just paid for with wadded and wrinkled bills, back to her minivan full of her fellow addicts and whores.

it is always a fun excursion to go out when most everyone else is safely tucked in their warm and cozy beds. random spontaneity is something that should never be forgotten for it is one of those simple things that makes this life worth living.

i close today with a great and inspiring monologue from V for Vendetta:

"An inch - it is small and it is fragile, and it is the only thing in the world worth having. We must never lose it or give it away. We must never let them take it from us. I hope that, whoever you are, you escape this place. I hope that the world turns and that things get better. But what I hope most of all is that you understand what I mean when I tell you that even though I do not know you, and even though I may never meet you, laugh with you, cry with you, or kiss you, I love you. With all my heart, I love you."

miraculously unharmed

its so strange to me that the older i get the less things i find amusing. i cant seem to recall the last time that i had a good laugh. a fall on the floor, face hurting and hyperventilating, side splitting laugh session. its so odd to me. i could laugh my ass off not too long ago. it seemed there was a lot more joy in the world before now. i attribute this to the weight of years pressing on me. the burden of too much emotion felt for too long.

some people wear their life times on their flesh via wrinkles and age spots. some people wear it in their actions like the cougars and the midlife crisisers who buy sports cars. i wear scars on my emotions. scars on my heart. this build up of tissue and heart ache accumulate like cancer on the mind. they poison the emotions and the life. they saturate the fiber of our being making them become more sullen and distant from our lives.

its kind of funny to see these things and still not be able to do anything about them. they are facts of life. we know that we will grow older. we know that we will die and yet we are unable to do anything about it. we have to accept what is unchangeable or ignore it. fate is non-existent except what our subconscious mind makes for us. we make our destinies out of how we live our lives. we determine where we will go and what will happen to us. we have the power and yet, most of the time we deny it or simply do not realize it. it is a horrible thing to be listless and floating with no end in sight.

our lives bear on them a horrible burden. the burden of choice. it is so much easier to be told and let along like cattle. it is infinitely more difficult to have to choose our path. decisions are a difficult enemy to overcome. and yet all i can do is hope that i make the right ones and the wrong ones dont hurt as much as they used to.

i dont know what hurts worse, being alone, or being with you

such a strange thing, human emotions. so odd how intense and powerful they are. how they are such an all encompassing driving force behind most of our actions. the wickedness of letting something so vile and uncompromising rule our lives is disgusting and for lack of a better term, unfair.

that word is one of the first things we learn as children, unfair. everything seems so horribly unfair as a child. and so it seems everything in the future in our adult lives shares the same description. our day to day lives become unfulfilling and seems too arduous to be considered life. we see movie stars and musicians with fortunes galore and long so much to share their notoriety that we becomes voyeurs and arm chair stalkers in a state of resentment and envy so deep that the only explanation we have is how unfair everything is.

the ideals of perfection we attempt to emulate only further the psychosis of our self induced state of inadequacy. the harder we push ourself toward unattainable goals the closer we come to losing all sense of individualized achievement.

i could go on and on about the lack of fairness in the world but i feel confident that at least 90% of the population would feel the same way. there is no need to beat a horse like that. suffice it to say that life is not fair now, nor will it ever be. we just have to learn to be happy with ourselves and all our inadequacies.

and i ran, ran so far away

loneliness is something that everyone experiences at some point in their life. there is no way around it. there is nothing to be done about it (short of the obvious) except to move on. you push through and grow older and wait for time to pass.

on a much more positive note, i went out to a bar that i never go to last night and drank some brews with some friends. had a great time and seriously cant wait to do it again. going to continue the fun escapades when i go see District 9 in about 45 min. everything i have heard and read about it suggests that it will be amazing and via its very low production cost could usher in a new era of film making. imagine that a great movie with good special effects that costs less than 50 million dollars to make.

everyday i throw out numbers like 10 million, 150 thousand, 250 million. those numbers seem so commonplace now days what with how expensive things are on a daily basis that we encounter in our lives; tv shows, movies, wars. money weighs so much that we tend to forget just how much something like 10 million dollars would be cumbersome in its bill form. from everything im seeing on the internet Here and Here 10 million dollars in 100 dollar bill denominations would weigh about 220lbs. an average keg of beer weighs about 145lbs and most people know how weighty that is. so imagine a keg and a half of beer as money and see how hard that is to carry around. 10 million in gold would be almost 10 times that weight at 1,242 lbs. so, cash or diamonds are your best bet. diamonds of course would be the best over all being that their value is much less flakey and paper money, but they are also a bit harder to unload for a usable form of currency.

not that any of this matter because in my life time, if i could have all the money that i will ever make and have made all at once, it most likely wouldnt even come close to 10 million dollars. that is the majority of the population too. scary isnt it, when you put the quantities of denominational income into plain numbers, you realize just how little your life is worth in the grand scheme of the currency of life. money, the bane of my existence and yet necessary for it at the same time.

off to see the movie now.

your pain is no credential here

so, it has been an interesting and semi-eventful past couple weeks. i have Sprint as my cel phone service provider and i have had them for 9 years give or take. over the time i spent with this company, i have come to realize that their sub par service, mystery charges, over charges, pathetic phone "internet" and many more reasons that i am just too lazy to list, make a terrible and hideous excuse for a company that has a "Customer-Focused Strategy". I used to have the Everything Messaging plan that includes unlimited text messaging and picture mail. when i incurred extra charges for sending pictures to iphones and blakberries because they dont accept picture mail the way sprint sends it, i got a bit upset. they told me that to send pictures to at&t, verizon and t-mobil phones i would have to upgrade my plan to have unlimited internet (30$ for my line and 15$ for each additional line, of which i have 2). i said, "wait, you want me to pay extra money every month just to be able to do what i already pay to do with my current plan?". to which they replied, "yes, with your everything pictures plan, you have to pay an additional amount for internet usage."

fuck that company. sadly it will cost me 570$ to cancel my accounts with sprint to change carriers. so, i have to deal with this bullshit for another year and a couple months to save myself some money. however, if i happen into 570 extra bucks in the next few months, im so switching over.

if you have the strange inclination or desire to switch to sprint, stay the fuck away. they have nothing to offer you but a hard time and bank draining mistakes with fine print restrictions you sign without ever seeing.

enough of the angry for the day. tomorrow i am going to throw up some short reviews of some of the movies i have been watching lately. some stinkers in there and also so good ones.

life: no one gets out alive

there are a vast number of truths in life. some horribly simple, but most are too obscure and irrelevant to be considered on a daily basis. the most simple truth to follow and accept is the someday, our life will cease. our brain will run out of oxygen and everything that makes us who we are, memories, emotions, dreams, all of those things that are us becomes one with the nothingness of non-existence.

perhaps that is the reason that people have to believe in god(s). that fictional solution to wipe away all our misdeeds and joys of living life as we want and not as we should. the easiest thing to forget is that we, as human beings, though being at the top of the food chain for quite a while now, are animals. we are beasts. beasts with conscience and cognition, and yet still beasts all the same.

some choose to argue this point by saying that we can be verbal and know the difference between right and wrong. however, what is right and wrong? what determines these words that govern our lives? it has been claimed that there are universally accepted naturally self-evident facts about what is right and what is wrong. where do these facts come from? who has established these guidelines to live our lives by?

ive heard it said that morals are what you have when everyone is watching and ethics are what you have when you are alone. guilt is what drives both of these things. in fact, i have a suspicion that guilt is what motivates the majority of our actions. so i guess in that respect, we atheists and christians share a common motivation. that motivation is also called, humanity.

your mind goes to dark places, and you wonder why i keep the worst from you

so says Dr. Manhattan to Silk Spectre 2. it is something of a metaphor to my life. i cant always tell the truth for often it would hurt much more than help. i would rather be dishonest than to hurt someone. often the dishonest isnt a lie, its more of an omission of truth. sort of like indifference. a bit more like my life is an allegory to living. telling myself over and over again that things will be different or better in the future and that things have changed now to bring about an outcome other than what it will be.

to say that people are free to select their fates is to say that the breeze is welcome to choose its path. there is no possibility of free will. no possibility choice. people dont seem to realize that its not fate that guides our actions, its consequences. fear is what drives us to do the things we do. threat of reprisals is what guides our hands in making the choices we make.

so only with the lack of conscience will give us freedom to determine our destiny. only through lack of fear do we gain the possibility of living the lives we deserve. trepidation is what rules us and in the end it is what will destroy us.

this prison of skin

went to a rehabilitation center today, where old people rehab new surgeries. it is a frightening thing to see that much age consolidated in one place. to see the shortcomings of humanity reflected in faces that have seen one too many decades. so much pain and confusion in eyes that were so clear and and un-clouded with cataracts. the frailty of age is a bitter reward for staying alive.

all the disabilities that come with extended years. its sickening and disheartening. the fleeting thoughts that once were so clear. the atrophied muscles that use to move mountains. the arthritic knuckles that could write page upon page of text without the slightest cramping. the brittle bones replaced and pieced back together with metal and plastic. no, no i dont think i have any desire to grow old.

im 32 now and i feel the years ticking by. im not as limber as i used to be. im not as spry as once was. i am stronger than before, that strength that builds when someone has used his muscles for so long. ive felt the pain in my joints for years. it is humiliating and humbling to know that the longer i live the more frail i will become and the more dull my wits will be. i dont want eternal youth, i just dont want to suffer the debilitation of being elderly.

the worst is knowing what will happen to me but taking no solace in the fact that when i get older i wont remember what i once was. this wasting away of mental and physical faculties are not just a guesses or semi-predictions, but an eventuality. unchangeable and unescapable fact of life. death comes to us all, but to most of us, not soon enough.

in the woods...

"political correctness: a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end."

sometimes certain explanations are more fitting than the more widely popularized ones that they feed us in schools and dictionaries. there are certain websites like Urban Dictionary help to give a much more realistic and practical approach to why things mean what they mean. or at least more descriptive and amusing anyways. it is quite funny to see how words evolve over the years. terminologies gain different meanings and similarly words can mean different things. for example: Moot (1587) has a synonym meaning debatable although through popular usage the meaning has been transformed into something completely opposite. im there are a slew of other examples, but as for right now, i need to go to work.

words are just words. the only thing that bears meaning is the sentiment behind them. one can whisper love every day and have lust and betrayal in their heart. a voice is only so strong as the intent that follows. sadly for us humans, speaking is the most reliable form of communication. similarly, for pity's sake we can only trust the other individuals verbal intent without ever knowing their true intentions.

all we have is what we say and what we know. we use our best judgement to get us through the thick times. trusting our gut to move us about our days, however long or short they may be. if some mistakes are made a long the way, that is a natural disaster that we have to learn to take in stride, for the good and the bad can come with equal strokes. we grow up. we get older. we grow thick skin and learn how to be heard. life is an arduous task that we are granted the yoke of when we are born.

mother is the name for god

on the lips and hearts of all children (or kittens).

goodbye phedre.

never between us, always in the middle

there are a lot of period set movies in hollywood, dealing with 2 decades that seem so unreal and yet are just as simply part of history. 1935-1955. i dont know that those 20 years have a specific title, such as The Roaring Twenties or The Great Depression. so many movies are made in that 2 decade period, that made lots of money and were pretty big deals, L.A. Confidential, Public Enemies, The Black Dahlia to name a few.

the times where volatile then. the country was really coming into its own. it was budding and burning simultaneously. the criminals were insidious and vicious. the cops were militant and violent. the people were overly drugged/medicated and vehemently opposed to realism.

the general populace had a veil over their eyes. a veil that they wanted. they wanted to believe in perfect world where the cops were always right and the bad guys were always black or mexican. even the simplest of downtrodden had stars in their eyes. everyone wanted to be a movie star. so, i suppose, not much has changed.

everything was simpler and easier. everything from crime to drinking to renting hookers to buying a house. there was nothing that couldnt be got and easily. is that the romantic part of that 20 years? no. the romance was in the darkness. the romance was in the love of the times and being able to look back at them and how primitive they were. there were no cellular phones. there were barely any phones in peoples houses. there was no such thing as Touch Tone. tvs were still mostly black and white and only the uber rich could afford something in color. Talkies were becoming every boy and girls dreams. soon after that, those dreams were replaced by becoming astronauts.

i miss the purity of an era that i never experienced first hand. i think this is a bit of a common thing, this urge to return to a time before now. everything seems so much better in the past. it was most likely never was. its more likely that things were quite worse then, especially if we could go back and see them first hand without our delightful creature comforts. i know i would miss my phone, good air conditioning, the internet, shaved pussies.

oh, the simplicities of the past reflected upon now in the future only make it to seem less or more than x, depending upon circumstance.

i had too much to think today. i should sleep, but instead im going to work.

pick your battles, carefully

i started watching The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and there was a PSA about ridding the world of cigarettes.

its all fine and good. a world without cigarettes is a beautiful idea. yes, i smoke. i will continue to do so until i do not want to anymore. i get the idea that people do not want to be subjected to second hand smoke and the odor involved. i would hate to suggest segregation at all, but let the smokers have their places and the non-smokers theirs. it would seem the most logical solution. instead of taking away everyone's free will to do what they please.

point being, taking away peoples right to choose what they want to do with their lives is something that no man, government or god has the authority to take away. know that smoking hurts the body in most irreparable ways. i Chose to do something that has a very likely chance of killing me. though, it is my choice to make. no on else's.

i suppose to be more concise about what my point is; arent there a lot larger issues to be handled? arent there much larger battles to be faught? arent there greater wars to be won? alternative fuels, global warming, needless war, broken hearts?

let people live and chose what they like. stop inflicting everyones opinion on others.

"we are meant to lose the people we love. how else are we supposed to know how much they meant to us?"

fight the power

an Anthem for a generation. still just as true now as it was then. perhaps even more so. there is entirely too much power being thrown about by those who lord over us in government. i hate to sound like the impoverished downtrodden lower class kid with a chip on his shoulder, for i am none of those things. as a kid i was mostly on the lower-middle class but i am 32 now and i have left that long behind. i am not rich. i am not well-off. i am not a college graduate, yet i do well for myself. i have savings and if i was unemployed for 6 months, i would be able to support myself through that time.

never-the-less, i still feel the yoke of the government yanking my throat with everything i do and every tv show and commercial that is flooding our now Digital airwaves. everything from bullshit new about inconsequential things to the Crazy Poiticians who could have been running this country.

now more than ever is the time where we as a people must fight for our Inalienable rights and the free will that was promised to us by birth. we are not indentured servants forced to serve our lives out where our freedom is paid for by death.

wow, sometimes i can be so melodramatic. enough of my bitching and whining for the day i think.

no power in the 'verse

it appears that i have an eerie obsession with end of the world and powerful aliens overtaking humankind kind of genre. hey, i dont mind really. i like the thought of finding conclusive evidence of alien life. in the book i recently finished, Childhoods End, a very similar beginning like the one in V, dozens of ships appear over major metropolitan cities across the globe.

the difference in childhoods end is that the aliens are benevolent, to a point. they arent on about a secret agenda to use people as food. instead they are shepherds sent forth by the overmind to act as a guide to usher in the next stage of human evolution. is it the greatest book ive ever read? no. is it a very good version of a world ending scenario. it is something that i would love to happen.

i want that proof. i want to know for a fact that there are other races and species out there. i know it in my gut. i know that logically there is no other obvious outcome to the potential of the universe than for thousands of thousands of varieties of intelligent life scattered across the universe. someday, some part of the human race will know it too. whenever we venture to the stars in a vehicle capable of traversing the the black between solar systems. someday when i am long gone, the truth will be evident to everyone not just the ones with logic and intelligence on their side. i wish that day could be in my lifetime. then again, i wish a great many things that will never come to pass.

around the focal point...

i saw a trailer today for a new (read: revamped) mini-series that i loved as a child and that i own as an adult V. i think quite possibly that it was v that started my science fiction obsession. something that i am quite thankful for. science fiction is just science fact of the future. anyways, here is the new Trailer for the new V. i gotta say, damn, it looks quite cool. im not one for the Re-inventing, Re-Imagining and Re-Tooling of some otherwise classic shows, this one looks more like a great Re-Interpretation of the original and something that i would like to put my attention in to.

i am a steadfast believer in the purity of the original things. there is just no making up for the originals. no matter how many times they bring something back, the new fails to live up to the old (for the most part) and never surpasses it, except in perhaps one case, Battlestar Galactica. much better than the original and vastly more enjoyable. im sure there are more though i cant think of them at the time being.

point is, everything that i ever needed to know about life, i could easily learn from The Twilight Zone. seriously. nothing is ever as it seems. there is no time like the preset. tomorrow you could die and come back and die again and no one would ever know better. the world is a tough but beautiful place that can be our friend as well as our home; and yet just as easily be our enemy and our doom. and To Serve Man is a cookbook.

whiskey and cigarettes

life is a funny beast that i will never understand. everything just goes crazy sometimes. just when you have everything figured out (or so you think), life has a funny way of turning that different. the mind plays funny tricks on itself when it thinks that it has everything figured out.

mine probably a bit more so than most. i have a confidence and cockiness that folks tend to revile it as they envy it. i wont call it a blessing or a curse, but it is definitely there and i dont want it gone. my attitude has gotten me through so much and saved me a lot more conflict than it has caused. it does tend to ruin every relationship that ive ever attempted. i think i have that aspect of it under control as of right now, but only time will tell what will happen with all of my mistakes and choices.

to call myself a new man is more of a misnomer here because im not a new man in the strictest sense, just have a new perspective on a who i am and what i do. its more broad and feels more open to new things. i am a lot more in tune with myself than i used to be. i am a lot more open minded about a lot more and i know a great deal more about myself. i have realized a lot of things that were always there but i never understood before. the biggest problem with being strange and is weirdness of it all. im different, i know it. now i happen to know a lot of the reasons why. having this understanding of myself would seem like a boon, but i wont know the full extent of it for some time to come.

then again, like breathing, all this knowledge is also a curse. for every drop of thought i have, its synonymous with every breath that i take that pulls me one step closer to the day that none of this will matter anymore. that is a day that i relish and invite. it seems that my will to live is growing all the more elusive every day.

irreligious

evil is prove of god's existence. so says the title of the book in the beginning of the Amityville Horror (2005) and it somehow also acts as proof for militant christian factions. certain Blogs would have the general and impressionable masses believe that the popular mislabeling of Evil refers to all the amoral and not good things that happen to and by us humans. such a blanket label of negativity makes very little sense. and yet there are people who fervently believe this sacrilege against the human condition. this blasphemy toward nature.

i read a blog from the lead singer of a legendary band called Paradise Lost on their myspace page that inspired me further to write this blog today.

"The thoughts behind the title “Faith Divides Us Death Unites Us” (forth coming cd -ttt)

are very much self explanatory, there is so much division in the world
caused by obstructing religious belief. We are all made of the same
flesh and bone, what makes one religions better than the other, and
would any true god allow his creation to destroy itself? The vast
number of different so called faiths around the globe, just helps to
strengthen my complete denial of any god, and force the belief that
religion is nothing more than a man made cash induced fabrication to
exploit a human beings natural fear of death." --Nick Holmes

i couldnt have said it better myself. the vast monetary conglomerate of religion is poisoning the minds of not just the youth of the world, but the elderly and weak minded of the middle-aged too. it is a nightmare to me to think about the possibility of a soul. to think that there is some sort of life after Death only delegitimizes the word and our concept of what life is all about and how to live it to its fullest.

is death a terrible thing? i suppose it really just depends on how you have lived your life. how you have embedded and shared your memories with those who survive you. for that is the only soul that shares any form of similar manifestation of who and what we were. in all actuality the soul is most likely just the residual energy that is left in our decaying corpse that will eventually become one with the earth that bore it. that is the immortality given to us from life. the immortality that there is something of us in the billions of years that will come. our energy will be here in the heart of a star, the core of a planet, the fusion tail of a comet or just a spec of microscopic space dust. yes, we do live on after death, but as energy, not some effigy of the culmination of our good deeds weighed against our bad ones.

heaven, zion, elysium, valhalla or asgard; whatever name you wish to call the peaceful afterlife peddled to mankind from books written by other men (not gods), it is a pipe dream. an elusive place from which there is no return. it is elusive because it exists only in the minds of the deluded. those who think that by somehow denying themselves their baser and more primal instincts (read: immoral) they will earn their way into this perfect world of unending happiness ever present pleasure.

what is far more likely to me is reincarnation. not in the way that our consciousness is changed into some other physical manifestation, for our personalities and memories die with us, but that our energy is used as the building blocks of another life form. something like a little of our physical selves is used to nourish the organisms that feed on our corpses to sustain life and therefore we continue on as life for something else. we feed the earth with our death. we feed the universe and are much more productive to the universe as a whole by being a life sustaining nutrient as a corpse than we ever were in the littering, wasteful and leaching organisms we call human beings.

hell bound, spell bound

what is more valuable, Free Will or World Peace? it seems a bit on the obvious side now, though i had never realized it before, but free will and world peace cannot co-exist. the realization hit me this morning. its such a strange notion. yes, peace on earth between all mankind is such a lovely notion. i understand the beauty of it. perfect world is an admiral goal. i would love to live in this world.

that is what i tell myself, but the truth of the matter is i love my free will. as does everyone else on the planet. that is the problem with world peace is that so many people with their wants and needs will always want and need things that the other people wont and therefore no peace. petty arguments will explode and people will become enraged.

i might believe in peace, but i believe so much more in free will. i will always be one to make my own choices. i will always be one to make my decisions. i have a very deep rooted passion for choosing my own path in life. ive made tons of mistakes, but they are mine to make. i try not to repeat myself or make the same mistakes twice, but sometimes it is unavoidable. life has a funny way of making people believe they make choices but in fact, the choice was made for them strictly by odds. ive had that issue so many times. logic would dictate that obvious choice would somehow be the easiest, but often times, it isnt.

bah, enough of the meandering prattle. my word-salads are getting increasingly bothersome.

while its fresh

scary moment coming up for me tonight; i am working solo for my first time. it should be good fun. i know what i am doing, mostly. it is a bit on the humbling side though. after this first time, all should be well though. have to be broken in sometime though right?

of all the things i could write about today, i cant seem to pick one of them. yesterdays was long and arduous task. i put a lot of feeling into that one. again with the choices. which way to go, what choices to make, what course to i push my life, what do i write about in this blog. how about fate?

life is what we make it out to be. we make out decisions and choose our own destinies. i believe that our lives a built upon our past decisions and the decisions we will make in the future. a bit like Chaos Theory in that our choices ripple outward like paths of an infinite selection through a heavy foliaged woods. we cannot see where the paths end or how many divergent routes there are among the choices we make. we can see a bit into the future, sometimes more so than others, but there are no guarantees because everyone else makes their own paths that intersect with ours and divert our initial goals.

we can make some assumptions about what tomorrow will bring, but in the end, everything is guided by us and by everyone else. there is no complete control. we have but illusions of consistency and delusions of our potential to guide our lives. take out victories where we can win them and accept our losses and failures when they occur. there are plenty of times that our inadequacies will bring us up short. roll with the punches and move on. get over it and get over ourselves. we are not as important as we think.

c'est la vie. moving on and moving along.

id break the back of love for you

i saw a very disturbing bumper sticker on a car today, it read: go army sign up to fight socialism.

really? join the army to fight socialism? i cant tell you the slew of reasons that i have issues with that entire statement. there are a more than a couple though. for one, i suppose i am one of those bleeding hearted liberals. i dont feel like a liberal, but what i feel seems to make me one. i believe that everyone should be treated equally. i believe that everyone should be payed the same (let me clarify that. set up a base payment, say 30k-150k differential salary based on the amount of education required to perform a specific task. have a bottom and a top, but put them in a reasonable level of each other so that it will mimic economic equality as much as human greed will let it.). i know it sounds a bit confusing, but im also trying to describe a complex set of social and governmental ideals into short and concise sentences. not an easy thing to do while trying to be specific.

the United States of America (notice that this is not a Democracy, because though we do have a lot of oppression of the Majority over Minority, our legal system keeps it "under control") has its share of issues. its share of contradictions and confusing statements. there are a lot of overbearing things that our government does that we blindly ignore, if simply because we feel that they are justified in doing so. in turning our heads away from these glaring and bothersome occurrences we lend credence to their subjugation of us. if you do not believe that this is true go to the store and buy some medicine that is not FDA approved. get on a plane that doesnt have a flight plan logged with FAA . listen to the radio or watch a show on tv that isnt governed by the FCC.

i hear the arguments here already stating how these things are for the betterment of mankind and for the protection of the people, and that might be true, but it is, never the less, subjugation and control. we are so happy to give up our liberties for comfort. so eager to throw away our decision making abilities for the luxury of peace of mind. so willing to give up our basic human rights of choice and chance for the security of passivity. dont rock the boat. dont ask questions. dont take chances. do as we are told and everything will be provided to us (at a cost obviously because giving up our inalienable human rights to them as currency, has no monetary value).

like it says on the hidden track of Bobby Baun by Good Riddance (i scoured the internet for a transcript of the spoken word hidden track that sounds like a psa but couldnt find the text) "our powers of persuasion are so subtle that you wont even know you are being subjugated".

i am a slave to comfort. i am a slave to commercialism. i am a slave to a government that is more concerned with extending it regime to every third world country on the planet and thusly increasing its astronomical debt than it is with creating a true unity of people and class for a better world tomorrow. i am a slave to the ideal of freedom and its complete lack of probability. i am a slave to ideals set in motion by dead men who never could have known things would end up like this. i am a slave so long as i let this or any other country control my well being. i am a slave to this and so much more, but the difference between you and i is; i know im a slave and im unhappy about it.

i do not want to serve anymore. i do not want to serve anyone in meeting goals that mean nothing to me. i believe in a world where people would do their jobs because they love it and are good at it instead of doing things based purely on profit. i believe in the freedom of man and the protections of those freedoms. i believe that the most qualified should lead, not the richest or most popular. i believe in a world that does not and cannot exist. the human heart harbors so much animosity, greed and jealousy that a perfect world can never exist until these self destructive traits are bread out of us or eliminated through some other, unknown to us now, means. by which point i would most likely be dead and forgotten, which doesnt sound terribly unappealing.

insensitivity training

i think a large majority of the issues with the world today is all the goddamn sensitivity. everyones little crybaby bullshit pet peeves. it seems like some people throw themselves at any cause they can find just so they have something to complain about.

i wore a shirt yesterday, sorry i cant seem to find a picture link to it, but to describe it;

HELP STOP RAPE

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c o n s e n t

i have found a ton of Places all over the web that have Threads on so many different Blogs about how offensive shit is and how it shouldnt be sold, worn or bought by anyone. what a bunch of humorless fuckwits. i am terribly sorry that your lives are so dull and monochrome that the only taking of everyone else's fun and good humor is their mission statement.

i seriously do not care about your personal hang ups. i do not care about how you were raped as a child or that your grandmother was a racist who said nigger every other word or that you are a jew with a tattoo number on your arm. none of these things affect me because i have gotten over it. i have learned to let shit go and not take everything so personally. if you live your life taking every so seriously and close to heart, you are bound to waste your life being pissed off instead of enjoying lifes pleasures.

there are causes for people to get behind. always fights that "victims" will have to fight back against. for me though, i just want to grow up and move on. i want to enjoy my life and no worry about the shit that gets me down or all the mistakes and wrongs that people have done to me. sure, i can carry the grudge, but im not going to because i have better things to do.

90 degrees, no fucking way

been raining for about 18 hours straight now. so beautiful. the only complaint i have about this amazing weather is the way it wreaks havoc on my sinuses. if it wasnt so beautiful i might actually hate it. the dark and beautiful clouds with the concussive thunder and blinding lightning just put me in such a good mood when i wake up to them. sure, it makes it hard to wake up when its all dark and dreary, but to enjoy the weather, one must be awake to experience it.

i drag myself out of bed and shuffle around the house with the dark spilling through the windows. i hear the rapping of the drizzle banging on my air conditioner pleading to be let in or at least not be ignored. another patch of thunderstorm rolling though now. the sky is grumbling through my walls like my stomach when im late for lunch.

on a different note, Porn Star Infected With AIDS. i can see both sides of this coin, yes, condoms are safe, safer anyways. the thing with porn is that its just not enjoyable for me as a consumer when the dude is wearing a rubber. hence the reason i can see both sides. as a consumer, i want the look and the feel of real fucking when im looking at fucking. because of the time involved in the testing, it would only make sense to implement a specific period of time between scenes. seems like a lovely compromise to me. that way everyone is safe and still making money and movies and we as the customer dont get annoyed. makes sense to me. all it means is that one person wouldnt be able to do multiple scenes too often. yeah, makes sense. ah, what the fuck do i know?

what good is any of it now?

A Meeting Place and Time

A meeting place and time.
Our chance to make amends.
Weather to meet as planned,
Or reach out for, the cold, upper hand.
[clean]
A meeting place and time.
Of which neither of them would show.
A meeting Place and Time.
A meeting place and time.
Pictured in our minds.
To stand up, from a table,
And prepare for the outside.
[clean]
A meeting place and time.
Neither of them would show.
A meeting place and time.
Neither of them would know.
'I wouldn't miss it for the world.'
with that having been said,
Could you be careful with your words,
Because my world is in your hands.
It was a year ago today,
I put a desperate man to death.
He was the man I used to be,
He trusted every word you said.
[spoken]
You can wait no more...it's time to go home.
I hope it's cold, everyday, where you are...
For this place, is where neither of us will meet.
For this time when neither of us will wait.
And this is the end of this burden of yours and mine.
This is the end, of this well rehearsed story of you and I.
This meeting place and time.
The story of you and I.

[Lyrics by David Gold]

i have so many favorite songs by this band. if i ever have the chance to meet david, i owe him a very large drink. perhaps his body weight in liquor. i see myself in so many things he has written. its not just about the writing either, his musical presentation is in perfect form. i see and feel so much of myself reflected in his writings.

that is the beauty of music. there must be thousands of people who feel the same way i do about thousands of bands and artists. a world without music would be a torture that i would never want to bear. my life was enriched over many years and hours of listening to all the beautiful and painful music that i own and love. everyday brings a new understanding and appreciation of the old favorites and new ones that i just happened to find.

remember; there is no destination, there is only the journey.

Digital Versatile Disk

DVD, sometimes grand, sometimes hell.  i found something quite funny and yet true on the interwebs today.  the blog has some good points and some quite moronic ones that have turned me off quite a bit from his stuff.  This Article/Entry (sorry, he has embedding turned off so i cant post it here), is pretty how i feel about dvds also.  i have a passion for them and therefore they have a bit of a hold on me and how i feel.  a dvd has never ruined my day or anything like that, but they have frustrated me quite a bit in the past and sometimes on a daily basis.  

as frustrating as they are, they do have some very entertaining moments that can be relived with your friends on those good moments and have the beauty of being an opportune cure for those awkward ones too.  things like this:

aint it grand? i can think of so many time those things have in-

spired so many good thoughts and quotable times with my friends.

you know you love it. sure, they arent all great, nor are they all

your favorites, but you can appreciate them regardless. at least i

hope so.

addiction and disease

what is it that separates the two?  we have so many different names for a lot of similar things.  Mental Disorder, Addiction, Dependency, ect.  there are so many things that plague everyone now days.  we have to justify events and actions to ourselves.  some people can say yes, some can say no.  it is a force of habit that moves our wishes into reality and actions.  our decisions guide us.  our decisions are what make us.  the most important thing to remember is that they are our decisions.   there is no destiny or predestination.  

it sounds crass and insensitive of me to say this, but that is what kind of person i am, im not sure i believe in addiction.  i dont believe in mental disorder.  i believe in strong and weak.  the strong can say no to the urges that tempt them and the weak cannot.  i believe that the weak and the strong are both necessary to life on this planet, from a social point of view.  humanity has to have a downtrodden and a heroic.  this balance is what keeps life interesting.  

yes, i do not understand how people can not say no to their habits (wow, convoluted sentence much?).  drunks who cant say no to the drink, junkies who know the junk will kill them and keep shooting, gamblers who lose their houses for one more roll of the dice or flip of the card and bulimics who puke themselves into oblivion.  i dont get it.  i am trying to see both sides.

i try to understand what it is that drives people.  there is only so much you can understand someone elses motivation.  there is only so much anyone can grasp from another persons psyche.  people have their own motivations and desires and those are only theirs to deny or accept.  i know there are a lot of reason that people do what they do, lots of which has to do with who they are and how they were raised.  sadly, people are products of their environment.  people are subjected to all types of conditioning and programing at home by their parents and teachers.  if we can rise above our shortcomings, we can argue the predestination thing as being non existent because of that.

in the end, it is all about choice.  choice and free will.  better yourself or die just the same as you have always have been.  in the end though... it is a choice.  it is your choice, it is my choice and no matter what is happening in our lives, it is our decisions that guide us down whatever path we have chosen for ourselves.