Ludic Lunacy

Sometimes I desire nothing more than to scream, loudly and extensively. And I do mean literally, too; not figuratively do I intend to sound here, I do not mean to say I get frustrated about matters and aggravated to a point of explosion. Rather, I mean . . . I need to scream, to release a primal energy that resides in the deeper regions of my soul.
It's interesting this habit, and it can never be pinpointed to be caused by something in particular — really, as far as I can tell, it is caused by an existence of a lot of different things in my head. When my thoughts clutter, when so many stimuli creep into my mind and cast a cloak of shadows over my entire conscious, when my brain is a swirl of emotions and ideas, that's when it rises forth like an eye in a hurricane: this singular urge to be loud. Heh, I suppose that seals exactly where it comes from: an overwhelmed feeling of being too weighed down with confusing thoughts.
And I accommodate this feeling, I can tell you that much; you will find me wandering about campus with my headphones on, singing along to the music without a damned care toward who sees or hears. I've said numerous times before to various people that I am convinced there is a marginal contingent of fellow students who are thoroughly certain I am a nutcase (marginal is being generous to myself, heh). Not that there aren't other reasons I present for people to be suspect of my sanity, of course.
Sometimes I know there is just no talking to be done, there is no soul-searching to be done, there is no introspection necessary nor do I want any sort of voluntary sounding board for my thoughts, but I crave noise — loud and chaotic noise. There's a constant rhythm buried in the core of my being that drives me toward music and song. I was once asked if there was a continual stream of thought in my head that always spoke to me, an infinite flurry of ideas and words in the back of my mind, and I honestly answered in the negative. I clear my head, and I don't hear words, but at a later time I realised that there is something there in the place of what the asker described and that is a beat, a rhythm, a line of musical sound — a pleasant, background noise. I would assume that if my head consistently talked to me, I'd excel more so at spoken communication than I do currently.
It's not the same feeling as the one I get that tells me to write, which is why this isn't coming out as fluently as I find it normally doing. Hell, look at that poor segue from the last paragraph, making reference back to the main topic and opening sentence without clearly defining the shift in focus. I find it . . . disconcurrent . . . with the logic of this feeling that it tends to accompany a headache (Yes, I just made up the word "disconcurrent," because I couldn't grasp an antonym for concurrent on hand). Like, now, my head hurts. You know, I'm listening to music at this very moment — Queens of the Stone Age — and I'm tired which is probably the direct cause of the headache.
Do you ever find yourself befuddled by the question of how to satisfy some aspect of your soul? Like a part of you is crying out to be attended to, and all you can comprehend is the need but not the cause or, invariably, the solution? At times, the hardest commandment I have bequeathed upon myself is "Balance." Doesn't take me a week after finding a centre in my being and a balance in living that it tips back in one direction or the other; God damn if I've discovered a fulcrum to level out my self, is one way to put it I guess. The urge to scream, I think it stems out of that, originating in the deep frustration of being out of balance somehow within myself. It's not a surface-level frustration, nothing like "This code is difficult" or "I can't get this drawing right," but more along the lines of an incommunicable grievance that growls in the recesses of my soul.
As of recent, I've been in a strange mood. Something tickles my mind but does not reveal itself in plain sight of my mind's eye. It's driving me up a wall, because I believe I have a handle on it one moment and then it slips out of my grasp and returns to intangible abstraction. I know one thing, it gives me a headache. I have a lot of headaches.
This is fast breaking down to disjointed rambling, so I will end this now before it goes completely off of the deep end.

Adios.

Pandemic Wandering

I fucking hate my eyes. No, seriously, I do.

I, Robot was an excellent film, I have to read that book. 2% Failure Rating. It may merit a later, longer review.

The International House of Pancakes is situated somewhere outside of the standard space-time continuum, creating a bizarre timewarp effect, causing all time to lapse into a seemingly singular moment.

Literature fulfills me on levels that I don’t quite understand, myself. Both the creation thereof and the indepth exploration, it provides some sort of satisfaction on a . . . . Spiritual level.

I find myself wondering if my proverbial "fuel" for art is purely negativity, or, at least, has been for years. My past works all have fairly dark motivations behind them, and even a sketchbook from as recently as last year is full of painful remembrances. In my newfound discovery of the drive to draw — or, moreover, the lack thereof — I question myself as to if it has to do with a sudden lack of so much pent-up emotion.

I have written a fuck-ton (S.I. unit of measure equivalent to roughly ten shit-tons or one hundred ass-loads) this summer, but it is pretty much on par with how much I drew last year this time. I worry about being prolific, occasionally, but it’s harder to catalogue the amount of writing I’ve done because it’s not in hard-copy and thus more intangible than art.

A conflict of interest rages in my head in regard to this Blog; on one hand, I’m starting to worry that my entiries are simply too long and dense for anyone to be interested in reading, and, on the other, I’m still full of the conviction that I write for myself and not others. Is the subtle push to write of publishing something somewhat public worth the fact that I am tempted to, in fact, treat this as something publishable. Were this to be more publishing-ready, though, it would be considerably more . . . . Boring to write on, since in many ways this is my pre-writing tool, in general.

Are comments worth the extra time it takes to publish the Blog? I doubt it, but I don’t know for sure at this point.

Queens of the Stone Age is on the radio and have recorded an album laced with loads of jabs at the radio. "This is KRDL, Kurdle Radio . . . We spoil music for everyone." Heh.

I am honestly and genuinely impressed with the stability and functionality of Windows XP Professional. The more I use it and grow familiar with it, the more taken I am with the operating system, and that chills me to the core; which just solidifies my argument that Bill Gates is the Anti-Christ, but that'll be a longer spiel that I promise won't be like every other Linux user and their gripes with Microsoft, instead something silly and interesting (to me).
 
That is all.

Thank You.

Adios.

Completea

In the cocky hours, we begin, began, begot;
Wayward treks up washed-up mountains,
Little lost in laundered moments — too bad,
Too bad, we tumble down.

Suits of black, blue, burgundy, blisters;
Worn on shoulders hunched and bent,
Men of magnitude, of significant figures —
Count not the leftward straying zeros.

Rules and rules and rhymed rhetoric,
Told to tell to torture gentle genetics,
No hope, no hole, no happy hands,
This is the world in which we stand:
Dust.

A bird, a dove, a thousand wings, white,
White, flown too high to catch the sun,
And down we come, we come, we come.

Grieve not the lost for they are those done.

“Hello, Mister Frost, how’re you fairin’ this fine morrow?”

The aged scarecrow-gravedigger held a pipe in his hand, and sat backwards on a grave marker; at his feet, a small, black kitten curled about him and made tiny ‘mewing’ noises. The young cat had showed up, unexpectedly and without reason, three nights back during the snowstorm. He had come clawing at the door of the funeral home, pitifully coated in white cold and shivering. The caretaker had noticed him while locking up, and brought him inside. A can of tuna later — out of the employee fridge — and he was indoctrinated into the staff as ‘Frosty,’ in homage to the conditions of his discovery.

“What do you think about this day, as the sun peeks over the trees and life begins anew? I can’t guess what words float through your cat-mind, no sir; not I, the human with his human head.”

A light snow was drifting from the cloud-dotted sky, still pink with the residue of dawn. Frosty yawned and stretched, clawing the old man’s pants-leg. Cracking his wrinkled lips halfway in a bemused smirk, he reached down and patted the kitten’s head with his free hand. They were positioned in the shadow of the angelic statue of a winged, knightly woman, the centrepiece of the graveyard. Wet stains ran down her checks, as the snow hit and melted and traced paths down her psuedo-flesh.

“Do you think about death, Mister Frost? Does a lost kitten in a dusty cemetery contemplate things such as that? Does your walnut-brain stop and wonder about the great beyond?”

The smoke from the ancient gravedigger’s pipe swirled and danced in the air, twisting around the sunken face of the spindly figure of a man in black, bounded upward for the endless, gray forever that hung like depression over the world, cut and bled crimson by the vengeful sun. If the innocent and chilled kitten was not so preoccupied with his own tail, he would have seen the blank, veined eye of the man playing with him twitch as if to move and see something else. More obviously, his right-hand, still-functioning eye swung toward the funeral home’s back building, where the silhouettes of three people emerged from a door. Standing up and putting the pipe to his mouth, the stick-man, attendant in arms to the master Frosty, stretched the muscles of his legs and watched.

“I do ponder, Mister Frosty, such things as death, I must admit. It does not trouble me in my sleep, however, nor does it haunt my dreams like a spectral nightmare. Too many people, they fear it and repulse from He Who Ends All Things.”

Many yards away, long from being in earshot of the strange man and his kitten, the trio of figures stepped up to the edge of the cemetery. One, a slender and clean man in a red jacket and mauve pants, held a clipboard in his left hand, while his closest companion, a Latin, burly man in heavy dress, crossed his arms and lazily looked about. Behind them, keeping behind in either shyness or wariness, a plain-looking woman in a light, green hoodie stood, head-down and hands-in-pocket. The front man’s voice, soothing and soft, pierced the morning snow’s silence and calmed the world about. “This is, as you can very well guess, where he will be bured, ma’am, and I must be so bold as to say it is the finest and most well-groomed resting place for the deceased in the tri-county region. We have been in business since the 1800's, in fact. . . “ The hooded woman kicked the snow and sharply jerked her head around, as though wishing to appear interested and looking around at the site but failing.

Deliberately at the pace of an aeon, the one-eyed scarecrow approached the stone angel — permanently on guard for some unnamed threat — and placed a hand against her base. Letting out a few rings of smoke, he removed his corncob pipe and knocked it against the bottom of his worn-through boot. Frosty hopped through the half-inch deep blanket of winter and followed his current keeper, leaving paw-prints in his wake over the graves of those-long-gone.

“Now, Mister Frost, one must not tread on the Houses of the Dead, I tell you. For when you knock on their doors, they are liable to stir from their Sleep and come to answer, and we really dun’ want that, do we? No, we don’t . . . we don’t.”

The olive-skinned man started walking toward the middle of the cemetery, where the scarecrow stood by the Lady in Waiting, while brushing flakes off his arms. Behind him, taking the arm of the green jacket the woman wore, the pristine-faced man smiled and offered her a steaming, Styrofoam cup he had been holding. “Miss, if the weather is too much for you, we can move inside, of course — but, I merely desired to show you the beautiful Garden your loved one would be soon joining,” he spoke, in a low and impossibly reassuring tone. She shook her head very slightly, and took the hot drink he offered, sipping it carefully. The black coffee scalded her lips, and she cried out abortively, biting her tongue to stop herself. “It’s o-okay.”

“Death has to be an amazing thing, I think — a life-changing experience, hehe. So many of us humans, we treat it in as wide a variety of ways as the width of disparity between our births and lives . . . Someone else said that once, but I forget who.”

Pulling the hood from her head, the woman revealed a mess of brown hair that splayed over her shoulders like grain spilling from a silo. Her face was the colour of a robin’s egg from the frosty, early morning, but her cheeks were red from some other source, perhaps a blushing or a sun-burn. “I’m fine, I’m fine. Just tired, you know? Cold, too. I’m fine.” She took a slower pull from the coffee, and sighed deeply as the heated liquid hit her insides with a splash of warmth.

“There are those who detest it and despise it, making it the centre of their hatred and contempt, loathing and disgust. Their whole lives go into death, by the end of it — kinda ironic, as the book-worms says, that what they hate becomes who they are, and blah, blah.”

The kitten took this opportunity to start scaling the pants of his tall escort, claw-by-claw. Reaching down and snatching him up by the nap, the human of the two placed him on the looming angel’s pedestal. Coughing in the raw cold, the Spanish-looking man came up to the watcher of Frosty and nodded. “Buenas manañas, amigo, we got a job,” he slurred, wiping his mouth with his hand; he was holding a Styrofoam cup of coffee, too.

“And others make it their Muse, their Saviour and Lord, welcoming it and awaiting it and counting the seconds until He comes a’knockin’. I dun’ really like them any better than the first kind of people — they’re too melodramatic about the whole thing and write a slew of bad poetry and music about it, you know, Mister Frost?”

The scarecrow did not particularly visibly acknowledge what the young, Hispanic man said, but he nodded, again, anyway, more to himself than anyone else. Turning back around, he lifted his feet and made sure not to stomp on the squares of graves on his way back toward where the woman stood with the man with the reassuring voice. Knocking more ash from the pipe, the time-withered, eccentric fellow dropped it in one of the large, deep pockets of his coat and pulled, from elsewhere, a tin of chew. Reaching gnarled fingers into the black mass of tobacco, he popped it in his cheek and bit down, producing a squishy sound. The kitten repeated his chant of ‘mew, mew, mew’ from the sandaled feet of the angel-woman; one might imagine him saying, in repetition, ‘cold, cold, cold.’

“Me? I think of it like this — death, that is — it’s a part of life, thus a slave to life. Treat it as such, and He’ll stay put, wherever He comes from, like an ignored, disobedient child. It’s like in those books with magic, where the Dead can be brought back to Life — I don’t mean the Bible, but that’s kinda the same — who cares about what comes next, then? When you can just be brought back around, no matter if your head done been severed or age has dug Her icy claws into your soul, then why concern yourself with Death? Sure, nobody can cast no spell to bring me back to life, but I may as well pretend they can — maybe they do, maybe I have been brought back to Life, and that was the day I was born? Or maybe this is where you go when you’re Dead, and I’m just somewhere else, waiting to be ress’rected . . . Huh, Mister Frost, want some fish?”

The kitten had begun to rub his head on the hand of the talking man, which he had absently let sit against the edge of the statue, and was meowing louder. Picking the kitten up and raising him to the level of his operable eye, the scarecrow spat out of the side of his mouth.

“Don’t matter to me, though, ‘cause I dun’ feed’ya, hah!”

My Misprizing

Sometimes, I ponder if my role in existence is to stoically remain forever a pitiless being of criticism. I say this, because as I was contemplating the advantages and disadvantages of seeing the second Spiderman film, I couldn’t draw my mind away from the stinging, predominant fact in regard to that franchise, that is I don’t care a wink about Peter Parker. I saw the first film, and I was quite disappointed with the whole ordeal to be frank, really. I do not intend to review it here, but suffice to say that had I not been in my own room and watching it on another’s tab, then I would’ve demanded the immediate refund of my hypothetical money. And as I was reading over today’s (Wednesday, June 30th) Penny Arcade post, wherein Tycho addresses Spiderman, I could do nothing but wince when he described Parker as “human,” complete with italics for emphasis and everything — is it to be whiney to be human, I ask?
I have no sympathy for the Parker character, nor any other adherent to that archetype of reluctant and overcautious superhero. You choose a lifestyle riddled with danger, you accept the risks and realise the side-effects, in my opinion; if you want to swing around beating up nefarious people of villainous nature, expect them to do evil, malevolent acts like threaten your loved ones. If you wish to save your unwitting cohorts from danger, destroy your actual identity and become the hero you wish to be — or don’t, and constantly come into perilous dilemmas because you can’t trip down an alleyway without revealing who you truly are. Just do not expect me to gasp and empathetically coo every single time it happens, as though it is surprising and the decision you face of “Who am I? Parker or Spiderman? Human or hero?” is somehow new at all.
And on that same note, I think about my favourite figures in cinema, I think about who it is in movies that I actually find myself rooting for their success. It definitely wasn’t Riddick, nor was it Neo . . . The Shining is one of my favourite movies ever, and one of the reasons is that I always found myself compelled to pull for the triumph of Jack, the crazed writer. Hannibal Lector, also, wins my wholehearted support, too, for his deliciously twisted approaches to vengeance — he ate the first violinist of the New York Philharmonic Symphony because he felt that the position was won through politics and not skill, for crying out loud; who can’t respect that? Alex from A Clockwork Orange is cruel and evil, but somewhere in my heart I enjoyed his adventures in devilish mayhem . . . And McMurphy from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest stands as an example of the greatest type of hero existent in my mind, and he’s not actually a psychopath or deranged.
On the hand of anime, of which I also watch a considerable amount, there’re the heroes I give a damn about such as Spike Spiegel and Jet Black from Cowboy Bebop. I would cite an example from Neon Genesis Evangelion, but I felt mostly an overwhelming amount of pity mixed in with intolerance for Shinji and a sense of admiration for Gendo, which is undoubtedly not a case in point for me as anything but coldhearted; granted, I did feel sorry for Shinji, but my feelings were heavily tinged with frustration at his weak character, for my pity was reserved only for his misfortunate life and not his spineless reaction to its tribulations. Kusanagi from Ghost In the Shell, now there’s a hero I could admire, stopping only here and there long enough to brood over her cybernetic existence between kicking the shit out of the Puppetmaster. Tetsuo from Akira? He was just a hot-blooded adolescent, in the end, which was sort of pitiful and relatable but still inexcusable. I can keep going with my analysis of my opinion of heroes in anime; however, that would not serve my purpose of discovering whether or not I am heartless, instead it would muddle the exploration.
Let me go back to Bebop for an instant, quickly, though; Faye Valentine . . . My God, the ill will I harbour towards that character can not be rationally explained. As I see it, she was a selfish, ingratiating, freeloading slut, and as far as I was concerned, she should’ve been left to rot for her bitchiness and careless attitude. In short, fuck Faye Valentine. I get the sense, and some of my friends tell me, that I should feel bad that (REVEALING INFORMATION) she was a rich, spoiled daughter of upper-class citizens that got into a tragic accident and was put on ice for fifty-odd years, resulting in her complete amnesia from the point she woke up until the point she found the rubble of her old home, and I’m supposed to shed a tear that she worked so hard for nothing and, as the sun set, she was without a past or family? “Hard Luck Women” was a beautiful and moving episode, and even I felt a little sad for Faye, but that doesn’t change the fact that she didn’t deserve any of the generosity she got from anyone. Fuck Faye Valentine, and, come to think of it, fuck Asuka Langley Sohryu . . . However, I’m beginning to just prove that I have zero tolerance for bitchy women and not sympathetic characters in general, at this point.
Am I heartless, am I heartless? Perhaps my qualm arises from the fact that to be visibly human seems to be equated with displays of weakness and wafting back and forth on a subject, waffling over some life-affecting crux point . . . Which makes sense, mind you, and I do not mean to sound as if people should not carefully choose the right decision in regards to something that the effect of will ripple through their entire lifespan . . . But, Peter Parker is “human” because he struggles with his identity and experiences real pain as a result of it, and I . . . Don’t . . . Care. I don’t care. I can’t make myself care. I don’t hate Peter Parker, but I don’t care about him, either.
Perhaps, indeed, my problem arises from the idea of someone doing great things and then the audience having an obligation to feel sorry for the rest of his character. If someone does something great and is great, than I won’t think twice about forgiving him or her the faults of their human nature without qualm or emotion. And I may have a tendency to translate my sympathy for a character into callous disregard; take, for example, my reaction to Dream from Gaiman’s Sandman comic. Once I found out the core of Dream’s being, as a moody, melodramatic and ultimately suicidal fool, I kind of stopped caring about him. Looking back on everything he had done, I saw the second half of his motivation and my heart turned to stone for his final plight. And it’s not that I begin to or ever hate these characters, but I lack emotional attachment or warm fondness for them . . . Maybe I just don’t like what it means to be human? Maybe I see it in characters in movies, books, comics, plays, etc. and it causes me to reserve my affection for them because they’re human, thus no better or worse than I and unworthy of any special concern?
Of course, it only seems to be a reaction to certain qualities of human nature, and specifically it has to do with self-doubt and insecurity. I don’t have patience for those qualities in people, because I used to have them in such abundance that I lost them almost through sheer tiring of having them. Or, after years of going through the same dilemmas and self-questionings, then I have zilch desire to see it in others. I know what it’s like, I know what it feels like, I know what it entails, so it is not new, interesting, or any sort of epiphany for me . . . It’s almost like it’s rehashing part of my life, and I don’t go to movies to see that.
I honestly don’t think I’m heartless, because this is a very specific and special apathy I only harbour for characters, not people. In my mind, people are on an entirely different level and I am much less . . . Contemptuous . . . Toward actual human beings; because, that’s what I am doing to these characters, seething with contempt for their problems. After one learns how stupid a state of being is, then it no longer holds any respectful position in one’s eyes, I suppose.
I’ll probably see Spiderman 2, anyway.

Adios.

Are You Afraid Of The Dark? (I Remember That Show on Snick)

I honestly do want to say that the Chronicles of Riddick was good for what it was supposed to be, but . . . I can’t. I’m sorry, folks, but I just did not enjoy that movie, on any level, whatsoever. Okay, so it was supposed to be an action/science-fiction movie starring a typical antihero and full of one-liners and explosions, not to mention impossible feats of impossible dare. It did that, and it did it alright, I guess, with decent CGI and plenty of special effects. Vin Diesel was all kinds of crazily strong and persistent in his quest to . . . Uh, his quest to, uh, erm, uhh . . . Be cool?
The plot was thin, as thin as a bulimic supermodel stranded in the Sahara, and about as transparent and flimsy as rice paper. The whole movie vastly lacked motivating forces, except for the big, obvious, mean guys with the black ships and laser guns — granted, that is a nice motivation, what with the planet-wide destruction. Still, there was a very cut-and-paste feeling to the scenes, with Riddick just being thrust, haphazardly and barely sensibly, from one scenario to the next, sometimes causing me to forget why Riddick was doing what he was doing. From being chased by mercenaries on a snowy planet, to being on planet Islam, to beating up soldiers, to being caught by mercenaries, to being thrust into a prison . . . In retrospect, I do remember why it was that he ended up where he did, but during the course of the movie, I was very strained to keep up with the plot holes that were laced together to resemble a plot.
The characters, the characters: oh, how I failed to give a flying fuck about any of them. Granted, and I’ve been using the word “granted” a lot in this review, I did not see Pitch Black, but I have a feeling I gathered the entire backstory from the exchanges of dialogue and thinly veiled references. Put pointblank, the characters were shallow, flat, unchanging, boring, undeveloped, and stock. There was little history given for any character beyond passing mention of some past event or circumstance, and none of them changed or acted in a way that did not perfectly fit into the archetype they had obviously been chosen to fulfill. Riddick was an antihero: dark, brooding, angry, anguished, silent, gruff, and Wolverine with interesting eyes. I hate to compare all antiheroes to Wolverine, but he was a great example of a successfully executed one; I refrain from making reference to Ash (Bruce Campbell) from Evil Dead because I did not particularly care about those cult classic films. Jack/Kira was the obviously jilted and overcompensating sidekick character trying to strike it out and make it on her own, but failing miserably without the protection of her mentor, Riddick. Vaco, while having the most retarded name for anything except for a vacuum cleaner or something related to a vacuum cleaner, was the loyal general full of ambition and dreams, but faithful to his superior to a near fault; that fault being his wife, what’s-her-bitch-name in the tight, revealing clothing, who whispered sweet notes of murder and betrayal into his helmeted ear. Vaco was Darth Vader, and bitch-whore was Lady McBeth, perhaps, if you wish to make analogies. It was all very tightly wrapped up in a simple box, if nothing else, and nothing inconvenienced the viewer by changing throughout the movie.
I feel as though I am being slightly hypocritical by writing a favourable review of Van Helsing and knocking Chronicles of Riddick, though. To be fair, there wasn’t anything spectacular about the characters or character development in Helsing, either, but I still liked it more. I think my biggest problem with Riddick that I didn’t have with Helsing was that I called the entire movie from the first 10 minutes of it, thereabout. I viewed Riddick in a strange, psychic vision that was about five or ten minutes ahead of present time, wherein I saw all things happen before they did and knew exactly what would transpire in the near future of the hardcore Mr. Riddick. Also, it would’ve been nice, not to give anything away, if there was a damn thing concluded in that movie, too — Hell, I’ll give them the liberty to be open for a sequel, but when Riddick was over I was left asking myself, “Did anything actually happen in the last two hours of this movie that had an impact on anything?” Yeah, okay, so Riddick went from having dreads to being bald . . . And?
What it comes down to, in short, is that the Chronicles of Riddick was meant to be light entertainment with action and, uh, action, but it failed to entertain me. It just wasn’t fun or enjoyable to watch, when I knew what was going to happen and I couldn’t find myself caring about any of the characters. Yeah, traumatic things happened, but to people that I never got to know or care for their well-being. Eh, death, and last-second heroics requires me to feel something for those involved, and I was not stirred. I want to give Riddick credit for being what it was, but I think a lot of other movies were the same thing, but a whole lot better, just possibly not as pretty and shiny about it; I give it a 67% Failure Rating. Better luck next movie.

Adios.

Fat and Stupid, or You'll Hear Me Out, Nolens Volens, In My Idiotic Baseball Cap and Jumpsuit

I don't like Bush. That, I think, is understood well enough at this point. I will, however, enlighten you, the readers, as to my opinion of Michael Moore.
Fuck Michael Moore.
That's right, I am an assumed liberal (which is to say that people assume I am a liberal without me ever saying I am) who thinks Michael Moore is a fucking hack.
But, I do relate to Michael Moore . . . Insofar as his visible shaving dilemma. As you can plainly see in the many depictions of him that are floating around the media, he is as displeased by shaving as I am. Sometimes, he sports a ratty beard, and other times he is wearing a ratty moustache, and yet other occasions he is trying to pull the ratty stubble look. In the end, his fat fucking face is usually covered with facial hair and I am sure he just doesn't enjoy shaving, much like me.
Of course, my days of being indecisive about my facial hair are over, and I have been in full support of the chin-strap beard for a few months now, frequently refreshing it and grooming it. I hope, one day, that you, too, Michael Moore, can make a facial hair-related decision, as well, and join me in the ranks of Americans who know what looks good on his face.
Do I think it is coincidental that his facial hair tends to resemble the look of a rat, either?
Michael Moore is a bloated God damn rat, and I am not surprised he looks like one.
Let me explore his latest masterpiece, just based on my passing knowledge of its content and the skimpy trailers and scattered excerpts I have seen. The very first thing I took note of was the title: Fahrenheit 9-11. Huh, it is not hard to see the play on words here, of course, with the combination of the title of the classic Bradbury novel, Fahrenheit 451, and the infamous date in history, September 11th, 2001. Now, this sticks out to me as notable because I just recently finished reading Bradbury's work, in the last month, for the first time — excellent book, by the way, 0% Failure Rating.
So, he made a . . . Movie . . . With a title that refers to a book that is the tale of a fictional, futuristic distopia where the fire department is dedicated to burning and destroying all traces of literature and written media. It's a book about how the populace of the world is mesmerized and desensitized by television and the cinema, their brains veritably sucked from their skulls by the lure of emotionally charged screenplay that has little to nothing to do with reality or is even coherent. Michael Moore — Michael Moore — made a movie with a title that refers to this book. A book that is about how movies destroy intellectualism. A book about movies that distort the truth in order to create emotions that are unfounded but pleasing, plus fleeting by nature.
There really aren't enough italics in the world to fully underline the irony here, people.
I haven't seen Fahrenheit 9-11, and I don't plan on it because I saw Bowling for Columbine, which was the most annoying "movie" I had seen in years. For one thing, Michael Moore doesn't make movies, he makes documentaries . . . Worse yet, they're political documentaries. The political documentary is the lowest of all the low forms of cinema in existence. Hey, you know who made a lot of political documentaries? Hitler did, that's who! Michael Moore is Hitler.
Seriously, the innate problem with the political documentary film is that it will be biased and it will be partisan, and it will be bullshit. Political documentaries are made for the sole purpose of swaying an audience toward a certain opinion, and they do it by contorting facts and scenes into a picture of a horrid world where what the film-maker thinks is utterly, irrefutably true. I can't respect this medium, honestly; when someone puts that much energy into conveying their political opinion, it's never going to come out on the straight and narrow. The same goes for political books, I should mention while I'm on the subject. Politics should be committed to art in pamphlets, papers, paintings, poems, and other such short, sudden impacts of expression. Leave the long books and dry movies to the philosophies and ideologies underlying politics and government in general, is what I think.
Michael Moore strings together these long flashes of scenes and images, sounds and music, to make his viewpoint ring truer than true and to make the opposing viewpoint seem like the scummiest treason to reason that ever was. I hate Bush, too. I really do. But, I don't think the answer is to make movies that are, in fact, thinly disguised political documentaries to rouse the fickle rabble like you're Marc Antony at the ex-emperor's funeral. Creating propaganda to denounce propaganda is never the answer.
To wrap up everything that I have said concisely, I will formulate a single sentence that contains every point I made:
Michael Moore, you fat, ratty bastard with your stupid, ratty facial hair, stop making political documentaries that you push as movies in order to sway the American public into believing your side of the political spectrum through emotional engineering and the same psychological tricks Hitler used during the Third Reich, because it fools honest, movie-going Americans into seeing your tripe under the false impression that it will be intelligent or maybe even entertaining — none of your movies are either — and go back to the sensationalist, lobbyist hole out of which you crawled.
YOU'RE FAT. And I can say that because I'm fat, just like how homosexuals can use the word "faggot" because they're gay, and black people can say "nigger" to each other.
So there; I pray everyone is properly pissed off now.

Adios.

Shaving has always been something of an event to me. Most times, feeling as though an immense bother or challenge, to be perfectly honest . . . Since I was fifteen, I’ve been growing facial hair at a rate that is not to my taste nor liking, but I don’t complain. For the duration of time just up until very recent years, I just let it grow, shaggy and unkempt, into a bristly, brown mane about my face.
For whatever reasons that be, my moustache took the longest time to grow, and that is really what got me onto the idea of shaving. I hate having a moustache. Gets in my mouth, gets in my food. It’s weird to feel on my upper-lip, and it generally just annoys me. So, yeah, you looked at me and saw the image of every male geek around, nearly: fat, white, and bearded. Granted, I would like to think not as bad as most, but, still, I carried that visage of lacking proper hygiene – of course, I always showered.
It was probably the Gendo Ikari costume that really put me to shaving. Back in my freshman year of college, some newfound friends both convinced me that I struck an uncanny resemblance to Commander Ikari from Neon Genesis Evangelion -- the cult-classic anime – and that I should go to Nekocon, a local convention. Me being the good sport that I am, I did go and I even did dress like Gendo, for the sheer Hell of it. I’ll try anything once, and probably twice, thrice, and so on. (I hate mint, passionately, but I still eat mint almost everytime it is put in front of me; it’s as though there’s some vain hope, in my mind, that its flavour will, this time, not burn my mouth like stinging bees.)
Part of the details of this costume was shaving my beard to a chin-strap-style, and it fit me, well. I, later on that same year, shaved my beard off for the first time since I was fifteen, but that just didn’t work for me. One friend has told me that, without a beard, I have a baby-face, and that just doesn’t look right for my personality. Admittedly, I do have a baby-face . . . Which is partially why I enjoy shaving, sans the problems I have: where I shave is smooth and gentle to the touch. It’s like some sort of absurd and silly, guilty-pleasure to rub my freshly-shaven cheeks. Feels weird, so I’m fascinated by it, of course, like I am with all things unusual.
Anyway, the point of this whole entry is that shaving, for me, is an incredible pain. I am convinced that I have some abnormally hard-to-shave face, that most of everybody else can shave their face with relative ease. Me, though? I’ve had to experiment with it for three years to figure out an effectively painless and convenient method to my shaving madness. And, herein, I will present the guidelines by which I shave.

- (One) Use Gillete Mach III razor with Colgate Shaving Cream. I tried the disposable kind of Bic razors, but those just hurt my face and gave me razor-burn. Also, I attempted to use some Shaving Gel, once, and that had hideous results. I’m either allergic to the stuff, or it just doesn’t agree with my skin, or I used it absolutely wrong. I don’t know how else to use a shaving substance, though, aside from smear it on the areas you want to shave . . .

- (Two) Use Hot Water. Fucking boil a pot of water if need be. I shaved with cold water, once, recently, because the hot-water heater ran out of hot water, and Jesus Christ it hurt. The cutting and, oy, the razor-burn. Eck, hot water is your friend . . . And having thought about it, after the fact, I realized the reason for this is very simple Physics and Thermodynamics. Heat expands, while cold compresses: so, hot water opens your pores and makes it easier for the hair to be shaved, whereas cold water closes the pores and turns shaving into a massive festival of tearing and gnashing.

- (Three) Start where it is always the most difficult to shave. Originally, and up until almost a week ago, I shaved down, with the grain, then up, against it. Also, I find it necessary to shave sideways and diagonally, in places, because my facial hair grows in every fucking possible direction, apparently. I had the bright idea of starting with the parts that always gave me the most trouble and, invariably, caused the most pain, which lead to very pleasing results. I guess it’s because that’s when the most shaving cream is on my face, which brings me to my next point.

- (Four) Always have a thorough lathering of cream. Don’t shave and shave until there’s nothing but a scant, thin coating of cream . . . Refresh it. It keeps the sharp, pointy razor blade from scratching the skin excessively. It’s not wasteful to lather your face three times in one shave, just to prevent razor-burn.

- (Five) If you ever think to yourself, “This razor blade can probably go one more time,” then immediately toss it in the trash. It’s a foolish thought, I assure you, and it is, nine times out of ten, wrong. No, no it can’t go one more shave, it is dull and must be replaced. Ugh, I’m like a remedial-grade shaver or something, I swear.

In conclusion, I suck at shaving and these steps are the only way it does not leave my face cut and stinging, afterward. Moreoever, this has to be the single-most boring entry I’ve ever written, and it ends now.

Adios.

A Malapropos State of Affairs

I find very interesting this phenomenon that I have recently noticed. For one thing, that first sentence was useless, but that’s beside the point. This phenomenon is in regard to a similar streak that runs through two separate yet similar subcultures that I have had my fingers in one way or another, at one time. There is a behaviour exhibited by both punkers and otaku that is most disturbing, indeed; but, first, let me define exactly what I mean by those two labels. The punker is someone who is familiar very deeply with old-school punk and the roots of punk; he knows all about old bands like the Ramones and Dead Kennedys, and, generally, understands what it meant to be punk originally. Nowadays, you can find these people as jaded, scruffy folk sitting in small punk shows and complaining — rightfully, if you ask me — about the state of modern punk music. An otaku, on the other hand, is one who is well-versed in her anime knowledge, being familiar with Miyazaki or Gainax, having seen plenty of the classics like Ghost in the Shell, Akira, Mononoke Hime, Wings of Honneamise, Yatsuri Urusei, and so on. You can find plenty of otaku at anime conventions, obviously, and they’re the ones who are most commonly cosplaying, especially as either obscure, fan-favourite characters or characters from brand new shows in Japan. They pull the fan-subs off Torrents or IRC fservs, and, inside their rooms, one can usually find a scattering of manga and a wallscroll or two hanging. These two individual types of persons sound distinctly and far removed from each other, but you would be surprised to find, upon closer inspection, that they exhibit a nearly identical tendency.
Here’s the thing: both subcultures have, as of recent years, become very exposed to the masses through commercialisation and repackaging — nobody is particularly enthralled by this fact, either, and that’s where the similarity begins. I have come to realise that both a punk and an otaku treat their modern scene and those who inhabit them, now, with contempt and disgust. Granted, the anime subculture is much newer to public exposure and mass popularity than the punk scene — this started in the early 1990’s for them — but I can see it forming: the rift between new-school and old-school. However, the reaction to the modern incarnation of their respective subculture is the exact same, otaku or punk, and that is to shun it and, in most cases, ignore it altogether, proclaiming it a “falsehood,” a mockery of the “real” thing.
Yes, indeed, one could very easily hear a jilted, old punk sitting at a table, smoking a cigarette, and lamenting the downfall of the punk scene and the uprise of terrible facsimiles of real punk bands — whether or not I agree with this is irrelevant to the current discussion, so I’ll try and leave my opinion out. Most of the malaise is aimed at the people newly coming into the scene on the tail of popular, new bands like New Found Glory or Dashboard Confessionals. Of course, even back when The Offspring and Green Day were just starting to get around, their fans were getting the shaft, too; because, you know, they “sold out” and became “manufactured.” The problem with punk, to give a little bit of insight into the scene, is that it hit a wall in the late 80’s and utterly shattered. Punk as just punk has been dead for years and years, replaced with the shards of the old punk scene: hardcore, post-hardcore, skater-punk, emo, pop-punk, screamo, jazz-punk, metal-punk, whatever they’re calling it all nowadays. There really are scant few actual punk scenes left — D.C. still has one, and Canada, for some reason too, and I’ll refrain from expressing my opinion of the modern-day East Bay — most of what you find are off-shoots of punk rock, widely different with little in common with 70’s and 80’s punk. Dropkick Murphys are not Minor Threat, and Floggin’ Molly are hardly the Gang of Four. It’s all different now, and none of it is just punk-punk; which is what a lot of old punks missed the bus on: that their scene is buried in the rubble. Anyway, a lot of what we have today is pop-punk, which is definitely not punk rock but has its origins rooted in it in an abstract way. However, I’m going on a bit too much about punk music, and I desire to get back to the point at hand: this phenomenon.
Anime, of course, has become popularised by the likes of Dragonball Z, Card Captor Sakura, Yu-Gi-Oh, and what-have-you. Basically, through the influence of Cartoon Network, a lot of random anime was brought to the foreground of the American animation industry, and thrust into the laps of American youth. Since then, the Warner Brothers Network and Fox and a few others, culminating in the existence of these all-anime network channels I, unfortunately, don’t receive, have been bringing forth a deluge of anime into the American teenage culture. Now, you can hardly show me an American anime fan that didn’t fall into the subculture of otakudom by means of anything outside of some American channel, Sci-Fi or ABC, airing an anime at one time in the distant past. Even us children of the Eighties can remember Iria and Vampire Hunter D being played on the Sci-Fi channel, or Sailor Moon and Dragonball being dubbed and edited — almost beyond recognition — by DiC and screened on ABC or NBC (I forget which exactly). But, it’s much bigger now, with Toonami and Adult Swim, all the anime being thrown around and soaked up by young, impressionable minds — it’s both good and bad in ways, of course. But, an otaku has been around the proverbial block, so they’re long past, and way above (in their eyes), the newcomers and modern anime scene. What you get is the same thing you get with the punks: elitism and exclusivist behaviour.
“Oh, you’re wearing a Green Day shirt? Feh, you don’t know punk. Offspring? What does Offspring have to do with punk?” “Oh, you’re costuming as a Dragonball Z character? Get away from me, you don’t un-der-stand anime, obviously. Pokémon isn’t really anime, stupid.” I’ve heard many variations on those sentiments, over and over. It’s interesting, because, instead of acknowledging bands or shows that they disapprove of as simply bad examples of products of their subculture, punks and otaku dismiss them as nonexistent and blatantly different things. (Is a punker otaku called a putaku, or otakunk? I do-o-o-n’t know.) I’ll give otaku that Pokémon and Dual Masters, things like that, are hardly the same as substantial anime shows, and are definitely made just to sell a product, too; much like what we Americans did with G.I. Joe, the Japanese will market a show for the sole purpose of pushing merchandise. Still, my problem arises from the fact that all it takes to be anime is to be Japanese and to be animated. That’s it, period. There’s no further criteria than to be Japanese and an animation; hence, there is no such thing as anime from other countries, too: they are classified as something other than anime by default. In other words, there is no American anime, to concede a point that is tangentially related to this discussion. Anyway, if something is Japanese and animated, it is anime; I do not want to hear about how Dragonball Z or G Gundam isn’t anime, because it is. I would be damn well sure that something that ran for over a decade in Japan and garnered a humongous popularity and following would be fucking anime, thank you — hey, I don’t think Dragonball Z is the greatest thing ever, but I will give it the credit that it is due. Dragonball Z is mindless action, with little depth to characters or plot, and atrociously slow-paced at times: it is not a terrific show for those who like to think or experience a show about real characters. But, it is anime, you fucktards, it’s just an action/shounen anime that is geared toward young male adolescents, nothing more or less. And what it comes down to is that there is anime made in Japan just for the sake of entertaining children or being bright and colourful and pretty, and not all of it is philosophical or thought-provoking or necessarily interesting to the intellectual or sophisticated, cultured mind. Get over it, folks, because that’s the way it goes.
Not to be leaving punks out of this diatribe, though, let me address something that I find it hard, myself, to say: pop-punk is a legitimate venue for music. It goes without saying that it is not punk rock, but it is still something akin to punk rock, sharing some traits and characteristics, and it should not be looked down upon for just not being punk enough. Yes, when the little pop-punkers parade around with their studded belts and spiked collars and whatever, proclaiming themselves to be punk rock — like Avril Lavigne — they should be beaten around the head and neck, preferably with a crowbar or four-by-four. But, the music itself, bands like Green Day and The Offspring, are doing what they do because they like to do it, and not to live up to some impossible expectations of being the new Sex Pistols or something; bands aren’t required to be anything, and they will always proceed to simply be the bands that they are, no matter what punks or whomever have to say about it. New Found Glory, as much as it pains me to say, has a right to play the music they play; the only decision on the behalf of those who are decidedly not the band is to either listen to or not listen to the music. Don’t like it? Don’t listen to it. I’m not going to get into the effect of radio and mass media on this subject, either, because that’s something for another time.
What it boils down to, here is that all I’m saying is that I’m sick of hearing people call something “false” or “fake” because they don’t like it. Anime is anime, and pop-punk is pop-punk — and punk is punk, which hasn’t been alive for over a decade or so — and that’s the end of the story. Anime that is translated into English and edited is obviously no longer precisely true to the original, yes, but it does not stop being a Japanese animation. And you may not like Dropkick Murphys or Blink 182 — and I honestly don’t — but it doesn’t stop being punk-influenced music because you say so. Both of these subcultures are recoiling in horror for the tiny luminance of the spotlight of the mainstream being shed on them, and they need to stop screaming that they’re melting like the Wicked Witch. (“Oh, what a world! Who would’ve thought a tiny amount of liquid would ever come in contact with me!”) Yes, American corporations are putting anime and punk music into a little box and gift-wrapping it to be fed by the spoonful to the youth of the nation, and that, in and of itself, is an outrage, but I don’t believe the anger for this should be aimed at the products that are being violated. What is an issue there is those who are doing the editing and manufacturing, those who are destroying something beautiful for the sake of marketability and profit. However, again, that is another rant to be ranted elsewhere.
What makes all this wrong, though, is the fact that those who come into anime or punk through the venue of having seen Toonami or Blink 182 tend to get harassed for this fact. They are expected to drop what they originally found appealing like a bad habit, and just like what they are told to like, basically. "Oh? You liked Dragonball Z? Well, here's Naruto, take it and like it and forget you ever saw Dragonball Z, and hide this fact in shame! Shame!" What kind of crap is this? I think it's great if someone discovers anime, no matter what the means be, because it's exposure for something that deserves it. The same for punk music, too; maybe AFI went to shit, but their old stuff is good, and if someone has to listen to the new albums to get to the quality albums before they went all spooky and retarded, then so be it. The point is that nothing is going to chase someone off from a scene like angry scorning for no reason aside from how they found out it existed, and have no previous knowledge that would tell them not to own up to what they saw or heard because it's unacceptable as "real" anime or punk. Fuck that shit, man, can't we all just get along?
This grows very long for one entry, so let me bring this to a close: Dragonball Z does not stop being anime because you don’t like it. And New Found Glory never started being punk, but just because it is not, in fact, punk does not mean it should be hated for that . . . Hate it for being bad music, if you’re going to hate it. Thank you, this has been a public service announcement from the Madman at Work.

Adios.

The So-Called Nice Guy's Potemkin Village

Here’s a rant: it is shiny and new.
Have you seen this “Nice Guys Finish Last” essay that floats around the internet, pasted into the web-logs and live-journals of many people? No, not the song by Green Day, either. It’s this long little delivery about how nice guys never get girls and how girls only date assholes and ignore the nice guys and blah, blah, et cetera, et cetera. It’s been around for a few years now, probably, and I’ve seen it at least a dozen times in separate reprints. Let me now share with you, my scarce readers, how utterly disgusted and revulsed I am. Allow me to divulge why this little, innocent essay rekindles a small flame of hatred in my heart for mankind — specifically, teenage boys.
. . . I think I need to take a moment to actually muster up the energy that this tiny rage of mine necessitates . . .
Fuck you, you little douche-bag pussies. That’s right, fuck you, and I reserve the derogatory definition of “pussy” for very special occasions, but believe me when I say that this occasion more than merits the usage. Fuck you and your little whining, your little teary circle-jerks to what you rationalise as a righteous complaint against the mythical unfairness of the entire female gender, which is nothing more than your pathetic shortcomings as a human being hitting you in the face.
What kind of a fucking friend secretly reserves feelings of lust and desire the entire time that you supposedly sit around and listen and “be there?” What kind of stupid, fucking friend are you when every time your so-called female “friend” goes out and gets a date that isn’t with you, that you have little, tragic pangs in your heart and shed a miniature tear in the name of her “bad judgement” and “future hurt?” Oh, oh God, oh no, she’s overlooking you because you’re “the friend” and you’ll never be “the boyfriend” and so all the time you spent actually consoling her and being a shoulder to cry on or whatever was wasted. Certainly, of course, it was never just a service of humanity delivered in good name upon a person — a woman — in need, and curse her to the Seven Hells for thinking so. Yes, she has certainly wronged you for treating you as a friend when you approach her as a friend, talk to her as a friend, and interact with her as a friend.
You know what: fuck you for being a raging idiot and throbbing pussy with no balls. You want to date her? You want to go out with her? You want to fuck her tiny brains out? Ask for it, idiot. You stupid, cowardly, spineless douche, you clammy, unclean, lonely, masturbating drama queen, you two-faced, duplicitous, deceptive, underhanded, self-motivated, selfish, conniving, scheming, weak-willed, retarded asshole. That’s right, you are an asshole, too; not just the “bad guys” that your precious female-friend — the centre of your hidden affection and secret lusting — goes out with and actually joins in sex.
Do you want her to “come to her senses” and “see the error of her ways” or “come around to the light side of the Force” or whatever? Ask her the bloody hell out, then, you wormy pod-child. If you had before, and she had said she just wanted to be friends, than far be it from me to be the one to point out the fact that you are always going to be friends. Resign yourself to the fact that she does not want you. She doesn’t like you as an object of desire, and maybe she’s stupid and has bad taste in men. Maybe you’re a fuck-head for hanging out with that kind of girl, then, and expecting her to change in the light of your awesome deeds of chivalry and valour. Did you expect her to suddenly go from a jock-humping slut to a decent, discriminating princess when she saw how “nice” you were? You fucking dumbass.
Do nice guys finish last? No, they don’t bloody finish last by any bleeding predetermined, unnamed force of God damn nature. They finish where they finish because that’s the fuck where they wanted to finish. I’m nice — believe it or not — and I treat my friends, male or damn female, with respect and compassion. If a female friend I have is crying to me about something that has blatantly hurt her, is the thought on my mind, “Oh, ho, this is my chance to get into her panties, now!” No, you miniscule-minded tadpole, because I’m friends with the women I want to be friends with and I ask out the women I want to go out with, in the first God damn place. I don’t reserve my longing and desire for long, sleepless nights staring, pitifully and passionately, at the phone, thinking to myself about how I should call her and tell her how I feel, but I — Oh, Lord! — just can’t! Fuck you people, hardcore-exploitation-style.
Argh, you weasely little slimy bastards make me sick. If you’re hanging out with some stupid bitch who dates idiots that continually hurt her, then tell her she’s being a stupid cunt. If you want to date this woman, then maybe you should revaluate exactly the kind of woman you’re looking for to be part of your life, hm? Perhaps, a girl who has terrible discrimination when it comes to who she wraps her vagina around is not the best kind of girl there is out there, huh? And I don’t want to hear about how she’s just been disillusioned her whole life or whatever, and how she simply never had the chance to be with a “nice guy,” because, as the essay itself bloody says, the nice guy is right there. She’s not blind, she doesn’t miss the mouth-breathing cretin clinging to her shadow like a lost, abused puppy, waiting for the next tidbit of drama to erupt so he can hold her and fantasise that she’s naked, eager to get home alone so he can furiously jerk-off to the thought of her breasts pressed up against his chest — no, she does not not see you, dick-wad. She’s not attracted to you, because you’re a wretched, simpering dweeb. And I don’t care how awesome you are, you immediately lose my respect when you trail some girl around allowing her to use you in any manner she feels fit to use you and, later, sit around and mope about not getting sex. You SUCK.
. . . And now, I will take a moment to wind down from that rant, thank you . . .
The conclusion here is this: if you like a girl, ask her out. Don’t just be her friend because the nigh-invisible hope that she’ll suddenly notice you in a different light may exist, because I guarantee you — just like how the essay says — that it won’t happen. If you like a girl, see, what you have to do is admit it to her and, then, from there, let her judge how she will process and respond to this information. I can tell you, out of experience, that it will not always, if ever, result in a positive response; maybe she won’t choose to like you like how you view her, but that’s the way of life, my friend. My outlook on the whole ordeal of dating is that it requires an immense amount of patience and observation. The way I see it, the only other valid approach is primitive trial-and-error: ask, get rejected, ask, get a date, ask, get rejected, ask, get a date, and so forth. The key here, boys and girls, is that if you want to go out with someone, you ask them out. Period, end of story, no argument, I don’t want to hear it: that’s what you do, and that’s the only way to get results. If you cover your feelings up and just act like a friend, in the vain hope of something more ever occurring, then you’re being stupid. You are making a poor decision and it is nobody’s fault except your own that the relationship never goes anywhere. And it won’t.
So, don’t tell me that “nice guys finish last.” Don’t tell me it’s because you’re “nice,” and not an “asshole,” that you can’t get the girl of your dreams. It’s because what the asshole does is be very direct about his intentions: he asks and receives, as a result. The only difference between a good guy doing that, and a bad guy doing that, is that the good guy never uses a façade or lies to persuade the woman to say “yes.” So, don’t be the “nice guy” who thinks he’s supposed to just cling to the woman and be there for her and never, ever once mention that you like her as more than a friend. Be the real nice guy who is straightforward about what he wants, displaying what is commonly referred to as “a smidgeon of confidence,” and ask her the bloody hell out. If you sit there, quiet, you’ll forever rot away as her friend, and nothing more, because that is all that you are displaying you want. You can’t expect the woman to read your mind and know that you are only being her friend to eventually get into her panties, you sick, sad man. If that’s what you’re going to do, though, anyway, despite any logic or common sense, then shut the fuck up about not going anywhere.
Nice guys don’t finish last. Spineless cowards do, you infernal bitches.

Adios.

Seven Names

There once was a man with seven names,
They say he lost them all, in shame, to a woman,
Wagered them away in a game of cards, one night,
And he never knew she was the gentle, red Queen,
She who shared the throne of Hearts.


Last in love lament the loss,
The loss of feeling ever-tossed,
On waves of blue, in pools of red,
They say, they say, they lost their heads.



Earl of Victory was the oldest of his monikers,
Given to him by an old, grey King, upon birth,
The Monarch was black, of heart and mind,
Never known to forgive a crime or trespass, his infamy,
He who shared the throne of Spades.



Road to ruin written in rage,
The rage of a wronged child in pain,
Two paths to choose, not one the right,
He says, he says, he lost his head.



In foreign lands, they called him the Good Pride,
He lifted their plague, cured their malady, they sang,
Tasted their wine, and knew their women, they sang,
For he derailed the crimson Jack of the land, they sang,
He who was to take the throne of Diamonds to Hell.



Pine to find the piece in kind,
The kind of mind that seals the deal,
Of black and white, of good and right,
Poor boy, poor boy, he split and died.



In kinder times, he was titled Gray Sky,
After slaying the Black Sun of Shadows,
Then freeing the White Moon of Truth,
For it was written in a book, years back,
That the One of Clubs would seize the day.



“The days, they try — in beds, we lie,
No truth to find, no souls to bind; not three so bright,”
The sage was said to speak in rhyme, he wrote,
But no one knew what words were gold, or
What words were wrong, or blackened soot,
So they burnt him to ash on Tuesday.



I met him once, introduced as Gregory,
His smile was plain, and his face handsome,
Strong in body, sharp in mind — still no good at Chess,
He told me a tale of dragons and flames,
And I thought he was crazy.

“A scaled beast of legendary might, stories tall,
Reigned supreme over all, over his domain of stone,”
Between sentences he sipped ale and spilt —
Which only made the maidens giggle —
And his eyes glazed over with memory and mead,
“He killed my father, and deflowered my mother.”

The maidens wept.



Of course, of course, they shout too loud,
The voices tremor and shake the ground,
“Time is coming, time is coming,”
But nobody cares, nobody cares.



I read the paper, one Sunday, about his deed,
They dubbed him Sir Treachery of the Red Steed,
And condemned him to the humiliation that was due,
Indeed, the task was tarnished with his filthy seed,
He who raped the gentle, red Queen.

The trial was held by the red-faced King,
He swore and screamed and pointed swords,
It was all quite a scene, the peasants gawked,
And he lost his honour, and he lost his glory.

Before the day was done, he was gone,
No maidens wept, their lips were tight,
And he rode on, to escape the light.

I saw him leave, his back to the world,
No longer any grand kind of lord.

He was forgot.



All is right, and all is wrong,
The angels sing their hollow songs,
They tell of heroes, damsels, and battle,
They tell of victory, glory, and mettle,
But, in the end, it’s the stuff of stories,
For no man wins, in life, or love,
Or anywhere.



In secret, to no one’s knowledge, he was He,
A blank name, a blank story, a covered history,
Town to town, he crept in hiding, doing nothing,
Saying no greeting, and making no love,
He who once was so High Above.



Coin of Chance and Loom of Fate,
Turn and weave and turn, for me, of me,
Scribe and paint and write my story, by me,
Destiny in choice, in decision, a provision,
Or a fiction?



At last, he came to be known as Beggar Mizzens,
A silly name, given by children, to a ragged old face,
His hands gnarled and pleading, his face cut and bleeding,
He sat in the garbage, he lived in the rain,
This was the end of the man with seven names.

Sunlight faded to pinks and reds, then to purple-night hues, revealing a familiar scene. A huge, expansive, oak tree centred in the midst of a vibrant, overgrown garden protected all the plant- and wild-life that thrived here. Flowers of white, yellow, red, and blue sprouted all along the grassy floor, climbing up the hedge walls that shaped the area into a sizable, rectangular shape. Shrubs of deep, forest green leaves of all shapes dotted the landscape, as well, giving hideaway to bird’s nests and bee hives that the sounds of could be heard, clearly: tiny chirping and dull humming, respectively. Ferns grew between the bushes, and saplings of dogwoods and birches waved from side to side in the chill, midnight breeze that arose from the south.
Stone paths intertwined between the flora of the garden, across which scampered rabbits and mice. A squirrel zigzagged up the trunk of the giant, oak centerpiece, holding an acorn in its mouth and chittering, vivaciously. Underneath the tree, a stone, cracked, marble bench sat, gray and moss-laden; interspersed within the garden, cylindrical fragments of Greek and Roman columns lay, cracked with weeds coming out from within, ivy climbing and circling the stone masses. In each corner of the garden’s rectangle stood an armless, headless, nude statue: two female, two male.
A boy ran about the confines of the garden, giggling and tumbling on the ground; he tried to outrun a rabbit, and then entertained himself with the tall leaves of a fern. His hair was golden blonde, shaped in an upside-down bowl on top of his head, and it flew across his face as he ran. His mouth stayed continuously open in a wide-mouthed smile or innocent laughter, bright red tongue revealed to the world behind immaculate, ivory teeth. His eyes — normally an ocean blue — reflected violet in the moonlight, seeming to sparkle and dance as they darted to and fro, observing all the sights and movements of the garden. He wore a black, boy-sized tuxedo jacket, with red pinstripes, and a pale green, button-up dress shirt; a blue bow-tie was placed around his neck, and a blue cummerbund was wrapped about his stomach. A white corsage was pinned to his right-breast pocket, threatening to come loose with all the frantic running he was doing. His pants, black and pressed, had grass stains smeared from the knees-down. His shoes were brown leather and untied, squeaking underneath each of his steps and leaps.
An auburn-headed, teenage girl sat on the bench, hands in her lap and fingers laced together, placidly in a serene state of calm contemplation. She was dressed in a white, strapless evening gown that reached her ankles, where a pair of glittering, ruby-red slippers could be seen peeking out. Her skin was pale blue in the moon’s glow, and her face was shadowed in the darkness. She didn’t move, and did not speak.
From behind the oak tree, apparently having been in a place invisible before, a figure moved to standing beside the girl on the bench. It was a very soft-featured, albeit muscular man, clad in a yellow toga cinched by a belt of white silk. His hair was black and long, streaked with silver, stretching down to the middle of his back, between the two, folded wings that sprouted there, from his shoulder blades. The wings were feathered, each feather brown tipped with red, and were as long as he was tall. The winged man spoke, then, placing a hand on the girl’s shoulder.

“What brings you back?”

The girl slowly lifted her head, revealing the features of her face to the luminance of the night, pursing her lips. Her eyes seemed bewildered and frightened, shining with shifting colours of red, green and blue. She held a hand to her cheek, and moved her lips, soundlessly.

“You come to escape?”

The winged man shifted position, coming to face the front of the girl, directly in her field of vision. He kneeled, then, grasping her hand with his and bowing his head. On his forearms were golden, patterned bracers carved with intricate, floral designs. She looked at him, staring into his gray eyes that seemed larger than the sky.

“No? You come to mourn?”

“ . . . “

“Who has died?”

“ . . . “

Violent, loud sobbing then seized the girl, vibrating her body and dampening her face. The man took a seat next to the girl, embracing her with his arms and offering her a comforting shoulder. She curled up into his arms, crying in broken, jagged sobs that rocked her bones. The small boy-child who had been frolicking about the garden then stopped, abruptly, before the pair. Tilting his head to the side, he cocked an eyebrow and put a finger to his lips. “She’s such a fool.”
The winged man fixed the boy with a stern glare. “Do not speak in such unkind tones, little one.” The boy kicked the grass beneath his feet with his shoe, and thrust his hands into his pockets. “Why-y-y?”
“Because, young one, you do not understand her pain,” explained the man holding the nerve-wracked girl. The boy stuck his tongue out and blew a raspberry, in reply. “Yes I do!”
The winged man raised an eyebrow. “Do you, o’ inexperienced child of the world?” Spinning around in place, the blonde child giggled. “Of course I do, silly.” Blankly gazing at the boy, the man had a look of expectancy. “How do you mean?”

“Oh, she’s just sad because her boyfriend is dead, but he deserved it, and she knows it. He’s dead because he was a bad person, and now he’s going to Hell, where he’ll pay for all his sins and live in eternal pain and suffering.”

“SHUT UP!” screamed the white-clad girl, wrenching herself from the man’s grasp and standing up, falteringly. Taking a menacing step forward, she balled her fists and spat at the tuxedo-clad boy-child. “You know nothing, you hear me? NOTHING!”
Dancing backwards on one foot, the blonde giggled melodiously and smiled like a fat tomcat. “Fibber! Fibber! I know who your boyfriend is, or was. He was a nobody: a worthless coward. He died like he lived — stupid and misgiven — and nobody ca-a-ares.”
Raising her hand, the girl bit back a sob and lurched forward. Swinging downward, she missed the boy who had, at the last second, dodged to the side and twirled around; she tumbled into the grass, letting out a small yelp. At this point, the man who had been on the bench rose to his feet and expanded his wings, in a grandiose and elegant way. “None of this behaviour, anymore, you torturous and cruel child.”
Skipping around in circles, the boy swung his arms widely and gleefully laughed. “Worth-less, no-good, ly-ing loser! Dead, dead, dead, maggots in his head! No-body li-ked his stu-pid face, and now he’s rotting in the fiery place!” Singing and prancing, the boy went around the tree and disappeared into the shadow of the tree. Pulling herself up from the ground, again sobbing furiously, the girl in the white dress sprinkled the garden with her tears. Taking her by the hand, the winged man assisted her to her feet, where she promptly fell forward and hugged him, tightly. Rubbing her back with one hand, the man had a neutral, emotionless expression on his face, disguising the guilt in his eyes. “It is fine, young one, his words mean nothing.”
A burst of static tore through the atmosphere, echoing and shattering the strained peace of the garden one thousand times. Jerking his head upward, the man raised a surprised face to the moon and vanished. Falling to her knees, the girl cried out in anger and fear, helpless as the ground fell apart and the garden broke apart into jagged shards like a broken mirror, reflecting all shades of colours. The familiar scene transformed rapidly into a blurry, indistinct, unfocused whiteness.

“ . . . That was the latest sing—“

Under the Aegis of Two Blind Eyes

One of my oldest hobbies has always been watching people — watching the world — watching everything and everyone pass by me, and watching nobody notice my observations. It’s natural, really, for someone as introverted as I am; I am, in fact, the kind of person who can not be around his closest friends, in groups, for more than ten minutes without zoning. For the longest time, I just didn’t like people, and held no fondness for the company of others or the opinion of anyone, but that phase has since passed and, yet, I am still entertained by watching people.
It used to be to figure them (people) out. I have learned, in my experience, that everything I figured out from just watching . . . It doesn’t count for shit. Everything you see from a distance is like an art patron scrutinising a painting.
I used that analogy for a reason: a very specific one. You see, the common technique come about the Impressionistic era was to paint in such a manner that, from far away, everything seemed realistic and perfect, but being close to the painting revealed the truth; the truth being that, many times, there was no blending, just colours placed next to each other to create a gradient effect — an optical illusion. On an artist’s note, this lead to many of the trends of Post-Impressionism, and further on, Cubism, which broke down everything into rectangles to resemble reality, in a fractured sense of perspective — this is more apparent in the Cubist style pioneered by Chezanne, not Picasso. Anyway, I digress, for that is art history, and I am not discussing art history (as much as I love it).
From my position — uninvolved and far away — I thought I figured out many things about people. I amused myself with it, to be honest, as so many self-proclaimed outsiders will tout; people-watching, to them, is more a way to assert superiority and feed their sense of alienation and abnormality, and much less about the actual process. Call me pretentious, but I consider myself an expert observer of humans, and I have come to perfect many aspects of the hobby.
For instance, and on another tangential note, there is an interesting phenomenon that I have seen, many times. There is a certain art to being blatantly loud and seen, but, yet, remaining overlooked and unseen. I have a habit. I walk around, quite a lot, and, commonly, wear headphones (that are attached to a CD player). I have another habit. I sing along to my music, because I can. And I’m not subtle, at all. I don’t sing under my breath, and I don’t care who hears me. Anyway, sometimes I’ll sit under a tree and sing, and watch people go by. They know I’m there, and they can see and hear me, but they still pretend I’m not there, and go on with their lives. The sheer number of people who refuse to acknowledge the fact that I am singing is incredible. I mean, seriously, it’s something to behold to see the look on someone’s face as they pass me by, but don’t stop anything. Like a camper in the woods confronted with a bear, they attempt to remain calm, unafraid, and unshaken in order to keep the bear (me) from becoming enraged or excited.
It’s all a sport, though. It’s like bird-watching, almost, I’d say. Sure, I can spot a type of person a mile away, by the way they stand and walk and talk, the angle of their head and the expression on their face — you see them all, in time. And from that, it’s not hard to pinprick them with personality archetypes, and understand some very vague, general behaviour patterns. But, once a bird-watcher tries to live with the birds, what do you think the birds do? Keep on keeping on, as they say?
Everybody has their spots. I know I do. Even though I intentionally try and disguise myself, in a strange way, by wearing no one style and moving no one way: all that does is put me in a category of eclectic. All it really affords me is the completely inability to be casually labeled — I know people have tried, sitll try, and I don’t think any definite tag has been established for me, by anyone. I could be wrong, of course. But, again, I digress.
I still watch people, and I think I always will. In the streets, restaurants, and classrooms, in the theatres, concerts, and entertainment halls, in their cars and with their cellular phones — that they call cell phones and have forgotten what cell is shorthand for — and with their shopping bags full of clothes with spikes and clothes with stripes, clothes of velvet and clothes of cotton, clothes sprinkled with logos or band names, and in their complete ignorance of me watching them, I will always watch. When the results of my introversion are taking ahold of me, among my friends — close or casual — I will resign myself to watching them, listening and absorbing my surroundings.
On a slightly related note, there’s something frighteningly refreshing about losing enough consciousness of your self to fail to be able to give commands from your brain to your body. That is another topic altogether, though.
And even when they know I’m watching, what can they do? At worst, stop and ask me what I’m doing, or, per normal, continue on as they would without an observer. It’s not like I stare. I don’t like my eyes.
And as I notice every other paragraph is a digression, I know it’s over for this ramble.

Review In Brevity: Shrek 2

Tom Waits. . . .

As the Pirate Captain Hook. . . .

Playing the piano —

In a bar —

With a hook-hand.

The End.

Failure Rating: 7%

Thank You.

P.S.: Tom God Damn Waits the Pirate. Fucking Tom God Damn Waits the freaking Pirate. AWESOME!

What are my views on illegal immigration? Well, this is something that I’ve always sort of remained outwardly neutral toward, mostly because I am not, in fact, very informed on the subject. But, since this is where I put forth my opinion, whether or not it be full, permanent, or informed, then I suppose I will share it, anyway.
So, we have this problem wherein Mexicans cross the border without going through customs. Let’s not pussyfoot around the question, either; when it says “illegal immigrants,” we all know it means “Mexicans.” One of the most pressing questions I always immediately had whenever I thought about this subject was this: what is so difficult about crossing the border, legally? Obviously, there has to be something hindering these Mexicans from just going through the proper channels, because I would hope that if it were easy and convenient to just leave Mexico and start working on citizenship in America, somebody, somewhere, by now, would have gone, “Eh, guys, you can come over ‘ere and fill out dis paper, instead of, ya know, being chased by dogs and crawling under barbed wire. ¡Olé!” The person who would, hypothetically, say this is very stereotypically Mexican, if you can’t tell.
So, I asked my roommate this question, and he gave me an answer: because they can and will deny you entrance into America for any reason they feel like. I did a small amount of research on this, and then realized that, yes, they can just turn you away from the border for arriving on the wrong day of the week, by the law. Having had this question answered, I finally understood exactly why Mexicans run the border. It all made sense, after that. I always knew that those people who clamoured for the deportation of all illegal aliens on the grounds that they could just legally get in were full of shit, but that was a subconscious reflex moreso than anything based in tangible terminology.
So, this is our problem? We don’t let people into the country because we don’t feel like it, and then we’re surprised to learn that they sneak in, under our noses? Mexico is a really shitty place: it’s poor, it’s dirty, it’s unfriendly, and it’s languishing away under the hot, tropical sun. Whereas America is a first-world nation with prosperity and opportunity, political freedom and economic growth-potential, Mexico is somewhere where you just don’t get anywhere, and you live and die in shambles. Of course people would want to come to America, versus staying there. Granted, I do know that the argument here isn’t about whether or not it’s a valid point to desire citizenship in America, but rather it is a disputed issue about getting in illegally and living in America as an unregistered citizen.
No, it’s not good that an illegal alien can reside here, not pay taxes, not be responsible for laws, and be slid under the carpet. And, as we all very well know, the single-most enraging thing they do, while here, is “take jobs.” See, this is where I begin to question whether or not this has anything to do with the aliens, and more to do with those who employ them and pay them pennies on the dollar.
Right, so you’ve just stolen your way into a country because the legal channels saw fit to deny you passage, and you have no rights or obligations to anything around you. You need a home, so somebody houses you with thirty-seven other people just like you, in a tiny hovel in a ghetto; you need a job, so somebody pays you five cents an hour to dig holes or work construction, along with twenty-two people just like you. Now, in this scenario, who just made all this possible? Why, yes, it was, in fact, the person who provided the shelter and the person who hired the alien. Would any illegal alien ever be able to survive if it weren’t for the Americans who profit from their situation, pocketing untaxed rent and abusing cheap, underpaid, manual labour? The people I have a problem with are those are so greedy and exploitative as to take in a refugee from another country, put them in deplorable living conditions, and then work them to the bone for a wage no sane American would even consider.
Don’t get angry at the border-hopping Mexican for “taking American jobs,” because it’s the Americans who are giving them away to these people. If it weren’t for your fellow, greedy, red-blooded compatriots, who would rather employ hard-working and devoted aliens for laughable wages that garnish incredible profit than unmotivated and typically lazy Americans, then there would be no question as to the rightful heirs to these positions. I don’t believe it’s any Mexican’s doing here, what with their complete inability to own or run a company, thus they are not the ones in charge of who is getting these jobs. This is the same mentality that leads to corporations opening off-shore factories for the sole fact that they have no obligation, by the law of the soil they build the factories on, to pay wages that are humane. And I say “humane” on the basis that it is of good morality to compensate someone an amount of money significant enough to live and eat on when you are taking from that person a large, irreplaceable chunk of the time in his life. However, I digress, as that is a separate, tangential rant.
What this whole job-thing comes down to is that selfish, greedy, profit-minded American company-owners are exploiting an unprotected workforce that can’t exist without employment, but can’t legally be hired; so, there are a lot of your fellow Americans out there paying Mexicans under the table a five-dollars-a-week wage for the job that would’ve cost him one hundred dollars a week to hire an American to do. Am I surprised? No. Is it the immigrants’ fault that this happens, and should, thus, be blamed and hated for it? No.
Anyway, onto something aside from asking and answering my own questions: the other big part of the issue of illegal immigration is what to do with them. What ever shall be done about all these unregistered aliens waltzing about the countryside, innocently being paid to dig ditches?
The sheer cost of finding and deporting each and every one of them is astronomical. The price-tag on that is so astronomical that it forces me to label it as astronomical, and astronomical is one of those adjectives I am honestly not a fan of using. I mean, come on, astronomical? What makes something astronomical: relating to astronomy. That means that being gaseous is astronomical, because Jupiter is gaseous, and is a planet, thus is studied in and part of astronomy. Feh, I say, to this adjective! Anyway, that was a retarded, little tangent I felt like exploring up until, oh, right now.
It’s impractical, unfeasible, and impossible to deport all the illegal aliens in the country. So, what should we do? We could just make them all legal citizens and hold everyone employing them illegitimately responsible for paying them minimum wage and filing them on their taxes. Oh, and then they could all openly seek out better living conditions, because they’d be getting money worth spitting at, and be able to afford something aside from fucking lean-tos. Perhaps, while we’re at it, we could recognize them as accountable for our laws and keep them in line in the same manner we do everybody else, and not have to expend the resources of the INS. But, for some reason, this plan is shot down, constantly, by conservatives and those who would like to see us deport them all . . . Too likely to happen and too fair, I guess. Because, you know, they’re immigrants, not human beings.
Oh, another point of this argument is the differentiation between political refugees from Cuba and border-hoppers from Mexico. I never understood exactly why this mattered, at all; I mean, if the deplorable economic ruin of Mexico is an acceptable condition for people to live in, and thus keep them bordered into, then what is so much worse about Cuba, which is actually a more wealthy country? Oh, right, because it’s Communist. I forgot that it was still the 1950’s and the era of McCarthy. Oh, oh, wait, no, it’s not — we have absolutely no reason left to excuse the illegal immigration of Cubans over Mexicans. One is just a political refugee, and the other is an economic refugee. Really, what is worse? Having the political freedom to rot away in squalor, or being kept prisoner in what passes for a humane, decent country? (Granted, I am not saying Cuba is the greatest place in the world — do not interpret what I have said as such.)
To wrap up: Mexico is poor and rancid, so Mexicans escape from it like rats off a flaming ship. The proverbial “they” don’t like just letting them flood out of Mexico, so they are forced to either stay in a shit-hole or cross a poorly-guarded border. Sleazy owners give them jobs for little-to-no money and house them in cramped dwellings that are shitty but still preferable to living in Mexico (it’s true, and think about that). People get angry because the employers of America are skimping out on their own kind, and political debate ensues. Isn’t America the land of the free, where the inscription of the Statue of Liberty means something?

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land,
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome;
her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"


Adios.

Today's English Lesson: You Are Not My Friend

Your != You’re

your adj. The possessive form of you.
1. Used as a modifier before a noun: your boots; your accomplishments.
2. A person's; one's: The light switch is on your right.
3. Informal. Used with little or no sense of possession to indicate a type familiar to the listener: your basic three-story frame house.
[Middle English, from Old English ower, genitive of ye. See you.]

you're Contraction of you are.

These are not the same words. They are not interchangeable. They both have very distinct and separate areas of usage. They are for different contexts. They do not equal each other.

What “Ur” Actually Means

Ur Known in biblical times as Ur of the Chaldees.
A city of ancient Sumer in southern Mesopotamia on a site in present-day southeast Iraq. One of the oldest cities in Mesopotamia, it was an important center of Sumerian culture after c. 3000 B.C. and the birthplace of Abraham. The city declined after the sixth century B.C.

OR

uro- or ur- pref.
Tail: urochord.

OR

uro- or ur- pref.
1. Urine: uric.
2. Urinary tract: urology.
3. Urea: urethane.

NOT

Any form or abbreviation of “you’re” or “your” whatsoever.

Thank you.

Not To Irrupt

You know, I am immensely grateful for one aspect of my life, when I think about it. I watch other people go through these phases, some long and some short, of being regretful and remorseful about "who they used to be." I try and think about the past, at different points, and never does any of it illicit any regret. I was who I was, and that was simply the way I was at that time due to the extenuating circumstances that surrounded me, and the experiences I had and had not had by then; the way I thought and acted was an extension of my past, up to that point, and the environment I was in, the people I knew, and the decisions I made. None of that was really something that should've been any different, is what it comes down to, in my perspective. But, that's really what it is: perception. People take their perception of themselve in the present and project it upon their perception of themselves in the past, and overlap the two and confuse it all and then start feeling remorse. My running theory is that current feelings of inadequacy and doubt lead to manifested emotions of regret and remorse about the past as a form of rationalisation of attitudes developed and carried, right now. And I don't doubt myself, and I don't feel inadequate or as though I am not meeting the standards by which I judge myself.
I never really have doubted myself. It's strange, really. I know I'll survive, though, because I want to survive, at the end of the day. I never lost the drive to be alive; just, on occasion, the joy of living slipped through my fingers. There's a marked difference, there, between the drive to live and the joy to do so. Kind of differentiated by the thought, "I will push on, because it is what I will do," and the thought, "I will push on, because it is what I enjoy doing." But, I deviate from something I wish to discuss, here.
I know I've changed. It's not too hard to see, in my head, that I have developed qualities of myself that were less developed or downright underdeveloped, before. Also, new and unprecedented things have arisen, and there are facets of my personality that were entirely not present at a younger age. I . . . Don't particularly mind, though. Even though I have newfound problems, and although I still haven't solved all my old quandaries, it doesn't mean I have failed at something.
I am alive. And, right now, I enjoy being so. Nothing is perfect, either. Nothing is without struggle. Nothing is without irritation. Nothing is without effort. When I don't enjoy life, then I lay down my cards and coast, and then I wake up, down the line, and realise I've picked up debris and a mess, like some kind of human broom that was being dragged across the floor, without being picked up to avoid the filth. Heh, that simile amuses me: a human broom.
I haven't rambled like this for a long time, and . . . I guess it's refreshing, in a way. It's a common tool of psychologists and psychiatrists to have patients write because of the therapeutic properties of the act. I never put much salt into therapy, but I won't say it's all wrong.
For now, I digress.

Adios.