Grow Up Already

The last few days have been incredibly difficult for me for one reason and one reason only.

I have been forced to accept I am old.

It first started to dawn on me when I realised I was no longer young and cool enough to be part of the crowd who hangs out and parties. I also realised I was not old enough to sit at home and play parchese, or whatever it is old people do.

I am in that transition zone built mostly for people with young families and mid level jobs.

I myself am alone and in a dead end job I hate. The kind of thing early to mid tweenties dorksticks do.

I am too old to be that guy. I am too old to be shiftless and merely concerned with my own entertainment and making ironic comments on annoying celebrities.

I need to grow up. I had to realise today at the hospital that I need to start taking care of myself. The doctor frightened me with his talk. He essentially said my body was rebelling. And rightfully so. I have abused it for a very very long time.

I am at a loss for what to do. It all seems so foreign and difficult.

I just want to have fun, but I am too old to do that, yet I am completely unattractive to people my own age.

Life has passed me by.

It makes me sad to realise that I have no peers, and people now look at me as the douchey old guy trying to look cool and overacting with the kids. They look at me as a joke, and that pisses me off.

The older people look at me as immature, and that just pisses me off.

Once again, I am on the outside looking in, and it makes me sad....and pissed off.

Here is something you can't understand....

Anyone who has known me for a length of time knows I am not a fan of war metaphor. I am not a fan of using violent rhetoric to fire up the masses.

You see it all the time. The war on Christmas. The front lines of the battle to win their hearts. We need to target our political rivals. We need to destroy our enemies.

It gets to me a lot when I hear people use violence to make their point.

Maybe people don`t understand why it can be so bothersome... at least until now. The event on the weekend in Arizona. I would post links to the news stories, but due to the 24 hour news cycle, the only thing I can find is articles on how this victim is the third cousin of Gwyneth Paltrow. Really? Is that where we are going with this story? How does it effect the pretty people?

The thing is, this dude thought it was a viable idea to shoot people because of their political beliefs. What do you think made this person think that? Was it Grand Theft Auto? Was it rock and or roll music? I am pretty sure this dude was not listening to Marilyn Manson. I could be wrong, but so far he seems less like the Cypress Hill type and more like the Toby Keith type.

The point I am making is that war metaphor and violent speech has become pervasive. pervasive in only a way the comfortable people can make it. Let me be frank and clear.

Those who have experienced violence, those who understand it, and those who know the results never invoke violence in their speech unless it is necessary. Unless they mean it. The reason for this is that they know what happens. They know what it means to dominate, to destroy, to hurt others.

Only the weak minded, poor spirited, comfortable people can easily reach in to the bag of tricks and pull out, we need to target our enemies. Only the comfortable and small minded can produce a website that uses targeting reticules over the faces of their rivals and not understand the meaning of it.

As long as we keep telling people these things we will always develop the violent, disaffected mind, and we will always incite them to take actions. I haven't seen a reaction from some of these people, other than to quietly and quickly remove these images and vitiolic messages from the public eye. I can guarantee you we will hear it is not my fault. It is not what I meant.

In communication two things happen. The sender encodes a message, and the receiver decodes the message. Language, visuals, these matter people. The way in which you code your message have an effect on the way others get the message. While you continue to use war metaphor you are part of the problem.

In this case, the receiver decoded the message and was unable to draw a line between hyperbole and reality. There will always be these people. They will always misunderstand, or take things to the worst point. We cannot get around that, but we can stop fueling them.

There is a line between entertainment and satire, and the pubic discourse. Music, comedy, movies, have always, and will always create caricatures of things that go on in our society, but when our society becomes a caricature, then we have crossed the line. No longer is it that rock music is parodying the blow hard. The blow hard has gone so far int heir discourse that we have lost perspective. How can you parody the crazy when the crazy have gone to the point where Marilyn Manson says....unless I pretend to be a politician actually eating babies, I can't top them.

I want to point out someone I work with. He uses violence in his speech nearly non stop. Whenever he is perplexed, frustrated or challenged he says something about punching you in the face or smacking you hard, or some such bullshit. It is the refuge of the tired weak mind. His intellect is not strong enough to develop other statements.

In political discourse we have gone from making a change and yes we can to we need to target our rivals. We need to break them. Take our country back. The revolution is coming.

Do you see the difference? Do you comprehend the change?

There is no war on Jesus. There is no war on family values. People disagree with you. Instead of making your case, you yell, you threaten and you push.

These are bullies who want to get their way, just like the guy at work.

Their chickens now roost. Someday, somehow, the guy at work will get hurt and understand he is just a bully. I do hope the media and politicians are starting to get it. It is terribe that people had to die. It is terrible we had to have this violence descend on us for us to get the message.

I want to commend Keith Obberman for taking ownership of his role in this, and for coming out and making a strong case, for saying it better than I can. This is what Keith said.





I won't say anything about the actual weapons. I will say, escalating the rhetoric, escalating the violence is the wrong direction, no matter who is doing it.

The revolution is coming. But not the one you are looking for. Not the one that will bring happiness or a return to your values. The revolution that is coming is anarchy.

The comfortable will not survive. They will need to adapt.

Let's break the revolution before it gets started. Not by breaking the revolutionaries, but by creating an environment where it is unacceptable to be a bully. Unacceptable to fight over ideas. Make it unacceptable to target your rivals.

30 years ago people saw the way we were and spoke out against it, but we continue to go down that road.

We can blame video games, we can blame metal, but we would be wrong.

Guns, fear, anger, self loathing, self righteousness, pride, weak mindedness are to blame.

Let's stop being weak minded, and let's demand more from our leaders.

Beggary

It occured to me today that we all see the world in our own way. Perception is based on previous experience.

The psychological and physiological theory is about sense memory. The majority of our vision is based on previous knowledge and experience. This leads us to all experience the world in our fashion, in our own little box, where everything is experienced in a special way.

When I look at you, I see something different than when you look at you.

Some days, like today, I would like to see the world the way you do. I want to see the world as a place of goodness and light. I would like to see the sunshine as more than a betrayer of shadows. A light source that only means I have to hide more, or wait longer for the warm embrace of the darkness which hides my shame, hides my ugliness, hides my anger.

I would like to see the world of possibility instead of the world of probability.

It is the difference between the optimist and the pessimist, but it is more than that. If only I could understand how the world sees me, then I could know what to do. Then I could know how to act, how to change, how to survive in your world.

I am still on the outside, still looking in. I am still seeing the dark places in the world instead of the bright spots, and I am still seeing my own self as something unworthy.

I would love to see how you see the world and how you see me. Unfortunately, there is never truth in this world. No one will ever tell you what they think or how they feel. They think they are doing you a favour, but in the end, they are not sparing your feelings, they are sparing their own.

No one ever seeks growth and true exchange of thought and feeling. people just seek the easy way out. They search for the minimum they have to do to get out without having to confront reality.

Confronting reality means challenging your perceptions. Seeing something for what it truly is, rather than for what you created it to be. Seeing the true dimensions of a thing instead of what you think the thing is.

Look at me. What do you see?

Lend me your eyes and I will tell you a tale.

Crazy Italian Restaurant.

I have been in a foul mood for some time now. I think it is because I am slowly starting to realise who I am and it sucks balls. Large hairy monkey balls.

I am a fat, lonely guy in a wife beater and boxer shorts, eating a frozen dinner and watching tv alone.

This is not something that I would have ever wanted for myself. I am in a dead end job, where creativity and intellect go to die.

I am horrible at decision making. All of my decisions led me to this point and it blows.

I know this is not happy, nor is it particularly creative. It just is.

I remember thinking to myself that I wanted to die when I was 19. I had a very bad year, full of pain and despair. I lost everyone and everything. I remember thinking to myself that I did not belong in this life, and the only reason I stuck it out was to fulfil someone else's wishes; someone else's dreams.

I drank, snorted, smoked my way to near death, but at the last minute something stopped me. I am not sure what it was any more, and I certainly don't give a rat's ass any more.

I went through the next ten years living someone else's dreams of what I shoud, would or could be. None of it mattered to me. I think that is why I ruined it all.

I think that is why I decided to marry someone I wasn't really in to. It is kind of sad that she was the only one ho ever really decided to be with me for any length of time, despite the fact I was only in it for the comfort of it.

I thought I was making a real change two years ago. I went to school and worked my ass off....ok that isn't true. One of the curses of not having to try at anything and still succeed is that you never really gain an appreciation for working at it, and for the thing itself. The curse of an electric mind is that it means you never ever have to do anything, shit just hapens and you roll with it.

The ability to interpret, extrapolate and then bullshit is not good. I never have to actually learn anything or try hard. The results are always the same. Information comes in, and it just sticks there, as long as the power is on.

Despite this gift, I find myself in such a horrible place. The other day a person said to me that it must be nice to be so smart. What makes you think thatÉ Being smart has not led to any benefit. In fact, I am in a worse place than they are. I have the same dead end job, but I am aone and eating microwave dinners.

My brain has not managed to land me anything awesome or worthwhile. This person has a fiance, is making more money than me and has fun things they like to do. I go to work, I come home, I microwave a burrito, I watch the daily show, I go to bed, and then I do it all over again.

I stand on the outside looking in and like what I see, but haven`t the foggiest idea how to achieve it. Maybe it is because I am lazy, maybe it is because I never like to do anything for the sake of doing it, and thus without tangible results, or the promise of tangible results, I just sit and do nothing.

I never wanted this life. I never really wanted any life. I wanted to be dead by now. I wished it so hard it almost came true, but those doctors were full of shit.

I know this is the lament of the lonely, and in so lamenting, I further cement my loneliness, but you see, there is nothing left for me to do but lament.

Reaching for the stars, going for broke, or trying that crazy Italian restaurant was never my thing. In a life where torment and despair was always the end resut of everything »I tried, of every risk taken, you learn to not touch the fucking stove, you dumb ass. How many time do you have to be burned before you stop touching the goddammed thing?

In a certain way I greive for the boy who lost it all, but to me, what good is it? How long can a person ive life in the way of an observer? How many times can I watch some other douche get the girl, some suit wearing tool bag get the job, some mediocre wit surpass my accomplishments before I just say, fuck it?

That was and is my greatest fear. How long before I settle again? How long before I just say, oh well and be satisfied with my dead end job that allows me to come home, watch a little daily show, eat a Jamaican patty and play a little madden?

How long before I give up?

How long after that before I realise life can't work that way for me?

How long before I wake up and realise I wasn't meant to be this way; wasn't meant to live past 20, or 25, or 30.

How long before I stop marking time?