Just for Fun

I'm working on some new angles. New inspirations, and with summer here and at least for the moment I can do as much of this as I want guilt free. So enjoy the flick's while I cook up some more text.

Re: Jane's Addiction what I meant to say was that I wish I still had someone to confide in not so much that I wish I could still or want to now, confide again. Anywho...to make a horribly broad and not all that accurate comparison I feel a lot of times that my mind works a lot like a nuclear reactor. It's got a great capacity for output but creates a lot of waste in the process. It's power can be harnessed for a lot of good things, but has equal potential to melt down and destroy quite literally. And of course each need maintenance and supervision to continue to run properly. I think it is no small coincidence that when I lost the person I was able to talk to everyday to keep me grounded and in check that it wasn't long before I started writing publicly. I have no where to go with these thoughts a lot of time and when I had no one to tell them to it didn't stop them from coming. Now that I'm better they only come quicker. I have vivid dreams and nightmares all the time and they bother me. People die, I hurt people, things are always based in reality and instead of the unreal shocking me I get scared at how close to reality things can be. I think I'll take my weird, unshakable, Fentnyl dreams over these nature made nightmares any day.

Took my whole flavor, I call her Coke Zero

Another post that rips off a Jay-Z lyric for a title is well underway and I'm happy to be back at the keys. The blatant product placement in his lyrics though disturbing is still effective. The man is a wordsmith, thats for certain, and it is my hope that I amount to be the same at some point. As of yet I don't feel quite that way but I found a story on the net that I think accurately shows some pretty great story telling. There is a big problem in this story and I want you to see if you can spot it. It goes as follows:

"My wife and I are watching “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire” while we were in bed. I turned to her and said, “Do you want to have sex?” “No,” she answered. I then said, “Is that your final answer?” She didn’t even look at me this time, simply saying, “Yes.” So I said, “Then I’d like to phone a friend.” And then the fight started…"

I'm not an expert or anything, but what I do know is that this is one of those moments when the perfect joke will get you in trouble. You had better have been extra good THAT DAY, if you think you're gonna pull this off. I don't mean you let her pick what you watched earlier that night, or you told her she looked skinnier than usual last week. You had damn well better have saved her from a burning building that afternoon then not gotten mad while she flirted with the fireman who showed up. I know this because this is EXACTLY the type of thing I would say. I absolutely would. I have no filter and it's been proven time and time again that I value laughs over consistent sex. Though in hindsight I do value loyalty and devotion. Those two however are finite resources.

Orbit

Now about this problem...can anyone spot what it is? Any guesses? Here's a clue, it has nothing to do with what he said...Give up? It's simple. What in the world is he doing with a girl who would say no to that question?!? Genophobic as I may be EVEN I know that there is no way that a relationship can work if she is saying no to that question. For disclosures sake I will admit that I usually date women whose libido exceeds my own and it's spoiled me but really..? W..T..F..? I am not sure I've ever even heard no so trust me this conversation would never happen for me anyway, because the day I do hear no I'm going to burst into laughter then say, "That's cute, I'm going to write that in my diary...You ARE joking aren't you?"

This is one of many things I've come to appreciate in my single days. I think being single has made me a better boyfriend. I finally learned to pick battles and I definitely learned to appreciate the good FAR more than I worry about the bad. I feel bad that there are some guys who will settle for this kind of behavior. It's like telling me there are 2 feet wide spiders or something, I believe they exist somewhere but I NEVER wanna meet one...NEVER.

I don't really have any advice on the subject of this argument because it is as I would call it, "A hypothetical Impossibility". But what I do know is that what I've had has been good when I had it. And I've certainly never been told no. I do know someone however who does have some good advice and I've posted her before so I'll do it again because Resha "gets it". She in my mind has the perfect sensibilities a GF should have. She says lots of outlandish things all the time yet often she speaks like she knows what it is like to be a man. For instance...

Guys who don't fully appreciate stuff like this are just as bad as girls who say no.

She is freaky but she also understands simple sanitation. I'm not against anything (anymore) but it is simple math if you ask me. *kanyeshrug goes here*

We agree on the important issues...like Kimberly K.

And of course she is no fool. Nothing is getting past this one.

All that said, the following is the only truth that anyone need be concerned with. It is a lesson I had to learn the hardest way and have been working hard to spread to the masses.

Here look, I don't want you to see this

When I was happy, I was too busy to write about it. Busy being happy I mean. So if the content of my thoughts are different now it's most likely because I'm mad and ready to tell the world, but that doesn't mean I won't be happy ever again. This world is full of projecting by people in similar situations. Some want to cope with it via Facebook statuses or subliminal tweets. As I scroll my feeds everyday I see these virulent messages; "I am so glad to be done with him!", "Well that was a waste of time", and of course "I'm on to the next one!!" But all this does is sully the experience of being happy for everyone who isn't in the same boat. I dont think relationships are bad and I don't deny that people need to vent so what happy medium could there be?

I find that the line I most readily draw is right between commentary and advice. I fully support everyones right to publicly wish ill and spout negativity as it relates to their own life. I've felt such dark and evil thoughts that I felt I HAD to spew them because they felt toxic to keep inside. Goodness gracious "just get this out and move on" I thought to myself. However when someone wants to say "all women are useless" or "love is for fools" then I have to take issue. I don't want you telling me love sucks..I'm happy loving things. Shoes, fast cars, gummi bears, music....BACON! I love those things. I mean what could be better than being able to feel love, I think it is one of life's small blessings. We love whatever we are drawn to and no one can tell us not to.

So when you get hurt and want to put things up on your public site that work to undo the greatness of something simply because you feel like you no longer have access to it, please just don't. I mean I could give you all twenty straight quotes that detail how love has served to cause nothing but pain and suffering but just like RELIGION often claims to bring a positive influence to peoples live, nothing harmful ever done by the church was done with the intent of bestowing "love". When you get yelled at, or cheated on, or enslaved, or nailed to a cross, it is not because someone doing it loves you. So yes love will blind you, but that's not all loves fault. The inordinate amount of evidence that seems to support the reprobate nature of love is merely because those of us lucky enough to be in a state of bliss are far too busy enjoying that to worry about telling people. It is also the reason conversely that we ALL hate to hear about how happy someone is. I do support the anti-sharing movement. If you and your lover are happy then go be happy. Don't tell me how great it is, don't share the amazing things you do for one another trust me I could care less and if I don't care I doubt anyone cares. My ex said I was too nice to everyone else and not nice enough to her...probably true so trust me I feel confident in saying No.one.wants.to.hear.that.mush.

If anyone is guilty of subliminalities it must be me, but that's because a lot of my messages are always backed up by real world actions. I'd never just threaten or gripe and not act on it. I'm quite certain the people who I hold near and dear to me WISHED i'd only subliminally lash out as I tend to overindulge myself. So please I implore you..let us be done with all that jibba jabba about fools rushing in, or love being for saps. Do you wanna die sad and alone?

In the words of the ever quotable Briana Loca, "I'm not mad at life, just mad at YOUR life."

I haven't written in a long while

But I really want too. I have a lot to say, and more importantly questions to ask. I've been far to lazy of late and I will do better. For tonight I will leave you with these words from a favorite band of mine. Ella quiere Venganza. They above all else have taught me, I really should pay more attention in the future.

She smelled like 2am

Took him back to her place

Where all the saints adorn the walls

Delivering her from grace

He knew he should leave

That this could only turn cold

She was a bad bad girl

So he told her so

Under the shadows of doubt

He had the whisper of lust

He said no touching tonight

She closed her eyes in his trust

She said tuck me in

He knew his judgement was sound

Still he pulled back the sheets

And said you better lie down cause the angels are watching

She closed her eyes and said quit the talking

You can hurt me do whatever you like

Her every word was in italics

As it would fall from her lips

The walls made of broken promises

He hoped this wouldn't be his

She said tell me what to do

He knew right then he was done

Feeling lonely and confused

He said you better lie down cause the angels are watching

She closed her eyes and said quit the talking

You can hurt me do whatever you like

So he said shut your mouth girl the angels are listening

You better lie down cause the angels are watching

She closed her eyes and said quit the talking

You can hurt me do whatever you like

She crossed herself now the moments are missing

You can hurt me do whatever you like

Glancing through the curtains

Questions on her tongue

She spoke in third person

And he had seen every one

Awkward and admitted

Said shut the door when you go

Perhaps he should have reconsidered (oh no)

When he said you better lie down cause the angels are watching

She closed her eyes and said quit the talking

You can hurt me do whatever you like

So he said shut your mouth girl the angels are listening

She crossed herself now the moments are missing

You can hurt me do whatever you like

I can't Help but Wonder what it's like

So I've got a new habit of writing some thought out into completion, and then deciding it is totally useless. Which I think is actually a good thing. Most often when I write I'm using the spaghetti method with my thoughts anyway. So not everything needs to be posted, I usually just need to work out some stuff in my head.

What I learned from the last little "spaghetti tossing" session is that I am horribly impatient. I can feel my skin itch at times when I'm forced to wait. Lots of people meet me and are shocked to hear or see this because I tend to have a calm demeanor. The reasoning behind it is convoluted. I have ideas as to why I sometimes am as patient as a rock, and other times bristle before I even have real cause, but can't really pin it down. Point being, I really wish I could learn to be appropriately patient. I don't have a good sense of when I'm being too patient, and when I'm not being patient enough, I can't really calm down easily. I can feel my mind trying to put the brakes on the rest of me and it never works, it practically makes things worse.

I've also realized that I have no forgiveness in my soul. I only find issue with this because it seems to be such a lionized trait. I was once told that forgiveness is a saintly task and that I was far from saintly...=( I never cared about being a saint until someone told me I couldn't be one. Now I NEED to be one. It's silly I know but my real problem is that I just don't believe in it. Forgiving someone means to cease being angry for an "offense, flaw, or mistake."

Now I don't think I've ever been mad at someone for a flaw, except for one of the many nurses I refused to allow in my room, whose voice sounded EXACTLY like Marion Ramsey in Police Academy (ear...splitting...pitch). I tend to forgive mistakes if I'm mad at all; albeit slowly but quicker now than ever before. It is those tricky offenses that I find so difficult. When someone is deliberately deceitful, mean, rude, conniving, or otherwise evil, then my initial reaction is retribution but short of that I am equally as deliberate in my inability to forgive said action. Apologies are often given but the action still remains. Even in instances where the misdeed can be remedied, I still don't think I could be quick to forgive. In large part forgiving was never taught to me so I don't have a background with it. There is another post floating around somewhere on separating the person from the accomplishment. Michael Jackson is a great example. I fully believe he molested many young children but he was also the greatest musical artist of his time. His talent with dance and music far outweigh his magnitude as a criminal and molester but the fact still remains. Also I'm not in any real position to stake that claim, because though he doesn't seem to have been serial or malicious in his negative acts towards children, I was never his victim and therefore cannot say how devastating it must be for those who were. To them perhaps he was a much worse person than he was a good artist. Case in point it's hard to forgive him, because no matter how you feel about what he did, and no matter what excuse he gives, I just don't see the pain he caused going away, and therefore neither will my displeasure with him.

I can't even really fully understand all the facets of forgiveness. Many people say that it is a sign you're holding onto past transgressions and still aren't happy when you fail to forgive. I reject that, as there are many people who have done unforgivable things in my opinion whom I never think about except for when they're mentioned. I also struggle with the notion that forgiveness is something we should embrace. It is largely a biblical sentiment and the idea behind it seems to play into some larger subtexts in holy works that I also take issue with. So I won't discuss that here but suffice it to say I seriously question whether or not we need to even have this notion of telling people that their wrongs are okay. Imagine drawing up a society all your own on an island somewhere. The rules, laws, and requirements for living there are all yours to create. At which point do you start including forgiveness. It's nowhere in our constitution and the laws that stipulate forgiveness all require that we pay some sort of prasad or offering to show our desire to be forgiven. You get a ticket and you must pay it. And even after you pay it you get a point on your driving record unless you perform a further sacrifice by going to driving school. In life an apology is one thing, to make amends is another, but to seek and get forgiveness is just on an entirely different level. For me I like to think not caring and forgiving are two different thing. Perhaps I'm making to big a deal out of forgiving.

I saw an episode of the "First 48" and a mother whose pregnant daughter was shot and killed by a hired hitman found it in her heart to forgive both the killer and the man who ordered it be done. My first question was why? Letting the other two men know she'd forgiven them may earn her brownie points in heaven, but there is no rational reason to do such a thing. Maybe she had just been raised to believe in it. Or maybe she actually didn't harbor any ill will towards them because she knew it wouldn't bring back her child? Regardless of her reasoning, forgiving someone doesn't really change the act. And remember I'm only talking about the misdeeds carried out deliberately against you here, forgiving a thief is quite easy compared to a traitor.

So for me the question comes down to this; if you want to forgive someone, and they want forgiveness, should you do it? Is it healthy to forgive someone's "sins" against you and move forward with them in your life, or are you bound to do something different? At first glance if it were my country that I was founding, I think at the very least I'd have some sort of show cause memorandum in the bylaws to find out people's reasoning. I know it's probably just me, but I feel like it's somewhat detrimental..? In Zach Braff's movie "The Last Kiss" which I feel I've written about before, he cheats on his fiance, with some woman who means little to him, but is more of a trophy or accomplishment for him. She of course finds out and shuns him. He however wants nothing more than to be with her. The movie opens with them discussing their life together and the wedding is imminent for them. So after seeking council he reconciles himself to sleeping on the front porch of their home. He simply sits, and waits. At some point she may have even made him a sandwhich as a small concession to his efforts, but as I mentioned in my post about revenge those small concessions are hard for me. The movie asks you to gauge your own thoughts on the situation and to be honest I can't blame her for never speaking to him again, as a matter of fact I'd have advised her to invite over a friend and make sure to make love in such a way that he knew what was happening. The tricky thing is whether or not I'd be okay with her bringing him back into her home? In my opinion it's a personal decision. I'd probably tell her not to, and after watching many friends try to forgive and fail I now exactly why I'd say that.

As for me I simply don't have the capacity to forget. So even If I forgave, those transgressions would still be my cross to bear. I'm still too young and prideful to even consider forgiving anyone for anything these days, and to be honest I hope that never changes. It just sickens me to imagine a future self of mine standing alongside anyone who did me harm intentionally. I did it once, it isn't likely to happen again. You may disagree, but you should be advised I'm not talking to you.

Fantastic Advice

I’ve been interested to see what other people think is important for the future. In a time when so little ahead of us is certain, the best we can do, is try to enjoy today. The future is not guaranteed to arrive, and I find that little or nothing many people do is geared towards seeing it anyway. So the disconnect seems to be we are living a life today, trying to build a better tomorrow, and like trying to stand with one foot in two separate boats, slowly but surely the gap between now and later has widened to a point that makes our balance tenuous. There are some who plow ahead and hope that when they pop up at some later date, they will be where they want to be. As far as I’m concerned I feel many people choose instead to mortgage what’s to come, and instead indulge themselves today.

Here’s the rub… I don’t know what anything is, where anything comes from, or why anything happens. So what am doing trying to make plans? If anything, my transplant taught me that just because you follow conventional wisdom, doesn’t mean you won’t end up having some Raven Simone sized wrench thrown in your plans. This doesn’t mean that plans are useless. It just means specifying your planning only narrows the range of scenarios in which that plan will be of any use. I don’t know if I made it clear enough in my introductory post, but I have no misconception that what I say is right, or even appropriate. But to read some of the words uttered with what I’m sure is a confidence near my own or more, it can be scary to see how far off we can be with our predictions.

In 1943, Thomas Watson the Chairman of IBM said, “I think there is a world market for maybe 5 computers” Considering I myself own 3, its tough to say he knew what he was talking about. But I am certain he wasn’t being brash, or trying to make some sort of grand proclamation. I think he really just thought that. 1943!!!! James Dean was already 12 and World War II was nearly over. At the guy who ran a computer company didn’t think he could sell more than 5 computers!!! Lord Kelvin in 1897 said that “Radio has no future.” Now just think, its 1897…the simple fact you even HAVE a radio is a miracle. So to say it exists but will die out is ridiculous by today’s standard. However the readership of this blog and others like it are unique. We are the first generation to grow up with operating systems, and experience technology evolving before our eyes. Our parents never had to do software updates on their phones. When new technology came out, it was like going from a Game Boy to the app store on an iPhone. Surely they have the same purpose, but to say they are even close to the same device is just absurd.

"I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year." - The Editor in Charge of Business Books for Prentice Hall, 1957

This last quote is specifically interesting because 1957 was a year in which many of our parents were already born. I have two friends who work in the debt consolidation field, a multibillion dollar a year industry. Surely data processing is a large part of their jobs and like the quotes before it, this one takes a technology that is designed to make life easier and eschews it as garbage. What must Mr. Ford have felt like with that silly Model-T I wonder? However there are two things I take away from all this.

1) This sort of dismissal still happens today.

2) There is some truth to what these quotes are saying.

You have to understand the question asked of these quotee’s to know what I mean. When Lord Kelvin says radio has no future. He didn’t mean radio was useless. It’s just that in the world he lived in, there wasn’t a use for a radio. There was no 1xtra, no Clear Channel, no FCC, and certainly no Rick Dee’s. So no, radio was a horse without a jockey at that point. Ironically we are once again at a point in which the popular sentiment is that radio is dead, and the advent of satellite broadcast seems to make the more of reality that it was even then when Lord Kelvin said it. I’m sure at the time, all these quotes seemed like perfectly reasonable things to say. The problem is that there is no way to know what the future holds. When Twitter was founded in 2006 I remember thinking it had no practical application and that it was mostly useless. Little did I know it would turn out to be a social phenomenon that transcended everyday life for millions of Americans. So yes I was right, as of now the company still makes only marginal profits. The estimate is that it brings in about $1.6 Million dollars a year. Split between its roughly 80 employees and considering Jimmy Fallon himself has over 2.7 Million followers, the profit ratio is anemic at best.

[Also consider that Kim Kardashian could conceivably make $3.65 million in Ad revenue this year simply by tweeting once a day. Based on her $10,000/tweet deal with ad.ly]

You can't be Serious!!

However I was also quite wrong. This cultural phenomena has absolutely changed American culture and though it didn’t have a purpose in 2006, in 4 short years it has found a niche, a use, and most of all a following. So yes the radio didn’t have a future. But only in the sense that as things stood, there was no way it could work.

What I wonder now then is what do we devoutly believe today will never happen that actually will? I think it would be easy to try and make a prediction that would surely never come true, so instead what is a prediction that will definitely come to fruition, though now it seems impossible?