that I hate

Okay, so maybe, just maybe, I don’t really hate Texas. As overly-irritated by others as I generally am, I can admit this possibility, as I’ve recently discovered a pattern regarding my own attitudes. Yes I can admit this, and yes, even when it might be unpleasant.

Whenever I get homesick, the most obvious sign is the absence of my friends, many of which have become more like extended family. The pattern, itself, lay in the observation that the more I seem to miss these people, the more I tend to mumble incoherent words of distaste for, not only Texas, but the entire southwest. There’s a hint of laziness here, I think, rattling to the tune of “it’s easier to say ’screw it’ than attempt to understand it,” and if that’s the truth, then I really ought to be ashamed of myself, which I might be. I’m not quite sure.

Ironically enough, it was one of these people with whom I had a recent phone conversation who nudged me down this path of thought, and thereby offering me an opportunity to perhaps better myself.

Additionally, while I’ve been living in what I’ve referred to as “not home, Texas” for about two years, I can admit that I’ve not been here long enough to really form an informed opinion. And that’s kind of ridiculous, even for me.

Turns out I’m an asshole, like everyone else.

Still, there are some things that bother me about “down here” as opposed to “up there.” There, the weather is much more constant. When it rains, it continues to do so until it’s freakin done. When it’s cold, it will simply stay that way until it doesn’t plan on being cold anymore for a while. I’ve heard the joke that Wisconsin’s four seasons are “almost winter,” “winter,” “still winter,” and “under construction.” Nevertheless, it was constant and, for lack of a better word, dependable. Down here, on the other hand, the weather has violent mood swings. Imagine having to deal with the most fickle, menstruating, bitch of a woman, only she can tear shingles off your roof. And, hey, just because it’s 40 degrees today doesn’t mean it won’t be 80 degrees tomorrow!

Now that I hate.

I shouldn’t really get into the whole driving thing, as I have no intention of writing a novel just now; at least, not about that. Suffice it to say that riding one’s ass seems to be a matter of course down here. Sometimes I can almost taste a bumper at the back of my throat.

Someday I may write about my musings and wonder on why and/or how everybody got into such a damned hurry these days, but I doubt it.

Kudos vs Crap

Taking the good with the bad…

• Kudos to Senator Russ Feingold for spear-heading the movement to keep internet radio up and running.
• Crap to the White House administration seeking a $20 billion arms deal to Saudi Arabia “and neighbors.” I think the last thing they need is more weapons over there.
• Kudos to Farmer’s Markets.
• Crap to yet another car bomb in Baghdad.
• Kudos to newly discovered microbes capable of converting light into energy. We could learn a lesson from those things.
• Crap to Congress for claiming P2P networks ‘harm national security’ just because their ilk are so out of touch that they don’t know what the hell they’re doing half the time…
• Kudos to Brian May of Queen, for submitting his PhD thesis in astrophysics.
• Crap to American Idol for beginning yet another season. Aren’t we tired of this yet? Seriously, when will this recycled pop-music garbage go away and die?
• Kudos to the FCC [you'll never see that again] for displaying its stupidity and giving a digital television station in Wailuku, Maui the call letters KUNT. Idiots.
• Crap to anyone who still cares what happens to or with Nicole Ritchie and/or Paris Hilton. These people are to be despised, not gawked at.
• Kudos to The Fatal Exception OE tatoo.
• Crap to this post.

Save the Cause!

Delusion: Pick your cause
Pick your cause: world hunger, anti-smoking, global warming, abortion, cancer research, MADD, it’s all pedantic, really. In the long run, I don’t believe that focusing one’s efforts on one particular thing or another will really make a huge difference. The bigger problems are, in fact, the foundations of the smaller ones we all seek to resolve. Need I state that one cannot cure a disease by treating the symptoms individually? Oh wait, I think I just did. “But what are the bigger problems?” you might ask.

Seclusion: Govern Thyself
For starters, personal responsibility and accountability seem to have been blown away completely. Whether we talk about trading liberty for the illusion of safety, frivolous lawsuits, or parental responsibility at this point doesn’t matter. They all share this common source. Somewhere along the line, the idea that everyone needs to be responsible for him/herself (or their children) got lost, and suddenly we find ourselves in a society where everyone except us is responsible for us (or our children). To give an example: when a minor is caught smoking cigarettes, the parent gets upset, but cannot possibly imagine this to be any fault of his/her own. It must be the Big Tobacco’s fault; therefore, the logical conclusion would be to spearhead a movement making regulations tougher on businesses who sell cigarettes to minors by sticking them with huge fines or even, perhaps, incarcerating clerks who make the mistake of not asking for appropriate identification. Now, it doesn’t take a genius here to realize that none of this has the slightest effect on whether or not the kid will continue to smoke cigarettes, and while there is a cause-effect relationship between the child getting caught and the parent’s movement to war on Big Tobacco, it still doesn’t solve the problem. The child will continue to smoke if the desire remains, regardless of whether or not the clerk spends a day in jail, the store in which the cigarettes were purchased receives a hefty fine, or the child’s mother is standing outside the nearest tobacco company headquarters with a picket sign instead of disciplining her stupid kid.

Let’s look at another example. I go to Taco Bell and order some “food.” Now, I know this is mostly chemicals I am ingesting, but for whatever reasons that take millions of people to fast food joints, there I am. If the “food” makes me sick because of some contaminant, and I sue Taco Bell, I am handing the responsibility for me to someone else. Nobody forced me to eat that garbage, and, if I had half a brain, I wouldn’t have eaten it in the first place. Still, I can see how the temptation for easy money coupled with the all-too-human dislike for being at fault could cause me to take this kind of action. At the end of the day, however, the fact that the decision to eat a bunch of chemicals prepared mostly by teenagers, who are paid minimum wage, working for a mass-producing corporation with loosely governed safety regulations, who’s sole purpose for existence is generating profit remains my choice, my risk and my responsibility.

Seclusion: The Corporate States of America
This brings me to my next point: when the hell did we let the corporations take over? Seriously. When? I don’t know if anyone else has noticed, but they pretty much run everything now. They influence us through advertising, they influence government through lobbyists, and they spend most of their resources on finding new and interesting ways to cut spending while increasing profit. The working man gets screwed over time and again, while the government seems to serve their interests instead of our own. Are we going to just take this shit lying down?

I have this vague memory, when I was young, about Ma Bell getting split up by the government. From my understanding, they grew too large and stifled competition, which is what a free market is supposed to thrive on. Well, has anyone been paying attention to the latest developments regarding these split-up companies? Seems to me, different names or no, they seem to be re-merging. I hear crap like “family of companies” and “the parent company of” and it strikes me as almost impossible to determine what owns what. If Company A is split up into Companies B, C, D and E, and along comes Company Z to purchase all of them and have them operate under similar regulations, then what was the point of splitting up Company A to begin with if Company Z can get away with that shit? Oh, sure, Companies B, C, D and E get to keep their individual names, but their taskmaster is still Company Z!

Hell, my cell company is Cingular, but I know that these days my money goes to AT&T.

Seclusion: I Pledge Allegiance
Which brings me to my third point: our government. Split in twain, overly-divisive, two sides of the same coin, really. Corrupt beyond belief, and we all know this to be true. Yet, apathy takes over. Somehow, the American public has been dumbed down enough to believe that every four years, they have to vote for one of two parties. This is really stupid. Given the evidence that neither of the two controlling parties have any more interest in serving the public, is it not high time we try a third direction? Apparently, a vote for a third party constitutes a “vote for the other guy.” Goddamn, but you people are so fucking stupid sometimes. There’s a cyclic pattern happening here and either everyone chooses to ignore it, remains ignorant enough not to see it, or stays apathetic enough to not care.

For example, why is it that right before every kind of election, congress gets back to the age-old, heated argument about whether or not its okay to burn the flag. First off, I’ve been hearing about this bullshit argument since I was a kid. Secondly, its a flag, a symbol. That’s all. Do we really have such a lack of domestic and/or international problems that this remains an eternal argument?

Conlusion: Cause for Cause
Let’s face it, it doesn’t take a strong imagination to see how the above three points are interconnected, with major media acting as a go-between to keep us good and confused about all of it. But let us not forget about the causes themselves.. Whether you are out trying to get people to stop smoking, trying to save the whales or even feed the hungry, just remember, somebody’s making money through it, which is probably the only reason those causes exist in the first place. That being the case, if one were so bold, one might even extrapolate that these causes will always need to exist, that their necessity would somehow be perpetuated. After all, if the problem becomes solved, then there would be no more need for the cause, ergo, no more money to be made, no?

So, again I say, pick your pointless cause, and continue to ignore the very foundation of the problems themselves, if for no other reason, for the sake of our economy.

Disclaimers are for Everyone

To understand me, one must understand the nature of my disclaimers. And there are a lot of them. Here’s enough to get you started.

01. Truth, being the relative thing that it is, can only be as I understand it. There is no such thing as an omni-truth, one that might represent the views of any and/or everyone. Doesn’t exist, never will. Period.

02. My understanding of other humans is limited to the kind of exposure to them which I’ve had over the last 30 years. If you don’t agree with such assessments, good. That’s your right, but it doesn’t make me wrong. Remember, my attitude is the direct result of attempting to deal with the rest of you.

03. My sense of humor, such as it is, cannot be conveyed easily through the written word. I assure you, as angry as I might seem at times, it is there. It is probably the only element of my personality standing between me and the freakin’ nut-house.

04. I don’t take seriously any of the following: what major media states, what the government states, what other people state. The truth (see #1) is often buried under various amounts of, for lack of a better word, bullshit.

05. I could be wrong about anything at anytime. It has happened before. It may again.

06. I am not a Republican. I am not a Democrat. I am not a Libertarian, or a Green Party guy, or anything else. They’ve yet to create a political party which represents any kind of common sense. So, whenever I happen to knock a particular politician, it has nothing to do with anything partisan, whatsoever. And while we’re on the subject, let me note here that I don’t “vote for the lesser evil,” because that’s stupid.

07. Everyone is dumb. If not always, then at some point, at some time. Everyone has the capability and the audacity, just like when they do that “voting for the lesser evil” thing mentioned above.

08. I am not racist, sexist, or any other kind of -ist. I used to call myself a “humanist,” but now I prefer to stay as far away from isms as possible. Isms are for short-sighted, low-frequency dumb-asses.

09. Preconceived notions are lame, but we all have them, unfortunately. One of my own has to do with my opinion of isms. (See above.)

10. I don’t worry about offending people anymore, because nobody gives a rat’s ass if they offend me. When I belch (usually close-mouthed), I say nothing, because it doesn’t make sense for one to excuse himself for engaging in a biological function required for survival, or at least, a comfortable stomach.

11. I don’t “bless” people when they sneeze because I’m not a superstitious moron.

12. I don’t engage in small-talk to fill uncomfortable silences because I do not find anything uncomfortable about silence.

13. The tenacity and energy with which I tend to attack things is a sign of strong character, I feel.

14. I have nothing to prove to anyone, because, quite frankly, nobody seems very occupied about proving anything to me.

15. I have a strong belief in the responsibility of governing oneself.

Myspace…the Wack

On choosing to depreciate a myspace account…

First off…I’m not interested in “befriending” any random slut dressed lightly in underwear who mass-spams people with their tawdry pictures in order to fool them into joining some wack-ass personals site. Nine out of every ten “friend requests” turn out to be something in that fashion. And for some reason, their sex appeal seems to diminish with the very idea that I am probably one person of a billion with whom they’ve requested friendship. Yeah, how sexy is that.

Secondly, I don’t care about your band. If i wanted to listen to your crappy emo or your lame-ass attempt at trying to be the next Creed, I would have searched for your music to begin with, and probably would have found your profile on my own. As it is, I have had no such desire, nor will such desire come about in the near future. That said, there’s no need to spam me with your friend request, because I have no interest in being your “friend.” Be honest, you’re not looking for friends, you’re looking for an audience. Well, take my advice: look somewhere else. Your music sucks. Your band sucks. Your myspace page sucks. And you probably do, too.

It was only a matter of time before chain letters made their way onto the internet. It started in my email inbox years ago. Now people are reposting them as bulletins by the wet bucketful. Uninspiring prose, poor poetry, unoriginal this and unimaginative that. Look, I don’t need to not “repost this” to have a crappy day. Odds are, I’m already having one. After all, I wasted a couple of minutes reading the bulletin in the first place.

My biggest problem with myspace, though, isn’t the same kind of easily-ignored bullshit mentioned above. Oh, no. Thanks to the heavy-breathers, myspace now has a relatively sizable reputation of being a hunting ground for sex offenders and child molesters, and I’d prefer to stay as far away from those assholes as humanly (or electronically) possible.

Now, understand that I’ve met some really decent people through myspace, and even though many of my friends remain, I simply feel that the cons far outweigh the pros at this point. My “digital identity,” or so to speak, can be better managed elsewhere. Not only that, but there was this incessant, inescapable feeling of lameness attached to having a myspace account to begin with. I can’t really explain that one, but there it is.

Wello, Horld!

Y’know something? I really dig widgets.

Yep. I do.