Why Don't You Put on a Little Make-up

There is a small chance that I am not even awake enough right now to actually complete a sentence. Oh, well, look at that. I totally finished that sentence, and that other one. Good for me.

It is far to easy to hit the snooze button. It should release a small electric shock every time you hit it that grows to a larger and larger shock over time. You ain't getting back to sleep once you've been jolted out of your bed. Unless it knocks you unconscious, but then you can at least have a doctors note as to why you are late to work, "Dear Employer, Matt was trying to be too lazy and his alarm clock tried to kill him. -Doctor"

At least I have coffee. I went to Savers last night and got a new mug. It's says "Zithromax" on it. It's apparently just an antibiotic. Boring. I was hoping it was some sort of super anti-schizophrenic drug that had to be pulled from the market due to causing some sort of Fight Club syndrome.

We have once again been visited by the ice fairy in the night. Extreme weather is lame. I was sort of following that "scandal" about the scientists "faking" "global warming" data. Man there were a lot of air quotes in that last sentence. Anyway, someone stole some emails from them where they were talking about how they presented the data in a way that was meant to convey the results of the data instead of just having a bunch of random numbers that only meant something to a handful of people. So according to conservatives, snow is to no global warming as spreadsheets are to science is fake. It's shit like this that proves America doesn't deserve to be a Super-power. Imagine if Superman had the brain power of this guy:



There is a sever lack of understanding of what science is. For the last time, just because something is a theory it doesn't mean that it is a random guess.

Fortunately I know that I am just being a cynic, and that people will understand the importance of saving the planet before it is too late and we will have reasonable, rational discussions of the topic.



Or maybe not.

By the way, I am totally aware of the irony of me calling Global Warming skeptics Sloth and then immediately saying that its their fault that we can't have a reasonable debate on the topic. But, come on, it's Ralph. With A FUCKING SWASTIKA IN THE CORNER! Because if you can't believe a fascist who likes the Simpsons, who can you trust?

She Don't Need No

So there went my first day in AmeriCorp. I thought it was going to take me a few months to get acclimatized. I think the gestation period will be much shorter than that. All in all it is going to be a rather dull job a lot of the time, which is perfect for me, as I have dreamed for a long time now of a nice dull office job. Mostly because I had never had that experience before.

I have to sort of relearn to watch my mouth though. I realized that most of the time I spend talking to other people for longer than a few minutes has been with dudes I've known at least half my life. I can blurt out any damn thing I want most of the time. But when the sort of cute girl at work said something that was every so slightly laced with innuendo I quite literally had to bite my tongue to stop myself from saying what came to mind. I have no idea now what I was going to say, or really what she said, but I knew as it was about to come out of my gapping mouth that it would probably not be appropriate to say. In a way I'm sort of glad that the average age of the people working in the place is around 56, and that is with my and the other slightly younger people averaged in to their ages. It's sort of like learning to crawl in an office environment. Had I ended up somewhere with inexplicably hot women surrounding me I would probably end up going completely mute until I was finally fed up with the job.

The problem isn't that I'm sexist or that I have to try to force myself on every woman that I work with. The problem is that I don't always realize that what I am saying most of the time in public settings is offensive to women. And in an office where there are lots of moments for awkward greetings and weird looks from across the room, it seems as though it would escalate out of control for me.

But that is just my impression on the first day. I'm sure that I can behave myself, at least for a while.

Last night I wrote that story I posted and I was thinking about how incredibly depressing it ended up being. If you haven't read it yet I won't talk too much about it so don't worry (as if you were worried about me spoiling some short story I wrote last night). I didn't mean to make it so depressing. I was just trying to write a Christmas story. And it sort of got away from me. When I write a story it is like my subconscious has already written it out on some level and I go into this sort of trance and it just pours out. I've heard similar tales from almost any one who regularly writes fiction. And when you are done it carries this incredible high. It is quite addictive, it no longer seems strange to me that so many writers are alcoholics/drug addicts/sex addicts. That small feeling of accomplishment and that sense of finally getting that damn story out of your head can be addictive, so it makes sense that people with addictive personalities would, for so many years, spend hours typing and writing and rewriting the same sort of stories over and over again.


Speaking of addictive, I have been hooked on getting giant fountain drinks since this summer. There is this slightly different taste to a fountain drink than to a bottled or canned drink, and it is intoxicating. And yes, I am drinking a large fountain drink right now. This has nothing to do with anything.

I've been debating asking this girl out that I met last week. I had a brief moment of thinking that it would be a good idea when she friended me on facebook tonight, only to realize that I was her 468th friend on facebook. The thing is I probably am going to ask her out, but until I get used to this new schedule I don't want to go on a date during the week. And it's odd to ask someone on a first date on a Monday if you don't want to go out till Friday. I know I am making too much of this, but I think that I need to wait till Wednesday to ask her out for Friday. While I was writing this I stopped to take a long sip from my giant fountain drink and realized that the girl I was thinking about had not just friended me on facebook. It was a different person that I am the 468th friend of, as I just realized, although the first name was the same, the last name was not the same. And I can't actually call her tonight anyway since I simultaneously realized that if I didn't have her on facebook than I had left her number at the office in Carson City. Yes, one day on the job and I am already leaving shit at the office. I also left a bag of pistachios in my desk, but that was totally on purpose. I am going to eat so many nuts tomorrow. And, regardless of the obvious dick jokes that will be made at my expense because of this statement, I am going to love eating those nuts.

Something that I find enjoyable about blogging that I have yet to be able to incorporate into fiction very well is my ability to contradict myself and correct myself in the text. Since I know I won't bother to edit, I just don't fix any mistakes, I just talk over the top of them. Some people might find this annoying, but I feel that it shows that I really am thinking and learning all of this as I am typing it. It's sort of strange to have that real time effect in writing. It's usually so rigid that I can barely get my mouth around it (that is probably the last dick joke) (especially since it doesn't really make much sense).

Before I decided that the world needed more, much, much more of this fantastic blogging I have become so famous for, at least to myself, as I caught myself asking myself for an autograph the other day, I watched some cartoons. Family Guy actually was sort of funny, but only because Hugh Laurie was on the show and he was playing House. Road House. That too. I bring this up because I have noticed that a lot of cartoons seem a lot less funny to me these days. And I wonder if it is because I am simply getting older or if I have lost a chunk of my sense of humor. Granted, I didn't have much of a sense of humor before, so losing even a small part is pretty fucking bad. Penis. See? That's not even a joke, as I clearly said that that last dick joke was the last one. What I really hope, getting back to cartoons, is that they simply aren't as funny as they used to be. Or they aren't meant to be funny for me anymore. They are skewing younger. I remember the first time I outgrew a comedy show that I really liked. I used to listen to a morning radio troupe all the time and then, one day, I turned on their show and it was idiotic and stupid and I never listened to it again. Its not like I ever missed that show, but a part of me missed being able to enjoy it. Ah, the joys of growing up. Everything just constantly gets slightly less enjoyable.

I think my favorite word to say is Potato. This has nothing to do with anything.

My stomach is all full of fountain drink. Why, cruel mistress, do you taunt me so? You make me wish I hadn't even bought you in the first place, yet I am compelled to slurp out every last drop of your deliciousness, foul temptress.

That is probably enough blogging for now. I often wonder what the point in this blog is the point where I just completely lose anyone who bothers to read it. I mean these long rambly blogs, not the awesome ones with pictures and moderately funny jokes I probably stole from Conan O'Brien. My guess is that after about 730 words most people have become over saturated with my thoughts. And after painstakingly have Microsoft Word to a word count for me, I come to the conclusion that at about 730 words I am talking about some girl that added me as a friend on facebook. That sounds about like the time I probably lost most of my readership. But you read it! You can't Un-read it!

Lightning Storm Fiction

prologue: I mentioned Lightning Storm Fiction before, it is what I call the style of writing that lets a story just be written in as little time as possible. What follows is a first draft that I haven't even read over yet. Enjoy!

I remember that Christmas was a time of joy and of giving and togetherness. I remember that while I am walking home in the snow carrying a bottle of Jack and a six pack of PBR. I used to love the idea of Christmas, the toys, the magic of Santa, the thrill of a whole month of music and movies devoted to the one singular holiday. Then I grew up, started to drink, went a little crazy. This Christmas will be a little like any other for me, at least in the last few years. I bought myself a present right after Christmas of last year when I didn't have anything to open up. There is a Christmas tree in my apartment that I never bothered to take down after putting it up three years ago, I wrapped the present and placed it under the tree. It says "From Santa" in big letters. I don't remember what is in there, probably something awesome. I've been waiting all year to open it up. I hope I got myself something nice.

It isn't that I don't have family. And it isn't that I don't have friends. It is more that those family members and those friends don't particularly want to see me at Christmas. I want to fall asleep, pass out actually, tonight and wake to find that I am in a Christmas Carol, or maybe It's A Wonderful Life. Re-learn the real meaning of Christmas. And maybe reconnect with an old girlfriend that I could have married or something like that. I want that to happen, unfortunately it doesn't really seem to work that way in this little world of ours. I will work the graveyard shift on Christmas, I will sit in my chair at the security desk and I will likely not see another living human until the morning when my relief comes in. He will say "Merry Christmas!" I will nod and repeat the sentiment to him. If the 7-11 on the way home is open I will likely say Merry Christmas to the clerk while I purchase my drinks for the day. Then I will get drunk and I will watch whatever movies they are playing on TV and then I will sleep until it is time to go to work again.

This should depress me. It did last year, maybe this year I have such low expectations that I just don't care anymore. Although a part of me still cares. Someone ought to make it a law that you can't get drunk alone on Christmas. I would probably break that law, though. At least in prison I wouldn't be alone. Plenty of people break the law around Christmas. It is the season of giving, it is also the season of breaking into people's homes while they are away at their families homes. Unless it is particularly cold out. Criminals hate the cold, its like their kyrptonite. Well, they hate the heat too, and they hate porch lights, and they hate working, and they often hate themselves. All of those things are also their kyrptonite. In general criminals have a lot of weaknesses.

At least my only weakness is that no one cares about me any more. That isn't a weakness, per say, but it is brought on by the combination of all my weaknesses. Frankly, I think that it is perfectly fair to say that my only weakness is that no one cares about me, because if they did the rest of the weakness could have been worked on by now.

It is Christmas eve today. And I am finally arriving home as I pass by house after house filled with lights and white people in sweaters and children running around getting ready for their day. I have just got off of work. The morning is the only time anyone seems to notice me. My uniform is almost the same as a real police officers. I think that there are a couple of people on this block that think I am a cop. They wave, they smile as they are getting ready to go to work, mentally they thank me for protecting them through the night so that they can wake up with nothing to worry about. I like to think about them thinking those things.

I sit down and turn on the TV and they are playing Wonderful Life. Jimmy Stewert wants to kill himself, and by all means he ought to, as he has fucked his life up. Thankfully, for him at least, he is rescued by a sub-par angel trying to get his wings. That would never happen to me, not even an angel would bother to stop me from killing myself.

By the end of the movie I am drunk and some sort of musical Christmas special is coming on. I watch it, not really paying attention, thinking about everything I have ever done wrong in my life and trying to finish the bottle of Jack before noon so that I can get to work on the beer and crash before work. I am thinking of all the women that I have wronged. Not to say that I have done all that much bad to them, I wouldn't call myself a gentleman, but, well, I'm fairly polite. But I would rather be alone than be with them unless we are having sex at that exact moment, and this becomes rather apparent to them after a fairly short period of time. It has been a long time since I've even had the chance to screw up a relationship, though, since I gave up a long time ago when it became apparent that I couldn't get by on boyish good looks anymore. I'm growing whiskers instead of facial hair now, I've got a few wrinkles, my stomach hangs well over my belt. The women I crave have begun to ask me about my Grandchildren. I've never married, I have no children, I am quite alone in this world. There is a sister out there somewhere that I might still be able to call and say hello to if I knew her number. She visited a few months ago. She was worried about me. She saw the evidence of my life in my small apartment and she decided, right then I think, that she need not worry about me anymore. I was called by a life insurance agency shortly after and they said a small policy had been taken out on me by my sister. Just enough to cover funeral costs. Thankfully she is willing to think of these things.

By the time that the music special is over I am fairly hammered, and I have begun to stare more and more at that present. The tree is artificial, the plastic branches decorated with a short string of light bulbs and a half dozen ornaments, a few dozen ornaments lay on the ground around it, having fallen off over the years and never been replaced. The present, however, is very nicely wrapped. I think I must have gone to a store and had them wrap it, I don't remember, I was very likely quite drunk at the time. There is a large bow on it, red with sparkles in it. The wrapping paper is quite shiny as well. I've been staring at it for a year now and it is Christmas eve. Drunkenly I stand from my chair and wander to the tree. I pick it up, I shake it. It's light, really light.

I hesitate, wondering if I shouldn't wait the final day to open it. As a child we always opened up one present Christmas Eve. I see no reason to forsake that tradition now, but I hesitate. I can't open it, my hands are trembling, I'm crying for some reason. I set it back down, delicately, under the tree, and promptly make my way to my bed and pass out.

I wake and go to work. In the morning my relief says "Merry Christmas" and I nod and repeat the sentiment. The 7-11 is open and I say Merry Christmas as I purchase my drinks for the day. I walk home, past white people in sweaters in houses filled with lights and children ripping to shreds the wrapping paper. They are holding presents in their hands and they are all laughing and smiling. I stop for a moment at a house nearby, the father sees me standing out there. He waves to me many mornings, he waves through the window and smiles and I think he is mentally thanking me for keeping him safe through the night. I wave back and I walk to my apartment. I turn on the TV and they are playing a Wonderful Life again. I pour myself a few drinks and then walk to the Christmas tree just as Jimmy Stewert is realizing just how important he really is. This time I am not trembling, I am not worried at all about opening the box. I slide the ribbon off without untieing it. But I rip through the wrapping paper just like the children were doing.

There is just a non-descriptive brown cardboard box. The top has been haphazardly bound together with a few pieces of Scots tape. I pull the lid open and it is filled with tissue paper. I throw the tissue paper out. It appears at first that there is nothing at all in the box, but then I realize that there is a small piece of paper, folded in half, in the corner of the bottom of the box. I pull it out and drop the box to the floor.

I open the piece of paper slowly, not sure what I am expecting it to say, though there is clearly writing on it that I can see through the paper. I have a bit of double vision at this point at it takes me a few tries to actually read what it says, but then it makes sense and suddenly I remember very clearly writing it and putting it in the box. It says;

"If this is still the only present under your tree then it is now time to kill yourself. And don't worry, no bothersome angel is going to try to stop you. Merry Christmas."

Careers in Science

Lately I've been starting to suspect that I am living in a Science fiction novel. One that was probably written in the fifties. Not in the sense that I am some action hero that has to save the planet, I am probably just some background/support character. But the world, in such a short time, has advanced so far. By 1910, Ford had constructed 12,000 Model T's. Most people alive then hadn't even seen a car, much less ridden in one. That was just one hundred years ago. There are people alive now that were alive back then. Now no one actually knows how many cars/trucks/buses are on the road in the USA. Estimates online range from about 70-300 million. I can get anywhere in the continental US in under three days thanks to cars. Remember the Donner Party? Imagine how different their story would have been if one of them had a Jeep. That is the difference that cars make. That alone should tell us how much a difference cars have been.

What was really making me think that I was in a sci-fi novel, though, was being at the airport. I took a plane between Portland and Seattle and I realized that they called it a shuttle and they had one going out about every half hour most of the day. And there I was, walking down onto the tarmac and climbing on a plane that thousands of other people had ridden and thousands of more will ride and we were going to cut through the sky and land in a new city in less than an hour. And this was so common that they considered it to be just a shuttle. I take shuttles to get to the airport, a shuttle to me is just a people mover. And that is how far we are in aviation. Planes are just people movers. We cram a bunch of people on and we can get them anywhere in the US in under 10 hours. Humans searched for the power of flight pretty much since we figured out how start building shit. We get it and all I can do is bitch about how uncomfortable it is to sit on an airplane.

But more than just transportation, the thing that really makes me question how far into this science fiction I am are iPhones. They are everywhere. People from about the age of 14-80 have them. A woman I met was showing me pictures of her daughter. She just pulled out her iPhone and started flipping through travel pictures. And she could have popped online, sent her daughter a message, ordered a pizza, booked a flight, and about a hundred other things while she was flipping through that phone. And everyone has one. We carry around a piece of technology that can do pretty much anything we can think of that involves any form of communication. And, sure, we think iPhones are cool still, but most people seem mostly numb to the amazing level of technology that is at our fingertips 24 hours a day. Growing up I always told myself when people started wearing wrist bands that had supercomputers fitted into them, then I would certainly be in the future. I was wrong, though, because people carry them in their pockets instead of wearing them on their wrists. Although you could wear an iPhone on your wrist if you fashioned something to hold it in place. All thats left is for the iPhone to be able to analyze soil samples and tell us if the air is safe to breath.

Humans have created a giant device to smash particles into each other so that they can see what the building blocks of the universe are. And if that isn't enough there are actual news stories questioning if the machine is being sabotaged. By mother fucking time travelers.

Doctors are, and have already been, discussing the ethics involved in human cloning. Not in some abstract way, but weather or not we should start doing it, because we totally could start doing it.

Our President is Black.



In 2001, what was thought to just be rain filled with red specks of dust was determined to be blood. And not just human blood, Alien blood. "[T]hese cells, whose origin is suspected as extraterrestrial. This way, the cells may represent an alternate form of life from space."

We are even getting close to synthetic telepathy so that we can communicate, through a computer, from one mind to another.

Just because we all aren't riding around in hover cars doesn't mean that we aren't pretty fucking deep in the sci-fi.

Society is changing, we are changing with it and we barely notice it. Exactly the way you would expect a futuristic society to behave. We have all this crazy shit but we are too busy dealing with life to really notice how insanely magical and wonderful it all is. Humans simply adapt to quickly. We don't have time to sit back and enjoy the new wonders of the world because we are so quick to get to work something even better. The problem with science fiction is that when it becomes science fact we cease to find it important and wonder why we don't have something even better already.

Nutritional Value

Still half asleep, I've wandered over to my computer once more to blog. This constant blogging is more challenging than I thought it would be. Just about 18 days to go, though, then the challenge is through. 18 days till the end of the first decade of the second millennium since we adopted this calendar. It seems like an amazingly long time. But humans have been around forever. If the first humans had figured they needed a calendar and had been keeping track since then, it is possible that we would be writing out the date as 11³.003*872 or something to that nature (and I shall say to any math geeks that that number is completely made up). Of course we still might have changed it something simpler.

Wouldn't it be mad if everyone could just instantly do a calculation like the one I put up there in there head? If we were all so freaking intelligent that we just automatically could understand the value of almost any equation? I can't even tell you what 11³ is without checking on a calculator. But in a world were everyone was so amazing at math I have to assume that we would be much better at a lot of things. We would know how to reach out with art in ways that we haven't even thought of yet. Our planet could be under our control, with a council of citizens who got together to decide what areas should get snow or rain. With a government that was run so efficiently, so smoothly, that we would have all of our needs met so long as we maintained some sort of involvement in society.

Of course that is just gibberish. Mathematicians who look into the face of infinity calculations often go mad. And I don't believe that there is any time in our future where we won't be just completely idiotic. Paul spent ten minutes in the bathroom waiting for someone to come get him because a card in a game told him to (the game was called Quelf if you are interested). I pretended to be covered in hot lava (well, just lava I suppose, as I believe it is called something else when it cools down. I forget though, I mean, I've heard of lava rocks, but that might just be the layman term for whatever that type of rock is. Anyway, it was hot, damnit.) Brianna spent half the night with a box under her shirt. We are simply designed to be idiotic. If we have to be smart and efficient all the time we end up just wanting to kill everyone. No matter how smart we get, how good our technology gets, how high a level our society achieves, we are still going to need to act like idiots. We still have to make fools of ourselves, get drunk and do stupid things, and stay out partying till dawn even though we have something important to do in the morning. Otherwise we become machines, we become zombies stuck in automated motion. We become nothing. Stupidity is what gives us our humanity.

I don't know anything. Not really, and I'm not talking in some philosophical way, I mean I know nothing. Who won the world series last year? I don't know. Why does it only snow when the temperature is within a certain range and not when it is below it? I don't know. Why am I writing a blog at 2 am instead of going to bed like my body has been trying to get me to do all day? Well, thats because I am an idiot.

When I was younger I thought I knew pretty much everything I'd ever need to know about life. Now, still a fairly young adult, I am realizing that I don't know the tiniest fraction of what I need to know about life. Sometimes I wished I lived in some sort of commune where everyone had the exact same level of knowledge. I mean, some people would have to be better at some things for us to function, but I am talking about living in a little place were we only allow X books and Y movies and Z television shows. We can only read or watch or listen to what is brought in, we all know each other, we all talk to each other, we never bother with trivia questions. And we never really run out of things to talk to each other about. How many times have you been at a party and everyone starts talking about some movie they had all seen and you hadn't? You just sit there and sort of listen but mostly get bored. If everyone you knew had all seen the exact same movies, you could talk endlessly with them all the time on the subject of movies.

Obviously there is a need for diversity. I can't ever see or read everything, but I can bring to the table the information I have and try to combine it with other peoples so we can all enhance our knowledge. This is why I don't think we will really see a commune like that, although, the more I think about it, the more I realize that I've just said that I wanted to go and live in a cult somewhere. Again, let me refer you to the fact that I am an idiot.

There was something somewhere out there on the internet that I was reading that was talking about a writers DNA. Not in the sense of their actual DNA, but in the sense that no matter what you do, what you write, you will always write in a style so specific and unique that it could only have been written by that one person. I think it applies to everyone, not just people who write a lot. It's weird to think about, though there are a handful of authors out there that I am quite confident that if I was presented with an annoynomus short story written by them I would be able to identify their voice within it. I bring this up because I feel like I have probably covered all this ground before. That I've spoken on the subject of stupidity in a positive manner, but I can't remember a time that I've actually done that. Of course when I go back and read some of my older posts or journals I realize that I have almost no recollection of actually writing most of those things. Honestly, I couldn't tell you half of what I had written on this blog in the last week. Maybe that is just part of why all writing by the same author sounds so similar, we just repeat ourselves over and over again until we die, not realizing that we've already said everything we were thinking about.

There is a halfway decent chance that I just nodded off while taking a moment to think about what to say next. To an intelligent person that would be a good indication that it was time to stop writing and go to bed.

I had been planning on talking about the conference in Oregon on this blog, but I can't think of too much to tell about it. It felt like most of the time it was just about having new members get together and meet each other. We were in classes a lot of the time, but the classes involved a lot of arts and crafts and very quickly thrown together presentations we were asked to do. They gave me a tote bag and a t-shirt that say "Vista" on them. I also got some buttons. One day I went on a walk around the town and realized that it felt almost exactly like every other Oregon town I've ever been in. I also realized that I have wandered around, usually on my own, in several Oregon towns, and in those occasions I have occasionally been drunk. I have bought at least ten books from book stores in Oregon. I have never eaten sea food while in Oregon.

There was one day when I had a little free time to hang out and I couldn't go back to my room because they had stuck me at a different hotel than the one the conference was in because I was one of the lucky few that didn't get a room there. I found myself laying on a couch in the lobby reading some Vonnegut (which I have been pronouncing "Vognet" for some time now without realizing I was doing that) and a girl I had barely talked to at before that point was chatting with her dad on the phone a few feet away. That was possibly the most comfortable I'd been in a long time. Everything just felt right, and having a cute girl sitting next to me having an informal conversation that I didn't have to pay any attention to at all made it feel like I was finally at peace with the world. I realized how much I've been missing by not having someone in my life. Normally when I think about getting a girlfriend all I can think about is going on dates and engaging in small talk for a few hours in the hopes that she will eventually want to sleep with me. I forgot about those quiet moments. Normally I figure if I am not doing something with other people there is really no point in being around those people. If we are just sitting around I get bored and want to go home and turn on Netflix or Hulu or read a book or a comic or two. But I'm so damn isolated.

There was no way to know for certain, but I felt like I was a sort of different person in those classes than I had ever been at UNR. It has been a while, and even though I often feel my life has stagnated, I suppose that my personality is changing ever so slightly. In a way its terrifying to realize that you have been living with a different person than you thought you were living with, especially when that person is you. But it wasn't like I was a stranger there, myself. Being forced to have endless small talk with people, to repeat everything that I had already said over and over and over again to a cacophony (I love that word, cacophony, I'm probably using it incorrectly, but I don't care) of people that I would probably not talk to ever again just gave me a chance to focus on the little parts of socializing I often over look. Still, I didn't care so much about what they were saying. There were so many people that told me the whole rundown of who they were and what they were doing with Vista and I lost interest after the second person. Actually, I sort of lost interest before that. But we have to talk to get to know one another. Even if it is inane babble. You talk to someone for five minutes and all of a sudden, even though you really know almost nothing about them, they cease to be a stranger and become this person that has some things to say to you from time to time. And the transformation is instantaneous. From stranger to friend in a heart beat. If I ever meet most of them again, though, I probably won't remember them, won't remember anything about them. We will be passing trains in the night once more. But a quick howdy and we are back to being friends. At least for the moment.

Not that there is a problem with that. Our Monkeysphere can only handle about one hundred and fifty people at a time. Monkey's can only really register a certain number (I think around fifty) of other monkey's as actually being part of their world. Any monkey that they don't know and haven't had contact with gets a completely different treatment than the ones within their Monkeysphere. That isn't to say that who is in the Monkeysphere is a constant, it changes. We can allow others in at the expense of pushing some of the people we haven't seen for a while out. Humans can only register 150 different humans. That means that we only really think of about 150 out of the 6 billion people on earth as actually, living, breathing humans at a time. The rest are just grouped and sorted and we can't tell them from Adam. We don't bother to think or worry about these other people because they are not really real. They don't exist in our world. They aren't even part of our karass. The Monkeysphere theory was written by a comedian whose name I can't remember.

Those people I met were in my Monkeysphere for a few days. They lived, they had issues, they had personalities. When I remember them in a few weeks, though, they will become generic stereotypes in my mind. This isn't because they aren't nice people, or that I don't actually give a shit about any of them, as I feel I give at least some sort of shit about them, but simply because my Monkeysphere can't handle that many people. They will simply fall into the background of my brain, allowing room for others to come in. I wonder who got pushed out already. I wonder how many people have ever had a chance to make it back in. I remember the first time I met Sara I couldn't register her as a person at all. I didn't remember, just days later, that she had even been there, that I had already met this person I thought I was meeting for the first time. My Monkeysphere must have been full that day. She made it in though, my brain must have turned someone else I hadn't seen in a while into a caricature. There are probably thousands of people that have been pushed out of my Monkeysphere. It's enjoyable to realize that its simply because my brain can't handle that many people and not because I am a forgetful ass.

There is so much in these blogs that I want to start weaving into fiction. I've decided that I need to go back to carrying around my little notebooks but instead of just jotting down random ideas I should write full stories in them. Grammatically incorrect with horrible spelling and handwriting, but just write them down. Then strip out the good parts of them later. Flash writing. Lightning stories. Story-storming. I'm sort of stuck on a lightning theme for what to call them, but I think you get my meaning

Cheb blamed me for his wanting to write some fiction over the break from school in his last blog. He blamed me because I convinced him to blog a hell of a lot more, and all that writing was making him want to write more. Funny how that works.


Editors note: I found the link to the original Monkeysphere article. The author is David Wong.

Awaken

What's a dicfer? sound bite  Dan Aykroyd sound bites

It turns out that if you wake up ridiculously early everyday for a week you will not be able to sleep late into the afternoon as easily as you had before. I've been tired this whole week though. Today was supposed to be my lazy day. I guess it still is, I can nap at least. But it hurts to only sleep a few hours every night. I don't know how people do it for an extended period of time.

I got home last night and it was snowing fairly heavily and I decided to run to the store to stock up a little for the weekend in case it didn't stop snowing. Of course since I already had a lot of pasta and other noodles I decided that frozen pizza and little debbie snack cakes were appropriate things to stock up on. Thank god it has stopped snowing, since I don't know that anything I bought even can qualify as having nutritional value.

My dreams lately have been quite epic. Not so much in what is going on, just in the fact that I can wake up and then fall back asleep and continue on the same line of the dream. I am creating very rich back stories for characters in my subconscious. Frankly they are having a better go at life than I am.

When I swore into AmeriCorp I had to swear (or affirm) that I would defend the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. It turns out, though, that I am wholly unqualified to do any real defending. It's not like I was getting combat training up there. Fortunately I came back and found something on the interweb that proved that the US doesn't need me defending it, as arch-rivals have already started to get along. And its all thanks to Conan.



Yes, I was implying that Sarah Palin and William Shatner are arch-rivals. I assume this because they are both completely insane and refuse to give up their fifteen minutes of fame.

I really want to go back to sleep. I also want to eat some pizza. I can't figure out how to do both of these things at the same time.

There are more random thoughts forming in my mind, but I'm not feeling up to actually elaborating on any of them. So I will bid you good day.

I said Good Day.

Come and Stretch Your Dancibilities

This is a late post, and I am a wee bit tired and possibly inebriated.

I want to ride a Camel. This has nothing to do with anything.

I finished reading "Cats Cradle" last week and I've been thinking about the fictional philosophical leader that was presented in that book. Specifically the ideas about ones karass, or just people tied up in ones life for no specific reason. I can't really site specific examples right now, but I have noticed that there are people that keep popping up in my life even though there is no logical reason for them to be there. A karass is a sort of pre-ordained team of people that will be with you and working with you throughout your life. They are the people that don't seem to belong yet they become an important part of your lives quest. They are your team, they are the people that, ultimately, are going to make sure that shit gets done.

I don't know who is in my karass. I imagine that paul is there even though he seems to have a logical reason for being in my life. Possibly everyone in the Group is in my karass. We just might all have to band together at some point. Or we all might just play small parts in what will ultimately be my life goal. I don't expect anyone to do anything, but if you are in my karass you are going to do it. Sorry, but you just can't help it. Fate put us together for a reason.

"I would probably find you more interesting if I were very drunk" was the first line of a short story I wrote on the plane ride between Portland and Seattle. It was about a Flight Attendent that I was sitting next too. She was just trying to get home and wasn't working that flight. She was one of those girls that is so ridiculously hot that it doesn't matter what she does, she will always have plenty of choices of how she wants to live her life. She was reading the short story I was writing about her. To be fair it was a lot about me, but she had to know it was about her. I took one look at her and wondered why it was that I really, really wanted to strike up conversation with her. I wasn't going to see her again, I wasn't, in all likelihood, going to have a quick fling with her on the plane. I wasn't going to actually get to know her in the time we had sitting next to each other. That was what the short story was about, and I wrote it in a small notebook on my trayback while she was sitting within inches of me. The thing is that I did strike up a small-talk conversation with her. She stood up at the end of the flight and her skirt was all cocky. I wanted to pet it down to straighten it out. I stopped myself because I realized that what I really wanted to do was rub my hands along the ass and thighs of a perfect stranger. She was reading a book. She was on page one. She tried to sleep by the time she got to page two. She assured me that she was not going to lie to me and that the book was "part of the vampire craze". I told her I wished I had written a vampire story last year so it would be out there selling millions of copies this year. She told me to write it down in my little notebook. Then she wished me a fond farewell.

Life happens. I am going with that as my guiding principle for now. Life happens, you meet people, they do things, they have an impact. You do other things. I always wanted to control life. I can't.

I met a girl in the AmeriCorps training that, although she was goddamn goregous, I though I would have nothing to do with...ever. She is going to be working in Reno, though. And she is from a Jewish family. I always figured that I'd end up with a Jew. My reasoning is because Jews tend to be more family oriented. They tend to have large families. I grew up with a family that could be counted on my fingers. I don't want a big family, I'm used to what I have. I need a big family. I can't stand what I have.

This might seem like it comes from nowhere, but I am a giant.

I am a giant and I hate it. Okay, I don't hate it, most of the time. But I hate it on planes. I inadvertently drove an elderly woman from her seat due to my excessive size. This happened on a plane. A plane that makes sure that its seats are comfortable for 15 year olds. Or just perhaps normal sized people. I am a giant. In this society all that means is that I am an inconvenience for someone else.

There are a lot of things that I want to say about this week. I won't right now, though, because I need to have something to talk about in my next post.

Cheb - 32
Mor - 28

Baby Bjork Bjorn

Last night I cleverly drank the rest of the milk so it wouldn't sit in my fridge going bad while I was out of town. Now I am forced to drink coffee with no milk in it, which is like eating pizza with no crust or dough of any kind.

I had to go shopping for some new clothes before heading out to my training and I ended up going to the mall because I didn't want to drive around a lot in the snow. Turns out if you want to avoid holiday shoppers you can just go to the mall during a snow storm. I was virtually alone there. I walked through the food court and every "restaurant" I passed had employees staring at me like I was some sort of mythic figure, sent from above to give them five minutes worth of work to do.

This snow storm is basically cutting a swath across the U.S. As I write this it is hitting Iowa, and its still going. I'm glad I'm heading north instead of east. In the rare big snowstorms that we get in Reno I always get reminded how fucking intelligent the Japanese automakers are. That little Rav4 handles the snow like a pro. Sometimes the brakes make horrible, horrible noises, but thats just from snow getting in the undercarriage and it doesn't really make the brakes stop working. Toyota is my friend. If I had to marry some mega-corporation, it would totally be Toyota *love you*.

My mom gave me some money to buy new clothes for this training thing. She wanted me to get some business-y looking clothes. My problem is that I am a fucking giant. So I got more of an Eddie Bower look going since that was all they had in my size. I actually quite like it. It's all so soft and in simple earth tones. I've been sort of looking for a new look, something other than tattered t-shirts and jeans. This might actually work for me.

I think my computer is infected with the Haunta virus. Or, more likely, something that targets computers. It kept just rebooting when I tried to turn it on this morning, and now its acting like it is running way too many programs even though all I have open right now is Google Chrome, iTunes, and solitaire. I hate it when my computer starts acting weird, it usually ends with me either losing a ridiculous amount of stuff on it or me having to spend money to get someone to go in and manually get rid of some malicious coding that has snuck in there. And if it is a virus I'm sure I got it from going to sites to illegally watch TV shows. This is why shows should learn from Hulu. Don't try to keep stuff off the web, you won't be able to. Just set it up so that people can watch them legitamitely. I'd much rather put up with a few commercials in a show than go to some untrustworthy site to get my TV watching on. It's kind of like Hulu is a legal brothel, like in Nevada. You go there, the girls are STD free, they are safe from pimps and they aren't bothered by the cops. Most of them are probably not doing it to support a drug habit, even. They are just horribly damaged women who don't mind selling sexual favors. These pirate sites, however, are the streetwalkers. Yeah, they'll sleep with you for money, but they are filled with all sorts of horrible things. And if you make a misstep you will be killed by a 6'6" black guy in a fedora and feather boa. This may not be a perfect metaphor.

In about forty five minutes Paul is coming to pick me up to take me to the airport. Cheb is definitely giving me a run for my money on this, the Great Blog-Off of '09. I really hope they have some computers with internet access at the hotel I'll be at. I tried, in desperation, to get my Mac up and running one last time. But it is still totaled. Damn you Orange Soda, Destroyer of Laptops.

I really hope that I can meet some cute little hippy chick up in Oregon this week. I mean, I doubt that I'll be able to have a whirlwind romance, but at least someone to hang out with a couple of the nights and make a few lewd comments to. Perhaps I am setting my goals too low. Still, I remember something from Mr. Habel's psychology class from High School. People with a good sense of themselves and that are confident set goals that they can actually reach. People with low confidence either set their goals so ridiculously low that they are guaranteed to achieve them or they set them so high that if they miss, well, its not like they expected to get to them. He illustrated this by giving us all balled up pieces of paper and telling us to take a shot for a garbage can with it from anywhere in the room. It seemed like a dumb lesson at the time, but it has stuck with me all these years. Hasn't ever really helped me, though, now that I think about it.

This blog is sort of all over the place, but right now I am sort of just killing time. I don't have time to do much else right now. Hulu has some MST3K up right now. I think most of them are Joel episodes, but at least one is a Mike episode. If you have too much free time today (and if you are reading all of this rambling post, I'm guessing you do), that would be an excellent way to waste some of it.

Man, it just occurred to me that today is the first day since April that I've actually been off to do anything related to actually working. And I'm going to be working for a year and a week at least from this point on. I haven't ever worked straight through for an entire year. It was either school or me being sick of the job I had and quiting to look for a better job that has kept me from being in one place for a full year. Of course, with AmeriCorp I can't just quit. I can, however, be let go. I suppose if I can't stand it I can just take a part time job. They kick you out if they find out you are working a second job. Sort of a shitty way to quit, though. Not that I want to, but I always like to have an escape plan.

Well, I am off. See you Friday Reno.

The Future Was Then

After my last blog I did in fact write a chirstmas story. Except for that it wasn't really a chirstmas story, it just happened to take place around christmas. And it was only about two pages long.

I was hanging out with Paul and JJ today and we got to talking about truth vs. Truth and several other philosophical sort of things. JJ made some good points, but while debating him it helped me to cement some thoughts I had. At one point, and I am paraphrasing here, JJ said something along the lines of "Whats the point of life if you don't try to understand the meaning behind living?" And all I responded with was "I like coffee, I like pizza, I like living. Whatever the point of all it is doesn't really matter. I enjoy existing."

I hadn't ever put it into words before, but I do enjoy living. I enjoy so, so many things. Right now I am listening to Electric Six and they make me ecstatically happy. It's stupid music but I love it. If I didn't exist before I was born and I won't exist after I die then I am more than happy to enjoy the sounds of Electric Six while I can.

I don't mean to pick on JJ, I will say that I consider JJ a dear friend and I very much enjoy his company, but it seems to me that JJ has always wanted to find the meaning of life.A very noble quest, but to me ultimately pointless. If 4.5 billion years of life on earth haven't stumbled across it yet, then who am I to try to figure it out? Perhaps it is selfish to just enjoy life. I want my life to mean something, but I don't think that I will ever be able to have a life that means something in a cosmic sense, nor do I think that I will be able to help human understanding of everything. We know so little. A single human will never understand the whole of everything. It's just not going to happen.

From time to time I feel like if I just wasn't alive anymore the world would be a better place. But I've never been suicidal. My life has intrinsic value. I don't know what that value is, but I know it exists. I'm a fuck up. I probably will add nothing to human history. But in some way my being here has changed lives. Maybe it was as simple as something I said in third grade that I don't even remember. Maybe it will be something so grand that I will do in the future that I can't even understand the significance of yet.

My point is that I don't know my place in any grand scheme. And I would rather relish in the Sunday afternoon conversations with my friends than to worry about if I am fulfilling some cosmic duty.

And so the point of all this is that by JJ challenging my world view it has made me realize that I am very happy with the way the world has presented itself to me. I never thought that my world view would actually make me happy. But although I sometimes hate myself, I don't hate my world view.

Pizza Flavored Burrito

Last night I played some poker, and lost quite horribly. Of course, I sort of suicided out of the game because after three hours of seer and logan basically shouting about hipsters my head was ready to explode.

David Bowies Ziggy Stardust just came on my playlist. This song made me think that I was to one day become a huge David Bowie fan, but I have yet to live up to that level of fandom. I am more around the "poser" level of fan for Bowie. I suppose that he was doing his best work before my time, though, so I won't let it get me down too much. David Bowie is pretty freaking awesome though.

Friday was the last episode of "Monk". I'm sort of sad to see it go, but it was probably time. The show was getting so ridiculous in the past few years. Honestly, the writing would often take Monk from being a brilliant detective to being a moronic child within the same scene. The show ended pretty much exactly as I suspected it would with a few surprises. (Spoilers incoming) I suspected for several years that last episode (well, last two episodes it turns out) would deal with finding out who killed Monk's wife and why they did it. Which is exactly what they did. We find out that the nefarious mastermind behind the car bomb that killed Trudy was none other than Coach. That's right, Craig T. Nelson. Mother fucker. And it turned out that Craig and Trudy had had a child together before Monk met Trudy. The death was to cover up the fact that, although Trudy thought the kid was stillborn, she was actually alive and well and living near San Fransisco her whole life. Once Craig T Nelson kills himself after admiting to the whole thing, Monk meets Trudy's daughter and all of a sudden he is a little less concerned with being an obsessive compulsive. I was reading an article on Cracked.com about Mental Illness Myths Hollywood wants you to Believe. The finale of Monk would fall into list number 6, the Instant cure/Magic key cure to mental illness. Monk was seriously disturbed for 12 years, but all he needed was to see Coach shoot himself in the head and meet his dead wifes daughter she never knew she had (who is, more or less, exactly the same as her birth mother)and all of a sudden he is ready to be a normal person again. It seems believable, they don't change him back to a completely normal person. He is willing to wear a different shirt and doesn't mind if some lettering on a box isn't exactly level. Still, he does get a lot better in a very short time even though he's been trying to get better most of his life. I guess it boils down to I want to believe that his life will be a lot better now that everything is figured out for him, but that doesn't mean its really that happy of an ending for him. But I'm going to say that these two episodes that made up the finale were quite good. Compared to other episodes from just this season they were in a different league. If they had been willing to write all their episodes so well they would have had much more interest in that show over the years and I wouldn't seem so strange for liking it so much.

Speaking of cancelled shows, I have watched the first two episodes of the new season of Scrubs. Its on a new network and they stripped the cast back down and added a couple slightly more interesting interns to the mix. It's, surprisingly, not awful. I don't know how long it will stay that way, the first couple seasons of the show were funny, and it just got worse with every season after that. This is sort of a fresh start and they have JD and Turk and Dr. Cox teaching instead of just being doctors. I don't think its ever going to be able to get an audience to rival the Office and Thirty Rock. Maybe it can take on Parks and Rec, although I know a couple people that like that show. And speaking of that block of shows, Community is a pretty solid comedy, I must say. I mean, its not great, and I get a nasty feeling that it won't last. But it does have Chevy Chase in it. And he's all old and weird. If you can find it (and it isn't on Hulu.com anymore) I recommend the Halloween episode, as it is for teh win.

One final show for me to talk about and then I am done with tv talk, I swear. Dexter is nearing the end of the season. John Lithgow is the anti-Dexter this season. He is a much more evil serial killer than Dexter could ever be (sort of, see #2 on that Cracked.com list I mentioned earlier). It's been a pretty good season so far though. Dexter can't keep up with his work, killing, and family, and its created quite a lot of good conflict for him. Of course, the more I think about it, the more I realize that the show is just an expert in being a bit of a sleight of hand magician in making it seem like a hundred things all have to be done by Dexter all at the same time. Shows always want to make it look like there is never any time, but we are seeing one hour out of the life of someone usually over a week or two week long period. People always have more time than they think they do. I mean, most people waste a few hours a day checking emails, chatting on the phone, and talking to other people. If they just made themselves out of contact a few hours a day and communicate at the same times everyday, people will learn how to keep in touch. Apparently we all teach people how to treat us (think about it, do you ever tell the drama queen bad news to her face? do you insist that the hermit comes out with you every time you want to go out drinking?) So you only check email between ten and eleven in the morning, only take calls between one and three in the afternoon (at least work calls) people will be able to get ahold of you and they won't mind having to wait till the next day to get a response for most things. Then all you have to do is make sure that you aren't wasting time doing little things you don't really need to do (watching tv, reading, etc.). I'm not saying make your life all about just getting certain things done, I'm just saying that I've heard the argument from so many people that they would do X but they don't have time. And say its something like going to the gym. You can go to the gym and come back within an hour if you want. Are you telling me that you don't have a single hour out of your schedule doing something that you don't need to be doing? You have time. Due to the "bubble" (the inability for people to contact them most of the time) most U.S. presidents have more free time while serving than they do the rest of their lives. Anyway, Dexter is definitely guilty of making it out like there is no way Dexter can do everything he needs to do during a day. It would be a dull show if he never had any conflicts between work/personal life/killing, but it does get to be a bit of overkill. His whole life is a house of cards, I get that, you don't need to throw it in my face every single week.

Okay, that is enough TV talk for one day. I might need to post another post or two before this day is over since I am still struggling to catch up to Cheb. The rules, as I set them up, are that we can do multiples a day if they are longer than 500 words a piece and on different subjects. So look forward to another post featuring me complaining about things. Hooray! Blogging!

The Score:

Cheb: 29 posts
Mor: 25 posts

You Are Talking a Bit Rambly, Though

For some reason I am having a hell of a time getting started on this blog. I shall turn on some Rolling Stones. Actually, I think I will go with Wolfmother. Yeah, that is the mother fucking shit right there.

I used to have a playlist on my Mac that was called "Writing Rockshop" that had all my best songs for writing to on it. I'll admit that I didn't really do my best writing while rocking out hardcore inside of Bibo's coffee shop while listening to my rock and roll music, but, fuck, it was way more fun to write about some hapless loser that I had sent on a journey that was doomed for failure (as I think that is the most generic plot I use in writing) while air guitaring and making the hipsters and yuppies wonder if I didn't, perhaps, just have a mental disorder.

I'm switching over to Trans-Siberian Orchestra now. The album "Beethoven's Last Night", not the christmas music. Although it would be seasonally appropriate to listen to the christmas stuff. Trans-Siberian is a pretty awesome fusion of music, you know. They are metal/opera/orchestra/spiritual. The amazing part of that is that they are not crappy. They are amazingly good, actually. Josh was the first person to tell me that I would probably like them. The man has good sense of what I would and wouldn't like, it seems, or he just got lucky that one time.

I've tried, so many times, to write a story incorporating/based on a song from that album, "Mephistopheles Return". I'm not sure I can do it. I'm missing something. I don't really get it. Even though I've tried to write it about 30 times and listened to the song at least ten times more than that. The song speaks to me, but I can't seem to speak back. I will not give up on it, but I can't force it, either. Someday I will have some experience that will put the song in a new light for me, and then I shall write the most rockingly awesome short story based on it. And that short story will likely be read by less than thirty people, but so be it! It's not the number of readers, or the quality of readers, its all about getting it written down and making some poor schmuck read it.

I wanted to write a book of short stories that was all about new American mythology. I have a couple of stories that incorporate corporate logos, hippies, politics, etc. but not enough to fill a book with yet. The problem is that the ones I write that are good just come from some Eureka moment where I have a brilliant idea while I am struggling to think of something to write. And those moments are hard to come by, especially when I allow myself to spend so much time watching Netflix watch instantly. This little blog challenge is actually probably going to be a good shot in the arm for my writing, as I am going to try to post first thing when I get up and that keeps me from getting on the TV for a while, which might, in turn, keep me writing well past the boundaries of this blog. Or that won't happen at all, who knows? Still, its nice to wake up and start writing (and if you are wondering, yes this blog was posted in the middle of the afternoon, I went to bed at 5:30 today, so this is morning for me, okay? geesh.)

I think I am going to go and listening to some of the Trans-Siberian christmas albums for a while and see if I can't write some sort of wholly American christmas story to be included in my likely never to be published collection of short stories. If you, valued reader, have any suggestions for a chirstmas story, let me know, as I spent about a month last year trying to write a christmas story and came up short.

And So the Battle Begins

The other night I challenged Cheb to a mighty battle. A battle of wits. A battle of words. A battle of the blogs.

It isn't really much of a battle, though. Cheb and I have been the only ones this year to even sort of keep up with our blogs. We are pretty close in overall posts for the year and so I figured that it was a good chance to see who can out blog whom. I thought of making it a battle of who could get the most comments come the end of the year, but then I realized that hardly anyone ever checks these things anymore.

This might be a boring battle. But I love blogging. I write a lot more than I post up here as much of it will end up in my personal journal, but it is a nice way to relieve stress and get some of my thoughts out into the world even if most people aren't really paying attention. My hope is that it will be a battle to be remembered, with lots of snide comments about how I am going to kick Chebs ass.

I started with a bit of a handicap, being behind in the count overall. And next week I may not have much internet access, but I should be able to find an internet cafe somewhere that I can use to quite thoroughly trounce cheb in this competition.

And to make sure that this blog counts, I will now ramble on for a few minutes about a few other things I've been thinking about...

Things are looking somewhat up for me right now. I am a little worried that about the AmeriCorp job that I am getting myself into. Mostly because I am not sure how well I am going to handle going from waking up at the crack of noon and watching tv for a few hours before taking a nap all the way to having to be at work at eight five days a week. I've worked some day shifts before, not for very long, usually only one or two days out of the week. I've always been a graveyard/swing shifter. Mostly that was because of school, but since I haven't really done anything since I left school I haven't ever had to get used to a common schedule like the rest of the world has (also, I am proud of myself, because for what is possibly the first time ever, in my life, I spelled the word "schedule" correctly on my first try. Usually I spell it "scheduel" or "schedual" and then have to go back and fix it, realizing that I am once again making a stupid ass mistake. But not this time, boy howdy!)

The biggest problem with my AmeriCorp position is that, although I signed on to work on behalf of the elderly, I wasn't fully away that the average age of most of the people working there was in the elderly range as well. There is some woman I haven't met yet that is probably pretty close to my age. And she is sort of cute in a bookish/nerdy/probably really into anime sort of way. I said hello to her when I went in to get some stuff yesterday and she sort of started a sentence and I sort of said something and then we got interrupted and it was really freaking awkward and I didn't say another word to her for the hour I was there. Still, really freaking awkward isn't the worst way to start off a relationship. When she sees me again when I official start and we are able to speak coherent sentences to one another it will be a relief to both of us and will, in some abstract way, bond us as united workers. Then we'll see how it goes from there. I have a bad feeling that it won't go anywhere, as it usually works out that the girl I notice on the first day (or the pre-first day, as it were) is married or something crazy like that. I sort of hope that I can at least befriend her, as it would be nice to have someone to chat with that isn't twice my age, as nice as the other people are. Of course, my main interests in this period of unemployment have been Law and Order, Dexter, Monk, Castle, 30 Rock, The Office, etc. In fact, there are a ridiculous amount of shows that I have seen most of the episodes for. And older people like TV, or so I have been told, so I should have plenty to talk about. I'm going to try to make some of the other AmeriCorp people read "The Milagro Beanfield War" by John Nicols (which you can apparently read in its entirity here) The reason for this is because it is the only book I've ever read that had a character that was currently serving in AmeriCorp, and he is a sad, irrelevant human. Maybe I won't open with asking them to read it.

Anyway, things are sort of looking up. Maybe I'm just feeling optimistic, but I honestly think that I am finally going to be able to get back to my life. I was thinking that I used to care really strongly about having a job where I could help people and prove my worth. I haven't really thought that so much lately. I mean, I've said it plenty, but I haven't really felt it. Its funny, I was in college thinking that how passionate I was about everything was going to stay the same for the rest of my life. But just a couple years later and I've already let the world take me down a few notches. Beat me down a few notches. Just beat and smother and kick and scratch and bite and punk me down a few notches. To be fair, though, I sort of had it coming.

I was reading this thing online the other day that was talking about how too much self-esteem or too much praised heaped onto a child has a very negative impact on them later in life. They feel entitled to everything, they feel the world owes them something and that they shouldn't have to work for anything. I don't know if that was my problem. I mean, I've never had very good self-esteem, not at all. I can't think of a time when I felt like I was king of the shit pile. Though I may have acted like it from time to time anyway. And I try to remember getting praised a lot, of course I can't remember because most of my memories of childhood are hazy pot and booze stained pictures that don't make a lot of sense. Which is strange, because I didn't start doing any pot or drinking till I was almost out of high school. Still, I either blocked it out or it was so uneventful that I just can't see it anymore. But there wasn't that much praise there. My mom was fairly supportive, but she didn't really spend much time going over anything with me. My dad was helpful with school projects and what not, but I don't recall him heaping praise on me. Actually, I sort of remember the opposite of that.

I brought that up since I was thinking maybe that was the reason why I never got my shit together, but I don't think that really has much to do with it. I mean, I know why I haven't gotten my shit together for the most part and that is because I just haven't been forced to. Not really, since I was always able to get money when I needed it. Not having to work my ass off and stick to a budget constantly has allowed me to be a little more free form in the way I approach the world. Which is probably why, though I had many grand plans to do this or that, I never could really accomplish a big dream. I need some time at the bottom. I thought that I had spent enough time in security and food service to warrant at least a crappy office job, and that, after a couple of years of scrounging around for it I did find that. But its not really crappy, it just pays very little, which is better for me, as I'd rather have a job I like and at least as the potential to boost a career for myself than start off making a lot of money in a job that would never go anywhere.

That is all for now as I am going to sit around and eat and probably watch Dexter with JJ for a while.

BLOG COUNT:
(as of this blogs posting time)

Mor - 23
Cheb - 28

Go Mor!

Vexxing

I've noticed over the last couple of years how fucking polite our society is. That isn't really an insult, I suppose, but in a way it is. Everyone seems to have forgotten how to say "no." A recent study I read about subways said that 70% of people riding the trains will give up their seat to you if you just ask for it. Panhandlers can live in crappy apartments, eat, drink, and be merry for just a few hours a day asking for spare change on the street. I'm not saying we aren't a cynical nation, or that we are easily manipulated. We just have a culture that frowns upon being rude to anyone.

I think it is because we really do believe, for the most part, that each of us are no better than anyone else. We have created a society that idealizes equality and individual freedom. It all sounds so good. Yet it sort of sucks.

Larry David is sort of a spokesperson for anti-politness. On "Curb Your Enthusiasm" he is constantly getting dragged through the mud because he made one, small, impolite gesture to someone. Obviously the show is a comedy and it is designed to take that one small thing and snowball it into being a crazy laugh filled adventure, but its a satire, and satire exaggerates reality to make a point about how absurd it is.

I am one of those people that is bad with the banalities of human life that everyone else seems to ease easily into. And I say "seems" since I honestly don't know how easy it is to really be nice and polite all the time. I just am not great with strangers or new people generally. Even so, I've been helped by strangers many times, I've had doors opened for me, just today, but mothers, by elderly people, and by a guy carrying a large amount of groceries. And you might say "well, your an ass, making those people hold doors." But I don't try to be, I was just standing near the door waiting for my turn to go through and they were kind to me and held it. I, too, hold doors for strangers almost every day.

The problem is that there is just too much politeness. I once had a woman measuring me for a tux, and I was just one in probably dozens of people she had measured that day, and her breath was awful. Just so incredibly foul. And she breathed heavily at me for several minutes while measuring me. I was too polite then to say anything. Frankly, I'm sure I've had horrible smells emanate from me many, many times. But to this complete stranger, someone who probably would have liked to know she should take a breath mint or at least smoke a cigarette so she just smelled like nicotine, I said nothing. I ignored the problem and went on with my life. And, yeah, it was just bad breath, who cares? Well no one, but you take that level of politeness to an extreme and you may find yourself not wanting to say anything to someone that is clearly pouring poison into their dinner guests drinks.

The biggest problem, though, is that we are so afraid of saying no anymore that we are easily manipulated. We are told by a salesperson that we need something and that it is relatively cheap and we are so used to saying yes that we just instinctively agree. I had a salesman on the phone the other day that was trying to sell me something and I said I wasn't interested several times and it took me saying no about eight times before he finally gave up (note: I would have just hung up, but it was a company I was already a customer of and I was trying to get something else done, they just put the phone person on sales as well as customer service). I don't mind telling people I am absolutely not interested, but our society seems to make no room for that. It wants us to act like we are always going to say yes. That was the problem I saw with the "hit" movie "The Yes Man" staring Jim Carrey (that I didn't see, but I'll talk about it anyway because I am an out of the closet jerk and I don't care if I get caught talking about subjects I know nothing about). It's all about a bored, white, middle class male trying to figure out why his life sucks. So he says yes to everything. And you know what? He goes sky-gliding (based on the preview at least). And then presumable he learns a valuable lesson. Maybe the lesson was, "you should say no sometimes" but they sell the movie as just saying yes to everything. And that is going to end up with you with twenty credit cards and several hundred thousand dollars of debt. If you could just say yes to everything, then there would be total chaos. Evolution taught us to say no because sometimes people want you to do really, really stupid things.

Speaking of "The Yes Man" I am reminded of a movie called "The Yes Men" (note the plural). Which sort of brings me home here. In the movie (a documentary) a couple of dudes set up a fake website mocking the World Health Organization (I think, it may have been another group, but I am not going to look it up)and some people take it seriously and book them for appearances at conferences. So they, like the Merry Pranksters they are, took advantage and made presentations about a selling poor people their shit, after it'd been recycled, back to them as hamburgers. They made another appearance wearing a gold running suit with a giant inflatable phallus on it that was supposed to be able to allow them to work on their computer (that would be attached to the tip) while working out. It all sounds a little stupid and far fetched, but aside from the college classroom they visit during the film, everyone bought it. And why did they buy into the absurd? Because they were too polite to say anything about it. A rational person would see they were just playing a joke. And I assume that there were many rational people in the conferences, but they didn't say anything because they didn't want to be seen as being negative towards a new idea. Which is idiotic.

Listen, there are great new ideas that a lot of people wish they would have got on bored with when they first heard about it, but for each good new idea, there are approximately 800 billion horrible new ideas that never go anywhere. Yes, saying no to everything will sometimes come back to haunt you. But pretending that every idea is a good idea, that every thing that other people do, that the way that everyone handles themselves, the way they live their lives, that every stranger is worth your time, is, again, completely idiotic. Society, politics, science, religion, and even sandwich preparation (by which I mean everything else), thrives on controversy. It all thrives on one asshole telling another asshole that he is an idiot. After battle, one idiot will prove victorious, and we have a whole new world view. But if every idiot just pretends to agree with every other idiot then the whole system gets thrown out of whack.

Questions of the Universe: Revealed!

Question one:

If Jamie from The Mythbusters was a crazy Scot and made a music video version of "I'm a Barbie Girl" by the Supergroup "Aqua," what would that look like?



Question two:

I'm not a psychic, but I've always wanted to experience what it would feel like to be Alec Baldwin filming an episode of 30 Rock, is that possible?



Question three and four:

If a country music video and a metal video had a baby and that baby became a professional wrestler, what would that look like? Also, if I were to sing into a light bulb as though it was a microphone, would I get good sound quality?



(if you want to see more video, just click here!)

Tea Party With A Vengeance

Places online say that this is not a parody. I would believe it, as if it were a parody they wouldn't have tried to be so subtle about showing that same black guy 6 different times.

I don't understand teabaggers. At all. I've been trying to figure out what it must be like inside their brains:




You might notice health care is not in this mind at all, as it is simply too frightening to even think about









For a baseline for comparison, I've also added in an Average American/non-teabagger brain scan:





As you can see, the brain is functioning at a normal level.











Maybe it's wrong to mock Tea Baggers so much. But, honestly, they call themselves teabaggers. I mean, anti-bush protests didn't run around claiming "We are Bush Munchers!" As funny as that would have been. I hate to just flat out call them all idiots because thats what these same people were calling all the anti-bush protesters. But they seriously need to get a fucking handle on things. They are protesting higher taxes, yet taxes haven't been raised, and in this economy they probably won't get raised anyway. They oppose a health care bill that hasn't been passed yet and, in its current form, is basically a 2000 page long essay on why Americans should buy health insurance for themselves (and yes, I know it is far more complicated with that, but stick with me). When you really don't have an actually cause to rally around it just attracts a lot of fringe people who hate Obama and Democrats on principle. I'm all for a healthy amount of protest in any society, from whatever direction it is coming from. But these guys seriously need to stop making overly dramatic movies that open on helicopters flying over Washington and then move into dramatic reenactments starring morons who actually own powdered wigs.

America's Future

Sometimes I think that a vast majority of people in the US are completely incapable of forming logical thoughts, then I came across Amazons page for L. Ron Hubbards "Dianetics" (and I was only there because Reddit was saying they had deleted all the negative comments) and I came across something lower in the page that has once again restored my faith in America, or at least in English speaking countries:

Tags Customers Associate with This Product:


cult(574)
fraud(551)
junk science(473)
avoid at all costs(446)
insane(434)
evil(431)
crazy(427)
snake oil(411)
quackery(296)
scientology(189)
See all 236 tags...

Are we the future?

For many years I have pondered the age old question: How the hell can I get my beer cold when I am not near a freezer? The question has plagued the greatest minds in history. I believe Plato once said "Death is not the worst that can happen to men. Warm beer is."* This quote is especially pertinent when you realize that he would not have even had a cooler in those days.
Yet even after the dawn of a new Millennium we were left sitting on the beds of trucks drinking Luke warm beer. Oscar Wilde said "I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability," and clearly he was talking about advancements in alcohol chilling processes. But he was proven wrong, alas, when the Tempra Technology company solved the problem once and for all. Yes, a self-chilling beer can was invented. Miller was even planning on using it.
Yet it is late 2009 and I must still suffer as the world continues to sell me cans of beer that cannot simply cool themselves. Perhaps it is the overwhelming cost that each of the one-time use only cans would cost that have slowed them down, but I believe it was Ralph Waldo Emerson (because it was) that said "a man is usually more careful of his money than he is of his principles." And is not that the problem? Are we not so afraid to pay for the one thing in all the world that can truly cure all of societies woes? Would not the world be better if it had the wealth of cold beer at its finger tips? We have sacrificed who we are, what we want, what we need, to save a few dollars on a case of beer. How have we as a society gotten to a point where the only thing that we have ever desired is available right now and we are too blind to see it?
"Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy," Benjamin Franklin famously said. And he's right, because he's Benjamin Franklin, and he invented electricity. And if he had had a few more years he would have invented a self-cooling beer and he would have become our God, but he ran out of time, though it is true that it was his life long goal, ranking far above building a new country to design self cooling beer**. If he were alive today he'd be spinning in his grave knowing we aren't drinking from state of the art self-cooling cans. And he'd be right to.

"He was a wise man who invented beer." -Plato***

*This quote has been edited to suit my purposes
**This is not true
***Surprisingly, an actual quote

Funkadelic Freak Out

Surprisingly I actually got a job today. Working through AmeriCorp of all places. There was a time early in the year I was getting set to join AmeriCorp, then I had some problems getting my application in order and one thing lead to another and I got Fallout 3 and time sort of slipped away. But a week ago I spotted something online talking about AmeriCorp and I thought I should take another look at my application. Turned out the problem I was having before was one most likely due to human error (surprisingly not mine) and it had been fixed. So I threw together an impassioned motivational statement and got a couple interviews and then a job offer. It was that fucking easy.

I have spent probably a hundred hours of time on job sites, another couple hundred writing cover letters, filling out applications, revising my resume (usually with factual information) and I got about ten interviews. The only time in the last year I got a job offer was for the new Ace's stadium, a job I only got because I was willing to stand in lines with hundreds of other applicants for hours on end, essentially hoping to win the job lottery they had going on. And yes, I did quit that job quickly, but only because it was awful and I would have been lucky to make four hundred dollars a month.

Granted, I did sort of give up for a while there (again I reference Fallout 3), but still, the private sector has not been my friend. I want to believe that it is because the people in charge of hiring realized that I would manage to get by on my rugged good looks and insatiable charm and they should hire those people that needed the job more than me. I'd like to believe that. In reality I think that it has to do with the fact that people don't seem to trust me when they first meet me. I've often suspected people see me and think "naive farm boy" and then they talk to me and start to think I've got some sort of strange, dark secret that isolates me from the rest of humanity. As though some sort of darkness got into me too early. Therapists call that projecting, assuming you know what other people are thinking and that they are thinking largely negative things about you. It's just that I get the strong sense that most people simply don't trust me at first. After a while I think it sinks in that I am just a bit of a loner who doesn't spend a lot of time chatting with new people, but it takes longer than an interview to come to that conclusion.

I awoke fairly early this morning and was done with what I needed to do by around 11. So I had quite a bit of time. And I realized that I sort of hate having that much time during the day. At night I have no sense of obligation of things that I could be/should be doing. The night is mine, I feel most comfortable there, safe in my own little world without the rest of the world bearing down on me with a stream of endless possibilities. The night doesn't expect anything out of you. There is great comfort in that. A sense of freedom, an ability to let go of doubts and regrets and to simply exist.

On an unrelated note, I haven't really been able to write any fiction since I moved back to Reno. Something has been blocking me every time I sit down to try to do any work. I know that I have to try to keep writing, I have to try to keep going no matter what. I heard a writer once say, "If you are blocked on one thing, work on something else." I just haven't taken that to heart. I wonder sometimes if I ever will. I have a penchant for writing, but I lack discipline, I lack drive. And lately I think that I have just been convincing myself not to write. For what reason, I don't know. But even when I seem to get a start of something going I'll just arbitrarily stop and do something else. I always think blogging or journaling will help to get me going, but it never does seem to. The only reason seems to be that I really only care about writing about myself, and I am reluctant to fictionalize myself in such a personal way. But that is a hurtle that needs to be overcome. Confidence, that is what I am lacking. Perhaps as things in my life begin to start getting going again, as they might with AmeriCorp, I can build some more confidence again. Being an unemployed slacker takes its toll on my sense of creative talent. I find I get much more writing done when I have a lot of other things on my plate.

I really hope that everything is going to work out with AmeriCorp. I made a commitment of a year, over a year technically since I won't officially start for at least a month since I still have training to go to, to a program that I really don't know a ton about. I guess it boils down to the fact that I am just nervous to take finally take a step away from jobs that require me to routinely clean out grease traps. Although I'm not sure that is it either. Even though as far as I can tell I am officially in the program now, I still get a strong sense that it is going to be taken away from me. That for the first time in a very long time something has apparently gone the way I wanted it to and it feels as though fate is simply playing a cruel joke on me, dangling the lolly in front of my carriage, so to speak. Perhaps I am just pessimistic, but I feel that I have earned the right to be pessimistic at this point. When it comes to jobs and women, things always seem to have a way of backfiring on me as soon as I think it is finally working out.

The Dumbest Opening Ever

When I was in Fallon over the summer I broke a wheel off of my chair. It wasn't that big of a deal since there are like seven wheels on the chair, but now that its on carpet that one broken wheel seems to find its way to the front so that every time I scoot around it makes it feel like the chair is collapsing in on itself. I could get a new chair, or I could just keep complaining about this one. The thing is its not hard to fix, I just have to stand up and move the chair slightly. Still, I find it to be the most annoying thing ever. Well, the most annoying thing ever when I am sitting at my computer. And I haven't just run out of coffee or soda or whatever else I was drinking. So really, its only the most annoying thing ever a very slim percentage of the time. Which doesn't seem to make sense but it really does if you count the fact that nothing I've ever said has made complete sense into the equation. That doesn't make it better, I suppose, just natural.

This has been a lonely week for me. I mean, a lot of weeks are lonely, but this one was really sad as I couldn't even go out for a couple of hours a day to do something. No, I just sat and watched movies and read and slept. And the next day would be the same thing all over again. I hate getting the flu. I sit around thinking about how it isn't fair then I think, well, its sort of fair. I mean, I don't have a job right now so I'm not missing work, and I would have spent most of the time in the house doing about the same thing I was doing anyway. Still, it was a pain in the ass. Plus I couldn't just drink a few beers and pass out like I can do if I am feeling bored and alone when I am not sick, since I wasn't sure if alcohol wouldn't just make me vomit all over the place with a single sip.

Still, I have started to come to peace with my situation. I have left the house for about a half hour a day to run to the store or return movies and then come back and been all by myself again. I hadn't realized how much more peaceful it can be to be by yourself when you don't expect yourself to be running around doing other stuff. Because I didn't do that much else when I was feeling well, I mean, I did more stuff obviously, but not that much more. But I always felt like I should be doing a lot more. And that desire was making me sad. Now that I don't expect to be doing anything else with my time it has opened up something. I feel a little more at peace and I feel a little more confident about myself. So I am not a social person, I've never really tried to be. I've wanted to be at times, but at the end of the day I am really just happy to be alone most of the time. Sure I would like to have someone to share my life with, but I guess I will just have to wait a while for that to happen. I'll never be able to be completely at peace with being by myself so much of the time, I don't think, but this week has taught me a few lessons about how I can enjoy solitude better.

I keep coming back to this idea that I just need purpose. I've wanted to try a bunch of different things, hell, last night I was browsing flight schools for helicopter training. But I keep coming back to the fact that things just don't work the way I want them too and I eventually tire and give up on them. So I have a new wacky scheme, one that has been in my head for a long time and one that I can do at my own pace and from the comfort of my own home. Will this, at long last, give me a sense of purpose in life? We shall see. But I have decided that for the price of a pad of post-it note I can start working on this project, and I certainly have plenty of time, so I think I will at least try. I doubt I'll succeed, but, fuck it, I really, really think it might finally be my time to get my shit together and actually produce something.

So wish me luck random internet people (although most of you are probably people I know, if anyone still reads this thing). I shall once again try to do something that by all accounts I am not qualified to do, and, if history has anything to say about it, I will surely fail.