Frustration

The recent absence of any new posts by me isn't a reflection of my interests in politics. Actually, it is quite the opposite. I keep up with politics as much as I used to, and that is the reason I haven't posted.

I used to think that if I made logical arguments I could change something. I don't think I can though. At least, not the people who really need to be convinced. The people who despite any evidence, despite all reasoning, despite being proved incorrect time and time again will not change their views.

Ironically, it took the historic election of the first black president to make me more cynical than I have ever been.

Why? Because nothing has changed. Because the problems are too big, too vast.

And very wealthy and powerful men don't want these problems to be fixed. They would lose far too much money.

I've been looking at problems in the country differently lately. I've been looking at them with just money in mind. Wondering why laws that make no sense cannot be changed, why injustices that have existed for so long continue to exist. And the conclusion is always the same, it's because of money.

There is a lot more money to be made if Americans are scared. If they are scared of their neighbors, if they are scared of foreign sounding diseases, if they are afraid of the government.

Security systems, prescription pills, antibacterial soaps that will only make bacteria stronger, gun sales.
________

(I'm only really going to focus on one example right now, but I feel it makes my point well.)

Why rely on your immune system when there are so many products to replace it?

But once again, this makes sense. Killing all germs, trying to hard to prevent your body from doing its job will make your immune system weak. And once you actually get sick, your body will have very little defense.

(You are a bad parent if you allow your child to become sick, so be sure to sanitize everything. And believe me, the small cost of protecting your child from life will pay you back in the end.)

Which is great news for hospitals. The sicker Americans are, the more money that can be made.

Perhaps that is why our food is getting worse and worse each year. And the reason Americans are getting fatter and fatter.

Skinny healthy Americans are terribly average consumers. And remember how unpatritotic it is to be average. If you want to save this country, you must consume, and continue consuming, except more and more, like a drug addict.

And business operates on this model. This model that everything must grow. Growth! Growth! Never stopping, only growing. In a world of finite resources this would be terribly unreasonable. And selfish. And evil in face of the scarcity seen in so much of the world.

But over consumption is a virtue. It has been made into a virtue. Because if Americans don't feel guilty about eating too much, about using too many resources, about having too many children, well, the more profits there are to be made in the end.

Well, at least until the whole thing falls apart.

And, when it does, if there are any of us left, which there probably will be, well, I'm sure there will be excellent business opportunities.

Update:

I just found this article to help give me a bit of credibility here.

Freedom

Conservative's Freedom:

Being able to make an unlimited amount of money.
Being able to buy anything (gas-guzzling cars, guns, every competitor.)
Owning lots of land.
Earning an untaxed income.
Passing down huge untaxed estates. (Oh Sam, after Pa died, the gubbyment took the whole farm, we are going to have join the sex trade).
Using as much gasoline and power as wanted.
Keeping all traditional definitions intact. The meaning of words is very important to conservatives... unless that word is patriotism and the president's party changes.

CHOICE!!! Well, not when it comes to the choice of same-sex marriage, assisted suicide, recreational use of drugs (though both parties are very weak on this issue), or abortion. But! Conservatives want you to have the choice of...a doctor! Yeah! And, you get to pick which health insurance company gets to fuck you over when you, or family members, are dying!

Freedom of speech: Hey! That liberal attacked what (insert favorite conservative voice) said! He/she is trying to stifle his/her freedom of speech!

Look! Obama laughed at a joke about Rush Limbaugh dying. Which is far worse than Limbaugh's saying he hopes Obama fails! And criticizing that remark is a violation of free speech. (I don't give a shit that he said he hopes Obama fails, I just know that if a liberal would have said that, it would have been the end of his career)

Freedom of religion: TEACH CREA-I mean, INTELLIGENT DESIGN IN THE CLASSROOM! It's only fair! Equal time!

(Geroge H.W. Bush: No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.)

Them liberal activist judges took away our freedom of mandatory school prayer!

Freedom of Assembly: Bombing abortion clinics. Ok, that's not fair at all.

I'm tired, and that's all I can think of.

I need to start writing again.

Ideas are always popping into my mind, in such a form that they would be perfect to insert into a blog. I just never get around to it. Not sure why, as I love to write. I would say that I will make a better effort at writing blogs on a regular basis, but I probably won't.

Perhaps if I start to carry some paper around with me, I think that might help. Just write down whatever comes to mind. Whenever. That should help. That way I won't forget. I'll try it.

School is over, and so is my career at USI. I am pretty indifferent to my experience there. It served a purpose, which was to wake me out of my plans that I didn't really want for myself.

I still think positively about my former goal of becoming a teacher. I almost wish that I could actually do it. I don't think I would have done a very good job though.

I think I just wanted to get paid to talk about things that I thought were important all day. I didn't think I could actually change anything by doing this.

This was part of my plan I devised when I thought I knew how the rest of my life would unfold.

When I didn't have an uncertain future. I had things I could count on, I had an easy path with no mystery. Nothing in my future was hinging on chance. It was based on love, and working around that love to accommodate our hopes and dreams.

As soon as that certainty and love faded, so did a lot of my plans for the future.

One day, about half way into my first college semester, I decided I didn't want to go to USI anymore. I didn't want to be a teacher anymore. I decided, after a few hours of browsing universities, that I would go to Indiana University. I had always wanted to go there anyway, I just hadn't mostly because I thought I was in love.

It amazes me when I think back, when I remember who I was and what I thought and believed just how wrong I was about everything.

I'm sure that will continue happening. Hell, I'm 19. I'm pretty sure anyone who reads this is young as well. None of us have any idea what we are talking about.

So, I decided to major in political science. And then I decided to major in philosophy. Not sure if I am going to law school, but I am most likely going to go to graduate school.

I am working out, trying to lose some weight before I move to Bloomington. I am doing this out of the same hope as usual. The great motivator of sex. That isn't the only reason, but that is the funniest to say right now.

I hope I can actually stick with it this time. I have failed every other time I have tried.

I hope I can actually stick with writing this time. I have also failed at that, though I did have a great streak going. However, I do look at some of the earliest posts on this blog and cringe. How quickly my thoughts evolve nowadays.

I just posted this on Ian's wall, and I thought I should make a blog of it.

I thought of the perfect role for me if I do decide to come to International Day. I'll come dressed as a hobo, and sleep under the table with newspapers covering my body.

Fits in with last year as well, since I was the successful business man living the American dream. The person that we are taught to aspire to. I guess it turns out that the American dream was just an advertising pitch. It was a right wing booth, and I was the embodiment of the success the right says everyone is capable of achieving.

This year we live in a blue state, and I become the cost of the American dream. Sure, many people have found it, but at what cost? Not everyone can afford home ownership. Not the people Americans can now buy cheap food from at Walmart. Maybe they could have before that giant corporation closed the store they owned. Perhaps I was one of the many who was promised a home with a mortgage I could afford.

Who could blame me? I had been taught that this was my goal in life. To own a home, to raise a family. Sure, I wasn't born rich and I wasn't particularity bright, but I was an American, this is what was owed to me!

Then the bubble popped, I lost my shitty job, and the bank foreclosed. Now I am homeless and I live under a table at the American Booth. A cost of those living this dream. A cost of those who teach us it is possible. And a cost of those who profit from continuing this lie.

But... maybe this is all too deep for a bunch of third graders. I'll just play it for laughs.

Something for you theocrats to get angry about.

And something that I take great pleasure in. Though, I realize it wasn't intentional, this is a great sign of things to come.

Well, let me back up a bit. Some silly people thought that because John Roberts screwed up the oath, Obama wasn't really president.

Now, he was president. The people who thought he wasn't president are ignorant of what our constitution says and still suffering from sore loser syndrome (see: OBAMA ISN'T A CITIZEN OMGZ). Sure, the oath for the Presidency is in the constitution. It isn't relevant anymore though. See, back during the great depression, everyone was getting really impatient. They wanted to get rid of Hoover, but they were stuck with him until March. They had to wait a long five months after the landslide election before FDR could take office. They didn't like that. So, they passed the 20th Amendment.

Section one says

"The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3d day of January, of the years in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been ratified; and the terms of their successors shall then begin"

So, oath or not, Obama was president at noon.

But, for whatever reason (most likely to shut up the paranoid right) Obama and Roberts decided to try it again.

BUT ALAS THERE WAS NO BIBLE!!

NO BIBLE AT THE SWEARING IN.

GLENN BECK IMMEDIATELY EXPLODED.

I, for one, am incredibly happy that damned work of fiction wasn't included in swearing in my President. Perhaps this will be a far more moral administration, after all, Obama didn't use an evil book written about a murderous desert god to start his administration.

Glenn Beck then began to lie on Fox News. He stated that Obama is the first president EVA to not use a bible! Well, he needs to hire new researchers. From Thinkprogress.org:

"Beck is simply wrong. As Slate recently reported, official records kept by the Architect of the Capitol show that Teddy Roosevelt did not use a Bible in 1901; and Lyndon Johnson is rumored to have used “a Catholic missal aboard Air Force One after Kennedy’s assassination.” According to his own letters, John Quincy Adams placed his hand on a constitutional law book rather than the Bible."

Geez, I wish Bush would have placed his hand on a constitutional law book... or at least I wish he would have read the Constitution at some point. That's besides the point.

Before President John Tyler, there is no evidence any presidents used a bible to be sworn in. Those damn heathens.

Well, sorry kiddos, but your dream of an American theocracy is going to have to wait for at least four more years. Sarah Palin could usher in a new era of a government ruled by a nonexistent character!

Palin '12! Palin '12! Palin '12! Palin '12! Palin '12! Palin '12! Palin '12!

No, No! Palin/Jindal '12!

Down with reason, up with BABIES!!

Nervous and Irrational

My heart rate begins to increase, my breathing slows, and my chest feels tight. I begin to lose the ability to focus, and I feel as though I am no longer in control of my body. I bump into things, begin to worry about everything that comes out of my mouth. I stumble on words, I say almost nonsensical things.

Obviously, I am nervous.

The situations in which this nervousness occurs is almost random. I am hit with waves of nervousness when I have no reason to be. I get the obvious public speaking nervousness, but that I can cope with. It's the social nervousness that I hate.

Just today, I became incredibly nervous when talking to someone I've known for three years, I ran into a door, I could barely stand still, I could barely breath.

This helps contribute to my occasional social awkwardness. Occasionally, when someone I know (most likely a cute girl) walks up to talk to me, I lose all complete ability to form complete sentences, and lose my extensive vocabulary, reduced to only the simplest words and phrases.

After these encounters, I often replay them in my mind over and over again, cringing over the stupid things I said.

Even when I know I am going to see someone I am usually nervous around, I total screw it up. I plan out everything I am going to say, and insert what I think they will say in response. Though, in practice, I flub everything.

The worst thing though is when I think of a clever joke for the situation, and I screw up the timing/delivery/the whole damn thing. That's when I really get mad at myself. Not only did I look like a complete fool, but I screwed up my chance to appear witty, humorous, and smart.

The amount of people that must think I am a moron is most likely high. I do a good job of portraying myself as such. I have actually used that to my advantage at work lately, trying to make customers think I am dumb so they will stop asking me questions. It's wonderful, I can clean the lobby at work, think about some deep philosophical matter/my last awkward social situation/how much I hate my job, and a customer can walk up and ask me a question, and I can mutter some unsatisfactory response, and they will give up.

___________

When I go to shop somewhere, I know what I want, usually. And, I know where it is. So, I will walk to that aisle, and... oh no. Someone is already in that aisle, right where I need to look. So what do I do?

I walk around until they leave. Yep, that is my irrational response. I just can't stand looking for what I want at a bookstore with some guy standing right next to me. I always imagine that person judging my selection of literature, or something. I'm not sure what I imagine. I just know that I can't do it. Just like I can't pee if there is someone else in the restroom, I can't browse with someone in the same aisle.

It gets bad too. Once, when I went to a bookstore wanting to buy a graphic novel (I ended up buying Blankets, which I cannot recommend highly enough), I saw someone in that aisle. I had just started my graphic novel reading, which meant I definitely couldn't search for something with someone hovering over my shoulder. I waited twenty minutes for this guy to leave. Seriously, I wandered around for twenty minutes, until this guy left the aisle. I was pretty ashamed, I have to tell you.

_____

More Soon. No worries.

Also, to mention, the other blog is slow to update. Not because of lack of ideas, but mostly lack of time. It has also been difficult to try and write what I've been wanting to write. Not sure why. But, I will relaunch it soon, make it a little different. I have lots of ideas, I just don't know how to express them right now.

The Divine Inspiration of a Poor Tree Farmer

This is the rough draft I submitted for class. We just had to write a short story. I don't think it's very good, but I like it anyway. I certainly hope to improve my style, but this is my first real attempt.

With two hundred thousand people starring at me and the television cameras pointed at my face, I began to realize that I was in way over my head. Many people find themselves wondering “How did I get here”, not me; I know how I got here, and who got me here. The person, if you can call Him a person, was God, who actually turned out to be a jerk.

Listen: Just a few months ago, I was just a simple farmer… a tree farmer and a pretty bad one at that. I was poor; I hadn’t planned out my finances very well. I hadn’t anticipated that trees would take so long to grow. It’s not as if I knew much about tree farming when I started, my parents weren’t tree farmers, and there were no tree farming courses at my college. These are things you must find out first hand! Sure, I could have asked a tree farmer, but how many tree farmers do you know? None. Except for me, I suppose, but I digress. My point is that I am poor. I’m still paying off my college loans. If you are wondering, I received a degree in philosophy and then decided that life was absurd and pointless. As a result of this decision, I choose to pick the stupidest profession I could think of merely to entertain myself in some weird way.

So, there I was, in the middle of the winter, in my shack next to my forest, eating bark. It’s not so bad; you get lots of fiber which makes you very regular. This may be more information than you want, but I could probably set a clock to my bowl movements. Anyway, there I was, eating my bark, drinking my rainwater, and trying to figure out where my life went wrong. In the middle of my dinner, I was interrupted by this incredibly bright light outside my shack. At first, I thought that my forest was ablaze, or that I was having an acid flashback. I opened the door of my home, and immediately shut my eyes tight and fell to the ground. It felt as if my eyes had just burst into flame, and I felt heat all over my body. Then, I heard “Oh stand up you pathetic imbecile”. The person who said it had a very deep voice, it sounded like James Earl Jones had just eaten peanut butter. I stood up, and opened my eyes again. It still hurt a lot, but I could see what was emanating the light. I immediately realized what was going on, and smacked my hand against my forehead. I softly said “Oh no…”

“What? What is it, why do you say, oh no?” wondered the glowing white being

“Well, you see... I’m an atheist, so, I’m kind of committed to thinking you don’t exist. This kind of shatters my whole world view”

“Yes, those who do not believe are fools”

“Or maybe… or maybe I am just crazy, yeah, I think I must be crazy. I must have cabin fever or something, I mean, I haven’t seen another human being in over five years, I haven’t been off this farm for ten… My diet consists of bark and bugs I find. Yeah, I am just delirious.”

“No, you are not. I am the Lord, your god”

“No… try; I am the Lord, your hallucination. Listen, as long as you are just in my mind, could you turn off the whole bright light thing, I get the point, you are divine”

And, immediately, the light dimmed. I could see that this God fellow was just white humanoid, devoid of any unique characteristics. He looked like a male mannequin.

“Alright, if you are this God-thing, then, what do you want with me?”

“Well, I like picking poor, destitute, chemically imbalanced men to be my prophets. So, you are it”

“Uh, so, what do you want to tell me about life? What information would you like me to relay to the human race? A message of kindness and compassion? A blistery fire and brimstone sermon? That it’s cool to be gay now? I hope it’s something exciting.”

“Nothing like that, I just want you to tell the human race that I am leaving to create a new galaxy, that this one has began to bore me, and that you are all on your own now”

“That’s kind of depressing. But people will never believe me, and they will probably get mad if I start saying things like that, I’ll get stoned, like, Old Testament style.”

“No worries, I no longer care about the fate of this world, so I will just give you the power to perform miracles… trivial miracles. Yes…yes… and I want you to use your new powers to prove that you are a prophet of God, and then tell them I am leaving”

“Uh, if you are leaving, why do you care if we know or not?”

“Well, there are a lot of people who have invested a lot of time and money in worshipping me, and I feel as though I owe them a goodbye, though, I don’t want to get too personal, so, you are it”

And He was gone. The human race was alone in the universe. I didn’t really care too much, but I knew some people would be pretty sore about it. I had a long few months ahead of me. I had no idea where to start. I used my new found powers to conjure myself some money, and bought a computer. With my new found access to the internet, I needed to figure out a way to make myself famous. After searching around for a while, I decided that making a video of myself doing something miraculous and posting it on a popular video website would be a good start. So, I bought a video camera, and sought out someone to perform a trivial miracle on. I began walking around, changing people’s hair colors, turning diet soda into regular soda, bringing road kill back to life, and flipping light switches from across the room. I posted my video and called it “God Sent Me to Impress You with My Skillz”

Comments were mostly negative. Well, they were all negative, but some were negative in a nice way. Some said awful things about me and my mother, and a few compared me to Hitler for some reason. I didn’t think that was appropriate at all. I knew that this was no way to get famous, so I had to use my miracle powers to do it. I changed all the negative comments to glowing reviews, and added about five million views to my video. I went outside to my forest, conjured a hammock, and awaited the arrival of the major news corporations.

I was awoken by somebody poking me. I opened my eyes, and saw what I knew I would. There were cameras set up all around me, and a man in a nice suit was warming up for our interview. I walked up to him, and told him that I was sent by God to deliver a message to mankind, and that I was going to do it when he interviewed me. He loved the idea, but this guy walked up to me from the news van. “No, that won’t work” the man said.

“What? Why not?”

“Listen, if people buy this whole sent from God thing, it has huge potential, you could have millions of followers, make a fortune! And, we want to be there every step of the way. How about a television show? Anything you want! Just impress people in this interview, and word will spread. Come up with some phony baloney advice, we will have you publish some self-help book, and presto, we are all a lot richer.”

“I don’t have any good advice… I mean, I’m a tree farmer living in a shack eating bark, I don’t have anything to say… well, other than the whole message from God thing.”

“Don’t worry about that, we will make it all up for you, you will just have to read what we tell you to read, and we will be fine. You have these little magic tricks, and we have all the advice you need to make us all rich. And, you can even deliver your little message from God, provided it won’t offend anyone.”

“Well… alright, I won’t spill the beans just yet.”

And that is what started this whole crazy spiral of press, money, orgies, drugs, books, church, and television appearances that have consumed my life for the last few months. My popularity was finally starting to dwindle, so my agent told me that it was time to deliver the whole message from God. The only problem was I couldn’t really remember it that well. Two months of sniffing the finest glue in the world will cause you to forget some things. I couldn’t tell anyone that though, so I just figured that it would come back to me.

So, that is how I got to be on that stage, in front of the whole world. Well, at least the people with televisions, the half of the world that is starving to death has no idea all this stupid stuff is going on, but everyone else was watching me. It was time to speak.

“Uh… Hello” I began, feeling uncertain of myself. I then told my life story, up to when God visited me. I continued “When God visited me, well; He had nothing but nice things to say… He wanted you all to know that He was proud of you all, and that you should give yourselves nice pats on the back… Oh! And He also wanted you all to know He existed, so, that’s cool, I guess… I know there was something else… about him going on a vacation or something…”

At this point, people started to lose their patience, they started to leave and boo. I was thinking that I was losing them, and God was going to be mad… and that’s when I remembered.

“Oh, yeah! That’s right, I remember now. God wanted to let you all know that he is leaving our universe! He is going to start a new one… he got bored or something. Geez, that blows huh? I forgot how depressing that was… but, hey, now that He’s out of the picture, we can party and stuff right? Like all the time?”

People kept leaving, they didn’t want my message from God, they didn’t believe me, they were angry at me for even suggesting such a thing. Didn’t God realize that people wouldn’t believe me? That they wouldn’t want to accept what I had to say? I went back to my shack in disgrace, and found my shack and forest burned to the ground. All my worldly possessions were gone. And so were my powers. God’s message went unheard, and people went on living just as they had before. All of their prayers went unanswered. No one noticed that God was gone… except me. For those months, I had something to believe in, that what God told me was true, and that I could accomplish His mission. He was wrong, and I was nobody again. I had less than when I started.

I had the memories though. I did have a good time doing all of those things. Perhaps I couldn’t have done them without my trivial miracle powers, but, I did them all the same. I still thought life was absurd, but I no longer cared if it was pointless or not. I just wanted to have fun, to enjoy life. So, I grabbed some bark off of one of my remaining trees, and started walking. I didn’t know where I was going, or what I was going to do, but I was going to go and do something. And I was going to enjoy it. Or, I wasn’t, but I would have those memories. And in the end, that is all anyone ever has