My Playlist for the end of 2007

We watch the ball drop on another year at the homestead here in the Bozone MSU campus. As always, I intend to stay up all night and have an evening of fighting myself over having another year passed. Personally, my life seems to pull itself away from those I love and that causes stress. I am tired as always.

Tonight I heard something again, but for the first time, it made sense. My wife was talking to her mother on the phone and mentioned something that was so profound that it was hidden in the monotony of every day speech. Her words were "I was going to clean the house... but I'm just too tired to even try." Something I have heard from her many times, but until today, it seemed to be conjecture about the day. To see it more clearly was an excuse to be comfortable.

Well, if anyone has read my blog before, one can see I am always tired. Perhaps its the poor diet of crap and soda that makes me sluggish. Perhaps it is the extra half of a full grown person I have in my stomach. Perhaps it is the lack of exercise that I get in an average day. Perhaps it is the crash from sugar and caffeine. Or perhaps I;m a lazy fat ass fxxx who should've died 21 years ago from a severe Asthma attack that made my lips turn blue until some fool gave me a remedy in the emergency room... I think that is how it happened, I'll have to ask my mother about the details. Perhaps I should've died when my friend crashed his fathers Nissan into two mailboxes. Maybe I should've died when I made a new driveway with my Chevy Corsica and a barbwire fence looped around the front of my bumper. Maybe I should've bit it when i wrecked into the sod farm sign next to the driveway that i made for that person on the corner. They needed the Jaws O' Life to get me out of that one. And yet I persist. A tired mass of shxx that apparently doesn't pull his weight enough around the house and deserves to be teased by breaks "where I don't have to lift a finger." Like I lift a finger anyway.

If we could have a dog in our apartment, we would have a dog house. If we had a dog house, I would be in it, and if I were in the dog house, Miss Pearl would make sure I was stuck in it with all 300 pounds of me and set it ablaze like the Fourth of July. So, in short, moving to a place that allows pets would bring me that much closer to having a patriotic barbecue of axxHxxx that is so well done the dog gets a new house and a char broiled table scrap of butt cheek. I have spoken my opinion and I forgot that being in a relationship is like being in AA. "Hi, my name is Ryan (Everybody: Hi, Ryan) and I... gulp... am a husband (low clapping) It has been 4 months since my last decision. I had a moment how ever, when I had an opinion or two and failed to call a sponsor to talk myself down until the urge subsided. The doghouse is very small and hot, especially when my wife pours a bag of Kingsford over the kindling and barricades the door shut. The dog will be fed however. Thank you." The free coffee gets distributed, I hug a fat man's bitchtits and remain the Instamatic husband who seems to do things to himself without his knowledge.

So, I've been listening to Linkin Park tonight. I always can go to a few choice songs on Meteora and they epitomize my feelings about things. The lyrics are raw, simple, and colloquial and they match my spirit on this foul night. I have four songs looping currently in a particular order that seems to speak to me more than a million Tolstoy or Dostoevsky novels ever could.


Linkin park - somewhere i belong

Tom | MySpace Video

The first song is an obvious angst song. It starts with an inverted acoustic guitar riff, adds a pulsing musical osstinato and bursts with a harsh forte of sound. It dies and starts the vocals:

When this began,
I had nothing to say, and I'd
get lost in the nothingness inside of me,
I was confused,
then I let it all out to find that I'm not
the only person with things of mine
Inside of me
But all that they can see is the words revealed
It's the only real thing that I've got left to feel
Nothing to lose
Just stop, Hollow and alone
The fault is my own, the fault is my own

(and then, My prayer, not to god, but to my heart bearer)
I want to heal, I want to feel,
what I thought was never real
I want let go of the pain I've felt so long...
...and find somewhere I belong

I think that this part is played in her head everyday, but she doesn't know the song

've got nothing to say,
I can't believe I didn't fall
right onto my face
I was confused
Looking everywhere only to find
That it's not the way I had imagined it all in my mind
So what am I?
do I have the negativity
cus I cant justify the way everyone is looking at me?
Nothing to lose
Nothing to gain, hollow and alone
and the fault is my own and the fault is my own.
I
will never know
myself until I do this on my own
and I will never feel
anything else until my wounds are healed
I will not repay
anything til I break away from me
(and the part that I wish she would hold)
I WILL break away, and find myself...







This song, for a long time, explained my faith in God for a while, and it brings me to a reflective state.

In the beginning of my anagnorisis to the nature of God that made sense to me, this song crystallized what I was feeling.

the refrain especially
...Everyone is so far away from me...
trying not to break, but I'm tired of this deceit, every time I try to make myself get back up on my feet, all I think about is this, and the tiring time between and how trying to put my trust in you just takes so much out of me.

I used to yell the bridge in my car at the top of my lungs just to see if God himself would be present to catch my plea for his evidence. It's not only a matter of getting God to come out, I found, but it was by searching for him that brought me to where he was... a lesson about God's nature I never forgot.




This song brings us to the past three weeks events. This is my song to her at this point. the first verse was parallel to what I told her a couple of days ago, which has kept me in the burning dog house.

"Tired of being what you want me to be!
feeling so faithless, lost under the surface.
don't know what you're expecting of me.
but under the pressure... I'm caught in the undertow"

then Mrs. Pearl replied
"every step that I take is another mistake to you"

then I wanted to say it. I really did want to explain the theory I have been making in my off time from Lilas and Life. We got the house clean at one point this break. It was nice. However, at that point, the requests and demands to keep the house in working order, I felt, fell squarely on my shoulders. I think that after all this time, she still has no faith in herself to keep what she has started going. That a lack of modivation would keep her in her gloomy disposition. As a result, she delegates these tasks to me, because she knows that there is a better chance for me to finish them than her own lowly ability. She starts to obsess about the details, squeezing the last bit of order out of the way things are, so that she can cling on to the happiness of cleanliness. There are also ficticious appearances of people who are spying on us apperently. I think that if she feels that she can run her own home, she can finally prove to "everybody" that she is worthwile. She tries to validate herself with works and not faith. When she gets overwhelmed, she gets pushy with the nitpicky details, risking aggrivation and hypocracy. I wish I could explain that she is a beautiful woman who just needs to see that her clay pearl is the most valuable thing in my life, and I wouldn't hock it for twice the money to get it back from the guy I hocked it to. having those moments without it while I bought it back would last too long and be torture. But I can't prove that to her, that is a path she must take on her own.

"Cant you see that you are smothering me?
Holding too tightly, afraid you will lose control,
cus everything that you thought I could be
is falling apart, right in front of you.

I know that I might end up failing to,
but I know, that you are just like me with someone
dissapointed in you."

My list is long with people I have failed to take a bullet for, and people who I accidentally shot. Trust me, I've disappointed people. and so have you.



I hope that this statement is not a resolution. I made a resolution to never make a newyears resolution starting the next year when I was 14. I didn't want to change because of guilt, but go a bit deeper and find why I feel guilty. Change the thing that causes the guilt, not be changed by the guilt. That is the difference between surviving cancer of the emotions and succumbing to it.
but anyway. I'll be up until new years starting my plan to keep the house clean. It's an issue of disciplining myself to clean the house when I don't want to. If I wait until I want to; if I wait until Motivation strikes, It will be like standing on stairs waiting for someone to push me down them. In the end you could've sucked it up, walked down the stairs and saved yourself some time in traction.
Madame Pearl has had on a white board in our living room three weeks of planning that she was compulsed to write by that need to bolt down her fleeting happiness. It's like eating your feelings only its with tables and graphs instead of cheesecake. Basically, she gave herself a high pressure ultimatum that caused a lot of stress and strife, and I doubt she is still following it. here is my new solution. I wrote a new three week schedule on the smaller white board on the fridge complete with algebra representation of our house:

this is our house if it was a messy, unresolved equation.

3X^2+ab-30+c=c+ab-x^2+19

week one, solve for zero:
This means just get the house CLEAN! There is a difference between CLEAN and ORGANIZED. I believe the mistress Pearl has been biting of more than she can chew by trying to solve this equation in it's current state. So, I'm starting with the office, and moving across the house. any papers I'm basically organizing into school, music, money, other and trash. Any other Items I plan to place into homogeneous piles of crap and keep them in neat stacks for week two. I'm going to be done with the whole house in a week and as a requirement for that, I have to keep the upkeep going on the house as well. Mrs. P can put in her two cents in the project of course, but unfortunately, I can't wait for her to get the complicated equation to fit into a logical sequence, so I'm just going to set the whole damn thing to zero and simplify it. Sorry honey, I can't wait for you anymore.
After one groups all the crap into homogeneous piles:

3X^2+x^2-30-19+ab-ab+c-c=-x^2+x^2+19-19+ab-ab+c-c

And simplifies everything back to zero:

3X^2+x^2-30-19+ab-ab+c-c=0

upon consolidating and making the house presentable, not just neat, the equation comes to:

4x^2-49=0

Week 2: This is when we can finally organize this stuff. We will look through the piles, and organize anything that is out of place, factor out what we don't need, and then simplify everything into logical patterns. In other words, now that the house has a starting point, we can then go into the things that make everything fall apart every semester.

See our newly zeroed out house become a factored quadradic.
(2x+7)(2x-7)=0

this makes this so easy. Once we start at zero we can make a better system of keeping the sides resolved besides just panicking about the mess. we have a week to put the equation of the apartment to this point.

week 3: solution! the answer to the whole thing is to work when we are tired. Both of us hate this concept because we both have parents who were chained to being busy, out of necessity, and we both have that kind of resentment towards that kind of neglect, even if it was for our livelihood. It also means that we have to be grown-ups and that is a benchmark that we refuse to accept for some reason. For me, it means that the ideas that plague me at night will have to simply be choked down for the sake of the whole and for my wife, it means that she may not have a chance to be an adolescent adult. Her mother saw to it that she played mom to her own little brother and so she didn't get more than a month of youthful reckless abandonment... (which was rekindled a year after that month and my daughter was born.) and I hoped that she would get to be more social, once again, I'll take another bullet and keep her off of my shot-on-my-watch list. Go be a girl, be forlorn and sad. Go have friends, go spend money, just come back and act your age so I don't have to carry us both. Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow will die.

That's why this song is the last one. I'm breaking the habit of letting the house fall to hell. "I don't want to be the one the battles always choose, but inside I realize that I am the one confused, cus i don't know what's worth fighting for, or why I have to scream, but now I have some clarity to show you what I mean, I don't know how I got this way, I'll never be alright(or rested for the rest of my life) so I'm breaking the habit tonight. happy new year. It's the first. I've got a lot to do tonight. farewell.

The Plight of Sir Theodore Ruxbin

since September 2004, I have had one job... That is to say, I have had many jobs, but one occupation. I have lived to be the shining armor clad knight that draws his sword and sacrifices his own life for the sake of those he loves. My battle with the great demons and creatures, dragons and harpies, Gods and armies of the underworld is never ceasing. My kingdom is expanding, and all is well, but I am constantly fighting all of the dark forces of evil to keep it so. At home, I must remain the strong tower that all crowd around for protection and provision. When I can strip off of the helmet, cuirass, pauldrons, grieves, Gauntlets, boots, chain mail, crucifix, and belt with my bastard sword, I still have to pour out my blood upon the altar of the kingdom's prosperity, I still martyr myself in the name of honor, chivalry, valor, ethics, and family. I cannot be a man who rests, but instead be the comfort of all in the province of my service. I protect queen and country. after I strip down the armor, I remain a feral animal. A pelt stuffed with cotton and given marbles in his eye sockets, stitches instead of a mouth, no fingers, no toes, and a posterior that always flat, so that the stubby appendages always open ready to comfort the poor defended royalty in the tower. When I speak, I say only the things the tape dictates. "Everything is well. We'll be fine." And then pop! the tape is done, the princess pulls the cassette from where my manhood should be and plays it over again until, finally satisfied with her level of comfort, she sleeps and so must I now place the facade of the warrior on my shoulders, dawn my helmet, cuirass, pauldrons, grieves, Gauntlets, boots, chain mail, crucifix, and belt with my bastard sword and gallop off to fight the powers of darkness. I watch the sun rise, for I watched it set and failed to rest, and so such beauty is truly hideous in the eyes of those who wished that they be unconscious before this event occurs. I get sloppy in my battles with this darkness and it's minions and now I lie here, tired, vomiting blood and magnetic tape that has jammed in the heads and is spilling from my body like the intestines of the second best samurai in a duel. The cascade of cassette tape is almost perfuse and caught on thorns and demon claws. the cassette doesn't get flipped. No beep to tell me to change the page, no proceed to side b, "Everything is F... sf...sf...sf...sf..Ie..Ie..Ie" Grinding and mashing ensues and then... hiss, the tape is no more.

Perhaps it is all for the best... Maybe the princess might have to face the demons alone, instead of waiting for her talking teddy to strap on his glinting armaments and go gallivanting off into the night... Perhaps the sleeping beauty should get up off of her deathbed, strap on her own armor, and strike the heart of the black with her loyal bruin soldier, cut the darkness with him instead of waiting for him to cut both of their paths. There is no more time to let Snow White apple shop. Now is not the time to wonder what karat of gold that straw gets spun into before that short freaky bastard whose skin is old and still takes your child... now is not the time to tell the poor prince that you must look for Altoids before he gets his green exchanged for a body again. Finally now is not the time to wait for prince charming to wake you up... chances are, prince charming is dead, lying in a puddle of bile and jammed cassette. Too late for the poor bastard. He's getting eaten by the demons and the dragons, as well as the ravens and the vultures. The least you could do is die next to your plush hero while you both don't have a chance.

What's worse, sometimes, carrying his magnetic guts in his arms, the all singing and dancing bear crawls in. He lands on his butt, unable to see, speak or be dexterous, for he was mutilated long before the demons came, for the push bear never had fingers, toes, eyes, or a mouth. He just lies there. The Princess pushes play, and only the sound of gears grinding speakers hissing, and the crackle of tape getting jammed and spewed out of the body greets her needy ears. She tells the bear that he speaks the evil tongue of the monsters, that all she needs is a good word, that it will all be alright, it will be fine,
"...and you can't even help me here. Won't anyone help me!?! You can't, no one can... I hate you and your marble eyes, your stitched mouth, your fingerless paws and toeless legs. I hate your overalls. I hate your hat. I hate the way you never fight for me, and all you want is to be petted, when something so simple as telling me "it is okay" is all I want. Every night that is all I want. And for you to do it until it is so. that is all I want."

The princess then leaves the teddy bear's sword on the table as she runs defenseless into her tower, braids her hair, and waits for the witch to request to hang from the braids to gain access to the princess's heart, right in sword range. Now is not the time to braid, but to take the sword that the bear has left, give herself a makeover, and remove the rope that the evil monsters need to get to her... and for god sake mourn the evisceration of your once mighty knight and best friend in trouble. Or did she not see the brown strips hanging out of the armor? Did you not see the fur ragged out of the helmet? Did you not see the marbles roll down the cuirass and on to the floor. His mouth is open, but cotton and blood, not comfort and words leave his newly opened face. He dies on the floor, in the castle, the only place where he was safe. He died, princess. Wake up yourself... No one else can... then fight! Stop crying! There will be time to cry after the demons are slain! There is too much to do to for anyone to feel sorry about herself. There is too much to rampart without you worrying about fitting it all in... THERE IS TOO MUCH TO DO TO ALLOW FOR WORRY ABOUT WHAT TO DO. The bear longs to speak, but all he can say is what the tape does, and the tape is jammed, stretched out and broken, tangled in the demon's claws and carrion bird beaks. He tried to say it would be okay, but the tape is jammed, falling out of his body. All he could do was be shunned for all that he was... sired in September 2004, the defender of queen and kingdom, the comforter of the needy, the killer of evil, and now, a broken toy lying on the ground... Now is not the time

All your love is missing is hate

I was hanging with my friend a while ago at his place eating grilled cheese and tomato soup. Most people would associate the food with childhood, but for me, I never had a point in my childhood where I had such a combo. My grilled cheese was always served with pear halves and I never had tomato soup until I was twenty.

Anyway, my friend has an amazing impediment. He cannot make grilled cheese. It's an ailment likened unto Derik Zoolander's left turn disorder. Try as he might, he just cannot do it. His girlfriend had to boot him out of the kitchenette and save the would be Dorito flavored charcoal bits, earning him beration and harassment of the culinary sort. The cute chattiness and whimsical insults made the scene endearing as she scraped the leftover cheese flakes from the pan into the garbage and handed me a plate with a delectable trinkets of flavor. During the serving, my friend looks at me and says "Don't we act like a married couple?"

I thought about it. I looked at it. I compared my marriage to the cute little exchange I just saw, and felt as tough there was something missing. there was a piece that Karen and I have that seems to make us, for a lack of a better term, less whimsical, yet stronger...

"I don't see enough hate," I said. This brought a strange look from the two of them to me. I could see the narrative "Hate... Is he telling us a joke? Isn't hate the opposite of love? Huh? Did we spike the tomato soup? He might not be used to all the Lycopene. We've been brought up with this stuff, he's been eating tomato soup for only 4 years now, he might be getting drunk.

"I'm serious" I said, "you need more hate I think." An uncomfortable chuckle emerged from the two of them.

HATE! yes hate. A marriage is strengthened by hate! Now let me explain: If everyday, day in day out, a couple is constantly enthralled in constant bliss, that means only one thing... They are lining to each other. even entropy dictates that nothing is truly constant, thus flux is always occurring in everything in the fractal of life. Therefore, to be happy all the time, is impossible. As Dennis Leary once said, "Happiness comes in small doses, it's a chocolate chip cookie, a cigarette, or a 5 second orgasm: you cum, you smoke, you eat the F*****g cookie and shut the F*** up!" Being constantly happy would in essence be an IV drip of those small doses, and more work that it would be worth. Bottom line: Bad days happen! Bad days happen more than good! Bad days are a constant! And given the chance of there being one day a week that is good... a generous assumption to be sure, that is one day a week for two people that is good. Odds are 1 in 7 that a married couple will have the same good day (86% chance of failure) and thus the good day will be destroyed by the bad day, and lets not forget the 6 bad days that overlap, giving two bad days for the price of one most days. Those are grounds to snap. explode, scream, swear, throw things, spit, splash, tear, dismantle, set up sleeping bags, make hotel arrangements, wash the blood from your gashed, vacuum dented forehead, rinse and repeat at least 6 times a week. This is only the natural progression of the entropic world. Anyone who pretends that a world like that is happy all the time is being dishonest.

By hate, I'm not talking about disdain, or angst, or disgust... all of which are reasons not to get married. I'm instead talking about hate in terms of honesty. Many would argue that honesty is what a marriage should be based on. I would take a stronger stance on that and say that pure honesty is a most powerful force in the human social world and that it must be tamed and used in order to be able to even consider marriage. To be honest with ones self is most vital. To know ones own weakness, to know the limits of ones strengths, to understand that despite the fact you might be right in the argument, the fight will continue until you are not, and to know that being wrong is not necessarily incorrect, though your weakness is exposed, is but scratching that surface of honesty's submission.

One must be comfortable with ones honest self to then be able to be honest with a partner. Once you do get married, You find that honesty with money and time becomes the next big hurdle that must be jumped. Many people would say that after you get married, it becomes about money. I say that it becomes about time and money. Money, by my own definition, is an object that has no worth unless it is exchanged for something else. Money is also an arbitrary value placed on a man's time and effort. T$=Money(rnd(infinity)). There is a relationship of time and money that is expressed in, more or less, the fact that one sacrifices time to make money. the honesty comes with what we sacrifice our money on. Video Games, Movies, Accent Clothes, Restaurant Food, these things that bring single people pleasure, now brings strife to the couple and to be honest that these things are a waste would clear up a lot of pain. But to change is to acknowledge in some way that the old way we were was wrong, and that attacks pride. Pride can be one of the biggest nails in the coffin of honesty, and as a result, the level of anger and hate gets pushed to the bottom of the pile serves as an agitator, churning other things into the top of the slurry, and making truly ugly reactions occur, like abuse and passive aggression. The explosion is what ultimately makes a marriage unhealthy.

One must always be honest. One must always be comfortable with their honesty. One must be able to sit down and have a brutal reaction with a bad day. Those who convert time into money see to it many times that one will have a bad day, and a marriage that is honest will allow for someone to sit on their couch, rant and rave, yell at each other over bills and housekeeping, and in the end have that hatred going for them.

"I think that for a marriage to work, someone has to take into an account the person he or she loves. If that person is someone you honestly cannot be without, even if you hate that person with every fiber of your being, and that sentiment is shared, that couple is ready to work at that marriage, and it might not be the easiest thing, but at least both people will have the drive to keep the marriage alive; The couple must be attractive to each other especially when they repulse one another." That was the only reply I could muster, then I finished my sandwich. It was a sandwich type I was not used to eating with tomato. and while the notion of fruit soup and buttery sandwich seems repulsive, they have been a loving marriage for generations.

Naruto VS Saske

naruto vs sasuke tribute

Sexy Beast in Need of a COOKIE | MySpace Video

I have a boss who is addicted to this show. I must also admit I am addicted to Naruto. It's a very in depth in story and has rich character development. Not only that but the rivalry element of the 3 main characters in the beginning episodes is incredibly well written. This video is the culmination of that rivalry with naruto and saske.

Pavlov

Well, let's assume for a second that there is a dog. A person throws a stick. The dog goes to the stick but doesn't pick it up. Instead, he goes back to the person. The dog gets a fist to the muzzle. The dog then goes and gets the stick. The person then beats him with said stick. Both ways this dog has learned that he will be beat, but one is with a stick and the other is with a hand. He will choose which pain is easier to deal with and continue to be beaten by that preferred method. As well as that, he will ultimately not want to play fetch...

I didn't finish the dishes last night. Big deal, I've got 3 days off and today is the first of those 3 days. I decided (after I forgot (caught up with getting my investment out of a video game, I'll confess.)) I intended to wash them as well as straiten out my study in my apartment. So I left the stick in the field... I'll get it later. 9:00 rolls around. My wife calls me and tells me that I've been snapping at her as of late. I see it the other way around. Her mother was visiting and for some reason her mother has a sway over my wife's emotions, that and I think my wife is a biker. By that I mean she got on her menstrual cycle and ran me over... At any rate, she asks me to do the dishes, sort the laundry, hide the dirty draws and make rice for a dinner I wouldn't eat; she had to sweep an clear the table, make shake and bake (and I was too busy to help).

A day before, I was bathing my kid when my kid defecated in the water. I have a queasy stomach and told her about it. She told me to move like I was 7. I jokingly mentioned that it was her turn and she revved up the motor on her red kawa-sock-me and let me have it.

"Oh, I don't think so. I've had to wash the last two. And the last one you did was only half done. I still had to wipe the crap out of the bath."

Queasy stomach!!! I would rather clean a dirty tub with crap in it versus a dirty tub with puke and crap in it. I'm just sorry that I couldn't do anything about that. I'm powerless against the torrent of gastric fury.

Any way. When I did the dishes the first time, I got the "thank you but..." line. Anyone who understands the word but will tell you that "But" really means forget what you just said. So, I got the schpiel about how one should rinse dishes with hot water, wipe them off, use soap. Like I was 7. Not much has changed in a year except that now she rides her hound-a with a muffler. She keeps her negative comments to herself and justs lets me know I don't do it as well as she does. She finds one thing to criticize every time I do anything around the house, and thus beats me with the stick I fetched.

I keep my house clean to taste. My wife's taste is more refined. If her mom comes over, she has to prove to her mother that she is better off and thus sets me to work... Throws the stick out and tells me to fetch. I could care less about proving that I have it all together to her mother. I know I don't; I revel in it. I live in a permanent state of brokenness and disarray. Further pandering to that kind of manipulation only reinforces the manipulative behavior and thus history repeats (fractally.) But if I bring it up she gets flustered because I've just compared her to her mother.

I don't do housework, I get a slap to the face. I do do house work, I get hit by criticism. I really don't want to play this game any more. There is only so many times a dog gets beat before he thinks to stop playing catch. There are only so many times that a dog will salivate at a bell before it starves.

3 am Philosopny

Welcome to the cycle. A few blogs ago, I mentioned a very sloppy theory on the fractal pattern of life. An entry before I mentioned that I am tired. Syllogistically, I will get progressively tired as I travel down the path to the end of the spiral... Anyway... I'm exhausted. Here is the thing. I have been torn all of my life between what people want from me and everything I want to be. I've got a song about it and everything.

Let's start from the beginning. Long ago I was an introverted chubby Mexican-German crossbred mutt with no friends. I found that no one liked me for who I was, just what they could get out of me. Coupled with my religious beliefs, I turned this social parasitism into a lifestyle. In the end, It's a good system for people that are not me. People start telling me things like "you're the only reason I haven't quit," or "you're like the only nice guy here," or, back in my single days "why can't I find a guy like you?" Last I checked, I was a guy like me.

Here's my problem. I am still an unappealing person, with poor health, an O'douls beer gut, and lacking in social graces that I didn't obtain from watching smart ass movies like Office Space and Tommy Boy. The only difference is that the crowd's face has changed. Same people using me for my niceness and supportive attitude, Same people using me for their good feeling. Different people with biological and existential limitations, but the same people none the less. I'm either a whore or a drug, and when I'm spent I'm useless garbage. I'm hoping I'm a drug because if I were a whore, I would've seen more money for this crap.

There's probably more I could expound upon, but I would rather sleep. If no one reads this, no one will be disappointed.

It's May?

I've Been busy... That's all I can say anymore. Tired and busy. My daughter is a handful, and my job is pleasantly constant. The world as I know it stands moving and I ride it like a drunken cowboy hanging on a light speed bull. Tired. and don't have much to talk about. only that I am tired, and busy, and Have no Idea what day it is.

(included is a comment)
Wow tired cowboy I want to feel like that. Tim and I miss you all so much.

Posted by Meg on Friday, June 01, 2007 - 9:22 PM

Wax Idiotic

I don't really watch CNN all that much. I find it irritating and sensational and further more, I simply think that media such as that generate more stereotypes than Sony and Panasonic combined. Well, I was flipping through channels and I happened to notice a familiar scene from a certain video game which has acquired national acclaim. GTA, while completely irreverent to society, containing foul language sexual references and gore, continues to absorb the brains of stupid people and other stupid older-than-teenagers everywhere.

There was a kid and his friend who killed a homeless man, rubbed crap on the dead body, and proceed to blame video games. (http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/02/19/homeless.attacks/index.html if anyone wants to have a reference.) I watched in horror as they showed all of the gruesome game footage of people getting run down with cars, shot from rooftops and grenaded into flames. I thought to myself "how could they push this filth on America like that. People aren't smart enough to take that kind of image and digest it against logic and common sense. Shame on you all, CNN, shame on you all."

Let's be honest. Americans are stupid, sensational, media whores who wouldn't understand a real scandal if they were caught up in one. Because a sociopath dumb ass shot up his school, or killed a homeless man, or tried to break a brick with his head after eating a mushroom, immediately, video games are to blame. (and rap music) It's ridiculous in my opinion, or to quote Carlos Mencia, "how stupid do you have to be?"

Here is the reality of the situation...

This band of kids were anti-social misfits

They had prior records of theft, drug abuse, robbery, forgery and arrests

They manipulated information to a scandal absorbing public, causing their parents to be considered abusive.

They needed to be locked up.

I have this conversation with my father a lot. "Ryan, how can you say that video games do not influence your actions."

"What do you mean?" I reply

"I mean you are killing a representation of a human being for points. Doesn't that make doing it in reality easier?"

My dad is, like many people in Montana, a sportsman and participates in cowboy action shooting competitions in North Dakota.

"Dad," I begin, "you shoot at targets in the shape of cowboys."

"That's different"

"Oh, I know, targets don't shoot back. At least my target practice to kill fake people give them a fighting chance."

That's when the conversation stops.

Some people are anti-gun though. Let me pose these questions to you.

If you build an RC plane, and crash it into a tree on purpose, does that make you a failed pilot in real life? If you build with Legos, and break it apart at the end, does that mean you will break apart a real building? If you shaved a Barbie's head, does that mean that you will shave the head of a tall blond who walks on her toes, completely nude with no nipples? C'mon people, wake up! This is idiotic. How is it that we still have people in this country who can seem to blame things on inanimate objects versus the choices people make? I think that video games made me kill someone the same way a billboard made me fat. I read the billboard that said Denny's I ate the gut bomb burger with chili. Had the billboard not been there, or had someone been more responsible with such an ad, I would not be fat. It's the same damn argument.

I really think that if we live in such a society that believes in the tenants of a Godless evolution into being that we should allow survival of the fittest to take over. Let the stupid people die when they think that they can fly after watching smallville. Let the inferior personality be weeded out of the gene pool when some teenager thinks there is no consequence for beating a homeless man with a bat for fun and pleasure. Let the stupid suburbanite children get killed in the street when they decide that they are the hardest thugs on their provincial style block... I'm all for letting that unadapted strain of genetic crap flow down the natural selection pike and never be seen again. All so I don't have to flip through the channels to see some shock jock journalist saying how a video game influenced a kid to kill a homeless man.

Do you suppose that people think they can roll up their entire back yards after playing Katamari Domace? Do you suppose that people won a million dollars in poker after playing Texas Hold'em online without real money? Do you suppose that some kid can drive a golf ball 315 yards after playing Tiger Woods? It takes a lot to push a normal person to kill another. Don't try to gloss over that with bull about some video game teaching people it's ok to kill.

Penny Arcade has a wonderful article on it right now about this. They are just as irritated as I am.

"...The sad truth is that the reality we're talking about here would probably never actually see the light of day. The media will tell the story they want to tell regardless and that story will be about violent games. The parents of these kids will be lucky to get two lines in an article about the crime. If they tell a reporter that their son hardly played games or that he was fucked up long before they bought a PlayStation do you really think that will make it into the final article? You'd never see that side of the story, not in a million years.

But you're about to.

I am about to share with you an email I received from a Penny Arcade reader. She also happens to be involved in this case but obviously she'd like to remain anonymous. She has agreed to let me share her email with all of you and I can't thank her enough for that. Like I said before, I know why most people come to Penny Arcade. You come every other day looking for a joke and a laugh. What you're about to read isn't a joke. It's an extremely personal email sent by a very brave woman and I'm honored to share it with you.

Gabe,

Your news post about the kids and the homeless man yesterday made me sick to my stomach, before I even read the CNN article. I knew what it was going to be about before even reading the article. It was not the article itself, or even your post that made me sick, it was the fact that I know this boy. Or, rather that I could be considered one of the "parents" of this boy.

The boy's father and I have been together for almost seven years, and I had what I guess could be called a "stepmother" relationship with the kid. To say that living with this kid was hell would be a complete understatement.

I don't think I have ever actively hated anyone in my entire life, but this kid just makes my blood boil.

As I write this, my teeth are clenched, my hands are shaking, and my whole body is seething with the hatred I feel for this kid and what he has done. Seeing the article brings back all the horrible memories from when he lived with us.

He was constantly in trouble in school, with the cops, with us, with his mother, and with anyone else who was an authority figure. Not a week went by that the school or the cops wouldn't call us for something. His attitude was basically "fuck you, I don't have to listen to you" said with a shrug.

We tried absolutely everything we could think of to get him to behave like a normal human being… we tried groundings, negative reinforcement / punishment, positive reinforcement, counseling, and anything and everything the counselors suggested. We tried to get him interested and involved in extracurricular activities, like hockey, drama, music, art, anything, but he got himself kicked out of every group he was in with his "make me" attitude. When we would ground him, we took away everything. No TV, no computer, no phone, no leaving the house, no snacks or junk food…. Everything. When he was grounded, he was only allowed to sit in his room and read or draw. He was actually a pretty good artist, and we tried to encourage him to spend his time working with his talent. He would just sit there and take it… the groundings had absolutely no affect on him at all. Most of the time, he didn't even remember why he was being grounded. At the end of it, we would ask him if it was worth it to have everything taken away in exchange for what he did… he usually just shrugged. He could be grounded for weeks, or a month at a time, and then the very next day would do something to get back in trouble again. Most kids get grounded or punished a couple of times, and then they want to avoid having to go through it again… not this kid, nothing seemed to phase him.

And we're not talking the usual teenager stuff, like coming home late, or refusing to do the dishes. We're talking stealing cars, setting fires, drinking, getting picked up for drugs, beating up handicapped kids at school (yes, really) stealing things out of our house… all with this "I'll do whatever the fuck I want" attitude.

We had absolutely no idea what else we could do. We already had him in counseling, and we did everything the counselors suggested. We tried rewarding his good behavior (what little there was) to try to get him to see that when he behaves like a normal human being, things are good and people enjoy being around him. Nothing phased him at all.

Then, things took an even worse turn when he decided that whenever he didn't get his way, or we did something he didn't like, he told his counselors and teachers that we were abusing him. (Never happened.) And for some inexplicable reason, everybody believed him. I understand that child abuse is a very serious situation, and that they have to take every possible case seriously, but this was clearly a case of him manipulating people to get what he wanted. We had people from the school, cops, and social services over at our house or calling us on a weekly basis stating some new abuse that he had made up. At 14, the boy was already 6'3" and over 200 pounds. Of course, there was never a mark on him, because no such abuse ever took place.

One particular night (cops involved, as always) he decided that he didn't have to listen to anything we said, and that he wasn't coming home. He went to live with his mother, where things got worse by the day. He stole everything out of her home and sold it. He invited gang-bangers and drug dealers to her home, and she feared for her safety constantly. She called the cops numerous times because she feared for her safety, but again, the boy said that she abused him, and the cops always took his side. (For reference, the mother is about 5'3" and barely clocks in at 115.) He planted a loaded gun in her room, called the cops and told them that it belonged to the mother's boyfriend. The boyfriend actually ended up serving time because of this fucking bastard kid. She had two other young children in the house, and the gun and the abuse charges were an intentional plot to get the other two kids taken away from her. She tried restraining orders against the kid, but since he was a minor, they wouldn't allow it. Every time he got picked up, she pleaded with the cops to take him to jail, maybe that would finally get though to him, but they just kept bringing him home to her. I don't understand why everyone who was involved with this kid just blindly took this juvenile delinquent's word over all else!

The night that he and his friends murdered that poor homeless man, the mother said that he was acting particularly cocky. Then he threatened to kill her. We had absolutely no idea of what he had done until they found the man's body. He was immediately waived into adult court (at 15) and sentenced to 15 years. We were all absolutely sick with grief for this man.

We were also sick with guilt… "What could we have done differently?" was a constant question in all of our heads. After the kid was sentenced, all the cops, counselors, social workers, and people at the school that had been dealing with him contacted us and his mother and apologized for not taking us seriously. They are all trained to take all accusations of child abuse seriously, and as a part of that they blindly took the kid's side for everything, and dismissed us as "the lying abusers". Many of them told us that they wished they would have taken our pleas for help seriously. Everyone thought we were exaggerating about how fucked up this kid was.

I completely agree with your statement of "These kids were twelve kinds of nuts and that's a fact." But the reason I am writing this to you is that, after reading your news post yesterday, I felt that I needed to defend the boy's parents. His mother and father and I did absolutely everything we could think of to try to keep this kid in line. Even the kinds of things that normal teenagers get in trouble for would have been a blessing compared to what we've been through with him.

What I gave you today is a very small sampling of the kinds of things we were dealing with every single fucking day with this kid. When people hear about what he's done, I can always sense the "I'm sure there was something you could have done" comment coming up. What would you have done? How do you deal with a kid like this? Like I said, we did everything the counselors suggested, and nothing seemed to matter.

If you want to add another element to the "nature vs. nurture" idea, this boy has a brother. Both boys were raised in the same house, with the same values. The brother has developed into a kind, considerate, responsible, and independent young man. He is currently working his butt off right now to save up money to go to school for architecture. The only thing I regret is that we spent so much time and energy dealing with the bad kid that this boy missed out on having a normal family life with a normal sibling relationship.

I am sorry this got so long. I have been reading PA since the very beginning, and I feel that both of you are very much like me. I think we are the same age (29) and I have been a lifelong gamer like the two of you. I can't stand hearing about the so-called correlation between games and real-life violence. Video games DID NOT make this kid who he was, and it's unfortunate that the correlation is there.

The thing that really gets me with this whole thing is that the kid knows full well that by equating what he's done to a video game, that he will generate controversy and media coverage. It makes me sick that the media is jumping all over this, because that is exactly the result that he wants.

The only good thing (if there is such a thing) that has come out of this whole ordeal is that the kid is behind bars. That is exactly where he needs to be.

Again, I'm sorry about the length of this. Thanks for allowing me to "tell my side" of the story.

So there you go. There's the other side of the story. He's decided to use videogames as a scapegoat because as crazy as he is, he's not stupid. He knows exactly what he's doing. The sad thing is that it will probably work..."

What a waste of an intelligent mind. He's now no better then the neanderthals I was talking about earlier. as such he must be purged in accordance to natural selection.

I'm Screwed

I have come to the conclusion, that I come to too many conclusions. It seems like all of my blogs start the same way. An epiphany followed by stating it as such, followed further by a 3 or four paragraph on how it relates to the real world relative to my own observations. It's obnoxious I think, and I really wish that I could just think that birds fly and the sky is blue without thinking about air resistance or how light is refracted by nitrogen. Why can't a rose be a rose...?

Because, its a flower with thorns and petals.

Anyway, I should be practicing my guitar right now, but I have hit a snag. I could have sworn that my lesson was on Thursdays, but at noon it hit me... Videon doesn't give lessons on Thursdays... My lesson was at 3 and I was not ready. I was going to practice later today after class, and then a bit on Thursday morning, but Instead I had to cram 2 days worth of practice into 2 hours. Damn it all... I just need to slow down for a bit. This applied music bullshit is the only thing between me and my future plans to become a washout band teacher that makes less than 30,000 a year. Big aspirations I know, but all the same, I seem to be failing at it. I could fall back on writing, but if anyone who has read my blog couldn't tell, as well as I write, it is unrefined, unmarketable, and further more, expects way way way too much out of its audience.

That's when it hit me, ALL of my skills are related to obscurely paid, inconstant, and long shot requiring jobs that will pay big if they work, but chances are, I'll be a pennyless miser. I'm a leftover philisopher in a world of mindless falsehoods and dollar signs. I need a way out...