a #NotallMen reaction to #YesAllWomen, or how to deal with "mansplaining"

The #yesallwomen hashtag has gotten some circulation as of late because of some situations involving misogyny, massacre, and mental instability.  It is a reminder that in our culture, women are the object of lust and discrimination, ingrained victimhood and systematic shaming in a society of supposedly liberty and justice for all.  When confronted with such a situation like a sorority shooting, the conversation goes to the individual involved and not the underlying consequences of our culture and motivations, and we miss the point that there is something foul and rotten in our culture that we would rather not be associated with or acknowledge. I had an associate post a picture of his solidarity with women by taking a selfie with a notebook page, stating:  "This is not about you;  Stop mansplaining, check your privilege, Show empathy" and closed with the not all men hashtag.  With it was a tagline taunt about being a penis having American who will listen.
Now, as I read this, my blood started to boil.  It had nothing to with having to show empathy, nor with the fact that women are treated like fuckposts with coin-op slots.  My rage came from the "mansplaining" and the "check your privilege" cliche articles included in his call to somehow garner solidarity.
   Checking your privilege is an attack phrase invented by well meaning white man folk to make sure that other white man folk are reminded that they are part of a discrimination problem.  If you only give up your privilege in a society you can make a better one.  I take issue with this because, though the motivations are coming from a progressive angle, the end result is anything but equitable.  Checking privilege is, like most "cultural sensitivity" methods discriminatory.  It states that the only way a minority, a gender, a belief can have any sort of authority is by garnering it from the dominant race, gender, or belief system.  It is no less bigoted than "separate but equal" and still forces the dominance paradigm, it just does it in a more politically acceptable manner.  It seems to even reverse what the idea of privilege assessment is supposed to facilitate.
Privilege analysis is to become empathetic of others by realizing that there are some things afforded by your gender, race, tallness,attractiveness, and other natural traits that others do not.  It is to take inventory of what sort of things in one's own life that has given him or her a boon.  These are not things you can consciously "check" as the catchphrase would have you believe; you cannot take these off.  they are just there as a feature of who you are in society.  Yet the idea persists that somehow a person can take off the trappings of natural things and operate as though advantages do not occur.  This is just silly, and it is corrosive to those to whom these boons do not apply.  Assuming privilege is something that can be relinquish it to attribute privilege to a right that someone has been offered, but can freely refuse.  It is a moment for white men folk to say "now, without all the good things about being white and a man, I am just like you.  Take away the awesome that I am, and I become a minority and a woman, at least until I take privilege back from the coat check girl."
  At any rate, I was mad at the idea of checking my privilege and so I addressed it.  See, privilege is reciprocal.  As one demographic gains a privilege, and equal and opposite privilege occurs in the disadvantaged realm.  White people can always purchase culturally relevant items, supplies, and literature.  Black people can say the word "Nigga" without rebuttal.  Even Mexicans who speak English can mutter Spanish and have people leave them alone.  There is positives to every classification out there, though whites just seem to have more of them when it comes to opportunity and class placement.  So, I asked about what privileges would be given up by women if I "checked my privilege" as a man.  Would women be required to sign up for selective service when they turned 18?  Would I not always have to pay for the date?  Would incarceration rates even out between women and men?  Would I not have to lose half of my shit in a divorce settlement?  I played devil's advocate to prove my point on the fact that I think privilege checking is a farce, a token gesture, and must go both ways in order to be truly fair, the response to which was an article was cut and pasted about how Devil's advocacy is a deflection.  So, I adjusted my line of reasoning from dramatic satire to explaining my point of view directly. this followed with a prompt excommunication from his facebook friends list.  Shucks.
  Fine, forget my diabolical client here.  The issue I have is now on the idea of "mansplaining"  or what I can only conjecture to be the practice to fallaciously dismiss the experience of a woman by describing the experience of a man.  This derailment of real conversation and empathy comes from a strange place in our society which I feel qualified as a man to illuminate.  When a woman says "I was raped by a man,"  a man makes the idea of rapist ambiguous.  our first reaction to being included in the idea of "a man" is to then distance ourselves from being a rapist.  Most of us would rather not concede that they are a rapist, I suppose, and it is natural given our upbringing in a society that encourages men to be dominant possessors.  Our reputations are being called into question as a women says "a man molested me."  Our reputations correlate directly with our ability at conquest, and so if our reputation is insulted, we try to save face by distancing ourselves from the undesirable classification.  In no way is a man saying that a women's experience is invalid, nor is he trying to maliciously silence a woman for speaking her mind.  He is trying to preserve his dignity.
This is the rotten part of the culture as I see it.  As men, we are still seen as the providers, as the bread winners, as the conquerors.  We are expected to still provide for everyone, while the role of women has been in slow flux for a few hundred years, becoming more autonomous while we still occupy our full role along with new responsibilities once considered "women's work".  We are still expected to pay for the drinks, to fight over the bill with other men, to prove our worth with our wallets and possessions to make more money, to be successful, to still crave women and treat them as something to be conquered, payed for, or won.  When a man does not do these things, he is shunned, berated, called impotent and weak. This is the reciprocal nature of the rape culture that we have instilled:  Women are defaced morally by sex and Men by refusal.  This means that when a man is rejected, our culture decides that man is worthless.   Most learn to cope and move on to a new conquest.  Some go to great lengths to change this.  Some kill, some rape, some stalk, some relentlessly pursue until they wear a person down.  We are encouraged to take things by force, to push for what we want.  We are also sold the lie that all one needs for success is determination and persistence.  It is a moral failing on the man's part that he has no women, because if he only tried harder he could have anything he wanted, a modern superstition perpetuated by over-privileged men talking down to the beta-males in our society.  So, paradoxically, it is morally corrupting to maintain our corruption free reputation as a man.
     This leads to the breakdown of empathy in a number of capacities.  For one, imagine you were a man who has traditional male values an this success delusion and wants to have sex with a woman, so he asks her out.  To the man, the woman knows this expectation that in exchange for proof of assets, he might be deemed worthy of copulation, and by agreeing to go out and consume his money, there is a transaction being carried out.  This is the toxic masculinity that we have been embroiled in since we were given a name.  We are consistently tallying the relationship in terms of possessions, purchases, and payout.  We see only cuddling at the end of he night as a women getting 100% of what she asked for in the relationship and equitably less for the man, a swindle, a rip off.  It destroys this man.  We feel used, we feel violated, we feel angry, but most of us move on.  when many of us that cannot cut the "Alpha-Male" stereotype then learn that we would rather have relationship over sexual conquest and take the shunning of those who are more attractive, wealthy, and privileged for one reason or another.  Those who succeed with this toxic male outlook then can evoke the envy of those who still want the power and the women, those who have yet to find the beauty and eventual coupling of relationship over transaction, and because of the perseverance fallacy we are fed, those willing to perpetuate the culture of misogyny.  There is no concern for the women in this, no reason to take her side in the argument because in this world view, the woman is chattle.
   Now, empathy then is broken by those beta-males as well, when they want to distance themselves from toxic masculinity.  We do not want to be included in the title of all men, but we understand we cannot be separate.  The M&Ms metaphor comes to mind.  if 10 percent of the M&M's are poison, would you have a handful?  Though the idea of conquest is weeded out of our behavior through experience, our sensibility to have our reputation untarnished still lingers.  We absolutely abhor the idea of being included with rapists in these anecdotes, so the natural reaction is to save face.  We reply with seemingly non-sequitir rebuttals like "I am not a rapist" and "it is tough for men too" without thinking we are derailing any justice.  We refuse to see ourselves the way the victims see us because we feel it is unfair to say that all men are like this.  The disruption is severe here.  We normally cannot go any further because to a women, the term "Man" is perfectly accurate to what they are going through, while we as men see a cline in behavior among us, a pile of shit on the top with the rest of us avoiding association.  Men, in essence see the face side of the cards when it comes to men and their intentions, while women only get the backs, and so it is natural that all men be included in the experience.
  The end result is the men trying to pull away from the association and feeling rejected, like their reputations are being hurt.  Once again, reputation relates directly to possessing and conquering, and even though most of us grow out of including people in our conquest, we are still ingrained to look at our moral worth through our possessions and by extension our reputations as possessors.  If our legacy is then tarnished by being unable to avoid the classification of rapist, we feel morally broken.
    So we combat, we diffuse, we derail any conversation as fighters, as combatants, as virile masculine stock.  And we silence empathy.

    This is my simple analysis of the situation, but it would be disingenuous not to offer advice to keep this derailment from happening.  I have one thing that can be done to produce empathy.  Simply acknowledge that the defensive men are not rapists.  A women cannot be sure of the intentions of a man, this is true, but those of us who wish not to be included with rapists will rally with you if you just acknowledge that this man replying to you is simply trying to save face.  Once that man is let off the hook, his masculinity preserved, then two things are bound to happen.  The first is the man can finally introduced to the constant shit storm that is modern femininity.  It is absolutely horrendous and for the love of God I wish that it could be another way.  I cry for every woman that has ever questioned if her rape was her fault, for every girl that felt guilty about her curves or lack there of.  I have utter disdain for every man that could ever decide that no was not clear enough of an answer, or more to the point, refused to take no as an answer to the modernist bullsh it of following your desires regardless of the consequences.  I hate the idea that children are denied nutrients because of prudish ass hats claiming breast feeding is indecent because of some wide spread mammary fetish.  I wish I could personally neuter every man who ever blamed unwanted groping on the cut of a shirt or the length of a hem.  I hate that when I tell my wife she is beautiful she can list 20 things wrong with her.  This is not whining.  This is constant, unadulterated fear that women have to experience every second of everyday.  It's something that I do not wish for my daughter, and likewise, I do not wish on my son, the future recipient of this toxic notion of chivalry.  I wish for a day that a woman could hear the words "you are beautiful" from a man and not reach for her mace or attempt to sabotage the compliment with some bull about cellulite and cup size.  I wish for a day, where cat calls could be replaced by compliments, not laced with the empty sexual repression of a toxic masculinity, but as affirmations of feminine beauty.  I wish that if my son were to stare at a body, admiring it, he would not be seen as a predator.  Hell, I wish that for me.  I wish that my eyes did not translate into lust and malice towards the opposite sex. I wish that eye contact was flattering and not frightening.  Once you can move beyond defensiveness and into empathy, there are things that a good man cannot turn from.
     The other inevitable event from acknowledging innocence from being a rapist is that you gain an ally.  You gain all of the force of original chivalry, the defending of your honor.  You gain a person that will tell a pushy egregious asshole to leave.  After being introduced to the cesspool female discrimination on a personal level, you also have a male friend that is not doing the interaction math when you share your story, cry on his shoulder, borrow his ear. If he is really trying to avoid the label of being a "man" in your story, he will also be fighting the same corrosive masculinity that you are constantly subject too.  Though he is far from a victim, he still suffers from this type of discrimination.  About the only person that is unaffected is the Alpha-male prick who, unfortunately becomes the object of envy and therefore the pattern of modern masculinity.  Once a man is confirmed not a rapist here, he is free to point out the emperors nudity and free others.  I think that this is slowly occurring with movements like #yesallwomen or the subreddit 2xchromasomes.  The problem is that conquest is still encouraged among men, and these things are an affront to that sense of conquest.  To d-bag alphas it is a challenge on their influence and power, to us betas, it is an association with those we would rather not be associated.  Getting "mansplained" does not mean the conversation has ended.  The shitty ones will walk away or continue with how "unfair" it is, and those of us with maturity and a conscience will be reasonable once we know you don't think we are the bad guy.  It is the second group that will become your allies here.
     In the end, this is a struggle for both genders, and both genders need to know they will be safe.  Both genders suffer under these obsolete and corrupted views of masculinity and if those genders squabble between themselves, this gives the advantage to the bastards benefiting from the discord, the defamation of character that the abusers rely on for their power.  It happens both ways. Women, if you are patient with us, the non-poisonous M&Ms, you get our motivation, our rage, our passion and our tenacity wasted on our false calling as possessors, and have it channeled against your abusers.  By no means do we as men need to assume responsibility for violations we have not done, nor do we need to "check our privilege" which I have demonstrated hopefully to be impossible anyway. I don't show my solidarity but not defending myself, but by simply saying I do not know your struggle, but I am willing to listen, not out of guilt, but out of common decency and my own scars from this terrible system of stagnated manhood.  I will lend and ear, a shoulder, or a fist if necessary.

Why Literally should not ve used figuratively (religiously)

Every word in the bible is literal and true.  Samuel made the sun sit still, the world was made in a 24 hour period regardless of the presence of a sun before day 4, and placing a penis into a man's anus is an abomination.   Every word is god breathed and is useful for rebuking... well that is the important one.  Of course, this only happens until we have to describe our pains, our struggles, and our perceived agonies.  When jesus said "I have been sent to those in prisons"  it can mean a spiritual prison, a prison of finances, a personal prison of poverty, a prison of bad habbits and addiction.  However, on the topic of Noah, there were dinosaurs on the ark.  We can make things like work a graven image in our lives, like football, like women, pornography, drinking addiction, poverty can be our idol if we worship SNAP and medicaid.  Also, if you believe in anything other than Jesus is going to come back and burn the edifices of those people we judge and dislike, you are a decieved ignoramus who refuses to accept the literal word of God.  Swearing, not in it's literal sense of swearing oaths, but in being profane, using God's name in vain, and using the replacements for those words like heck and gosh.  You may as well say those profanities and cursings.  A fetus is murder because the bible literally says "I knew you when in your mother's womb" no interpretation issues or anything,  and if we let gays get together, we will be showered with fire and brimstone.  There is no other interpretation.  However sometimes we are being opressed by philistenes like the government, philistines like not wanting read your bible and giving your offerings and tithes, philistines like poverty, and addiction, and abortionists.  It's not literal philistines and I should know, my pastor told me and I dechiphered the poetic language of my bible.  The poetic words of the Psalms is the literal wod of God.  You have to be familiar with it to understand it.  There is a literal valley of the shadow of death that I walk in, and I think it is in Huston.   Now, someone's figurative valley could be taxes, abortion, addiction, sadness, gossip, depression, abortion, poverty.  That is not literal, and you have to be able to be discerning in these matters.   Take it fom me; I know the pastor.  My uncle is the pastor, my cousin married the pastor and I went to youth group and had a bible study during lunch. 

Tell me, why can we fudge literal interpretations just because it justifies our grace and defiles those we are to love?  When we have that selective play with definititions, we run the risk of defining what we wish and not what is.  If the bible is literal, let it be literal, but do not turn and say that literal, clear things , mean something they do not because we ironically think that by inventing a definition, we support the undefined and literal interpretation of a book with no modern context. 
Morally, it is all allegory.  It is mythology.  It is Entymology.  It is a window into the insights of prior generations of humans with a view into where our ideas comefrom and where our values originate.

The goal is simple

I recently attempted to write a novel instead of growing a beard.  I failed in both despite the amount of shaving I did not do.  Camp Nanowrimo has begun and now I am 3 days behind.  I have decided simply to finish the novel I started.  Is that a cop out or a cheat?  Perhaps, but perhaps it is an oppertunity to finish the last leg of the marathon.  I used to write everyday in my younger days, and now I find that I write less for me and more for arguments on social media and other such nonsense.  Why should I waste my genius on those people?  A few things toconsider though:
1, I can only write when I am not at work.   I ran into this issue when I was doing nanowrimo.  I was letting my work slip so I could write.
2.  I need to avoid drama.  My last nanowrimo was enveloped in bullshit by the 3rd chapter, when thkngs became difficult in my real life.  Since then I have got my house in order and hopefully I can make some progress outside of having the bottom of maslow's pyramid cave in.
3.  Weekends are ideal.  This means that I have 34000 words to mash out in between laundry, sleeping, and watching my 5 year old son at home.  34000w/30 gw/m= 11333 words which comes to 11333. (((11333/60 min/h) /24 h/d) /2 d/weekend) /4 weekends a month) comes to about 2 days a week of solid writing to finish Dissolution.  If I write from midnights to midnights.  So, as ideal as weekends might be, I have to put in some sweat during the week, leaving very little time for anything else.  I'll at least finish it sometime.

Optimism in seeing a half empty glass

If I convey one thing to my children before I die, it is this:  optimism is not the opposite of pessimism.  When you are young, you are a slave to circumstance.  You must comply.  If you do not comply with the world that is created to keep you safe, you comply to chaos and entropy, which insures your decay and cooling.  Either way, the lack of freedom creates a notion that insists that all courses of action are worthless, all hope is dispair, and you must succumb to a world that is cold and cooling...  this is the essence of pessimism and you wallow in it or are oblivious to it, creating a sense of wonder, curiosity, or simple smiles and glitter of having everything taken care of.  Oblivion and pessimism are then the dichotomy, not optimism.  What people must forget is that optimism and pessimism are diametrically opposed.  Pessimism, by virtue of this quick blurb, is entropy, natural decay and a belief in the inevitability of disaster.  Optimism is something else entirely.   Where pessimism or oblivion is an attitude, optimism is a discipline.  Optimism is not just thinking good things in bad situations, which is of course oblivious behavior, but a cultivation of finding solutions to problems that seem impossible.  Optimism has nothing to do with your attitude in fact.  The most basic form of optimism is the will to live, and the will to live at all costs.  As one cultivates an optimistic skill set, people become creative, analytical, passionate, not always happy or even successful.  The reality of optimism is that you can still be classically pessimistic and still retain your optimism, as well as be happy with everything and lose your optimism by stagnation.   It matters not the water level on the glass, half empty or half full, an observant optimist will look at a half full glass of water and fill it with a pitcher if she wants more water, drink the water and leave an all empty glass, pour out the water for a glass of scotch, or pour the half glass into a thirsty plant to keep it from dying.  Optimism is a dicipline of resourcefulness, not the liquid level in a cup.

Why do I believe?

I am finding, the more I locate the people who shared the same world as I did when I was young, that many of them have discovered religion to be a caustic form of collective ignorance, destructive attitudes, and a smug sense of superiority that supersedes rational thought.  As a fairly "religious person" I painfully have to agree with them on all of these markers.  Then I have to answer them at every turn "Why I still believe?"  The answer is simple, yet gets me flak from my religiously inclined acquaintances, elders, and fellow believers:  solipsism, and probability.  Notice the order I have indicated these, and do not think that is unintentional that solipsism begins this list.  No one can sympathize with my situation, my life, my world, my existence, so no one can truly understand the world that I perceive.  In my world, because of what I have seen, experienced, been blessed with, and struggled through, the probability of God existing is higher than his chances of not being there.  My world just has the edges filled in with a creator who guides my path, and expects me to make choices based on what I understand about being faithful in everything and being kind to others, and what I can empirically understand about my world.  It has nothing to do with science, nature, evolution, politics, economics, or society.  It has everything to do with the observation that either entropy or Love has gotten me to this point in my life, and for those things that are not certain, I have a vocabulary and a system to categorize that which is unknown or imperceptible.  Christianity, or being Christ-like, for me then is not about having the truth and being right, but about being a good father, a forgetter of debts, a person willing to do labor and sleep on the ground, though I have been blessed with divinity, to be alone in hard times, to as Paul put it, work out my faith with fear and trembling, as beads of blood run down my brow in the garden ready to die for the very person killing me, to prevent the stones be thrown on the marginalized, to prepare my intellect for conflict instead of shying away with smug superiority, to recognize sacrifice before generosity, to be a peace maker, a gracious guest, to be one who re-purposes tradition to no longer be a form of discrimination, but a method of inclusion, to subvert power from those who oppress, to pay taxes to Caesar because his face is on the coin, but remember that I am made in the image of God himself, and to contemplate what I must give of myself with that face on me.  To rationally dissect the world and appreciate it's elegance, whether or not a creator made it at all, and to challenge my brothers and sisters in faith when their actions do not align with the doctrine they prescribe to others, to point out the white washed tombs and the dens of vipers.  My job is not to make followers of our tract of beliefs, but to teach the disciplines of what I know to people willing to hear, not to "prove" empirical evidence wrong with fallacious reasoning, but to acknowledge that God is a crafty fellow who designed a complex world that runs on its own.  Perhaps in another mind, not like my own, what I have attributed to God is actually nothing but cosmic coincidence, a happenstance of a spontaneous generation from a single point in space, expanding without uniformed dispersion until we gained the ability to think up God, and Heaven, and Hell, and all of these things to explain the unknown.  That's perfectly fine with me, to the utter frustration of many of my less tolerant brothers.  I don't expect everyone's brains to create the thoughts I do.  I expect that they understand what they believe, not because church screwed them up when they were younger, or they still want that smug sense of superiority without the moral contract of being sent to Hell.  I simply expect people to exist, persist, and end, where that takes us, I am not so concerned.  I live for those now, who need me, as Christ did, and that is simply how I live.  The short answer is simply "because I do."

Merely a speed, not a vector

"We are all going to die screaming, so why would you not fill it with wonderful experiences?'  -Kevin Smith...  abridged.

I am trying to figure out something that has struck me as odd.  I didn't think of it as odd at first but now, as I spend all of this time watching TEDTalks and Kevin Smith Q&As and other miscellanea  that is geared to my intellectual self, I see the oddity.  They talk about passion; they talk about a drive; they talk about a force that pushes those smart folks, and they talk about goals.  I have had goals; oh I have had goals.  I have wanted to be a teacher, a musician, a game designer, a good father, a writer, a transient bum living out of my car.  I lack direction, something that intelligent people seem to have.  I have no direction.

I have had this consistent concept of moving for a long tome.  Since I was a washout C student high school student, up until I am a washout C college student, I have had this concept of moving on, marching though the mire and muck until one day I would be somewhere.  It kept me patient, easy going, and really, it kept my life in perspective that anything I felt was struggle was actually just resistance, a thing to push through until I got what I wanted...  This brings us back to the previous paragraph,  What good is all of this shit wading if I'm not going somewhere?  So here I sit, at my computer at 5 am, trying to figure out my life.  I am tired now, but I cannot sleep.  I need to get these thoughts down to someplace, to someone.  It is unfair to my wife, to my family, to my friends and to my parents that I embark on this quest to make me an adult, only to find I have been walking in a pit of muck and walking in a snazzy pentagram pattern.  Perhaps the problem has always been direction, and I can only think of one time I really had any direction at all.

I can remember being driven by only one thing.  I was a 6th grader and hanging out with a guy with a crush on a girl.  I followed him and his girlfriend, and I met someone else,  a redhead, to be exact, her name was S.  Now S. was an odd duck, an awkward seeming young lady who had a pension for X-files trivia.  She became a friend of mine, nothing too serious, since a friend of mine consisted of someone I talked to about every 3 weeks or so (Really introverted I was in those days.)  The less I saw her, the more I thought about her.  Now compile this against what I can only can describe as teenage angst and depression.  This turned into a full on fixation that I was consumed by.  S. was a stain on my brain, a scorch mark on my psyche, a nagging noise that could not be auto-tuned out of my soundtrack.  I never acted.  I never told her that I liked her.  Not until I was a freshman in highschool, and I left her a note before Spring break.  She shot me down promptly.  This killed me.

Now, when I say killed me, I mean killed me.  I realize that I experienced grief in all 5 cliche steps.    I bartered, got angry, etc. for about 3 years.  I actually had girlfriends during that time, which amounted to just mind games and guilt for a few months.  I could not break this idea, this pattern, but I was passionate about this loss.  I filled notebook upon notebook of poetry; I wrote songs and stories about S. and my pain and anguish.  This is laughable to me now just because I realize most of this navel gazing was my own damn fault, and I should've let it go, but I couldn't. I had to resist the release.  After that, I was careful about anything that required any sort of infatuation.  This lead to the concept of muck walking.  If I pushed on, no passion, only the monotony of every day, I had no space to be lost in something, no space to be passionate, no space to follow things, only the space to plan the next stride and fuck the direction.

So I walk around, but not in a direction.  I push on, but not toward any means.  I will be thirty in less than a year, and I am set up for nothing.  Jesus started his life at thirty, and as we all know, that ended well for everybody but him.  I need to find my passion again, and place it in unattainable things.  I need to find how to give myself over to what I love.  Loving my family is not enough.  Loving my wife is not enough.  I do love those things, but my pushing into nothing is so destructive to myself, that I cannot take care of them, those people to which I have legal, financial and spiritual responsibilities.  Loving them is not enough; I have to find a goal.  I have to find something that I can pursue.  I need something that I can push on with so that I can support my family.  That conclusion I guess can wait, It's 6 am and I have yawned for the first time in 6 hours.  I figure that when I get all of this out, I will sleep like a fuckin' baby.  Until then I intend to contemplate this shit on this blog.

Equals Force Times Distance

Of course I can't sleep.  Apparently I forgot to pay the mental peace bill.  Perhaps they went paperless, but I don't remember it coming in the mail, and not one phone call, not one.  Did I overdraft my account?  Did I not keep it current?  I've lived in the same house for over 6 months now, I should have a constant billing address.  But I'm still awake..  cringing.

I have been unemployed for over a month and a half now.  I have lost 15 or so pounds and I am going to the gym with my wife, something that I am not philosophically aligned with, but participating for the novelty of a 50 dollar a month bill.  It's not that I feel that it is silly, or I am too healthy for the gym, or that I would rather be fat, or that "Da Geem's too hawd... I huwt aw ovew."  It's more on the physics definition of work.   W=F*D that indicates that when I move equipment up and down, back and forth, around and around, and it returns to the same place, D=0 Therefore 0*F=W=0, nullifying any force that I expend at this supposed bastion of health.  In the end, working out in a gym according to physics is an oxymoron.  I am in fact convinced that for every hour spent in a gym, a person gains an hour at the tail end of their life, so spending the cartilage in your joints will ultimately yield a net gain of 0 years.  But I go despite this.  It's something I can do with my wife.   I still have a wife!  Lucky me.

Of course, I am using this formula of work to illustrate other things in my life as well.  I got fired from Wal-Mart over a stupid mistake that I made a few months ago.  It started much like this evening of latenight blogging.  I couldn't sleep.  I was finishing homework for class, reading texts, sorting MTG cards and found myself showing up late for work by a matter of minutes.  I clocked in late a few times, which I was reprimanded for and sent on my merry way.  Now fast forward to a month and a half ago.  I was scared to lose my job.  If I was running late, If my schedule was not perfect, if I wanted a few more minutes of study or a few seconds more with my family, or if someone needed something before I went to work, I was guaranteed to be stopped at every red light to work, and come in late.  If this sounds like an excuse you miss the point completely, in fact this is my mistake.  I seem to have been a push-over in my social life enough to take it upon myself to be a good person and care for my kids, make sure I had things covered, as well as slightly absent minded to not realize what time it ACTUALLY was.  I never wanted to be this guy who was always late, but here it goes, constantly over estimating myself and always finding myself lacking.  It is not the reason I got fired, it is the mistake that lead up to it however.

I started adjusting my hours, by a minute or two.  I did this a couple times, not to get paid for work I didn't do, but to try to keep a job I really needed to provide for my family.  My second sin was fear.  I felt that I could get away with it for a while, and when summer rolled around, I could get my shit together, show up early, work hard, go home and feel good about providing for my wife and children.

They fired me for misconduct.

Completely ineligible for unemployment, completely out of a means to pay for anything, completely back where I started, all of the force I was exerting  was canceled out by the amount of distance I had covered.  W=F*D, D=0 therefore F*0=W=0.

School as well has demonstrated that I am back where I started.  I am out of student loan money.  I had been using that stuff to live off of for the past 7 years, supplementing my shitty job with money that seemed to always disappear into last semesters expenses.  I remember a time in my life where I had 2000 dollars in my savings account, 1000 in my checking, a combined total of 3000 dollars of credit, a good attitude and a credit rating that looked like the record holder's score at a bowling alley after 3 games.  Now, I have nothing.  I have sold everything that I can sell, traded everything I can trade, I literally have no collateral to borrow, no money to use, no income, no force.  I am almost done with my schooling, but I have no foce behind it anymore, F=0, W=F*D Therefore W=0*D=0.

So I can't sleep.  Perhaps it is the lack of work I have done, not for a month and a half, for 7 years, I have expended force until I don't have it, and have gotten nowhere.  The bill collectors for my peace are hassling me now.  If the work was complete, I would have the distance and the momentum to pay them.  The penance of my sin I would figure is the collections department trying to take my stuff and realizing that all I have is shit and stone.  Nothing to pawn, nothing to put up for collateral.  I am out of options. 

10 commandments for a modern audience

     We as Christians have spent a long time trying to make ourselves (rather others) feel bad.  A grand history we belong to of torture, self-flagellism, inquisition, and incineration, and all for the betterment of ourselves and for those who are not in our world of invisible fathers and blood drinking.  It gets fairly extreme when we are in charge of things, but when we are not leaders of our realms, not the pope, not the pentecostal preachers with a large congregation, not the evangelist commanding a crowd of loyal ticket holders, we still try to turn the mood on things that could be enjoyed, and all for the sake of our piety.  For instance, when given the 10 commandments in a modern context, we ran into an interesting predicament.  The first rule of God Club was "No Gods Before Me."  The second was "you can't have their merch either."  (well technically, you could not make their merch, but as we will see shortly, what the words say makes little difference.)
      Now, most of us who were reading or hearing this were being taught about following God.  These tablets came from God himself  in order to make us better people after all, and everything in the bible is "Useful for teaching, instructing... uh... gimme a second... wait, REBUKING!  we have rebuking in that line from Timothy!"  This begins our search for the anti-God in the room.  Well, most of us, if we were learning the 10 commandments belonged to a homogenous group of Christianity who, throughout 2000 years has crystallized the beliefs into the only correct interpretation, and embodied it in our denomination of faith; the other denominations are all going to Hell.  So, we have a good bead on things.  What is our other gods?  We all believe there is one God!  Even if you ask the drunk guy in the bar, he can say that there is one God!  Our God totally kicked the hell out of every other heathen god in our country and is continuing the proud tradition of kicking asses and taking names. 
     This is when we looked at our world and ironically deified things that God could fight.  "Movies are a God" we said, and pitted Sunday morning against Friday night at the multiplex.  "Drinking is a God" and now God could go after everybody's wine, except for the ones that turned into the blood of our savior on Sunday.  "Television is a demon that we have in our very livingroom!"  and so to watch TV became a religious experience.  If you were even thinking about a sitcom or the news, you may as well have roasted a chicken in your living room in honor of the cult of Nielsen and Farnsworth.
     We were molding graven images of False Gods, in violation of God club's second rule, in order to follow the first rule.  No one realized it.  As a result, we became oppressive, hypocritical and elitist, but most of all, we started to condone sin.  Instead of being in the congregation, we began to gossip, which if you didn't realize yet is to bring false witness against ones neighbor.  In reaction we said that gossip was alright so long as it's true because then you aren't lying.  (See, the wording of the commandment is not important, rather the ignorant translation.)  We walked around in our smugness and told people to stop saying "Goddamn, and JESUS" while we called on his name while full of our self-righteous sin.  We never killed anyone (An improvement from our days of burning Muslims) or stole, or committed adultery, (unless of course we did, then we would ask for forgiveness)  We never coveted other peoples things, but we did try to dress in our "Sunday best" in order to inspire the covetous attitude in others.  We honored the Sabbath day very well, including resting our wallets when it came to tip the servers at the restaurants we ate at after church.  She would probably spend it all on her false gods of baby formula or rent.  She isn't honoring the Sabbath today because of her god the power bill, so we are going to be rude.  Then, for compensation for her minimum wage job, we'll leave a tract to save her eternal soul, instead of the 2 dollars on a $60 bill.
     So we went home and repented of our worship of material things, and went to bed with most of the 10 commandments broken.  Of course, we break commandments in the way that Moses broke them, to prove to sinners that God hates them and put their sin in the drinking water (Well, at least rub it in their faces.)
     I do not know why our group wants to put so much suffering in the world.  I don't know why we waste all this time inventing sin when Jesus pointed out that sin is everywhere so long as you care not about your fellow man.  You sin against the other sex not by raping that person, but by treating that person as an object, not as a fellow human being.  The moment you justify a bad situation for a man as being a flaw in his moral fiber, you have in essence ruled on his character before knowing the whole story, effectively baring false witness to yourself against your neighbor.  The moment you invent a god out of innocuous items, you are making images of gods. And finally, by doing all of these things and still walking around with the banner Christian, we take God's name in vein.  We are a destructive bunch for some reason, and for that I've tried to keep a safe distance from those who call themselves Christians, glue fish to the trunks of their cars and tip badly on Sundays.  Those are the ones who crave power, who want inquisitions, who want to beat themselves with whips and convince those who don't that it is fun.  These people are the ones that can't stand sin so much that they refuse to see their own, and, while I am aware of mine, I work my faith out with fear and trembling. 

The Endgame is Absurd(ist)

When my generation was born, we were sat in front
Of a chessboard, the Babyboomers on the opposite
On a preplayed game that the Boomers wanted to finish
In the stead of The Greatest Generation.
And boy were they impatient, We didn’t know how to play
We learned quickly though, But realized that it
Was rigged, despite the fact that The boomers assured us
That it was always a fair situation.

My first observation that
They played white,
Got their turn first and
Controlled 99
Percent of the board,
And the only pieces we had
Were a king, a couple of
pawns, and rooks.
“If you feel jealous,
Maybe you should have
Saved your pieces
Across your line,
And played the game as
Well as I,”  They said.
We retorted “however, we have
Bought some books

In preparation for this game,
They tell me you had
Your daddies’ help you
With your moves,
To make sure you had
A chance of winning, then thanked them by
Cutting his social security,
Until of course you needed it
Yourself, then you said thanks
For the head start, now
I need to collect.
My need behooves.
So you took pieces from me
To secure your old
Age, to continue the game
Perhaps to prolong it.”

And here we were, ill equipped,

going through our lives,

made to suck down Ritalin,

when we spoke up, when we challenged the authority

Drugged up and strung out, 

commiting suicide, and other

atrocities while the doctors said 

our activity was a symptom.

imbalance or disease, opinions 

are the proof of infirmity

ailment, not thought.  You called 

our opinions hyper-activity and

through drugs, guilted our parents 

and into buying them, but perhaps we need return to the game.

 

“Taking pieces is part of the game”
said the babyboomers to my peers
Said us, “but you took our best and brightest,
and took them for your own gain.
Look, my knights are dead
because you disallowed to be used,
a few moves from my most powerful
pieces, the most keen
The ones that could speak Arabic,
that were proficient with their weapons.
And you decreed this,
because in your brain
It was better to keep up
with appearances while escalating war.
Personally our generation
doesn’t care if he was a Queen.”

“That was a moral choice”
blurts the boomer smirking slyly
“you want to talk of morality? 
Let us look at your bishops gyrate
Crookedly across this whole board,
covering each other
With relocation, for they never
cross the same path since
The one in the light prevents
the contraception of rape
While the one on the black squares
exercises his ability to participate
in it, by sneaking up on
the smallest of my pawns from behind
And taking them off of the board,
and with it their innocence.

Is it any wonder then,
Why my generation
Has forgotten its religion,
Sacrificed all of its bishops
In favor of protecting ourselves? 
To decide for ourselves
What is right and wrong and
Not listen to a central fallible
Human?”  We asked rhetorically
To this bloated spoiled opponent
Adjusting in his seat,
Sweating like he was doing push-ups,
Speechless. We continue
To question the game we play,
“I have covered war then morality,
What other things are allowable?”

“Look at our castles, 
We can’t move to them,
We can’t seem to live in a home
That’s not a wreck
With my job we can’t get,
The degree that we were given
To insure that I’m not flipping
Burgers, but that insurance was denounced,
So every time I move
In position with my rooks
To endanger your king,
To put it in check,
You throw a tantrum,
And hand hits the table.”
“Well, far be it from me to concede a castle,
 Can’t you see your checks bounce?”

“Well, that’s pretty funny,
But with all of your money
I can see that you’ve pinned in
My king.  Your mansion,
Your castles, to the left and to my right
Of him; even my king is a pawn,
Moving slowly to
Your side of the board,
But none of my pieces
Come back when he reaches the
Other side, and if he did,
Would he be, pinned down.
Oh there goes my pawn,
My rooks, what fun,
Now my King is in stalemate,
Finally peace from this game.
I cannot move now and
Now the game ceases.

“No, the game doesn’t end” 
They said with a giggle
And gave us a sadistic grin
And leaned back. 
They had control of all the toys
In the playroom, including
The ones for the outside,
Surely even by the balls
They had us.
When we tried to tip the king,
To forfeit and occupy, they said
We had nothing to say,
And into our eyes
With a pepper spray attack.
So we have to wait for the
Babyboomer to die, just so we
 

Can pick of the pieces. 
Then the board will be just,

But in the midst of the
Game we were playin’
They set up another
Board for their spoiled children.

What keeps me up at night

Let me ask the faceless mass a question.

If you think about your existential status, and provided you are not concious for any sort of afterlife, a hypothetical-at-best scenario for even the most devout religious person, and you have imagined what it is like NOT to exist, have you ever found yourself on the cusp of revelation, yet scared of the reality of such an existence? Have you thought about the experience of no experience? The existence of null? The being of not being? The Thing of Nothing?

I do.

I do and I feel like it is a place that will kill me.

I try to imagine not existing and a remarkable thing occurs. It is almost like a gate appears before me. My mind, acting as a regulator, advises my wandering imagination to avoid this gate, but my curiosity pushes me closer. The latch swings open and gives me a taste of oblivion.

I dictate to my imagination the scenario of oblivion. "Blackness, no, not even, no eyes, no senses, no body, just infinite emptiness. " Then I think of the inevitability of such an experience, how we are in a constant state of decay, and realize that I will one day experience this emptiness, and that at a certain time in this existence, I will not. I will experience non-experience. After death, my body will no longer receive electrical impulses, no longer be able to interpret stimuli, and cut off forever my consciousness from the rest of the world. The gate swings open, and I am given a profound sense of dissonance, and worse, angst of crossing, as though I found the self destruct button to myself and I am coyly brushing the dust from it's red cylindrical surface, flirting with the idea of just mashing the button.

This is when the experience begins to disturb my psyche. I try to think of Heaven. I try to think of becoming a cow, or a fly, or a beetle. I try to think a great spirit will take my soul to join those who have gone before me. I try to think of existing beyond the universe. I imagine I become the pieces of a tree, as my body fertilizes the roots, embodies the bark, and reaches out from the branches. Then, the escapism of the impending null is broken by my own inquisitive imagination, recreating the prescribed scenario of empty nothing. It is almost like an alter-ego forcing me to look beyond at a possible reality of having no future beyond this "Mortal Coil". It is my Tyler holding my hand in the lye, reminding me of existence now and the void to come. "Don't look away. Don't block this out. We are learning something here. We are becoming enlightened"

I feel my life slip away. My finger outlines the Self-Destruct button. I take a breath. I put my index finger pad on the button and push until the resistance begins to give, and the button flexes. It feels like the emptiness is pulling my senses away, and for a second, I really do not exist. I never push the button until activation, mind you, but something sadistic and malicious inside me likes having that power, to tempt fate, to push only so far.

It's the same angst one feels looking over a high drop. Even with the arm rail there, a primal fear kicks in that directs your body to fear this height, to walk away. However, the charge and the rush of knowing that impending doom is only a misstep away also has its intriguing elements.

It is an interesting concept, the terror I feel imagining death without a conscious afterlife. It just causes so much dissonance that I can't sleep some nights. I start crunching fuzzy numbers in the waning light about the odds that even if I get into heaven, my spirit will be conscious for it. No one really knows if your consciousness is involved in the afterlife. Something not a lot of people have considered: your spirit mignt indeed go to Heaven, but there is no guarantee that you will experience it. What if even if there IS an afterlife, your consciousness only exists with the sensory array of the biological machine? Your spirit gets a "well done" and your body no longer experiences the world. Your spirit sees pearly gates, your body no longer functions. Your spirit gets a mansion, the body has no idea, and by this I truly mean NO Ideas.

What if what we call "consciousness" is really just your brains UI and when the system shuts down, the user gets up and leaves through the gate, we are left in this virtual OS of molecules and energy? What if the button powers off the system and leaves us in consolation, a pass up for a new model and our hard drives won't reformat or become an external drive to a new machine?

In the end, I sometimes lose myself in this concept and find myself later horrified. It ruins my sleep and traps my brains when I am tired and left to my own devices. I simply have the compulsion to explain this to the empty faces, until the feeling goes away, ignorance sets in, the lye is neutralized with vinegar, and I walk away from the gate to forget about its existence, and more importantly, my inevitable nonexistence. Life goes on, and I can continue with my cyclical, fractalized existence in this world. I can continue to punch my card and spend my time, go home to rest for the next day... until its facade is ruined again by my own imagination's wandering.

Why can't I just go on pretending I will live forever like all the other deaf-mutes?

Entropy and biology: the birth of the conflict of philosophy

As a future english teacher, I figure I need to write more. So as I find time waiting for the bus in the SUB, I figure I should flex my rhetorical muscles and do some reflecting, or something along that line of activity.

Well, I believe that I have rounded the spheres of philosophy into two schools. One of entropy and the other of biology. Entropy understands that everything is in a delayed state of decay. The world began as nothing and so it will return. Null and Void birthed light, matter, substance, structure, system, and it is within that understanding that we operate, understanding that life is slowly returning to the null and void. our right eye understands this world, as it is the eye that is connected to our left brain, that understands black and white, light and dark, and binary logic. Our words and language are a product of our understanding of the fact that all will die, and it is in the increase of decay that man excells over all other creatures. We created tools to speed up entropy and breakdown. We make sticks and swords and bows to hunt animals. When tribes rise up against tribes, it is the entropy that is being sped up to consume the other. Even in the binary understanding of "the other" we see that light and dark are a matter of being able to understand how the world decays.

The other philosophy, one of biology, emerges through the understanding of process. From the void comes order and purpose. From light comes mass, mass is organized into states, states create the composition of planets, stars, chemicals, and amino acids, amino acids are the building blocks of life, and on the top of that life is man. Our other eye, the left eye, the other eye sees the composition and is literate in the image, the big picture. We are all dying, that is true, and war increases the entropy, but we can also nurture, dress wounds, and make medicine. It is through our understanding that biology is forever fighting the null and void by making process and structure.

A balance between these philosophies are an ideology, a culture, a society. How far one establishes the ideas of either sphere demonstrates what kind of culture you belong to. A guilt culture understands that it is individual guilt that motivates the actions of a human being. A personal failure to dominate among others as an individual ultimately demonstrates the proness to entropy, and therefore it is the dominance over others that indicates status. Entropy is the bear that consumes the slowest camper, as the old joke goes. I don't have to outrun entropy, just be faster than the other people around me. Shame culture however, acknowledges that the system of community can combat the effects of entropy, and therefore the tennants of community and hospitality reign over all else. To fight against a force in the face of entropy is to be revered. People do not die; they return to the earth to continue the progression of the system. Entropy becomes nothing more than an inevidability, not the enemy. In fact, enemies are only those who practice these expediant methods of increased entropy. The image, the big pictuer is important. One dies for the many and the network of bards and oral teachers immortalize you in the system. The culture then picks and chooses its tennets of faith through the understanding of how entropy and biology play out. Every culture has a mix of all of the spheres of philosophy.

Hmm... The bus will be here soon. I'll refine this in subsequent posts.

The 3 Rule Challenge or, How I Completed a 14 Hour Car Ride by Bus in 28 hours

I have this theory. Inside a Greyhound bus, time speeds up. Somehow a novel pedestrian conveyance such as the cross country bus has mastered the control of time and space, a feat that quantum physicists are still striving for. For instance, by car it takes fourteen hours to reach Minneapolis, Minnesota from Bozeman, Montana, provided that the roads are icy and the vehicle that is being employed on such a trek is an inefficient SUV, forcing a stop at every gas station.

By bus this trip doubles, although the distance and speed limit stays the same, proving that time outside of the bus is moving slower than the inside. To break it down further, for every one hour a person spends outside a bus, two hours are spent by the people inside of the bus. A shift in temporal stasis is the only real scientific explanation. Or perhaps was it stopping every five minutes so that the driver could take a five minute smoke break? This answer seems more reliable than quantum theory, but not nearly as entertaining.

The first rule of bus travel is that the person sitting next to another person cannot be someone who the original person wanted to sit next to. This plays out thus. I sat down in my seat, threw my backpack into the overhead compartment, and removed from that backpack The Cheese Monkeys by Chip Kidd. The gist that I received of this book was the tale of an undergrad student in the 1950’s, and his struggle with the power of influence versus being within the constructs of societal generated safety. I had just reached the part about his art professor saying that everyone can call her Dotty, and thus providing the frame work for the rest of the book that nicknames can seem like they make someone naked. That is when a beautiful red headed woman sat next to me.

The odds of this gamble were that I would be sitting next to a middle aged man named Carl that had a pack of zigzags, cheap pipe tobacco to roll them around, a prosthetic appendage and never ending ‘Nam stories that always ended with the whistling through the gap in his smile where a tooth should have been. Instead of having a little peace, I would become privileged to experience the stench of latex under body odor under the smell of cheap liquor and Listerine, as the fellow’s leg disconnected at the knee to “air out” for a few miles.
For this more attractive outcome, most males would become quite religious, mouthing thank you to whoever they look at when mouthing thank you. Whether it is God, Allah, Fate, Brett Favre, Homer Simpson, Mom, either way, this chosen deity seems to live on a thankful person’s forehead as they appear to stare at the heavens looking for something deeper.

She asked what I was reading. I said that I was reading The Cheese Monkeys. She asked “Oh. Is it good?” I said “so far,” and continued reading. She then sat and faced away from me. Not only did she seem turned off by the idea of sitting next to me, but I knew that despite the initial attraction that I had to this women, I was going home to propose to my girlfriend which trumps any notion of a shallow flirtatious fling. On top of all of that, I have never been one to be that forward with my notions of attraction, in fact I had been best friends with my then girlfriend for three years before I asked her out. Hasty relationships were not what I was about. She sat next to me none the less, and as I speculated a nickname for Elisabeth, (For there were many: Elle, Beth, Liza, Libby. It’s like verbal Kama Sutra with a name. ) I remained tied to Chip Kidd and his novel. All I wanted now was the chance to read; she probably wanted a tattooed bruiser of an army man who just came back from war looking for a warm bed to give him a welcome back party. Both of our interests were thwarted by each other's presence in an uncomfortable seat.

I continued reading the book. The plot took me to a point where a professor was asking a group of students to create a poster that influenced someone to do something. One submission was a simple black and white text poster that read “Whatever you do, don’t think about elephants."

The second rule is that no matter where the location, the bus must stop every five minutes for a smoke break. The Non-Smoking bus drivers would bend this rule a bit but the hard core smokers seemed to pull over every time their Camel logoed watch pointed to a number in the minute hand. This allows for common souls to huddle together in the elements, freeze outside, and talk to people they would rather talk to instead of those they have been paired with in accordance with rule one. This brings up Chet, a navy guy from San Diego. While on this smoke break, Chet walked up to Elisabeth and introduced himself. She replied with her own title as “Lizzy,” and began to talk about who she was, what she liked, and why she was attractive to
this fellow. Chet had recently got on the bus at a stop on the fringes of the twin cities, in fatigues, so his exposure to the three rule bus game was short. It was only later in the trip that I noticed he was a 3 rule challenge hustler. Not only had he played before, but he was an expert on this little travel activity.

I stayed on the bus. I don’t smoke, although I do believe I have a second hand addiction to smoking. Sometimes I am just more relaxed and less edgy around people who are lighting one up. My minor addiction to nicotine is satisfied by standing next to people that have a more profound attachment to the substance. I fear that the only way to break that addiction is chewing already used nicotine gum or wearing a spent patch to cure secondhand nicotine addiction. We all have our corruptions, this is plain to see, and we are told to glance over them like they don’t exist, but the difficult part of that is avoiding the pachyderm sized flaws
that we are told not to look at. I stayed in the bus reading for 10 minutes, the smokers came on the bus at five minutes, so now the relative time warp of the Greyhound bus was satisfied at stasis again. The Diesel engine fired up and we were on our trek again.

The third rule is also very simple. All participants must acknowledge that the trip is temporary, and therefore acknowledge that all personal connection on a bus be superficial and anonymous. This is the demonstration of Chet’s savvy when it came to the three rule game. I try to bury myself in Chip Kidd, try to concentrate on a funny moment when a person in class demonstrates a word by signifying the word in its presentation. The fellow painstakingly made the word HOT out of match sticks and was given a C due to its inability to burn his finger when he touched it. The Professor threw him a Zippo lighter and told him to burn his project for an A. Not only did the student incinerate the project he worked so hard to achieve, but the glue he used exploded and left a large char on the wall of the cinder block classroom.

I couldn't pay attention. I was eavesdropping on the conversation that I knew I shouldn't be listening too. The problem was that his conversation was such a mammoth display of the power of anonymity it was hard not to listen to something I told myself not to listen too. Not two minutes after introducing himself as Chet, he puts his hand through his Mohawk and says “I’m sorry. My name is not Chet, it is Steve. I lie because I am insecure about myself and had a rough life growing up without a dad.” Lizzy, as it were, across the aisle, was enthralled with “Chet’s” "honesty" and continued on her smoke and mirrors rant about how so many people were shallow.

It’s one thing to be caught in a lie and have to tell someone that the person in question is not who he claims to be, but it seems that “Chet” had other things in mind. His idea was to burn the façade of what he was immediately to demonstrate a soft, scorched, vulnerable side, so that girls would like him and start a hasty romance that ends when the trip stops. This could only happen in the anonymous fling situation of the bus. Rule three was Chet’s advantage to take advantage of another person. It just so happened that Elisabeth was shallow enough to allow that advantage, or perhaps dying to be exploited by that advantage, to fall for such an obvious ploy. The flames consume the façade and they both get the A they wanted. The bus trip ended and Chet and Lizzy got off the bus hand in hand. Chet lit Lizzy’s cigarette with a Zippo and went on their way to the bus station restroom. Their time normalized while I still had 10 hours of a 5 hour bus ride to go. I finished my book, closed my eyes and reflected on the events of my travels. Perhaps in our anonymous selves, we have smoke damage of the corruptions that we want others not to see. We create illusions to demonstrate ourselves in one form, as well as metaphorical nicknames to demonstrate our seemingly unconscious desires, until we are touched by an observer that should not be looking at our faults by decree, but cannot resist. We are found to be false and then either burn away that falseness for our own credit, or allow it to take the form of the average everyday grade that is passed on to the people we meet. The final purpose of all of these illusions and monikers persists to create an illusion for ourselves to perceive the individual as more powerful than his faults and controller of his own destiny. This then contradicts itself in the practice of the flaws dictating how fast we progress along a highway of personal freedom and achievement of goals. It turns our claims of understanding liberty and freedom into understanding the boundaries of what is socially safe. We are afraid of ourselves and rely on the preservation of anonymity to spare us. The danger is that there are those among us who have learned to benefit from this dissonance and with that advantage, take what he wants from people who are sitting in the false security. Safety is at its core a social construct and leaves us ironically unsafe.

To sum up, Bus travel leaves way too much time to think about things. If ever given the chance to fly or go Greyhound, splurge on the coach seat. There is very little philosophy dealing with an hour flight there and back than a more than whole day’s worth of what should be a fourteen hour ride.

In Process

I have started the passing of my MySpace Blog to this location on Blogger. pork ay? you ask, well, after much encouragement by my wife to switch over, and the fact that no one uses MySpace anymore, I have decided that this is my best move. I will continue to place things in the blog every now and again, but at the end of all of this, there should be new stuff coming out soon.

Larger than Life (tissue warning)

I recently attended my Uncle Matthias's funeral.

Due to the fact that my father had about 17 brothers and sisters, there are many of my aunts and uncles that I don't really know all that well, and Uncle Matthias was one of those people. All I really remember was that at the baby shower/Wedding reception we had a few years ago, he and his wife Jane brought us a tree to plant for Lilas. According to his Obit, He was a man who loved life and those that were alive.

Let me explain a little bit further. He had a lot of cats. 11 cats, mostly walk in strays that he took care of. He also tended to his garden a lot. This seems kind of like typical things a 63 year old fellow would partake in, but it is a little deeper than that in my family. We are, from my observations, the stewards, caretakers, and the ones most attuned with life and lives.

See, my father enjoys it when the lake water runs over the bank in the stream. I always assumed it made for good fishing, but one day my dad related this to me that made him tear up a little. "Ryan, when I was younger, there was so much bad around me, so much death, then I would see the water rise over the bank. The water was just so full of life, I could forget how tough things were and revel in the living. There was just so much life..."

I think that we as Riojas's are quite attuned to life. We are sensitive to the little behaviors that are exhibited by living things and life in general. That's why we got a tree. I mean, Karen and I were registered at Target for gifts, and we had no place to plant a tree where we were living, other than at my parent's house. It was not a practical gift at all if one looks as it in a useful way. But this one gesture of good wishing seemed more a representation of Life than something that could be used for any useful purpose. My uncle was saying, whether he meant to or not, "Here is life! I'll give you life for your new life starting."

My father also is a man who is preoccupied by the essence of life. He is a hunter and a fisherman, as well as a 4wheeler officionatto, and spends his day at work providing heat to people who are cold. I myself find myself getting choked up about silly things like when people are offered jobs to be able to continue providing for a family. My dad is also an empathetic man, which I inherited from him in spades. We both have a desire to fix bad emotions in other people, to experiment with human reaction, and to make people laugh. By the same token, I guess I share the same sort of anchor to the well being of life to enrich my own.

The format of the funeral was to collect the family and have people share fond memories of my uncle. My dad took a turn.

"I remember that Matthias had a pretty blue car. He would give me and Danny each $2.50 a piece for our allowance and get into his car. Then he would say... 'Hey, each of you gimme a dollar back.' We would give him a dollar and he would peel out in front of the house. We would cheer and yell and have a grand old time. My brother Matthias was someone who was Larger Than life itself..."

I'm kinda choking up right now as I draw conclusions and parallels with my own life. I am seeing with each day that I grow older and older why my dad was the way he is; why he would ask me where I was going before I would hang out with my friends, and why he would give me 5 or 6 bucks to enjoy the outing without thinking about it. That's what my dad was shown about how to take care of someone younger than himself. To be larger than life is what it means to be a Riojas, to be a part of this family, to be a person so tied to the ebb and flow of life.

I now look at my dad with the eyes of a father. I see things that he is too humble to admit. My father has a million people that would take a bullet for him. The conversations I have with people I meet on campus is "your Tino's kid aren't you" that is followed by "Your dad is a great guy!" There are children being born in the family that people, on purpose, are naming after my dad. As sad as it is to lose a brother, an uncle, a father, a friend, a soldier, a caretaker, and a gardener, I believe it is Valentino Riojas's turn to be what Uncle Matthias was to him. It's my father's turn to be larger than life.

This post in particular made, and makes, people in my family cry.

Long time survivor of S.I.D.S

I am a year older and a year wiser. Ok bullcrap flag on the thirty, 15 yard loss.

Here's the world as I see it after a quarter century of breathing without choking.
1. Everything sucks.
2. Everything is beautiful.
3. Life is hard
4. Life is simple.
5. Sleep is optional
6. Don't believe the hype, what people say is bull to compromise your freedom.
7. Always get a second opinion. one person's word is hype, 2 people is solid science.
8. God is real, but the God most people follow is imaginary.
9. I enjoy video games, and drink coffee, but do you know what's addictive? Heroin!
10. Don't go outside. You know, global warming and all that.
11. All is legal until one gets caught.
12. A person cannot take someone's freedom, but when panicked, a person can give up their freedom to someone else. War is one of those panic inducing events
13. Money is a numeric value of what an employer feels that your freedom is worth, and upon purchasing your freedom on a pay as you go plan, they capitalize on working you more than they feel your freedom is worth. One day, You become a salaried manager, and thus you are updated to a subscription basis, where your employer decides that your freedom is totally expendable for the sake of his or her own ends. Then you retire and spend whats left of your freedom on not finally succumbing to S.I.D.S.
14. Everyone in this world is an ass. There are two kinds of asses in this world: Ones that are smart, ones that are dumb. The luckiest of us can choose which ones we will be on an hour by hour basis.
15. I have no problem with God, it's the fan club that I can't stand.
16. Giving your 110% is what stupid bosses ask of employees who probably have a better grasp on statistical math then they do.
17. Most controversy is not worth talking about until it can be talked about in a non emotional manner. Since most controversy evokes emotional reaction, this means that to effectively discuss controversy, we must wait until it is no longer controversial.
18. Politics is a way to place all of our responsibilities on someone else. Its how grown ups shirk their chores.
20. Most Americans are minorities. Ah, the English language, it is beautiful.
21. English is a stupid language.
22. I love sarcasm. Stupid people think I am complimenting them, and smart people get the joke.
23. I think Helen Keller said it best...
24. Those people who tell you that everyday is the greatest day of their life are lying to you.
25. Never cook bacon naked. The blisters are unattractive.

After all this time, you would think I had something deeper to say about the human experience. Well, I'm not that old yet. I can't spend too much time reflecting on that which is deeper than this. I have to wait until I retire to really understand what I just went through and what I truely know. If I were Descartes, I would have deduced that all I can really know is that I think. (Yes, most people get the quote wrong. "I think therefore I am" is actually a combination of two conclusions Descartes came up with in hes meditations. It really goes that he knows he could only conclude if everything is a deception is that he exists, and he thinks. It has nothing to do with generation of self as the dumb ones from the 14th point might conclude

here's to the night folks. Here's to another year under the belt. Yay, I'm not dead.

Wasting Time

One quick thing before I earn my nights repose.

I make 9/hour+tips at outback

Take out for taxes and my first paycheck was 75.07 for 10 hours of work creating basically, 7.51 per hour

3 of it went to cashing it
20 of it went to lunch of which I spent 10 on myself
30 of it went to take out for dinner of which I had a wonton or two and bites of each thing

43 dollars in one day converts into five hours that went to expensive food and over 50% of my assets (overshadowed by ridiculous amounts of over draft and credit charges) and 1 hour got to spend on myself for a burrito and a Sobe. Roughly 6 hours in essence got spent in roughly 6 hours. Every hour I do not work is an hour that gets spent in this case. I hope this pattern does not continue.

With this set of circumstances, is it any wonder I flip out at the slightest provocation and stay up all night with indigestion? Add in the fact that I don't really do much for myself and just about everything for the other two and 2/9 of a person that live with me and you will find a guy who just needed a good time for one day. So, I had a much needed release hanging out with my friend consequences be damned. It is 2, Lilas will be up at 7. I will take care of her, fall asleep on the couch and have nightmares of credit card companies calling my phone and doing chores to the point where I work a week in my sleep in reoccurring dreams. Only to wake up to credit card companies calling me and doing chores while I am awake. At this point, I need to say this and once again, consequences be damned. I needed tonight so anyone can say what they will and I will give them the bird and begone with it. Its late and I am going to sleep now.

See May 24, 2007

My god, is it May again?

AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I think I've reached the breaking point.

I find that the more I try to work though this situation I have gotten myself into, the more impossible it becomes to work. Lets start with about 4 months ago (or so)

I was consoling Karen about a movie we had just seen. She was crying inconsolably about the movie Juno, a comedy, of all things. It was about a girl who had a baby at a young age and the sight of a baby welled tears in her eyes. Well, the reason, she said later, was that she wanted another baby and she knew she couldn't have one. I was not ready for one, to be honest the reasons were beyond anything like finances. My first child's birth took a lot away from me that I guess even now, staring my future down again, I am still bitter about what was stolen, not only by having a kid, but by others who associated with my first child.

My mother in law is a big source of the bitterness. She came into my house in Missoula a day before my wife and future daughter was to be induced, rearranged my furniture, threw away my things, worked herself to death in my home, and expected me to thank her for the invasion of privacy and insulation to my character. I recall resting in the back room of our small trailer that we were renting from my father in law, (who I have nothing but respect for) and having her come to me and literally call my faith and salvation into account. "Ya'kno, if I were you I would go take a walk and pray. Ya'kno, get right with God right now. This would be a good time." I was reading Snow Crash instead, and didn't move an inch. Really, she was using an assumption that I was a dirty rotten sinner and therefore needed to pray for repentance because of the infidelity that was going to be born in 15 hours. I had long made peace with that to my creator long ago, and now all I had to to was deal with the consequences. All she really wanted to do was get me out of the house so she could have Karen all to herself. Even earlier she had asked what role she was going to have with the birth of Lilas, and we told her that she could be there for moral support then a partner for the birth. That was MY job. anyway, comes time to have Lilas, and she tells me that I am tired and should go get a sandwich from the vending machine. Once again she told me what to feel and tried to get Karen by herself. This time I was mad, and had to leave to not stress out my half conscious wife who was giving birth. I left to save peace and as much as I hate to admit it, I was hungry. However, when I left, Karen's mom was such a stress that we almost had a C-section. When I came back we resumed giving birth, but Karen had contracted down to 4cm from almost 9. I always phrase it nicer when i talk to Karen about it, but the Human Body tries to abort children under stress. Stress stops labor, stress causes miscarriages, stress Kills babies that the body deems too stressful to live. When we called Karen's mother during different false labors, It put so much strain on her that she would stop contractions. Anyway, as we resumed, I had Karen's hand and her leg with my arm. she pushed and bled and I held her leg back to help get my daughter to the world. She was born with a lump on the side of her head from the 9 to four contraction but she was a pretty baby when she was born despite it. Upon going to but supplies for the hospital stay, Karen's Mom received a phone call from her sister and re accounted the events. "Yea... Karen was having a hard time... Yea it was just like when I had Jeremy... Yea, she had it rough but me and her mother in law pulled together our motherliness, and she has a beautiful baby girl." Let's be clear Leslie: Karen was having a hard time because of YOU, your story about your first child changed at least six times until it was exactly like YOURS, and you were no where near the blood and the piss and the placenta and the shit, YOU were being corrected by health officials when you were giving bad advice. She eventually did get her wish of getting rid of me, you see. She doesn't tell the story with me in it and writes me out of history. So you can imagine my bitterness to this day. She did get her wish of getting rid of me and having Karen all to herself.

So I was not ready to have another kid. She cried every night after that. I gave in our anniversary under a few conditions.

1. She said that she would push though being sick.

2. She would avoid her previous pregnancy diet of Dr. Pepper and Fudge Shoppe sticks.

3. She would be better with the money.

After all of this and the fact that it would be a good time for Lilas to have a little sibling, I gave in and for our anniversary, we removed her IUD. We Immediately got pregnant. We also immediately went broke during the final days of the semester. What I figured happened was Karen panicked when we had under 1000 dollars in our checking account and counter intuitively began to "sand bag" for the coming depression, spending the last we had on things we apparently "Needed" and for the life of me I don't know where it went. Good bye 3! She eats relatively better than she did when she was pregnant the first time, so she keeps number two. Number one is the one that Is the most destructive. She is too sick to work. Even to clean the house. I have had to be the housewife and the working man while Karen acts as the couch. Yea, she's sick. I wouldn't make her clean a toilet in her condition,but she promised she would work through being sick. She has even moved her computer to the couch for ease of access and camps out on the same stretch of furniture complaining about Lilas jumping on her. I'm starting my old job at Outback again because they would give me more hours and they give me free food as well as tips every week. It's not a bad gig, but it is fast and hard and I ache like a bastard. In the end she has defaulted on 3 and that keeps her in check for 2 on the basis that we have no money, and last but not least, she lied to my face about 1.

So, now I feel betrayed. I feel used. I feel like taking all our stuff, torching it, and living like a freaking hermit for the rest of my life. I think I need another job on top of the Outback gig, the problem is Karen can't watch Lilas in her condition so the other job would be going to daycare while Karen continues to act like a Barcalounger. It's not her fault, I know. That drive to make another baby was so strong I guess, she felt a necessity to have another child, she felt it necessary to lie to me and give me false hope that I would not have to carry the whole house. This is the punishment for being an upstanding male who accepts his responsibility with the consequences of his actions. It's not worth it. To the dead beat Dads out there, Hazaa and Kudos to you for being able to escape the responsibity of children. I envy your lack of conscience and honor and long to be one who could walk away when things get hard.

....I feel lied to....

(comments posted later)

From Jason

Well, I have to say that the way you just spilled your guts to everyone is impressive. You've never been one to hide your feelings though, so I'm not overly suprized. It really sounds as though you've gone 100 mph into a brick wall of shit for lack of a better term and have no time to turn for anything other then advise.

First of all, life is far too short for you to invest time into people that go out of their way to make you feel like a horrible person. It's also too short for you to be dwelling on the perameters of maintaining relationships with those that cannot accept you for who you are as a person. Your faith, in the 15 years that I've been a friend to you, hasn't waivered or been questioned any more then the next believer. We all make bad decisions and we all do things to a less of an extent then we would have originally prefered. Wether it be your education, career or relationships with your family and friends, they can all be improved upon just like anyone else. I only bring that up because I don't understand the reasoning for Karen's mother to be acting this way towards you. There's a very good possibility that there isn't any reason at all other then the fact that she's an overbearing, control obsessed psyco. Much of which is not seemingly in her control to remedy untill she can mentally and emotionally accept the fact that her daughter is a grown woman and her role as a mother as changed.

Without meeting Karen's mother, I can't really give you any other outlook on the situation with her. I'd venture to guess that you're better off in just understanding that she has issues. It's not you, it's not your fault and you need to just blow her off as much as you can without completely offending Karen. Talk to Karen about it though. Not everyone gets along with their in-laws and at least you can feel comfortable in knowing that you tried, but your friendship wasn't accepted.

As for working too much and doing all of the housework. Karen needs to realize that even though she's carrying your child, she still has an obligation to maintain. I supose you'll have to try and rationally talk things out without directly putting blame on her. Even if accusations are fully deserved, their never looked kindly upon when their being delivered to you by someone you care for. Many feelings arise, such as being embarassed which is soon to be masked by anger closely followed by defense mechinisms. More or less, you'll need to tell her that you've run as hard as you can with the rope in hand and you're about to hang yourself. What I mean by that is you were basicly handed the responsibility of, well, pretty much everything and you ran with it. Right now you're at a "breaking point." So tell her about it. Ask her if there's any way she can muster up the strength and determination to help pull you two through this. Start small though. If there's any way to guarantee failure in a life changing goal, it's by setting yourself up for failure with too large of a goal to achieve. See if there's a few light chores around the house she can do. Get the computer away from the couch. I've been there, and it's just plain being lazy. Talk to her about a part time job. Many women are sick through the duration of a pregnancy and she still has obligations to maintain. 20 hours a week with a creative aproach to child care during those hours could really help you out a lot.

I have to get ready for work now man, but send me a mssg or call if any of this is making sense and you'd like to talk it through a little more or just vent. We're here for ya bud, hang in there.

My reply:

In defense for Leslie, my mother in law, at that point in her life she was busy with her own issues with her Marriage and finances. The way she copes with this is to ratchet down the other things in her life that she can control. Karen acted as sole babysitter for her brother for all of high school and as a consequence, Karen missed out on a lot of things that you and I got to do, like stay up all night with friends, fight with people and not feel guilty about it the next day, and just be a normal teenage person. She was basically a co-mother with her mother and that inclined this whole controlling psycho thing. I was something that Leslie couldn't control, and barely knew in general, so as a consequence, she tried to control me and failed. Since then Karen has had conversations with her mom about her role as mom. We've worked out that although Karen is Leslie's daughter, she is not her child anymore. Things are better. It's the day that my kid was born that I want to get back, or at least feel better about. We patched up the relationship with Leslie, but the scar is still there for past transgressions. I'm working though that though.

In defense for Karen, she really is sick. It is miserable and painful, and we have a prescription for nausea that we can't afford until next week. I try to get her to do things around the house and she runs to the bathroom instead. She's not having a picnic. The metaphor of furniture is to describe the ability she has right now to help me while I clean and work, not for her laziness or her lack of commitment. To put it another way, if she went full out cleaning, I would have to clean the house and the vomit from the floor. She understands she has an obligation to uphold, she just cant do it. The "Breaking point" was an internal one for me, rather than one in our relationship. I'm falling apart an there's no one that can help me at this point. I found myself kicking a box across the room over not finding a dust pan, screaming at my two year old for being two, and having nothing to do but write about it. Nothing much really has changed about how I deal with things I guess, Instead of bringing a notebook with me everywhere, I use my computer.

anyway, I am shocked by your insight man. You've done a lot of growing since I last saw you. I also need to meet this chick of yours. Kristi said she liked her, so that gives me... well nothing. I appreciate your concern and thanks for the post.
one more thing: CALL YOUR DAD! He came into home depot a few months and we were in a consensus that you were a bum that doesn't answer your phone :^}, take it easy man.

Og the Caveman

I have thought long and hard about this for a long time. How did we get to the point, where like it was said in Pirates 3: currency is the currency of the realm? Both me and my friend Ben have had issues with this, mainly because we both see the strange flaw with this: What is the true value of money? It is currency, but what does it stand for? Sure it was at one point based on gold, but what value does gold have? Sure, gold is rare, but what value does rarity have? there is less of it in the world true, but why does that make that item valuable? Sure, It is hard to get if it is rare, but why does difficulty indicate value? It involves a lot of effort and expense to the obtainer, that is apparent, but, why does expense and effort define value, when there are many difficult things in life I can place effort into, to obtain a rare product that is not valuable in the sense of currency or even product? This flaw is extended by the current dollar standard, the "Prosperity of the government" which refutes the rarity issue, causing the dollar, a printed bill, to be the new rare item, and thus regulated to keep its rarity, to make sure that there is less money in the world, to make dollars hard to get, to involve a lot of effort and expense. It is a simulation, a game that we as modern society participants play to validate a system to numerate our value and pretend that cotton with green ink is worth working at a job for, and thus validate the lifestyle of the modern man, and further validate the entitlement of a consumer culture.

I have once defined "Money" as an item with no value or intrinsic worth until exchanged for an item or service. A "wage" is a number that is arbitrarily attributed to the assumed value of ones time or (in the case of those lucky bastards with a salary) potential for work as expressed in money. The transitive property would then indicate that to work for a wage is to ask someone to quantify your time or effort into an item that is worthless until it is used for things that have worth relative to the consumer. So, the question remains, why do we work our lives to death for money?

I have heard it said that it is because we live in a cultured society and do not live like animals, who are ruled by survival of the fittest. These same ironic individuals are also not only benefiting from a society of culture and commerce, but are also contradicting themselves in the form of being "Politically Active" or rather, politically fueled by things that can cause arguments. Democratic politics by nature are dominated by politics by numbers; the largest piece gets the power. As in American politics, only a select few can really decide policy, and thus insures the dominance of the few over the many, perpetuating the strong over the weak, vis a vis, Survival of the Fittest. Thus the paradox is revealed. Wait, Ryan, I thought that everyone gets a voice in democracy, where do you get off by saying that only a few people get policies passed and insure Survival of the Fittest? As it stands, the system in place is the electoral college, who have political conscience; In other words, even if a majority under that Electoral official votes yay, that member of the electoral college can vote nay, and thus perpetuate his own dominance. Politics is, at it's foundation, the definition of organization with resources, (money) laws, (either pertaining to or issuing fees in connection with money) and military issues (getting money to end your life or another for the political gain of territory( resources(money)) or power(control of people (human resources (human money))) This is the kicker, are you ready? The value of a wage is only given if a person relinquishes a part of his freedom to the person who makes the wage. Transitively wage is equal to a worthless item representing worth of time or assets which are the equivalent of freedom, Let's go to the algebra:

Time or assets=Freedom
(time or assets)random(X)M..Wage
X=whim of person with power
IF Service = 0, then M..0
Else M..Random(Service)
(time or assets)=service

Therefore:

first Service=Freedom
and then
Freedom(random(whim of person with power))(random (Freedom)=wage

This makes little to no sense to anyone who won't look at it with an open mind, but what this tells me is a wage is the amount of freedom one chooses to relinquish to the scrutiny of a person with the power who judges what your freedom is worth. it's being a willful slave to a person who is more powerful than you and as a result, a willful disregard for how much your freedom is worth to you. By extension, Politics is the controlled stripping of that freedom. By choosing a politician to make policy, one is asking someone of more important power to decide their freedom, making freedom bondable under any "Civilized" society.

So, why money? It is control over those who don't have any. So, how does this work? How do we as those under the system, get into a place that our sweat becomes our own bondage? I think it began with Og the caveman.

Og the cave man was a man who should've died at about 1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000BCAbout During the Godknowswhen period. Og was a genetically inferior being and in accordance to evolutionary advancement, was about to be expunged from the genetic pool. Moki the Huge and Smelly was a contemporary of Og and was about to participate in the natural selection process, as a genetic material filter, with a big bloody club. See, Moki was the biggest caveman in the settlement and as a result, could take anyone's game as he willed by killing the person who had the game and taking it for himself. Og was no big and smelly either, for he had asthma and a club foot, so it was hard for moki to gain his kill. Moki was raising his club wen Og pathetically said "Wait, Moki, Hear me out!"

Moki stopped for a moment. His arm ached from the beatings from earlier and really was only gaining the game that Og had for a snack for the next day, so he listened. "Go on, weak and feeble one."

"I bet your arm is tired from beating the other cave men huh,"

"Indeed it is Og, in fact it is quite uncomfortable."

"tell you what, I love shiny pebbles from the creek over there. If you bring me a pebble, I will just give you the game I have."

Moki thought that this was a good alternative to working over this weakling for a piece of jerky, so he went to the creek and found a small pebble and gave it to Og. Og responded by handing the small game to Moki, just as was agreed.

The next day, the club was being raised, Og made the request for 1 pebble for his game. Moki took the offer and rested his clubbing hand for another day.

The next day came around, Og was vey hungry. Og had not eaten for two days now and the game he was getting that day was running faster than his slingshot could fire. Moki came around and said "Og, I brought you a pebble, give me your game"

Og knew that he would die if he admitted to not having any game, so as a distraction, he said "I don't like these rocks, I only want white rocks now." Knowing that white rocks were rare in the creek. This would keep big dumb Moki busy for at least 3 hours. Moki, to the surprise and shock of Og, found this new system to be kinder to his killing arm and thus went to look for a white pebble. Og, sllingshotted a few geese and came back. Moki paid one white shiney stone and went on his way with his snack geese.

The fourth day of this rolled around. Og was starving. Moki had returned with his usual request for Og's game. "I was looking for white stones in the creek. There are not any for me to give you."

Og replied "Here's what I'll do for you, If you go and kill an antelope for me, I'll give you four rocks that will have a scratch in them. These are just as good as white rocks. They have to have MY scratch in them for the trade to be good now, though. You get 1 antelope in exchange for four free meals.

Intrigued by the idea Moki goes off and kills an antelope for Og and returns. Og gives Moki four scratched rocks and, when Moki gives back one rock, Og gives Moki a piece of antelope, thus creating the first manager/employee relationship.

after Moki goes through those rocks, Og looks at Moki and says "Moki, The Item I want is far more rare now,"

"What is it" Moki said

"Teeth from other cave men" Og said

So, Moki ran arond beating up cavemen for teeth, all the while not seeing Og collect their game when they were dead. Moki gave Og the teeth and Og gave moki all the game that only a business week or two before, Moki could've got for free by doing the same thing he was doing. The difference is that Moki was now under the power of a crippled top man who convinced Moki that this system was beter.

One day, Moki ran out of people to take teeth from. "I want food Og" He said

Og replied "I want teeth"

Moki Replied "I don't have any"

Og said "What about yours?"

Moki, without hisitation hit himself in the face with his club, gave his own teeth to Og. Moki then during the course of a month, starves to death without the ability to chew the game he purchased, while Og sought out new areas to corporately expand. Thus beginning the struggle of the weak and powerful over the laborious and strong. Or maybe not, I don't know.

What I do know is that many of us have sold our teeth for a piece of meat. Many of us starve in our own participation in the system of clubbed footed asthmatic bosses and presidents who want power over us to do things that they can't do. I for one need metaphorical dentures many of an occasion.

So here's to you Og, for shifting survival of the fittest to the survival of the weakest and giving humanity the trait of decrepitude for eternity. Here's to evolution and what it has given mankind. Here's to natural selection turned on it's ear. Here's to God watching this unfold and asking for 10 percent of all I have every week, 10 percent of my power and freedom as an organism in this world. Here's to Og the caveman, may his ancestors be full, for the week he starved.