The Plight of Sir Theodore Ruxbin

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

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

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

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

All your love is missing is hate

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pavlov

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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