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.

My Playlist for the end of 2007

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

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

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

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

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


Linkin park - somewhere i belong

Tom | MySpace Video

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

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

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

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

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







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

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

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

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




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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

And simplifies everything back to zero:

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

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

4x^2-49=0

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

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

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

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

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