A Reason for Everything?

Why does everyone need a reason for things that other people do? I have to say if it isn't very obvious why someone is doing something at least slightly out of the ordinary, then most people scrutinize the decision; endlessly. And if you don't give an answer that makes sense in that person's estimation and experience, you are deemed a dangerous individual to their own little universe. I mean dangerous as in someone they don't particularly like or dislike but are made uncomfortable by because they don't quite understand them.

Personally, I like people I don't understand. I find people that fit my logical flow to be somewhat boring. But why don't people just do things for no reason? Well, I shouldn't say no reason...there is a reason for everything. But why can't it simply be

"For shits and giggles"
"Because I felt like it"
"Because I wanted to"
"For kicks"
"For the sheer fun of it"

without garnering wary looks and uncomfortable silences or acting like you are a sideshow?

Set Up For Failure

So, has the United States as a collective organism learned its lesson from the economic crash? I have to say in one critical aspect, the answer has to be a resounding no. The big banks are still conglomerated and a decently large point of failure. The stimulus package has done absolutely nothing to curb the growth and dominance of the huge banks that caused the meltdown in the first place. The whole point of capitalism is that businesses that are not performing well begin to fail and allow other better run businesses to ascend to prominence.

This breaks down when a government regulates things enough to create barriers to failure, but do not regulate enough to prevent a business from becoming so integral to the economy that it would cause a financial catastrophe if it failed. But we haven't seemed to learn this lesson, as the banks and insurance companies that were the central cause of the economic crisis are beginning to rise again. The concentration of wealth in certain spheres is the byproduct and the correlative cause of the slow recovery the country is experiencing and most likely will cause more busts in the future.

Will we ever learn?

Memoria - Pages 32 & 33

Memory Introduction - Pages 32 & 33-ish

Salty granules whip through salty air and fly through now-salty wisps of hair that whip against The Boy's cheek. Chunks of dirt crunch underneath his boots as he makes his way across the long abandoned road. Now surrounded by trees, the sound of silence encroaches upon his incessantly noisy universe. The sea stretches out before his eyes. The only sounds left are the wind and the waves; both crashing interminably against whatever has the gall to interrupt their serendipitous journeys. He reaches down and grinds sand slowly between his thumb and index finger.

—To see the world in a grain of sand.

The Boy is as surprised as his surroundings at the suddenness of the adage as well as the new rasp his voice had acquired. The silky tone of his vocal cords had temporarily shifted to the earthy husk that always reminded him of a rasp rubbing against tree bark.

Dust flies off long locked tumblers as they turn rapidly within his mind. He slowly opens his palm so the remaining particles of sand are swept from their hitherto resting place of infinity into a spiraling tailspin. His eyes watch each granule without seeing any. The sand has unconsciously mimicked the vortex that has overtaken his conscious being. He slowly travels down the hallowed hallways of long repressed experiences ushered deep within his psyche. Memories he himself had locked behind thick, ancient oaken doors with rusty hinges and dust-caked jambs. He knows exactly where it is, but it has always been too painful to remember in its entirety. Yet he finally finds the right key and the day comes flooding back, overtaking his conscious mind with its force.

The Pen Is Mightier

"A picture is worth a thousand words;"
But pictures never change.
The picture's meaning fades
Like rust on a thousand swords.
Words have much longer range
and infinitely sharper blades.

Detached

Sometimes I feel like I live in a separate world from everyone else. Sometimes I feel by my very nature that I am completely and utterly different than everyone; even my closest friends. I live in a quandary of never quite fitting into groups of people. It is a quandary because I want to feel a sense of belonging, but I also don't. I'm not a group person, I'm a people person. I like interacting one on one. But sometimes, even that makes me feel estranged. As a writer, I have to observe which is just one more set of icing on the cake of my bubble world. With that sentiment in mind, this is a poem I wrote one day while sitting in this quagmire of other-worldliness.

Detached

I live separate from this world.
This world, this life, this time
Is a language foreign to my ear
As others take the wheel to steer.

I stare at people walking by,
Driving by, riding by, biking by,
Busy going places, living lives
While I observe it from outside.

Each one acting their own little play
Through song and dance on their stage.
I sit and watch them all portray
Their hearts from this self-made cage.

I sit and decay in a plastic chair
Wondering who, what, why and where
People go when they stop being fraught
With indecision wrought from a prison of thought.

Originality is Overrated

The amount of words you use is directly correlated to the originality of the combination of words.

Say one word. It is 100% certain that someone has said it before you. That is why it exists as a word.

Say two words. The likelihood of someone saying it before you is slightly diminished, but still remains well over 99%. I said. You were.

Apple brain. Not very common, but I'm sure in the history of the English language it has been said before.

Dodo shampoo. This one is still possible, though I'd say the chances of it having never been said before are slightly higher than apple brain.

Heretofore mayonnaise. I'm guessing this one might be original. But then again, throughout the entire history of the English language....who knows?


Now string three words together. The likelihood goes down yet again. Although the percentage would still be well over 99% considering the amount of three word combinations in the English language that make some semblance of sense. (Go ahead, dare me to find a legitimate use for the two word combinations above) But it would be slightly more likely to have never been said than a two word combination.

String more than ten words together and now it gets interesting. The sheer amount of English words mean the combinations are almost endless, but the amount of sentences that have been said in the history of the English language is so vast, that the percentage might still be over 99%...but now, I bet the average person could come up with some combination that has a chance of being original.

My real question here is when the cliff comes in. At what point does the percentage of originality fall off and start its rapid reduction to zero? Because it does eventually reach zero.

Take a novel. The average one is roughly 100,000 words. Those 100,000 words are strung together to form a coherent combination of words that is most likely completely original. I doubt the same 100,000 words have ever been independently written in the same sequence once in the history of the English language. Quite a limb I'm going out on there, eh?

I'd be very interested in which was more likely, 100,000 words being independently the same or coming up with a two word combination that has never been said.

Cantankerous onomatopoeia. Get back to me if you've ever heard that one before.

Lying and its Discontents

I don't quite understand lying. But I do break it into two categories at the very least: lying to strangers and lying to friends. (lying to people you know and aren't friends with doesn't count because you necessarily don't care about them)

I can wrap my head around lying to strangers, they aren't people you know, you probably want something from them if you are talking to them at all and lying usually greases the wheels toward whatever it is that you want. It happens so often that people often subconsciously expect people they don't know very well to lie to them. Even to the point where they distrust someone who doesn't lie to them when they first meet them. Odd flip, but it does follow logic.

Lying to friends, however, I don't quite understand. Friends are necessarily close to us and we care about them. We always want something from them, but it would make sense that we want to give something of ourselves to them as well. It also stands to reason that if we are friends with them, they like us and have spent enough time to know who we are to a certain point. So what is the reason for lying to them?

My guess is fear. Fear of losing that friend, fear of losing companionship, fear of offending them, who knows? Fear of being alone is a strong one too.

As a case study, it was about six months ago when I heard a story (corroborated by two independent parties and partly my own eyes) in which a guy slept with a friend of his that he had known for a couple years. The issue being that she had a boyfriend at the time. The other issue was that he was only in the area for a month or two. So she cheated on him; but it happens and it's terrible. The more confounding thing to me is that she is still with him 6 months after the fact.

Obviously the relationship wasn't strong enough to stop her from cheating in the first place and in all honesty, I don't know her that well (we only hung out a couple times and always through a mutual friend) so I can't exactly comment on her psychological state or the likelihood of it happening again. I just can't understand how a relationship could withstand that and not erode the foundation of what they had. There are only 2 options, she told him and he's okay with it (not very likely without serious repercussions) or she did not tell him. Lying by omission, especially to friends, is arguably worse than lying to them directly.

How do you see someone so close to you without thinking about the elephant in the room? And what is the point of being with that person if you had a big enough reason to cheat on them? That is, other than the fear of being alone; the fear of someone close to you leaving; the fear of losing their companionship; the fear of incurring the wrath of someone you like, but don't like enough to tell them the truth...

Viva La Vida

Never an honest word
And that was when I ruled the world.

I'm obsessed with this song. I have a fairly addictive personality. I find something new I like and I become obsessed with it for a short amount of time and then I forget about it. If it is actually something that hits me, the infatuation gradually rises and again I want to see it, hear it, touch it, smell it, and taste it all the time.

For some reason I can't explain
I know St. Peter won't call my name

I've been listening to it all the time lately because it just hits me in the right way. This line is pretty much the epitome of why as well. It's not quite "ah, I'm goin to hell". It's so much more a resignation, a realization, a regretful woe, and a testament to his own wistfulness about not being able to get into heaven. I don't even take it as an afterlife thing, it's more about losing something in your life.

I used to rule the world.
Seas would rise when I gave the word.
Now in the morning I sleep alone
Sweep the streets I used to own.

It's like looking back upon something that you don't exactly regret, but realize you could have done it differently. Even more than that, it's like finally realizing that you never thought about alternatives when you were in the midst of this important period of your life and all of a sudden, you now know that you did have a choice after all but it is too late to do anything to change it.

And I discovered that my castles stand
upon pillars of salt and pillars of sand

And then to have it erode from underneath you when you thought it was so strong. If you've never experienced something in your life that was so strong and then eroded weakly, you have no idea how powerful this is.

It was the wicked and wild wind
blew down the door to let me in

It isn't like a huge explosion, it fades and it is arguably worse to be relegated to sitting back and watching it erode rather than making it go out in a blaze of glory. Especially if a big bang is how it started.

It's rare to hear something about active resignation that also isn't weak but powerful.

Just a puppet on a lonely string
Oh, who would ever want to be king?

My Ear Hates Your Phone

I love the invention of texting. I hate talking on the phone. I do it simply because there is no other option most times, but the advent of the text message took the wind out of the phone's audio sails. It pretty much did away with over 90% of my phone calls. Before text messages, my ideal phone calls fell in one of two categories:

Phone call #1:
Them: Hello
Me: Hey, how's it goin?
Them: good, how about you?
Me: good, going to _____ in a bit. Wanna go?
Them: sure, meet you there.
Me: cool, see you soon.

Phone call #2:
Them: Hello
Me: Hey, how's it goin?
Them: good, how about you?
Me: good, going to ______ in a bit. Wanna go?
Them: sorry, got plans already.
Me: cool, see you next time.

Both of these conversations can easily be taken care of by text. So 90% of my phone calls are now textual. Being that I hate small talk and phone calls are pretty much all small talk, this was an incredible change.

Holiday Hijinx

Labor Day might be my favorite holiday. I pretty much treat every day as if it were a holiday. so I don't generally celebrate more on holidays, but Labor Day is the paradox of holidays and therefore quintessentially human.

Unlike most other holidays, it actually makes sense even though it doesn't. Labor Day is a day we take off working to celebrate the fact that we work. Let's celebrate how hard we work by not doing it. It makes perfect sense to me. Not like some of our other holidays that don't even make paradoxical sense.

Christmas - Nonsense: Jesus wasn't even born in December and the date is actually from an Egyptian myth long before Christianity that became a pagan holiday Christians co-opted in order to convert more people.

Easter - Nonsense: Seriously, A grave gets robbed 2000 years ago and all of a sudden, we are hunting colored eggs hidden by a giant pink bunny? What in the world happened there?

Thanksgiving - We eat Turkey, fight with our family, watch football and go to sleep.....wait a minute, that's awesome, never mind.

Halloween - Awesome Nonsense: We dress up like idiots, girls dress up like whores in honor of scaring away dead spirits by looking like them. That's religion for you, but also proof that good things can come out of religion once a millennium; I love it that girls can dress up like whores in October guilt free.

Veteran's Day - Backward: Great idea in principle, but what in the world are all the people who weren't veterans doing getting a day off for something they had nothing to do with. Not to mention, most of the veterans I know don't even get the day off....

New Year's Day - Let's pick an arbitrary new beginning and celebrate by making very pious resolutions for wholesale changes to make our lives better and healthier for the coming year. By the way, then we'll kick it off by getting staggeringly, belligerently hammered and drive intoxicated to see how many car accidents we can have in one night!

July 4th - Let's set an arbitrary day that our country was "founded" and celebrate patriotism by shooting off incendiaries! Very apropos. Oh, and let's eat a tube of mystery meat parts that could include pieces of rat feces and shoe as well.

Screw em all and give me Labor Day!

Memoria - The Boy

The streetlight above flashes red and green simultaneously. Smoke rises from a car askew on the sidewalk with a streetlight pole sticking out of its hood. People run around the street like chickens with their feet cut off. The Boy sits calmly amidst the chaos. He slowly raises his head at the commotion. His azure eyes slink out of the shadow made by the brim of his jet black fedora. He runs two fingers up and down the two-day growth of stubble along his jaw line and fixes his gaze toward the low rumbling of an approaching motorcycle motor. As it passes without coming into his visual range, he turns his zirconian eyes back to the smoking car. He studies the wreckage, his eyes crawling slowly, purposefully across the scene. It had happened minutes ago. He watched it happen from where he sat; a raving lunatic who drove into a street pole. He then jumped out of the car, claimed to have seen God fly out of the street lamp and proceeded to sprint down a back alley, presumably giving chase to the deity.

The Boy's eyes narrow on a tuft of blond hair peeking over the edge of the back window. He looks at the smoke rising from the engine block. The Boy stands. His hands ripple with burn scars as the sunlight illuminates the subtle waves of scar tissue. He unbuttons his suit jacket and straightens his impressive, subtly pinstriped suit. He pulls the fedora off his head as if a princess was standing in front of him and allows his haphazardly styled, chestnut-colored hair to fall over his forehead. He softly places the hat on the bench behind him. The Boy breaks into a dead sprint.

The Boy weaves between the people running away from the car and the people running after the driver. He slams into the back door as the first tendrils of flame spiral out from beneath the hood. He pulls the small child from the car and carries him away from the wreck. He sets the child down near the bench and turns back to the car. The Boy stands with the child and watches the car explode in a ball of flame. He tousles The Kid's hair.

"Beautiful, eh?" The Boy says softly. The Kid simply nods his head as the flames dance in the mirrors of his eyes. The Boy turns and picks up his hat from the bench behind him. He slips it onto The Kid's head and it falls over his ears and covers his eyes.

"Ehh, you'll grow into it," The Boy chuckles and smiles as he walks away humming "Sympathy for the Devil."

Tea Party Tyranny

Is there anything that a group or a movement can't corrupt?

I love the idea that the Tea Party started out with, I'd actually join up and fight for it if it hadn't been corrupted. The fact that it was founded as a Libertarian movement against runaway government spending, rampantly inflating taxation and a pervasively interfering government is amazing. The fact that it seemed like a badly needed third party was also incredible. Except for the fact that it is a thinly veiled offshoot of the Republican party and has become a monster that has absolutely nothing in common with the grassroots it claims to have been born from.

It actually seems to be the same crap that happened with Christianity. Give it a group and a following and it corrupts everything the founder preached. In fact, it usually turns into the exact opposite effect of the creator's original intention. Funny how that works.

Feel Bad to Feel Good

"I never choose to count my blessings, instead I choose to dwell on my disasters."

I used to listen to this line and feel slightly depressed because it did describe me. I actually hear it a completely different way now. I don't revel in my past happiness, but it is basically because I inherently don't have to. When I'm happy, that is the benefit and I leave it at that. I'm not going to look back on the happiness I find now with nostalgia. Instead I look back on my failures and see how they define me.

I bought a shirt from Life is Good that reads, "If the World were Perfect, It wouldn't be." I think that this is amazing practical advice. Some of the most poignant and influential experiences in my life have come because I stopped listening to the voice in my head saying that it wouldn't be a good idea. Mistakes make us who we are. I don't define myself by my successes; I define myself by my stupid decisions. Especially when they lead to fun, which they usually do.