The N Word: Just like Grandma made

There has been a lot of fuss recently about the word ‘nigger’. Nigger, not to be confused Niger, the uranium exporting African country, is a pejorative word referencing people of African descent. Latin for “black”, the word nigger has traveled a myriad of dialects throughout the last five hundred years, assuming different spellings and often retaining completely different definitions.

During the 1970's our country made a conscious choice to step away from the soft-sell racist terms it embraced to please the mid-century liberals, such as ‘negro’ and ‘colored people’. Bigots, once stripped of the only denigrating and disunifying words that held a socially acceptable status, made their way back to the original.

Racism is alive and well in America today, thriving on more than mere words, staunchly populating the agendas of the most powerful people in the country. It is no secret that the rich and powerful have kept minorities as poor and quiet as possible throughout American history. Our media is more sensitive than ever to the most minute of injustices, but only because it keeps sponsors filthy rich and perceivably guiltless.

The debates rage across the internet regarding what is or isn’t racist. Pundits weigh in on every news show whether they know the situation or not. But what people really want is for race-involved discussions, music and language to just disappear, never again reminding them of what they believe is our past. But racism is not our past. Instead, it is very much so our future.

You can’t change people. Nobody wakes up in the middle of the night and decides to discontinue parts of their childhood-learned or subconsciously assimilated vernacular because of a rally, a protest or a boycott. Just as well, you can’t make somebody racist who doesn’t already have an innate hatred of the given race. No board game, book or movie is going to turn an accepting individual into a hate-filled monster.

Racism is never going away because we continually take more steps back than we do forward. If Americans really wanted racism to disappear they wouldn’t have made such poorly thought out, over-reactionary choices. We wouldn’t be in near the mess we are in if we avoided the dubious errors of creating laws that distinguish hate crimes and over publicizing small racist comments. But it was the change they didn’t stop that caused irreparable damage.

The biggest mistake we made as a country was allowing the black community to attempt to desensitize the word ‘nigger’ by using the hell out of it. Where is the logic in that? And I am sick of hearing non-black people regurgitating the same stupid argument of “why can they use it and we can’t?”. These folks are average, boring magoos that want to use a slur like marijuana; in secret - away from the cops and as shock value to liven up their meaninglessness. Trust me, the people that want to use it are using it.

Why would a government allow 30% of their population to use, promote, embrace and scream freely their own racial slur, yet glare evilly at the remaining population, ready to drop a heavier hand than usual if they even think about using it? They expect tolerance from all but are distributing the punishment disproportionately. We should stop promoting tolerance because it only turns racism underground where it can brood and disseminate quietly, giving only the appearance of declining racism.

What disgust me is that the people who want to end racism are afraid of going to the root of the problem, because that would cross lines with their other liberal oaths of allowing privacy, not interfering with personal lives and being accepting of those with differences. Well, fuck that.

Racism begins, and is perpetuated, in three places:

1. The Home
I loved my grandmother more than anybody in the world. Just thinking about the years she had lived, the wars she saw and the many who had passed before her, I would crumble into tears of affection and respect. She was an icon to me; a pillar of postmodern survival and an encyclopedia of domestic solutions. So you can imagine my surprise the time she shared a can of mixed nuts with me, expressing the “nigger toes” to be her favorite. Although I too shared a fondness for Brazil nuts, I now also understood the ease with which an old-fashioned term can roll off the tongue twenty years past its relevance.

How do you stop racism in the home? Normally I would suggest genocide, but as we are learning in Iraq, wiping out part of a country’s population only makes the rest of the country really fucking pissed off, even those “tolerant” of our nation’s freedoms. You can’t stop racism in the home. It is a virus that feeds off its host’s lack of education and compassion. Essentially, as long as there are stupid people in the world, there will be racism... unless you want to round them all up in trailer parks and set them ablaze: senators, radio hosts, bounty hunters, and rednecks all ablaze in a modern day Sodom and Gomorrah.

2. Your Environment
In every locker room in America there is at least one guy always ranting on, “nigger” this, “honky” that, it was this “spooks” fault, stupid “white boy” did it. One guy is saying it, but many are silently agreeing and the rest are not opposing the repulsiveness of it.

Every job I’ve ever had included at least one person ballsy enough to wear their hatred on their sleeve. Because I live in a predominantly white area, I see rampant black and Mexican degradation. Having grown up in a mixed urban area, I witnessed a heavier taunting of whites and Asians. We are products of our environment, souls searching for truths and accepting anything we are told is right.

3. In Fear
(Black people, I realize you have suffered enough but unfortunately this question isn’t for you) Have you ever been on a New York City subway after dark? If you were, what were you most afraid of? If you have never been, what is your biggest fear? Film and television have almost exclusively reserved nighttime subway riding footage for muggings and killings by black people.

It seems cliche, but the most racist people I know never really cared about our cultural differences until they were scared into hatred. One good beat down, rape or robbery by someone of another race is often all that is needed to jumpstart bigotry. What else could you find to be angry about if there was no rhyme or reason to your attack? If you get beat up or raped a lot, then perhaps you can dissect the subtle differences between each and locate the attackers true motive. Otherwise, these are singular cases leaving the victim convinced that “insert slur(s) are a bunch of insert type of criminal.”

How is this for an option, America? If a public personality makes racist comments on or off the air, remove them quietly and blacklist them across the board. If a musician uses a racist word in their music, remove them from the label and do not release the song; blacklist them across the industry. Consider a crime as just a crime, whether it is prompted by racial hatred or not. Tell your friends and family that they are not welcome to use that type of language in front of you, and do not relent when they put you on defense for their own issues. Do these sound like viable solutions?

If someone calls you a bad name, deal with it. Grow the fuck up and realize that life is not going to be the way you envisioned it. The world is too big. Humans are too diverse within our cultures and environments to voluntarily accept aggregate change unless it benefits us financially. The government will never regulate our thoughts. The fact is, no amount of protesting would ever have made my grandmother give a shit what the name of a nut is, and there was no word in the world she could have called them that would have hurt my feelings

Pretty Girls Date Douchebags

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Ron Mexico's Dog Fighting Extravaganza

I’m going to weigh in on the Michael Vick situation, although the last thing that I wish to do is add more commentary to the already over-discussed and over-analyzed case, but I am going to do it more so with vigilance toward every public figure engaged in illegal activity.

Dear Rich People,

What the fuck are you doing? You have they ability to spend the rest of your life doing every possible fun, be it legal, activity in the world. You can afford to have every second of your life after thirty-five filled with non-stop excitement and never work another day again. Why is life so boring, so sad, and so empty that you need to break the law?

Five things that will have your ass hemmed up publicly:

1. Killing dogs
2. Killing people
3. Neglecting your children (permanent nannies are apparently fine)
4. Abusing drugs we are not privy to
5. Being treated differently by the legal system

Rich folk, you know what America wants? Of course you don’t, because your handlers wouldn’t have it. With enough ‘Yes Men’ around you, you’ll never have to feel a real feeling again. Claim innocence in person? Hell no, not without your lawyer’s consent and prepared statement.

America wants apologies. Sincere and heartfelt apologies. Something as blatantly illegal and immoral as racketeering an underground dog fighting business for gambling that includes killing animals and burying them is a pretty fucked up circus to be involved in. But for a star NFL quarterback worth millions of dollars to establish such a business is heinous on so many other levels as well.

If you didn’t do it, stand before us and tell us that. Apologize for even being remotely involved. Tell us you will make sure the guys responsible pay for what they have done. Apologize to the families of the dogs. Something besides silence.

If you did it, go rot with the rest of the degenerates.

You are a world famous athlete blessed with amazing ability and opportunities. You are insanely wealthy and could have any woman you wanted. Pretty humdrum, huh?

Also, for you idiots that want to drink, get high and then drive, take a little of your pocket cash and hire a limo. You bought a grand in coke and hundreds in drinks, yet you couldn’t consider forking out a couple bills to get home safely. Jesus, toss a fiver at a Disney Channel kid and have them drag you home in their mom’s van.

Best regards,

Sun-Dried Eyes

Innocent people are being hit by coked-out celebrities in SUVs and shot by athlete’s ghetto-ass entourages. We have athletes killing, raping and beating their wives. We have rick folk from sixteen to twenty-eight so numb and disillusioned that they hurt everyone around them and know not what they do.

What makes me saddest is that America is so forgiving. We will eventually forget about the crimes, the dead, and the drugs. Next time we see them they will be in the midst of their triumphant comeback, with millions in advertising flaunting their shining exterior, this wonderfully reborn human.

So this next letter is for America.

Dear General Consumer,

Perhaps you have been lulled into a post-buffet like coma, watching the pretty flat screen and tucking all of the bullshit it feeds you in your cheek to wash down later with cherry cola. But wake up and pay attention.

They are insulting you.

I’m no celebrity, but let’s just say that I am. What if, just today, I spend my session in congress vilifying gays and prostitutes, then hit the strip and pick up a 6'5'’ he/she, run over to my homey’s house, help him kill a couple naughty puppies, drink three 40oz beers, do a bump or three of candy, hops in my ride and hit a few clubs, a few pedestrians, and then end up at the strip club where I make it rain for an hour, leave, send my homey back to the club to shoot some people over drama, yell some anti-Semitic slurs at the cops, go home and sleep with a fifteen year old girl and the he/she, and finally pass out in front of my still-awake three year old and infant?

Perhaps I should go to rehab, you know, for my gay/racist behavior, spend eighty-two minutes in jail, hide out under the radar for three years and eventually return to the silver screen a triumphant actor and voice-over king of forgettable CGI characters.

Would you remember my sins when it came time to watch a movie? Would you help make me successful again? Would you spit in the faces of those I have hurt and buy my new album?

Stop forgiving them just because it didn’t involve you directly. You are feeding into a machine that produces and nurtures this kind of behavior. Force bad congressmen to resign. Stop seeing movies with lunatics and ex-cons. Don’t by the albums, or even download the songs, of pedophiles and murderers.

Most importantly, stop being had by the spin doctors and hype machines that tell you it is okay to love these people again. These talking heads are only doing it for the money. Your money, in fact, as you spend hard-earned cash to keep the rich richer and the high higher. They don’t care about you. They laugh at your stupidity. Have you ever heard the expression “The audience is stupid”? They mean you, not the guy next to you. You.

I’m sorry to be so harsh, consumer, but it is forgetful audiences like you that perpetuate the lifestyle and let news outlets drown out real woes for celebrity retardedness. We are in a war. People are starving. So to you, just as I said to the rich folk, what the fuck are you doing?

Love,

Sun-Dried Eyes


In summary, there are hundreds of great actors, singers and performers in the world. Support them by not supporting the grime that infests their only chances to shine. Install a ‘one strike and out’ consumption policy and consider it a public service. It is time we take back the media. Read between the lines.

Faith-Based Emptiness

I must get something off of my chest. It is about religion, but I don’t want you to turn away and ignore my perspective so that you can remain safe and unquestioned in your heart. We all must question religion in order to fully embrace it. If you don’t ask what is in your food or how the car is before you buy it, then you have no one to blame but yourself when things are not the way that you expected them to be.

It is not religion with whom I have a bone to pick, but faith. Notice earlier how I did not say “we must question our faith”, because faith is not an order of beliefs or traditions. Faith is not tangible, printed and bound, hiding in a hotel room nightstand.

Faith is the fuel by which everything runs: your faith in your favorite sports team keeps them playing; your faith in your spouse relieves you of worry; your faith in fellow man keeps the world around you as peaceful as possible.

I recently watched a video on YouTube about a Christian rapper and his song containing provocative lyrics possibly outing himself as a homosexual. As usual, I fired off a muddled stream of anti-religious hatred having never even heard of the artist, let alone hearing the song or caring about the issue. I figured I’d just attack the moral majority for a goof.

The gist of my comment was that the guy should have felt okay to be gay in the first place, not hide behind the facade of a gangster-rapping Christian, and live without the judgements of his holier-than-thou peers. Every comment before mine was either homophobic or some vague offering to “pray for his soul”. I merely suggested that their prayers were worthless and mused about how they don't use religion to share love, they use it to hate people different from them; the ultimate hypocrisy. I also suggested that the rapper, “drop the whole act... (and) not cater to those so blind and afraid they turn to someone who they can't see (that) threatens to hurt them.” Yeah, I’m a dick.

My only intention was to let off some steam, but instead ignited a small debate about another user’s “relationship with Jesus Christ” and “Jesus as Light”, whatever that means. With others involved, this discussion soon extended out to homosexuality. I even had a guy who claimed to be a gay Christian offer to support me through my angry, gay Christian transition. Some people’s kids, I swear...

Religious fanatics love to argue about everything except what is wrong with their beliefs. They could spend hours telling you what some preacher ranted about on Sunday regarding abortion, gays or the GOP and argue those “facts” with conviction, but as soon as they are confronted with the detailed stupidity of what they claim as the “Word of God”, they instantly go deaf, dumb and blind and start spouting brainwashed verse, asking God to forgive the ones who haven’t been had yet.

And this is my point about faith. Where there is science, there is no need for faith. The answers are there in the laboratory. Science tells you what is in your food. Science tells you what is wrong with your car. And science is slowly proving that homosexuality is not a personal decree but of a genetic disorder.

It would be easy to slam religion and God all day, maybe come off like the cool kid in school or a Daily Show correspondent, but that is not my desire. If I had one wish, it would be to turn off all of the Gods and get the people in this world back to believing in each other.

For centuries, man has relied on religious training wheels to hold us upright and unified until we were civilized enough to shed the ”organized” skin and move forward as a human race that loves one another and works toward the greater good, without the assistance of our imaginary friends. But like all good theories, it is prone to human corruption.

Ever notice that the richest, most powerful, most evil people in the world are religious? The senators, clergy and businessmen who vote to help but won’t hesitate to kill, who scorn prostitutes but pay them well, who speak tolerance but slur anyone. They don’t believe in it. But you think they do, and that keeps you in your place. Religion keeps you in your place, not questioning, not looking deep enough, not wanting tangible truth. They play on your faith’s blindness to conceal their evilness and keep you filling up the donation basket.

If I gave you a burger and told you it was chicken, you’d tell me to go fuck myself. If someone hands you a book and says “this is the truth”, will your faith fly blindly or will you keep both feet planted on ground that you can feel, holding hands with the only people you need to be loved by?

Porn Stars Can’t Kiss

Having been single now for four months, I’ve finally found the time to reconnect with my adolescent joy of pornography. Now, before you judgmental fucks fly off the handle about my supposed misogyny or begin implying desperation, remember that porn and I have a much longer, deeper relationship than I have ever had with any of you. We go back, way back to a time when I was... happy.

Unlike all of the mythic beings our friends spoke of in junior high, like the guy that could suck his own cock, the cheerleader that blew the football team, or your buddy’s girlfriend in “another town”, porn stars were the real people that lived these nutty tales. One twenty-two minute video provided evidence to all of those nonsensical claims and fueled the tank for more.

My relationship with blue movies was slow to form, suffering the heartbreak of laws that kept me from my passion. Through friends, online, and thanks to a grizzly sixteen-year-old beard, I began accumulating my library, courting the likes of Chasey Lain, Nina Hartley and P. J. Sparxx. After high school, the bond grew stronger as I enjoyed great conversions and performances in person with Ginger Lynn, Raylene, and even Jenna Jameson.

My reasons for abandoning porn in the first place were both noble and inevitable. Steady sexual relations kept me busy time-wise, but I also grew angry with the continued lack of sexual education in America. I have said from day one that pornography is only dangerous when in the hands of the uneducated, just like cars, guns and drugs. This prophesy took life, however, when I began seeing its toll on American etiquette; surrounded by guys who learned about sex from porn and women who felt victimized by the disassociated, sometimes hostile, sex life it created. This left me no choice but to wean myself from its presence, which I had grown quite accustom to, and delve further into the personal relationships I was forming.

In retrospect, my eschewal of smut may have been the downfall to my affairs, leading me straight back into its loving arms. Perhaps the prurience was what kept me balanced as a mate; like Samson, I sheared my X-rated mane only to succumb from the lack of support it had enriched me with.

As I have consumed the many videos and movies available to me lately, I’m finding that the older me just might not be able to enjoy porn anymore. With all my historical and technical studies of the industry, I satiated my need for knowledge but simultaneously took a lot of fun out of it. Worse than that, even, is my disgust with the current state of premium adult entertainment. It appears that the “quantity before quality” creed is running even more rampant than when I left.

When viewing sex through youthful eyes, I saw magic and beauty, desire and possibility. It was like Harry Potter for horny teens and my imagination was unstoppable. Now I only see the bruises and tacky background sets. I fast-forward past scenes where the woman is taken from behind to avoid witnessing her saline implant sloshing back and forth in the gathering of stretched skinfolds where a normal boob once hung. I see someone’s estranged daughter or sister being dominated on-screen, only to leave the set and return to the frightening entropy that is a nineteen-year-old’s life without direction.

It reached a turning point when I watched a male actor in a soft-core porn flick kissing his female lead, and he was fucking it up bad. I understand that most performers won’t really kiss, relegating them to that awkward tongue-jousting action. But this guy was really bad. They were actually trying to kiss passionately, but he couldn’t find the rhythm or land both of his lips on hers at the same time. I liken it to making out with the opening of a jar.

Then it occurred to me that porn stars have no actual lovemaking skills. Like how actors lack commonsense and geniuses are socially inept, these poor pillars of sex do not have the ability, or perhaps have never learned how, to be a real lover.

I know that if I’m going to rekindle this relationship with porn, it’s going to be on my terms. No more bad sex just for the sake of getting it over with. No more tasteless themes. No more poorly written situations. No more empty promises about how great it’s supposed to be. I have to start again from the ground up, a grass roots kind of wanking. I found a way, and even if it doesn’t work forever, it’s a start.

It’s a site where real people submit their own videos; voyeurism in its truest and most legal form. Although the actors are not outwardly stunning, their mission is pure: getting off for us gets them off. It covers the gamut of mediums, from high-end equipment to cell phone video, and fetishes, from lingerie to orgies.

I realized that it is more erotic for me to see genuine folk enjoying sex, people that live in our neighborhoods and work with us, than it is to watch the professionals. Just like how college football differs from the NFL: the players put more heart into the game. You see that in the faces of excitement and hear it in the real moans of joy. And the best part is that the kissing is legitimate.

We all get off differently - that is what makes sex beautiful. But it is time to strip away the misinformed logic that bad porn has ejaculated onto the psyches of America. We need to remind folks of some basic ideals, such as, love is not sex and sex is not intimacy. Average men and women don’t really look like the people in the movies. Sex should be about both partners reaching orgasm and making it happen regardless. Porn is not misogynistic, but misogynistic porn is. And most importantly, learn how to kiss well and become a real lover. It can only lead toward a better life.

Let me begin by saying, "fuck".

I have grown quiet. In place of my honesty and boorishness I have chosen a path of discretion and inefficacy. I chose to be part of the scene instead of in front of it. I have resided in my head, alone there, enjoying the humor that comes from other’s misfortunes and idiosyncrasies. I have fallen away to exist merely as a watcher.

But I think that should end today. My torrent of emotional waves smash against the breakers I have placed there to keep the peace. I look at them from dry land and can not help but feel that I am losing a part of myself each time the tide relents and leaves me digressing steadily toward normalcy.

I watch the waves of truth hit and fall short of my mouth, the one place they can ebb, leaving only my conscience to take the heat. It is there, in my exhaled tangents, that they are cooled, unabridged and unbarred, malicious and free.

To my words I owe much gratitude. They’ve given me the most precious gifts I could ever wish for in this life. My words have retrieved for me women with a taste so divine it was intoxicating. They have put me on stages across the world for strangers to enjoy. They have given me access to people and places ordinary citizens could never dream of being. But more importantly, they fuel an existence that without them will bring death, for a life without my words will end all that is me and I shall lay silently as inanimate carbon.

I believe it is time to enjoy my words again, to break the silence reserved for condescending smirks and fill it with condescending remarks. It is once again time to sacrifice friendship for reality, because truthfully, how could I possibly enjoy life if it’s not played by my rules?

I’m holding court behind my eyes because it is the only perspective I have. What I see is one channel; my only viewable daily programming. Lucky for me, I’m the programming director.

This will develop progressively, with proper measures taken to ensure job security and other needs, but it is my hope that through this resurgence I can finally begin regaining some semblance of me.

Afterlife Now

It is as though I finally understand what religion is to us. The savior from our fear of no afterlife. I have long tussled with the worries that end in a spiritless world. When will I see my sweet love again? How will my children get by? What will come of all that I have built, experienced and felt? I again find myself chilled by the desolation of nothingness.

When the talk of nuclear war graced my adolescent ears, I would awake from dreams terrified. Dreams where all that was left from the explosions were floating bodies and debris in the starkness of space. I contemplated, while miles away at college or on the other side of the world, how I would return to my mother and my brother, my grandmother and girlfriend if something cataclysmic were to happen.

I remember a dream in my early twenties that began with familiar friends in a familiar house near my old high school. My lover was with me enjoying the day as well. When I heard helicopters hovering overhead, I knew immediately they were going to fire on us. I remember diving atop her, flailing to cover every exposed piece of flesh that I could. When the missile hit, I felt the burning sensation slither up my back. I knew that I had saved her, but understood that we were still in trouble. I grabbed her hand and pulled her out through the back door. We ran hand-in-hand down the steep, grassy slope toward more open field. We were being fired upon still. We both instinctually know that we would have to let go hands and spread our paths if we were going to survive. We never broke stride or eye contact as we peacefully released one another and began our descent toward freedom.

I understand that after death we slump over motionless, a bag of carbon and fluid that will soon begin deteriorating and disappearing. I believe this because I am realistic and honest with myself about the disillusionment of assuming otherwise. Only the foolish, I stated with a firm tone, would waste life preparing to look foolish in death as well.

Today is different, however. Today I am lonely. Today I am emotionally and physically flogged from a short adulthood hollowed by narcissism. Today I am not worried with looking foolish to anyone at anytime. Today, I feel religious.

Religion is not the uniting of all who love each other, love God and love love. Religion is the uniting of all who are afraid to die without first knowing where they are going, and secondly, whether they are going to be accepted there. They will stand outside of the velvet ropes like a coed excited to enter the best dance club in town, knowing the bouncer will surely see the hopeful gleam in her eye and buckle beneath her batting lashes. We want eternity in a comfort we feel as though we rightfully deserve. We want our own self-created heaven. Though it would be tremendously exciting, I’ll never be convinced that its possible or even necessary.

It’s the not the deteriorating that saddens me. It’s the disappearing. With billions who have passed and billions more to go, we will merely vanish into the forgotten. A rotted box or discarded ashes left to the void. It’s being forgotten, like a month old pop song or completed book. We are dated and no longer relevant. Our hands never touching one another. Our lips never holding each others. We melt away and can not stay just a little longer, like trying to hang up the phone with your high school sweetheart on the other end. You hang up. No you. I can’t. I don’t ever want to let you go.

Maybe it’s more than that. Maybe I want to keep loving. It seems to be the only reason I am still alive today. I never want to live the day I can’t call my mother, stop in to visit and talk with her about anything. Show her that her years of struggle were not in vain, that I am a good man. I want see my brother and my niece at the park forever, and never experience the feeling of not being able to push her tiny back as she swings back and forth, or listening to my brothers newest adventure. I want to still lay my lover’s head on the pillow and kiss her to sleep until we are five hundred years old. I just don’t want to say... goodbye.

My self-created heaven is life just as it is now, where everyone is just a call or a drive away. I’m certain I’ll never take full advantage of it. Again, I’m realistic. But maybe if I just try to enjoy it enough, never miss a moment to love, and never hang up when I can still talk, maybe I’ll finally be okay with disappearing. A moment now is worth a million in death.

Birthday Brass

I want to preface this blog with my unwavering respect for those who took time out of their day to show me some birthday love. I had many more birthday wishes sent to me throughout the rest of the day. Some showed up at the bar to celebrate, a half dozen texted salutations to my phone and more than twice that posted to my MySpace account. I, in no way, wish to diminish the prominence and importance of each friends gesture. I merely noticed the strangeness of this event early in the day and have not stopped dissecting it for greater meaning. I am simply fascinated at who would be the first five people to leave an indelible mark on the weathered heart of a birthday boy who has made a life of making friends.

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My 28th birthday held a surprise I wasn’t quite expecting. I had to work all day, but found some time to check my cell messages during lunch break. I ate my delicious birthday lunch: two Hot Pockets, a pizza and a ham and cheese one. I headed out through the front door to distance myself from potential interruptions. This would be the only inspiration available to push me through the lurching workday toward my excitement of that evenings binge and bash. I didn’t bother viewing the call list, I just wanted to hear the voices that cared.

I had missed five calls and had five voicemail messages.

1. Ex-girlfriend (from college, currently in Japan); 9:01 am EST
2. Customer from last job-turned-Friend; 10:18 am
3. Mother; 11:17 am
4. Ex-girlfriend (most recent); 12:08 pm
5. Ex-girlfriend (on-and-off from ‘97-‘03); 12:16 pm

Each one stated their cause and offered a wish that melted me to the hot sidewalk. I was enveloped in the beauty that is a full life, remembered and appreciated.

You see, birthdays are hard for me. The wretchedness of growing old uncontrollably leaves me shaken, wishing there was an afterlife like they say there is, full of old friends and reminiscent meanderings. Worse are the forced announcements from people who feel inclined to do so, as if some ancient God will slight their children for them not following the scripture’s call to wish happy birthdays to everyone. I don’t like the attention and don’t need all the hullabaloo created by overzealous sycophants. At least not until I’m certified Mel Gibson drunk. Then it’s on.

As the day wore on, I couldn’t stop wondering why those were the five that would lead off my big day. Are they just early risers? Do they possess my strongest emotional ties? Maybe the rest of the lot went a less confrontational, more digital route and contacted me via PC. Strangely, it didn’t really matter at that moment. These acquaintances wanted me to hear their voice and feel the inevitable surge of excitement through my spine that accompanies a message that is truly selfless. Nobody has to call, but they did.

I really don’t factor in my mother, as she has always been in the first five and will always be. The Customer-turned -Friend was clearly a surprise. It’s no doubt he saw the blip on his Myspace dashboard, but again, he phoned me instead. He was short on the call, and understandably, because the noise in the background at his work would have steeped any sincerity in annoyance. He has proven himself a good friend with this gesture and I hope we grow closer this summer.

The first caller astounded me mostly because she didn’t have to call. We began talking recently after I sent out an “Are you alive” email to the last address I had for her. We last spoke two years prior in a two-email exchange that I’m sure ended with”don’t be a stranger”. This rediscovered, distant friendship, however, has slowly evolved into a couple nights a week of IM phone/video chatter. Therefore, she could easily have told me later. Her sweet voice always a mash up of scream and soprano, it warmed my stomach faster than a shot of whiskey.

The fourth caller I expected to hear from because she is an early riser and we talk most often of all my friends. Her voice buoyant as usual, peaking and breaking as she improvised the message, always wanting to say the right thing but not say too much. Still I’m proud to have her in my first five “best wishes” calls, as her messages always carry the weight of reassurance with them.

I shouldn’t be surprised with the fifth caller’s message. She has called me every birthday since we first kissed five days after my eighteenth. But the talking has dwindled to mere hellos and occasional phone number references. It was all of three sentences, hurried and, what I gathered as, despondent. So, frankly, I don’t know why she called. It could be an old habit. Could be she wants to keep the consecutive call streak alive. Hell, maybe it’s a karma thing. I prefer to believe she still thinks fondly of me and cares enough to call every birthday regardless of our current drought in communications. Either way, the streak is alive.

I drove home from work bewildered, yet inspired by this event. We all choose random episodes to rate the current standing of our lives. This is mine. I deduct that my life has been one of sorrow and forgiveness, love and comfort, pain and separation. I have left all of them at different junctures in my life: off to college, new job, growing apart. Perhaps this is evidence that my existence culminates with a great love, a truly epic union, only to gather its knees and descend the mountain in a fatal tumble that survives trees and rocks but not the bottom. Bloodied and sprawled at the base of my glory, I will remember all who passed through my heart and left their mark, be it years of intimacy or an early call to me on my birthday.

To Be Fair, Love

To be fair, I never really knew how to love. Love was just something I felt when the chemicals danced. I’d say to her, in a breathless, straining gruff, “I love you”, and in the beginning she’d smile ear-to-ear, hugging me tighter than I knew how to expect. Years later she’d respond in kind, eyes never leaving her magazine, as I graze toward the door in a silent suspension, waiting for just a little more. Love was given and received generously, as a child would serve tea to imaginary friends at her party.

Men understand love, at first, as giving our self physically. We push inside of her with the pure motivation of acceptance and vulnerability. We stray from temptation as it lays wanton before our newfound confidence. We often do as she suggests to ensure mutual satisfaction. When the chemicals dance there is no way but up.

What’s amazing is the complexity of being in love with somebody. It’s free to everyone. Like fire, anyone can pick it up and use it, yet there is no manual. It can warm the coldest of nights or level the most beautiful of buildings. Love is God, in that everyone believes in it but no one has met it. Love saves lives and love kills.

I don’t know how to love because I did it all for me. Men aren’t usually malicious, we just have intentions. Angles, perhaps. There was always something in it for us. Woman have angles too, but those run a more destructive course. Men project their fantasies on women, causing them to constantly refine and anguish. Women, however, find men they desire and try to change everything undesirable about them. And this is the template that life pounds every couple out through, because we know no other way. Some of us get on with it and some of us get over it.

When a woman dates a man, his life freezes still. He no longer matures because he has officially been accepted as who he is. Only single men develop, but merely as means for survival. The taken man has been validated in his current form. If he drinks nightly with friends, spends weekends in the garage and watches sports loudly, this is who he will be for the rest of his life. She will always love his teddy bear hugs, the scent of his collar, that night under the big oak tree, a bottle of wine with their favorite song and the true love they carved in stone. But she thought he would just stop partying. She thought he would want to spend weekends with her instead of his toys. She thought he would change, or that, through arguments and long cries, he would banish his habits for her. Unfortunately, they aren’t habits. They are him. He is that man; the same man she chose to be with.

I never knew how to love because my development was suspended every time I tried. Therein lies my narcissism with every couple I meet that weds before the age of twenty-five. They can’t tell the difference between the chemicals and a true partnership, one that will eventually weather the storm of monotony. They haven’t grown enough, or explored all foreseeable interests, and soon will have nowhere to grow but apart. Like bamboo shoots in the marsh, they will eventually need to compete for the same air and light, just to survive.

Love is intangible, yet it’s the only thing I have blind faith in. I’ve seen it work with others. I’ve seen their selfless giving and authentic concern for each other. I’ve seen their passion roar for years and then fall to a faint simmer, both of which were enough. Of course I’ve been all of these things, but never all at once.

I have seen love and it is meek; lying naked along the estuary, bringing a calm to the tide no mortal could ever fabricate.

The Power To Change

If I had the power to change anything in the world, I wouldn't do a thing. Because it's not my responsibility. And when I say that, I mean it in a surrendered, but realistic, way. The problems the world faces are bigger than we think.

First off, why? Half of you think life is predestined. Some of you think you're in God's 24hr puppet show. Well, outside of LollipopSuperFuckingGreatLand, in reality, there is no plan. It's not predestined because we humans have the power of choice, which ranks up there with our cool ability to think about those choices beforehand. Plus, there is no God, and even if there is one, read the fucking book. He's usually the cause of disasters, not the hero. Kind of funny, huh? He'll help you off the sauce and then flood your city. That wacky deity.

Secondly, how will anyone learn the hard way if somebody else is always cleaning up after them? I'm so tired of talking to people who are comfortable taking financial risks or who live a dependant, inept life because they can call mom and dad to bail them out. These are the same assholes that think that just because they drop off a few shitty old shirts at the Goodwill or befriend a black person that they have done some type of civic duty. See, that is what the government and religions and the media have done to any true attempt to help humanity. They've dumbed it down for you.

Save the planet? Easy! Just throw some of your trash in a different dumpster, we'll recycle it. Don't buy these dangerous products. Instead, buy these "safe"ones. And don't forget to buy these pills to make you feel better. Drop off a couple sixty-cent cans of beans in the barrel to stomp out hunger. Buy more hip, useless shit painted red to wipe out AIDS. By a hat with a pink ribbon on it and consider breast cancer dead. Seriously, you people believe this shit? Do you even wonder where your money goes?

Now, I'm not downplaying the significance of these gestures. I'm merely pointing out that they give a false sense of actually helping something or someone to those who participate. These conscientious citizens are subconsciously convinced that helping others is a non-contact, minimal responsibility, no-sweat feat with Jesus' stamp of approval. And they blindly trust these organizations with their money. Worse than that, it reinforces the idea that people should get something in return or be rewarded for pulling their own weight in this organic machine. We have created a culture in which the "Drive Thru Convenience" mentality has been applied to helping our fellow man and maintaining the environment's health for our children.

Lastly, the planet is designed to maintain species and cycle them in and out of the eras at their own risk. It's a landlord that doesn't mind if you fuck the place up because everyone moves out eventually, plus the apartment has a self-cleaning feature.

If all the hungry get fed, all the diseased and blighted survive, and the old live longer, then there will be no place left for anything. Crops will be bled and then built on. Our precious nature preserves and golf courses will be sacrificed. You will be forced to sell your summer home and all restaurants with immediate seating will no longer function as such. Basically, there will be nothing here but healthy, co-dependant retards wandering around, eating all the goddamn food and fucking out of sheer boredom. It'll be college all over again.

The next chapter...

It's now clear to me that I am damned to live alone. In my excess, I have alienated virtually everyone that I love. Those I've wished to love most likely smelled my plague, like rats sense disease, and were content being my pal. It's only in my most painful low that I can see up to a world filled with disaster and emptiness. Through my morbid intrigue of horror, I watch my self driving anxiously down the highway to hell toward a closed exit ramp in a burning car. The road is paved with my good intentions, each one in dire need of repair.

If you're interpreting this as a "poor me" pity party, a silent cry for help or a case for attention, piss off. It's a blog, for Christ's sake. The digital toilet in which we shit the current events we've consumed and eventually flush when they are no longer of value. This is my dump and I'm taking it.

As for the bed I've made and will now sleep in, it's cold and built for two. In my attempt to exorcise my demons I've grown closer to them. They are to me a comfort now, like an abusive spouse you wouldn't dare leave for a long walk through a vast wasteland of singles. Millions of hearts in the world that can't seem to find a good enough match to settle for. And why, if the bottle is cheaper and the devastation less apparent.

I hate it when people quote divorce rates to me because I don't fully subscribe to marriage in a traditional sense. Lumped in with all the Eharmony success stories are all the grown-apart high school sweethearts and forced unions for the sake of a bastard child. The numbers are skewed. Besides, marriage is based in religious values, and most religious people have loaded values. Plus, everybody is fucking each other whether anybody knows or not (just check the soaring number of global AIDS cases. These people weren't just rubbing elbows).

I'm looking forward to meeting all the intriguing single people with their uneducated, self-centered observations and asking them, "when was the last time a gyno scraped all the finger nails and Nuvarings out of you?". It's almost a lost cause to imagine a single woman with a good job and no freak baggage. Were this the blame game I'd have veritable host of targets: Asshole guys, pedophile uncles, Hollywood's image distorter, religious dereliction of prevalent contraception/sexual acceptance information, and the list goes on until there just aren't enough fingers to point with.

And maybe I'm part of the problem. Maybe, in my agonized writhing, I failed to remember how I negotiated a girls trust for a chance to party. Maybe, in my flailing tantrum, I misplaced the memories of neglecting the people I love to fulfill selfish needs. Maybe, but perhaps that's what it really is all about. Being selfish. Maybe years ago, before the "divorce rate" spiked, people were better together because they were less selfish. We are all empowered nowadays to be independent, outspoken young consumers chasing our dreams. But what happens when everyone is chasing their dreams and not working toward a greater good? When we all want to be socialites, actors and reality-show contestants, who's going to take care of the sick? We've all lost sight of how the power of family and giving keeps the world balanced. I guess we're just expecting all the fat and ugly people to do it.

Here I wallow, festering in my own reconstructive impotence, trying to grasp the greater meaning to save the world and maybe land a date with a nice girl. What a feat for an asshole guy like me. They speak of being up Shit creek without a paddle, but they fail to mention what it's like when your canoe flips over.

Should I stay or should I go?

Should I stay or should I go?

In my late teens, I had a propensity toward travel and change; I thirsted to know more and couldn't stay in one place very long at all. But after a stint in college and a trip halfway around the world, I came home and settled down. I now had an inclination to nest, which was well intentioned, I just didn't have the tools necessary.

It's funny how normal people try to act manic, when those of us who are manic just wish to act normal. My attempting to assume the role of "working stiff, loving husband, proud father, and active family man" seemed to falter somewhere between my need for being needed and my want to fill the vacant nighttimes with more than just holding a sleeping angel. I was like a developmentally challenged six year old trying to put the square peg in the round hole.

Now I'm an emotionally-developmentally challenged twenty-something living in a town strewn with hearts I was given and broke. I held each one like Lennie held Curley's wife, stroking their soft hair, but comfort gave way to fear, and when they got spooked I broke their neck. Figuratively, of course. And quite frankly, the bodies are starting to smell.

I don't know if it's the small town thing or if I've really created some type of delusion that people see instead of my true being. In the last month, some of the people I feel closest too not only thought I was still seeing someone, but a few of them didn't even know I'd been dating someone for the past couple years. I realize she hadn't been out with me in some time, but I always spoke of her well and freely, assuming people had stayed abreast of all our turmoil. I now understand that the few who cared knew me. The rest were just there for my entertainment and not my comfort.

So again, I've considered moving ("Oh, the moving thing again?" my coworker blurted out with a type of arrogance that intimated that this was my latest try in a secession of failures. Which, in effect, it is.) away from this town and trying to start over somewhere else. And for once, it doesn't seem like a bad thing at all. Hear me out:

1. I need new friends. I don't mean this derogatorily toward my current cohorts. Perhaps I should specify by saying I need new close friends. It seems the few people that know me the best, and that I feel I can talk to candidly, fall into the categories of "too far away, "too self absorbed" or "are my ex-girlfriends". I need to meet new people that I can create a circle with, much like I had in Lansing or Kalamazoo. This town seems too small and too full of itself; it has lost it's humbleness, in my eyes. You know you need new friends when you're sick for days and the only person who stops by to help is your mother.

2. People here have preconceived notions of me. I don't want to go on and on about how wonderful of a mate I can be, because I don't believe I'm perfect. I have much to learn about both patience and application. Plus, I've tooted my horn in previous blogs, both mine and others. Here is a small excerpt from a candid letter that should suffice the argument:

Walking my neighborhood, this evening, I finally realized something so insanely valuable, yet perplexingly obvious, that I can't imagine how long I've gone without this knowledge. I am a good boyfriend. Truly. Deeply. Finally. A shadow in the dust and ashes of yore, I have emerged a viable contender for hearts in today's exhausted, free-agent-style market of love.

Here are my Statistics: At least five nights a week, for fourteen months, I commuted 40 minutes both ways to be with love, if for only an hour. For six months, I made sure love had the freshest, most unique flowers biweekly; always a tasteful assortment with a single red rose as it's center piece. At least twice, I alone pushed love's SUV between 20 and 60 feet, up ramps even, because it was past fumes and because I cared. Once, I took out a small loan so that love and her family could have the greatest Christmas possible. Through blatant selfishness from love, through indirect threats of bodily harm from an ex-husband, through consistent distrust, even through a miscarriage, I tried.

And this was one relationship. Sadly, though, I can't imagine anyone in this town could ever take me seriously. First off, I performed comedy onstage for four years; you'd think women love humor, but its a one-way ticket to the friend zone. Secondly, the only time people see me is when I'm drinking with my boorish (or boring, depending on the night) drinking buddies. And lastly, my only other mating traits are not something I can do publicly. A guitar playing, poetry/prose writing, funny-man movie buff with a penchant for karaoke? One of these posers gets churned out every ten minutes in America. But, in another town, nobody has to know that that's my steez. Most importantly, I can focus on finding someone who will accept me as I am and not how they have viewed me over time. My losses over the years make me question my effort (i.e. start being an asshole instead), but without a town full of constant reminders, I could begin again.

3. I need to date more than an empty bar stool. I can only assume that my leaning toward nesting-type women is the manifestation of two things: a silent cry out for change in my besotted life and my understanding that the nesting type are among the cleanest, most stable women on the market. At my age, there is no doubt that this is still my demographic, but I need to hone the search down a little finer. If my life shall involve a cocktail out every other night, then I need to find someone who will join me (this is key, because most of my relationships started this way, but my partners trailed off and eventually held it against me). I need someone with common interests; someone who will play guitar with me, watch indie movies and talk politics with me. Someone who isn't waiting for me to change, they just want to walk with me everywhere and grow up together.

This seems a bigger task than it is. Perhaps the bigger task is pulling myself away from the unbelievable apartment I have, the networking I've accomplished and the copious ideas with colleagues that I'm just a college-try away from performing, filming and selling. All because I've boxed myself in here for so long.

Most haven't faulted me for staying; they understand that I have been happy and do not judge my choices. But now lies an even greater evaluation: Am I best to take this show on the road, leaving this one-horse, sleepy-bedroom town and all it's heartache behind? Or should I stay and continue to test my metal in a low opportunity area, praying everyday that a dame, with similar interest and in her late- twenties, gets off the train here only to saddle up next to me at the bar and let me buy her a drink?

What am I looking for?

What am I looking for? The perennial crux that challenges every human being. I stare at it now like a wasted freshman sizing up his next failure in life lessons. I know what I want, but it's nothing within reason. They never really tell us to be reasonable until our early twenties, and then we pull back the curtain to see our nightmare. If I had a niche or a child or anything tangible I'm sure I could find purpose. All I have, though, is memories and they equal dick in the real world.

I've seen a hundred movies about some fucko wandering the terrain, working odd jobs and searching for his calling. But how am I to relate when the ending is always happy? I mean, even when the protagonist dies, it was for something honorable. The main character apparently sweats it out all day between the margins of what the movie shows, because the movie wouldn't show something boring. But they always end up with a magically beautiful answer. The dream job, the dream girl, or anything that is the farthest away from how life really works. Two hours sobbing through sludge to step out into a parking lot of nobodies who aren't happy and will never get to do what they dream. Tell me, what's noble about working sales for five days, fifty-five hours a week and coming home to the massive void that is loneliness? If I die tomorrow, the schmucks looking in my casket and buying me bad flowers really don't have much to say except, "he was always nice", "he was so funny", or "his personality made up for dick".

I refuse to look at it like destiny. There are too many fucking people on this globe and not enough crises to accomplish. Fate is man-made like religion and Fruit Rollups. I am not here to man one of the six billion decrees someone or something dreamed up. This isn't Touched By An Angel. It's not even Quantum Leap. I'm no better than the kid scooping my ice cream or the woman commanding the multinational corporation down the street. Or am I? You might say the kid curling out frozen sugar is content because the prom queen is blowing him. Or you might instead tell me that the CEO has a twenty bedroom house and a car outweighing my net worth. Which leads me to my next point.

The new message in America is "do what makes you happy". Well, to do that you need money. That's it, folks. You need enough money to not have to shovel other people's shit. Then you can pursue whatever the fuck you want. So maybe, therein lies the answer. I'm looking for money. With a extreme financial lead I could live an existence based on my ordinance. Only in the unfairest of worlds can trash like Paris Hilton drunkenly meander the city, breasts accidentally ablaze, leading television shows and cutting shitty pop songs. Meanwhile, I'm surrounded in talented, benevolent humans pushing a heavy pencil daily so that they can spend one week a year occupying a suite in the Bahamas Paris wouldn't even shit in. Why, because they drew the wrong straw?

I'm not trying to assume a life I didn't earn, I merely wish to highlight the flaw in our society the pushes one of us over the other through luck. Bitterness is irrelevant; it's the idea that what I'm looking for is not what I need, it's what is available. It's what I can afford and will bring me more happiness than the rest of the possibilities could. Right?

Great. Sounds good. While I'm at work tomorrow I'll remember the douches enjoying the cash I deposit from my till. I'll imagine their genetically engineered kids studying in good schools and doing the good blow off of stripper asses. I'll fantasize about their trophy wife and how she whines at five o'clock socials with the girls about how her gift basket venture is so tiring in its intricacies. And after I whack off to the imagined trophy wife in the work bathroom, I'll pull some paper towel from the dispenser which was recently refreshed by the mother of the stripper whom the rich kid is doing blow off of. I'll return to my seat and retain my role as a cog in the machine, where in between customers, I'll try and figure out what else I'm looking for.

The Ten Minutes After Great Sex

The ten minutes after great sex with someone you love is the single greatest moment in life. There is something about those sweet, damp minutes that resonate a lifetime.

It's the closeness. Laying side-by-side, resting your faces on each other in a synergetic embrace. Separated by exhaustion but holding one another's hand as if rain chased you under the porch and implored you to taste each other's lips for the first time.

It's the purity. Unashamed of the love you have made, the effort you have given. Unabashedly flaccid and reviewing the uttermost personalness of the depths of your soul that you consigned just moments ago. Having given all you can and allowing the quivers to reassure you.

It's the darkness. With no intensity left to rush you, you can gently finger the curves that have been forgotten. Discovering, through touch in blackness, the beauty that may have been negotiated by light. You can breathe each other and fantasize that you are anywhere in the world, from a beach-front villa in Spain to an ancient castle in Scotland, absorbed and inspired by the journey as the breeze pours over your skin.

It's the finality. You can slowly puff down, relent the charm and just be, with nothing more to earn and no one left to impress. It's the time where you forget that work is six hours away and laugh about the madness of it all. It's the granulate of eternity where you aren't too fat or too tall. You fit just right, and perhaps it's the only time you ever do.

It's the only time I can ever truly feel normal. Out of the scope and accepted, in a cocoon of soft pillows and softer flesh, infinitely justified as me.

Mainstream American music is a tattered teddy bear being sodomized

Mainstream American music is a tattered teddy bear being sodomized by a retarded orangutan. Due to the teddy bear's inability to move itself from the path of danger, the process will continue until someone moves it. Either that or the orangutan will take five to eat bugs and fling poo. But even then it'll be back around soon.

Music today is void of any originality at all. The same three bar chords are arranged in a slightly different manner and played as backdrop to "I'm angry at my mom" as opposed to "I want to do your mom". New Country (and I stress New, i.e. post 1987), New R&B (post 1993), Rap (post 1997) and Modern/Alternative Rock (post 2000) have all been purchased by Satan, sold to the advertising phallus, reissued with scratch-n-sniff groupie stickers, and drilled deep into our skulls with limitless air play that is not due to it's popularity, but do to the depth of the pockets pushing it. Remember kids, just because a pop singer is on your TV, radio, lunch box, cereal box, ringtone, and favorite sitcom as a guest star, doesn't mean they have talent or that the music is good.

As a consumer in these fine United States, I consume many things fed to me by the Man's ad cronies. I mean, don't you want to know when the newest, most improved anything is available? I think they should make it right the first time. It's unavoidable, however, so we man up and buy the products we remember. But there are those of us who seek the product that actually work, regardless of how catchy the commercial. You may consider me a heretic to commercialism, but I think any human being who has ever heard a non-radio cut from Bright Eyes, Fiona Apple, Gnarls Barkley, Minus The Bear, Down, Blue October, Gemma Hayes, Trey Songz, Joe Firstman, Motion City Soundtrack, Patty Griffin, Death Cab For Cutie, The Shins, The Used, or Wilco knows that the blood of true music still flows, it's just difficult for the average consumer to find the vein.

All this is mere tripe to my biggest beef: Cover Songs. They are out of control. It seems as though the retro idealism has finally reared its true ugliness, and it's in the form of hundreds of unoriginal fucks making money from somebody else's musical legacy. All genres, all decades, and all... okay, 99%, are horrible. Don't get me wrong, I love covers. When I'm at a concert, I want to hear two or three live cover songs from my favorite artist. Or, when a legend like Cash makes a disc like Cash, and it's the most bad-assed covers album ever, I cream for the day it's in my sweaty palms. Annie Lennox barely pulled it off with Medusa, but even that is pushing the envelope labeled 'Good Taste'. It's not easy, but it is possible.

So as not to come off as merely a complainer, I have developed a list of rules that the FCC should install immediately in order to preserve our rich musical heritage (it's not like the FCC does anything good anyway. This could only improve their image). These rules are not meant to oppress nor were they established to segregate. They merely increase the price of artist property rights from purchasable to obtainable. Meet these simple requirements and you are on your way to murdering any song that Michael Bolton hasn't yet.

1. A song must be at least ten years old to be covered. This rule is almost exclusively in response to the instant regurgitation from R&B radio directly into Country radio. Oh, and that song that Leeann Rimes and Trisha Yearwood put out within months of each other; that breaks all the rules. If you are going to cover a song, make sure it's a song that's not still fresh in the minds of your audience. If you are an All-4-one or Brian McKnight, keep your shit under lock and key. Choose something from another era and make it your own. Or choose something obscure and rock it on the radio. Do not take something written three years ago by a band you "want to pay tribute to". Thats want concert covers are for.

2. You must have at least three previously released LPs. Two EPs will make up for one LP. This rule is in place to save your reputation. Nobody cuts a cover off as their first single and lives to tell about it: the aforementioned Leeann Rimes, Tiffany, Alien Ant Farm, etc. Try showing off your talent for creating music right out of the gate. The worst thing that could happen is that you showed the world your soul but failed to do so interestingly. It still makes you a true artist, though, and that is something to wear with pride.

(I considered including the clause, "with one Billboard Top 100 song per two albums," but the charts are just as skewed and easily purchased.)

3. The covered song must be from a different genre that your own. An R&B artist can't redo an R&B song that much differently than how it was originally done. There is not much room for musical movement, which makes it sound the same as the original, which ultimately defeats the purpose of remaking it. But a Modern Rock artist has a different path to take that same R&B song, with new rhythm and instruments to pave the way. Country and Soft Rock have always smoothly transitioned from R&B, but there is so much more to be done. The only song I grant clemency to is The Gourds rendition of "Gin and Juice". It is both brilliant and a trailblazer.

It's everywhere, I know this; movies are being remade, television shows are be reestablished. But consider this thought: why would you try to remake something that was already done well once? Try taking something that wasn't done successfully - a B-side song, a flopped movie - and make it better! Your margin of error increases dramatically, and if a fan has not heard or seen this obscure piece before, than you pay more tribute to the artist through discovery and recognition by new fans than by slaughtering their legacy with a piss poor attempt at the same great fame.

In the meantime, help keep American music good by controlling your cover usage. Only you can prevent yourself from ruining a masterpiece.

The Shocker: Fallacies and Repetitive Motion Injury

For the last five years there has been a sexual craze sweeping the youth of the nation, much like armband tattoos and pink male polo shirts, only more humiliating and painful. Week after week, I see guys of all ages speaking of the "The Shocker" and displaying it with a great pride in their knowledge, and each time I grow more despondent in relation with this decade's contribution to the sexual revolution. You see, reader, I was one of the pioneers of this movement in the mid- to late nineties. I created, defined and successfully executed my own patented move that I had also deemed "The Shocker", but alas, somewhere on the bridge between my bedroom and the worldwide fad machine it was lost. Now, all that we have been left with is an affable fraternity brother nickname and the promise that women will enjoy this gnarled digit move as much or less than a mammogram.

Allow me to begin by explaining what this current phase actually entails. To form the current incarnation of the Shocker, you would lay your hand out flat and vertical, as if you wanted to shake someone's hand. Then you bend your ring finger down toward your palm and secure it against the palm with your thumb. You would move this monstrosity toward the ladies two-in-one crevasse; first place the pinky finger in her anus and finish by depositing the top two combination in her vagina. This, the egotistical and ill-fated male brain thinks, will bring her pleasure. Yes, because anything poorly thought out and perpetuated by college boys must be pleasurable, naturally.

Now I shall systematically destroy the myth of the Shocker as you know it, but I will not leave you without a Friday night signature move. No, no, reader, I will bring you a solution from the deep, mysterious vaults of the Turner Sutra. This wisdom is based on hundreds of years of knowledge and has been translated, nay, channeled through my body and placed safely into my Vault of Copula, where it shall remain until the world is ready. All I ask in return is that you please keep this knowledge in your heart and do not allow it to seep into the trendy fabric of commercialism that so often soaks up tiny bits of truth such as this, rips them free of earnestness and tosses them aside for the next fortune cookie wisdom to be consumed.

- - -

In performing this Shocker I have described above, you will notice two things. 1. It is more awkward and strenuous than bathtub shower sex, and 2. It is not pleasurable at all. Here is my reasoning:

Bad Architecture - The framework is poor. If she took off quickly to the right, she could break three of your fingers and potentially steal your class or secret-decoder ring.

Lack of Agility - This position does not allow for the dexterity necessary for create quality sensations. Unbeknownst to your precious Maxim, she feels with all 360 degrees of her chocha.

Boring - Where is the shock? The penetration might feel powerful, but she could recreate this sensation with results tenfold by purchasing the Rabbit or Dolphin vibrators, which incidentally would be cheaper than hanging out with your bitch ass.

How can we change this, you ask? By tuning up the weaknesses and attempting something both effective and ergonomic. From deep inside the Vault of Copula, a family member in the artistic, sexual styling known as Tongue-Foo, I give you... er, I introduce to you, The Shocker!

Hold your hand out flat as if your where asking your bitch for money while simultaneously giving her a place to put it. Bend your ring finger and pinky finger toward your palm. Secure them both with the base of your thumb, i.e. the bottom right part of your palm itself. As it secures, your thumb should naturally stick out forward just above and between the index and middle fingers. Looking directly at your fingertips, a la Three Stooges eye poking, the product should resemble the plugging end of an electrical cord, as your fingers are the prongs and your thumb is the grounder. This can be a wonderfully successful move based on one vital need: her button and your finger need to be properly lubricated. Now you have the pose and can understand where part of the name stems from. But to understand the rest you must take position.

Nothing done in front of your lover's eyes could be as truly shocking as what could be done as she lays on her stomach or on her side, facing away from you. Therein lies the shock. Here are two possible setups:

You are nudely spooning with your lady love, pre-sex, and she is grinding the sweet grindings of love against your manhood. As you are caressing her, you walk your fingers down to pink pages. Excitement should lubricate the front, so all you need to do is spit on your thumb, rub some saliva on the button, and then "plug in".

As things have progressed, you find yourself orally satisfying your companion. If she is on her back you need to roll her over, but do so gently. As soon as she is on her stomach, start tonguing her starfish so as to accrue the necessary amount of lubrication. After sufficient plunging of the tongue, put your thumb on the button and "plug in".

- - -

By opening the door to the Vault of Copula, and sharing with you the secrets of the Tongue-Foo, I have given you an insight that places you eons ahead of your nearest sexual rival. And there is so much more to be understood. Carry this knowledge forth, placing it safely in the same pocket as your prophylactic, and DO NOT, under any circumstances, share this knowledge with anyone whom you wouldn't let plow your sister. Enjoy!

If You're Lazy And You Know It...

What is it to work as hard as possible for that which you truly want the most? Most of us never know because most of us never try that hard. Now don't get me wrong, I've tried to achieve an assortment of tasks, goals and pleasures. I even accomplished a few. But these were not daunting milestones, no, those fell into my lap. These were projects that required my charm, talent, and a flare for the rational, but not one ounce of true, hard work. I have never worked a hard day in my life. I have helped build a house, run a hotel, cooked, baked, served, peddled films and jeans, decorated, designed, acted, directed, concierged, footballed, and sold. Oh, how I have sold. But being even this accomplished (restless) does not necessarily dictate my character. I have never prepared for anything. I never learned something so much as to be great at it. I have never examined a subject and then dissected and explored its inner workings for an informed assailment to complete my thesis. I don't even know what I just said.

Everything that I know I learned because I liked it. It has crossed my mind that maybe I just haven't been exposed to much, but as far as I'm concerned, I've been overexposed and then put back under the lamp. Its just that nothing sticks. All of this began occurring to me in college when I quickly realized that I didn't have the slightest idea how to study. I glided through high school on Cs, blow-off classes and a winning personality. If I had a test, I would open the book the night before and stare into it for about six minutes or until my eyes crossed, and then I'd wonder where to begin. Within five minutes of that I'd be playing video games or making lewd insinuations to the giggling voice at the other end of the phone. But in college I found that you didn't work during the classes, you just listened to a toupe-d whoopee cushion drone on for two hours and then went home and worked. This was a slack-ass proof system. My endless nights of boozing and debauchery proved unable to penetrate and sustain life in the walls of that collegiate institution.

I don't blame my parents for not pushing me enough; there is quite little else a single mother can do when faced with a forty-hour work load and a husband on the other side of the world. The problem is, and was, myself. I have no work ethic and have never really had one. I go to work now and bust my butt there. Long hours and longer weeks spent working continuously. But its just the motions, and I'm going through them like Tic-Tacs. What I am seeing now is that its the things I have passion for that I need to focus on. I'm not going to quit work and move to New York, rent a small hole and starve until I act. I'm starting small. For instance, I am gaining some semblance of discipline the more I play my guitar. Why am I playing it? Because I want to. I don't make money, just music, therefore I have no reservations about pace and product. And I think about playing constantly, which is helping me stay focused. From this feat alone, I have mustered the ardor to better watch my cash, choose salads, turn the TV off and keep writing and reading. You'd be surprised how much of your identity gets lost when you're in the daily grind.

Now, a lot of you reading this probably think this is elementary stuff. Good, great, fuck off. Don't forget the flaws you've buried deep beneath your accomplished facade. You are the wankers that can't relate to cult comedy and have trouble holding even trite conversations whilst remain interesting. Allah blessed you with all of the brains and none of the splendor. But I digress. You have finished or are completing school. You have degrees, career goals, and the gumption to earn them. Good for you. Be happy and never look at it as a burden. Continue your path to mediocrity but always understand that there are a great many people who may not share your knack for math and science, but through person attractions find the beacon that draws their calling to shore.

Yes, perhaps there is a greater purpose for me out there. I just hope I hear it considering my video games are too loud and I ignore calls while making lewd insinuations to my girlfriend.

Amore like burning: What I have learned in eight years of love

Amore like burning: What I have learned in eight years of love

This is a graphic and unmitigated look at my failed love life over the last eight years. It's not here for you to judge, though I'm sure many of you will. This is merely a tool to help me accept the mistakes I have made and learn from them. None of us are perfect. There is no guide on how to love and no authority on earth that could write one. All we can do is lick our wounds and remember the bitter taste. The pain is obviously not enough to transform me, therefore I am reduced to written expression as a fighting chance at personal objectivity. I place it here in hopes that you may get something from it.

1. I don't know myself.

After two years of slowly deteriorating the six year relationship we had built, Jessi and I separated. The pain at the time was soothed with a newfound interest in Allie. But what I have come to understand now is that I was worse to Jessi than I will ever allow myself to feel. There were a few times that I strayed and even more when I flirted publicly. This was in no way with malice toward her, I was merely attempting to maintain an image I created in art. By acting this way, I felt as if I would receive the same response socially as I did on stage. With a low self-confidence and constantly in search of new affection, I forgot what was most important to me. She was the woman I loved and wanted to spend my life with, and you would have never known it from my actions or my words. I lived with one foot out of the door, always looking for something new. I was never fully comfortable with myself. I took for granted the woman who loved me for who I was and professed her undying love for me. Young and stupid, in retrospect, I gutted our love with incendiary flames, like falling asleep with a lit cigarette in my mouth.

2. My heart heals slower than it seems.

I honestly had no idea that Allie was even remotely a rebound until I finally understood my deep restlessness concerning the unfinished business between Jessi and I. Sparked by this inspiration I paraded my happy facade before my friends and family thinking that it will never hurt me if I didn't let it. In essence, I wasn't ready for a relationship and I put Allie in the awkward role of my escape when I was oppressed by what I felt at the time was an overall hatred for me by my peers. She became my shield, my refuge and my antidepressant. She should have been none of these, just my love. Everyone, including her, from day one told me to be alone. They said I needed it to be exorcised and complete. But I couldn't let go of Allie, no matter the trials, because once more I was afraid to be alone, and I didn't want to lose her in the event no one would ever love me again. I clung tight and squeezed the life from her. I had exhausted one of my few remaining friends, all in the name of fear.

3. My lack of self-confidence has destroyed the majority of my relationships.

During a conversation with my friend Joe, I came to the realization that I hated myself so much that I unknowingly pushed everyone away. Since I have been obese, beginning in the tumultuous middle school years, I have been sensitive of my weight. Unable to take my shirt off in public and distrusting of my average penis, I covered it by taking on a suave persona to sway anyone from imagining that I could be as fragmentary as I was on the inside. I separated sex from love so as not to allow anyone close enough to judge me.

Many years ago I had an ex-girlfriend that, after a misunderstanding ended us, began telling everyone that I was a bad lover and had a small penis. She and I never had sex and I believe she never even saw my penis, but nonetheless I was devastated that people may look at me through that mirage. When Jessi finally gave me the time of day I yearned for, I let go the facade, but not enough to allow true happiness. I felt even uglier and much fatter than the years before. Jessi rarely went out to have fun without me, and I would say the most awful things in an unnecessary attempt to make sure she returned to me that evening. I would ask her not to sleep with everybody while she was out because I thought that it would secure the chances, when in actuality I was destroying her trust for me. Saying this filth in jest was probably just salt to her already aching wound. I philandered so that my friends didn't think I was weak, another meaningless venture. I couldn't be happy with her because I was unhappy with me. She was the first one who ever made me truly happy, which is where the pain I felt later on rooted from.

I found someone else in the middle of Jessi and I's time together, but fear made me walk off of that also. I left Jessi for eight months to be with Amy B. I was in college away from Jessi. Amy B. was that someone who could physically be there, not be three hours north. I needed her to keep me sane and she did. I was at a very low point in my life and she saved me. I have always been indebted to her for that. But after just a month of being together she found out that she was heading to Japan for school. I pushed her away and fell into the dark again. After leaving school I headed out to Palau to clear my head of woman and find my roots. I couldn't relax though, because thoughts of both Jessi and Amy B. danced though my head nightly. I drank them away accordingly but it proved futile. I chose to fly to Japan and decide once and for all who to be with. After the most amazing week of my overseas life, I knew Amy B. was to be the one. That was when the fear set in: How do I love across an ocean, where should I live and wait, what about her staunch Christian family, etc. On the bus to the airport she laid in my lap and cried deeply. I stared out the window and wished I had enough moxie to blindly launch into the unknown with true love. But instead I relegated myself to feeling like uneducated street trash that had no place being with a woman that good. Within weeks I was back to Jessi and comfortable again. Complacent, but comfortable.

4. My need for attention is a poison to my partners.

I was given another chance at love soon after Allie. Amy W. was far and away the partner I'd been looking for all of those years. Someone who understood my humor, and this is no easy task. She was someone who had flaws too, which allowed me the opportunity to forgive someone else instead of always being the forgiven. We had many common interests, thoughts and bonds. But again, my appetite for the attention of others proved fatal to my relationship. I began spending more and more nights out on the town. She was welcome to join but was not interested in partying at the volume that I did. There was no straying, just more intoxicated flirting and long nights away from her. She couldn't understand why I didn't want to spend time with her. I didn't see it in that way, but my explanation that it wasn't me avoiding her but me needing to hang out fell upon deaf ears. She just wanted me home. Luckily I walked away before hurting her any more than I already had. I heard the cries but still couldn't see how I was hurt her. At the time, the idea of changing that part of my life for her was unacceptable. A fool and his addictions do not part easily.

5. I am the reason that I am here; it is my fault.

Micki pretty much sums up all that I could ever want out of life. I stumbled into her arms soon after Amy W. She encompassed every wonderful aspect her predecessors held, as well as offered a future that would have been paradisaical. She was positive, sincere, and most importantly, supportive. I could spend eternity relating the hundreds of hours spent together in bliss, but it will suffice for me to simply say that she was my best friend ever. But being older than me, she possessed insight about my issues that I could not garner myself, nor could anyone my age or younger.

Fate had it that our time together was amidst turmoil in both our lives separately. This meant that I rarely could spend overnights with her. So I defaulted to my usual routine of late nights and sore mornings to fill the time we couldn't be together. This brought about an environment of distrust. I walked into this relationship with the preexisting stigma that my persona created, but it didn't help that I consistently placed myself in questionable situations and never connected the dots to how it might have potentially affected my relationship. As her heart sunk deeper every night I ran with the wolves, that insight she had of me rose closer to the top. She began calling them like she saw them, every last relationship faux pas I committed. Unfortunately, a man of pride as foolish as mine would never recant. But instead of sheepishly burying my chin in my chest and kicking my feet, I turned it around on her. Not intentionally meaning harm, I saw what seemed like her flaws for not understanding and flung them back at her. I didn't realize I was doing it. I just thought that I had insight too or that maybe my lifestyle was justified considering the situation. But all the rational in the world couldn't replace my poor choices and inability to be alone. I made one mistake too many and found myself escorted to the door.

These words and actions now bounce around inside my head, tearing me apart with wicked remorse. It may only subside when I prove to myself that I am better than this and will never do it again. But this is a goal not easily achieved. If life affords me eight more years, I just may overcome my issues and began again.

We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.

"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are."

-Anais Nin

It's amazing how we view the world through constricted eyes, unknowing of how to react to the diversity lining life's wake. Eyes that have only seen and experienced that which has been placed directly in front of them. We understand the things we see to represent that which it aligns with first in our memory. The instant you see a growling dog in front of you, the image rides the brain's electricity around your hard drive searching for the quickest association. This image will attach to a specific experience you have had before or have heard about from someone else. That is when it enters what I call The Thinking Process. The product of this process is a conclusion, and from that conclusion you create a reaction, which, in this case, would include you either soiling yourself or remaining calm.

In the realm of behavioral science, the way someone reacts to a new situation is a discussion for another day. Just as well, I will not be considering the "fight or flight" argument here because it would complicate what can stand alone in an theoretic discussion. It is the conclusion I am concerned with, not the reaction, because a reaction is to a conclusion what a "bang" is to a gunshot. To pose this analogy in my hypothesis' question: why would someone experience a live gunshot but consider it a toy gunshot? Why can we only see things with our labels and not see them for what they truly are?

After the image has been captured, it enters The Thinking Process. During this process the image is fitted for its conclusion, but there is only one filter between seeing and understanding: perception. The memory that is matched with the image is chosen because of their perception of what this image actually is. Let us use an example: Two women hold hands as they walk along the sidewalk. It would be easy for me now to say "what the normal person would think" in this situation, but that is an idea I wish to dispel. What I would think in this situation is in direct link to my experiences and knowledge. If I spend the majority of my maturation with lesbians, I might be more inclined to assume that these two women are lesbians than to consider any other possibility. And everyone else will draw their own conclusions based on what their perception is.

How is love affected by all of this? Consider the average person, with limited experiences and short-sighted expectations, learning to grasp, tolerate and commiserate with a society loudly entrenched in a social, sexual and spiritual battle with the moral establishment. How will individuals fair in the war of self-understanding and acceptance of others? Only their reaction will tell. But on a less overwhelming level, how is one able to cast aside their dogmatic ways to find content in someone whom they love but cannot relate to?

Being a human being with history logged in your subconscious, you have formed an opinion about the lifestyle that you lead. Everything you consider right is based on that history. Though you may never have actually experienced a 'perfect life', it is what you subconsciously yearn for. But, more over, you attempt to live a lifestyle based on your perception. You know this 'perfect life' like clockwork from following a hero, like a father or mother, or external influences, such as the movies or books. And not only do you know it intrinsically, you also know that anything outside of it is wrong.

I have created a detailed example of star-crossed lovers, so as to better apply our theory of perception and it's troubling effect on reality and, in our case, love.

Man Y. You have lived hard and memorable: experiencing too much by fifteen, sliding through school on your ass until it expected something back, searching the world for excitement but only finding what was comfortable, dating a flock of normal women who all eventually succumbed to your proclivity for nightlife, settling for a mundane job and existence. You have spent eight years in relationships more out of fear of being alone than out of love. Many years ago you quietly placed all of your talent and dreams in a closet and forgot them. Now you have the opportunity to rekindle a self you lost years ago. But alas, love (i.e. Woman X) appeared and dominated your life. It was everything you could have ever imagined, but you questioned whether that was because of your penchant for monogamy or because of her. Your expectations of her were low, but her's were high because of what she expected from the 'perfect life'. You tried to change these differences but they were hardwired and she found your progression too slow. A series of breaks, issues and separations ensued and now you finally have your time and your bed to yourself.

Woman X. You have experienced the complexion of life: moving cross-country at eighteen, failed loves filled with warning signs, the disastrous marriage that bore two wonderful children, and the uphill battle of feeling validated in a world that doesn't care. Just as you were finally breaking free, when you were so close to finding yourself and had rediscovered the secrets to fulfilling long forgotten dreams, love (i.e. Man Y) appeared and dominated your life. It was everything you could have ever imagined, though not quite in sync with the map drawn many years ago when you traced your hero. And though the relationship was flawed, it is possible that you never truly let his love into your world. You considered his social needs excessive and expressed often how they created trust issues. Whether it was bitter independence or just scar tissue, you let go before the expectations of the 'perfect life' were met. A series of breaks, issues and separations ensued and now you finally have your time and your bed to yourself.

In studying these examples, we can find obvious instances where perception affected the relationship. But in regards to our thesis, we must ask ourselves, "could they ever see one another for who they are"? She might be able to embrace him if she could let go of her need to fulfill the requirements of a fantasy life. He might be able to fill the holes in his heart and have a great supporter of his talents if he could grow out of his habits. But where is the decoder, the potion that will open their eyes to the possibilities and put their minds at ease? Tolerance would not work in this situation because it is a band-aid that falls off. What we need here is a pure understanding of who each other really is, because they are ultimately no different from one another. When you scrape away the details, all that remains are two people who cannot see each other for anything other than what they think. The Thinking Process is producing a black-and-white conclusion from a color image; a right-and-wrong conclusion when judgment is irrelevant.

Even though these are two people with different past and presents, they could logically share a future together. But first, they must remove the filter from their Thinking Process. In fact, we all need to remove our filters and see the world for exactly what it is. Our perception of images must be disconnected from our previous experiences. We can no longer be cloud by greed, intolerance and ignorance. We can finally enjoy this earth and begin rejuvenate its richness. And, for the sake of love, we can avoid punishing someone for another's crime. Losing the filter will refresh our understandings of normality and make the playing field level with attainable goals.

I realize that this was a long and tiring biopsy of a quote. However, it is the conclusion of my Thinking Process. I'm sure that for each individual the quote brings about different feelings altogether. After reading the quote again, what does your filter leave you with?