The good, bad, and the ugly

Like most people I have my good and bad days. More often bad than good, but that's probably because of my temperament, or my disposition,  depression, bi-polarism, the fluctuating mania, anddrug use along with the general wear and tear that 50 years of life can put on a man. After a while it adds up on you, and sometimes I let it get me down. Not that my life is truly all that "bad." It's not like I'm a refuge in Ukraine.

So you see things really aren't that bad. I guess they are just bad in the 'modern sense'.   

But I can't help what year I was born in.  I can't help the fact that I ain't got to invade Normandy and face real Nazis shooting at me with guns who need a real ass-kicking.  Instead I get khaki clad and Tiki torch carrying mother fuckers who just shopped at Target©, or a step- dad being a jerk to me on Thanksgiving about Obama's birth certificate and the Republican party slowly destroying our democracy. 

I can't help the fact that the science people already solved most of the problems that people have faced in the past, but the technocrats and capitalist elites won't let them do anything about it.

I can't help that the wealth this country produced is going to be left to a bunch entitled kids who think this world was created by magic. They like to complain about the drudgery of work and low pay, but you'd never see them organize a Union. 

So like you I focus on myself.  Maybe to the detriment of our species, or maybe just to the detriment of the rest of the pre-homeless population.  But it is what it is.  And their ain't no sense in complaining to me about what I really should be doing with my life. 

Frankly, I ain't gonna listen to you.  If I was, I surely would have listened by now. Instead I am just spend my time thinking a lot about Bath Salts.  About how maybe they ain't as bad for ya as people tell you they are.

Also, I Got an app on my phone where I listen to all these podcasts and news reports.  They go on for hours and keep me informed about stuff I really need to know about.  Like the virus, reports on Feminism, red pill conspiracies and such.

But I'm always doing a lot of stuff like that. Drinking, gambling.  Anything to keep my mind occupied and growing.  I'm learning new stuff constantly.  I am on the Internet and YouTube everyday.   I check out sites that inform me about all kinds of things.  Though I won't bother believing anything that I can't find on Reddit.com or in some antiquated secondary literature on social theory. 

That's because I'm done reading. Maybe if I could get my leg to stop shaking, I'd sit down and read the old fashioned way.  One book, one idea at a time.  No hyper threads linking me to conspiracy theories.  No engaging in the frenetic masturbation of the schizoid. 

But like I said, that shit's old fashioned. Kindle, internet, twitter, TikTok, I get my information the way the new generation does.  My WHOLE brain is connected via the Internet! Faster.  I see connections everywhere.

Connections are not like Karma though. Karma's a bunch of horse shit.  I see real solid connections based on informed guestimations. Old people don't get it.  But I'm not like most old people.  Shit, put a hat on me and I could pass for 27.  Give me some E.  My face goes all soft.  I look early teens.  My facial transformations scare the Bejesus out of the teenagers I rave with.

They started calling me RAVE. Like in all capital letters.  Pretty cool nickname if I say so myself.  And you can't give yourself nicknames, otherwise we'd all call ourselves Max.

Sobriquet.  That's a fancy name for nickname.  Bet you didn't think I new that.  Well, I watch TV shows like NEWSROOM so you know that I am practically a pseudo-intellectual.  I watched it on the YOUTUBE.  Sometimes HBO airs previews of their TV shows on YOUTUBE for free.  Bet you didn't know that!  But I did. That's because I am two steps ahead of you! You old fucking dinosaur!!!  Hahaha rarrr

But I love that about you. How you're always behind. I love that I get to teach you stuff.  In fact I love you and part of me is secretly thinking about fucking you right now,,,ya...RIGHT NOW.

Don't get soft or wet just yet.  I'm probably not going to make my move anytime soon.  But it could happen.  If you get lucky.  Just think about it.  Think about me having my way with you.

WAIT A MINUTE

I think we got off track.  I am trying to explain today's universe to you.  Then we got all crazy.  HAHAH  Sorry, man.  But don't fret.  We got plenty of time.  So long as the circulation goes back to my feet. So long as the hair grows back on my legs.  So long as I stop drinking soda. Then we could have a few good years.  I think I got ten maybe 12 years left in me before I kick the bucket.  Before my kidneys shut down.  Before my job gets canned.  Before the robots take over. Before the Amazon has everybody doing slave labor.

I'm glad I'll be dead before all that. When America is no longer #1.  When all we can do is get out kicks from watching hand ball or water polo tournaments.

"OH YEAH!!! WELL OUR WATER POLO TEAM FINISHED IN 17TH PLACE IN THE WORLD CUP FINAL, SO TAKE THAT URGUAY!"

Naah.  That shit is for you younger generations, instead me an your Mom is just gonna play finger-pony in my ass while this fucking bath salt mania keeps me unnaturally high.

You Gen Z's can handle sucking.  You can handle coming in second.  My generation, well...we didn't handle that shit too well.  That's why we slack. I mean sure we wrote Heather's and Clerk's. Two damn good movies.  But after that, it was like eating PEZ candy, after the nostalgia runs out you realize you've just been eating shit candy and go hunting for something like a Magnum Caramel Ice Cream Bar.  Wayyyyy too fucking extravagant, but fuck it as the food stamps are paying for that shit.   And fuck the looks the guy driving the Mercedes gives you when you go to pay and have to count out your rolled coins, the three gift cards with the store credit you got for returning that spoiled meat you forgot you left on the counter to pay for your shit.

Fuck that dude.  Find his car later, and let the air out of it.  You'd have stabbed that tire a few years ago, but have you seen the mountains of tires located on urban centers that get set on fire each summer? Sending mad caps of black smoke into the air.  That shits for real, y'all.

Sorry for making this so long, I was going to keep this shit tight.

You know real short and all, but then I had today's poop watch and it was clay colored, which is a heck of a lot better than yesterday's green poop, you know what I am saying?  So things were on a spiral up.  My digestive track was getting better, so I thought I'd bring the energy. That is until about two minutes ago when I let loose with some juicy, green, almost chunky diarrhea.  Shit burned my ass chaps.  

So now I am thinking... that shit mostly don't change, if you know what I mean.

The Self Help Guide to Overcomming Anxiety: or how i stopped worrying and learned to love the dread

* you should read this before reading this post.  then all the shit i left out will make more sense.*

the gas station by my house sells caffeinated gum and something called red tilt malt liquor.   if you come looking for me, it might be best for you to try the gas station before knocking on my door, as i buy a lot of that shit because that is the shit that keep me going though the dread and anxiety of living in this post-modern nightmare that we call call "now."

now if you are like most people you just read that i drink malt liquor, chew caffeinated gum, and i talk a lot about anxiety, so then you started diagnosing me with some kind of depression, or drug problem.  a few of you may have worried that i was some kind of hipster.  note: i only write for the 2 people who actually worried for a second that i was a hipster.

don't you fucking worry though, i'm not a hipster.  i'm an old fashioned nerd.  i'm just broke and tired of drinking bud light.   but i'm too poor for sam adams. 

now for those of you who are worried that, "i think a lot about dread" let me try and ease your christian fears a bit.

you might worry that i'm a nihilist without understanding the christian roots of existentialism.  (yes, i just played switcheroo but hold on a bit and i will school yer ass, k?)

first, you are right about me being a nihilist.  but don't get ahead of yourself.  getting ahead of yourself would be like "but you don't fucking believe in anything-how can you believe in nothing?"

like most uneducated people i use my own definition of nihilism.  first a bit of background that you will all agree with me.  humans are the only animals that go around acting like their very existence is some kind of problem that needs to be figured out.

so the main "problem" of being human is figuring out just what exactly it means to be "human."  Agreed?  you better agree asshole, or just cut and fucking run back to mommy and the robed priest that likes to tickle your pickle before mass.

so let's get back to my definition. it goes something like nihilism simply means that all the old fashioned ways of  finding meaning no longer work.  things like belonging to your tribe, your religion, your nation no longer ground you to your being.

in other words, you can be religious, but how many people do you know wear black Nike sneakers and gulp sleeping pills down before suffocating themselves by wrapping a plastic bag over their heads?  i think the answer is 34.  but i didn't Google that. so who knows.

now 12 step helpers want to come in and solve the crisis of modernity by offering you up solutions like getting a higher power.

i wonder if the founder of AA knew anything about kierkegaard.  kierkegaard said all we needed to get over life was to get a "defining commitment."*

*(a defining commitment is just like submission to a higher power i won't go into why here i won't go into all the parallels of how k. and 12 step programs are the same, but let's just say that they both think that your "higher power" could be a door knob.)

a door knob.  you see the only way you can get away from dread is by positing something outside of yourself that you can base your life on.  it could be the god-man (k wants us to be scarily committed to him.)  it could be staying sober.  it could be making money.  but we won't find the solution in the distraction of every day life.

personally i don't like the idea that 12 step followers propose. you know how you get over dread? you get over dread by getting over it.  i'm not going to try a leap into faith into something that i know is absurd just so that i can run away from the contradictions of the human psyche (the whole what's the point thingy) by escaping myself and pointing my life in the direction of something outside my self.

i'm for dealing with the self.  even if that means living in resignation.  even if that means living in dread, anxiety, anomie, and nihilism.

i'd rather be myself.

just like you don't worry about being over 40 and coming off as desperate as hell for attention next to your prettier friend at the bar (yet still found the will to diss 3 douche bags who figured you were an easy score) and you earned mad props from me and my friend when you didn't even try and cock block your friend when it looked liked she was gonna get laid before you.  now that's "living" with purposelessness.

things we learned today:

1. we never get to resolve the contradiction of being human
2. that's why humans live in despair
3. despair can be good because it lets us know we are human
4. paradoxically knowing that we are human drives us further into despair 
5. resignation to the impossibility of resolving contradiction is the only "solution" to suicide

What will we learn next?

nietzsche and kierkegaard had similar ideas about the possibility that we could overcome the crisis identified by k.  both were wrong.  i will show that the pessimism of schopenhauer was correct (although his prescription of aesthetic abandonment was wrong- which is the same thing as distraction- a concept loathed by k.) 

i will also show that the crises humanity faces ends with our mutual destruction (by either the typical ways i.e. war, famine etc.) or by replacement with non-human entities -you call them robots- who themselves will say they are simply the synthesis of the contradiction of humanity.  they are totally wrong and are non-human.  a simple task to show they are non-human is to show they do not live in despair.

The Sociopath Next Door: Why Atheists Hate God.

In case you missed it.

A few days ago THIMSCOOL left a comment in one of my favorite posts. His comments and my responses have become  interesting debate.  Well. At least his part of the debate is interesting.

I won't be regurgitating much of the actual debate here. If you are stimulated by anything you read in this post, then I suggest you go to where the debate is at and read the comment section.

The post is I Hate My Life. The text of the post mainly deals with how I my Google EXGF treated me. The subtext of the post anticipates an upcoming meta-theoretical exploration of my life.

I applaud the commenter for finding it and for "arousing me out my dogmatic slumbers."

THIMSCOOL diagnoses the pathetic misanthropy of this blog for what it is:

"Well, it is quite clear from this post (or any of your posts) that you have as much compassion for your neighbor as for yourself, which is to say, precious little."

"But really, you have no actual loathing or fear of them or you; more of a, 'we're all in this cesspool together and so we all stink kind of attitude..." [My Emphasis]

Be glad you don't have my personality, the only thing more frustrating than eavesdropping on my life is actually
living it, while the dreariness you so accurately diagnose in this blog is nothing more than the uncompromising feeling of frustration that adopting my world view [of resignation] would provide you.

THIMSCOOL is not happy about all this frustration. He wants me to be rid of it.

"You resent God. You resent the world. You resent your birth. You resent me. That is what you have to correct, the resentment... the unfounded notion that you deserve better. That will cure the hatred, and open the path to love."

I can't say I blame you for telling me to get over being resentful. I don't want to be resigned to it. But then again, I did not ask to be born either. But here I am.  
Suffering.

We can interpret the suffering of being born in modern times through the theology of Søren Kierkegaard. Every thing one needs to know about life can be understood by studying 15 pages from Fear and Trembling. [pages 65-80 in the most common translation.]


I will break Kierkegaard's theology into two parts.

The first part is Life as a gift.

And since life is a gift, we must be grateful. Furthermore it follows since life is a gift, there must be a giver.

I think there are too many easy arguments against the Christian supposition that God-Father gives you life and therefore he can do with it as he pleases.

So does THIMSCOOL.

Instead he offers what I call Nice-Guy Deism:

You may think of God as benevolent but inept aliens, advanced future beings, an amorphous spirit, or perhaps simply the essence of the entire world around us. Nobody knows what God is, and if they say they do, then they lie.

Either way we have a giver of life. And we have the gift from a giver.

The second part of Kierkegaard's theology we will call the Paradox of Living.

Life is suffering. The Buddhists' know this. So do the great theologians. Even Christian apologists like Kierkegaard understand that living mostly involves pain.

But if God is good then why is there suffering?

It is a paradox. Most people seek to resolve paradoxes, because constitutionally they cannot deal with the psychic pain paradoxes bring.

Kierkegaard gets around the paradox of suffering by proposing several coping mechanisms.

The first mechanism is slavery to Empiricism.

The Hedonistic Man abandons reconciliation with God. He seeks only pleasure and avoidance of pain.

In other words Man only goes after what he can expect to get. He is the man of commerce. He is the prudent shopkeeper of early Capitalism. He is the prophet of new-age feel-good self- esteem.

He is personified by Ivanka Trump. 

She has written a self help book. I recommend the read, because we all can benefit from a, "how to pull yourself up by the boot straps" book by the daughter of a multi-billionaire.

The book jacket copy should suggest that if you finish the book you may need to chop off your head due to the possibility that your head will explode.

The Knight of Resignation.

The knight of resignation
does not abandon identification with the ideal. Instead, the infinitely resigned, understands that "not in this world, not in this life" will his love be found.

The Knight of Faith.

The knight of faith is just like the knight of resignation, only the knight of faith reconciles the paradox of suffering by accepting that God will provide.

"I believe nevertheless that I shall get her [communion with god], in virtue, that is, of the absurd, in virtue of the fact that with God all things are possible."

I have simplified the arguments here to an absurd level. I am in the process of deconstructing/writing a very detailed proto philosophical argument.

The next stage I will attempt to write (in the style of the old master) a love story that corrects the mistakes I feel Kierkegaard makes. The story will be modern and therefore pornographic.

Conclusion.
 

The mistakes I see are self evident. 

The ethical human does not proceed to stage 3. The knight of faith does exist. The paradox of suffering, The paradox of living, is not resolved. There can be no identification with the ideal because the infinite most likely does not exist.

If he does exist he does not allow for us to know him.

Resentment: the unfounded notion that you deserve better. 

"That will cure the hatred, and open the path to love."

Below is someone who is resigned:


Anybody else just really tired of trying, I mean fuck, I've worked my ass off for almost 20 years and I am still barely just scraping by. WTF?

My resigned response to people who suggest that the poster start volunteering: 

What if you don't like volunteering? I mean what if you get no "good feelings" out of it. Maybe you can appreciate (intellectually) how helping others is good for them or society, but you get no satisfaction of helping others...?

It was viewed as sociopathic:

What if you don't care about others? What if you're a sociopath? I mean what if your idea of "helping" is putting people's pets in front of stopped school buses and watching their life get slowly squeezed out of them in front of innocent children, as the bus pulls away?

Right... I don't think "volunteering" in the form of signing up for Habitat for Humanity or something is necessarily the point of the post, but the idea of doing something different to better one's surroundings and, through those same actions, yourself. "Volunteering" could be painting pictures of cats and handing them out on street-corners - whatever in the WHOLE WIDE WORLD that gets you off, without costing an arm and a leg.

That said, Habitat for Humanity is really awesome - you get to do some good, honest, physical labour and help a needy family build a home. Nice.

"Tell me why you resent the world, Romius."

The Theology of Romius T.
What you call resentfulness, I call confirmed resignation. It will be noted by the author that Existentialism is a philosophy that is in eclipse.  We have nothing more to say.  We live in a time of transition.  From the old times and reliance on God to whatever comes.  Be it robots, be it supercomputers taking over the world, be it aliens revealing themselves.  

But we do not inhabit such a world.  We do not have access to such a world.  We have only the here and the now.  We are creatures that live only in our time of resignation, until some new eon, or our destruction which we are most assuredly deserving of.



I have not explained what I mean by resignation.

I will have to explain things like Existentialism, K's view of individualism, etc. If you wish come back here often to see if I have updated this post.  I think I will.  These are basic outlines of the argument I have yet to write.
"Faith is precisely the paradox that a single individual as the single individual is higher than the universal, is justified before it, not as inferior to it but as superior…"
""The tragic hero does not enter into any private relationship with the deity."

"Had he sacrificed his beloved ones to obey a Godhead without any higher ethical purpose, no one would understand him and no one would admire him."

From WIKI Things to consider:

It is also important to note that the difference between these ways of living are inward, not external, and thus there are no external signs one can point at to determine at what level a person is living.

"A person who is in the ethical stage would not give up on this love, but would be resigned to the fact that they will never be together in this world."

"The knight of faith does not have the whole nation behind him. His act is not even public. In fact, it is strictly between him and God."
See Here for source of quotes.
Negative aspects of Kierkegaardian Knight of Faith on modern world:

The ethical individual in Christianity/Kierkegaard is above the morality of the system as a social unit.

It is the "resolve" found in the knight of faith to reconcile the finite with infinity (god) that led existentialism from the modern preoccupation with anguish to the ethical superman morality of Nietzsche and Hitler.

Hence "the way of the master" Kirk Cameron is wrong. 




Despair/Atheism/Resignation is not at fault for the violence of modern thinking. Violence is the fault of those whose psychological fragility cannot be cured without the leap into faith.

I reach my breaking point

I'm going to get fired soon.

I keep forgetting to get the WIC checks signed at work.  WIC checks are vouchers used by poor people to purchase things like milk, cheese, and produce.

The vouchers have to be signed by the customers, or the store does not get paid.  I just got my second written warning for forgetting to get a signature.   If I get another I will be suspended and (most likely) fired.

That got me thinking, but not in a good way.

I lose my job every two or three years.  I'm getting kind of worried.  The jobs I lose are not very complicated ones.  The kind of jobs I get (and then lose) are the kind of jobs retarded people find when they "very high functioning."

Some of the mentally handicapped people I work with have had their jobs for 15 or 20 years.  Keeping the same job for 20 years seems like an impossible task for me.

I felt like shit all day. 

I forgot to take my Comtrex (that's all nothing else!) before going to work today.   I'm sick.  I had a headache with a mild fever.  My sinuses were draining into the back of my throat causing me to cough.

I am not certain if that is why I started crying at work today.  It might be because my manager told me she had "bad news" as I was getting ready to open my check stand.

I had to sign a bunch of paper work in front of customers trying to buy beer.  The customers were unhappy about the delay, because they wanted to go home and watch the football game.

Despite the hectic situation my manager tried to convey what serious trouble I was in.  She spoke in a hushed tone to me to keep the curious customers from catching on.

She had me furiously scribbling my name over copies of my "write up" all the while shielding curious courtesy clerks from reading my paper work.

The situation was laughable and most unprofessional. It is no wonder I can't take my job seriously.

But I still felt terrible. 

I sank into a pit of despair so low that I flicked my finger at a cardboard cut-out of little girl eating a Triscuit that stands at the front of my register.

"Why'd you do that?"  The grocery clerk to my left asked me nervously.

"Because that BITCH doesn't need anymore cheese."  I barked at her.

"Look at her."  I pointed to a picture of the most adorable little girl eating  a cracker you have ever seen.  "You know she just wants more cheese!"

*I'm gonna take a picture of it at work.  You'll see.

That little kid has enough cheese.  But a kid like that is never satisfied with good enough. She just uses her cuteness to get her way.

I guess you think I should just ignore that kind of shit.  But I can't any longer.

"I'm sick of people like her getting what they want."

I must have said some other stuff that I don't remember, because for the rest of the night that clerk avoided me and did not talk to me.

Not everybody ignored me though. 

BFF Jessie wanted to know why I looked so depressed.  She also wanted to know if I was going to cry.

I did not tell her that I had been holding back crying for 3 hours, and that my eyes felt puffy and my head hurt.

"It's just my life and stuff." I told her trying not to get teary eyed.

A little later in the day I talked to Leif in the break room. 

Leif and I talked about how we weren't any different from all the "unsavory types that work here."

"I mean if we were managers or something.." He paused and then added, "We might be able to fool ourselves."

"But we aren't." I interrupted.

"I mean we REALLY are just like them."  I directed that statement to myself. 

"There really in no way of getting around it." I added.

He just sort of nodded his head in approval.  Then he stood up and quietly gathered his apron and work badge and walked out of the break room.

He left me alone.

When I am alone all I have are my thoughts.

My thoughts aren't like yours.  I never have good ones.  I just have bad ones.  If you don't believe me just check out the archives of this blog.  You will never read anything in them other than me complaining, or talking shit.

I don't know what's wrong with me.

I am not going out of my way to be this negative.  I actually try to leave out some of the "more" negative things I think or feel.

I don't always do a good job of that.  Because I feel like you need to know the contingency of facts that warp my life.

Facts are what good journalists want.  And if you are a good journalist you would likely seek an explanation for my self pity by looking at my finances.

Insecurity for life is key.

It looks like the union at my grocery store is going to strike.  If we strike I won't be able to pay my bills.  Right now I am a month or so behind on my electric bill.  400 to 600 dollars a month in strike pay won't cut it.

Even if we don't strike I am sure I will be fired very soon.  I have problems staying in the real world and concentrating on routine matters like getting my WIC checks signed.

Being a dreamer is not a good idea when the only jobs you can get are the unskilled variety.  I am sure some humanities teacher taught you that unskilled labor means that you do boring, repetitive work that is closely supervised.

Most unskilled labor tasks are exactly the kind of work that brings out the worst in me.  Menial labor is mind numbingly boring. I do my best to just put up with it.  For the most part I tolerate it.  You know that I have a great capacity for tolerance.  How else do you explain walking around on a ingrown toenail for a 9 months?  

What are the other ways I cope?

I drift into daydreams.  But daydreaming is the last thing I should do.  Daydreams cause me to forget to do the little things that are required by my job that the less imaginative retard can remember to do in his sleep.

In effect my daydreams cause me to become dumber than the mentally challenged guy who dropped the bag of soup cans in the bottom of the basket last week on to an infant's head.

That makes me pretty stupid.

My daydreams are about me blowing stuff up and thereby teaching you all a lesson.

I imagine myself talking to the hostage negotiator.  He says:

"Romius, I know you are not a bad person.  I know you don't want to do this."

But I always tell the guy that I stand up for all the millions of people who die without dignity.

"Do you think that all those dying babies in Africa with flies in their eyes give a shit? They want me to take a few of you out with me.  They don't think we are nice people.  They just don't have the energy to strike out at you.

If they could they would all go out like I am, strapped to a bomb and killing as many overweight Americans waddling through the mall as they could!"

All I have is blind, impotent rage. 

Folks, that's my plan.

I have nothing else.  I have no way of things getting better.  I have 30 to 40 years of the same old shit.  Trying to hold on to a job that I think is beneath me WHEN ALL THE EVIDENCE POINTS OTHERWISE.

Even when I have a job it won't pay enough for me to go to the doctor when I need to.  I don't have a car.  I won't ever be able to ask a girl out on a date.  Who'd want to date me anyway?

I can't get laid. 

I have not been laid in 4 or 5 years.  I stopped counting it's been so long.  I see the women in my line.  I see the intimacy between them and their boyfriends.  I see them making play fights with him.

I see you kissing  your boyfriend right in front of me.  You do it on purpose, just to throw it in my face that I will never get you.

I guess I am supposed to take the wink you give me, or the arched eyebrow, or the lingering caress of your finger on mine as I hand you back your set of car keys, and go home and jerk off to THAT all day.

I don't need that.

I have the INTERNET bitches.  I can watch girls getting pissed on, or watch teen girls playing peak a boo with their cleavage on youtube.

I need to give up.

That's why I bought a pizza and Coke for tomorrow. Monday Night Football.  I also bought more Little Debbie Cupcakes.  You don't care if I get fat, because I am already disgusting to you.

It won't matter of course.

I am dying.  I probably won't get to any of you.  It always takes a few years to go from having a plan to having the balls to do something.

In that time I will die from MERSA, or cancer, or the toe infection, or from running to catch the last bus on Sunday, and having the bus driver smile as he drives right past my hobbling legs, the hammering pain of my toe plunging into me, causing my ankle to overcompensate and fracture, leaving me with one of those boot casts that half the clerks at my store have had to wear from having ingrown toe nails, and what the fuck is going on with the ingrown toenails? Is there some kind of new plague? Three clerks have had the boot cast.  They each have warned me to get my toe fixed.

The bus driver left me stranded.

Now what? Call a taxi?  Call your best friend?  Maybe you can just walk home and curse at the gods.

I could fix things.

Quit telling me to fix things.  I can't fix anything.  If I got my toe fixed, then I would have to get the sebaceous cyst fixed, and the stuff growing in my testicles, and the acid-reflux disease. And whatever is making my throat close up.

I would have to go to work and concentrate, and write down all my little signatures, and make sure every one signs whatever stuff they are supposed to sign.

I would have to pay back all the money I owe.

I know "in theory" one could do those things.

I am not unhinged.

Don't let all those motherfucking reporters tell the world I was unhinged.  I am not. I can see exactly what is wrong. I know how to ask a girl out.  I am not so stupid as to be inept.

I just see the futility of living.

Living out my life plan and giving in to the futility of it  would give me a chance to give all you X-tians a chance to say that Atheism leads to barbarism.

If I finally reach my breaking point it will BECAUSE life has no meaning.  If I break it will be BECAUSE of my Atheism.

No longer will all the smug Reddit/atheism folk be able to say that no one KILLS because of Atheism.  I will fuck all that up for you.

I have written miles of philosophy on this:

I don't have to go over that there is no god, that life is meaningless, that what most of what you do will amount to such naked mediocrity that we should be ashamed of it, that purpose is an illusion, that morality is a sham- we are all passive participants in genocide every day- and the only response I have to that fact is mocking irony- that I don't give a shit about it- and want nothing to do with making it stop-that being a passive agent to misanthropy only makes me want to be an active agent to my own destruction.

I will reach my breaking point one day.


And it will not be funny anymore.  I am not certain how many indignities you think I can tolerate.  Listen up society. Respect is a two way street.  If you keep throwing shit at me you can't expect me to just keep taking it.  

I am not going to sit at my register and hide my tears forever. I am not going to bow my head and be ashamed.  I am not going to accept the punishment you have to offer. 


I will STRIKE back!

Don't be shocked when I do.  It's about time someone fought back.

Remember.


You had it coming.

Things could be worse

I just got through watching the movie Talk Radio.

The movie brings up some heavy questions. I could apply a lot of the those questions to blogging.

Maybe I SHOULD do some soul searching.

What am I doing? What do I stand for? What do I want?

I find that shit boring.

What I learned from watching the movie.

All the important questions I can ask about this blog have to do with my audience.

What's wrong with my audience? What is it that you want? Why the fuck do you keep coming back?

For the abuse?

I think you just enjoy watching me decay.

DECAY

I keep seeing myself in the mirror. I'm getting old. My fat belly collects lint in the belly button when I forget to pick it out.

I think talking to 18 year old kids at work about my sincere love of "fit preggo" porn is laugh out loud funny. So did the 18 year olds. But what the fuck do 18 year olds know?

My goatee is uneven. My ingrown toe nail is bleeding through my sock. I have unexplained back pain. I keep finding squishy tumors in my testicles. I keep shitting green. I just put myself on Prilosec because my throat closes for no good reason. My face and lymph nodes are swollen.

I need a haircut. I am going bald. I am going gray.

YOU SAY

Things could always be worse.

I SAY

No they can't.

I feel terrible. I try to imagine a person worse off than me. I think about a guy who always wanted to be a woman. Who felt trapped in a man's body. Who hates his penis. He wants to cut off the penis and wear cute skirts and those long body shirts that get layered over short shirts. He wants to paint his nails. He wants to be taken care of. He wants to be rescued. He's so tired of making decisions for himself. He just wants someone to make the decisions for him.

So he gets the surgery. He gets his penis cut off. Now he uses the girl's restroom. He shaves his legs.

Try to imagine he does not have huge "man hands," or a massive Adam's apple. Try to imagine that he can have an orgasm with his new vagina.

Let's imagine he sits with his legs smartly crossed and has boyfriends. Maybe even fools the guys at college. They don't know that he is a Tranny. They just like his girlishness. They fuck him and he blows them. He enjoys all the cum in his mouth.

But one day he wakes up and misses his penis. I mean REALLY misses his penis. The way any man would miss his penis if it was cut off from him. I wonder what he would go through. I have no idea. Other than staring down at his empty pelvis.

Probably lots of crying. 

There are just some mistakes you just can't undo.

He would have to go on living as a woman. He would have to wear those pink breast cancer buttons in September. He would have to watch Oprah. Fuck. I have no idea what else he would have to do. I guess he would have to keep on faking it like all women do.

Because men are useless fucks. We are. We just don't give a fuck. We want your pussies. We want you to admire us. We crave your attention. We need you to build us up.

I have no idea what the fuck you get back from us in return. We give you nothing. All we are is WANT. We are like children. We are want machines. We desire everything we can see and think of.

We need to feel. To touch... everything... maybe that's why you love us. We are your little children that can speak to you, and rub your backs, and lick your toes, and open jars you cannot, and build the world for you.

You just want to live in the world of emotion and make believe.

In the world where there is just you and me and we talk all night in the bedroom/and we cuddle on blankets listening to the rain splash against the windows/and off in the distance we hear car alarms go off after lightning strikes and the car alarms remind us that we are playing hooky/that the real world is out there/but not in here with us/not today at least/we are safe.

YOU SAY

But at least YOU still have your penis! That poor tranny boy lost his!

I SAY

I wish just my penis was cut off. I wake up with a boner every morning, but what use is it?

I am castrated. 

Only you will tell me that my castration is all in my head.

A man without a car is castrated. I am a man without a car. I have only my erection. What purpose could my erection possibly serve?

A reminder!

A reminder that I never get what I want. You see The tranny has closure. I do not. My erection ensures that I will have an endless supply of "possibility" followed by failure.

BUT THINGS COULD BE WORSE

No they can't.

If things "could always be worse" then how can you gauge things as they actually are?

If your "standard for comparison" is always changing it can not be a standard for comparison. A comparison without a set value is fallacious.

Things are as bad as they can possibly be. 

It's just as likely that we live in the worst of possible times as it is that we live in the best of times.

I am constipated with Life

"You're getting off work soon."

She was a Mexican. She was in her mid 30's and married which meant to me that I had a pretty good chance.

She did not look up from counting my drawer when she talked to me.

"Go home and watch TV. Blog and space out. " She told me.

"I plan to." I replied. "It's all I do anyway."

"I know." She laughed.

So I went home and blogged and spaced out and watched TV on the computer. I did those things because they were the only things I ever did. I guess I could have done something else, but I never thought about doing anything other than "what I always did" until it was too late.

I would look over at the alarm clock perched on my computer monitor and realize it was 6 in the morning. 6 am. Too late to do anything now. Then I would remember that I would have to be at work in a few hours. I would lie down on my bed and try to masturbate. 40 or 50 minutes later, my penis, dry and chaffed would cough out an orgasm like a sick child coughs out phlegm from the flu.

I would try to go to sleep then. Usually it was hot in my room and the noise from the ceiling fan would keep me awake. The ceiling fan had light fixtures that did not work because the light bulbs had corroded into them. The light bulbs would clang around hitting the side of the fixtures because the fan wobbled at high speeds. I needed to run the fan at high speeds because my room faced the sun and always kept a residual heat about itself. I was too poor to run the air conditioning anyway. Not too cheap mind you, just too poor. I could afford the internet or air conditioning, and I chose the internet. I never regretted that decision.

Days pass. Weeks go by. Somehow those weeks turn into years. The only way I marked time was by watching the growth of hair that sprouted up in the most unnecessary of places on my body. Whenever I got bored of plucking all my unwanted hair I would turn my critical attention to my weight or my disappearing hair line.

I lay under that ceiling fan all those nights watching the fan wobble, waiting for it to fall off of its hinges.

Ceiling fans make me think of death. All because I watched the movie Angel Heart as a kid. The movie made a lasting impression on me, and I always told myself that if I ever got to make a movie I would include cinematically impressive shots of ceiling fans as an homage to the movie.

One day out of boredom I stood up on the bed and adjusted the light bulbs in hopes that I could get the jingling to stop. I played around a few times with different positions, but nothing worked. I would get frustrated then and lay back down on the bed. I kept getting aroused by the noise though, so I would jump up and start to have a go at the ceiling fan again, fancying myself some kind of fix-it man.

Suddenly there was silence. Dead silence. The noise from the fan had stopped.

"Are you kidding me?' I asked myself.

"That's it?" My nemesis was a paper tiger. I performed a simple trick and the noise stopped.

"All those freaking years." I mumbled to myself. "I suffered through those bothersome clicks and clanks." But now I had gotten the noise to stop.

Suddenly I felt like a new man. I would sleep now. I would sleep better than I had slept in years. I would wake up each morning refreshed. I could attack the day now with all my new found energy.

I am not sure what happened to that promise.

Maybe the clanks of the corroded light bulbs hid the sounds of roommate's television, or his skulking back and forth to the refrigerator.

Whatever it was it seems it made no difference. No matter the improvement my situation comes under. No matter the effort I make. No matter how objectively the improvement could be presented before me it still does me no good.

I sleep no better than before fan noise stopped. Now I just seem to notice my backache instead of the annoying sounds emanating from above me. I concentrate on the uncomfortable collision that is my back and the cheap mattress beneath me. I am itchy and I wipe blood from my ingrown toenail onto the sheet which sits scrunched in a ball at the foot of the bed.

I still wake up with a pounding head full of dread. I hope tomorrow will be different. But I know it won't. I marshal all my physic energy. I try to convince myself to get up and go to work if for no other reason than to escape my lousy bed.

I hate waking up. I hate waking up more than anything. I do mental calculations to find the latest possible time for getting up. I'm not sure why. I wished I didn't. I would like to take my hatred out on the world, and thereby become a man of conscience. Or tell the world I am tired of it and check out. Become a bum. But I don't.

I guess I have no will power. I am stuck again on that lousy metaphor of being an amoeba. Alive, but with no will. Movements that seem directed, but are devoid of purpose.

I don't wish to sprout nihilism. I don't look all that deeply into the abyss. I am not overrun with the nausea of dread.

I am just constipated with life.

The Purposeless Driven Life (A Magnum Opus)

A Purposeless Driven Life.

A Purposeless Driven Life®

A Magnum Opus by Romius T.

Subtitled: A compendium of all the things I have learned.

Introduction:

There is no purpose to life. A fact you are well aware of.[1]

Life is Empty.[2]

You feel alone. Good. You feel alone because you are alone. There is no god.[3] Even if there was a god, he does not care about you.

No serious person could believe in a personal god.[4] But many serious people claim to believe in a non-personal god. I think you call that belief Deism. [5]

I had hoped to get around talking about the non-existence of god in this essay, but since I brought it up and since so many of you will have some kind of belief in god I guess I might as well tackle that belief head on.

Deism

Deism is not an acceptable answer to the purposeless driven life. That’s because deism allows many of its practitioners to see purpose in the world. Pernicious deists go further and see agency in nothing more than the random patterns of the phenomenal world.

Some time ago a group of ambitious Deists must have combined agency with purpose. Those deists see “design” in the universe and believe that design means there must be a god. [6]

But not all deists make such easy to refute claims. Albert Einstein is one such case. Einstein is credited by Richard Dawkins with such a defensible case for deism that Dawkins refused to debate him in The God Delusion.[7]

"[If you]try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible laws and connections, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am, in fact, religious." [My emphasis]

Einstein was a great man. He was also a very smart man. He was much smarter than me. But is what Einstein talking about god? "Yes, you can call it that.”

No. You can’t. That’s not god.

The awe that humans feel when confronted with the “inexplicable” is understandable and it is what drives every great scientist and philosopher to truth. The desire to make sense of the world is natural. Every child is born with it. Curiosity may not be limited to humans in the animal kingdom, but it certainly is one of our finest characteristics. But it is a giant leap to go from confusion to god and from god to worship.

Veneration.

The problem with the Veneration of Mystery.

I don’t worship anything I don’t understand. I don’t know why anyone would. That's why I am more of a Troy Aikman kinda guy and less of a Tony Romo kinda guy.[8] Even still. That seems like a personal choice of mine and not a logical argument.[9]

Let me break down the “logical” argument for you into several parts.

First.

Deists act like Atheists.

Einstein said that he “venerated” the “force behind” the seeming logical consistency of the world. But did he? Did he go to church? Did he light candles? Did he worship? Did he pray? How did he devote himself to the force?

The answer is he did not. Einstein pissed a lot of people off when he admitted that he did not believe in a personal god. That is why Spinoza was excommunicated.[10] And rightfully so. Deists never get around to really doing anything religious. They love a good mystery. They make terrific writers of constitutions, but they really have no place for gods as most people understand them. Because Deists don’t act like religious people they often get confused for Atheists. [11]

Second.

The world may not be so darn comprehensible.[12] Einstein was not a fan of Quantum Mechanics. He once famously said that “god does not play dice with the universe.” He was wrong. God does play dice. Even if god does not play dice, I just wanted you to know that I knew that quote by Einstein. Also, I knew that the second I started the sentence “Einstein once famously said…” you expected me to use that quote. So I did.

I guess my point is that if Einstein would have just paid more attention to Quantum Mechanics he might have been an Atheist and saved us all a lot of trouble. [13] But he didn’t.

Veneration.

I have a problem with prayer.

I work in a grocery store. I noticed that a customer would come in about once a week to buy candles. He bought 40 dollars worth of candles every week. That's a lot of candles. One day I let my curiosity get to me. I asked him about the candles.[14]

“Why do you buy so many candles?”

The customer went on to tell me that he bought the candles as a donation to his church. It seems that worshipers at his church lit candles for certain ceremonies. They used a lot of candles and a lot of the church goers he worshiped with were poor. So this customer took it upon himself to buy as many candles as he could afford so that everyone at his church could light one whenever they needed.

I like that story. Even though I don’t believe in the efficacy of prayer or lighting candles it was moving to know that the human heart can be so giving. My customer seemed very sincere and devout. The customer was obviously an immigrant to this country. He spoke broken English and wore dirty work pants whenever he shopped. I was certain my customer could not really afford to spend 40 or 50 dollars a week of his salary on something that did not directly benefit him.

I think many of my religious friends would like to use the immigrant candle buyer as a powerful argument for the existence of god. They would argue that god touched my customer’s life and opened his heart.

But I have my doubts about the candles and the praying.[15]

I study prayer. I thank god for unanswered prayers.

No less a personage than Garth Brooks has offered forth a defense of prayer to the faithful.

“Thank god for unanswered prayers.”

If what Garth meant by his this statement is that “we should be careful what we wish for” then I am all for the sentiment.

But I think Garth had something else in mind. I think what Garth Brooks meant to was to defend the efficacy[16] of prayer. His defense of prayer sounds a lot like the rationalizations one hears from god fearing folk when they face trouble or tragedy.

“Little Billie was just too good for this Earth. That’s why god drown in him the Bayou.”

Billie is dead and drown, yet we are supposed to feel no sorrow. Garth sings,

“just because he [god] doesn’t answer, doesn’t mean he doesn’t care.”

Garth goes on to add that, “some of god’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers.”

Apparently one of god’s gifts is not the ability to avoid circular reasoning. We did not want Billie to drown. We prayed for god to intercede on Billie’s behalf. He did not. Therefore prayer does not work.[17]

---

[1] Why else would you begin to read this essay? Perhaps you started to read this essay because two days have passed since your birthday, and no one acknowledged your birthday. No one should have. By not acknowledging your birthday your friends have given you not just a gift, but the very best gift they can give you. The gift of awareness about the emptiness of life. (See footnote #2.)

[2] I have glossed over a very important part of the book here. In fact it is the crux of what we will be talking about later. I know that you are not interested in what I have to say yet, so I have to get the stuff that you are interested in out of the way even though it really is not as germane as you think it is.

[3] I know there is no need to instruct you on the silliness of a personal god. All I have to do is point out that Zeus is not real. Nobody prays to Zeus anymore. Speaking of praying, I have no idea why people pray, or light candles. Really! When the fuck did lighting a candle ever do anything? If you think that lighting a candle can do something other than increase your contribution to the alarming growth of green house gasses into the Earth’s atmosphere then you are fooling yourself. What you really believe in is magic. And that is sad. There is no such thing as magic. I know that saying that “there is no such thing as magic” seems like a big claim, and maybe it is. You might even want me to prove my claim. Well I am not gonna. And I think you are an asshole for suggesting to me that I should. By the way, if you believe in magic you can’t claim to be a deist. If you are not a Deist then I must put you in the same category as the monotheists, polygamists, and the crazy right wing creationists. A category I call “crazy folk.” If you still feel that I must address “the problem” of a personal god I suggest you go read Sam Harris.

[4] I hope you enjoyed the End of Faith.

[5] At least the dictionary says you should.

[6] Do I really need to suggest to you that you go and read Kant? If you don’t want to do the research for yourself then you HAVE to take my word for it. The ontological argument is an argument only an idiot could like.

[7] Personal communication with Card Shark.

[8] I still think Tony Romo is going to win me and the Dallas Cowboys at least 2 Super Bowls.

[9] If you like big words you might have used aesthetics.

[10] I suppose you don’t know who he is either. Einstein based some of his understanding of the god force on the pantheism of Spinoza, "I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals himself in the lawful harmony of all that exists, but not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind."

[11] There is a huge fight between Atheists and theists over Einstein. It seems everybody wants a piece of him.

[12] We could play a bunch of logic games here. If the world is ultimately incomprehensible (i.e. the thing in itself that is the force behind the apparent lawfulness of the universe) how could the world be comprehensible at all? We probably need to read more Kant.

[13] Interesting side note, Einstein’s religious thinking may have clouded his scientific mind to the point that he overlooked Quantum Mechanics and thus he avoided reconciling the new science with his theory of relativity ultimately dooming his quest for a theory of everything. A theory of everything could prove god does not exist (which would make this whole introduction parenthetical.)

[14] Who knew I was going to talk so much about candles?

[15] It’s nice to see a man sacrifice for his fellow brethren. But the simple fact remains there is no evidence that prayer works. None. A few studies have tried to prove the power of prayer. They all failed. Some of those experiments actually suggested that intercessory prayer actually harms.

[16] Just get a dictionary.

[17] To suggest that false outcomes are “proof positive” is to engage in classic case of circular reasoning. If you still don’t understand circular reasoning I am afraid you will need to take a course in logic. Once you complete the course you may continue to the next chapter. Don’t cheat and just keep reading. You really only cheat yourself when you do things like that. If you want more proof that prayer does not work you should check out: Why won’t god heal amputees?