Salagadoola
mechicka boola
bibbidi-bobbidi-boo
Put 'em together and what have you got?

Sounds to me like a desperate cry for assistance from a fairy godmother who is having a major stroke. Be that as it may, what has happened to the English language? Let me throw a few things out there for you.

Ain’t ain’t a word and I ain’t gonna use it. Well, you may not but the hoity toities at the English Oxford Dictionary have no problems muttering it out when ever they can.

“ain't
• contraction informal 1 am not; are not; is not. 2 has not; have not.”

Let’s continue...

“irregardless
• adjective & adverb informal regardless.”

And for the love of fucking god...

“bootylicious
• adjective orig US 1 A term of commendation of rap lyrics. 1992-. 2 Very sexually attractive. 1994-. [Blend of booty buttocks and delicious.]”

Come on, Demosthenes went to the shore to crammed pebbles into his mouth and forced himself to articulate his word over the crashing of the waves. The best we have today is waiting until our PBR laden belches are finished to mumble out “I needs me another can.”

Before my towering ivory pillar starts to look too tarnished I want to state that I know I am no paragon of the English language. I came from a low income family with little to no emphasis on education or formalities but I try to do as best as I can or to catch myself when I falter.

I just want to thank the higher authorities for lowering that bar. Nothing says ‘striving for the betterment’ like pandering to the lowest common denominator.

Things that make me happy:

Not necessarily in this order...

Playing my violin.
Writing.
My cat, Mortimer (especially when he lays down next to me when I am writing.)
Fencing (when I have the strength)
Drawing (when what’s in my head matches what ends up on the paper)
Seeing the people I care about
Oddly enough, the Moon.

Hmm... I’ll add more, or expound more, later.

How does one respond? How does a broken entity react to a situation that feels “right”? Does it respond accordingly, fully aware of it skewed perception? Does it move on, in an attempt to conform, transform itself into what it is told should be right?

Is what feels right and what should be right the only two scenarios? They’re both wrong. They’re both right

Is it broken in the first place?

"Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow;
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain;
I am the gentle autumn’s rain.
When you awaken in the morning’s hush,
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft star that shines at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry.
I am not there; I did not die."

i am not really sure who wrote this.

Let me start this off by saying that I just got two new hats. For a while now a lot of people have been telling me that I need to retire my old one. To be more accurate, they have been telling me to snatch it off my head and set it on fire.

Any way, so someone bought me two new hats. One of which I am wearing right now. They are both nice hats.

But this is not the point I want to make. So, this person that bought me these hats had mentioned that he would be out drinking the next evening.

So the next day I had supper with my family. Kind of a birthday/anniversary get together. As I was being dropped off by my brother at my apartment I told him that if I went out that night I would call him.

Going out that night had completely slipped my mind. So, for a good four or five hours I played video games until I got a call reminding me about my brother. I put on my shoes and headed down to meet him at Steve’s Old Time Tap. I bought the table a pitch of beer and we sat around and bullshitted until I was struck again with the memory that the guy from last night had said he would be out.

I pulled out my phone and gave him a call. He had said that he was at the bar down the street. I told him that I would finish up my drink and meet him there. I downed the beer and my brother and I headed to the Blue Cat. We found the guy and sat down with him at the bar and had a drink with him. After a while he asked if I wanted to play a game of pool with him. Later on into the game he told me that he had invited a lot of people out and that my brother and I were the only ones to show up. He didn’t tell any one but that night was his birthday.

Ouch.

Seeing as how I am in a exhausted state of being right now, it got me to thinking. Had I done the same thing on my birthday, who would show up?

The number isn’t that great. I’m not going to pretend that I am really surprised but it is, none the less and if nothing else, disheartening.

Now, I have been spreading myself pretty thin here recently. It has really started to take its toll on me. So, I am trying to decide to cut the fat from my life. Lose the dead weight. I say trying because I have never been that good at saying no. I just need to find it in myself to of what is dragging me down for the sake of myself and those that I still have hopes of helping.

I hope that this make a little sense.

I am looking for home. It is no great mystery that I am different. That I don’t much fit in most places. I know this. This has not past me by. I also know that I am feeling alone. it feels like I am the only one of me in the world sometimes. But I have to keep telling myself that this is an arrogant way to think. It’s obvious that, perhaps, I am unique or rare, but it is pompous of me to think I am the only one of me... ever. There has to be someone out there like me. Some place where I fit. If nothing else it gives me hope. The hope that I am not alone in the world. That there is someone else out there that thinks and feels the same way I do. That person. That other will be home.

Some people have questioned my “tendencies” to be secretive. That I keep myself bottled up. But I look at it like this. I could go around and just spill everything to someone. Give them my weaknesses and my fears my loves and joys. But as far as that goes it seems everybody in my life are just passing through. None of them are going to stay. I am none of their final destinations. I am just a tool, a stepping stone until they find their home. I believe that, like the rest of me, my secrets belong to my home.

I don’t know. I will write more on this later.

"You never know how long it's going to take to bury a whore in a cornfield until you actually have to do it."

fortune cookie says:

"a letter of great importance will reach you soon."

fortune cookie says:

"Step out on life's stage. Stardom is just ahead!"

fortune cookie says:

“Your destiny lies before you, choose wisely.”

“We are no more the white knights we find ourselves to be then we are the wicked warlocks we see in others. We’re all trapped in a tower of our own design.”

“I am done with great things and big plans, great institutions and big success. I am for those tiny, invisible loving human forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillaries.”

-William James

Just a little update on how I am doing. Today I was having a staring contest with my cat and I won. With the way my social life has been going I was quite happy and excited. That all ended when I realized that the reason I won was due to the fact that my cat had more of a life to get back to then I did. Damn cat. Always rubbing his self importance in my face.

Here’s a little story for the kiddies out there who frequent the local taverns and pubs:

My brother, a friend and I were out one night enjoying a drink and some light conversation when a disheveled, 30-something dipsomaniac stumbled confidently up to our table. Now, had I been in normal society I would have politely ignored him and held firmly to my lie that I had no change to spare. But, I have been in my share of bars and I know that when some people drink they become overtly friendly. So, no social graces have been breached. We exchanged our hellos and he introduced himself while he stumbled through his muttered attempt at banter. Afterwards, “Santos”, and I am calling him Santos because that is in fact his real name and I want you all to know exactly who I am talking about in case you run into the guy, asked us if we would like some shots because he would go get them at the bar. We rarely turn down a shot. So we agreed, gave him our order and thanked him. While he was away we all questioned each other if anyone knew who he was. Needless to say, emphatic no. And then he was promptly back with our shots. He smiled with a sense of self-accomplishment. The kind of smile a baby gets when he craps in the toilet by himself for the first time. Drool and all. That or he was just waiting for his eyes to refocus. Maybe a little of both. We all toasted and took our shot. We thanked him again and he politely walked away.

A good five minuets later he comes back asking for money. We were all stunned. Money? Yes, you know. Money to pay for the shots. Curse you Santos and your wily ways. We all refused and stormed out of the bar. Santos followed us out screaming about his money. So, we all prison-style shanked him in the alley like a stool pigeon that cooed one too many times.

Moral:
Don’t go up to a table and ask for drink orders and expect to be paid unless you are a waitress.

A sidenote. We didn’t actually stab him. It just sounds a lot better then what really happened. That being, we asked him what the hell he was talking about, gave him somewhere around two dollars and later leaving the bar feeling, for the most part, confused.

"Men were designed for short, nasty, brutal lives. Women are designed for long, miserable ones."

- Dr. Estelle Ramey

I just find this interesting.

Since I have been laid up I have been engaging in a multitude of activities. One of them being sitting on my expanding ass and playing video games. The funny thing about it is that I noticed how intrinsic we are in our nature. In this game you come to a part where you have to fight an army of robots. If memory serves, there were fifteen different types of robots. Each one serves a specific function and had its own duties to perform. The one that interested me the most was the nurse robot. You see, when “her” companions were injured she would heal them. But, as I found out, if she is the last one to die she will surrender and heal you instead. So I opted to skip my next turn and let her escape. As she left a window would pop up and read “Thanks.” And I repeated this pattern over and over. What’s funny is I am taking pity and showing mercy to something that’s not really. I could have easily killed all the other robots, have her surrender, heal me and bashed her metal shell in until she, like her brethren before her, exploded and still have a relatively clean conscience. I guess that’s just how we are. Good and bad. We are what we are without thought or reason.

fortune cookie says:

‘if you can shape it in your mind, you will find it in your life.’

I am reciting this from memory so I’m not sure if this is word for word but here goes nothing.

“People who are smart about politics don’t want to get evolved in it so they are destined to be governed by people who are dumber”

-Plato (the really one)

For awhile now I have had this idea that I wanted to get down on paper. Either a short story or maybe a one act play. It’s about two brothers arguing over the nature of humanity. One brother believes that humanity is doomed by its own undertakings. Man has always been a destructive animal and as time evolves this destruction will eventually become all consuming. On the other hand, the second brother argues that man, over millenniums, has shed its unnecessary accoutrements. So, man’s unspoken love affair with death and war will one day fade. Joining the ancestral tail or coarse body hair in primordial history.

The problem is, well maybe not the problem but the catch is, there is no resolution in the end. Neither brother is proven wrong. Who do you believe in the end? I think I have a fairly strong ability to play devil’s advocate on both sides. So, I can argue for both sides, but personally I can’t say which one I truly believe in.

Humanities obsession with hate seems so overwhelming. Which, I think, is an immense basis for destruction. But is hate a psychological disease that will some day have a simple cure, or a cure at all, for that matter? Or, is it just a simple component of nature? Existing as natural ebb to recreation’s flow?

Now, if you will allow me, let me shift gears. I am going to give you two situations of discussions I have had with my friends. Let me start off by saying that I honestly can’t think of anyone I truly hate.

My first discussion was with a friend of mine as we were walk to an ATM so I could withdraw some money. As we walked down the street, we were heckled, for one reason or another, I don’t remember exactly why, by a group of black women. As we passed by my friends mentions how she hates black women. I had to ask her how she could say that. So, she told me that when she was in school she was constantly tormented by the black girls in her class. Naturally, I reprimanded her by saying that you can’t judge all black women by the few that attacked you. I honestly believe in that too.

My second took place with a friend of mine who is enlisted in the army. I don’t remember what started the conversation but it eventually worked its way around to him saying he hates Muslims. I rebuttal with the same philosophy as in the first discussion. He countered with all he had seen and been through. It seemed to me that in order to survive he had to hate. I could say any more. I couldn’t tell him in good conscience to take each man as an individual. In the time it would take for him to evaluate he could be shot or bombed.

Assume that both arguments I’ve told you about are true to nature. Now, I am going to offer this idea. A man alone can destroy a life. Men gathered together can destroy a nation. Both a sin, yet humanity as a whole can collectively perform the greatest of sins. But how do you fight that? Man, in his heart, longs for peace. Humanity’s nature thirst for war. The trouble, it seems, is group mentality. But can you justly punish the individually for the crimes of the group? In group mentality it seems the individual sacrifices his own personal being to be one with the group. The group itself becomes its own single entity. Man is never more evil then when he is cheered on by his peers. So, it almost seems fruitless to attack this segment by segment instead of battling this group beast in its entirety.

What is the answer? I have my theories. Not that they probably haven’t been tried before. Maybe it’s not my place, as an individual, to ask the questions of the majority. Maybe that’s all I can do.

I am going insane. Due to my surgery I have become bedridden. This means I have been sentenced to solitary confinement, so to speak, until I am able to walk out of my house on my own two feet. By doctors orders I am required to keep my foot elevated above my heart pretty much twenty-four hours a day. Side note, I’m also supposed to quit smoking during my recovery period. Needless to say, I have cheated on both.

Even with my minor indiscretions I am stricken with cabin fever. I haven’t left the house in days. I can count on both hands how many minuets I have spent talking to my friends on the phone. I have seen more B-movies on the television in this short time then I think I have in my whole life. And, worst of all, since I have been left to my own devises, I have been left alone with my own thoughts. I am bordering on paranoid schizophrenia. For one, I am constantly wondering what my friends are doing. What are they doing? Where did they go? Why would they rather go out and enjoy life when they could be here entertaining me? It’s disgusting how selfish they are. It makes me ill to my stomach. Well, that and the Vicodin can be a little hard on my system. So now I am calling and questioning them on what they did that day. Not because I am specifically concerned about how they are doing, but I need a body that I can live vicariously through.

But I haven’t got to the point yet to where I am sitting alone in a dark room and having in-depth conversations with Napoleon. Oh no, not me. So far, I have only been visited by people like Louis Pasteur and Rutherford B Hayes. Sweet Jesus in heaven, if I have to sit through one more long winded speech on milk bacteria I am going to shoot my sub par, lackluster delusion and then myself.