A Lesson In Holidays, Capitalism, Family, And Priorities (Prepare To Be Destroyed)

You want to boycott stores that are open on Thanksgiving, you say? Well, isn't that fancy. That sounds like something a responsible adult would do. I have feelings about this issue and I'm going to act on them, you say from your SUV and your suburban house. Go you! I am all for you, believe me, but I think before the boycott actually occurs, I ought to remind everyone once more of a few things related to reality. I know we don't like reality, as it gets in the way of the universe revolving in its entirety around our wants, needs and beliefs, but stay with me on this. Put down your picket signs for a second.

If we're going to defend this holiday, we ought to remember what it's actually about. You can boo me all you want, but the fact of the matter is that the holiday is not about being thankful that you have a lovely car and a wonderful job and 868994 children. Thanksgiving as I understand it without doing a college level amount of research is a yearly recreation of a feast held to celebrate a bunch of unprepared, silly white religious zealots surviving with the generous help of Native Americans, without whom they would have either perished or been forced to return to caucasialand (AKA Europe). To thank them for this generosity, they would spent the next several hundred years murdering and raping the Native Americans into desolate little patches of land that no white people wanted to live on.  They would spend that same amount of time attempting to wipe them out with disease-laced blankets or whiten them into "decent human beings." Indeed, happy thanksgiving. Thank goodness those crazy crackers survived, otherwise this land might still belong to its rightful inhabitants and several thousand Africans might have avoided being enslaved over the next few hundred years as well. Turkeys and American flags for everyone. Pass them around.

As for family, if you only have time to spend with your family on holidays, you might as well consider yourself a solitary unit and give up. The truth is, if you found yourself so far away from family that holidays are the only option, that's cool. You know what? There's a reason we leave home and go out on our own. We are all raised by crazy people.  No one seems to think that a visit just to visit is feasible, but instead that visiting family has to be planned with the same strict schedule as paying a loan off. How is that bonding? Is that what you're fighting for? That seems pretty lame. I ended up with a pretty good family, but some people aren't so lucky. Some people get homophobic, racist assholes for parents. Some people get abusive morons. Some people are cast out entirely and keep coming back in the name of tradition. You know what? Family is what you make it. You are born (whether it be a good or bad thing) related by DNA to a group of people who are more likely than strangers to expose your every misdeed and judge you for not visiting them when you clearly have hundreds of miles between yourself and their front door. You wonder why they're hostile during Thanksgiving? Why even come home? Stay gone. You have friends who are happy to serve as a surrogate family, and in reality, they are usually people you've chosen because they agree with most of what you think. Wouldn't you rather be in that kind of company than a bunch of might-as-well-be-strangers who live in your memories as shadows moving from instance of abuse to instance of abuse and now wear some shiny smile because my GOODNESS they thought you'd NEVER visit. All year we complain about these people and what they did to us and how they did us wrong, but we're perfectly willing to show up at their house and be accosted over a dinner table. Like I said, I ended up with a fairly good family. That being said though, I have a life of my own over an hour away, and I don't make constant apologies to my family for being gone the way some people do. I don't have to. They understand, because you know what? They have their own lives to live. They don't have to guilt me into visiting because they feel bad for being bad people, because either they weren't or they don't know they were. Either way, I prefer it that way. So, if we're boycotting in the name of family, let's make sure we aren't doing so out of context. Family is not a forced DNA circle with room for outsiders only by romantic invitation. Those people are called "relatives." Your family is yours to choose. While I'm on that note, my combination DNA/chosen family bonds on Black Friday not by shopping, but by watching the chaos. I've had more fun tossing items into the carts of strangers at Walmart with my sister and Dad than any of you sad shankwhales do sitting around a table eating in resentful silence. We eat, sit around and have a grand time chatting, and then go out to survey the carnage of the Muncie Mall at 1AM on the busiest day of the year. You really ought to try it. Here's a suggestion for family bonding. It's called the Day After Thanksgiving Games. Go to Walmart with your family, each of you grab a cart and toss a bunch of hot items into it and make the loop around the store screaming "MINE MINE MINE MINE MINE MINE MINE!" until you reach the checkout lanes. Then stick the carts in the checkout lane like they belong to the lady with the other nine carts and leave. On to the next store. Happy Thanksgiving indeed!

If we really want to know why stores like Walmart are open so early, look no further than the other end of that finger you're pointing at big box retailers. You greedy asshats have allowed this and even encouraged it to happen by being willing to shop earlier and earlier until stores figured you don't mind if they open at 6PM on Thanksgiving. The fact of the matter is, no one is making you shop that early. No one is making you wander around in a hysterical fit of bath salts-grade shopping rage. You do it to yourself. And by doing so, you have made it mandatory for the employees of these companies to work through Thanksgiving. You cannot now protest what you caused to happen, because there is no good way to reverse it now. If you boycott the store and it succeeds (and it won't, because too many people are mindless drones buying into the notion that love is not love until it is represented by a financially crippling rock someone dug out of a filthy cave), you will effectively signal a nationwide mass firing of all those employees you're "defending" by boycotting. At least they'll have plenty of time to visit family after that, right? They might even find themselves living with them. Happy effing Thanksgiving, everyone.

Put down your damn picket signs, visit the people you WANT to visit, go support the poor sad people who smile through you yelling at them for "bad service" and go get some coffee. Most of all, chill the fuck out. Who knows what this stupid holiday is actually for anyway? It seems to me it's just as happy a day as Columbus day. Happy Thanksgiving. Let's go deep fry a frozen turkey and blow the garage to the moon. That's how you do it right. Stay classy.

I Prefer To Think Of Myself As "Third Grader Chic"

So let me tell you about my adventures tonight. They were simply too numerous and wonderful to not share. My goals were simple: do laundry, get groceries, come home and sloth about on Netflix.

Things did not go as planned. I mean, then did, but not really. Behold, I come bearing stories. Sit your asses down.

The laundromat was the gayest place on earth. I don't mean that in the way my generation refers to DVD rewinders and food that has to be prepared before it is eaten, I mean Ru Paul himself beamed down on a rainbow next to the dryers and wanted to know where the slot machines were. There were so many catty queens in that place, and not one of them was shiny or pretty. All they had going on was the valley girl girl GURRRRLLLL accent, and one of them looked like a stubby, balding little treasure troll. I swear he said literally everything on his mind. OMG MAI HURR ITH FALLING OWUT EYE LUV HUR SHEEZ FABOOLUS GURRRRRL EYE TOLD U NOT TO DRI THAT ON HI NOW ISS GON HAVE WAYVS GUUUUUURL OH GURL FUK U EYE TOLD U SO. Just queening it up back and forth across the laundromat, raging around on a sugar buzz, flaming up and down the aisles like a circus clown. I was both amused and horrified. I was mostly horrified, and it wasn't because of him directly. He was just so annoying, because he talked so fast and so much that I don't think he had a human respiratory system, and I just wanted to kick him until he was dead. I pictured myself heaving his treasure troll ass down a flight of stairs and I giggled, and I don't even feel bad about it. GUUURRRRLLLL EYE NO U DID NOT JUST KULL ME O NO HE DINT INT.

Finally, my laundry was done, and I left. On to Walmart. Judge me if you like. Zero fucks to give. "You should shop at Whole foods and eat organic blah blah blah blah emo hipster stupid uninformed save the world cult rhetoric." I have $20. You shut the fuck up.

So I went to Walmart with no grocery list, which was a disaster. I was side-eyed by Quasi Moto in the frozen section because I walked by twice. YALL NO WUT U WUNT? Shut the fuck UP @vv@ I am shopping!

I get to the register, and there's one open, which is this big huge surprise to everyone in the store every single night. Oh gee, there's one register open, just like every night ever. This meth-addicted forever-teenager behind me was all "Man I hate coming to this place at night. Only one register open." Meanwhile, his bourbon breath is melting my ice cream.

Let me drop some knowledge on the world, because these are the people who complain about this loudly in the store and make the cashier uncomfortable and hate their job even more. Let me explain capitalism to you AGAIN. Okay, so after 10PM, Walmart gets no business save for three fifteen minute periods between then and when the morning shoppers arrive at 6AM. They only have one register open because it makes zero sense to have a full line of registers open in an empty store. Sure, maybe there's a crack head vibrating near the cheese, but he's not here to buy anything. He just wants to shit his pants in the cheese section.

Then suddenly, a factory lets out, and let's face it (because I know; I have worked at a factory), these are some of the most bitter, illogically angry people on earth, and everyone has the same bright idea: let's go to Walmart. Suddenly, there's a line. Why don't they open all the registers for fifteen minutes at a time? Because they would have to put drawers in, then take them right back out. Someone would have to count those drawers when they ought to be doing something else, and then whatever was supposed to be done will go undone, which will cause some other stupid, pointless customer complaint. Listen, take my advice. Don't pick on Walmart people. They didn't hold a gun to your head and make you marry some idiot and make babies. They didn't make your mom a bitch. They didn't make your car a piece of shit. They don't run the bank that's about to take your house. They're struggling to survive. Go home and yell at your kids, punch your husband in the dick, tell your wife she's a slug with defective eye stalks, drive your car into your house and deliver it on a truck to the bank and tell your mom to go shake her tits down McGalliard. Put the anger where it belongs, for the love of fuck. I am just as inconvenienced as you are, and you don't see me waving my bottle of disgusting cheap vodka around like some fake 1980's TV asshole like WHATZA GUY GODDA DOODA GIDDA BIDDA SERVISA ROUND HERE? Kindly retract your beak and shut the fuck up.

You are welcome.

I See What You Did There (Warning: Offensive Content)

There are a lot of decent human beings on this earth, and some of them happen to be Christian. A couple of them are my friends, and they know well enough to support equal rights because they have read Leviticus. ALL of it. And they know that if we were to use three lines out of it and ignore the rest, that would be called "taking it out of context," which is considered a fallacy. 

The book of Leviticus is used by frightened, old white men to suppress people who are not old, white men. It was used to justify slavery, and it is used to justify excluding a whole ton of people equal rights. Yes, I am about to quote scripture. No, I don't need your opinion. I realize that people diaper-rash sensitive when an atheist quotes the Bible, but I am not out to disprove anyone's religion, merely to clarify the relevance of the book of Leviticus in modern times. I just want you to pay careful attention. I will give both the NIV and King James versions of these verses. 

This is Leviticus 25:44.

NIV: Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves.

KJV: Both thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids.

The Bible is almost never read or studied cover to cover, much like the Patriot Act, and most people know just as much about both.

Let me give you the most used verse in the fight against gay rights. Leviticus 18:22. Burned into my brain at this point.

NIV: Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable.

KJV: Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.

You really ought to read this particular book. It is full of strange instructions for a rigid, strange lifestyle that cannot be considered normal in modern society. Leviticus 15:1-33, for example, pertains to the apparently unclean status of a woman during menstruation, for example, It's really just very bizarre and uncomfortable to read in 2013. I would consider most of it offensive, personally. The whole book of Leviticus is offensive in a modern context.

If we are to use this ridiculous and no longer relevant set of rules set forth for a nomadic desert tribe as rules for modern living, it would make sense that we would have to ignore all those silly rules for women, because that's just not cool anymore. And slaves are so 1800s. Let's ignore those rules, too. But you know who it's still okay to single out? Oh, most other people. Until they win their rights. Eventually, those verses will be ignored, too. Eventually, the whole book of Leviticus can be disregarded, thankfully, because it is not compatible with modern life. Period.

HOWEVER, it should be noted that there are a lot of stupid, trite, idiotic people arguing for my side as well, some of them on my news feed. I have to address this, because it is a glaring issue. Fellow atheists, pay careful attention.

Proving the existence of a unicorn is not the same as proving that God exists. You cannot do both arguments and call them parallel. God, in theory, is an all-knowing, all-powerful entity and creator of the universe as we know it. A unicorn is, in theory, a magical horse with a horn. They are not the same. If you must use an example, use something like the flying spaghetti monster, because it at least represents the same set of requirements for proving its existence. You have to understand the religion in order to argue against it, and if you simply cannot be bothered to understand Christianity, you ought to avoid the topic until you know how to do some research on philosophical arguments. That's what an upstanding, responsible person would do, rather than become a vehicle for uniformed hate. I grew up in a Christian household, and I consider the majority of my fellow atheists ignorant of most world religions.

Personally, I see no need to disprove anything. I merely see the need to point out why certain arguments are completely invalid. You are welcome. It's not my intention to offend anyone, but I'm sure that I have done so.

Coffee Required But Not Present: Side Effects!

Well hello, glorious internet people. How are your bitstrip comics and Giraffe riddle failure profile pictures doing today? Mine are fabulous, meaning they don’t exist. I feel the need to drop a ridiculous, nonsensical blog upon your assholes today, and so I shall. Crash positions, everyone. This one’s a train wreck.

So I love my little apartment. I say little, but it has a ton of rooms. They’re all small rooms, but it has as many of them as my parents’ house! My living room is about a fourth of the size of theirs, but like I said, we are not counting size. In my mind, though, this is merely a stop on my way to something more permanent. Yes, I could stay there forever, because I adore it, but Listen to my plan. I will lay it out for you. Close your dick mops and listen. This lease is up in a little less than a year. It becomes month to month after that. For the time being, I am content to roam the fake-art streets of Muncietown and revel in being arty and mysterious and slightly overweight (and if one more person tells me I’m not allowed to say that… I swear to cheezus) and drink iced coffee whilst I make infinite plans which beget more plans, and I have hatched a grand one.

I hate moving. We all know this. Moving this time was horrifying, because there were stairs; so many stairs; narrow, terrible, evil fucking stairs that robbed me of my soul and look like they lead to a creaky scary attic, but in fact lead to my apartment. By the end of the process, I wanted to throw all of my shit back down them. At least it wasn’t like the haunted apartment in Portland where I moved a sectional couch up a single flight of 705 stairs by myself and then puked down them. No, no, I had friends and family to share the joy. We all puked together.

Given that I hate moving, I have decided that for my next home, I shall make moving my stuff obsolete. I will simply move my house. I’m not talking about trickery. I’m talking about buying a newish single-wide mobile home and just taking it with me everywhere! I don’t want an RV as a primary home, so don’t suggest that. I’m not THAT mobile. I want something with all the features of a “normal” house. I have friends who drive truck, and I’m betting at least a few of them are familiar with hauling mobile homes down a freeway. You see my plan? You see it? I will pay one of these awesome people money to move my house! It’s brilliant. I’m not sure what the laws are concerning that sort of thing, but I shall investigate. For years, I’ve thought I was just an idiot. I wanted a permanent home, but I wanted to move constantly. It took this long for me to realize I can do both!

Moving on. We know how I love to rant about my fellow gays. I always get these comments like “you’re so bitter you need to just calm down meeeeeeeeeehhhhhhhhhhhhgaga.” I think I have valid points sometimes, so I just sort of shrug when I see those comments anymore. I used to go all ninja table flip on people about them, but I have since realized that I can shut out all opinions by locking my front door and staying off the internet. Problem solved. Usually, when I post something, I don’t do so to get an opposing viewpoint and be magically changed. This is not an after school special. The gay community is full of issues, and I just happen to love picking at them like scabs to try in my way to cause some sort of awakening. So far, I am apparently not yelling loud enough to be heard over Madonna’s remix of a remix of a cocaine remix. Because of my negativity and how much everyone enjoys it, I officially rename myself Negative Nancy Superbeast 3000. I’ll leave your comments in place, but I likely will not respond to them. My hope is that they either make a good point and provide a valid counter-argument to whatever sludge my brain smashes out onto Facebook, or that it is so singularly stupid that I don’t have to help you look like an idiot.

I have a revelation for you. Some men are just not into dicks. That’s right, I said it. They might support us, they might wear our little T-shirts for equal rights and whatnot, but there are some of us who simply cannot connect straight men with support. This is where we will one day lose support. Just because someone puts on an equal rights T-shirt and changes his profile picture to a red and white equal sign does not mean he’s saying to you “Okay I admit it, now get your flabby, washed-up hooker anus over here.” It simply means that he supports equal rights, specifically marriage equality. This misinterpretation is something that seems to be unique to the gay community because our public image is light years ahead of my high school in “lacks ability to think critically and in three dimensions.” He doesn’t want you, ass nugget bitch lantern poopmouth. He wants you to be happy. GET YOUR HAND OUT OF HIS PANTS FOR FUCK SAKE BEFORE YOU RUIN IT FOR ALL OF US. Because let me tell you something, even if he lets you do anything, that doesn’t mean you won. It doesn’t mean you’re some irresistible converter. You have a hole, that’s all that means. In all likelihood, you probably scarred him more than “opened his eyes.” So let’s all quit barking up the wrong trees. Plenty of slimy, catty little gutter skanks out there to go around. Pair up. Do the rest of us a favor and eliminate yourselves from the equation.

Am I bitter? You bet. I love it. Bring me a hot dog and some grape soda. I feel like being ironic.

Moving on again, I would like to announce that I will soon be selling my work. YES. Selling. Ohhhhhh I said a bad word. Are all your houses on fire? Is Joanne’s in flames? Did all your lensless glasses melt into puddles of arty hatred? I want everyone to do me a favor. Come to my first book signing and throw tomatoes at me. Scream that I sold out. Tell me my work was better before I became “mainstream.” I would love to be in that class of people, because I would be on the other side of popular culture. I bet I could think better on that side of it. Personally, I do not plan to spend the rest of my days answering phones for a pancake stack of companies who couldn’t care less if I lived or died. One day, I would like to be free of that. I don’t want to spend the next fifty years rotting into husk of a former artist. I want to leave a Bradbury-like catalogue in my wake when I become a member of Future Zombies of America. I want to be a tortured old man in a lovely little house with a head full of stories and a house full of memories. I do not want to still be working in the service industry, because jobs like mine are in the same category as a suicide prevention hotline. My job keeps that one in business, I should imagine. I hate my job. I do not want to stay there forever. I’m okay with another four years, but if I am there when I turn forty, I’m just going to give up. I doubt it will still be there by then. That building may be a parking lot by then. I won’t be there. I do not give a fuck.

You can work your minimum wage Panera Bread Jimmy John’s Walmart jobs for the next fifty years and maintain your artistic integrity if you like. I plan to be a successful artist, rather than one that can’t support myself with my art. Believe me, I shall one day live on the proceeds of my ability to tell a story. My writing is by no means great, but I have no shortage of stories to tell, and I improve every single time. You just wait. One day, I’ll be regulated to English Literature textbooks where students will be forced to read my work. No one will read it by choice at that point. I want to be THAT loved as a writer.

I require it all! All of it! A single wide mobile home! Get your hand out of his pants! I want to be a sellout!

So up yours. Up yours with a great big engraved redwood log, my friends. With love, of course. How else does one sodomize another with a huge tree?

Why Am I An Atheist? An Attempt At A Non-Confrontational Explanation

I feel the need to clarify what atheism is and why I am an atheist. It is not to eat your babies or sacrifice kittens on your kitchen counter. I simply am not religious because my personal belief system cannot reconcile belief in a higher being, because most things can be explained one way or another. I feel that while there are piles of videos and blogs out there trying to make the point I'm about to try to make, they usually devolve into babyish confrontation and dismissal of Christianity in its entirety as some kind of ridiculous cult, which is not the case.

Now, before you rip my head off and poop in my eyeballs and give me pink eye, I will say that it isn't that I don't believe in anything. I believe in science, logic and reason. Not to say that logic and reason can't apply to other belief systems, because they can. But at some point, religion asks you to stop questioning it.

I am simply not okay with that. Life is too complex to be governed by a single set of rules.

I question things. I ask stupid questions sometimes because I want to know everything. I want to experience things that religions tell me not to so that I can know why I'm not supposed to experience them.

I'm not saying that someone is weak or inferior for being a religious person. Life is difficult. Life is alternately the most beautiful and the most vile thing ever known to man. You have to believe in something. That's a basic human truth.

I believe in science, because even though I don't understand so many things in life, no one tells me to stop trying to understand it and trust that everything will be okay. No one tells me not to try to understand this world and all of the amazing things in it and accept one single, unchanging explanation: that it was all created a long time ago by a being higher than myself. That is merely one of many  explanations, none of which will ever be proven. Sometimes, faith is all you need. There are other times when you also have to consider your options when nothing you know seems to fit.

The biggest argument people have for me as to why I ought not to trust science is that it always changes. It contradicts itself from decade to decade. Who would trust that?

Change is the driving force of this life, and change is frightening. Change takes one from point A to point B, but sometimes religion tells one to stop asking what point we're at, or it still behaves as though one is at Point A when Point B is clearly where one is. Science changes in response to evidence being discovered. Science is sometimes a series of educated guesses, which are then adjusted as evidence comes to light. This is the most beautiful thing about being an atheist. I am free to change as new evidence comes to light.

Religion does not change the way it works because society changes. Religion stays the same and denies change. Religion has a vague way sometimes of even suggesting that people who present new evidence are bad people for questioning anything.

Perhaps it's not supposed to be that way. Maybe it's just the people who have hijacked organized religion that have made it so rigid and unchanging and opposed to change. After all, change means rewriting the text. Rewriting the text means that the old text was wrong. In religion, this is not allowed.

Christianity, for example, is actually a very beautiful collection of beliefs about loving one another and suspending judgement for others. Because the Bible was written and rewritten by different people through the ages, it evolved like a game of telephone, and at some point, the book of Leviticus became a tool to hate people. It's odd, though, that only certain parts of it are still considered relevant. My father is a pastor, and I have read the bible. All of it. Especially that book. It says a lot of things are wrong, and if we were to consider it all to be relevant, most of us would have been stoned to death. I'm not kidding. You should read it before you quote it. Yes, it says being gay is wrong, but it says a LOT of things. I would love to see a translation of the original texts so I could see what was added by monarchs in the middle ages and so on. We are living in a time that is not compatible with the Leviticus as it is written, but religion does not change. It does not evolve.

I have several Christian friends, and they are actually lovely people. I feel bad that so many crazy people have hijacked their belief system and used it to do so many terrible things to innocent people. I feel bad that terrible people have translated their text as a get-out-of-jail-free card for people to make each other feel bad for being gay or loving people outside of their own race. I feel bad that people have distorted the true meaning of Christianity and, indeed, the words of Jesus to such a degree that he has become the biggest emblem for greed and hatred in a country fueled by greed and hatred. I am sorry that Christianity was taken in such violent and brutally wrong directions as the Spanish Inquisition. I am sorry that it was used as an excuse to drive people to suicide by misinterpretation of “love the sinner, hate the sin” as “hate the sin and constantly tell the sinner they’re going to hell unless they conform to a system that hates them.”

However, it should be noted that atheists are just as guilty as anyone else of being terrible people. This world is full of assholes that go around trying to disprove the beliefs of others because they are so filled with hate that they can’t contain it. Why is this how we’re perceived? Because it’s the most visible people in atheism doing it. You have to understand a philosophical argument to disprove anything like Christianity. You also have to understand it to prove it. You can’t prove it wrong by saying that a unicorn exists because you say it does. We don’t know unicorns don’t exist in another reality. Modern philosophy is full of golden tickets for things like that. You cannot simply slam the door of your mind shut every time someone says something you don’t agree with. You also can’t prove it’s true simply by pointing at a very vague, easily mistranslated religious text that has been written and rewritten so many times it sometimes defies understanding. The bible is no further proof of its contents than an owner’s manual is proof that a product exists. The product may never have exist in the first place. However, is there proof? Probably not. There may never be. It’s up to the individual to decide if a lack of proof is more tolerable with or without the idea of a master creator.

Now, it is inevitable that someone will rage comment this. I get that. I’m not expecting to write something like this and not be questioned. All I ask is that if we must discuss it further, I ask that we both be open to learning something and going out of our respective comfort zones. I shall not respond to openly hostile comments. This is a serious topic, and I expect serious conversation.

I Am The Devil, And I Wear Prada

What is it like to be me right now? Well, first of all, you have to go around the internet with the mostly false impression that anyone gives a fuck about what you have to say. That’s how I do things. Celebrity syndrome, it’s called. I’ve got celebrity syndrome in the same way that Hollywood zombies have the flu. Which is to say, it’s much worse than it looks.

Now that I’ve prefaced this whole thing with that, let me welcome you back to my blog. It’s been sitting here mostly dormant because I’ve been in the ruins of depression to such a degree that I can’t even bring myself to give a fuck about my own goings on long enough to write about them. However, recently, I’ve had a breakthrough in that I simply do not care anymore what my writing says about me. I have written some crazy stuff lately that I ordinarily would not have written for fear that someone might read it. Guess what? I plan to sell it. I plan to make money! And then I’ll dive into it like Scrooge McDuck, because coins are liquid. How did that crazy duck not break his bill off in his forehead? COINS ARE SOLID.

      That being said, I hereby present a list of things which have changed and which you may not care about, even though you obviously care enough to read my blog. I see right through your bored hipster act.

1.       I have decided that I am no longer a sexual person. It just doesn’t do anything for me anymore. I don’t know how else to describe that. I mean, that’s not to say that I won’t still have the occasional tri-yearly… um… well, I think after a while people just have eye sex. So maybe I’ll just do that. People are gross, and so am I. I have no desire anymore to combine into a larger gross.  Not to say that I don’t find anyone attractive. That’s totally unrelated. Definitely is.

2.       Following that announcement but not directly related is my next item: dating is for the birds. It continues to be. It always has been. People want to slam you into a commitment 3 days in, or they pretend they hate you so you’ll grovel, or they explode your phone every second of the day to the point that you start to actually believe that your phone is in fact a surrogate body for them. *Vibrating phone, dog looks up from the floor like AW HELL NAH* “Oh are you eating? Reading? Shitting? Bleeding to death? Did you see that new TV show you hate? Me either.” I guess I idealize people so much that when I actually find out how small and stupid and shallow and limited they are, I want to beat them to death with a pole. I’m sure that’s normal. Oh you don’t like my music? Well maybe I don’t like yours either. *smashes music collection off the stereo* Oh you think it’s silly that I write? I think it’s silly that you spent years before dating me as a human beer urinal and a criminal smoke stack, and now you want to criticize me for wanting to escape reality to avoid strangling you every second of the fucking day. You’re such a damn rebel with your baggage that doesn’t equal mine. Pinch me, Romeo. You spent your twenties looking for adulthood in motel rooms as a sentient sex toy, but you’re willing to settle down and withhold affection in my case so I don’t think you’re too easy? How sweet of you. Some gay men are bullshit, GaGa-soaked, dramatic adult children. Don’t ever become one.

3.       I live in Muncie. Woohoo. Don’t get excited yet. I’m already crashing and burning into red dollar signs, as expected. It’s only until January, though, so I think I’ll make it. After that, I’m going to be able to pay a few months of rent in advance.

4.       I’m turning 29 in December. I have already sent the black cars and the coffin to the grave, and now I’m ready to live life as a self-aware zombie. My thirties are going to be when I become famous and win the lottery and invent post-it notes. None of you bitches better fuck it up for me. I will cut you @vv@

5.       I have decided that I have a strange liking for music of the 1980s and the early to mid-2000s. I’m late, I know. Welcome to my life. I’m always late to things. I started listening to Franz Ferdinand after they released You Could Have It So Much Better, for god sake. I’m hopelessly behind, and I’m perfectly comfortable with that.

6.       There are people I haven’t spoken to in a while whom I need to start speaking to again. I’m terrible at keeping up. And then, there are those weird conversations where you suggest getting coffee with people you’ve never met in person, and you realize you sound exactly like all the morons on “To Catch A Predator.” This is related to the first item. No, no. I just want coffee, not peens. I have a peen of my own, I don’t need yours, too. Sorry if it sounded like I was being all coy like “let’s get some coffee and bang. I mean get coffee. I mean bang on a coffee table. I mean banging sideways with… I mean I… no…Well damn.” I like coffee, though.

7.       I am a Sagittarius. Oh god, run away. I’m bad. There’s this meme going around like “stay away from these people I’m 14 and know nothing about astrology LAWL ALL FIRE SIGNS” If you actually put faith in that meme, you are beyond lost. I might as well not even send you a life raft. Drown. Enjoy your date with death in the middle of the fucking ocean, as Jennamarbles once so eloquently said.

8.       I am an introvert these days, with some lingering extrovert tendencies. I can still walk into a room of strangers and act like a total idiot and talk about nonsense and walk away with new friends. I don’t know how I do it. Most days, I would rather stay in bed and sleep. I actively avoid people I know when in public. DO NOT ASK ME WHY. I WILL FREAK OUT.

9.       Why do I feel like everyone disapproves of me? My friends, my family, my teachers, my coworkers? And everyone takes everything SO PERSONALLY that my every word might as well be an ice pick in the ass cheek. No one knows the definition of venting anymore. I mean, I used to get all high heeled and dress in Prada when someone I knew and maybe even liked said something pointy about me, but anymore, I just go with it. Yes, I am a fucking wreck. I changed my hair color and appearance completely and without warning. I still do. And I used to show up at friends’ houses unannounced and annoy the fuck out of them by just walking in. You can either learn from people pointing these things out, or you can throw a tantrum and act like your privacy and person have both been violated in ways to which only rape can compare. LEARN FROM THE SALT GRAINS SUCH CANDID JUDGMENTS CONTAIN AND LAUGH ABOUT IT. Then you move on and are a better person. Have to learn to do it sometime.

Suddenly, everything is exactly the same! Everyone clap hands and sing. My goodness, I sure am doing well. I don’t need medication at all. Why don’t I go back to therapy so they can put me with another soulless, robot teenaged psyche student who blinks and stares at me when I make a joke and then asks if I think I mask my pain with humor?

HOLY SHIT YOU ARE OBSERVANT, LADY. WOW. YOU’RE GOING TO CHANGE LIVES FOR SURE.

I love talking to robots. I do it at work all day, why not tell the robots about how I sometimes think about driving my car into the pillars under overpasses, and it makes me giggle. Not that I would. I have too much to do in this life, and none of you are capable of imitating my work. You might be able to mime it, but I don’t want someone trying to guess what I would do or say. Plus I’m afraid of death, which doesn’t really jive with my mood most of the time.

Oh well. My life continues. Here we go, sliding down the late-twenties oil slick toward the grave.

I’m not bitter or anything.

Retract Your Beaks

So, much to my dismay, my degree choice of English with a Creative Writing focus involving three different schools is apparently not only relevant to people who will never be affected by it, it is also cause for some kind of scholastic intervention.

Let me lay this out for you, because there is an obvious need for an explanation, here.

I am not under the impression that I am going to get my master’s in Creative Writing, walk out of Ball State/IU’s entrance gates in cap and gown, and be offered some elusive job in “creative writing” on the spot by an androgynous man in a black limo. It’s truly eye-opening to see how many people think that my brain works that way. No, I know what I’m getting into. This decision has not been made without a year and a half of fighting with myself, mapping out future internships, reviewing open positions at universities and community colleges to get an idea of what I want to do, etc.

I am a writer above all other professions. Prepare for an onslaught of “you don’t need a degree to write.” Well, yes, you’re correct. You also don’t need a medical degree to try to do your own stitches when you need them, but no one is going to let you do theirs without showing them a degree from a university first. If I want to be a professor, and not just a writer, I will need a degree.

And I DO want to be a professor.

Thank you for your concern and your suggestions to major in something more realistic like “business management” or “computer science.” Really, I get it. Why don’t I just give up all my dreams and work in a call center the rest of my life, watching people come and go and wondering when the crinkly hands of death will finally close around my throat?

You mean well, but the execution is terrible. Let me do what I want. It’s my money, and I know what I’m doing. I’m almost 30 years old. When I want to be justly criticised, I will bring up my dating history and ask for advice. Until then, hands off. This is not your ship to steer, and if I end up beaching the damn thing, at least it was my own fault.

YOU major in business management and computer science. YOU get a respectable job in a growing field. YOU take online classes at a for-profit online college where the credits don’t transfer because YOU can’t stand school, not me. I love school. I love everything about it, and I’m not about to take shortcuts because you think I’m making a mistake.

Buh-bye now :) I am childish and immature! Perhaps even bitter. But at least I'm doing what I want, not what makes money. Early stress-related deaths are not for me.

News Flash (Get Ready For It)

I would like to open this blog by saying that I do not give a fuck. Not one single fuck. Zero.

I don't give a fuck if you don't understand depression and see me talking to another of my friends and not you and you get all junior high pissy and unfriend me on Facebook. If you are that immature, good riddance.

Up yours with a toothpick.

Especially if you still try to contact me after that. If it were a year ago, I might oblige you, but if you prove yourself to be so unstable that you simply cannot handle my inability to text back sometimes, you are likely the last person I need around me right now. Sometimes, I can deal with some people. Then those people shift to other people. It's nothing personal.

But while we're all throwing fits about who pays attention to who and stomping our feet because we're all fucking bitches who can't take the fact that the god damned world does not revolve around us, how about we sit right down on a sandpaper dildo?

BECAUSE I.

DO NOT.

GIVE.

A SINGLE.

FUCK.

ZERO FUCKS TO GIVE.

ABSOLUTE ZERO.

NO VARIABLES.

JUST ZERO.

Aunt Poopmouth Goes To Whole Foods, And You Should Do The Same

Oh, you silly cucumbers. There is a debate that I simply must weigh in on, because I find it to be amusing if nothing else.

This started as a comment on a friend's post, and it expanded to become this giant WTF in my head about the way we perceive food safety. I'm talking specifically about natural versus obviously synthetic foods.

It was suggested, at one point, that perhaps foods that are genetically modified should be labeled “contains GMOs.” Now, let me explain something, before we get too far into this particular topic. I grew up in the land of missed opportunities, down a long road that ends in a Walmart, a Burger King, and a few houses. We had only what Walmart decided we wanted to eat. I know all about eating food that's not good for you simply because you have no other option.

I will tell everyone right now that no matter what is “fair” and “right,” food in the U.S. will never be sold with “contains GMOs” on it. Not because food here doesn't contain genetically modified elements, mind you, because it does, but because we live in the most pure example of capitalism on this end of the galaxy, and in capitalism, what is “fair” and “right” have no bearing on what actually comes about. If anything benefits anyone outside of the company's upper management, it is often coincidental. But perhaps I'm bitter. There, I said it for you.

Labeling foods that contain harmful elements has been done in cases where not every single food on earth contained that element, so that companies can still make a profit because they can offer other foods in place of the stigmatized foods. If we want the government to label GMO based foods, we have to supply a profit motive. We have to explain to them how to earn back the billions of dollars in profit that they'll lose in both labeling food as dangerous and then eventually having to change their entire production system to make food safe.

Spoiler alert: There is no way to make the profit back, so the short story is that the government says fuck you, buddy. Hope you like $4 bread if you want to eat natural.

That's fine for some people. Whole Foods is down the road. We'll pay $8 for a gallon of milk that will spoil in 48 hours and $20 for a head of lettuce. Right? Because we can use all that milk in 48 hours. We like milkshakes and cereal. Anyone who eats GMO based foods is obviously misinformed or just plain stupid. Right?

Not exactly. See, not everyone grows up in the same circumstances. Maybe you live in Carmel or Noblesville with the parents, and you can afford $4 bread and $8 milk and $20 lettuce. However, some of us don't have that luxury. The world is not always kind, as many people have discovered, especially if you start out poor. Sometimes, you grow up on the wrong side of town with your mother and your grandpa and your stupid redneck neighbors and everyone on earth parking on your lawn for the Tractor Engine Show every summer. Your main store is Family Dollar or Village Pantry or Walmart. There simply is nothing else within a four hour radius.

Keeping that in mind, let's say you move out at 18 the way you're supposed to and you start working shit jobs. Ten years later, you have rent, utilities, a car payment, car insurance, and a conga line of bill collectors marching up your urethra. You're going to school to make more money, but it just makes you more poor. Following me so far? Walmart finally gets natural foods, but the difference between natural whole wheat bread and Aunt Poopmouth's Magic Processed Bread Food Loaf is well over $3. You have $12 after bills and rent, and a grocery list of 14 carefully, painfully chosen food essentials to keep you from starving to death because you now live hours from where your family is, and even though Whole Foods is here, you can't afford to shop there and pay rent. You get processed, terrible food and koolaid because no one wants to help a near-30 year old man pay for overpriced bullshit bread. “What the hell's the matter with that guy?” someone might say. “Why doesn't he just get a god damned job like everyone else?”

Except you do have a job. You have the job that a college town reserves for someone without a degree (you're still working on it, remember?) You made that someone's sandwich for them at Subway an hour ago, and you're still in your uniform. You are the least appreciated piece of a system that feeds fat, arrogant, entitled, judgmental assholes so that they can go buy more overpriced, bullshit items on a full stomach.

The real issue, in my opinion, as a poor student with a job and bills and rent and a car payment, is that foods that will not hurt or kill me cost more than any independent, self-supporting, self-sufficient member of my generation can afford to spend. And no, that member of my generation is not a unicorn. We do exist. We're usually too busy trying not to let our finances close over our heads thanks to this wonderful world of consumerism that the past few generations so thoughtfully constructed for us, one which persists even after a total economic collapse occurs, only now they're selling us life rafts too.

Good consumers do not live on their own. Good consumers have at least 3 roommates in a small, “luxury” or “resort style” apartment, or they live at home with parents who can afford to buy something better than “Uncle Bitcheye's Famous Cardboard Chemical Cookielarks.” If you aren't a good consumer, the FDA does not give a fuck about you, and you are a boil on their ass when you don't buy meat substitutes for the recommended $4 for 4 basic, fozen veggie patties.

Another spoiler alert: there are no generic vegan foods at Walmart, Target, Meijer, or any other grocery store you can find in Indiana. I am a huge HUGE fan of vegan food, and I get cravings for meat substitutes, but they are not meant for people of my income bracket.

We aren't all dumb clucks who just don't know that we're hurting ourselves. We aren't all blind idiots, sheepling out into the sunset with a package of Sucrose Methadone slices, just so you know. If you live on your own in this economy, you are forced to make an unfair choice: eat things that will kill you later, or starve to death right now.

You can protest the lack of GMO labeling if you like. You can buy $4 bread, if you can afford it. If you don't have rich parents or at least 3 roommates, though, I suggest you learn to read labels very carefully if you want to avoid harmful substances. Above all, don't expect anything marketed in a big box store to have been created for any purpose more useful than to separate you from your money, regardless of what using said product ultimately results in. They don't care, they don't want to hear it; they're sorry about the inconvenience, and here's a coupon for another one.

The reality of the situation is that until we can create a system where upending an entire industry for consumer safety causes profit rather than loss, we are all on our own. Period.

So shut. The fuck. Up.

This Is How You Suck At Dating, You Assholes

We will sidestep another long, weeping blog about how awful everything in my life is. You can all rest assured, I won't be flipping my emo bangs all over you today. Today, I shall be discussing with you all of the things that people do wrong when they date someone.

Believe me, I'm just as guilty of some of these as the rest of you. I feel that as an experienced self relationship ruiner, it is my duty to educate the rest of you. Sort of a form of community service, I guess.

So without any further nonsense, welcome to...

THIS IS HOW YOU SUCK AT DATING, YOU ASSHOLES.

A tutorial. Or perhaps just a slight bitchslapping. It has yet to be determined.

1. There is nothing that will make someone want to punch you in the face until you're dead like seeing that your date has just updated their Facebook status with “so bored. Txt it :)” while they're sitting right across the table from you. There are rules to human conduct. If you're really having such a bad time, most people would prefer if you simply got up and left. You're not so awesome that anyone would endure that sort of humiliation just to be in your presence. Get up. Go. Find someone more exciting, and your date can find someone who's not a big dumb dickhead.
2. Your date is not a used car. Nothing is more invasive than you whipping out a dipstick and a tire gauge and telling them to bend the fuck over. A person's clothes and shoes and facial features are not to be used to determine his or her worth as a person. You cannot make a checklist and dock points for things like “can't cook” or “not a family person” or “doesn't like cats.” I'm sure you wouldn't like that to how someone views you. A test drive will be inconclusive for all but the most shallow of people. As a general rule, people are simply too complex to judge them like a contestant on American Idol.
3. You are not a god damned celebrity. There is something to be said for shutting the fuck up and listening to the other person. No one wants to date someone whose biggest accomplishment is that “I'm me.” That's simply not good enough. What do you do? If you don't actually do anything, grow a personality.
4. Do not go into a date intending to make it a one night stand and not tell the other person. People who do this are the lowest kind of person. I'm a bigger person these days, and I can actually stay this now. I've had this happen to me, and I know a lot of other people who have had it happen. People who get one night stood by surprise usually spend the next few months blaming themselves, and telling themselves that things would have been different if only they had been more fun to be with. In reality, you never had any intention of giving them a chance. My advice here is that if all you want is sex, don't be a dick. Hire a prostitute. That's what they do, and you'll be helping someone pay rent that way. Don't fuck up someone's life to get off.

Do try to keep these in mind, assholes.

Sincerely,

Santa F. Clause

How To Be The Only One At The Party

This week has been more emotional for me than I'd like to admit. I've put up this hardened shell and tried to get people to care about more for me than whether I can get married. I don't have anyone to get married to. I'm not waiting to put a ring on anyone's finger. I'm more worried about not getting the fuck beaten out of me in the street, fired from a job, or publicly humiliated because of who I am.

Now, I don't believe necessarily that NO ONE cares about these things. Maybe I shouldn't put it quite so dramatically. But what I will say is that it's very frustrating to see how many people are focusing on JUST marriage equality because that's what's up for debate. It has nothing to do with me, even though statistically speaking, it does. I feel like everyone's over in another room cheering for me, and no one knows I'm not in the room with them.

It's scary how distracted people can be from the other issues once a ray of hope begins to show through. I don't care if I can get married right now. What difference does it make whether or not I can get married if some dickhead can grind me to a pulp behind a bar because we frighten him just by being in the same room, and if local authorities take a hands-off approach because they don't want rainbow stains on their fingers, should the next election fall out of our favor? What difference does it make if we can have equal health insurance benefits to everyone else through my job if said job can still legally fire me in some states for violating the moral code of the people in upper management?

I hate to sound so down on everyone, but I am not part of the celebration, here. And it's not that I left the party, it's that the party left me without realizing it. Marriage equality does little for people who don't want to get married. It's a good step for our kind and for humans in general, but I'm starting to realize that my safety and job security (aside from being threatened merely by my own bad habits at work) will never be secured in my lifetime.

I have waited almost ten fucking years for someone to get it, for someone, ANYONE to stand up for something other than my right to marry and divorce someone. It seems to me that no one is coming back to my room, because no one realizes I'm not there, or maybe they think I left on purpose.

Well, I'm here to tell you, thanks. Really. I appreciate it, but it does nothing for me right now if I can still find myself a bloody pile in a back alley. It doesn't make me feel any better to know that I should have been able to marry one of the guys I've attempted to date over the last five years, because I doubt that any of those situations would have gotten any better with marriage.

I leave it in your hands to give a fuck about me, because I certainly give a fuck about me, but I seem to be the only one. I am seen as the party pooper when I tell people to put action behind their god damned red equal signs. I am seen as the Debbie Downer, the Negative Nancy, killing everyone's equal rights buzz with my petty demands for safety and a life worth living alone.

You've all disappointed me by how far you've missed my points in what I say and even accused me of being a bitter, self-hating person because I insist on change in all directions rather than just one at a time, one slow, bleeding-out change at a time. I'm literally going to be dead before anything gets done that makes me feel safe or okay in this world.

I am thinking of myself, yes, because someone has to. Love is not all there is in this god forsaken husk of a life that I find myself forced to grit my teeth through anymore. I have people that I love and have loved, but I want to be alive for it, god damn it.

You may very well still tell me that I am bitter, or that I am self-hating, or that I am missing the point of what you're doing or the historical significance of what's happening. That's just fine. I see that as you continuing to not listen to me.

I am standing up for me, and therefore for you, and so few of you are clear-minded enough to realize it. You have no idea how frustrating it is to be called out for wanting more than what you're fighting for. Like I'm supposed to just sit down and shut up and have my rights handed back to be cafeteria style.

I will not sit down. And you had all better get back into this room and get on the same page, or we're all going to be lost. The focus is wrong, though admirable, and the attitude toward anyone who demands anything more than what you're willing to fight for is shameful.

Nevertheless, there's little I can do besides wait and hope.

I don't actually expect anything positive to come out of this blog. It's more of a rant than anything. I think I'm done with calling anyone to action beyond what they're comfortable doing, because it really pisses on everyone's party, and I don't want that kind of reputation. I don't want to be that guy.

I appreciate all of your support, I really do. I just wish you were fighting for me as well as my love life. I'm not here to be the bad guy and shit on anyone's flowers about it, but I understand that that's the way I'm seen, here: some kind of ungrateful asshole sticking it to his own community for the sheer joy of doing so. I'm not changing my position, though. And what hurts the most is to be treated by my own friends and my own kind like I just don't understand the significance of what's happening right now. Like my level of understanding is so elementary that it has to be explained to me, when in reality, no one is listening to anything that I have to say about it. They simply hear that it differs from what the bandwagon is playing, and they assume that I'm just determined to be a bitch about everything.

It makes me want to give up to realize how few people actually listen when I talk.