The little unventor who blabbed

Jimmy was a young old man-child who wanted nothing better than to be the oldest young child-man to come up with the newest little take on the oldest big idea. The oldest idea that immediately sprung to mind was (not springs) paint. But thinking up a new idea about paint proved to be as boring and difficult to focus on as watching ideas about paint dry. There had to be something easier that seemed more difficult to everybody else. There had to be some simple little something that every other little everyone had passed by thinking it impossible. Turned out there wasn’t.

Jimmy took a job at a local ice scream sunday school scooping kids brains out. 6 weeks of sundays he worked at the same little school buttering his bread on both sides to stop the conjecture.

One day a knuckle sized thought thwacked him roundly near the tuba hole. “Edible paint”, he screamed. Well, he didn’t scream, that would have awoken the lobotomized kiddies before they could harvest their organs. Black market organs are so cute at that age, as long as nobody is fussing.

Eventually he was too excited to contain his glee, and tripping over kiddie corpses he fumbled for the phone. He then dialed the local guy who nobody trusts and told him his plan. The guy stole the idea and promoted it as his own. Eventually, he had two large folding tables and a very large salad bowl (to hold the paint chips) as the major components of a vast edible paint chip empire.

Jimmy was disappointed to see that his first little big idea was not only stolen, but was possibly the last little big idea he would ever have. Just then Jimmy had another big idea, he would create a murder hammer that would seek out people with unoriginal ideas. The idea was a big success and he was instantly killed by it. As for the other guy, he was an idiot too, he used a lead based paint to make his edible paint chips.

The tale of the hypothesist

Dr. Sloppynose P.H.D. stood at the threshold between pure science and wild fantasy. He was staring Schrodinger’s box right in the cat’s eye. As he ruminated on the ramifications of the possible implementation of his theorem like a 2,000 pound bull chewing the cud of destiny. Naturally, a tear, did, didn’t, and got busy with some party planning and so almost forgot to, come to his minds cat’s eye.

Tomorrow the world would be a very different place, but would it really be a better place? “For me it will be better, that will have to be good enough for everyone”, he thought. He was right, it was a better day for him. But then the next day was terrible. Then the previous day had never happened. Then he was married to duck. Then the earth was frozen solid. Then he never existed. Then the earth was a paradise. Then he was a girl. Then the whole world was a playground. Then he was retarded. Then the planet was just as it had always been. Then he was cells in a dish used to extend a kids leg 3 inches. Then the planet was even more like it had ever been. Then he was a Nobel Prize winning ox. Then the world was a zoo. Then he was himself in the 15th century B.C.E. Then he was happy, then sad, then happy again, then very sad, then he was happy and sad at the same time, then he was finally everything, then nothing, etc...

He had done it! The disposable, single use, time machine was the ultimate success failure.

The cuddly polar bear must die

I’ve been seeing this little polar bear on TV a lot the past few days. And the tag is always about how animal rights activists want him dead. What kind of sucky animal rights activists are these? I know polar bears may not get much choice, being that most animal rights activists are from tropical climates (that’s why they don’t understand that people may need to wear fur when it is cold). But come on, if I was a little snuggly cuddlekins (which I am not) I would like better representation.

They are saying people shouldn’t cuddle polar bear babies because they are wild animals. But when is there a better time to cuddle with a wild animal than when it’s a baby? Adult wild animals kill people who try to cuddle with them.

I predict zooicide bombings.

The science of the unknowable

I’ve always liked science, real science, the kind of science where things actually happen, where things are discovered. What sometimes strikes me as odd, is that discoveries are often named after the discoverers, as though they had really invented what they found and hadn’t just found it. I don’t have a big problem with that, but I think that much of the time properties of the occurrence or phenomenon could be used instead. Of course we wouldn’t want that name to be too long.

I appreciate theoretical science because most of my science has been done hypothetically or even rhetorically. I have some ideas for room temperature superconductors that I wrote up when I was a kid, but I’ve never been able to test them because I can’t afford the equipment. I rarely take things at face value without doing some research, although I used to think that Einstein was an idiot, until I realized that Nigel Calder (whose writings about Einstein, I read before I read Einstein’s writings) was probably just a poor communicator or misinformed. That misunderstanding was a lesson to me, that many scientists don’t get what other scientists are saying. And just as they misinterpret words of others, they often misread obvious data within the framework of their own experiments.

Scientific research is a daunting task for the dedicated truth seeker, possibly even more so for the tried and true fact checker. The fact that every answer tends to generate at least 10 more questions often seems to make pseudo scientists feel free to comment on items that stretch deep into the unknowable. I think that the frustration of taking ten steps back for each step forward eventually wears down many real scientists as well, until they become the very thing they despised in the beginning, a prophet for a false god. They start to talk about the distant unknowable past or the distant unknowable future more than the here and now that can be recorded, observed, and commented upon.

This is how I see it, If cold fusion can’t be proven (or even disproved) to have occurred in a reasonably well monitored lab in 1989, how can anyone expect to have more reliable data than that on the lineage of Zygoticus Rex 20,000,000 years ago? Of course that is exactly why some of these guys who want a hypothetical process or modern fairy tale named after them reach so far back to grab data. It is so hazy and distant that they can make up any old crap and no one can refute it. If they want to refute it they will need to wade through data for generations, and the grudge will die long before the answer is won. Other questions requiring more immediate attention will take its place in the queue.

Let’s consider a scenario, a scientist says that pies made on the moon are nowhere near as tasty as pies made on mars. It will be so many years before there will be coordinated space bake-offs that we can’t discount that possibility. Perhaps the bold theorist will be long dead by the time the hypothesis can be tested. We are required to accept that there is some slight possibility that the same ingredients prepared in the same way on mars vs. the moon would taste much different, and we may speculate that it may be due to the limited gravitational pull of the moon vs. mars. Of course, one day we will be able to test the tastiness of moon pie vs. mars pie, if he is still alive when this happens, and it becomes clear that moon pie is better, he will simply say, “You did it on earths moon?”

Haiku the anicient art of thought folding

frost envelopes me
a blank cat skates through my hair
visible in breath

a needle stops pain
right at the central vibe joint
howling at relief

grape candy peels back
thoughts of another tantrum
baby tastes the floor

art evacuates
the room of no condition
entropy enjoyed

mental spool unwinds
on a bone table I see
sparks become silent tears

artificial wound
from a plastic utensil
then roundly absorbed

Thoughtfulness and Business = Bad Beer Day

Let’s go back in time... A guy comes into my office to get someone from my staff to work up a new logo for his client. We sat down and discussed the project along with other possible future projects. He was a veteran marketing guy with the full bag of cliches. He was fairly intelligent and thoughtful, and I could see that he was making mental notes about my way of speaking and items in my office.

While we were talking I was drinking a can of Budweiser (not a Czech one, the crappy American one). I was actually a little embarrassed that someone had seen me drinking a bad beer at the office. Back then I could still drink that stuff on occasion, but it isn’t enjoyable at all. In fact, I believe that I had decided while drinking that particular can that I would never drink a Bud again.

Well, I had another meeting with the guy about a week later and he walks in with a 12 pack of that garbage as a gift. So because I chose to drink that urine once (in a moment of weakness) I get stuck with 12 that I have to get rid of, and a bad beer bad reputation. I gave the 12 pack to the guy who gave me the single can.

Now, getting crappy beer as a gift is an insult on so many levels. What did it cost for that 12 pack? Maybe five bucks? I should have been drinking a Flemish reddish brown ale or something else that was difficult to find at the time. Oh well, the guy kinda creeped me out anyway, and my disinterest in his gift must have been apparent. But we finished the logo project, it was okay but not up to the quality I’m used to showing. How’s that for a trip down bad memories lane?

Eyesores soar at the Grand Canyon

I was talking with my brother today about the Grand Canyon Skywalk, you know, the glass floored "ride" where you walk out and look down. It is supposed to be like a helicopter ride that doesn't go anywhere. Exciting!

I put off visiting the Grand Canyon for about 10 years of my life in Arizona. My main problem was that all the pictures looked like open pit iron mines, and I'd seen enough. Finally I went to see it, and realized that there two big differences between the Hull-Rust mine and the Grand Canyon. The first difference is that the G.C. is has a river running through it, whereas the H.R. has a lake. The other major difference is that the H.R. is in MN and the G.C. is in AZ. So, I've seen both of the famous holes in this country and my money is on the bigger hole.

I have seven better ideas than the canyon skywalk:

1 Canyon Cannon, it has it all, views, danger and even alliteration! It would just be an old circus cannon with an optional parachute. Cheap, practical and fun for the whole family!

2 Grand Canyon "Clear View" Park and Ride, this is just as it sounds, you park your car on a glass parking lot that overhangs the G.C. then you hop on the shuttle that takes you to your hotel in Vegas or Flagstaff.

3 The Grand Canyon=Grand Slam Batting Chasm, again exactly as it sounds, you stand at the edge of the canyon and just swing away. The person with the best distance wins a donkey ride to the bottom to collect lost balls.

4 Condor Medic, this is actually a subset of the previous idea, but it is so unique and exciting that I thought it should be its own attraction. You have 1/2 hour of intensive training before you join your team of naturalists and activists on a mission to save condors beaned during batting practice. You will need to be fast on your feet to avoid being hit by the falling baseballs and rare California Condors.

5 Canyon Coffee & Cake Carousel, this has views, danger, refreshments, and more alliteration than any other Grand Canyon attraction to date! You sit in a cage with a 8 pound cake (with your choice of frosting and sprinkles) and an espresso machine and a large sponge. You are slowly lowered to the canyon floor to get your cup, or will you get too excited and pour the coffee into your sponge? It will be worth the cost just for the cake alone, the great views of dead donkeys condors and heaps of baseballs are just gravy!

6 Disposable Choppers, Helicopter tours are expensive but they don’t have to be. What makes helicopter rides cost so much? Experienced pilots, expensive equipment, fuel and maintenance. We eliminate all of these with disposable helicopters. Our helicopters will use vegatable oil powered chainsaw motors, props will be made of balsa wood and rice paper, the cabin is a 15 gallon plastic bucket (perfect for picking up baseballs you might find laying around after a crash). The whole package includes a map of the G.C., a repair manual, a first aid kit, and a great egg roll recipe, because there is nothing like real egg rolls, wrapped in rice paper and cooked up in a huge plastic bucket.

7 Standing on a Rock, Saving the best for last, and pulling out the big guns means waiting until item number seven to unleash the awesomeness of the sure-fire G.C. hit! For the price of admittance to the Grand Canyon you can look over the edge and see thousands of feet down. It is like standing on a giant glass patio and looking down, only there is no glass in the way. This is going to be so huge, I just hope I can figure out a way to get in on this National Park thing on the ground floor before too many people get the same idea.

HOW TO WIN *EVERY ARGUMENT (PART IVb)

Let’s take money as another example. Currency has names that are common enough to call “reality” for the purposes of this discussion. If someone holds up a twenty dollar bill you know what it is. True some might say, “that’s money”. Few might even say, “that’s very durable paper with watermarks, security thread, color-shifting ink and other security features. Some use it to facilitate transactions.”

If they say anything like this last statement, you probably shouldn’t be talking to them. The point is that it’s pretty readily agreed upon that it’s a twenty dollar bill. Not many sane people who have a life are going to argue against that reality. It is interesting to note that currency often changes in value during the course of the day. This is most evident when you travel abroad, but it has an impact locally as well. However, the name of the monetary unit remains the same, and it continues to be regarded as legal tender.

The following point is particularly fascinating to me. There is almost no intrinsic value to a twenty dollar bill. Its value beyond the scope of the marketplace is quite minimal. It could be that a twenty dollar bill on its own is the same value or only slightly more valuable than a one dollar bill, due to the twenty’s security thread which could possibly impart a small amount of extra durability (and thus quality, and thus value) to the bill. How would someone fully evaluate money when it is no longer used as a means of exchange? As I’ve already indicated, I think the main criteria would be durability (followed by opaqueness). That’s just an opinion.

Money is subjective, variable at best and often arbitrary, yet it is treated as a constant by the majority of people. Many give no thought to the fact that it has little to no benefit without the ability to facilitate an exchange. It is interesting that many of the same people who believe that there is some intrinsic worth to money beyond the usefulness (and possibly durability or malleability) of the substance(s) of which it is comprised, are the same people who ascribe seemingly arbitrary worth to their beer of veneration.

Quantity, not quality is the aim of many. “I drank a whole 24 pack myself”, “you paid fifteen dollars for that one beer? I paid $7.50 for this 48 pack”. People who quantify in this manner generally do not consider taste or quality as part of the enjoyment process. Many of these are people who’s “enjoyment” is solely based on basic linear processes. Either they want to consume a large amount of liquid, they want to consume a large amount of alcohol, they want to consume liquid quickly or they want to demonstrate the volume of liquid they can absorb. These “feats of endurance” generally seem to revolve around the belief that, being surrounded by math enthusiasts at the time of the “beerbongathon” or “chugalugfest” the quantities will be totaled and for a goodly length of time they will retain fame and “high number status”. The amount of memory loss (a difficult thing to quantify) somehow also seems to be high on the list of factors cementing the greatness of a beer. “I had such a great time this weekend! I can’t remember anything since Friday afternoon.” This has been a very long, slightly comic aside.

Just because we don’t see the merit of the “choice” someone may make doesn’t mean it is arbitrary. It might seem arbitrary to us because we can’t see the method used for defining and establishing the criteria used to evaluate the possibilities and thus develop this “preference” which may finally be acted upon.

Of course we can’t see this. Usually it’s not there.

As any thinking person should be able to see, most people have chosen (or “chosen”) not to choose. The “choices” they make are almost invariably more reflex than choice. They’ve allowed themselves to be conditioned to “enjoy” certain things in life based on repetition and environmental influence. Some have reduced their life processes to nearly the level of a grade school science project (action/reaction).

*HOW TO WIN (almost) EVERY ARGUMENT (PART IVb) b as in beer

A Shrine to Me

Today I got a phone call from the Executive Director of outer space. He told me to expect something big. Bigger than space? “Twice that big”, he mumbled. “That’s a big deal then dad”, said Tube (the son I never had). Wow! My expectations of my life having been changed in an instant had changed in an instant. It was as though something big was really about to happen. “Bigger than space, dad”, I was quickly reminded by the son I never had as he deleted my conscience. Don’t! “Too late”, replied my non existent child.

“I’ll never be able to forgive (or forget) your alleged mother”, I plothered. A made up word to describe the way I communicate to my anti-son.

When the big day arrived I was like a son I never had, diluted with anticipation and full of apricots and vinegar. Yes, as you properly guessed, I am no longer writing this story. How did you, dear reader, gain such bountiful wisdom? Certainly, you show wisdom beyond your wizening!

I in fact am the son-of-a-me that was never had. And as such, can thus properly acclaim the disproportionate coronation of my dad. You would never believe him because the story is about him. But it was big, bigger than space even! And they placed it upon him with glee, there was oh so much glee, and dancing, oh, the disproportionate dancing, and twins, conjoined twins with hula hoops and hacksaws.

There was a distress in the air that no one could fake. Why would they want to? But the air was fake, mostly argon, I hate argon!

And the bows were provided for snake charmers and neptune handcuffs, but the prognosis was large, bigger than space even!

I am beginning to understand the reason that my non existent son (the one who is writing this) has allowed me to see you, dear reader, as you can barely finish this tale. It is because you are the end of this story, and I/it is/am bigger than you. Your conclusion, no matter how meaningful or meandering, cannot infuse meaning into itself or even this/it. You must secretly know this, but won’t you tell yourself? If you can’t trust yourself, then who can you trust?

Try to trust a doctor with a very mild conscience and we shall see which side of the morgue you wake upon. I have no conscience, it was rolled back at the Wallmart, and my neverboy charted it to doomsday mice.

Sparks launch my blood-target to force the issue of pain from the dark void of all-encompassing doomsday particle accelerants to the peaking of the pain in my mental shard, the one left true by bankers and deli thieves and skate park honchos.

I look at the derailed rallied clouds of crowds embarking on the journey to the center of my daily grind, forcefully intruding on my nocturnal bliss, the moment my eyes close and see the snake of sleep drift into the heart of my translucent nightshade, and they enter, with hearts made of hands and pulverized, sequenced, entombed, razor-edged diatribes, benefiting no one, being shared by all.

There are quips and engendered vagrancies that delight in stopwatch harmony. The fluttering embolism that is a symbolism of the persistent gouging away at my incomplete, post-destined, punctuated life that has been capitalized on by the hounds of reading. No pages re-inserted. No coffin overflowing. No chance to escape the day I am scraped into a shrine built for no one but dead little sad little me.

An apology...

So I've been out here blogging for a couple of months now. I have plenty of good ideas, but no time to write them. So some of this blog is new, some is old, and some is not very interesting to anybody other than myself. That's okay though, I've seen what most blogs are like. I know that mine is still better than most. That's good enough for me. I seriously considered doing some sort of quality control on this blog thing, but that takes even more time.

So I'm sorry about taking your valuable time explaining that my blog is not the best but still better than most. But I thought it needed to be said. And with that out of the way, we can get back to the days important events.

HOW TO WIN *EVERY ARGUMENT (PART IVa)

As we have already discussed, winning is easy if you are me. And who am I to say you aren't me? If you are in the argument game for the long haul, you will want to understand the difference between reality and perception. Once you understand the point at which a discussion crosses the boundaries between perception and reality, you can choose what is best for your particular topic, to remain firmly planted in reality, or to use perceptions as a gateway into the best argument you ever won.

People very often say, “perception is reality”. Far less often people say, “there’s perception and then there’s reality”. Never have I heard anyone say, “There is reality and from that people draw their perception”. Ironically, this is true. It’s fascinating how many people squirm and even twitch with frustration when one expresses a belief that something is correct or incorrect if it conflicts with their own apparently unfounded beliefs. Perhaps they will say, “that’s your opinion” or “that’s how you see things” or “I don’t know about that”. These are all great responses, but the last one’s best because it is a sideways way of saying, “since I don’t know, you must be wrong”. Of course if one agrees with these unfounded beliefs the response will be hearty agreement. They may say, “yes, that’s true” or “I know”.

Not that there’s anything wrong with perception. Perception is what makes everyone who isn’t me unique. Everyone else being unlike me is what makes me appear unique. I don’t mind being called different, even if I’m not. I also don’t mind too much being called the same, even though I’m not. This has been a comic aside.

The reactions to a proposed reality or opinion are generally provided by the respondent in roughly the following format, 1. twitching, awkward defensive/offensive posturing 2. opposing response 3. lecture on perception and reality. This lecture should fully explain how we all have different viewpoints, we are entitled to our opinions, and how they are all correct, and yet incorrect. They may be “polite” and thus omit telling you that you’re wrong. What just happened?

Nothing. Nothing actually happened. Time elapsed but nothing was actually stated. Not even an “Agreement to Disagree” was exchanged. They could have just as well have said, “My opinion doesn’t matter”. The aim is to gloss over the notion that there are facts and speculations and these two things may differ or even conflict in their amount of meaning.

Reality or not, your perception and their perception may be mutually exclusive. Let’s say that the discussion revolves around a glass of beer. Your view is that the beer is bad. His view is that it’s great. Can it really be both? Clearly it can be perceived both ways. Perception being touted as reality is a very unfortunate reality.

Interestingly enough one of these much-debated “beers” makes claims of kingship. Of course, it’s not even popular opinion that makes a king. A king comes in and takes power. And like most kings it has lost touch with reality and relies heavily on perception. This has been another comic aside.

Reality, however, must exist if there is to be perception. If nothing is real, nothing can perceive. Some (idiots?) say, “perhaps there is no reality and we’re all just in someone’s dream.” You may respond, “if that is the case there still must be the reality of a dreamer, besides dreams actually exist, although not tangible.” Or perhaps you might respond, “but how would you explain the fact that I know what you just said isn’t true?” Or perhaps your response would be, “maybe you thinking you are keeping up your side of an intellectual discussion is a dream and you’re really an idiot.”

* HOW TO WIN (almost) EVERY ARGUMENT (PART IV)

A funny thing about school shootings...

When I was in either third grade or my second fourth grade, I heard rumors that a kid had brought a gun to school. A girl named Tina and myself disarmed the kid and gave the gun to the teachers. Turned out it was just a starter pistol, but apparently he was putting rocks in the barrel and trying to shoot branches off trees. Regardless of any of that, he was not punished as far as I know. It wasn’t on the news. He never tried it again as far as I know. These days that kid would be in prison and Tina and I would have been praised as heros. These days it doesn’t matter if the gun is real, its all those mind bullets the kids shoot. I think that’s all the teachers were afraid of with me. They probably worried about what would happen if just one of my mind bullets materialized. What they never seemed to notice was that my mind bullets were real, but they weren’t bad bullets, they were bullets of benevolence.

Anyway, that kid who had the gun, used to steal the little gold stars and “good job” and “well done” stickers and take them home to his mom affixed to his F papers. It was really sad. But I think it has become abundantly clear that sad and pathetic is funny. I still wonder if his mom ever figured out that he was not the student the stickers made him out to be.

The School of Life IV

There are too many dreary tales of woe from my life in school to recount them all. In fact, I’m not sharing any of the real horrors with you (just the fluff) because the descriptors required would be to mindbendingly shocking. I made several attempts to describe them, but without using only the most perverse analogies and offensive descriptors it just doesn’t come remotely close to helping others understand the reality. Once people get to know me better and I reveal a small fragment of the pain inflicted by the depth of weakness of the minds of others they are shocked and they think that I’m telling a horrible sick joke or just insane. But the problem comes from them comparing me as an equal to themselves. They can only comprehend lower level anguish. They think physical torture is worse than mental torture because they are more physical than mental.

Of course, even I can’t comprehend what I went through as a child, partially because I’m not nearly as smart as I was, and partially because when you experience real trauma you can only fully comprehend the pain during the pain. Afterwards, when the pain is just a memory, it softens. But it still makes for great anecdotes.

One of my overall points with this writing about school days is that school never gave me anything real, it just corroded, eroded, shredded and ate away at my soul. It beat me down, plundered my mind and attempted to nullify my worth. In many ways what they were trying to do worked, I could certainly call myself a victim of the school system if I wanted to. But even with all that they ripped away, all the ways that I conformed and foolishly allowed them to control me, I started out with so much substance and worth that even as the shell of the boy I once was, I am a man who is still too cool for school. I am a proud drop-out. I am the purple-heart winner of the war of the mind, I am the Heisman trophy winner of being the only kid in my class who never learned the rules to football, I am the Nobel Peace Prize winner of not being the first kid to shoot everybody in school, and I am the impeached king of compromise. Besides, who really wants to claim to be a victim of something that is weaker than them? That would just be sad.

The School of Life (part III)

I have to start by saying that I know this series of writings is not of interest to most people, but I’ve titled them all clearly so that you can avoid them at your pleasure.

Fourth grade was a year of true protest, no homework, no work in class except what it took to maintain a C to D average. It was very difficult to hit D all the time, me and my friend Troy would compare drawings and try to shoot low enough on our scores to get into the special classes. This wasn’t actually possible, but it worked because our teacher HATED us in no uncertain terms. There were quite a few D and F students in my class who never got sent to the special classes, but we weren’t complaining. The teacher really sent us there to (1) get us away from her and to (2) try to embarrass us. But which would you prefer, to be talked to in a slow sweet voice by a teacher who thinks you’re retarded or have your mind raped? Right, it’s a no brainer (no pun intended).

Troy and I would finish our ‘tard work quickly and then have a couple of hours to spend in the library actually getting a chance to learn for a change. It seemed that this was the perfect scam, except for the fact that it raised our grades to B’s and C’s, I may have been left with as little as one D at the end of the year.

One day my 4th grade teacher sent me home with a note for my mother that said, in essence, “If you sign this we won’t hold your son back, if you don’t sign this we will”. My mother, of course, didn’t sign it but never told me. I got my report card and it said, “Placement next year: Grade 4”. I was sick, I was being “consoled” by several girls in the class who were very sympathetic but now sounded just like my special class teachers. The evil 4th grade teachers plan was a success, I was embarrassed. I was also sick and shocked. I never trusted anyone (including my parents) but to have such blatant confirmation of my mothers betrayal did hurt a little.

Later my mother told me that she agreed with the teacher and that I was immature for my age. I said, “Have you even seen these idiots? They eat paste and chew on pencils all day!” I knew there was no fighting it, my mother had no understanding of what I was going through, she had bought into the system long ago, even having been homecoming queen.

My second fourth grade was extra painful but mostly due to the multi-faceted monotony and then having to learn the names of the new crop of idiots in my classes. I had a good teacher. I didn’t learn anything from her, but she wasn’t afraid of my brain, maybe just because she knew that all the other kids thought I was dumber than them. She clearly liked kids (even though I still can’t see why). Overall it was at a relatively calm place between rapes. She read Judy Bloom books to the class. In a way, it was refreshing that the kids in my class weren't intimidated by me.

For some odd reason I seemed to be the only kid that didn’t have a music class that year. It was my previous 4th grade teacher who also taught music. Somehow she had arranged it so that she didn’t have to see me at all that year. She was winning all the way, my only consolation was that she was sentenced to life as herself, and that was something I wouldn’t wish on anyone.

The School of Life (Part II)

When I was in Kindergarten (the first day) it took me less than 10 minutes to figure out that it was a scam. It took me no more than 1 hour to vow to myself that I would quit school at the earliest possibility. In 8th grade my mother promised me that I could quit school the next year (when I turned 16). Of course, she went back on her promise just before I was going to quit. A deal was finally negotiated wherein I would attempt to like school in 10th grade, and if I still didn’t like it, I could quit.

So, I coasted through 9th grade, tried in vain to get a negative GPA and waited out the year, I got a horrible case of pneumonia and missed many days of school. The pneumonia and its associated ailments remained with me for many years, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t keep my GPA down. I had avoided doing almost all work, it had been quite a few years since the last time I had taken any homework home. I rarely did any work in class, and I would only do tests when I felt like it. I must say though, you can do nothing at all and get a B or even an A in many classes just by acing a test.

If I was going to college I would have majored in tests. I was great at tests, I never had to know anything about the subject. I could generally skip 15 days in a row, take all the tests and still get a good range of scores (mostly A’s and B’s but some C’s and D’s too) but for me school wasn’t about scores, It was about survival. Not surviving being beat up (although I did get beat up a lot during certain years). A real man (or even a real boy) can take physical beatings. I was also afraid that I would accidentally kill these kids (even though they were in large groups and/or bigger than me), because I was smarter than them, and I generally had a good grasp of why they were beating on me. They were fragile minded children and I was not going to kill them for being too stupid to know that I was not even remotely associated with the source of their rage.

I’m not saying I was very smart back then, just that I was smart in comparison to everyone else. Which is certainly nothing to brag about. As for my current intelligence or smarts, that is no longer an issue. Yes, I’m still much smarter than most people, but I’m not even a reasonable fraction of the person (or mind) that I once was.

Getting back to the survival I was describing... I was speaking of the mental terrors that were imposed upon me from the beginning to the end of my schooling. Some outstanding torments included Kindergarten’s infamous Nap Time (which is particularly bad for an insomniac) where I was forced to lay down on the concrete floor on a towel I brought from home and stare at the ceiling for 45 minutes, being forced to play with blocks, square dancing, floor hockey, baseball, having teachers attempt to force me to sing, being locked outside with all the idiot students during recess as if I hadn’t spent more than my share of time with them (of course I would sneak back in through the window and read or hire myself out as a spy most of the time), being forced to do math again after I figured out how, being forced to use their mathematical systems, being forced to write with cursive letters, being forced to print everything after being forced to write fancy for a couple years, being forced to use pencil, being forced to use pen after deciding pencil was okay, being told you have to buy a calculator, being told you can’t use the calculator, being told that you can use the calculator but you have to show your work...

I know what some of you are thinking, “these are things YOU hated, but it wasn’t about you, It was about all of the students”. And you’re right, it certainly had nothing to do with me, except to attempt to remove all the me from me and turn me into an industrial robot. Even as a very young child I knew that square dancing and memorizing the lyrics to Sidney is a Silly Centipede were not viable “life skills”, but you know what? I was the only kid that protested singing the song on the grounds that it was stupid and on moral grounds (which again amounted to the fact that I thought it was stupid). I was the only kid who protested any of this garbage and I had my personality set to negative decibels and was running a personality white noise maker, I was trying my best not to complain, but it was ALL so stupid and it was killing me. All the robotards around me seemed to bask in it. As a side note, it turns out I was 100% correct, it is a very stupid song. So, the one with the backbone and the mind to run it should have been the one controlling the curriculum.

I was affected by the conformity of singing later on, when a particularly harsh teacher wasn’t going to take “it’s retarded” for an answer, and I had to once again compromise my principles and pretend to be singing the song (by moving my lips). Turns out that this was life training that I one day had to use, when my “team” at work had finished all of our work for that day but one of the higher-ups was walking through the building, the manager comes running in and shouts, “look busy”. It is a very sad realization, knowing that I had picked that up from school, that I actually did have to use it in “the real world”, and that it was just as stupid as square dancing. I tried to avoid similar jobs in the future and got very good at quitting jobs that offended my conscience.

The School of Life (Part I)

School is supposed to prepare one for the “real world”. It is supposed to give us the life skills to ace our future careers. It is no secret that it only works that way for idiots. In case there are some idiots reading this, I’ll explain. First of all though, congratulations, you are a happy product of the school system!

If you are an idiot there is one easy way to tell, you don’t have the bitterness and resentment that comes from having your mind raped on a daily basis, rather, you feel an attachment to the institutions with which you were affiliated and a fondness for the students of their chaos.

I will take this time to mention that I don’t think that all schooling is bad, and not all teachers are bad. I have noticed however, that many people get into positions that they consider to be positions of authority because of the fact that they have virtually no self esteem. They have no self esteem in most cases for very sound reasons. I have no problem with the kindly sub-intellect that just likes kids and wants to help them in any way they can. And there is certainly a small group of these in public and private schools. Of course there are so few that there are many schools that don’t even get one. These may rarely teach you anything, but they are just about the only ones with a shot. But mostly they are just good for chilling out before the rest of the days mental trauma. I’ve never checked the numbers scientifically, but some schools possibly get quite a few and perhaps this is where some of the reasonably intelligent teachers come from.

I had a couple of teachers over the course of my government imposed sentence that I thought were probably fairly intelligent. One such person I could actually converse with on his own level as though we were really equals. When he would bring by little experiments for the kids, he would accept my wishes to abstain. With tests and quizzes, he would also respect my wishes (of course I would still get marked off points for not engaging in that part of school activities) but never would he mark points off for thoughtfulness, creativity or insight as most teachers would. I remember how sad he was when I told him I was quitting High School, as though he really believed that there was ever something for me in school. Now, perhaps if I could have gone to college right off the bat rather than kindergarten I could have taken it for 4 years. As it was I almost totally stopped taking homework home in third grade. I had totally given up on schooling on the first day of kindergarten, when I realized that it was just a place to enforce conformity and give tiny minded teachers a little ego boost, and of course to rape little minds. The only thing sadder than being a student is being a teacher who really believes it is a big deal to control a child. I tried to comply with their arbitrary standards, but they were so contrary to logic that I frequently bent my standards to the point of breaking and wasn’t even close to what they wanted. I felt totally compromised, and they thought that I hadn’t been paying attention. Idiots!

It was during this time that I fully realized that when you have no power the only way to control the power is to make sure the power has no control. That may sound like chaos to some, but it isn’t. I’m speaking of the power exerted by disinterest. Almost all of my childhood victories over ignorance were mostly due to my general disinterest in stupidity, and in part due to the school system beating me down so much that I didn’t care. I didn’t care about my future, my now, or even my past.

Since most teachers have the same exact disposition as rapists the rapist analogy is a solid foundation from which to build a platform of discussion. But on second thought, we’ll have to finish this later, after I’ve had more time to think through the analogy. I don’t want school teachers to think they’ve suddenly been promoted to rapist status.

Know thy you Be thy thee

What makes us self aware? Actually most people don’t have a clue who they are. So a better question might be, “what makes me know who I am?”

A good question, thanks for asking. I just know, that’s all. It’s like anything. Ask me how I come up with unique ideas. Go ahead.

The answer is, I think of them.

Now, I have to admit that I sometimes think of things after others have already thought of them, but when you have as many original ideas as I do it is inevitable that some may overlap with some original or unoriginal ideas of others. That’s why when I say something that fits into the category of observational humor, I generally let the people with whom I am communicating in on the fact that I may not have been the first one to say such a thing.

I also must admit that I conform the outworking of my thoughts to formats conducive to sensory comprehension. This is to say that a certain creative work may look, feel or sound like something familiar to you. The idea conveyed is still enough in tact to be appreciated, but on the verge of being destroyed by its own representation.

People always suggest or ask for a list of influences. A real person doesn’t need influences. I have no problem with people who have influences, but it can often damage their credibility. It is as though one is saying, “I do this, and here’s someone who did it much better a long time ago.” So, as for inspiration and influences, I already have myself, so I have no further need of influences.

As for my drawn and painted artwork, it isn’t about the artist, it is about an individual physical representation of a completely unique thought that has no physicality, tangibility or any possibility of finding words or objects that can accurately express it. The combination of everything is “good enough” to express the thought I want to convey. People always ask what a painting or drawing is “about”. My answer is the same, “It is about itself, a physical representation of a thought I had. If you try to assign words to it or concepts you are familiar with then you are getting further from having an understanding of the work.”

I’m not trying to say that all of my art is complicated. Much of my work is simple in concept and simple in execution. But I would still say that my work is far better than most other work throughout all history, because it is unlike anything else. Sure, it may look like things you have seen, but that’s called communication. I made it look like things you’ve seen because that is the only way for you to see it. If you see the image, then peel away all that it made you think of, remove every word association that popped into your mind, you’ll see a bit of what I was thinking.

Of course, sometimes I’m just drawing a silly looking dog or a cabbage made of razor blades. But I hope you can tell the difference without me having to explain it to you.

Life and the sound of waiting for applause

I want to make a horror movie called “PLANET EARTH” it will star everybody, doing all the crap they do all the time. It will suck, but it will be the biggest hit ever at the box office. Credits and commercials will run right on top of the movie itself. The credits will take an eternity to complete but everyone will stay to the end because they will be waiting for their name to show up. Since the credits will start in order of appearance, no one will ever be able to live long enough to see themselves in the credits. Entire generations and nations will rise and fall in this one gigantic theatre. This will all be filmed and shown to future generations and the credits will go on and on and on. Bodies of the dead stars/patrons will be buried in popcorn and candy, then mumified by the sugars from spilled soft drinks.

I won’t take a writing or directing credit. I will have a brief cameo where I play the part of a person who moved out to the middle of nowhere to get away from all the noise, but military planes are always buzzing around because it is such a sparsely populated area. I will be the comic relief because I sit around all day giving people the benefit of the doubt.

The Tale of Embryon

There once was a little boy, a very little boy, and young, very very young. His mother was dainty, considerably dainty. And his life was a chore, a bore and the sort of a crapfest from which grew lore. Sorry about the rhyme, I got carried away. The point is that he was small and his life was a big task. His mom was dainty so she was not likely to be of any great assistance to him.

When he went to school he had to stay inside his mothers womb, this was difficult for him because of all of the name-calling. Names like mommas boy, belly boy, core and unborn/undead were commonly heard (by his mother) on the playground. He was generally unaware of the sadness he should be feeling. I think I forgot to mention that his mother was also petite, both dainty and petite. As Embryon grew older he depleted his mothers few resources to such a great degree that she eventually had to give him up for adoption. She was saddened that she had to leave her home that she loved so, and had paid for with money that was supposed to go to her education at the International Steroids and Weightlifting University. Now all her dreams were replaced by vague, indifferent hypotheses about what it might be like to be any two other people besides herself and her son.

The foster parents were very friendly and astute, they were like very very large teachers, and they knew it. Embryon’s new family sent him off to military school, imagining it would make a man out of him. They were fairly bright folks, but not hip to the fact that it is difficult to make a man out of a boy that still has a mother outside of him. The simple fact is that Embryons mother couldn’t keep up with the rigorous training needed to keep her son in military school. Plus, she was disturbed by the fact that all of the classes were about how to scoop guts out of moms.

At long last, Embryon’s mom had enough with the prison inside her and took her own life by giving him his. At this emergence, Embryon was fleshy and raw. His adoptive parents were happy to finally see him in all his huddled red radiance. And quickly introduced him to his adoptive brothers Cephalovoid and Extrolung as well as his adoptive sisters Cranimorph and Rhinaclasp. As he sat in a pool of blood he began to appreciate that there were many others in this world that were odd and had difficulty fitting in. He started to realize that he had spent too much time hiding in the womb and needed to get out there and live his life.

His adoptive parents allowed him to go to school with his brothers and sisters and were able to get him honorably discharged from military school.

At his first day of school he was happy to see that his brothers and sisters were all greeted in a kind way by all of other children. As he walked proudly with his siblings everyone shouted to them in perfect harmony, “hey, what are you kids doing with that fetard?”

Dear Diary, I’m leaving you...

Hi Diary, I know that this is my first time writing anything to you, but I wanted you to know that I care. How I long to rifle through your pages recounting childhood dreams, aspirations, interests and girls I liked. But there were none. How I wish I could page through my history and see everything with a new perspective and laugh at the childish and carefree point of view I had back then. But I don’t need to, because I remember, and that’s not how things were.

What it all boils down to is this: You were never there for me. You were all about words and not about feelings, ideas or freeform expression. If you didn’t have blue lines all over your pages, If you weren’t bound so tightly that you made writing a joke, if you were made from a higher quality acid-free paper so I could be certain of your archival quality, or better yet, if you were able to contain abstract or immaterial concepts and retain them with perfect clarity so that I could recall them exactly as they originally were instead of having to remember them as objects or colors or even worse, WORDS, then I certainly would have let you into my life a lot more.

But you are stupid and useless, fat and empty. That’s the most polite way I know of saying it. My feelings are, of course, much deeper than that, but don’t bother asking me to write it all down because deep feelings can’t be written, and if they could you wouldn’t understand.

An ode to a Utah! Driver...

Dear stupid driver, why do you stay so near? Can't you find your way without me? When you pass me you slow down. When I pass you again you risk your life to get back into formation. Do I create the perfect wake in my 1996 volvo 850 Turbo? I know you are from the far away land called Utah! but right now I'm there too. It is very disturbing to see that everyone else here seems to love me or my old car at least as much as you. Why did you just turn left and chase me off the road? Don't you love me anymore? There is oh so much more that I could say, but I may just find a way to say it with my car.

A unifesto (a singular, hurried, incomplete, defective "manifesto")

“Once you label me you negate me” is a quote attributed to Kierkegaard. It isn’t fancy like some other Kierkegaard quotes, quips, Japes and Insights. It certainly isn’t his best statement overall, if indeed he even said it. Perhaps he titled the work in which it was written and then it disappeared.

If someone could label me in the sense that I was perceived by the populace of the entire world in a unified way, even if that viewpoint was derogatory, I would still know my personal worth. Although I must say that even the strongest among us may be a tiny bit swayed in their feelings of self worth either + or - based on the opinions of others. But, I would think negation would come in a more complete way, it is NEGATION after all.

A label does change a thing, a can of generic soup vs. a can of big name soup (both made by the same manufacturer out of the same ingredients) will experience very different cupboards in very different homes for several years until someone finally opens them and purges their contents thus negating them.

As for the general use of this quote, I’ve always thought of it as a whiny statement, a pre-victimized perspective, as though anyone could just walk up to you and negate all your worth (assuming you have some).

If you allow someone to label you then you have most certainly opened yourself up to the possibility of some variety of personal negation.

I think it is more to the point to say, “if you freely associate yourself with a moniker of questionable worth, you have placed your value in peril.” We don’t have complete control over our existence but until I am given a label over which I have no control whatsoever, such as “corpse”, I will present myself as an independent entity. I will avoid established labels as much as reasonably possible. When I create a label that is assimilated into the vernacular, I will disown the label at its point of saturation.