Please and Thank You

I've never written anything important before.

People have lied to me and told me otherwise, but I know myself - I have to, to keep my head. You see, I'm quite used to the friendly praise, the respectfully reserved red ink scantily dribbled on my papers, and I've received my undeserved share of exhortations concerning my bright and successful future as a writer. For the longest time I cast these encouraging words aside, mainly because I felt people "weren't being real with me". Not anymore. Today marks the first day I've considered maybe it's not that people aren't being real with me, but it's more so that there aren't any real people out there.

I contend that 95% of praise is cursory, or reflexive. Instinctual. People say "good job" because it's easier than saying "bad job". Now this isn't necessarily a bad thing, and I'm not even saying these people are being insincere. I'm just saying most people instinctively praise other people because it brings a swifter end to that part of their day, more specifically their time with you.

Uncorrupted praise is almost offensive in a way. When friends shower absolute praise upon other friends, it's borderline disheartening because the encouragement is often so shallow that it goes beyond the basic, surface-level insincerity you might expect from your friends. It's far worse than if they didn't like your work at all. At least if one of your friends didn't like your work, you would know deep down somewhere that he or she at least somewhat thought about your work critically, but perfect praise reveals your friends had no passing thought at all about whatever it is that you did. They like your work because they like you, and that's the way it is.

Don't even bother to tempt yourselves with the follow-up questions, like: "Oh what did you like about it?", or "What was your favorite part?" These questions will only exasperate your friends and antagonize an already tired and mutually self-absorbed conversation, so don't even fool yourself they're even remotely interested in anything you do.

The first rules of etiquette we learned as children taught us the invaluable folkways of "please and thank you". Just stop. We don't mean it; we just say it. We say it because we should. We say please and thank you and congratulations and happy birthday new year merry Christmas because these are lingual precursors meant to preface and determine respect in a request or conversation, not because we're determinately friendly or pleading and grateful for favors rendered.

Why can't we just admit we want things? Salt. The direct approach. I want salt. Give me the salt. You're going to get the salt, please and thank you not required. The result will be the same, and if we all just unshackled ourselves and cast off the social weight of common courtesy and instead embraced the present reality of direct desires, then maybe we together would be participating in something slightly closer to real communication.

Basically, tell me my work would be better without all the adjectives. Please and thank you.

The Procession

Today I had great success doing something I didn't deserve to do. As I was enjoying my publicly earned handshakes and shoulder-pats, a weird-looking faux-hawked kid abruptly interjected my sweet victory with a bland and vacant stare that very clearly violated my euphoria as well as my personal space. Honestly, euphoria is overrated; personal space is not. He dressed like a punk/goth kid who has his parents arrange his outfits for him. Oh honey these chains will look so cute on you next to that little studded wristband. He looked like a skateboard at a yard sale.

Anyway, he just stood there in my personal space looking like a doofus, and he continued to unblinkingly stare into my eyes until I too felt like a doofus. To me he had a strange presence that affected the immediate world around me. I sensed the people I perceived around me gently react to this infiltration, and from my peripheral vision it looked like something akin to that mental shit in Inception, if you've seen that.

Uncomfortable with this current state of affairs and unhappy that I had to set eyes on him at all, I quickly engaged in reliable small talk rhetoric, quietly harboring the snappy hopes of zipping through the geography and common interests portions of the exam and skip straight to the warm and heartfelt farewells. Fast-forward thirty seconds, and you would find my performance was pitch-perfect. Flawless Victory. However, just as I was about to shake my own hand and congratulate myself for yet another ditching job well-done, he quickly turned and floated his head to my ear and slowly whispered these lines:

"You looked very comfortable up there. Just remember you can't escape the process."

Then he turned and walked away.

Active Voice

Sexually active. I hate when people ask me that, doctors and shit. Are you and your partner sexually active? Are you sexually active? Active, as opposed to passive. Active, like thrown switches on a fusebox. Like my cock's loaded with lithium batteries or double A's, juiced up and ready to rumble. Sure, I'm active. I do things. I don't "do things", but I do things. I pursue things. I like sex. I've never had "it" or been with "that" or whatever other smokey objective pronouns the "active" community smugly drops in pushy rounds of personal confessions, but I'm no sagely monk. I've dated my fair share of women, but I tap shoulders more than anything else, and I would never, ever, "hit that shit."

I tap shoulders; I have questions. First of all, what's with the taboo? Is referring to birth control as "the pill" the peak of our sexual liberation? Is the sneakily named "pill" dubbed such so inconclusively because our whoring generation was raised so sexually attuned we think of nothing else? That can't be right.

I get the sexy pill. I can dig it. My gripe here is that we have this awesome pill that no one wants to call anything. It's unbelievable. Also, pairing raised eyebrows with subtly raunchy pejorative pronothings in exchange for calling sex sex isn't a tell tale sign of your coital enlightenment; but rather the imparted consequences of the world's largest, deaf-only "whisper down the alley" game gone down as you think it would. Seriously, how "made love" became "hit that shit" is well beyond my understanding. Someone must have thrown that game, and I have no doubt he left with a tidy purse. He probably bought himself something nice.

We live in an era of grown children playing "I'll show you mine if you show me yours," and I don't like it one bit. I'm a bit disgruntled over it already, and i haven't even given any real thought to the conjoining issues, like the irrevokable damage done to our approach to the act itself, or the active community's semi-intentional defecation of the English language. You either had sex, fucked, or made love to her; you don't get to say anything else.

I understand there are several ways to skin a cat, but that doesn't license anyone to skin all these g-ddamn cats, you sick freaks. Leave the cat alone. It's fine just the way it is.

Net Brutality

"I was born with an enormous need for affection, and a terrible need to give it." - Audrey Hepburn

There's this Audrey Hepburn poster you'll find in every other girls' dorm room. It's a blown-up black and white snapshot of the sexy 60's actress. She has her hair pinned up, revealing a necklace of white pearls ornately decorating her naked neckline, and she's wearing her trademark large dark sunglasses. A lit cigarette makes an appearance, but I forget exactly where.

I hate this poster.

I don't know how this poster became so independently popular and subsequently colossally available, but I imagine most college girls bring theirs in their tote bags from home. Most though probably throw down some coin for theirs at their university's annual poster sale, and from there they'll scurry back to their cubby holes, pull out some adhesive from their meticulously coordinated stationary drawers, and then slap those bad boys in some convenient wall space made available between the fanciful printouts of inspirational quotes and the iconic heartfelt collages depicting those memorable nights out with the girlies. It's enough to make a grown man spew.

Almost like a reflex, I blame Facebook quite readily. I'm not completely sure why I go on at all anymore. I never liked keeping in touch with people, and I was certainly never one to invite other people into my business. However, there is one unintentional element of the website that spices up some otherwise droll browsing. The "social network" is, to me, a tad misleading. What you really have here is a highly effective character generator. Millions of self-conscious people play Sim City with their personalities and act the identity architects of their own self-propelled public perceptions. It's repulsive, like the cocooned humans in The Matrix. Some see a valuable and entertaining Internet tool; I see a web monster harvesting the insecurities of semi-conscious, goop-covered men, women, and children fulfilling trite fantasies from the ugly safety of their networked test tubes.

Sick :( text or call. Curling up in bed with my Nutella and Humphrey Bogart <3.>12 days, *sigh*. Bros night with @bman and @g-money. 3 Months <3<3<3. DRUNKKKK...get at me.

Now get this, motherfuckers. If we ever again chance to meet screen to face, I will neutralize you and your besties in one fell swoop. I'll be coming for you, and I won't hesitate to bludgeon you with your thumb drives. If I have to I'll confiscate your cameras and shoot myself USBeating off all over each and every one of your keyboards, and then I'll split your skulls when I smash them over your heads until it hits home row, you stupid, terrible neanderthals...LOL jk!!!

What's really frightening is how Facebook life is running over into the real world, slowly but steadily blending the two into something indistinguishable. Everyone's living that g-ddamn Mark Twain "dance like nobody's watching" bullshit. Go ahead and lap it up. Cliff jumping, bungee jumping, and sky diving use to be cool, thrill-seeking activities, but now people leap off cliffs, bridges, and out of planes for tweets, giggles, and the imminent enshrining of momentous digital memories. Jumping off cliffs with the bros. It's gonna be wild, but not too wild, because really I do this kind of stuff all the time (check my pics dont forget to comment plz thanx ;)). My life is so casually crazy.

Fuck you and the froth in your mocha lattes.

Life in the Bedroots

When I moved out west a year ago I had no idea that would begin my detour de force. It's strange how persistent we are in our useless sideways sprint, like stubborn old trunks jealous of the branches. I don't know why I hate the soil under my feet, but I do. I hate the roots perpetually sprouting from the balls of my feet, eager and ready to latch and take shape wherever I stand.

I always surprise myself with how good I am at fronting the illusion of progress. I may be a hamster, but I'm the fastest wheel-runner in three counties. I've taken and passed classes, and I've read the right books, but somehow I'm just now arriving exactly to where I left myself 18 months ago.

Things have changed though. I have new glasses now. They're pretty sweet. I wear more of my brother's clothes, and I'm 100 pages further in Moby Dick than I was 2 years ago at this time. I've written some shit, read graphic novels like an art form, and I've started/abandoned/restarted this blog to nowhere. More things have stayed the same. I'm dating the girl I used to. I'm living at home again. Same bed, same house, same friends, SOS etc. My music tastes have changed, or evolved. Ultimately though, my only accomplishments of which to note since 18 are only pitifully connected to my progression as a professional consumer. I read, watch, and listen to better things. I devour media of a higher quality, and somehow this makes me a better person. I've chased and tackled the cultural canon and stripped from him the rigidly sharp slew of refined talking points with which I impress my friends. I've purchased for myself rounds of applause in a time in my life when I contribute absolutely nothing at all to anything of value.

I suppose life will be grand when I get there, but for now I find I'm growing callous in my personal fears as my roots tangle and knot along the surface of the bedrock. I've been in this place for too long, pedaling away at my stationary bike and half expecting motion. If I just read this one more book, or watch this last critically praised television program, then maybe I'll glean the truth I've been absentmindedly groping for these past few years. Maybe, but probably not. Definitely not, actually, but this has served its purpose. It's been 72 minutes, and Megavideo awaits on the next tab over. Peace.

McDonalds Car

My brother and I had this Hot Wheel track when we were kids. The car would speed down a blue plastic incline and do a loop-de-loop before flying off a ramp and onto another set of track ahead. Out of all our cars, only three could make the jump: the unlikely purple van car, the Corvette car, and the motherfucking baddest car of them all - the McDonalds car. The McDonalds car would zoom nearly straight through the loop-de-loop and rocket off the ramp and onto the landing 12" away, and it had perfect form every time. The frame and chassis burned in a hot cherry-red paint, and the signature golden arches tattooed on the hood were a blonde bombast of yellow erupting out of my sexy-sleek-streetcar-tire-sporting-blood-machine. Man that car could fly.

I loved that car, but I couldn't understand why the garage of cars belonging to my middling pack stood so far askew from my precious McDonalds car. The car had a power I couldn't fully understand. They were from the same company; the builds looked the same. I'm no astrophysicist. I couldn't rattle my pissant brain with the varied qualities of aerodynamics, if that's in fact what astrophyscists do (which, in turn, also concerns me, because I feel like that's something of which I should be sure). All I know is that car jumped the track and landed on the other side as if it were the Gospel truth on Sunday and every other day.

There is something though that I missed in while lost in those strained, palm-to head hours of boyish pondering. I had to admit I was the one who arranged the track. I decided the space and forethought the length of the jump. I was the one who inadvertently tinkered my Hot Wheels track into a well-oiled foolproof mechanism, a mechanism tailor-fit to my reckless McDonalds speed demon. Essentially I supplied the resources and selected the environment, and ultimately I set the stakes. I chose the car's calculated and measured success. A thrilling fear for all, but still a path laid and made special for one.

It's funny how life can bring us to the point at which we're disposed and subjected to the flimsy whims of mass and momentum. Speedsters zip on hellrides through the gauntlet, and we hear the sickening crunch of car wrecks as we teeter on the clifftop at the starting line with engines revving. The counter's on 2 of 3, and flashes before the gunshot we each pause to wonder, "Was I really built for this?"

I can only hope I'm driving that car.

All the Tiny Fingerprints

God is a body with a thousand hands.
Each hand owns a thousand fingers, and that’s how He sculpted the Earth:
Molded it, cradled Creation in His gentle arms, and gave it shape.
And all I am is a tiny fingerprint,
No purpose or will to call my own, nor name nor house to call my home.
Just an imprint, on a tiny fingertip.
No moving action, no stasis or signature –
Just the royal crest and evidence of a savage beast
Stamped, burned, and branded in love.
Like gloss finished driftwood we float dead in the cast gray sea,
All the tiny fingerprints,
You and me,
Waiting, undeserving, and praising our King.
He is beautiful.