Victor Green

To quote the late Biggie Smalls, "I got a story to tell."

You see, this blog has filled somewhat of a pattern for me over the last... well, basically the entire time I've been writing this blog. I didn't really know why I started writing this way, but it started to occur to me that maybe this is what I have the most to share. I could try to write about politics, about music, about sports, about geography. I could try to relate about my work experience, or my family, or my grad school program that I have about a year left. And do you know what I do basically every time that I start writing? I share a bunch of embarrassing shit about myself, usually that no one ever knew about and definitely without being provoked to sharing such mess. Is it that I enjoy being humiliated on a regular basis? Or is this just what I have to share with the world?

And by the world, I mean the eleven or twelve people that actually read this shit when I post it.

A lot of embarrassing moments don’t even get mentioned for me. You have to understand, it's a stiff competition to even get on the list for me. Like the lay up I would have made to win a basketball game that skipped off the backboard hard enough to reach half court. Like knocking an older woman over while running out of the bathroom (the wrong bathroom) that I’ve already mentioned. Like the band competition that I had to show up late to, without my instrument, wearing my track and field uniform. Like the alt right book store I walked into and didn’t realize it for kind of a while. Damn, I guess I have covered a lot of this already, now that I'm thinking back.

This tops all of them. And it’s a curious thing to fully explain, even in a project like this, but I feel like it’ll help you understand why I am at least partially the way that I am. I can trace this moment back very vividly, but at the same time I realized a few years ago that I had literally blocked this moment out from my memory for fifteen years before I told anyone. I had told myself that it hadn’t existed, yet I know the impact it has had. I’d be hard pressed not to give ode to it and to the fact that it didn’t cause me to crumble into oblivion. This is the moment that could have, but didn’t, ruin me as a person. It just ruined me as a normal person.

Let me tell you about the time that I almost probably ruined my life.

And let me start by saying that 6th grade was already a rough time. I was one of 7 black kids at my entire middle school. My main interests were hockey video games, pokemon cards, and the comic strip Dilbert. I had glasses thicker than most encyclopedias (exaggeration, but still). Oh, and my voice cracked every 4 words, and I hit a growth spurt that borderlines upon actual cruelty. My legs grew a whole lot in the span of a few months, so none of my pants fit and it looked like everything I owned was high waters. And then my arms grew past where my legs did so I could grab my knees without bending over. Just, yikes. Oh, also I thought I was funny. Like I’d make jokes that were funny to someone that was like me. And was into these things. Hockey video games, pokemon, and Dilbert. Mmmph.

On a fateful day in 6th grade, I walked from my English class to my math class during an in-between period. It was that simple. I didn’t make a decision to do something that was going to fundamentally change the way I lived my life, I just went to math class. I walked in and set my books down and realized, just before the start of class that I had to go to the bathroom. And I was not nervous about it, it was a natural, simple feeling. A human desire. But as a 6th grader, I procrastinated. Besides, it was 6th grade, not like we were doing anything anyway. Do you remember middle school? Do you remember days where literally nothing was learned? I remember whole months that didn’t matter. So I figured this one period, I could just go to the bathroom once class started, not a big deal.

I waited until about 2 minutes after the bell before I asked my teacher if I could go to the bathroom. Her name was Dr. Selma, which it really wasn’t, but that’s what we’re going with. She was petite, she had curly brown hair, and this unmistakable Latina flair about her. Or she was just bitchy, I’m not sure anymore, I don’t remember everything about my teacher. I remember about the day though. She said in simple enough terms, “No. You cannot go to the bathroom right now. Go sit back down.”

A quick side note: you may be asking yourself why a doctor was teaching 6th grade math in suburban Texas, and the answer is fairly simple. She was a doctor of marriage psychology. Which, last I checked, only has a few applications. It appears one of them was teaching 6th grade mathematics.

So I went to sit back down, not really sure how to take the idea that I had greatly mistaken how this class period would go. I don’t remember us even trying to learn anything, we basically just sat in silence and had a study hall. Dr. Selma was pissed about something or other. I, meanwhile, felt worse and worse. I felt like I was about to explode, I’m not even kidding. You know the term turtleheading? I was beginning to squeeze a roll of playdough out. Not a good feeling at 1:15 in the afternoon among ruthless middle school peers. So about 4 minutes later into the period, I get up and ask again. Because screw it. This is real crisis that was brewing here. And again, Dr. Selma said to sit down, this time even more cross than before. I did my best to communicate my distress in my looks and the sigh that I gave out, but I still didn’t think she really understood the dire consequence that I felt was to follow. I would have lobbied with some eloquent speech, some provocative insight that I could have dropped on her. But no. The only thing that came out of my mouth was, “Okay, but this ain’t gonna go like you think.” Which was weird, because I had never used phrases like that before.

Long story short, I just stood up about 35 seconds later. I didn’t even care. She had no idea, I mean NO IDEA what was going to happen. I made an executive decision. But on my way to the door, I said to her, in no uncertain terms, “LOOK,” as I made my way to the door. To my surprise, and really my saving grace, she finally decided to acquiesce. “FIne, just GO!” She basically mirrored my attitude. Thank god, thank allah, thank Buddha, vishnu. Whichever supreme being that pulled that string, owe you big.

Now, 2 doors away from my math class is the 6th grade bathroom. In a different world, I walk in there and lay down the #2 nice and simple. Well, as simple as this dookie ever would have been. This was some nastiness to end all nastiness, but we’ll cover that soon enough. But nasty also covers the bathroom in the 6th grade hall. I mean, to date, basically the most consistently disgusting place I’ve been around was that bathroom. You know, that would have ever been in a middle school. Looking back, I think the reputation of the place was more vile and disgusting than the actual bathroom, but alas, that’s how reputed this bathroom was. It was a banal enough image I had of this bathroom that taking the most necessary shit of my life was not even an option.

For that matter, I guess I was a nervous poo-er, because I was kind of particular about where I’d take my dumps at this time in my life. In my fairly uncrowded and upper-middle class middle school, there were still only a few places I felt comfortable with dropping the kids off at school. One was a bathroom on the 2nd floor next to the stairs that seemed to get next to no use, one was the boys bathroom in the band hall, which saw a very select clientele, and my personal favorite, the bathroom in the art room hallway. It was an oasis, a hall with one classroom and  a computer lab that never saw use. Sure, there were plenty of lockers on that hallway, but with 5 minute passing periods, who has time to pinch a loaf? I found myself crossing the entire school on certain periods just to find a certain solitude here.

But not this day. On this day, I sought not just solitude. I sought asylum.

In a hurried kind of racewalk, I struggled across the courtyard that separated the hallway I began on and the ramp up to my destination. My ass was in full clench mode. I was sweating, both from the effort I was putting in and the mental prospect of having to explain any of this in the near future. I cannot describe the exact discomfort I felt, because I blocked this day out in my mind for so long. But let me get to the part that I felt needed to be locked away in my own proverbial Disney vault.

I get up the ramp with no problem. I open the doors, and walk into the far side of the building still on full clench alert. Not even racewalking, I resemble someone in a petticoat with a herniated disc. I look like I’m being pushed in the back as I walk, but my ass hasn’t caught up. That’s what you should picture with me walking right now. And I get all the way to the door of the bathroom still clenching, and I make the mistake of not walking close enough to the door before reaching for the handle. Essentially, it was celebrating before getting into the endzone. Because by reaching for the door to this bathroom, I ended up losing my full ass-clench. I mean, by a few inches of stride, I just basically needed one more small step towards the door. But now, I felt that I could reach and yank with no issues. In doing so, my levee broke, and the dam could no longer hold. So the dam broke. And...damn.

And this moment will live, in my mind, for all of time. The infamy of… the event.

What followed could not fully be described with any single thought. It sounded like a legitimate 12 seconds of continuous farting. It smelled like an onion patch. It felt like instantaneous shame, with a side of self consciousness and horror. I don’t know what I looked like when this occurred, and I hope I never find out. Point being, this was the worst thing that ever happened to me on school grounds. Of all the embarrassment I suffered throughout my academic and extracurricular career, this was as dark as it had ever been. I hurried into the bathroom, still farting. Well, farting among other things, forget about that. Literally 10 full seconds were occupied by this loud and malevolent force of exodus from my colon. To my additional horror, there’s someone in there with me. Some older kid I don’t recognize. He didn’t even want to look when he heard me come in, based on what he was hearing. Good, I figured. Don’t even look at me. It makes it more likely that I won’t have to explain shit later.

*Note: I’m not trying to be humorous when I use the word shit through all of this.

So this kid is washing his hands as fast as possible, and I’m doing my best trying to play off how rattled I really am right now. Like, I’m pretending to look through the stalls to choose the least dirty one, when I’m really making sure that NO ONE else is in the room when I try to deal with this situation. The kid leaves in a hurry, probably sensing the smell and hoping it doesn’t sink into his clothes and haunt his dreams. When I hear the door close, I check to make sure he really left and didn’t just pretend to leave, and then I take refuge in the handicap stall at the end and try to prepare myself.

It’s not gonna be that bad. You can handle this. You’ll survive.

I’m reaching for anything I can to make myself feel better and literally nothing is helping here. Shit. SHIT. I pull my pants down not looking, trying to psych myself up to deal with this, knowing that it’ll likely be the thing that ruins my life, this IT that I’ve long felt was on its way but now that it’s here I’m still not really prepared for it, like if I was off hunting Big Foot and then actually found it and was like, “Oh shit, I didn’t bring a single thing that would actually help me in this situation.” That’s how this shit made me feel before looking at it. But I'm willing myself to stay together.

It's not gonna be that bad.

And then I looked. And freaked out for a completely different reason than anything before.

You see, there was a shade of green within this shit. A shade I’m not familiar with. A shade I didn’t know existed, nor was possible. A shade I have not seen before this incident, and haven’t seen since. It wasn’t sea foam, it wasn’t olive, it wasn’t emerald. It was, as far as I can tell, a new color. And I didn’t know what to call it. I have to assume, if I can’t find it anywhere else, that I created a color with this shit. So this color, this Victor green I saw on this fateful day, is staring me back in the face in the bathroom of the art room hall. And I’m way more scared than before. This color has completely taken over my underwear. It’s not even underwear anymore, it’s the vessel for which this color came into the world.

And so I jettisoned the underwear and pants I was wearing and just sat there, bare-assed on the bathroom floor for a few minutes. No words, no thoughts. I just pondered what I beheld. In horror. This was that thing I had sort of always seen coming that would be my mark on the world. I was no longer thinking about homework and band practice. I was worried about math class and history assignments. I wasn’t just worried about changing my pants anymore. I looked at this color and thought that now I had to change SCHOOLS. I needed to move away and undergo surgery to change my appearance. My family needed to go into witness protection. This is Def-Con 17 we’ve reached here. Code black. Code green. Code VICTOR GREEN. There was no going back from this. FROM. THIS. SHIT.

But alas. Could I come back? I pondered if I could pull myself together. Come on. There had to be something I could do before just giving up. And I did this thing that I do all the time now, where part of my mind suggests something, and another part of my mind shoots it down and gets angry that the first part even suggested it.

Okay, I thought. Can we get new pants?

Like where? The lost and found? You gonna stroll down the hall and look there for another pair of jeans your size? Really? They’re just gonna have pants for you? Are you a fucking moron?

The gym locker?

No, they locked that right after our period. (I knew that they did, I had tried to get my dirty gym clothes after hours before.) Besides, that also requires walking down an open and public hall to get to to the locker room that won’t be open, and then you’re trapped out in no mans land. Then you’re walking around the coaches’ domain, with an exposed ass for someone to break a foot into. Dumbass.

Okay, go to the office and call your parents.

And say what, exactly? That their oldest child is incapable of bladder control? You want to have that reputation in the family? No one, NO ONE will ever let this go. Your family will be worse about this than most of these asshole kids. White people have trends, they’ll find something new to torture in a few months. In your family, you will always be the one that shit his pants in school and then voluntarily drew attention to himself. This doesn’t leave the room.

Besides, that didn’t work for another reason. Calling parents meant I needed the front office phone, and those women that worked there didn’t keep anything quiet. They were bigger gossips than the kids at school were. Involving them in anything meant the entire school would find out by the end of the day. Hell, they would probably make a schoolwide announcement, “Calling all students with spare pants, Victor Dupuy is in need of your help here in the front office. Underwear too, if you’ve got it.” So yeah. Not an option.

Briefly, I did consider killing myself. Like, just hanging by my neck right there in the stall or drowning myself in another toilet. I’m still a bit embarrassed to admit it, but it really did get a few moments of consideration. But that quickly faded as a real option, and here’s why. The only thing worse than dying, I reasoned, was dying in this much shame. Surely there would turn out to be an afterlife if THIS was what caused me to take my own life. And then I’m dead AND I shit myself like this. This was the kind of thing that people would live and die remembering. Like I’d be chilling in heaven (or hell) and people would walk in having lived full lives and would still bring this up. Or this would be like the thing that kept me out of heaven, like God is sitting there judging me and he’s like, “Vic, I like you. You had a good thing going. But 1, you killed yourself and didn’t repent. And 2, and more importantly, is that shit was GROSS. You gotta understand, Vic, I’m God, and I didn’t make that color. That shit was crazy, I can’t have that in heaven. People have a certain expectation of what gets in up here.” So screw that. This was no way to leave a mark on the world. A skid mark? Nuh uh.

Now, to be fair, I also came very close to just leaving school. Just running home without any pants on. It was also a very real possibility. It was about 2-2.5 miles to my house from middle school, at about the right time of day that I could have done it and been alright with it. I was in good enough shape that I’d have done most of it all at once, not that I was ever a cross country runner. Then again, I’ve always been a sprinter, and the prospect of needing to catch my breath while walking around without pants on? Yikes. Besides, it seemed like this was the type of thing that people would piece together if there was anything suspect with me the rest of the day. A kid runs home with no pants on the same day that Victor just disappears from class? I don’t want to say it sounds like something I would have done as a kid but… well, I almost did do that as a kid.

But that gave me the idea. Could I salvage the pants? The underwear, gone. Destroyed. I will never wear those again, you cannot clean those. Wow. But the pants, were they redeemable? I checked. To my surprise, the jeans were not particularly damp. I mean, I could tell something horrible had happened from the inside and I thought they still had some of the Victor Green smell, but in the end, it wasn’t beyond redemption. A few minutes with some paper towels, and they were passable. The jeans were a darker shade and the...um, added moisture, well, it didn’t really show up unless you were looking right at it, and it was in the crotch area where no one should be looking anyway. Jesus. This was doable. This was not just possible, this was plausible.

I tried them all the way back on, the jeans I mean. Leaving the underwear in the toilet of that stall, I tried to flex around in the pants in a way that made myself feel more comfort. It didn’t come. I tried to ignore it, but it was hard to get past some of the thoughts I had just had. A few minutes ago I had considered leaving school forever without saying goodbye and starting a new identity. I had thought of informing my parents of how weird and hopeless their first born son might really be. I had briefly considered suicide. Now I was going back to class like nothing happened. I was not a kid that hid his emotions well. It wasn’t what I did. So there was a little bit of prep time taken in the mirror, trying to practice my faces to make when someone would inevitably ask why I smelled exactly like shit smells. I won’t lie, I didn’t like the takes I was getting from myself. Wasn’t believable. I just didn’t commit to the character, you know, of someone who didn’t soil himself.

I then took the longest walk was back to class ever. It’s hard to explain my mental state during this. But the idea centers around 3 points:

1. The weight of everything I had just taken on. I’m not an actor. I’m not a good liar. Terrible at poker. So pulling myself back together was not only a chore, but I was very aware of how bad at it I usually was. I would have stayed in the bathroom longer to go over my lines and practice my faces, but I was all too eager to leave the ‘scene of the crime’.

2. (these are in no particular order) I had been away from class for about 40 minutes by this point. Middle school classes were only 50 minutes or so, and I had left somewhat close to the beginning of class and was getting back just before the bell. It was going to be very obvious I was walking back in like this, and I was less than enthused at how it was going to look. All I needed was for someone in the class to remember that I came in looking freaked out, and then hear that during that same time period someone had experienced an explosive deuce somewhere in school with catastrophic consequences. Reasonable dots to connect.

3. I was not sure if I’d left any evidence to track me down. I was making sure no one saw me leave the bathroom, so I actually took a different route back to math class. The way back literally took longer and was a different path, just to check if I was being tailed. Also, I was trying to think of whether or not they could identify people in the world by their fecal matter. It was in the early days of crime scene investigation shows, I didn’t know if that was a possibility yet or not. Still don’t know. Maybe.

On top of all of this, I hated math class in general. Never once liked math. I hated going into this class with dry pants on. So this did nothing to improve my take on this subject.

But alas, I was not cursed on this day.

I walked into the room and saw everyone sitting in groups laughing and playing around. Some kids had cards, others were talking about new cell phones, a few of my friends had a board game out. Someone was just sitting there, napping in a loud room.I had to restrain myself from celebrating out loud. I pulled it together and slunk down next to one of the tables they had drawn together. As it turned out, right after I had left, Dr. Selma had completely loosened up, told everyone to do whatever they wanted to do, and had left the room. She wasn’t even there when I got back. No one could verify if I had come and left again, or if everyone else was even there. I was home free. I was safe. I exhaled uneasily as I sat and trying to play it Bogart.

And then the scariest thing happened. One of the girls in the class looked up, sniffed the air, and asked in a somewhat loud and confused voice, “What the hell is that smell?”

And for an instant, it seemed like EVERYONE in the room looked at me. I almost shit my pants. Again.

And then someone said, “Steven!” And they all blamed it on this fat kid standing behind me. And for once, I was happy to let someone else take a fall. I let the spatial profiling go on without batting an eye. I had enough I was trying to get through that day. I actually pretended to get up and move out of disgust.

Somehow I made it back to my room in my own house. Along the way, I had to get a ride home from one of my friends, who actually ended up taking me to his house, which I normally would have been excited about. Today I was excited to get home and take the 3 different showers that I desperately needed. I then looked myself in the mirror and vowed to not acknowledge this happened for at least ten years. And believe it or not, I made it about 15 years or so before remembering this as an actual thought. I mean, at first I was just faking it, but somewhere along the way, so many other embarrassing or mesmerizing things occurred, I forgot I was even trying to forget this one.

My point in all of this though: I could not subconsciously just go back to myself from before after seeing Victor Green. That was the dawn of a new age in my life, and perhaps in the human race itself, assuming I ever figure out how to recreate what i saw. It was not something that just happened and I could get over it completely with time. It changed the course of my life. Dead serious. Imagine something really embarrassing that happened to you. Now imagine something that sucked, but was way less of a big deal. If that 2nd thing happens first, and then the worse thing happens afterwards, that a really crappy day because of these two things. First this one small thing happened to set the tone, and THEN the really bad thing happened.

Like let’s say you get splashed by a puddle while in a nice suit, dress, uniform, whatever. You look nice, and you get splashed wet. And then on top of that you get hit by a car and break your leg. That would suck. I mean, you’re all wet and THEN you get a car running into you. You didn’t need that. But flip it. You get hit by a car and your leg is broken, and then a puddle splashes you. Who gives a shit about the puddle?! You’re writhing in pain on the street, and some water gets on you, big fucking deal. It might help wash off some of the blood, who knows? Now, you may be saying, the puddle isn’t a big thing even if it happens first. And I get this. Yeah, that's technically right. Try not to get too caught up in the theoretical shitty things that did or didn’t happen.

So yeah, that’s probably the worst thing that ever happened to me, from a traumatic memory type of perspective. And because it happened, a lot of other things happened that didn’t really register in comparison. So in a way, this event in 6th grade may have helped me more than it ruined me. Perhaps this is the true effect of seeing Victor Green in person.

But shitting your pants in a midddle school bathroom? I wish that upon no man.

Bye now.

Vincero

This is an apology
For the stars we cannot see
That burned out bright as phoenix tamed
But came to quick serenity
This brings to mind those of the flames
Who burned out bright without a name
That turned out not to have the time
To beckon from us their acclaim

This is an apology
Because not everyone we see
Will truly get to be
Not every fired arrow
Finds its apple or its sparrow
But if I can, before I go
Vincero

I find myself gazing yet again
Upon my shining, starry friends
Of worlds and lands I will not see
For they have long burned out to end
But now and then, I breathe back in
The thought that maybe they did send
A story worth admission
Who's submission's plot will ought contend

I remember pondering while watching my mind wandering
Wondering where in all this yonder I can find my own calling
And thus can stop this feeling that my time has been spent squandering
Looking down into the abyss from up in the mist
Up on the cliff, up in the bliss
Trying to figure out how long I've been...this
And I'd be remmissed not to blow a kiss to everything that brought me
Fought me
Distraught me
And therefore, taught me how to exist
For each of those pieces mark a shift
In the paradigm that now I'm trying to fix up
And bring out of the mix up to have to deliver as my gift

And that's what this is
If this counts for an ounce of anything at all
Let it be me looking up after a distant fall
Just to recall
That I've gone through anything at all
Looking up at the stars, set humming
Shimmering back and forth from sunning
Swooning, mooning, blooming, and ballooning
I must give thought to the ones long done
The ones still running
And those that perhaps I'll never see coming

All I can do is wait to congratulate
Those that meet their victory gate while I can stand and wait
For many more may slip by on just the date
That I must bow and duck out late
And if I miss these twists of fate
I beg you not to castigate
For I may have light of my own
That I'll need you do decorate

If I'm not here, when you shine brightest
Please think of me in the politest
For if you miss my moment coming
I hold it against you not the slightest
For sure, I strive for purity
Before I find obscurity
But I can settle for knowing that
In the end, it was always me

This is an apology
Because not everyone we see
Will truly get to be
Not every fired arrow
Finds its apple or its sparrow
But if I can, before I go
Vincero

Wildcard, Bitches

I used to read the strangest things as a kid.

Oh, wait. I should say Hi first.

Hi.

Anyways, I read 'The Art of War' by Sun Tzu as a kid. Or, most of it. 

Mostly because I was bored while visiting my grandparents in Florida as a kid, but also because it seemed like the kind of thing that you should read at some point in your life, to gain perspective or at least be able to feign that you have perspective, which was up my alley. So I read it over a long weekend while hanging out in Blountstown, FL, or most of it, and then I finished it later in life as an adult that could truly appreciate it.

A lot of things stick out when you read a book like 'The Art of War'. It's not like most books you would just read. The book itself isn't any kind of literary organization, it is just a bunch of rules and principles. Stuff like when to attack an enemy, when to evade. methods for cultivating a successful army, ways that leaders get screwed over by their supporters. Things that build morale, things that kill it. That kind of thing.

This book single-handedly made me hope I never have to go to war. I mean, the fact that war, as a concept, was dumbed down this much and is still by no means straightforward. Screw that. I had enough trouble applying these ideas while playing Starcraft on my computer. I cringe at the thought of world leaders going to war and not thinking it through, but again, in the interest of not getting overly political, I won't go into names. But man, I hope those individuals don't pick fights with the U.S. army.

I bring up The Art of War, however, because of a particular passage that I will forever remember. This passage is in the elongated version that my grandparents have, that hold a lot of extra commentary and explanation of the book itself. It's about different types of soldiers and the jobs that you give them. The passage goes like this:

"The skillful employer of man will employ four types of men: the brave man, the wise man, the covetous man, and the stupid man. For the wise man delights in establishing his merit, the brave man likes to show his courage in action, the covetous man is quick at seizing advantages, and the stupid man has no fear of death."

I thought to myself at the time: Oh shit, which one am I?

Not just at work, mind you. You ever stop and wonder who you are, in your group? Are you the brains, or the muscle, or the looks or even... the wildcard? TV shows always dumb it down to cliches like "the dumb blonde" or 'the jock" or "the rich douchebag" and make it painfully obvious, but there could really be individuals with roles in your own circles of friends, and you may or may not realize that there's something specific about you that keeps people around you regularly. Oh, sure, it may be money or fame or a parent in law enforcement that can make legal trouble go away, but it could be even more basic, or abstract, than that. 

Like, I don't know, maybe your life is so screwed up, people like to have you around to remind themselves that shit could get worse all the time. Maybe you're the funny one in the group. Shit, maybe you just think that you're funny and the others rip you to shreds when you leave the room. You might be the best cook, have the best apartment, be the most fashion savvy. Maybe they just all actually like you, and you're the only thing holding your group of friends together, and without you they would all fucking hate each other. I don't know, I'm not sure who you are, but you must have done something to get friends. And it's not likely to be that you were the smart one, the brave one, the sly one, or the stupid one.

Again, in no way am I saying that every person in the world falls into one of these four categories. Definitely not in job or military settings. After all, come on, how many skillful employers are even out there? Every company has a few employees that you look at and think, 'Damn, who in HR came in drunk at work and let this dude get a job?' But also, people in general don't always fit into nice boxes like this, not that these are all even nice boxes. 

But I do always think of that last option. The stupid man, or wildcard as we say more often nowadays. The one who is not afraid to die, probably in a horrible and embarrassing way. The guy who makes the interesting decisions that get everyone else into a certain type of situation, but can also be the random one to get everyone out of the same type of mess. You just never know what the hell this dude is going to do, or be willing to do. And this type of individual just might come in handy sometime. 

I mean, even back in the Ancient times, they understood the use of a fall guy. Same thing today. I know for a fact that certain huge corporations have people on hand almost exclusively to step in front of nasty situations so that the upper management doesn't have to be inconvenienced. Some refer to them as Customer service. I even know of a video of an ex-NFL player, Cris Carter, talking to incoming NFL league rookies about the entourages that they keep, and having a guy there that will take the blame if something bad happens and someone has to face serious legal culpability. 

Imagine being that guy in a group, where all your 'friends' agree that if shit goes down, they're just all gonna say that you did it. Like, that's the only reason you're even around. Someone has to explain to you, "Alright, Benny, here's what's about to occur. The police are on their way, and there's way too much cocaine here for us to finish in time. We're gonna need you to take the hit this time, buddy. Yep, just, yep, just tell them that it all belongs to you when they get here. We're gonna head out the side door here. And Benny? We really- huh? Oh, sure, you can do some more cocaine while you wait, no problem, but Benny? We're really gonna miss you." 

Take Zeke, for instance.

We’ll call him Zeke, anyway. Zeke is a big ass burly dude who loves to get into dumb situations with others. I forget how I know Zeke, but I know him and I will always remember that I know him now because of the story I'm about to tell you. I’ve never seen him get into an actual fight, but I’m guessing he can throw them hands pretty nice. His teeth are a bit fucked up too, so I’m guessing he has experience in taking a punch. Anyway, as intimidating as he is, he showed me that he has no real fear of death or injury or consequences. Oh, and he also taught me the value of being oddly specific with your threats.

We were at a bar, enjoying ourselves after a football game one night, years ago from today. I don’t remember exactly what was going on prior to this, but we were already pretty rowdy on this particular evening. We go to a bar down the street from the house we were hanging out at, and it was pretty packed. Dimly lit bar, loud music, beer pitchers being poured everywhere. I'm sure you’ve never heard of a place like this, right?

So it was packed enough that there were limited tables and chairs for everyone that wanted one. And we had one table and had grabbed most of the chairs we needed, and were trying to get one more, when out of the corner of my eye, I notice the next table trying to pilfer one of our chairs. Now, this wasn’t a big deal at all, but it was annoying and in our defense, it was OUR chair that we had gone and collected. And Zeke notices at the same time I do, and we approach the two guys on their side of the next table. Not big guys, not small guys, just two different regular looking guys, nothing imposing or anything. I try to be diplomatic, and explain that they have grabbed one of our groups chairs, and that we want to keep that. And they start to go into something about it was really theirs first and we should just let it go and find another one. And it was at this moment that Zeke utters a phrase I will never forget as long as I live:

“You give the chair back or I’ll beat your fucking dick off!”
...

Now, when he said that shit... I forgot what we were even talking about. I briefly forgot there were other people there. I turned my focus to Zeke because I became very concerned all at once. Mostly for my own safety, but also I had a few issues to unpack.

First, and these are in no particular order, not really an appropriate reaction to losing a chair, is it? We went from calm to blowing up in a matter of seconds, so there’s that. These are chairs, they are not the new iPhones or seats on a space shuttle ride, or really anything that warrants an outburst. Because nothing warrants an outburst quite like this one.

Second, what exactly did he mean by that? Did he mean beat their dicks off, like ejaculate them here in the middle of a crowded bar? Because that’s not something you should just go around offering. People shouldn't be doing that in public to strangers that they're unhappy with. Or… did he mean he would beat their dicks...off? Like off, off? Because that’s a whole different set of questions. Ejaculation might actually have been weird enough to scare somebody away, but the later option, that's not really something you should do to, well, anyone. Ever, under any circumstances.

Why would you do something like that? The punishment does not fit the crime. And why are you announcing that shit, like it’s already a foregone conclusion that beating off a human penis is where this has to go now. Is that what you’re prepared to do? Are you just saying you are willing to do that over this chair situation, or are you saying that you know from experience that you can remove a man’s dick from his person? Like, for real, have you DONE THAT? This is the kind of person Zeke is, that I have to ask these questions out loud. I need to re-evaluate the people I associate with if this is the company I’m keeping. Like, what else have you not told me? What are you prepared to do if someone spills your beer? If we get into a bar fight, do I need to be concerned for my own crotch region, regardless of whether your on my side or not?

And I don’t even want to look at these bastards we’re facing off with. I'm concerned with how they'll react to this oddly specific threat. If they were told that they may lose their penises in the course of fighting for these chairs, and it doesn't shake their resolve, then I want nothing to do with these men whatsoever. I don’t have time to be fighting dudes that aren’t scared about losing their junk over something so trivial. Any man who is willing to risk losing his penis for, well, really anything... that's a dude that doesn't care about LIFE in general.

I honestly don’t remember if we got the chair back or not. I haven’t hung out with Zeke since.

The point is, these things reflect on you. The people that you associate with, the company that you keep, it matters. Partially because of the situations that you get each other into, but ultimately, the role that you play in their lives and the role that they play in yours, even when you aren't around each other. You cannot be there to constantly explain to complete strangers, "He's kidding. He's not really the kind of person to rip genitalia off of a living person."

On the other hand, we didn't get into a fight, that much I do remember. Maybe it was a calculated move on Zeke's part. Holy shit, maybe Zeke actually is the wise man! Or is he brave for putting himself out there for something so stupid? Or wait, no, is it that he's clever for out-thinking everyone and using an approach sure to work in his favor?

Who am I kidding? Definitely a wildcard move.

Wildcard, Bitches!

Bye now.

This Is Not For You

As kids, a lot of our parents told us that we can do anything we want. I've come to believe that this is always a boldfaced lie.

And that's a good thing.

When you're young, you have all these hopes and dreams in a wide world of possibilities, that will invariably get whittled down over a long and slow process of living on this planet. I figure, there's so many things that are going to end up killing your spirit in life, why start the process too early? Let kids run around through their early years, thinking that Santa exists and that life is fair and that being an astronaut is a realistic goal for a career. Which, again, it is possible at some point. But it's such a lofty goal for a program that our country isn't even really active in at the moment, and even when the U.S. is doing it, literally the best people who have perfect grades and are in perfect shape will still probably wash out and not make the cut. So an adult would want to temper their expectations. But a kid who doesn't know any of that and will probably change their dream at some point soon? Let 'em dream, what's the problem?

So, yeah, lie to your kids about what they can do. Tell them they can do anything they want.

You might want to mention, however, that they can't do everything.

And not just kids. No one can. There's not a soul on this earth that is going to be good at everything. Why would you want to be good at everything? Do you know how long that would take? Imagine being a lawyer who has a medical degree, and can play the piano, and is good at tennis, and is a Grandmaster at chess, and knows geography, and can quote philosophy, and speaks 3 different languages. That sounds exhausting to do even all of those things, and I didn't even begin to list "everything" that a person could be good at. We've all met those people that seem to be good at everything. And you know what those people are when they're not around everyone else? TIRED. And probably some degree of miserable too. And why? Because there literally is not enough time to be good at everything, even if you were capable of becoming good at all those things individually. And you know damn well that of all the stuff out there, there's gonna be a whole lot of shit that you don't want to do along the way. Again, stuff you could do, but have no actual interest in. So... just don't do those things.

You know what I mean though, some stuff you'll need to at least know about. You'll need to know enough about taxes to pay them each year. Doesn't mean you have to study tax law and become an accountant. You should probably be familiar with how to drive a car at some point, but you are not required to be the best race car driver that ever lived. I mean, you should know how to live healthy and perhaps even be able to get in relatively good shape. You do not, however, have to train like you're trying out for the NFL combine.

I guess football is a good example of this for me. Not that I'm good at everything else, but still. I always liked watching football. I did not always like playing.

See, I was not a very good football player. I could run, I could catch, I could even kind of throw for a while. All those individual parts and tasks of being a football player, I could do them one at a time just fine. But I wasn't a good player for most of the time I played competitively. You see, I didn't have the mind for it. To be a good player, you have to be able to practice with others and play with others at a certain speed. It's not enough to be able to practice on your own and have these skills down when you can control the circumstances. You have to be able to perform in the game, with pressure on and 11 guys on the other team trying to stop you. And as much as i could practice and get to a spot that I thought I was ready, almost every game I ever played in involved at least one moment where I completely froze or forgot what I was doing and I gave up a big play or screwed something up. And as a result, I got benched very often, to the point that I didn't really get a chance to develop any confidence on the field, and plus I just started hating playing like that.

I still remember the moment that I figured out that football was not going to be my thing.

It happened in 8th grade. Our team was playing one of the middle schools in Coppell, a few cities over from us that we didn't usually play. They had this enormous stadium and they had a ton of fans show up for some reason, what felt like a couple thousand and it was louder than I'd ever played in before. And I was the starting cornerback on the left side. For those of you that don't know, a cornerback is a defensive player that covers the wide receiver positions. You have to be able to run along side the wide receiver and either prevent them from making a catch, intercept the ball yourself, or be ready to make a tackle downfield if someone gets around the defensive line. Obviously there's a little more too it than that, but the point is that a cornerback is doing a lot of running and has to work in a lot of open space.

Well, I was playing against this kid, a little bit shorter than I was, and he was jus staring at me when we lined up. Staring angrily. I mean, real malevolent look, like I'd dated his sister and it didn't work out type of look. And the first or second play of the game, he runs a route straight down the field, and I try to keep up with him and time it so I can jump for the ball at the right time, and it fails miserably, the kid gets a huge gain while I'm guarding him. And as usual, the coach pulls me out, no surprise there. And I get an earful about letting my team get back field position and my lack of focus and blah frickin blah, I hated playing for that guy.

Before you ask, no, that wasn't the big moment I was talking about. That came in the 2nd half.

The coaches put me back in after we got a comfortable lead. Or were down by a wide margin, one or the other, like it matters. I was back at cornerback, and that same kid that burned me for a huge gain before was back in. Still staring angrily, like the first play he embarrassed me on wasn't enough and now he was really pissed off or something. But I wasn't worried about it this play, because our defense had called cornerback blitz. So as soon as the ball was hiked, my job was to run towards the ball and try to get a sack or tackle for loss of yardage.

(I apologize to those who don't know football lingo well enough to follow all of this, suffice it to say that I was about to do something I was more comfortable doing and that wasn't going to get me in trouble if it didn't work.)

Anyway, the ball gets snapped, and I break inside. No one seems to see me coming, which was a good feeling. Then I get closer, running full sprint, an I see the quarterback hand the ball off to the running back, so I head right for the guy. And at the last second, he sees me coming, and lowers his shoulder in my direction. And I dive in for the tackle, and I brace for impact and...

...

The next thing I remember is a voice coming from above, saying something muffled that sounded like, "mmmhpppm mhmpmpphhh  rmmmmph". And I realized I was in a pile of kids on the ground, and I was face down. And that didn't seem to be a good omen, considering I was just running at full speed and had dove right at someone coming back at me with his force. Finally, someone helps me stand back up, and I look down, and the running back I was coming for a few seconds ago is laying on the ground, beneath where I was, and he looks hurt. And I can hear people from the sideline cheering for some reason, and a few of my teammates run over to me and are slapping me on the helmet and saying things like, "Good job!" and "That's the way we hit, boy!"

I try to smile and just play it off for a sec. Then I grab one of my friend's that's on the field, who we'll call Josh. Actually, it was Josh, what am I saying? Josh was there.

So we have a few minutes there, while they help the running back off of the field. He wasn't seriously hurt, but he was shaken up for a bit. And I ask Josh, "What just happened?" To which he replies, "What do you mean, 'what just happened?'" And I explain to him and no one else that I just blacked out and don't know what I just did. And then he says, "You may have a concussion, dude. You might want to sit down." And I keep pressing him on it. "Just tell me what happened."

So in Josh's words (at least, the way I remember him telling me):

"Well, you came in to tackle that guy, and he ran into you and knocked you back. I saw it and thought you were gonna go flying. But as you were falling, you grabbed onto him and kind of flung him around and piledrove him into the ground. Looked pretty cool. Oh, and he fumbled the ball while he was flying through the air, and a bunch of other guys jumped in, trying to get the ball. I think they got it back for their side, but it was still a pretty sweet play. So he's still on the ground though. Are you sure you're alright, though?"

So I didn't come out of the game, even though I definitely think I should have in retrospect. The next play I covered the wrong guy and let another big gain happen, but I didn't get benched. But that was the moment I knew I wasn't gonna be a football player any longer. The moment that I do not even recall was what let me know that there were better ways to devote my time, energy, and remaining brain cells. I quit football after that year, not because of the worst play I'd ever made, but because of the best one I'd made. Can you imagine if I had to blackout every time I made a good play? I wouldn't be here, writing this. Or I would, but you'd find it impossible to read through the extra consonants and numbers in every other word typed.

I kept playing basketball for a few more years after that. Ironically, I got two different concussions playing basketball in high school, a much less violent sport. But that's not even a story. Point in all of this is, you're allowed to not be good at everything. You can read into it however you want if things don't go well on several different occasions doing the same thing. Could I have pushed through it and kept playing football? Yeah, probably. Maybe I would have been fine, and not gotten hurt again and learned the position well enough to play through high school.

Maybe another concussion and I'd be in a wheelchair.

And maybe I missed my calling and should have been playing through college and even playing on Sundays. It could have happened, right? Maybe? Who knows?

But I feel pretty good about listening to that muffled voice that woke me up when I was at the bottom of that dog pile. That voice that said, "mmmhpppm mhmpmpphhh  rmmmmph". Which I can only assume was trying to say, "Maybe this is not for you."

Notice of Resignation

I, Victor Joseph Dupuy, III, being of sound mind and body, do choose to resign from my 20's on this day, May 24th, 2017. I don't make this move lightly, and I hope that it is not taken as a sign of my feelings towards my 20's, but it has come time for me to move on to other endeavors.

Effective at approximately 3:15 P.M. (Or 3:45, I honestly forget which one it is) I will have been alive and active on this planet for three full decades. During that time period, I have needed to grow and develop in ways that I did not fully realize and appreciate in those moments, but would now like to acknowledge. My 20's have had a significant role in that, and I would be remissed in not acknowledging their service and dedication with the utmost gratitude. Many valuable lessons were taught, even if some of them were lessons that should have already been learned long before. Many sobering, inspiring, and at times agonizing memories were made, none of which will soon be erased, not with time, not with therapy, and not with alcoholic beverages. My 20's and I were right there, through ups, downs, ins, outs, and all abouts.

I know it is customary to give two weeks notice before leaving notice such as this, but I happen to know from firsthand experience that my 20's will not mind one bit. We knew this day was coming, even if we just assumed it would somehow take longer than the literal amount of time it takes to become 30 years old. Once again, thank you for everything, god speed, and farewell.

Sincerely and with tremendous reverence,

Victor J Dupuy, III

P.S.  DIRTY THIRTY

Where credit is due

There's something to be said about our own biases. You know, what we do or do not want to admit about things, especially people. Confirmation bias occurs when we see or don't see something, basically because we want to. It happens when something confirms what we already thought, and we accept it. It also occurs when something goes against what we think, and we find several reasons to dismiss it. Or even moreso, confirmation bias occurs when one thing happens, and two people that disagree about that event can both point to things within the event as evidence that they are right and the other person is wrong.

I could use politics to make this point, something about Trump's firing of FBI director Comey and Comey's handling of Hilary Clinton's emails and Russia's intervention into the presidential election. I COULD do that. But watch me not do that now instead.

People keep debating Lebron James vs. Michael Jordan, and it's fucking pointless.

Actually, it's not. It's human nature, to try to take the really good parts of something and say which part is the best. We do it with taste tests for foods, we're constantly weighing which television shows are getting the best ratings, we compare prices and qualities of different goods online before we shop for them in person, we give yelp reviews for places we've shopped at. Sports are especially key on records, on wins and losses, and eventually on champions. So it only makes sense that we start trying to compare which champion is the best. But that's not enough. A champion today doesn't feel like the champion if there was a guy in the past who was still better, so we just keep bringing up how the new guy isn't the old guy. We keep living in the shadow of past accomplishments until someone new can exceed those accomplishments to a level that everyone somehow agrees is better than all predecessors.

On the other hand, there are always new factors today that didn't matter yesterday. For example, many would point to how Michael Jordan played in a time where there were more fights in basketball, so he had to be tougher than Lebron does in the league today. And that's a fair criticism, until you consider: who the hell would pick a fight with Lebron James? The guy is huge, and even for his starting size, he's built like a tank. A tank that can still run with high agility and elevate over anyone he chooses to. There are NFL linebackers that might refuse to pick a fight  while wearing a full set of pads and a helmet. So it's not a fair comparison there. Why would there be? They are different players that played different positions and used different attributes to succeed. They had different upbringings, had different stages of development, and broke into success under different levels of expectation. I grew up with Michael Jordan winning championships, and I can now watch Lebron fight for them as a youngish adult, and both of them had greatness expected of them. And both have delivered that. But that isn't enough? There has to be one that's a higher level than the other?

In the back of my mind, I can hear a voice saying, "Yeah, kinda."

I'm doing my best to not choose sides on the two, mostly because there's not reason to. I have a poster of Jordan on the wall at home to this day from the finals of his first championship. I have a few of the books about Jordan's rise to fame and some of the ups and downs he faced once he got there. But I catch every Lebron game that I can and I genuinely want to see him play as great as he can, even if it means he one day surpasses Jordan. Either way, I can appreciate the unique skill level that they have both attained in their careers, and the fact that one of them is still going strong and may for another 5-7 years is pretty exciting. And you don't have to agree with me on either player, and you don't have to like either one, but for Lebron, it's crazy to try to say that he has to be the best of all time to be enjoyable.

I can give credit to something that's due credit.

Or somewhere, or someone. The thing about giving credit is that some people make you want to give them credit, and others just deserve credit despite being complete pricks that you don't want to give credit to. When you want to give credit, you give tons of it, and rarely do you give just what is deserved. You give way more than what is necessary, and you notice a bunch of other things that barely even matter and then you probably even make up a few things to give credit for. But when you don't like someone/place/thing, you intentionally wait until you are blown away before you acknowledge anything, because you actually want to diminish that which opposes you.

I had a track coach once that was much like this. Actually, to be fair, he was never officially my coach, but he coached another group within the team I was on, and he really new his stuff. And I hated the prick, because he was just that much of an asshole. I mean, he didn't try to hide it when he disliked someone, and he disliked a lot of people for reasons that were never explained. It wasn't just me either, there were plenty of guys my age that came to the same conclusion: he's not mad about something, he's not upset, he's not hard to get to know. Coach Anthony is just an asshole. (His name isn't really Coach Anthony, in case you were wondering)

The guy just seemed to look for reasons to dig at me, and I know I'm not just making it up. There have been others that confirmed it with me. People would come up at practice and just say things like, "Why does coach Anthony hate you? What did you say to him, because he is not a fan."

You know, to tell the truth, there was one time I messed with him just slightly. I used to work during the summers for the Food and Beverage department of my University, and they would have functions that would cater to the coaches. One of them took place in this dining hall set up in a certain part of the football stadium, mostly for sports alumni to meet and celebrate glory days, stuff like that. So I see Coach Anthony while I'm working this one time, and I decide to mess with him slightly. When he got up to the bar, I put on a stern face and just simply asked, "Sir, can I see some identification?" Thinking he'd think it was funny and we'd have a little joke between us. Yeah, not at all. His face turned t stone, and he was just like, "Are you kidding me? I will jump over this fucking bar if you don't get me a god damn drink, Victor." Which, wow. Didn't see it coming one bit. I tried to tell him I was kidding, and he really didn't mellow out about it that day or for like a year after it. Maybe he was pissed about some other stuff going on, I don't know. But he never ceased to be a prick from that point forward, at least not to me.

I know for a fact that he was a good coach though. I know because the one time that he actually gave me some coaching, which he didn't have to do, it made a pretty big impact on my career. It was about 2 years after the bar incident that was barely an incident, and I was preparing for the conference championship, pretty much the biggest meet of the year for me. And my actual coach had already left to go to the site where the meet was going on, and I had one last pseudo practice as preparation for this meet before traveling there myself. So I see coach Anthony, and for whatever reason, he wasn't being a jerk to me, and we actually joked around for a few minutes about something random, like a Will Farrell movie or something. And I turn to walk away and I think to myself, I wonder if Coach Anthony has any pointers for me that my real coach hadn't thought to say. So I turn, and I ask him.

Turns out, yes, he did. In about 2 minutes, coach Anthony gave me some advice that I had not previously thought of. I won't go into the specifics because you probably don't actually care about that level of detail, but he had an insight into one of my main events, that I had been doing for years and years, that completely changed the way that I thought about literally everything I was doing to set up my body's position and... see, there I go again. You don't care. The point is, it was a really simple thing to think about and he knew exactly how to communicate it so it would stick.

And then he said, very confidently, "Congratulations."

And I said, "Congratulations, what for?"

"For finishing in the top three at the meet." And he walked away. Just like that.

Can you guess which place I came in at the meet that weekend?

Second. I finished second at the conference championships because of 2 minutes of instruction from a coach who was otherwise a complete asshole to me every time I spoke with him. And I lost by just.... well, it was really close to me winning. Really, really close.

But I give credit to him because he deserves it. He's a hell of a coach.

But MAN, I don't like that guy.

Anyways, bye now. I'll talk to you later.

...

A centimeter. I lost at the meet by one god damn centimeter! GUH! Can you imagine if Anthony had taken a full five minutes to not be a jackass?!

Just put food in there

IS there a meaning to life?

I mean, really? Does this all mean something? Parts of it don't make sense, does the whole thing have to, either? I don't ask trying to be a downer, I'm actually asking in search of an answer.

Take the concept of utilitarianism, for example. The idea of utilitarianism is essentially that the best thing to do is that which produces the maximum good. So, the best thing to do with life, under this concept, would be to do as many good deeds, as often, for as many people or places or things as possible. But what is good? What is the most good you can do? Is it charity, helping individuals in need? Is it creating new and exciting technologies that help change and revolutionize the world and make more good things possible? Is it teaching and inspiring others to do good things on your behalf, like a benevolent pyramid scheme? Is it entertainment, scoring the most points in NBA history, getting the most likes on Instagram? Which one is good?

Or perhaps you could live by hedonism. Hedonism is basically saying that pleasure and enjoyment are the things we should strive for in life. Which is kind of a loaded bag, because some people enjoy doing charity and good works for humanity. Others... Well, I'm reminded of a quote by Joe Piscapo in the movie, "Johnny Dangerously". Joe's character said, "Well I enjoy collecting protection money, putting whores to work. I like putting bombs in peoples cars. These are a few of my favorite things." And regardless of how you feel about comical gangster roles in spoof movies, you have to admit that there are some people out there getting enjoyment from things that the rest of us do not care for. There are people who actually enjoy doing hardcore drugs and tearing up hotel rooms (that aren't rock stars from the 70's and 80's). There are people that like to streak in public and see the reaction of others as they look in disgust. There are people who enjoy anime porn, I'm just saying it's out there and it's being made for somebody because they keep making it. And yet, if hedonism is the way to go, then even people murdering because they like murder would be fulfillment of the meaning of life.

And then there is existentialism. Existentialism portrays life as inherently meaningless, and that the only reason life ends up having meaning is because of the meaning that we ourselves make it have. It states that Bill Gates, Bill Nye, Bill Clinton, Billy Baldwin, and Bill Buckner all have the same inherent meaning to their life, but that through their lives they can create meaning for themselves. And I guess that makes sense, or at least more sense that other theories have to this point. We all start at basically zero, and as we go, we can create a meaning different from other meanings of life, since we are all living different life's anyway. If we all lived the same life, perhaps it would be easier to define what the meaning of that life is, but it's very difficult to really sit down and say, "You're life's meaning was the book that you wrote, and his life's meaning was the family he raised, and her life's meaning was the facebook page she managed, and his was that strain of Herpes he spread through his college dorm room, because for each of you, that was the most impactful thing you managed in your life." Even if we could actually identify what each of us did that made the biggest difference on the planet, it still doesn't really tell all that much about the life itself, so you would have to be able to explain and explore and clarify and quantify, and here we are back to the first problem of how the hell to tell what it means in the first damn place.

There are thousands of ways to look at life and try to define and categorize and quantify it, and they all basically have their faults and drawbacks. You may be familiar with nihilism, which is more to the point that life is actually meaningless, and that killing yourself as soon as possible is preferred. Which is just an awesome way to go about your week. There are philosophies that you should live life by virtue, that you should seek to raise a family and contribute to society, that you should live simply and humbly (as in Lynyrd Skynyrd's classic, Simple Man), and there are even philosophies that you should just do whatever the hell you want because it's really not going to make any difference anyway, because human life is just a blip on the radar screen that is existence in the universe.

I like one particular approach to life that has been discussed, and it doesn't come from a philosopher. Well, not what we traditionally think about philosophers, anyway. It comes from an actor and comedian named Louis Szekely, better known as Louis C.K. And Louie is known for his sardonic commentary on everything, and most of the stuff he says is pretty bleak as far as its outlook, but I really like his take on life. It goes basically like this:

<points to mouth> "Just put food in here. That's it. Just walk around, find food and put it in here. Just do stuff so you can put food in there. Later on, when you feel it down here <points to stomach> just shit. That's all you have to do. If someone tries to stop you from putting food in there, murder them."

And I think my man Louie might be on to something. Not so much the end where he advocates murder, I think that kinda got away from him, but the concept that maybe life is less complicated than we've made it over the years here. The idea that maybe...

Yeah, I still don't know. But it doesn't mean we can't teach ourselves to look at overarching things like life differently.

Like how maybe life itself has no meaning until we attach meaning. Because that would really be better for me if every single life out there didn't really matter. Not so much for humans. But animals and insects. Really just certain types of insects. Like flies. I understand why they have to exist, but I really hate flies. If I could, I would kill flies all day, and I'd be pretty damn good at it, and I'm not even sure people would have to pay me very much to do it. I've killed flies pretty much every chance I get because I can't relax if I know that they are around. I'm not even kidding, I can't focus on anything unless I can kill or get rid of flies around me. And there is a reason for this.

The summer that I graduated from college, I was pretty much stuck at my house in Madison. It was a 4 bedroom place just south of the football stadium and it was kind of a dump but then again it was also okay for us. Well, a few things about the house. Ummm, it had no central heating, no A/C, it had 2 rooms in the basement that we're pretty sure were filled with mold, there was a 2nd floor with 3 bedrooms and a bathroom that actually trapped heat pretty well for the winter months, a 3rd floor with another bedroom and bathroom, and this yard out back that was wide open. The yard was disgusting, and connected to 4 other houses that rented from the same property company that we did, and then there was also a garage space that you could get to from this yard. So when trash accumulated in this back yard, that was still technically our backyard, it was hard to pinpoint where it came from unless you saw who put the trash there.

Well, over time, trash in that yard attracted stuff that likes trash. First there were a whole lot of ants, that took over the backyard and then moved into our kitchen.And we didn't have a dishwasher, so the dirty dishes that we had previously let pile up for a day or so were now the breeding grounds for the new Insect Hunger Games. So there was a month or so of that year that we had to make better resolve to clean dishes up. Next came the birds, who didn't so much want to get into the house but just always seemed to be fluttering around the backyard to check out whatever was on the menu.

And then came the flies.

This was into the summer months by now, when I was the only one still staying in the house full time. Everyone else had either moved out completely or was staying somewhere for the majority of the summer before coming back to move the rest of their stuff. And like I said, the second floor trapped any and all heat from the house, which made it unbearable to sleep up there. I gradually started moving all of my stuff to the living room, which one of my friends elegantly named 'Vicsville' due to the amount that it started to resemble a Hooverville from the Great Depression era. I honestly didn't mind for the time being, because I knew I just had to get through a few summer months and then I would move into my new place, a few blocks away, that at least had central heating and definitely had an A/C unit for my bedroom.

Well, I don't know how they got in to start. Probably from a window left open by someone in the house who would then have left and not had to deal with the consequences. But the important thing is, I was forced awake one night, as I tried to sleep in the living room, by the feeling of something crawling on my forehead. Which shouldn't have been happening under any circumstances, because no one else should be in the house, and even then, it would be a weird prank to put something on the forehead of a roommate forced to sleep in the living room because his bedroom was too hot.

Well, I try to swipe away at whatever it is, since it's dark and I can't see anything. And I shake it off, and try to go back to sleep, and I feel it again, this time I also hear a buzzing next to my ear, so I recognize that it's a fly. And I try to shoo it away again. But it keeps coming back, over and over again. And this goes on for like an hour. And finally I get to sleep, and wake up in the morning, and can't find the fly. So whatever, I go about my day, hang out at a friend's house, and come home to sleep again, and the same process starts over. Well, this time, I decide to try to find the fly and get rid of it, so I flick the lights on. And the living room has like 6 or 7 flies just buzzing and circling around everywhere, it made my skin crawl for a moment.

Well, I was energized at that moment, and decided to handle this situation all at once. I spent the next 2 hours going room to room, swatting and swiping at every fly I could find. I actually swung so hard, I busted part of a window in the dining room, which I had to subsequently tape back up to prevent the same problem from occurring more. Anyway, I got all the flies that night, but each night there would be more that found a way inside the house, and I wouldn't be able to go to sleep until I hunted them down. For the next 2 months, until I moved, that was my basic routine at night. It got to the point where, while I was living in that house, I didn't sleep the same unless I had hunted flies. And ever since, I've had the same reaction to any flies or spiders or bugs found where I live. They. Must. Be. Dealt. With.

So yeah, if I could, I would be a professional fly hunter. I would do that as a job if it were viable, just because of how much I believe in it. But as far as I know, that's not a thing. So I'm gonna keep trying to figure it out, or something close to it. And while I do, I'm gonna keep putting food in there. And shitting. And murdering people that try to stop me from putting food in the hole in my face. That's still cool, right?

Insult + Injury

You can always make a bad situation worse.

I'm not positive that you can always make the situation that you're in better, but I do think you can always make something worse than what it is. I sometimes find myself wondering how I could make a situation go terribly wrong, right while I'm sitting there, supposed to be listening to someone else. I'll be at a gas station or something, waiting in line, and wondering what the clerk would do if I just slapped him in the face when he told me the total for my chips. Or what the elderly woman in the Honda Civic next to me would do if I just rammed her for no reason as we both merged onto the highway. What would my boss do if I threw a battery through his office window while he was watching? I mean, he probably should fire someone for that, but he might be so confused that he just talks to me about it for an hour and then lets it go. I don't know, I usually don't do the things I'm imagining like this, but I imagine these things quite often.

I wrote a post a while ago about giving into the random impulses that come about for no reason, and this is kind of like that. But not quite. This is more about taking a bad scenario and going for broke on making it worse, since you're already 'in it' and you don;t lose anything by being that much more of a jackass.

Back in middle school, I was involved in both sports and marching band. I mean, marching band is kind of a stretch, we really didn't have that much marching that we did. High school had a marching band, but middle school band did a single parade around Christmas and played a few pep rallies, and that was basically it. But the combination of the two was rarely convenient to accomplish side by side, because most kids were not doing sports and music at our school. In fact, with one or two possible exceptions in the choir program, I may have actually been the only one. Not even trying to brag, I don't think anyone else went through the sheer headache that was trying to coordinate between the two sets of schedules, practices, and expectations. And it was fun, I guess, but mostly it just kind of sucked while you were doing it, because you couldn't enjoy anything right then and there, you had one thing to leave and another thing to join, it was a lot of keep track of. Just ask my parents.

My mom, to her eternal credit, was always so positive about these experiences. However she made stuff at her job work around my stuff, my little sister's convoluted schedule and whatever the hell my brother was doing, she just had a smile and a few jokes for any situation we faced. My dad... well, that's the thing about my dad. He'll be right there with us and support and cheer for us and all, but he will also point out a ridiculous situation. Usually in hilarious fashion. For example:

I once had a track meet take place at one school at the exact same time that a band concert was taking place about a half a mile away at the local high school. Now, conventional wisdom would say, okay, which one are you going to. But no, that's not how the Dupuy's do it. I ran at the track meet, did 3 of my 5 events, and then started warming up on saxophone in the parking lot just before the 4x100 relay. I then proceeded to run the relay, run to the car in track spikes, and then run across an open field to get to the performance hall where my band was just about to go onto the stage for the recorded performance (audio recording, not video. But still...)

One of my friends, who we'll call Clay for this post, gave me a funny look when I sat next to him in my track uniform and skimpy running shorts. I just whispered to him, out of breath but quietly, "Not a word. Not one word from you." He did his best not to laugh. But I composed myself, despite the fact that the performance hall was absolutely freezing, and played a decent part for the circumstances. I then packed my saxophone back up and ran back to finish my last race, which didn't go that well, but I got through it. And I was happy with the overall experience. Because I took a not great situation and made the best of it. Because that's what you're supposed to do in those situations.

Or you can do the kind of thing I did a few weeks before that.

It was the end of the basketball season, and I was pissed off at how I had played in the last game, which at the time I thought might be my last game in organized basketball, period. Not just because it was the end of the season, but I didn't know if I was going to be good enough to play in high school, and like I said, I was pissed at how I played. I sucked that night. And I had a concert that I was going to be just in time for at best, but probably late for, which also has always pissed me off. I hate being late, even if it's my fault. So I'm pissed off, and I'm in the car with my mom, God bless her as always, and she's trying to tell me how well I played, and trying to get me to eat some Sonic while changing into my band uniform but not spill, and get over the game because at least we won and I played good in certain parts, blah blah bladdy blah. So I'm eating and changing and stewing, and we're absolutely flying down the road to try to get to this concert on time.

Now, the concert is going on at a different high school than the first one I mentioned, and it's farther away from where we were coming from. What I had planned is that my band director would brig my instrument from our school to the performance, since there were a lot of other equipment that needed to be transported over. So when I got to the high school, all I had to do was locate where they had placed my instrument, and put it together to start warming up. Well, I went through all the trouble of hightailing it from half an hour away, tired and pissed off, and they could not locate my god damn instrument when I got there. So I went from being pissed off to what I considered was enraged, even though it probably was just smidge more annoyed than before. I mean, I was a middle schooler at a band concert performance, how much damage could I really have done?

Well, just hang on there.

So I hd been looking for my instrument for a good 20 minutes, and my band is warming up and getting ready to go out onto the stage, and I just can't handle it anymore, so I storm into the hall where the band is warming up right as they stop playing and are listening to the guy conducting. It would turn out later that the guy conducting was not our band director, but the director at that high school. He had literally just told them about one of the marimbas near the back, where the percussionists were standing (Marimba is a big ass xylophone that's wooden and sounds slightly different, for those of you about to open another tab to google it) And this particular marimba was from Africa, and was very special, very expensive, and was made of special wood that was sensitive to the oils in our hands, and the guy specifically told everyone not to touch this particular equipment. Like, you can touch any other instruments, but please not this one.

Enter Victor in a pissy mood.

I storm in, determined to prove a point as I walk around the side of the room where the percussion section is. And I swear, I didn't actually mean to touch anything. I just meant to walk in, make some gesture in the air, and then tall the guy that I could not find my instrument and that he needed to help me fix it. I had this image in my head of flinging my hand through the air, almost like I was throwing something away. That's all I meant to do, no real harm done. Well...I aimed a little low, and ran my hand down the exotic African marimba, and made loud de-chromatic sound in front of everyone. And I played it off okay, like I'd meant to do that, but inside my head I was already like, "Oops, ok, I know I screwed up already, please just don't look back here. Nobody look over here.."

And the band director stops in mid sentence, storms over to me, almost knocking kids over in the way, and asks me what the matter is. And I felt even more ridiculous trying to keep a straight face and complain that my tenor saxophone could not be located. And he very quickly offers me another saxophone for the performance, and I of course had no real reason to refuse, and after that there was nothing I could complain about, so I had to just sit there and look like a moron while this guy wipes off the sections of the marimba and literally 15 different kids approach me to explain how funny it was to watch that entire thing unfold. That was the extra insult to the injury that I had apparently inflicted on this special instrument. So yeah, I got crap about that one for a long time.

My band director never spoke to me about it, but I heard him apologizing over and over to that high school director after we finished playing. After the concert, they found my saxophone under a marimba on stage. I don't think it was under the same marimba, and frankly it was bad enough without any more symmetry or irony. But it serves as a reminder: you can always make it worse.

It's Chess, It Ain't Checkers

There’s a saying that gets more and more true over time: Those that don’t know their history are doomed to repeat it.

And this exists in basically all walks of life. Business, music, sports, politics, whatever you’re doing. Whatever you’re studying, or trying to figure out, or just trying to enjoy. There are good ways of doing things and there are not so good ways of doing those same things, and when you start trying something out for the first couple of times, rarely if ever have you already figured out the good ways to go about it. Which means we learn. We learn from ourselves and our own experiences, we learn from those around us, we learn from the world and animals and plants and Chinese proverbs and newspaper horoscopes and Snapple can tops and South Park. Stuff happens, we watch it or we listen to it or hear about it, but we gain perspective and we internalize it and hopefully, we can take note of what does and does not work out so well.

The way I see it, we know what we know from one of two ways: intelligence and wisdom.

There's only a few different ways to learn stuff in the world. From the time that we're born, we have to constantly adapt and change and develop our understanding the scope of what we remember, what we can do, and how we learn things going forward. It isn't as simple as, "Okay, I know everything I need to know, stop teaching me stuff now." Like, you never reach that point in life, and yet there will be several times in a person's early life, and probably the middle life, and probably near the end somewhere, that they just sit down and say that they know everything that they need to, and they don't want to hear another damn thing from anyone about what they don't know.

I'm absolutely positive that everyone reaches this stage at least once in their childhood or adolescence. If you're a kid, you think you know shit, and you almost certainly don't. We've all been there, and none of us wanted to hear it at the time we were there. And if you get old enough, I think your mind just literally shuts off, and you stop caring what you don't know because, you're old, how much could you really be in charge of anymore anyway? And if you get old enough, that’s your right to disregard planet earth past the date that you choose to go by. But for the rest of us, there’s intelligence, and there’s wisdom.

So intelligence. The smart way of doing things. The recommended path. This comes from reading the directions. From listening to others. From watching how something is done and trying to emulate it. This is the type of smarts that comes from, well, basically from being smart about things. Intelligence comes from studying for the test you are about to take. From building upon knowledge that has already been acquired. Largely, this involves observation and using patience, and accepting that you don't know about something and you would instead like to learn from another person. Here's what intelligence sounds like: Don't jump off that ledge! Scientific studies have shown that falling from that height into that creek will almost certainly break both of your legs and possibly knock you unconscious. Don't do it, that's a terrible idea. Take those stairs, or the ladder, or fling a rope down. Just be careful, don’t do anything you’re going to regret later.

Wisdom? Nah, wisdom comes from experience. It comes from eliminating the bad choices in life by trying them first, although not approaching it quite like that. Wisdom comes from doing things and learning firsthand why we don't do things certain ways. From hearing others but not really listening to what they say. From disregarding directions. From seeing how others do something but thinking, what if I switch this up and try this over here instead? And sometimes it works out, and it is innovative because you push past an idea that had limited others. And sometimes you do things that are really dumb, or are not seen as dumb at the time but you discover during the process why no one does it the way that you did. Wisdom sounds like this: Don't jump off that ledge! Johnny Legs jumped off that ledge two and a half years ago. Oh, he hit the water and basically got folded in half. It was brutal, blood everywhere, he was in a coma for a month, and he's been in that wheelchair ever since. You wanna end up like Johnny Legs? Get people to help you get bread from the upper shelves at the supermarket, have to use the ramp to get in and out of the strip club? Then by all means, go for it, jump for it kid. We'll watch, see how it goes.

That’s why any time I see something dumb about to happen, I can rationalize it that, “Well, at least some wisdom is on its way.” And wisdom does not come quickly. It comes with time, and pain, and usually a bunch of shit that will seem pretty obvious in retrospect. But just because you already knew something doesn't mean that you can't gain a valuable lesson from hearing it again under different circumstances. Wisdom, it's a drawn out process, like a chess match. And also like a chess match, there are lots of variations on how things can go, and stuff you could have done, and stuff that could have gone different based on what you could have done. So you start off and you suck at it, and you get your ass kicked a bunch, and then you start to do a little better every time. 

At my apartment in downtown Madison a few years ago, we had mice. Plural. We thought it was just one mouse that was really crafty at avoiding capture, but it turned out to be a few of them. This happened the 2^nd year that we lived there, an entire year of 4 guys that were pretty messy and threw more parties than they should have, didn’t always pick up after ourselves, and an old rickety apartment that may have already have had rodents living in it anyway. And I’m not gonna sit here and blame anyone specifically for why our apartment was quite as messy as it was, but there was much discussion of why the bathroom always had clothes in it and why the kitchen never got completely clean. It was discussed.

Anyway, one night we were just sitting in the living room, watching the Bucks play on TV, and one of the roommates, we’ll call him Chad for these purposes, Chad randomly jumps up and starts yelling and pointing to the ground over by the garbage. And it’s really out of nowhere and startling, so it was hard to tell what he was even saying at first, but finally I could understand “Meece!” which is Chad’s way of saying that he had seen a mouse. Now, it was dark, and we had all had a few beers, and I think we were also willing to ignore this for the time, so we all just told Chad that he was probably just high. Which, he could have been that too. And we didn’t see a mouse again that night. But a few nights later, there was another sighting in the same spot. Then a week later, I saw a blur shoot past in the same spot. So it wasn’t really something to ignore anymore, so we tried to decide what to do about it, rather than decide whether we had to do anything at all.

Now, there are obviously many ways to try to catch things that are hiding in your house. Traps, glue, lures, borrow someone’s cat, bunch of ways. But for god knows why, our first plan was to keep our household bat (like baseball bat) near the kitchen so that upon the next sighting, someone could grab it and bash the rodent to death on sight. Please take a moment to imagine all the ways that this could fail. Take a few moments, I’ll wait.

Okay, good. Nothing ridiculous happened from that approach, but I almost wish it had. I almost wish we had a story of one of us desperately swinging at a fleeing mouse and breaking the tv open. But no, nothing like that. It just wasn’t a good set up in general, because usually by the time we saw that the mouse was there, it was already too late to do anything about it that time. So, the first plan was not a good one. Lesson learned.

Next, we tried to set up a mousetrap with a little piece of cheese in the same corner that the mouse would pass through. We set it up, let it sit for a day or so, and we heard a THWAT come from the corner. But the mouse would never be there, no matter how many times we tried this. Nor would the cheese left as the decoy. For whatever reason, the trap was too sensitive or the mouse was too experienced or maybe this invention never actually works, because I’ve never seen or heard of any mousetrap actually catching one of these damn things myself. But whatever, maybe we had a shitty mousetrap, lesson learned.

Next we tried malt-o-meal. This I’ve seen work because we had a mouse in our garage at home when I was a kid. You give the mice something to eat that will make their stomach expand, to the point that the mouse basically overbloats and can’t move anymore, then it just keels over and dies. So we pour this food in the already dirty corners of our kitchen and wait. And wait, and wait. And nothing. Or at least we think nothing. Looking back, it’s possible that there were a tone of other mice that met their end because of this, I can’t be sure. But because we never saw those results, I still assume that it didn’t work. Maybe mice don’t eat malt-o-meal anymore. I know humans basically don’t. It took forever just to find malt-o-meal in the first place, so screw that. Lesson learned.

Finally, another roommate, who will be Anthony for this purpose, comes back with a glue trap, and that’s what finally got results. One morning we awoke to find this poor bastard just careened face down on the trap, not even breathing anymore. Did we assume it was the only one at the time? Of course. Did we end up using glue traps several more times in that corner? You bet. Is that the end of the story? Hell no.

The end finally came one night when I heard a shriek come from across the hall where my bedroom was. It wasn’t that late, but I had mostly chilled out for the night when the noise came. The room belonged to, well, we’ll call him Flea. Partially because his room was the dirtiest and partially because I’m using names of Red Hot Chili Peppers for aliases here. So Flea’s girlfriend at the time, she runs out of the room, freaking out, and after a bit of discussion, she reveals that she had seen yet another mouse and was disgusted. Well, we’re all a bit pissed off because we were certain that we had already gotten the last damn rat or mouse or whatever the hell. But we determine that we’ll take him down, right here and now, just to be done with it. Like it was personal now, like this mouse had invaded Flea’s bedroom, so any of us could be next if we let this go unchecked. Although again, filthy room, if I’m being honest here. So Anthony, Flea, and myself ran in the room and shut the door. Chad stayed in the hallway.

We started moving stuff around, trying to force the mouse out to run around, and then we laid a glue trap near a narrow space we thought we could force him to go. Then we started making noise and rummaging stuff around trying to provoke a reaction. Suddenly, out of a small pile of socks, the mouse darted forward, which shocked me enough to kind of jump up onto Anthony’s shoulders. I wasn’t scared, mind you, but startled enough to lose my composure for a second. But it didn’t quite work, the mouse went around the bed, so we tried it again, and he shot back around to the book case, and back, and forth, for like an hour. But then we finally get things moved around enough, and we got it to go the right way out of the closet and then around the TV and BAM, we got him on the trap!

We were so jacked that we had finally caught this little bastard, I and my roommates started exclaiming quotes from Alonzo from Training Day. I yelled out, “The shit’s chess, it ain’t checkers!” And then Anthony yelled out “You protect the sheep by killing the motha-fuckin’ wolf!” and then I think Chad yelled out from the hallway, “It’s not what you know, it’s what you can prove!” Which really didn’t go along with what had happened, but it started us going around trying to quote pretty much everything Denzel Washington said in that movie. And then we decided to get drunk and watch the full movie. Oh, and we bashed the mouse’s head in and threw him in the trash, because screw that mouse and all of his free-loading friends.

Speaking of Training Day, did you know they’re trying to make that into a TV show? And that Denzel WON’T be involved? How could that possibly work? And unless the whole series is one long day, why even call it Training Day?

Sounds like some fresh wisdom on its way. Bye now.

M.A.G.A.

These four letters
I have a bone to pick with these four letters
An itch that I must scratch, a conversation I must have
A transgression I cannot simply condone
For I am not in a zone, I am not in a place
I am not in a club that allows me to make these four letters my own
I have tried to understand why, and I figure maybe its
Members Are Getting Atonement

(You see what I did there?)

This subject has given me much to ponder
Much to think on for days as I let a mind like mine wander
I mean, the idea that greatness is returning
Is most disconserting
It implies that greatness was present and then left
Or it was stolen, or it was squandered
When did this occur, exactly?
Maybe A General Assertion will help clear things up

And you may say this is ridiculous and monotonous, since
Making Acronyms Gets Annoying
But the struggle is continuous
And the amount of Material Attained, Gathered, Arranged
And presented for this purpose is generous
For we must come to terms, all of us types of individuals
Either interracial, impartial, or indigenous

Mentally Aware Generations Agree
That this issue that presents us is not with any them, but with we
We as a whole must open our eyes to see
Even if what we see is that
Maybe Anarchy Generates Apathy
And the current catastrophe is exactly what follows
Calamity and dastardly disaster rapidly

Yeah, I got a bone to pick with these four letters
I have an axe to grind
Picture Me, A Grinded Axe, and these four letters
As I fight the urge to sit back and cuss
As I try to discuss the feeling of disgust
Which has been thrust upon all of us
In a way that may in time
Require that Maps And Globes Adjust

Our country just brought to power one of the type of men
Who blends division and conquering with favors for friends
And has established a quick habit to condescend, with
Meaningless Apologies, Ghastly Agendas

And Making Aggression Gradually Acceptable
While playing innocent in the end
A man for whom it was a challenge
To find Musicians Actually Giving Acceptance
At his inauguration
A man who,
Although he may suspend the idea, let's not pretend

That we didn't just inaugurate someone who just might
Mandate A Genocide Accidentally

This is someone that has spent his last two months
Meeting And Greeting Assistants
To those that will help dispel the resistance
Of insistence that those who move up in this way
Be held accountable in this or in any instance
Of campaign trail promises that now risk a hint of inconsistent litmus when
Meanwhile, Accountability Grow Ambiguous
As we bear witness

And plenty out there have been
Moping, Adamantly Grieving Autumn
Others are just nodding and smiling
Going along with the program being rolled out
Merrily Agreeing, Gaining Amnesty
Or so they think, and so they plan
We can sit here and
Make A Great Amount of excuses
Look for cause and effect of the useless
Find a seed to plant from the fruitless
Or perhaps we can even give this new route a try
Make A Genuine Attempt to ignore
The previewed, viewed, and reviewed abuses
Getting you to feel like you need a drink of gin and juices
Until you find yourself
Meeting Alcoholics, Generally Anonymously
Just to reduce it

We've paved the way to go backwards
If you can believe that
A friendly place for all of the righteous
Moderately Anti-Gay Activists
In favor of
Making Angry Generals Ambassadors
That support
Manly Alpha-Guy Armies
That make a priority of
Marking And Grabbing Aliens

Making All Guns Available
And
Making Abortions Generally Antiquated

All coming from a man
That seems to think that things like
The Affordable Care Act, environmental protections
Immigration of Muslims, trans-Pacific trade
And a committed relationship in NATO
Could all be looked back upon one day as
Many Already Gone Anecdotes

I've also seen neophyte zealots from the far right
With eyes lighting up bright when they see signs of
The kind of sights that
Make Aryans Gain Appetite

But lest we forget how many of us have come together

In ways that cannot simply become undone in this country

For the simple fact that we have

Melted And Gelled Anyways
All of us here, together, steadily ready
Different walks of life, different minds
Different skin tones, and different sports teams to cheer for
All of us out here

Medics, Advertisers, Gardeners, Accountants
Meat-packers, Architects, Garbagemen, Archaeologists
Michiganders, Arizonians, Georgians, Alaskans
Those of us that used to be
Mexicans, Angolans, Germans, Australians
Macedonians, Armenians, Ghanaians, Azerbaijanis
Those of us that are still
Muslims, Agnostics, Generalists, Atheists
Even the less excusable of us
Misogynists, Assholes, Gold-diggers, And people that just don't even care anymore
That aren't even reading this because nothing changes with these 4 letters
These four words
These four years...

But here we are
Maintaining A Giant Assimilation
Of other ideas, philosophies, and ways of life
And this one gets in, just as right
This is us, all of us
Mixing And Getting Along
Being who we are when we are us, which usually results in
Making All Get-togethers Awkward
We will get through this
Even if we have to look at the next 4 years as
Missing A Government Already

But what I still can't get past are these 4 letters
Lined up like some creed of pride
Claiming to bridge gaps, when perhaps
All it ever did was divide
Because at the end of the day
The thing I fear that you neglect to say
Is Make America Great Again means
My America Goes Away