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

Freeze

Just. Stop right now.

Please. Just stop everything.

The volume needs to come down, needs to bleed

At exceedingly increasing speed towards its needs

(Wait, scratch that, I meant knees)

Better yet, it needs to freeze

So just freeze

Freeze out the general hum

The hum of the humdrum and the scum and the dumb-dumbs

The ones that bumble and fumble and stumble so humble as they tumble

Inwards, outwards and under the tundra like thunder, blunder after blunder

It’s no wonder that there always remains some other out there

Uncovered, unsmothered, unlov...ered

Scratch that last one

Freeze it out

Freeze out the rush

The undercurrent mush that will not, cannot, shall not just… just shush

The engines in cars, the battery bars,

The cellular, elevator, tele-refrigerator

Energizer enervator relegater

The constant ticking or clicking

That won’t stop picking and keeps on sticking

By the prickling and texting of your thumbs

Everything noisy and vexing, this way comes

And now it’s going out

Freeze it out

Freeze out the walkers and squawkers and knock-knocks,

Cock blockers, beat boxers, punk rockers

All out now

The jockers and boxers and the head-blocks (or something like that) alike

The ones with mop tops or the goldie locks, none of whom know how to stop the

Talk-ta-talk-talk-ta-talk

Per tutte le parole, for all the words, para toda las palabras

Non si dice nulla, nothing is said, no se dice nada

They say nothing and mean even less

The vixens, the fix ems, politicians, smitten and slitherin’

They all stay hidden

Their words stay unwritten, stay fixed on the heads of the pens

Before the ink ever spreads itself thin

But their blabber gets in

Let them never begin

House-leavers and couch-weavers and mouth breathers

Ugh, the mouth breathers!

I mean for god sake, blow your fucking nose!

But that’s not where I wanted to go, so...

Freeze out the silly little gimmicks and limericks and outer inner bits

Among all of the fringes and limits

The frames in space and time within this mind

That tick-tick-tick even when the clock will not wind

The simple sides of the climb that no one else could possibly find

So they stay confined as mine

The intricate plots and photo shops of over-the shoulder shots

The who’s-got-what-from-whiches and witches and switches from each slot

All stored neatly in one spot

The notes and quotes from each boat across each moat that hope to float

The faces in shapes and sizes and spaces

That drapes and rises and chases

All through the escapes and demises and disgraces

All through our scrapes and surprises and faces...

...wait…

What am I even doing right now?

I’m making more noise to describe the noise that I’m trying to escape

Ok, screw it, screw everything I just put down on the plate

I need to escape the… well, I guess the escape

Just let it take flight

And let it have weight

And let it be free

Just let it freeze

And I’ll pay the fee, but let me be free

And let me be me

Just stop everything in one, two,

Two and a half

And three quarters

And three

...ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...

I can feel it like a shiver

Like it will almost ring

As the the sound gets drowned out and found out

And not a word of mouth can sing

Not a soul can now bring me back to down from this mountain top

To which I am now the king

No longer an heir, now up in the clear, up into the air where

I

Can’t

Hear

A

Thing

The mouths are moving, but the waves never reach

Like enemies at the gate that never quite breach

They crash and claw at me

But no sand moves from this beach

No puedo oír nada.

The phone rings and no one reaches

No clicks and pings, no dial tone increases

No whispering, no gossiping, no snitching, no speeches

I feel the weight melt away as the pressure releases

Non posso sentire una cosa.

It’s almost like it’s deafening, the weight of not knowing what’s at stake

Not feeling what it takes to be the great break in this muted state

I’m feeling at peace, and I’m feeling awake

It’s like from up here, I don’t just hear things differently, I know them differently

I don’t just hear the peace and quiet, but I feel at peace in quiet

I don’t just hear the faint wind around, I rise and fall with it

I don’t just hear myself breathing, I know that I’m breathing

All in a way that I never knew that I never knew

And never dreamed I'd wanted to

So please

Please just keep it all away today

Just let it freeze

I’ll pay the fee, but let me be free

And let me be me

Driving Them Nikes

Luxury is relative.

I know I could start with something more general, like acknowledge that I haven't posted anything in a few months or talk about stuff I've been doing. But...meh.

Luxury is relative.

Take this phone I used to have. I think it was a Nokia. It got terrible reception, it had a really annoying tone when it rang, and the buttons didn't consistently work on it after the first year. I remember it didn't always turn off when I wanted it to, so I got it taken in class a few times. And the battery was screwed in, so it wasn't like I could just pull the battery pod out like you could with some of the older phones. It was a crappy phone, but it was my first phone and I was in middle school and really didn't even need a phone, so it was awesome. It was the early 2000's, so kids really didn't need phones in the first place, and I figured out at one point I could program my own ringtones, so I actually had a lot of fun doing that. The phone was not great, but it was far and above what I actually needed, so it was luxury to me.Now, that same phone today would be an abomination. It would be archaic to what phones can do now. I would constantly be complaining about it, and showing people how thick it was and pretending to try to give it away so I could get a new one. But, honestly, it would still probably be just fine as a phone. It would still make calls, it would still text, it would...no, that's about it. It would do the things that a cell phone is actually supposed to do, before we decided everyone needed to walk around with super computers in their back pockets. I think it was capable of taking pictures, but not sending them effectively, so yeah, calls and texts.

So having a phone was cool. Having a crappy phone kept things in perspective. If I just didn't have a phone, I doubt I would have really known the difference, but since I know the difference, I do my best to see the positives. It was a luxury, just like it pretty much is today, but I don't think I could ever just go back to not having a smart phone at all times. Do you think you could just go back? I don't. I don't even know for sure who's still reading this, but I know you're probably never cutting social media back out of your life now. It's not a phase, it's not something you're just trying out. This is who you are now, so get past it.

Generally speaking, I think most people take luxury in their life for granted. It’s human nature, whatever you have you end up expecting to be there, rather than being thankful that it’s there. And literally everybody is guilty of it in one way or another. I don’t care who you are. The rich kid that expects his breakfast to be ready for him every morning on a tray. The young business woman who cannot function without her cup of coffee. The old man that reads the newspaper every morning, no matter what. The little things are automatic. And for that matter, so are the big ones. The prisoner who expects to get fed every day in prison. I mean, what if one day, they just decided, “Dude, screw you, you robbed a bank. You don’t get food this week. Deal with it.” Or the homeless guy who suddenly is not even allowed to drink water from the public water fountain.

I mean, they had their water tainted in Flint, Michigan last year. And it took way longer than it should have to even get attention on it, and then again, I’m not positive that the problem has been fully dealt with even now. Of course, this is a tragedy and will probably have long reaching consequences, but at the same time, it seems unreal. It seems like the exact kind of thing that could not happen anymore in a country like ours, because someone would stop it or it would get enough attention that surely they would fix it right away. And yet, I’m positive that the minute I stopped seeing news stories about Flint, it was an assumption made in my mind (that I later corrected) that this problem was solved and I didn’t need to worry about it, and that it could never happen to me where I live. We take things like this for granted too, and they're the things that allow us to survive. What if someone really decided that you were not entitled to living, just ‘cause? Just walked up to you and took your means for continuing life and thought nothing of it? It would make you realize a whole host of things that really don't mean a damn thing, wouldn't it? And a few of you may even feel tempted to make a Facebook or snapchat post as your last act on this planet just to let people know how upset you were about it. At least a twitter update with some emoticons, because who doesn't love emoticons, right? Ughhh.

I know I’ve gotten materialistic to a degree. I don’t need my phone to have all the apps and shit on it that it does, but I do NEED my phone. What if I need to know what temperature it is in Tokyo? What if the Packers trade someone and no one near me tells me right away? Am I supposed to just wait until the news? What if I lose track of how many steps I took in a given week? Not that I ever cared about my steps before, but if I inexplicably need to review my activity, how else will I be able to answer the questions that matter? What will I do?

Or my car. There’s a great example. My car is a 2002 Ford Taurus, a shitload of miles on it (that’s the actual reading on the odometer) not great underneath the hood but decent enough that I get by, but guess what, I need that damn car. I mean, what if I’m somewhere that I don’t want to be? What if I can’t drive away from the place I don’t like? That sounds awful. I'm glad I have a car. I can control the climate in it, I can use my stereo to drown out the noises that occur outside of my car. Having a car is a good thing. And you know what, I've had worse cars than my current car that make my current car seem like even more of a luxury than it already is.

My first car was a 1989 Toyota Corolla. It’s color was piece-of-shit white. Washing it never helped. It never actually passed inspection at the car garage I had it registered at, but the guy just felt sorry for me that THIS was how much my parents valued my transportation. The parking brake didn’t stop anything, just made a really annoying sound that made me stop to see what was the matter, what I possibly could have done to make the car yell out in such pain. We took it to a mechanic once to see what it would cost to get it updated, and the guy said he couldn't from a moral standpoint. He said there was so much wrong with it, he didn't want to take our money for any one thing and that paying all of it wouldn't be worth it for a car that sucked that much.

The mechanic actually offered to drive it out back and put it down like Old Yeller for us. He said he’d do it for free.

Thing is, for the last year of high school, it was pretty much exactly what I needed it to be. It got me to and from school and track practice, eventually. It was decent on gas, considering at times there was about as much motor oil burning as gasoline. Even though the driver side rear-view mirror always fell out, it was conspicuous enough that other drivers just kind of got the hell out of the way, on instinct. I never got a speeding ticket because I couldn’t speed. The car topped out at a majestic 44 mph, during which the car sputtered like it was maxing out on bench press. Once I left the keys in it for a whole weekend by accident. I’m pretty sure someone stole it and then brought it back. There was more gas in it on Monday.

But when I would complain about it, my track coach put it in great perspective. He said, “You know what I drove when I was in high school? I drove these Nike’s.”

Well played, Coach Harris. Well played.

The Corolla was not even the shitiest car I ever had either. It was beaten out years later by a Lincoln Towncar that lasted around a month, but that’s another story.

Eh, screw it, I’ll tell you now.

And it’s not really even a story. I wanted a car around age 25 because I was sick of walking everywhere. And I found a shitty car that I thought was bad. Like bad meaning good. Bad like Michael Jackson meant it. This Lincoln Towncar had a V8 in it. It had all original Lincoln tires and rims. It also had the front and back seats torn up, the check engine light literally always was on (probably not by accident) the windshield had a crack in it just low enough that it was legal to drive, and the steering wheel was beat up. This car was a death machine, I was sure it would end up killing me. It just so happened that the first month of having it, I didn’t try to drive it anywhere besides home and work, which was right down the street, or around town in small trips like the grocery store or a concert or two. Also, the radio was busted and the speakers were blown out. So I couldn’t even enjoy riding in this car while I was unsure if I was going to survive. But I had not had a car for several years and wanted to be able to get back and forth around the city if I had things going on and didn’t want to wait for the bus to pick me up.

Anyway, finally, I tried to get it out on the highway to see my girlfriend that lived a few hours away, and it took me about 25 miles out of town before dying for good. The radiator was leaking the whole time and finally blew at the distance where no one could just come and pick me up. Axel, a friend of mine (at least we'll call him Axel here) finally got out there about 2 hours later, after I had been towed to a nearby exit from where I said I was with no reception. It was just perfect. Not to mention my girlfriend was relentless in how I never should have purchased the fucking car in the first place. And being stranded far from home (or should I say far enough from home) puts a lot of things in perspective. One of which is the concept of how much we really do have to change our perception when we think of crappy ways to get around. The crappiest, after all, is the way that doesn't actually get you anywhere.I mean, the car straight up failed at the task it needed to accomplish. If I had tried to ride a bike or hitchhike or even just straight up walk there, I would have gotten there faster. It would have taken a long ass time, but I would have gotten there, as opposed to just not ever reaching there with ol’ Wilbur. Yep, I named the Lincoln Wilbur.

So my thinking in all of this, I didn’t need the nicest car for what I was doing at any given point. I actually think it was better to have a car that I could just kind of run into the ground. The Corolla had set expectations low enough that I knew not to do anything stupid with it in the first place, it didn’t even pretend to be capable of traveling to a distant city. And obviously, when I got a new car, I wanted to have it better than the car that I had been used to that was sufficient for high school. The point is, there’s nothing wrong with taking steps forward, as long as you appreciate those steps forward. One of the best ways to appreciate what you’re given is to start out with something humble and have to aspire and yearn for better.

And always remember: No matter what you're driving, there's someone watching you drive it while all they can do is keep driving them Nikes.