Nummuli Adrogare Divinum

Today, when I logged into WordPress, I saw on the home page a silly poll about removing “In God We Trust” from American money.  The post was listed as a Hawt or Top Post, or whatever they call those featured blogs for the day.  The post was silly in he first place, but the many comments left in response were truly an interesting cross-section of people.  There were the typical morons who don’t think through their words before they post a comment even when they do have a good point, and there were well worded, grammatically correct, intelligent responses in both directions of opinion on the matter.

Of course, the man who posted the poll, had it on a page called “Proud Atheists.” I’m not sure if this is just his own little page he likes to make sound like a large community, or if it truly is some cadre of people who get angry about anything to do with religion.  Everything on the blog is posted by the one man who presented the poll, so I am leaning toward the first possibility.

It doesn’t matter, I guess, but what does is the many rebuttals the poster, Mark, left in the comments section to other readers’ opinions.  After reading his rebuttals, I realized why he made a poll post instead of well thought out textual content voicing his thoughts with some literary quality.  What cemented my belief that he’s less than credible was when I clicked on the photo on his page.  It took me to a Photobucket account where his user name is “Proud_Democratt” and that is the exact spelling.  Just gotta wonder about someone who misspells one of the primary words he labels himself with.  No big deal, just an observation.

Though I don’t want to give him or his goofy poll any more viewership than it deserves, I have put in links above to the poster, and his contribution to the January 5th edition of Proud Atheists.

Also, as many of you who know even a little about me, I can’t ever keep myself from jumping into controversial discussions.  So, I left a comment in response to all the other comments, and more specifically to Mark the Atheist and his rebuttals to all these comments.  My statement is still dwindling in the purgatory of moderation, and will likely be unapproved soon, so no one will get to read the opinions against little Marky.  He has approved some stuff that was not in line with his propaganda, but I’m sure there were more omitted than allowed.  We shall see.

Anyway, I have my comment here in case he chickens out on approving it.

Says me to him:

***

‘Mark,

I first want to say, I have nothing against you, or any atheist. I do not cling to any religion, but I always think, consider, and wonder about that which I could never understand or prove either way. I had to comment, though, on your poll, and more pointedly on the many replies it brought – namely your own which said, “money rules [ ] otherwise religion would not be so popular.”

I want you to go to the homeless shelters, and the soup kitchens, and the park benches acting as beds for too many people these days – then tell me “money rules.” Most of those people are quite religious regardless of their money circumstances.

I’ve been homeless. I did it by choice to be there for a friend who was down and out. Those several months proved to me that I didn’t need to be surrounded by all my wonderful furniture and high end electronics and MONEY. Money does not rule.

God or gods do not rule either. Whether any of them exist or not, it doesn’t matter what is on a dollar bill (which is nothing but a representation of value and of no intrinsic value). It all comes down to the concept that man rules his own life – and that is the only thing he has power over.

So, Mark, you and your little club will not change the markings on currency. It is not up to you, me, or any other single man or woman, but only up to those who control the printing plates. Those people answer only to Congressional Acts that regard to the printing of currency, and/or whatever markings and phraseology shall or shall not appear on said currencies.

If you’re so determined to wage a war against God or gods, then you’re: A.) Fighting battles with nothing, according to your belief, and B.) You will need a vast majority despite your refusal to acknowledge that majority is how things are still done in this country. The masses called for this motto one hundred and thirty six years ago, and the masses will be the only catalysts of its removal or alteration.

If you win your war against an intangible enemy, good on ya. But, remember that if atheism rules the land and changes everything to do with religion – you’ll have to go to work on Sundays, you’ll lose all those holiday breaks and the holiday pay that comes with, and many more things you reap a large benefit from – which came from religion.

In the end, I think I would have to vote on your empty poll in favor of keeping the motto on there. It happens to be the officially mandated national motto since July 30, 1956, so this is national law as well as tradition. Before this, the phrase itself has been on various forms of our currency since the Act of Congress of April 22, 1864. If you don’t want to honor any God, then don’t, but it is just un-American to turn your back on national history. If that is unimportant to you, and you spurn all that is American, please move elsewhere.

Beyond the honoring of long-running American tradition, removal of the motto would stand as a useless and massive waste of money and effort that could be spent so much more appropriately on the people out there alone and broken, because someone didn’t have compassion, or a Christian heart, or whatever you call being a good human being.

You want to make a statement about how religion doesn’t have to be the conveyor of morality and ideals… go feed a bum, take a lonely old person to lunch, or start volunteering at the many services designed to lift up fallen humanity. When people see an atheist can be a great person without any prompting from a God, then maybe you’ll start to have some legitimacy to your beliefs – and maybe you just might be able to slowly build more support so that, someday in the unlikely future, you too can have an Act Of Congress just for you. However, I doubt that will ever happen.

Sorry to burst the bubble.’

***

We shall see what happens in response to this.  I just had to make a few points on what he and others were saying yesterday and today about the poll.  I also had to limit my message quite a bit, because I’m sure you can see how verbose it was in the first place.  I could’ve added so much more, but in that page, I figured no one would listen but the select few who felt differently than Mark.

I welcome any thoughts or comments about his poll, or my response.  I don’t delete any comments, so you people who think my opinion was stupid – you can leave your thoughts with the confidence that I won’t throw them away.  Besides, this is an extremely subjective issue, and no one can completely discount anyone else’s opinions, because there really are so few facts to base any choice on.  Speak as you wish.

—

PS – Sorry for not posting for awhile, this season was a bitch, and I still feel like shit, so I layed low for a few weeks.  I will try to come back in a fury and start posting often again.  Thank you all who continue to check my page for new words.

Dies Alternus Dies

I am a creature of habit.

I wake up the same time every day, even on weekends – which drives my sleepy girl crazy I’m sure.  Once awake, I moan and groan, stretch, throw on something and anything warmer than shorts, then head off to the glorious porcelain room.  Just before heading back to the bedroom, I weigh myself.  Sometimes I smile, other times I wonder what part of the scale is broken.  With those initial wake-up duties complete, I open the bathroom door and hear the sirens blaring.  Our two guinea pigs are also creatures of habit, and they know that the sound of the door opening means their morning veggie treat.  So, the very second the knob starts to turn, i hear from the other side, “SQUEAK, SQUEAK, SQUEAK…”  You get the idea.

It’s every single day, and it is frickin’ loud!  I have to get some ice and soda from the fridge anyway, so I better get their treats while I’m out there, or the cacophony of squeals will amplify threefold by the time I open the bedroom door again.  Selma and Lingling are always standing up with their front paws clinging to the top rungs of their cage walls when their treats arrive.  Their little feet and big butts wiggle around, and the expression on their faces genuinely looks excited and happy like young children on Christmas morning.  Selma tries to climb up the walls to get the veggies first, while Lingling remains standing, but for some odd reason always chews like a beaver on the high rungs.  It sounds like a machine gun, and she always has her eyes on the food, but that chewing of the bars has always been such an adorably bizarre thing.

With treats passed out, and my soda poured, I sit down at my desk to take the half dozen morning pills.  Then it’s time to turn on the Glenn Beck radio show, which starts at 9:00am.  I haven’t had cable for a month and a half, so I can’t get my fix of Fox News.  To alleviate the withdrawal symptoms, I turned to talk radio, and my man Glenn.  I had heard of him before, seen his old CNN show, and even got dragged to a live lecture/stage show he put on about 4 years ago.  Without cable by my side, I began to listen to him every day, and he joined the long list of my habits.

That’s my day until mid-morning.  Once the talk show starts, and my meal of medicine is done, I sit down at the computer and work for an online search engine company that pays me far less than what bums get from an hour of begging in a ghost town.  Since the service requests are few and far between, I fill the down time with working on my novel, contemplating whether I can slap together another questionably witty, somewhat intelligible post to display on this page, and repeating another of my strong habits: staring at the horizontal lines of light filtering through the blinds of my bedroom window.

I’ve always been strangely drawn to lines.  Any lines will do, so long as they’re straight, and preferably grouped with other lines that are parallel.  Stop shaking your head like I’m a freak.  I may be one, but the head shaking is just plain rude.  I know it’s very odd, but I have as little remorse for it as I have an explanation.  Lines are just comforting.  The order and repetition of parallels, and the simply defined and regulated visual concreteness does this odd voodoo on my emotions.  It calms me and helps silence all the conflicting thoughts, memories, unrestrained emotions, and everything else pinballing around in my skull.  So, I look at the lines every morning and afternoon to keep my head as clear and centered as possible.

My girl gives me a lot of grief for the line staring thing, but I have many little quirks and habits she likes to tease me about.  She doesn’t realize that she has silly habits too.  Most of them are adorable, but one is something that I half think is hilarious, but half think is humiliating to me – in a loving way, of course.

She seems to think it is a barrel of laughs to write down or just try to remember when I say “cute” things, as she calls them.  Once she has a handful of these cuteisms, she likes to post them on her blog.  Most of the responses are, “Oh, he’s so cute…” or, “I know what you mean!  Guys say such odd things!”  It’s a very well received theme whenever she puts up posts like that, and I do like that she finds joy from the stupid things I say, but of all the habits in the world to have – does she have to further point out to he world what a boob i can be?  I mean, really, everybody already knows!  (I’m kidding, sweetie.  Post whatever you like )

Honestly, I love her little habits as much as she finds humor in mine.  Even the guinea pigs know my habits well: they squeal in the morning after the restroom break, they squeal after I come from the kitchen after lunch, and the squeal at night when we bring dinner into the room to devour in front of the TV.  We’re all wrapped tightly in our routines, habits, and rituals.  Without them, life would be too unpredictable and so exciting we may just lose our ordered and regulated minds.

Well, the afternoon has closed now, and I followed my daily routine once more.  I made lunch for when the girlie comes home for a little bit before returning to work.  I got another cup of ice to fill with soda.  Made the bed.  Then I spent the afternoon waiting for service requests from the silly Internet company, reading a bit of research for the novel, and catching up on news off Yahoo’s home page.

And as always, staring at those blissful lines.

Grates Agere

I just want to give a big “Thank You!” to the glorious politicians who dutifully ignored the completely false nay-saying about some silly economic meltdown, and to the habitually irresponsible and literally mentally retarded folk who did this nation proud by being so illiterate that they couldn’t read their own mortgage contracts let alone pay them.

I also want to show much appreciation for those wonderful folks at the Treasury, who weren’t even elected but just picked by good ole Dubbya himself.  These genuine stars of humanity have been doing such an outstanding job making sure everyone who is being hurt by the economy gets all the help they need, like: buying up defaulted on housing loans and redesigning them so the poor shlubs who couldn’t pay their own bills anyway can get a much better deal on something they have no business owning in the first place.

The Treasury superheroes even did a kind deed for all the big name important people who lost their money to that scamming guy from Wall Street.  WOW.  That is so great that the government can find it in their hearts to assist and protect illiterate, lazy, fiscally irresponsible, self-absorbed, too-rich-to fail, too-poor-to-be-expected-to -pay-bills, absolute leeches on society.

Oh, and before I forget… “Thank You!” to all my doctors who can tell me what hurts, but are just a little too busy, a little too proud, a little too afraid to admit that they are confounded by my bizarre anatomy, and simply don’t have an idea why these things are happening to my body.

Finally, I want to sincerely thank myself.  Seriously, dude.  Thank you (me) for being a burner of bridges, a great and powerful mind that doesn’t do anything constructive with it, a guy that got his shit together just a couple years too late.  And thank you (me again) for getting sick at such an awesome time!  It was commendable how I synchronized my illness so fluidly with the moment when my girl and I left the safe nest of our humdrum lives, and went off across the country to an unresearched job – with no backup plans… that was fucking awesome.

Now, we’re here in down home Fort Wayne, Indiana.  We have a car that runs on money, a pretty nice roof over our heads that pulls money up through the chimney, and a nutritious and steady diet of (drum roll please) money!  And I just gotta thank myself for being too weak to ignore the pain, stiffness, and shortness of breath to go back out there and work.  I deserve a medal for my recent contributions to my relationship, and my country.

I also deserve a commendation from the President himself, I tell you.  I deserve it for being so broke that I just half an hour ago sold every piece of my high-end camping gear collection (that I really wanted to use on a through-hike of the Appalachian Trail someday) for less than half I paid for it, so we could just barely keep our bank account from going into the red again when the car payment comes out next week.

I’m the best, man.  I am.

God bless us, everyone!  Give thanks for all those mentioned in this post, and wish them a joyous holiday season (can’t say Christmas because some might be Jews, or Muslims, or Kwanzanistas or whatever you call it).

Ah, damn it, forgot what to say next.  Fuck it.  Fuck them.  Fuck you. Fuck me.

Fuck.

Factum Oriundus Peractio

A long time ago, like maybe a year and a half, I had this concept for a majorly large piece of artwork I felt would be amazing!  That’s only if I could complete it.  See, if you read anything else I wrote, you’ll know the crippling disease I have.  It eats at my brain cells.  Specifically, it devours the cells responsible for motivation, follow through, and accomplishing goals.  It’s an awful condition, really.

To illustrate the symptoms of this fiendish illness, I could point you to the folder on my desktop filled with reference photos I was collecting to assist me in my project to create a glorious work of art.  Elsewhere on my desktop, is a group of Word documents I’ve been slowly adding information to.  These are streamlined reference guides I’m compiling for a historical novel which I am sporadically chopping away at – for just over a year now.  Last, but not least, somewhere on my hard drive is saved a company name and business card design that I put together when I had this flash of brilliance to start an Internet service for college students.

All of these projects/ideas/goals/whatever seem to die more than once, but never rest in peace.  Believe me, I would love to raise my unfinished zombie creations from their repeatedly dug graves.  I would be so content to breathe life back into at least one of them.

In regard to the art project gathering dust on some lost mantle of a fireplace where my plans should be warmed, given satisfying comfort, and put to sleep complete, I could use any photos of any of you out there.  I want images with emphasis on faces – and eyes, especially.  I don’t care what you look like, what gender you are, your age, race, or anything else.  I just want to see as many eyes, in as many expressions as possible.  Those would become wonderful flames carrying up the hopes of this project.

As far as the business idea, that’s pretty much dead in the water.  I have zero money to set up a website, or pay for anything necessary for such an undertaking, or even pay the shipping for a package of 250 free custom printed business cards – no money for even free stuff!  So, I’ve got a wallet filled with nothing, and even less experience with entrepreneurship.  I do have a concrete idea of how the business would work, and all the service packages mapped out, but no metaphorical car or knowledge of how to drive to my destination.  So, that’s the least likely idea to actually happen.

The novel, however, is actually one thing that hasn’t faded into oblivion, but it is very slow going.  It’s such a massive undertaking that it intimidates me often. The ‘good’ news, though, is that I’ve followed this path further than any other in my life, like: the great idea to make novelty t-shirts with my very own slogans (just like so many other people already do), or to get my work into these open gallery weekends at a place in northern California, or the ludicrous idea that I could become a massively popular blogger whose voice is heeded by millions.

One of the flawed cogs in every sputtering machine of my goals is support.  I don’t have many friends.  My family has not-so-secretly regarded me as the crumpled up rough draft since I ceased to be the only son or grandson.  And behind the puffed ego that leans solely on my staggeringly powerful intellect (which is another element of potential I neglect) sits an ugly, monstrously dark hearted little beast who can’t even motivate and support himself through the smallest hopes or simplest ideas.

Other than my girl, and on a few occasions, my Mom, I don’t have anyone to keeps me encouraged and on task.  My sweetie is so loving and supportive with all my cripplingly far-reaching ideas, but I know she is completely tuned in to the reality that I am a hopeless Unfinisher.

(That’s a word of my own creation – so you steal it, I find you and beat you to death with anything close by (just kidding, sort of.))

She believes in me, but I have no delusions that she should have any confidence in me ever reaching my potential or completing my goals.  It doesn’t hurt my feelings.  Honestly, it is a bit comforting that she is wise enough to keep her excitement over an idea of mine tempered by how well she knows me.  It makes me feel truly loved that she knows everything about me, and still falls asleep beside me each night.

Mom knows a bit less about me, but also has even less confidence that I will ever accomplish anything, which is understandable, I guess. Then there’s my mother’s mother, who takes lack of faith in me to the extreme by reminding me in increasingly bitter tones, every single time I am within earshot, that I am a failure as a man, that I am a lying and thieving waste of talent, and someone who will never make anything of myself to make her proud.  Oh, then she always adds, “But we do love you…”

Anyway, as difficult as it must be to strain out the thesis statement of this post from the self-loathing, not-so-inner monologue, I do want you all to get this one point:  I know I’m a disappointment, a let-down, and a slacker ignoring what I’m capable of.  I also used to struggle and fail against the part of my nature that oh so enjoyed other people’s pain, but I’ve chained down that monster inside my head for a few years now.  Next, I don’t want to shackle the other part of me.  I want to slit the throat of that Unfinisher.

I want to dance in his blood.  Then, I want to soak my brush in his pools of still-warm, dark red death and use it to paint something inspiring.  Or dab my pen in his inky splatters on my desk to write something noble and evocative. Or even build over his maggot ridden corpse, my own enterprise that brings relief to overburdened students in today’s stressed-out, too much in too little, ADHD society.

Then, I want to be finished.  Accomplished.  Vindicated.

Kill off everything holding me down, though; everything that refuses to let me flee the already shattered eggshell of my past, and I am left with just me.  Ally my baggage burned to ashes, then it’s me alone… alone withUnfin the fear that I still will fail.

Cordis et Corporea Morbus

It has been a bumpy ride this year…

Ever since I got sick this summer, I’ve been a shell of a man.  My lungs are lead weights in my chest.  I can’t get enough breath to exercise, or work anywhere that involves standing or lifting or doing anything but sit, and I can’t even walk around a grocery store when we go shopping without moving like a slow old man on sedatives.  I hate it.  I hate it all so much.

I was nothing like this before about six months ago.  I loved exercising: weight training, playing basketball for hours at a time, hiking long distances whenever I could persuade my girl or family to come along.  When they did join me, I only struggled to keep my stride slow enough to stay with them, and they fought to keep up as best they could.  I was inherently just lightning in hiking boots or sneakers, and this was all the time.  I could walk for hours, and even contemplated doing a through-hike of the Appalachian Trail – a 2,100 mile trip.

Strength was one of my great strengths, too.  I could leg press 700 pounds, carry a one hundred pound steel shaft on each shoulder with ease, and break ribs and jaws with just my fists. I was deformed from birth, so when I got older I was determined to let my body define me in a positive way, instead of the powerless crippled way people saw me as.

My lungs were equally powerful.  I had a strong, deep, booming voice and the ability to hold my breath underwater for at least a minute and a half, two minutes on a really good day.  I gained a little love fat since I fell in love with my girl, but it was only a little extra padding over rock solid muscles.  Besides, I wasn’t always in the greatest shape possible.

For the past three years, I had also been dealing with some other health problems that caused a lot of pain and affected my vision, but it didn’t affect my physique or daily activity like the problems of the past several months has.  I thought that the headaches were disrupting back then, and the brief time I was blind was a major pain in the ass, but none of that was like this.  I could work then.  I could go do stuff.  Even when I was blind, I went back to work at Borders Bookstore, I accompanied my girl to the grocery store, and shopping in the mall.  I just kept tapping my little cane all around me.

Now, though, I haven’t worked outside the home since October, when I tried to work as a Home Theater sales guy at Best Buy.  I knew right away it would be a great job.  It was far from my traditional industry – youth instruction and counseling, but it was a fun job at a company I felt was focused on customers and employees, instead of just profits.  The one bad apple that spoiled this bunch was that I had an extremely hard time standing for more than twenty minutes, just about killed myself and, more importantly, a frickin’ sweet $2,000 TV when I tried to carry it from the warehouse to the cart just outside the door… a distance of about 25 feet.

It was an embarrassing, and deeply spirit-crushing experience to fail at such a simple and minimally physical occupation.  I couldn’t even bring myself to pick up the final check because I was so ashamed.

They ended up mailing it to me last week.

I still look for jobs in this obtuse and misguided attempt to will myself able to be a real provider again.  To be a real man.  Instead, I either don’t get any interviews, or get called in to sit in front of some moron with half the intelligence of my ass, who sees immediately that something seems weak and feeble about me.  A year ago, I could have snapped their condescending little necks like twigs, but now I just nod, shake hands and shuffle out of the office to never be seen again.

So, for awhile, I’ve been sitting at home, trying to keep on task with a novel idea I have worked on for a year now.  The research is virtually done, and I’ve already begun making outlines and reference lists of information to help in the writing of the actual text.  The hard part is finding the confidence to keep chugging along at it.

I had a great idea about a web service for college students that I really think would be an explosively successful venture, but I have zero website knowledge or experience.  Not to mention, I possess an equally abundant amount of business knowledge too.  I figure when we actually have enough money to not worry about food and gas and bills, then I may be able to justify getting a few books to edumacate ma sef.

I’ve also considered picking up my sketch pad and charcoals again.  I have been an artist, at least in my own mind, since I was five or so, and I always travel the waves of an artistic ocean.  I dip down into the deep troughs, losing sight of the drawing horizon, then at random times I rise atop a crest to open my eyes to the wide world of possibilities on blank pieces of paper.  I’m trying to swim my way to one of those crests these days.  I want to will myself into that elusive crow’s nest and take sight of creative land ahead.

I figure if I’m going to be relegated to only working in my room, on a chair, or sprawled across the bed, then I need to become productive on my terms.  My mind is still able to run a marathon, and lift a mountain, and my girl is amazingly supportive about me using it to follow through on these projects (which I am a notorious failure at completing) – if not for a lot of money, at least for my own self-worth.

That’s taken a big hit through all of this.  It is more withered and achy than any of my muscles, joints or lungs.  It’s been a continuously rough few years, and it only takes a few bad things to happen for you to start getting down on yourself.  I have the greatest support in my wonderful girl, but she’s about the only one on my side anymore.

The reasons for my isolation in this world are half my own fault and half the effects of my family refusing to ever even give me a chance to show that I’m not a monster anymore.  It’s very complicated, but the not so short of it all will be posted later today or tomorrow if anyone wants to hear the story behind this author, who is basically a four year old when it comes to being a good human being.

If no one wants to know, that’s fine too, I’ll just keep my keyboard shut. 

P.S. Grandma, and Mom… if you’re reading this, I could care less; but if so, there is a HUGE difference between tough love and flat out mean and nasty disregard for my feelings and the effort I’ve put into the last several years.  Mom, I do appreciate that you can at least try to be civil and supportive, if even at rigid arm’s length.  Grandma, I am so angry and hurt at the way you’ve treated me, and indirectly my woman, I don’t want to speak to or see you until you get your head out of your ass, realize that even I can change regardless of how tightly you cling to your grudges for protection.

To everyone, in general, who doesn’t want to know and acknowledge through an apology or even just better treatment, that they can be wrong, they can be the ones not changing, they can be the ones not moving on from the past, and they are the ones who have the power to mend our relationships – I say to you people:  I’ve made the changes, I’ve tried to move on, I’ve put away the lies and the stealing, and even worse things you have no clue about, and I am the one who has fought through the dark hell that is my mind and soul to be a good man even in the face of all the pain and suffering of the past three years.

I am not the faker this time.  All of you who say you forgive me for the past… you’re the fakers.

Percunctoris

It’s a strange day.  I’m sitting at my desk, blankly staring at the empty white-space on my screen, and wondering what the hell to write.  I look out the window to watch the clouds go past.  I never understood why they’re so mesmerizing.  A few days ago, I was doing the exact same thing but something was different.  The clouds were going from the left, directly toward the right – and  flying past rapidly.  Today, they’re still moving pretty swiftly, but in the completely opposite direction.  I know… who cares, right?

That’s a really good question, that I have no answer for.

Throughout my life, I’ve prided myself in an ability to provide quick, correct, and educated answers.  Sometimes, it made me unpopular, labeled a know-it-all, or a target of less informed but still passionate debate addiction sufferers.  I freely admit it, I’m an addict too.  The difference is that I don’t argue a point I don’t really know about.  There was a time, not that long ago, when I had the knowledge.  I had the answers.  I knew what was going on, and wasn’t just sitting around gawking at the clouds with nothing of value to say.

Lately, I’m running out of answers.  Things go on in the world, and I get frustrated because they’re happening for reasons I can’t begin to understand.  Things are happening to humanity that seem to have almost no solutions.  Don’t get me wrong, I hear so many mouths blathering their fix-it-all answers to the unprecedented events of recent years.  Answers, themselves, are not at all hard to come by these days.  There is, however, a major difference between answers and solutions.

As I continued to sit still while clouds sailed by in an odd direction, talk radio was on in the background.  I’m not a huge fan of most of the silly hosts and pundits on radio, TV, or newspapers.  There are a handful of people I do find insightful and informative, albeit strongly biased and subjectively issuing their own perceptions of the news.  All media people are this way, in one direction or another.

With that in mind, you can still find value in what is being said or written.  For example, I listen to a radio talk show in the mornings by Glenn Beck.  I like the guy’s ideas and opinions, and always remember he is just paid for that and not for being an objective news reporter.  So, like many weekday mornings, I had his show on today while I sat here in an uninspired stupor.

He and I think a lot alike most of the time, and he has the same frustration in his voice as I do with the state of this world lately.  He also has no solutions.  His show is often filled with answers to questions from callers about the choices and actions that have led the world into the  deeply troubling problems of our time.  That is only half way to what a solution is.

The fact, as I see it, is that we have passed the boundary between fixable and just plain ruined.  We passed it long ago, and didn’t even look in the mirror to see if we ran over it or just splashed mud in its face.  This world is so far gone, not a single person on it can honestly give you a real solution, or even a legitimate answer.  So, it is some comfort that everyone else is finding fewer answers right along with me.

Well, at least I found an answer and a solution to my writer’s block today.

Vacuare

Snow is falling outside my windows.  My girl is napping, and the guinea pigs are huddled in their blankets for he afternoon.  My roommate’s gone, and his girlfriend is being quiet.  It is all still and calm and muted.  I equally love and loathe this type of moment.  Something about it seems so peaceful and soft, while the other part feels like the hammer of a gun being cocked.  You have this sweet stillness, poisoned by inevitability.  No matter how blissfully empty and numb a moment is, it will always end – and sometimes with a jarring bang!

You can’t stop it.  You can’t ignore it.  You can’t even delay it, because you have as much control over the shattering of silence as you do over when those joyous moments come.  No control.  That’s one of the great things about being in the lulling grey void of a time like this.  You don’t have anything to keep control of.  Everything in life just slows its whirring and screaming and teetering, so you sit back and wait for it to stop.  To freeze just for a moment.  You can breathe, at last.  All the ties that bind you to the life that is called ‘yours’ are severed and you float away like a balloon set free from the greedy grasp of a grumpy child.  You float off into the plushness of nothingness.

Gone are the anxieties of roommates, their twice a month children, the bustling of cars, the family who hates you, the woman who loves you when you can’t imagine why, and everything else.  Don’t get me wrong, I love the woman and am never complete when she’s away, but there is always anxiety over how long it will take for her to walk away, like everyone else has.  She is the only thing in the world I would want inside my cocoon of silence at these times, because these moments are frozen.  They are static and unchanging for an unknown span.  So there would be no worry of her leaving me too.  We would just curl up together and float off.

Until the balloon is snagged, a bird squawks, kids start yelling, a car roars past, and the gun fires.

Solivagus

I’m not an agoraphobe, at least I don’t think I am.  Maybe someday, I will wall myself up in the dark recesses of my bedroom and never come out again.  At the moment, however, I still pop my furry little head out of my borough to look around, see the sights, pick up groceries.  This last activity has become the concrete foundation of what will someday be a permanent and meaningful relationship with the lock on my door.

I’ve always hated grocery shopping, from as far back as I can remember.  Even at five years old, I would throw tantrums every time I had to go with my mother to the store.  One time, I was playing in our backyard when mother yelled out the window for me to meet her in front for a trip to get groceries.  Being the intensely defiant child by nature, combined with a raging distaste for anything to do with crowds, I began screaming that I wouldn’t go.  A child’s refusals are no match for a parent’s demands.

At the threat of a spanking if I didn’t get to the car immediately, I ran down the alley toward the front of our house, bawling like a… small child.  With my vision smeared into tear-drowned blurry blobs, I scampered over cracked and uneven cement, stumbled briefly, then flat-out tripped.  I was running full speed when my foot caught on a pot hole.  I fell like a brick, and broke my collar bone.  Now, when I start pouting about trips to the store, I keep my eyes on the ground, ensuring no more injuries.

I already hated crowds before that fateful day when my own mother let me lay in the alley, sobbing in agony, for more than twenty minutes – so that traumatic event couldn’t have helped my aversion to large groups of people.  As it is now, I can’t go shopping without getting frustrated at the prices, the people, and everything else that’s involved with it.  It bothers me so much that I am incapable of getting through it without physically getting all worked up, and emotionally frazzled enough to ruin my sweetie’s enjoyment of her second favorite pastime – shopping.

It’s not just shopping, though, that really makes me anxious and upset.  As I’ve gotten older, and especially the last five years or so, I’ve really grown so uncomfortable with crowds anywhere: in stores, at work, on the road.  I even hate it when my roommates have guests over.  It hasn’t always been this bad, but I am becoming aware that all the excuses I make for not wanting to be around others, are all just masks for the fact that I hate being anywhere but inside my bedroom or in the wild.

I’ve been pretty sick since the start of summer, so I’ve been spending quite a bit of time at home.  I try to get jobs and work out of the house, but the level of fatigue and soreness in my body beats me down every time.  After all these months, I am still pretty sick, and still at home, but I am getting a feeling that when or if I get better, it will be even more difficult to work outside the house.

I am trying to become a writer, and still bat around the idea of being an artist – both of which can be done from home.  So there is a possibility of becoming less of a drain on mine and my girl’s finances without actually being surrounded by people.  I have a lot of doubts about whether i will even remotely succeed as either a writer or artist, but it is possible.

Something else seems possible, too.  I can feel the chilly shadow of fear coming over me that I am becoming more of a hermit than I ever intended.  What’s worse is that if it weren’t for making money and carrying my own weight in my relationship, I don’t know if I would mind all that much never leaving my room.  I just don’t know.

I need to get a job, but I can’t physically do much at this point – and I question if soon I will also be unable mentally to join the world of the working dead.  Besides, J.D. Salinger was a hermit, and one of my favorite writers ever.  Of course, his hermit stage came after making a ton of money.

Maybe I can be Obi-Wan Kenobi, he was a hermit, right?

Fructus

Last night, my sweetie and I turned off the video games, DVDs, and our television. She sat at the computer, while I sprawled across the bed.  We started to go through much of the music we recently downloaded form different places, and picked up several new tracks.  It was an entertaining and warm way to spend a little quality time together.  We both love music, and although our tastes sometimes vary widely, we always come to common ground on most genres.

I used to be very close-minded about what I listened to, and what I considered ‘good’ music.  I always thought of myself as enjoying many kinds of tunes, but when we first started dating, I realized that things I didn’t like were often that way because I never gave them a chance.  I would like to think that I expanded her musical buffet as well.

As we went through the new music we’d gathered, I was struck by how often we both liked or hated any given track we hadn’t heard before.  Years ago, it seemed like the distance between our tastes was a bit long, but either our own personal evolutions went down similar paths, or our couplehood somehow melded together our individual thoughts into a sort of musical experience collective.  Weird, huh?  Like a big soup pot was filled with each of our tastes, then a fat old Italian lady with a giant whisk whipped us into a smooth broth.

I know you’re thinking, “Whatever man.  You one crazy dude!”  It’s ok, everyone says that.

I admit, we still have differences in our iTunes libraries, but I love how she has taken me down new musical roads.  It’s really hard to tell if either of us came to truly enjoy each other’s music, or if the magic of love just made us oblivious to our distaste of those songs we avoided.  Last night, I didn’t care which reason was right – I just enjoyed enjoying something together.

Today, we are both doing our favorite things, even though they are completely different.  She’s sleeping, and I’m writing.  We may not be spending quality time together, as it is perceived by the majority, but we are both content at least.  She’s snoring away happily, and I am just glad she is off work.  I think that’s a great sign of the depth of our love – that we can just exist in the same room without feeling obligated to entertain one another.  We can just be.

I am like a little puppy, though, waiting excitedly for her to wake up and play with me.

Obruere

“The role of government is not to pay people’s mortgages, it’s not to let them out of bad deals they made; and a free market means free from the government, not free from the consequences of your own decisions.”

I found this quote while watching old video clips of Peter Schiff, who is the president of EuroPacific Capital, and was/is? an adviser for the former U.S. presidential candidate, Ron Paul.  I think that this qoute, which incidentally is actually from Johnathan Hoenig,  managing member of Capitalistpig Asset Management LLC, wraps up all the little scraps of what went wrong with the economy recently, and what is wrong with this country for the past few decades.  What’s worse is that people like Peter Schiff, radio personalities like Glenn Beck, and even myself – a nobody from nowhere – have seen this coming for years.

When mortgage companies started giving out overbloated and unjustifiable loans to people who had no business receiving credit of such large quantities, and no business signing contracts they probably weren’t educated enough to understand let alone read – that’s when the first tiny spark started to smoulder into the inferno that is burning our country alive today.  Why would lenders, versed in the principles of finance and the concepts of affordability, regularly provide loans to people with little chance or ability to pay off?

There are several reasons, but the strongest motivation for this silly decision is the government.  I am no expert, and I am not filled with all the information about this country’s finance history, but I do know that at some point in the ’90s the federal government was pressured into leaning on lenders to provide these high-risk loans to high-risk people.  So much for a free market.

That pressure, combined with the drooling greed of the mortgage lenders who saw an opportunity to milk those with bad credit, together made the mole hill into a mountain. Or, to use another metaphor, our already fragile economy teetered for awhile, then toppled down the cliff of unpaid debt.  Now, we’re going into further debt as a nation, to help those sinful companies, and those irresponsible people.

Before this whole mess hit the fan a few months ago, our trade deficit increased by sixty billion dollars a month.  Foreign nations were holding money in our country to help shore up our dollar, and to help the Treasury make profits by investing their holdings.  I don’t imagine that is going on much anymore.  So, the enormous amount of money that was already in the Accounts Payable column of our national ledger, is now being filled with the hundreds of billions of dollars being taken from the pockets of taxpayers like you and me.

As of today, the amount of “Rescue” or “Bailout” has added up to a bit over 7 trillion dollars.  If you stacked each of those individual dollars, one on top of another, the stack would literally reach to Mars.  Digest that for a few seconds, then think about how much more ‘rescuing’ is still to be handed out.

I wish someone would rescue me, instead of those who screwed themselves.