~Fin
Literally a Story
6
Self Worship on Facebook
When Facebook first became accessible to me, it was my favorite thing in the world. I could talk to my friends, play fun-stupid games, and posts pictures of myself looking cool. It was a little shrine dedicated to the center of my universe – Myself.
Unfortunately, like all places of worship, as Facebook grew in popularity so did its message become diluted. The joys of connecting through mutual self-worship were lost under a wash of political capitalization. People stopped posting about their lives and thoughts and started posting links to banal sponsorships and teutonic memeary. I received friend requests from people in countries I’d never even heard of, who immediately invited me to an event I’d never be able to attend. If they were really my friends, they would know I don’t have the time or means to attend their one-man charity show to stop Kony2012.
The beauty of simple narcissism had been taken over by a desire to acquire political currency.
The fastest way to disengage me from your religious views is to mix them in with politics, an occurrence all too common on my quickly disintegrating Facebook.
When I looked at my Facebook this is now what I saw: a place less about self-expression and more about self-aggrandizement. The Gods of Us had become tools to push product. We’d sold ourselves into a plantation where we were both slave and slavedriver. So, like every other god I’d once loved, I decided to abandon Myself.
~Fin
The Troglodyte’s Guide to Ego
Sometimes I look out at the fleshy, squishy, hairy collection of cells we call the human body and I wonder how anyone could possibly have an ego.
Now, that isn’t to say I don’t understand why we have an ego. The ego is what makes your emotions feel real. In order for a tribe to survive, there has to be a certain drive for personal achievement. You have to be willing to fight saber-tooth tigers.
Emotions are our quickest and most accessible tool for deciphering a situation and, as such, we rely on them way too much.
Unfortunately, egos can be damaged and, like a balloon filling with air, the larger they get the quicker they pop.
Our emotions pass through our ego, inflating it, telling us when someone has insulted us. They feel so very powerful, we assume they’re real. And they are real.
But real and objective are not the same thing.
Perception is important. It’s what makes us unique.
But unique and correct are not the same thing.
No matter how amazing you think your idea is, it’s been done before. Through the power of the internet, the whole world is connected. Concepts and thoughts and mindless chatter all mix together and swirl around to give voice to every idea ever conceived.
Your job is to interpret this whirlpool as honestly as possible. Grab in with your hands and clasp an idea you believe in.
If an ego is useful for anything, it’s sorting out the problems in yourself. When you feel it flare up, that means you’re doing something wrong. You’ve fallen too deeply in love with yourself. You can’t admit you have flaws, because they’re cauterized into your psyche and you know removing them will be painful. Shaving off the infection will take some of the skin. Skin you’d like to keep.You don’t want to fall.
But sometime you must fall into the six-lashed eye.
And we all do eventually.
~Fin
Yelling at People During Meetings
Sometimes in my line of work, I end up yelling at people. Not that yelling is technically in the job description. I’m not a foreman or middle-manager, where yelling is essentially your defining characteristic (that, and a deep-seated sorrow, although that’s something I do have, thank you very much.)
If I were in a job that requires me to be exploitative, like a congress-human (note the gender-neutralization – I’m very inclusive) or if I was the president, I think my yelling might be justified. The president has to spend all day of his or her day trying to wrangle in a slithering herd of psychopaths and liars, hoping to milk their venom into something semi-useful. If you’re a congress-human, you’re a snake who spends all day yelling about how everyone else is probably a snake. If the president yells, everyone pays attention because it probably means China has finally decided to invade using their perfectly synchronized gymnast-girls. If congress-humans yell, it means they’re just trying to fit in. Yelling in the case of both of these professions would be considered appropriate.
When I get passionate about something, I don’t speak.
I pontificate.
A paper isn’t bad, it’s an opaque mess of troglodytic drivel.
A performance isn’t unsatisfactory, it’s sub-par to the point of non-existence.
An idea isn’t poor, it’s an insult to the intelligence of every organism born over three-minutes ago.
Needless to say, this hurts people feeling beyond the recommended threshold for not receiving murderous glares. If I was a politician, this kind of dense yet vague criticism would not only be encouraged, it would be essential.
I, however, do not have a job in politics. Many people say I don’t have a job at all.
What is it exactly?
Sit down and I’ll tell you, friend.
What I have is an internship at a research journal.
To what does that entail, exactly? To put it in Layman’s terms (Larry Layman – a dumb guy I know):
I provide an outlet for cocksure nerds to publish their thoughts regarding schoolwork. Also I hurt people’s feelings during meetings.
It’s a tough job, but some has to be unpaid to do it.
~Fin
Spooky Impulse Purchases
The best thing about this time of the year is everything starts having a theme. Coffee isn’t just coffee, it’s Pumpkin-Spice Coffee. Sugar cookies aren’t just sugar cookies, they’re Pumpkin-Spice sugar cookies. Orange gourds aren’t just orange gourds; they’re Pumpkin-Spice Pumpkins.
If you don’t live in America, first off, I’m sorry. Make fun of our imperialistic, oligarcian nature all you want, but we fucking know how to market a season. We can take something as gross as the orange-lard-goop from a pumpkin and make it seem like the greatest thing since manna fell from heaven. It doesn’t matter what the product is – slap a pumpkin on it during this time of year and it will sell. That’s called stimulating the economy, motherfuckers.
So, as is my duty, I make sure to stimulate the economy all I can around this time of year. I bought a bag of candy corn, even though it tastes awful. I bought cookies with spooky bats on them even though, once cooked, the bats just look like black blobs. I even bought the Halloween-only cereals that come out this time of year.
(YOU’RE WELCOME FOR THE FREE ADVERTISING, BOO BERRY!!!)
Of course, dry cereal is slightly-sweet fodder as far as I’m concerned, so I had to purchase milk as well. This is where I crossed the line.
That’s right. I purchased orange milk, the most unappetizing color you could possibly give to a liquid. If you’re revolted, that means you have good, human instincts. But, before you judge me, please take a closer look.
See it? Look again.
No artificial growth hormones and No high fructose corn syrup. In terms of the dairy industry, this might as well be a three hundred-year old bottle of wine made of grapes harvested by Napoleon himself.
Did you think this was a morality tale about the fallacy of marketing?
WRONG!
This is a morality tale about me being AWESOME!!!
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
~Fin
Silent Knowledge Accumulation
For a good chunk of my childhood, I did not speak. This was the height of my popularity.
Because, at this time, my parents were hippie liberal bohemians, they decided it would be best if I got my education in home environment where I would be free to till the garden-heart of my inner creativity. They purchased a book called Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons and some puppets and some building blocks and I went on to receive the greatest early childhood education anyone could ever receive.
After just 100 lessons, (which were as difficult as advertised), I became literate. I mostly used my newfound power to figure out which cereals were most delicious.
I was an excellent reader, and probably had far superior vocabulary and much clearer syntax than any of my peers, but for some reason I never felt the urge to express these skills through verbal communication. Even when I spoke to my mom it was in a whisper.
Any free time not spent reading was spent staring at walls, trying to help my dolls process the accumulated knowledge into the key to unlocking the doors of perception.
I continued this trend of silent knowledge accumulation until about fifth grade, when I began to grow tired of never getting my way, but was still unable to speak.
So instead of talking, I began to develop “anger issues.” I would break things and throw things and cry. This quickly ended my reign of popularity.
My once endearing silence had become terrifying. My parents had no choice but to readjust their strategy.
~Fin
Personal Failure, Part I
One hour from the time I am writing this, I will be expected to fail a mathematics tests. Did you notice that I said “fail” instead of “take?” You should, because that is the basic premise for this entire blog post.
You see, my college requires everyone to obtain three credits of mathematics in order to graduate. Unfortunately, many people who definitely aren’t me avoid taking math classes until the last minute. This is because most math classes are about as appealing as watery oatmeal.
In their vast wisdom, my college implemented a system: if you don’t register for a math class by the end of sophomore year, you are not allowed to register for any classes at all.
I went up the registrar’s office during their office hour of one p.m. to two p.m. and asked them to fix this for me. I promised I would sign up for a math class right away if they let me register before all the good classes were taken. The registrar was exactly as helpful as every public service worker I’ve ever encountered.
After maybe a week of bugging them, I finally lucked out and landed a helpful person.
Then came the choice of which pointless and unnecessary level 100 math course I’d have to take. Pretty much every course at that level sounded like it would be filled with the boring as fuck fractions and line graphs I was forced to do throughout middle school until they boosted me up to the advanced courses when it became clear this stuff was too easy for my smart-ass brain.
Back my youngin’ days, I took a lot of pride in being smarter than my hillbilly peers, but now I just wanted to obtain my two credits with the least amount of work possible. That’s when I noticed a beautiful, familiar face: Financial Mathematics.
You see, back in middle school, Financial Mathematics was part of a “special” group of classes. Any kid too dumb for the worthless knowledge the school provided was placed into a tract designed to promote “practical knowledge.”
When I saw the glorious class as one of my college options I signed up immediately, positive I could breeze through with all the effort of a public service worker.
Unfortunately, it was this brazen overconfidence that did become my downfall…
~Fin
Sad Times For No Reason
Sometimes I think that human depression is caused from an unfortunate mixture of empathy and imagination. Empathy opens you up to dark feelings that aren’t even yours, and imagination makes these feelings real and able to hurt you.
Just to keep yourself safe, you start to close off any vulnerabilities you see in yourself. You patch them up so the feelings that follow you can’t wriggle their way in and burrow inside you.
You feel proud of yourself for cleverly blocking off the hole in your chest. You don’t even mind the emptiness. The emptiness is safe. You care store all sorts of things in the emptiness. Usually some cash-money.
Everything seems to be going okay for a while. You’re lying to yourself, and you know you’re lying to yourself, but you don’t think it matters because everyone lies to themselves.
Material things do a good enough job filling the hole. You’d use something better if you had some idea of what that was, but you don’t. Maybe Jesus could fill the hole for you, but you don’t really trust him after two-thousand years of child crusades and inquisitions. Besides, you’ve visited too many museums to believe the earth is 6000 years old. So instead you just wait…
When I get like this it’s you don’t ever want to leave your bed. You know when they’re this close it’s only a matter of time, so you kind of hide to delay the inevitable. The only way you can manage any interaction is to become a quiet lonely starchild who loves with the cold distance of a terrible ice demon or human father.
You let it in the hole is filled. You feel a little less empty, but you can’t help but feel calloused, uncaring. You’re content with yourself but you don’t want anyone to see you. And you let it consume you, fearful of what may someday emerge from the void-egg around you.
~Fin
Anarchy, Week 2
As we close in on the second week without a government, my fellow citizens and I begin to see the repercussions. I’m living on nothing but cheap canned beans and half dollar ramen noodles. Was this basically my diet before the government left? Who can tell? All the days blend together in this post-democracy hellscape.
If I work out my dumb citizen head-brain, I can almost remember how this government shutdown began. Of course, as a non-politician with limited funds, I can’t even begin to possibly comprehend the complexities of such decisions. Such things require amazing mental gymnastics to make even the slightest sense, and my brain ego is just too human-sized to perform such incredible feats of self-rationalization. I believe it had something to do with how letting poor people see doctors will explode the country with an atomic death bomb of deadly, unsafe human compassion.
What then?
There is no ideology so perfect it can take precedent over basic human compassion. How can you promote the religion of Jesus in one breath and advocate against healing the sick in the next? What would Jesus of the bible (that kind hearted hippie who hung out with vagrants and wanted everyone to love each other) have to say in this situation?
But I suppose none of that matters now. The government is gone, and as far as I reckon, they ain’t coming back. Only a matter of time before Cormac’s McCarthy’s road winds through the once vibrant and beautiful streets of our land. All we left to remember our once great nation is the post office. Allelujah, brothers without leaders.
~Fin
America Finally Ends
So guess what? I’m living in an anarchist state.
A couple of days ago, the American government officially shut its doors. And then locked those doors, and flipped their country off, and then went off to enjoy the paychecks they’re still receiving thanks to the 27th amendment to our constitution. In this way, the 27th amendment is kind of the perfect allegory for the American Government itself. That is:
On paper it has good intentions
In practice it’s selfish and juvenile
It took over 200 years to get done.
That’s what I don’t understand. Democratic and Republicans both love the same things – eating expensive foodstuffs, gerrymandering districts, taking pictures of their dicks – they’re like the two kids in school fighting over Star Wars and Star Trek. You’re both a bunch of fucking nerds who like stars! Stop arguing over whether the stars are going on a trek or going to war!
Everyone should have figured out that America is the greatest country in the world – if you’re already rich. Otherwise it kind of blows. We have to go into personal debt to receive what places like Canada and France take as basic human rights.
But I suppose none of that matters now that I expect to buy medicine with cookie-dough protein bars and recently deceased rat pelts. Rest in peace.
~Fin
Waiting for Satan 