MALAKIM

Posted on December 19, 2013 by qrparker

This is something I made using Windows Movie Maker and MS Paint when I was supposed to be doing homework.

Sad Times For No Reason

Posted on October 18, 2013 by qrparker

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

Posted on October 10, 2013 by qrparker

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

Dealing with Jesus Bros

Posted on September 24, 2013 by qrparker

So on my campus there’s these dudes that sometimes come up to you. I think there might be girls too, but so far only dudes have come up to me, and they always say something like “can I ask you a question real quick?”

They always say “real quick” or “real fast” in order to emphasize how brief the time you spend together will be, like I’m expected to believe the dude chatting up strangers doesn’t have a lot of free time.

Back in early years, when I was naïve and optimistic freshman, I actually tried to listen to these guys. We’re all part of this beautiful collegiate learning family, aren’t we? Why shouldn’t I listen to what my brother in education has to say?

As it turns out, they only cared about one thing…Our Lord and Savior—Jesus Christmas.

I have dubbed these men the esteemed title of JESUS BROS.

Now, Freshman Me was never a huge fan of organized religion, no matter how ripped and delicately draped in loincloths they made their personal saviors. Even as a kid, I was pretty sure that Jesus looked less like a Hitler’s ideal swimwear model and more like the people we were at ~~war~~ peaceful conflict mission with.

Nevertheless, I thought that these people might have something to offer me, so every time one of these guys approached me on campus I tried to listen.

Pretty soon, however, I began to realize these guys didn’t share my platonic concept of open dialects. Instead, they liked to hit rhetorical passive aggression statements like “If you had the chance to save your soul right now, only a fool would pass up this opportunity, right?” or “If someone loves you with all his heart, shouldn’t you at least try to love him back?”

I began to hear these key phrases repeated so often, in such analogous order, that I grew suspicious if my side was being listened to at all. And then, just as one of these Jesus Bros was about to hit the climax of his speech, it came to me…