Resolutions

I hope we are all better in 2020 than the shit people we all were in 2019. Happy New Year!

True Sacrifice

Dying is so easy and so final. If Jesus really wanted to redeem mankind with his suffering, he would have gotten a job at a bank, a college debt, a mortgage, and a couple of kids. He could have died for our sins nightly, a glass of bourbon in his hand and the late show on the television.

Customer Service

Getting my oil changed at one of those quick oil change places, and the older white guy in the car next to me starts yelling at a younger white mechanic. The older man asks to talk to the manager. A black guy about my age comes out—clearly either the general or shift manager—and starts talking to the angry customer. The customer says, ‘I asked to talk to the manager!’ The manager says, ‘I am the manager sir. Let me know how to help you.’ Then the customer says, ‘ I need to talk to the white man who pays you!’ and I saw all of the (white) mechanics’ eyes widen. I was hoping for a strong comeback from the manager, but he responded in a better way by being unfazed and professional, and moving things along. When the customer checked out, he almost seemed chastened as he paid for his service.

Hats

My grandfather loved hats. I grew up thinking men should wear hats. At my first job in the human services, I met an older man who always wore fly ass hats. One day I asked him, ‘how many hats should a man have?’. He laughed and said, ‘I’m a recovering addict. I used to buy crack, now I buy hats’. He didn’t give me a specific number of hats a man should have, but he taught me other things about being a man, and, PS, I’ve got a bunch of hats now.

Nitpicking

Maybe it’s a small point, but how can someone be both radical and ‘do-nothing’? Doesn’t ‘radical’ ultimately imply action? How can you be radical if you’re not doing anything? Also, LOL to the whole ‘radical left’ thing. If any kind of radical left was in power in the U.S., we wouldn’t be talking impeachment. We would be talking guillotines.

Joel Osteen

I guarantee you, every motherfucker trying to give inspirational speeches based on their own experiences and create memorable motivational quotes on Facebook has absolutely burned their own life completely to the ground, and their mom knows the truth.

I Go By Many Names...

Who is this man with a matching universe themed hat and hoodie, walking aggressively down my street, chugging passionately from a white Monster energy can and carrying a black grocery bag full of mysteries? I need to know his story. I don’t need to hear the soundtrack, because I’m sure it’s all Drowning Pool, Staind, and Korn, but his story...I actually probably don’t need to know it. I’m pretty sure I could write a better one.

Read Into This

‘So ridiculous. Greta must work on her Anger Management problem, then go to a good old fashioned movie with a friend! Chill Greta, Chill!’

Donald Trump has completely validated all of Sigmund Freud’s ideas. He may not specifically want to be Greta Thunberg, but he very much wants to be the youngest, prettiest, most noticed girl in the room. I feel bad for him, and I feel bad for the entire world, because we have to suffer the ramifications of this sad, hurt man’s neuroses.

I Am But A Man

When your kids are upset, and you improvise some philosophy and motivational talk (right out of your ass), and the evening is saved, and...maybe we all really learned something here?

Honor Among Thieves?

Apparently I left my wallet at a gas station I went to this morning. Someone turned it in to the proprietor and they found my business card and called my work phone to let me know they had it. I had 80 dollars in there, and when I picked the wallet up there was only 5 dollars left. I’m conflicted about how to feel about this. Obviously someone stole from me, but on some level, they decided not to totally clean me out, which counts as a certain kind of compassion.

Be An Extremist

I don’t understand people who don’t hold public office declaring themselves ‘moderates’. You’re not an elected official. You are free to advocate for your actual worldview in a completely undiluted way! You don’t have to compromise with opposing parties or write legislation you think will be able to muster enough votes to pass. Say what you really want. Organize to put pressure on elected officials to make it happen. Vote for officials you believe are most likely to represent your views. The compromise and moderation and vote counting happens within the government structure. If you start off with a watered down demand because you think it’s more pragmatic, by the time the elected get around to actualizing, it will already have lost all of its flavor. Be an extremist for what you believe. Centrism is weak. It’s affected by weak, vain bores who lack imagination and value the appearance of being sophisticated members of the intelligentsia above all else. Take your NPR tote bag and get out of here.

#Mood

Heads up to anyone who has to interact with me today, I appear to be in a really irritable mood. I’m trying to manage it, but to illustrate the depth of my condition, I just got profoundly annoyed by my windshield wipers, and aggressively hit the lever to turn them off in a way that if verbalized would translate into a really bitchy, ‘Could you fucking not?’

What Came First?

I can’t decide if hurt, sad men, incapable of insight, growth, and healing, created the (all fictional) characters of James Bond, John Wayne, and Frank Sinatra, or if those fictional characters created these real men. Definitely a chicken/egg situation.

Just Breath On Glass

There’s nobody in this room,
Not even me.
There are no birds in the sky,
And definitely no bird in that cage
I keep in the corner,
Always changing the newspaper
Always refilling the water
And the food dish.
There are no birds in the oil,
And none in my belly.
There is no one reading this,
And no one writing it.
There is just space.
There are just these two hypothetical points,
These two dots on an imaginary map.
The space contracts and expands.
Sometimes the string is tight,
And sometimes it’s loose.
But there’s no one pulling on it,
And when it goes slack,
It’s not because someone is tired,
Because there is no one.
Not here,
Nor anywhere else.