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.

When They Still Have a Little Puppy in Them

My 8 year old just joyfully asked, ‘Hey Daddy? What’s a Muslim?’ and I giggled at the sweetness and out-of-nowhereness of the question and gave him a brief bullet point version of Islam. I love small moments like that.

Prohibited Activities

I’m guessing everything listed beneath skateboarding is meant to refer to things you can with a skateboard, but to me, this sign is telling us not to ride a skateboard, not to use your legs to momentarily propel yourself into the air, not to gnash your teeth or grind your pelvis against another person in a sexually provocative dance, and not to apply hot wax to your body in order to remove hair. At least not here.

Men and Cars (and Maybe My Childhood?)

I am not really a car guy. I remember the first time I actually wanted a car: it was in high school, and I saw a BMW Z3 in front of a pool hall one night. I asked my friends to hold up so I could check it out. ‘What’s the deal here?’, one friend asked. ‘ I want to have sex with this car’. I said.

Just now, for whatever reason, I pull up next to this Le Sabre, and I’m like, ‘I need this car’. I need a Freudian to help me translate this urge.

Your Next President. If You’re Good.

Famous Presidential Quotes

"Any man worth his salt will stick up for what he believes right, but it takes a slightly better man to acknowledge instantly and without reservation that he is in error." - Andrew Jackson

"Labor disgraces no man, but occasionally men disgrace labor." - Ulysses S. Grant

“It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. In this life, we get nothing save by effort." - Teddy Roosevelt

“Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” - John F. Kennedy

“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” - Ronald Reagan

“I want nothing! I want nothing! I want no quid pro quo!” - Donald Trump

It Turns Out God is a Surrealist French Filmmaker From the 1940’s

What the actual fuck. After I watched this weird, tragicomic meltdown, it took me a minute to realize my mouth was still agape and my eyebrows were still raised to their limit. Signs and wonders, folks.

Freud Was Right About Everyrhing.

For real though, the world wouldn’t be in the condition it is if a handful of white men had known how to talk to their fathers. 

West Clermont Local Schools

(this post is re: my community, but probably indicative of practices across the country):

An administrator from West Clermont Local schools called me to inform me that my son would be given detention for being late to school 20 times this year (no later than 10 minutes), and I explained to him that this practice is discriminatory against different family types (a stay at home parent who lives a block from the school and has one kid will have a much easier time than a kid with two brothers who each go to different schools and live in different houses different distances from the school twice a week). The administrator seemed to accept this, and my son wasn't given detention, but this baseline is still discriminatory—and West Clermont Local for some reason doesn’t seem to allow public posts—so I’m posting this here on my page for other families who find this unnecessarily punitive practice unacceptable. Hopefully if enough of us speak up, they will stop punishing our children for not living in homes that fit their cookie-cutter expectations!

Spreading the Gospel

Years ago, I would blare bands like Hatebreed, Pantera, Down, Helmet, Eyehategod, and Goatwhore in the morning as I was getting the kids ready for school. They definitely didn’t find it as motivational as I did, but endured it. Finally this morning I had a breakthrough. I put on ‘Becoming’ by Pantera as I drove Eliot to work, and asked him to read the lyrics. He was like, ‘Oh, this is nice! I like this. Who is it?’

I can only imagine the way I felt at that moment was most analogous to a door to door evangelist who actually got someone to listen to them and invite them back next Saturday.

\m/

Birds of a Feather

Her: you should go.

Me: no thanks. Too many white people. I don’t feel comfortable in that kind of environment.

Her: but you’re white.

Me: tell me about it.

The Glow of a First Time Voter

To be honest, I wasn’t planning on voting today. There were only a handful of local candidates on the Clermont County ballot, none of which I knew or really cared anything about. My 18 year old, however, was stoked about his first opportunity to vote, and was up and ready at 4:30 am to make sure we both got to the polls and were first in line. He’s a good citizen already, and I thank him for keeping me on point. I look forward to voting for him someday.