We Have Nothing But Fear Itself.

I used to believe a person could be both good AND strong, but the longer I live, the more it seems these forces are diametrically opposed. Either a person is good OR they are strong. If they are good, then they are not strong. And if they are strong, they are not good. What follows is that the strong abuse the good, and the good let them. In the end, everyone is miserable. But why is this so? I looked into it and found only despair.

First of all, are these "good" people actually even good? I used to wonder this back in elementary school when I saw kids getting bullied for no logical reason. At first, I felt bad for the victims. I tried to help them. I befriended them. It was only when I got to know them that I saw what piece of shit cowards they were. 

They weren't really good, they were just weak and afraid. It was their weakness in character, not their kindness that made them appear to be good. If you're only doing nice things because you're too scared to be an asshole, you're not fucking good. You're just a little dandy-ass bitch. These little fucks had no problem bossing around and humiliating kids lower than them in the social hierarchy. If they were more popular or stronger, they'd be doing the same shit as the bullies. After seeing enough of this, I lost all of that worthless pity for those spine-less pricks.

Then came the bullies. They were generally athletic and/or good looking. They wielded power either physical or social. They used that influence for enjoyment and more importantly, security.

Again, I got to know some of these people. I wanted to understand them, and what I found wasn't much different than the victims. Yet again, the main motivation was fear. They were afraid of not being liked, or not being strong enough. If they attacked others, they remained dominant. If they were dominant, no one would hurt them. It was pathetic. Tough demeanors hiding frightened little babies. They disgusted me.

In the end, it was all about fear. 2 sides of the same coin. Either they dealt with their fear using aggression or placidity. The differences between both kinds were barely distinguishable. It sickens me to this day to see these fear-raddled worms. 

I hate the idea that fear is mankind's chief motivator. Fear of death motivates us to live a full life, to do something important, to be remembered, and fear of others, of pain, makes us act shitty to each other along the way. So fuck you. All of you.

Music-Hating Town Inadvertently Creates New Form of DIY Event.

Money-loving, music-hating capital of the world, Asbury Parrk NJ, has recently banned local businesses from playing background music in their stores.

Despite its reputation as a hip, musical mecca, Asbury Park's chill, hipster attitude is actually a facade disguising its greedy totalitarian reality. Unless you are only playing pre-approved types of music and making the right people money, this town doesn't want any of your bullshit.

Background music isn't completely banned however. Businesses may play as much music as they like as long as they keep the volume below 65 decibels and they pay a fee upwards of $1500.00 a day. So if you're were looking to savor a fancy pasta dish at a candle-lit table over a bottle of wine with barely audible jazz music, you're shit out of luck.

The new ordinance has thusly forced ambiance aficionados to form a new underground scene. The $5 basement show is being replaced by events where you can bring your own food and eat it while listening to genuine, 100% real music played on somebody's phone through a crappy speaker. Punk houses don't know what to do with the sudden influx of new revenue from all of the middle-aged married couples seeking the refuge of a crusty basement in which to listen to Radiohead and Jack Johnson over salad and breadsticks.

"I'm thinking of buying a car. Maybe starting a 401k or something." says local resident Jake Healy in an interview yesterday. "It's cool, man. If these weirdos want to give me money, I'll take it."

A brand new DIY underground scene. Like always, bourne from the fascism of the greedy and powerful. This town has been dead for years, we're just fucking its corpse at this point. Expect organized police raids of these speakeateries to soon follow.

Eaters of the Flame

I can feel the world moving. Beneath, above, around, and within. Knew unto new. An expression of futility and quixotic ignorance. Faces shrouded beneath shifting folds of time. Connections and lack thereof. Faces slack with inarticulate vacuity. Tumbling through the escapades of a shameless generation. Nothing real can last in this travelcade of set pieces, interchangeable roles, vast sands of desolation, stagnant, repugnant waters. Not of life, bereft of life-giving succor. Nothing floating nothing moving.

Media junkies. Addicts of a substance far more dangerous than that of chemical euphoria. Slug-like entities. Human shells, skulking darkened on rivers of black rock. Groping for a fix in every bar across this shit-hole excuse of a country. Desperate. Manipulating. Sheparding toward self-annihilation. Insatiable sensationalists. Whip-scarred backs scraping and crawling through an ocean of spent semen and lingerie. Burn marks permeate their ligaments, dulling their ever-fleeting tangenital grasp on holographic reality. Who among you can claim immunity to this vile sickness? Atrophication of the grey matter. Axions missing their mark. Spiraling nothingness iterating itself into existence. Hildegarde doth professed.

Wrinkled, mucus-trailing swarm. Drinking clear frothy nectar. Lapping fervently the tap of devoidal opulence.

Pointlessless

Logically, if intelligent life continues onward without an extinction event, there will inevitably be an end to history. The point at which every permutation of every given event has already occurred. Literally a moment when nothing is new, because nothing can be new. With infinity as our time frame, it is an unavoidable inevitability. Given, one far beyond a time we could ever conceive, and certainly one we will never live to see. Yet, that does nothing to deter the ineluctable truth of limited options in a limitless time frame.

Now this... this is a pretty bleak concept.

Imagine being born into a time in which it is literally impossible to do anything new. Feels pretty futile doesn't it? As if our lives didn't feel pointless enough, we've got this atom bomb of futility looming ever-present in our genetic future.

Once you come to terms with this fact, you knock down one of the massive barriers preventing happiness for both the people alive at that time, and for ourselves right now. By imagining this world, we can learn a bit more about life, its meaning (or lack thereof), and our innate desire for agency.

At least we can have the hope of doing something novel. It's something we dedicate our lives searching for or creating. But future people will be denied that at birth. No possibility of leaving their mark on history. All the history books have already been filled and shut.

On the other hand, does that necessarily void meaning in one's life?

How many times have you been in a situation that is as old as mankind itself? Ever been sweet on someone who didn't even realize you existed? Ever fought with the urge to spill your heart out to them for fear of rejection? Ever been stabbed in the back by a friend? Or cheated on by a lover? These things have happened in nearly identical ways since our earliest ancestors. It's part of the human condition, and it is timeless. Despite knowing you're involved in a situation that has been played out billions of times and billions of ways by billions of people, it doesn't remove the meaning that you feel from it, does it? You still feel like it matters, even if it only matters to you. You still feel a sense of agency even when the possibilities have previously been exhausted by others. Because they're not you. You are you. This is your experience on your path. It is yours alone.

Live your life. Fuck history.

Factured

Traditionally, humans were defined by gender, with women being indirectly defined as "unman."

Women fulfilled the role of "other." Whatever it meant to be a man, being a woman meant you were the opposite.

In recent years, these lines have blurred. What you were was no longer dependent upon the gender you were born with. One found meaning in oneself.

It was a new freedom for the individual. One could finally express whatever qualities one personally valued.

It was fine for a time, but global interconnectivity and access to media led to an overabundance of entertainment. We spent less time discovering what was in ourselves and more time discovering what was out there.

Epiphenomenally, we came to define ourselves by our interests and tastes in entertainment. Less by our personal values and philosophies.

Our sense of humor, attitude, and style pulled directly from the screen we shed our personal identities. Reality, now a construct of imagination distanced by a screen, no longer felt real.

If the camera didn't capture it, it might as well have not happened at all.

And what remains when our defining features are culled from without instead of within? Nihilistic movie-quoting sex fiends? Carbon copy media mugwumps? Hollow-hearted, dying to live, distractopheliacs overdosing in a futile effort to kill the pain? Hiding the only honest part of themselves behind a mask? Refusing to relate to others on any meaningful level? Denying the fact that each of us is hollow and lost within the black hole of ourselves?

Disemelevatored

Whenever someone is kind, generous, or helpful to me, my immediate reaction is WHAT ARE YOU AFTER, YOU MANIPULATING PIECE OF SHIT?! WHAT'S YOUR ENDGAME HERE?!

FUCK WITH ME AND I WILL STRIKE BACK WITH SUCH RIGHTEOUS VENGEANCE THAT THE NATIONS WILL KNOW THEMSELVES TO BE BUT MEN! THE SKY WILL CRACK OPEN AND MOUNTAINS WILL CRUMBLE IN MY WAKE! THE WHOLE OF HUMANITY WILL TREMBLE IN WIDE-EYED FEAR AT THE MENTION OF MY NAME!

I WILL DO THINGS TO YOU THAT WILL RUIN THE REST OF YOUR NATURAL EXISTENCE!

RWOOOOAAAAAAAGHGHGHGGG!!!!!!
GYUUUUUOOOOOOUOUOUOUGHGG!
AAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!


or whatever.






In other news, I've been trying to be more sociable lately.
And by sociable, I mean saying exactly what I need to say to get people to not want to talk to me anymore but not dislike me in any way.

It's going well.


Another large glob of protoplasmic jelly falls from his atrophied form and hits the floor with a loud smack. A faint sucking sound can be heard as the pressure equalizes at the rapid loss of glia and axons. Processes halted, stimuli undigested, aneurystic  insect eyes seeking sugar and light in a young boy's virgin cavities and burn cherry-red with pent up desires.

I stood in front of the mirror, stared deeply into my own eyes, and saw nothing but darkness...

Don't let me fall into that pit again...
It took all my strength to crawl and scrape and drag myself out the first time. It was unbearable torture with no reprieve. Yet my strength won out in the end. I freed myself of that indescribable hell. I was again myself. No more were the hooks of demons ripping violently at my flesh. But still, it wouldn't last, it never does...
Again the beast came to my door. It creaked and shook with fury. This time it was here for good. Now the monster was going to ensnare me and never let me go. He came so swiftly that I had barely any time to react, but again I made my move and gained victory... but at what cost?
I lost all that was dear to me. I may have driven away the demon, but now I had to live with the aftermath. I had to live with myself, with what I've done. A boulder I'll carry on my back for eternity. There was no going back. Believe me, I tried. Nothing could come close to repairing the rift it created. I was myself again, but what's the point? I have nothing. I've ruined it all.
I live on for one reason. Hope. The hope that one day things will get better. It's all I have and it's next to nothing. Now the real torture begins. How long can I last? The demon is always at my door. I've only known of it's existence. But this time I saw it. It's eyes glowed a fierce crimson and it had two crooked horns. It literally emerged from the wall. I was keeping it in there and it was breaking free. Each day I saw the fury in it's eyes grow. I was terrified and alone, but then again, when am I not?
I won, technically. I had my life and my mind. Everything else was lost in the confrontation.

But life went on, life always goes on, and it doesn't stop for me. I slowly regained a sense of purpose and friends to laugh with. Things were getting better and better.
It came again. It tried to drive me to violence, but I ran. I ran far far away. It always comes back near familiar ground. So I threw it all away. I freed myself yet again from it's grasp. Only I made things worse in the time it tried to grab hold of me. I didn't think that was even possible.

It's been four years since then. I've hidden the door even from myself. It's not safe there. But 2 days ago I walked an invisible path in a world of light. I dive into my mind. I came across an object in this illuminated garden of forked paths. And just like that I stumbled upon the door to my insanity...

And look, it's green.

Hahahaha, it is truly the only color befitting such an agonizing object.

Soaked with tears and sealed in blood.

I fell to my knees. I grabbed the edge of the horrid thing. I won't open it. I thrashed at it screaming bloody murder. I gave into crying at it's feet. It was only then that I noticed it's degrading. It has holes carved into it. I dare not look inside lest the demon escape again. But I knew. It was inches away.

I sat alone and broken until I had forgotten everything. The world seemed to disappear with my thoughts. When it all had left me, I rose to my feet. I was not in the light anymore. Everything had gone dark. The light faded and with it all the beauty and goodness of my mind. Now, in front of me, there was not a door, but a mirror.

I stood in front of the mirror, stared deeply into my own eyes, and saw nothing but darkness...


Then the pitch black eyes that were so fixed in place suddenly fell from their thrones. I tasted my own brains as they gently rolled along the gray matter and mental sewage. I've missed this taste...