This is going to be a bit of a short one because I want to get some sleep soon.
Conservatives and libertarians seem to forget the key tenet of life, and that is, life sucks. Life is unfair. Life is not meant to be some sort of competition, it is not supposed to be some sort of mad scramble to the top of the pile. At birth, we are dealt our cards and for the most part, our cards don’t change. Sure, there are occasionally some nice stories about how people can rise above their humble beginnings to become something greater, but honestly, how often does that happen? More often than not, people who are born into wealth stay rich and people who are born into rags remain clothed in rags.
Life is not a competition to see who can collect the most stuff. Life for most people is a shitty situation and most of us are trying our best to find a way to rise above that sea of shit, if only for a moment. So if you have a shit-ton of money, don’t complain. If you’re in government, don’t go on about how cutting taxes for the rich will somehow cure the country of all ills. Don’t worry about the supposed “redistribution of wealth”, because there is NO redistribution of wealth. You wealthy fuckers will stay wealthy, and the poor will stay poor. It’s not the poor are going to be become rich from welfare.
Oh yeah, and one last thing: TEA PARTY. You’ve been manipulated. You’ve been had. You are been used by a corporate news organization. You are being directed by a higher HUMAN power toward extremism. You are being stoked for ratings. You are being stoked for views. You are being USED. You are not you, you are sheep in the minds of the great manipulators, the puppet-masters. Left up your arms. Examine yourself. Do you see the strings? Think for yourself. Break free. Do not be constrained by the easy rhetoric of the puppet-masters.
And… yeah. That’s basically what I have to say about that, in my rough, unpolished, operating-on-little-sleep form.
Okay, so I spent about 3 hours and 20 minutes to get about 80% of the points on my physics homework. So… yeah, I understood maybe about half of it, but whatever. I’ll go to office hours and I’ll find out how to do the rest then. In any case, my grades are a bit in the shitter, but I’m trying to pull them off and rinse them with a pressurized hose.
So while I was doing my physics homework, I listened to the album, “My Computer”, by Radiohead. It’s apparently one of the best rock albums of all time, and it’s so very, very depressing. Basically, if you take emo and make it good, that’s what “My Computer”… no, that’s not right to say. Emo is emotional, emotional about the sadness that is their middle-class, suburban life, emotional about their asinine, trivial high school issues, emotional about their uptight, overbearing parents. Rather, what I mean to express is such a deep, endless pool of nihilism that threatens to destroy the mind and crush the soul by merely listening to it. I’m not a music critic, but I can see why music critics say that “OK Computer” is one of the best albums of all time, and certainly one of the best alternative rock albums of the 1990s.
There are a couple of tracks that stick out from all the others. The first that comes to my mind was “Fitter Happier”, an extremely experimental song/poem that basically shat on every dream, aspiration, hope, or tiny happiness that I had in life. It invalidated everything that I wanted and made everything I did seem meaningless. I found a Youtube video that perfectly captures the meaning of the song.
I also liked “Exit Music (For a Film)”, “Let Down”, and “No Surprises” because they were good songs. “No Surprises” was also really depressing and it seemed almost like a suicide note in audio form. Now, I say it’s “depressing”, but I don’t mean to imply that it’s sad. It’s certainly a melancholy song, and by no means is it a happy song, but it’s a different type of sadness. It’s not something sharp like having to bury a family member or breaking up with a girlfriend. Instead, it’s something dull like realizing that nothing really interests or excites you anymore, like it’s difficult to find something to while away the hours. I think that’s real depression. Sadness doesn’t lead to depression; boredom and disinterest does.
On a side note, “No Surprises” was the song in the opening for Season 6 of “House”, and I liked how it was used.
Oh yeah, have you ever tried to write while really sleepy? Like you were about to fall asleep or something but your fingers were still working on autopilot? It also works if you’re writing. It leads to a sort of stream-of-consciousness-type thing where your mind’s on autopilot and your grammar goes out the window but somehow your spelling remains impeccable. You don’t really have a logical string, more like a mess of jumbled up words and ideas that are entirely unrelated to each other. Despite the rambling nature of this bit, I promise that this isn’t any example. If it was, you literally wouldn’t be able to understand anything I wrote. Also, I wouldn’t be proofreading/correcting my stuff while I’m typing but I do detect a larger number of mistakes and missed keys in my typing. Whatever. It’s unimportant.
I swear I’m going to try something like this when I’m much more tired. I’m can sleep, but I’m not about to fall asleep at any point just yet. I would very much like to go to sleep though. It’s a physical compulsion that I just don’t seem to want to go against.
It’s now 5:06 AM. And I kind of want to sleep. Actually, there’s no “kind of”. I WANT to go to sleep. I’m tired. I’m sleepy. I know I need it. My brain’s not operating on full but I so want to continue writing. So I think I will. I’m sorry if this reads like I’m high or something. Wait. No I’m not. I don’t really give a damn. I’m not drunk or on drugs or anything. I’m just listening to Radiohead and I’m sleepy and it’s totally fucking with my mind. It’s not particularly pleasant to I swear to GOD it’s hilariously fun. I’m starting to forget how to spell words now…
Anyway… so… yeah, I’ve met a bunch of new people off-hall so far this year. It’s nice. Most of them are girls. So that’s nice. I always find that more productive. In some way. I think. I dunno. Maybe just in general. Is there a point system or something? Maybe girls are worth twice as many points as guys. Is that strange to contemplate? It might be.
Anyway. So. Yeah. I wonder if I should ask one of them out on a date. I don’t have much money though. I need a job. I need something sustainable. What the hell am I going to do about that? I still don’t have a job. I also haven’t eaten since… around 1 PM yesterday. It’s Sunday now. I started out on Saturday night. I’ve been awake for about 20 hours now. I haven’t eaten in about…. 14. I think I did that math right. 15? No, more like 14. I was right the first time. As long as I’m right in the end. That’s all that matters. I’m feeling very empty in the stomach region. I’m feeling very light. That’s a good feeling. I must learn to maintain it. It both saves money and prevents me from gaining weight. It’s not like you can gain weight if you don’t eat as much, right? Yeah. I’m right.
So in any case, I need to go on a date. I think. Is that a requirement now? What are the contemporary mating rituals for normal human beings? Some of these girls aren’t entirely vanilla though. A couple of them have got the geek flavor. I’m sure they’d appreciate going on a date, but a normal date? I don’t think that’s how things work with geek girls. I mean, it’ll go over well, but what does better? I dunno. I guess it depends on how much of a geek girl they are. In any case, I need money for anything I’m doing. So I’m kind of crap on that ground.
I also need to lose a shit-ton of weight. Like… I need to get to 120-130 or something. Probably 130, because I think I might start looking a bit twig-y if I go below 130. Still. Getting to 130′s not going to be easy. I think it’d take longer than a couple months unless I literally don’t eat or something. I’m just start with getting down to 160 first. I think. That’s manageable. I just won’t have to eat for a week or so (not literally… duh) and then gradually build my diet back up to the point where I can eat some meat or something. I’ll be a bit of a bitch until I get there though. I just know it.
Anyway. It’s 5:17 AM now. I’m really going to sleep now.
I think part of growing older is seeing all the closed doors. As a young kid, I wanted to do be a fight in war, explore space, be a rock star, or dig up dinosaurs in the sand. As I grew older, I realized that war sucks, space is empty, I suck at singing, and digging up dinosaurs doesn’t make that much money.
Growing older isn’t just your body aging and decaying. It’s more about how your focus shifts from dreams of success to visions of failure. Growing older is understanding that failure is more common than success. It’s about losing the wonder of life and explaining away that lose as “seeing the world more realistically”.
Dreams and the dreamers are scorned and ridiculed.
