Moment of Truth

The American college system is such a sick joke. Every time I sign up for classes and by text books I feel like I just walked into a 9 dollar movie and the ticket ripper says “Where’s your 8 dollar popcorn? You can’t  come in without popcorn.”

In the flimsy guise of a “well rounded” education we, the people, are consistently robbed by being forced to take what are commonly referred to as “b.s. classes”. We have to fulfill requirements for subjects that have nothing to do with our concentrated academic path or “major”. Sure, it’s all fine and dandy to talk about having knowledge in a plethora of subjects when you finally get your bachelor’s, but tuition and books what they are we should have a choice! If I had only been made to take classes pertinent to my major then I would have had my degree this year. The pockets of the whomevers wouldn’t be as fat but I can live with that, can’t you?

I know it’s useless to complain, most good things in life take a level of compromise. Unfortunately I’m awful at compromise. On top of being steadfast to a fault I chose a social road from an early age where I was inandated with terms like “never back down”, “no compromise”, and “don’t sell out”. So if I’m whining please excuse. But if you feel the same way let me know!

In today’s installation of YouTube party we explore the negative spiritual effects of materialism…br00tal

My respect for women ever grows the more I come to know my wife. It’s so funny how little we boys really know about you ladies when we think we know everything. If any guy can get any girl to do anything we think we’ve got it all figured out. When I figured out that ignoring a girl in high school would get her to like me I thought I was the smartest man alive. Or when I figured out that sitting quietly with my wife for a few hours would earn me a few hours of uninterrupted guy time I thought “girls aren’t such a mystery! What’s the big deal?”

But today I’ve started to understand about girl’s something that has brought me to the only true revelation a person can have.

All I know is that I know nothing.

Women have it rough!

Guys lead simple lives where everything is numbers, colors, and shapes. We know everything we need to know by the time we’re in 4th grade. We can measure time, distance, and state our opinions or change them just as easy as you please. But girls, well girls see all the things us boys see but with the added dimension of feeling. It’s like they see things four dimensionally. If my wife tells me we don’t spend enough time together than I show her a graph of how much we are in the same room, car, or bed. Then I compare these figures to the amount of time we spend doing things separately and the math clearly shows that we are together a majority of the time. My wife sees the graph, and acknowledges it’s numerical truth, but then she cannot accept it’s validity based on it’s lack of emotional truth. My wife sees a bar on the graph that I can’t see called “quality”. The amount of time we spent together, though numerous, lacks quality. The time lacks feeling.

But this doesn’t just go for relationships with most women. I suspect that emotional validity gets factored into every facet of their lives. Like the fact that I read a report about the negative effects of this or that on myself, the community, or the global economy and I simply make a decision to stop or continue doing it. My wife, however, reads the same report but has to figure a rubix cube of emotions out before she can start or stop anything.

A short for instance:

My wife has a problem getting agitated in certain situations. I used to have this problem as well. Something happened to me and I said “getting agitated doesn’t help, I don’t think I’ll do that anymore.”

But for her it’s not that simple. She can’t just click her emotions and ideas on and off like I do. There’s this beautiful and treacherous fourth dimension to everything that she has to navigate her way through before she can not be agitated anymore. This is a huge point of contention between the sexes. Woman says “This makes me so angry”. Man says, “Well stop letting it get to you.” It’s not that easy. Mix all that in with nature once a month and mantaining a body image that won’t put dark clouds in the fourth dimension and girls have it really hard.

I also think sex is so much more complicated for girls because they lack the ability to dissociate like boys tend to do. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a firm naysayer of the term “casual sex”. I think sex is tied to VERY strong emotions for both sexes and is never quite casual. Guys who run around having sex with whomever have just as many issues as girls who do the same, they’re just better at ignoring them. However, guys seem to be able to do this dissociation trick that girls are incapable of. A man’s mind seems to default to the thought that whatever he does between the time he’s ready to have sex and the time he’s finished having sex has no baring on who he is as a person. A perfectly normal, well adjusted man can watch the weirdest stuff on the internet and not bat an eyelash later on. Girls, I think, don’t have that dissociation so whatever they do behind close doors is something they tend to carry around during normal day to day. I think this makes sexual relationships difficult even in a perfect “virgins at the altar” situation. A guy will want to do or “try” something and it’s no big deal because the bedroom seems not to be real life to him. But the girl doesn’t dissociate, so she has to wonder how she’ll feel about it at work the next day.

Bottom line: hats off to women! You all put up with a lot of shit and have found time to fight for equality and maintain it when it’s achieved. I respect but do not envy you.

I had a sudden epiphany today that revealed a deep rooted problem for livers of the modern life.

People, especially in this country, are seriously out of touch with reality and as a product of that we’re all hyper tense and suffering from needless anxiety.

When I say reality I mean that we are so far removed from the simple truths of life that we consistently complain and stress out about the cards we’re dealt instead of playing them to the best of our abilities.

So you’re at your local department store and they’re out of the product your looking for and none of the birthday cards perfectly communicate your feelings so you get agitated at someone who walks in front of your car in the parking lot and honk or yell at them and then they walk into the store agitated that somebody yelled at them and they cut in line at the register and agitate someone else.

All because Target happened to not have what you were looking for.

Guess what folks, the majority of people on this planet have never been in a Target and would give an appendage to be able to afford anything within it’s walls. You have both your arms and both your legs and you eat by chewing and swallowing and not with the assistance of a tube. Who cares if someone cuts you off in traffic or wears an obnoxious t-shirt to work. If these are the things that are wrong in your day you should be on your hands and knees thanking whomever you thank that you ate today, yesterday, or even the day before.

So someone was incorrigible today at Starbucks, at least you don’t bathe in the same water other people shit in!

Get with it folks, reality is real and all you have to do is realize that you don’t have it so bad. It’s kind of that cliche “don’t sweat the small stuff and every-thing’s small stuff” accept for this version goes “realize that real tragedy exists and your existence won’t be a real tragedy.

In 1998 Ben Stiller set the bar for intelligently offensive humor when he answered the door with semen dangling from his ear for “There’s Something About Mary”.

Years after this we would watch the bar get raised by Micheal Cera and Jonah Hill after the first four minutes of “Superbad”.

Less than two seconds (literally) into “Tropic Thunder” Stiller reclaims the perverbial “bar” and throws it up another notch.

With the lead role and the directors chair, Ben Stiller reminds the new shock comedians and writers of our time how it was done in the olden days. Of course, Stiller also seemed to have the advantage of calling in some huge favors as Tom Cruise plays a VERY strange uncharacteristic (and hilarious) part in the movie and the one and only Ethan Cohen has a writing credit.

This movie delivers truck loads of laughs while simultantiously making you feel like an insensative jerkwad for even giggling. This is the true sign of a good, irreverant comedy.

You can read the premise and the technical ins and outs on more reputable movie blog site. As for me? No complaints whatsoever. This movie was well worth my nine bucks and what little bit of self respect I sacrificed in laughing at racial tensions and the word “retarded”.

I think a lot about what God is calling me to do. Part of being young and enthusiastic about living your faith is wondering whether God wants you to move to Mongolia or hand out religious tracts or become rich and famous for His glory or whatever silly thing we come up with.

I’ve decided that God is really calling me to cry. I think my missions field is just holing up in a dark room and crying for everyone. Crying because war isn’t right. Crying because sometimes to stop killing you have to kill. Crying because people don’t understand why their marriages don’t work. Crying because people live short, unexamined lives. Crying because I don’t have the brass to do anything about it.

I know God uses our talents, and I’d say crying is a talent of mine. I’d say I feel like crying an average of 4 times a week. I don’t know if this is abnormal for a guy with anchors and burning bodies tattooed on him, but I’m a writer and that’s the truth.

The term “going home” makes me want to cry when it refers to going to heaven. Talking about Johnny Cash and June Carter makes me want to cry. Little kids saying simple things makes me want to cry. Watching smart people like my pastor (who graduated from Yale) almost cry makes me want to cry. The list of things that don’t make me cry would probably be an easier list to compose than what I’m attempting now.

I think it’s my guilt from always wanting to cry that lead me to be so hyper-aggressive for awhile. Like, for everything that made me want to cry I had to find something that would make me want to fight. Then, when I would cry, I’d make a mental note to physically or intellectually assert dominance over someone before my next crying incident. But I’m sort of over that now, so I’m just going to start being honest. Because that’s what writers do and I want to be a writer. Writers are honest about themselves even when they’re lying about something else. So there.

I don’t have a lot of brain power and what little I have has been going into stories lately so please forgive me for the filler. Speaking of filler…I bring you YouTube party vol 2.

Last night I had a dream that I beat the tar out of somebody.

I’ve had these dreams many, many times but this one was notably different. After I accosted the focus of my ethereal rage instead of feeling refreshed and released I actually felt silly and a bit guilty. I woke up feeling the same.

This is the sign I’ve been waiting for that indicates I am, in fact, not just pretending to be a pacifist. My subconscious, viva my dreaming, has clicked over into a totally different attitude about how I deal with people and the ways in which I interact with them.

Too bad it took me this long to start growing up.

I went to the Alley Katz portion of Best Friend’s Day this evening in order to see a favorite band of mine.

For those of you who don’t know what Best Friends Day is allow me to continue you on your happy path by not explaining it. If you don’t know, you’re lucky. Don’t get curious is my only advice.

Here’s my review.

Imagine you somehow lined up every Richmond resident and played word association. If you said “Avail” and they answered “band” then they made it to the next round.

You then line up all those people and play word association again. If you say “life goals” and they dimwittedly answer “party” then you gave them a ticket to the show. These people then make up 98% of the show at Alley Katz this evening.

In times such as these, when posts are sparse, I’ve always turned to gimmicks to keep my post count up and my readers assured that I, in fact, still live. So now I introduce YouTube party Vol. 1. This will be the first in a series where, when I have nothing pertinent to say, I will post online videos that have changed my life.

In this first one we’ll see that when the kids are united…they will target the real issues.