A Long Winter

I dug in for the long haul

Splintered soul and haggard drawl

Shelter left me long ago

Left me out here in the snow

Try to build another now

No one ever shows you how

Dig a ditch and get inside

But don’t let them see you die.

“Idiocracy” was a documentary from the future.

Let this message be a call to arms.  Let these words be a call to action.  Let anyone who reads this post rise up and join the small minority of people who have been quietly and thanklessly struggling to keep the human race from a path of destruction.  This is not a call for weapons, violence, or mutiny over any structured institution.  Rather, it is a call to knowledge.  A call to educate, inform, and enlighten.  A beacon of hope we can shine throughout the U.S. and possibly the world so future generations will not live in a dark, cold, unfriendly place.  And together, we can change everything.

Okay, seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you people? How hard is it to learn basic spelling?  How hard is it to retain a simple piece of information like “your” and “you’re”? For the love of God!  If you can’t remember a simple thing like “there” and “their”, how the fuck do you remember where you live?  How do you remember what color your car is when you come out of the library–oops, I mean–when you come out of the strip club?  Yes, it is my intention to be slightly humorous in the way I present this, but I seriously want to know how all you people are still surviving.

How have you not accidentally walked in front of a train?  How have you not accidentally choked on the jagged edges of a tin can lid while trying to eat soup?  How have you not gotten into a horrible car wreck when your favorite song came on the radio?  How have you not walked into an empty elevator shaft because you were checking Facebook on your phone?

Admittedly, I’m also a pretty avid Facebook user.  And I’m not necessarily blaming any specific social media outlets for this decline in human intelligence.  Nor am I blaming social media in general, technically.  I do feel it has been a catalyst, in many ways, but we cannot remove the blame we, as a people, share in becoming one of the stupidest, uneducated, frail generations since cavemen first recoiled in horror at fire.  And to be fair, at least they knew how to hunt, cook and sew.

So, what am I talking about, you ask?  Aside from a general malevolence toward the poor grammar and spelling that has become the norm, obviously.  I made that pretty clear in the last few paragraphs.  This is what I’m talking about:

Oh really? What kind of “metals”? Copper? Lead? Zinc? And yes, the capitalization is annoying, but not necessarily at the heart of what I’m trying to convey.  Although, laziness is definitely part of the problem.  No, what bothers me here is the fact that this person genuinely thinks the word “metal” is a homonym.  After all, most medals are made out of metal, right?  Bullshit.  This is unacceptable.  Here’s another one:

This represents another part of the problem.  Now, I know what you’re thinking.  Yes, “omg” is an acceptable acronym like “lol” or “wtf”.  And “dafuq” was not born out of a lack of intelligence or an inability to spell.  It came from someone trying to be funny, similar to “Ermahgerd” and that horrible “lolspeak” on those awful “lolcat” images.

The reason I see it as a problem is because while “Ermahgerd” and “lolspeak” are similar in intent, I have not seen them replace normal conversation on the internet (if you can call it that).  “Dafuq”, on the other hand, is becoming part of everyday speech, instead of being limited to funny memes.  I know this seems a bit trivial, but what it represents is a systematic degradation of intelligent thought and speech.

I do also have a problem with the fact that it’s becoming commonplace to shorten an entire sentence into a series of acronyms.  Let’s say someone is harassing you on Facebook.  How fucking busy can you be that you have to type “omg stfu & gtfo u jrk”?  How difficult is it to type “Oh my God!  Would you shut the fuck up and leave me alone? You’re a jerk!”?  It took me all of about two seconds to type it just now.  And wouldn’t it be easier to subdue your aggressor by giving the impression that you’re not a half-witted mongoloid, mashing the keyboard with your sausage fingers and hoping for the best?

I’m a big fan of post-apocalyptic movies, television shows, and video games.  Unfortunately, most of them are completely implausible.  And the reason they are implausible is not what you might think.  The truth of the matter is that we, as a people, could NEVER handle living in such a society.  The human race, as a whole, has become so entrenched with all of this unintelligent banter that our overall thinking has become dumbed down.  Our ability to utilize critical thinking and rational, logical decision making has gotten so cobwebbed that we wouldn’t know what to do once the grocery store was empty.  Except, of course, to scream out “omg!” and rock back and forth, cradling our now dead smart phone with tears in our eyes.

But I digress.  My intention is to highlight a serious deficiency with the people who inhabit the online universe, right here and now, and not in some mythical future.  This staggering lack of common sense, basic grammar, and grade school level spelling should be a serious concern.  Unfortunately, the general consensus is that people like me are being “too serious” or “too uptight” or a “grammar Nazi”.  How about you shut your barely literate mouth and learn how not to be an idiot?  At least I know how to read a face clock, you lump of manure with skin stretched over it.  I would have never thought that a bowl of moldy, rotten apples could be poured into a human skull, but here you are.

My final thought on all of this is that unless we are able to separate the things we say, write, and do as a joke, or as a way to make people laugh, from the actual uneducated, half-witted, lazy display of gibberish that takes two or three passes to understand, we are all doomed to become a society of the latter.

I’m actually not that old, but I can already see it happening in the youngest of us who use the internet and social media.  I see it in the celebrities we worship and idolize every time I take a browse on Twitter.  I see it in schools, where after 11 years of education, a senior turns in a paper for a “critical thinking” class that’s almost unintelligible, yet still gets a “C”.  And I see it out in everyday life, when some 19-year-old dead brain cell can’t comprehend the concept of a silent film and continually asks questions about the lack of dialogue.

Is that serious enough for you?  Or do you still think I’m uptight?  If you do, then stfu & gtfo, the rest of us have no interest in being sucked into the black hole created by your crippled brain.

My Humanity Axiom

I’m turning 33 in one month, and I have finally run out of patience.

Patience for people’s idiotic, annoying, uneducated, irreverent, and mostly pointless ramblings, usually made all over the internet (irony alert).  Patience for people seeing my generosity and exploiting it, especially if it’s intentional, but also if it’s not.  Patience for people thinking they can say whatever the hell they want to me, no matter how irritating, insulting, incorrect, out of line, or disruptive it may be, because I’m such a “good sport” or a such a “nice guy” that I won’t call anyone on it or cause a scene.  I can take a joke, don’t get me wrong, but not if you’re being childish, relentless, caustic, or just flat-out annoying about it.

Patience for people turning everything I say and do into something about them.  The entire fucking world doesn’t revolve around you, your friends, your career, or your love life.  If I post a status update about how exciting the game was, it’s not an invitation to post three paragraphs about how your boyfriend proposed to you at a football game.  I know it may be hard to swallow, but everything that everyone says is not a subtle reference to something in your life.

Patience for people who disregard my personal thoughts, opinions, or feelings based solely on the fact that they disagree with me or think that because we’re friends I won’t be bothered by it.  I don’t give a fuck if you agree with me or not; it’s your right to have your own thoughts, opinions or feelings.  The difference between you and me is that I actually listen, read, and comprehend what you’ve said or written and take that into consideration before crafting my response.  Unless, of course, you’re guilty of all the other shit I’ve lost my patience for.  In that case, I don’t really give a shit if you’re insulted by what I have to say.

Patience for people who put words into my mouth, accuse me of some hidden agenda, or are so convinced they know what I meant by what I said or did they completely ignore everything after that and “write me off” as manipulative, mean, or unscrupulous. Patience for people who pick apart every single word I say and ignore the fact that human beings often speak in metaphors, allegories, and abstract concepts to convey meaning.  And if you can’t follow those things, then I’m sorry I’m smarter than you, but I’m not going to speak in one-syllable words so you can follow a simple conversation.

Patience for people who pretend (or actually believe) they’re the smartest person on the planet.  Don’t assume you know better than everyone else just because you read some article on the internet or some friend of yours told you something.  Try using your brain for once in your goddamn life and actually learn something instead of just regurgitating what you read on a message board or saw on television.

Patience for people who have a small amount of knowledge on a variety of subjects and then fill in the gaps to seem extremely knowledgeable about a lot of things.  In the world we live in, it’s very easy to search and find real facts and information about pretty much everything on the planet.  Take five minutes out of your fucking life and expand your mind once in a while.  Don’t take the 5% you actually know and tout yourself as an expert on the subject.

People who act like they’ve had every single idea ever conceived before anyone else had it.  If everyone who said, “I was thinking the exact same thing” or “I actually had that idea a while ago” was really telling the truth, then the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral would have been broadcast live on CNN and Jesus would have taken a jetliner to heaven.  Have some fucking humility and acknowledge when someone has a good idea, especially when that idea is better than yours.  You might accidentally come across as a decent human being.

Patience for people who think everything they say and do is so important that the entire world must stand up and listen.  Your opinion doesn’t mean shit to anyone else but you.  Even when people agree with you, the reality is that your opinion has no bearing on their lives.  They just happen to agree with what you’re saying.  The entire fucking population sits up on their own individual high-horses, proclaiming their thoughts on religion, politics, technology, science, society and everything else known to humankind as if anyone else should actually give a shit.  If everyone would take a moment and actually realize their opinions don’t matter, then everyone would mind their own fucking business and we’d all be free to live happy and fulfilling lives.

Patience for people who hide in their rooms and use the internet as a sounding board for shit they would never say in real life.  (irony? nope)  Try having some guts and tell someone what you think when you see them face to face.  We all know you won’t, though.  You’ll continue to post comments “anonymously” and then smile and nod in your real life, you spineless, sniveling, whiny piece of human shit.  Then again, “human” shit might be better than you deserve.

Patience for people who think they’re more evolved because they don’t like television, sports, movies, video games, or other sources of entertainment.  Just because you don’t need to be entertained doesn’t mean you’ve discovered some hidden part of the brain or human genetic code that allows you to truly take life and the world seriously while everyone else “hides from reality” and plays Assassin’s Creed.  The truth is that you’re the one who’s hiding from reality, thinking that what you had for breakfast is some profound moment in human existence.  And entertainment is not some kind of modern Roman Coliseum intended to fool the public into a false sense of reality.  If you watch a baseball game and walk away thinking, “Wow, that was a good game, I guess the economy isn’t really that bad.  Maybe I can finally get that job and buy a new house,” then you’re a moron and removing your sources of entertainment isn’t going to make you “wake up” and see the world for what it really is.

Patience for anyone who walks around with a false sense of entitlement, as if they truly are the one who broke the mold.  Just because you’re attractive, smart, spiritual, educated, healthy, wealthy, well-endowed, in shape, important, famous, fashionable, cool, popular, desired, followed, admired, envied, or anything else a person can possibly be, does not make you better.  Most of the time, it makes you worse.  You walk around with your skimpy clothes, your $1,000 briefcase, your Blackberry, your fashion blog, your millions of Twitter followers, your bag full of books on philosophy, your gold card, your crystal shard necklace, your prayer beads, and your free-range, all organic, low carb, gluten-free, tofu, wheat grass bullshit as if everyone should turn their heads and marvel at your mere existence.  Well, guess what?  They shouldn’t.  And neither should you.

And finally, despite everything I’ve said, patience for people who think it’s their right or duty to clean up the world.  No matter how “enlightened” you think you are, you have no right to take those ideas and ruin the lives of those around you.  You do not have the right to keep people down, take away their rights, take away their life, or take away their basic human right to live and exist in the world the way they see fit.  Even if they’re wrong.  Even if they are the opposition to your own beliefs.  Even if you truly believe they are destroying humanity.  You do not have the right to deny anyone the ability to be as much of an asshole as they want to be.  Everyone has the right to live the life they want to live, eat the food they want to eat, love the person they want to love, drink the booze they want to drink, worship the god they want to worship, speak the words they want to say, and run in the circles they choose to run in.

However, if you are one of the people who actively engages in interfering with or denying this simple, basic, human right, whether it’s as insignificant as writing a letter or as detrimental as murdering your neighbor for not fitting into your narrow world view, then your rights are revoked.  Sorry, the planet doesn’t want you, and neither do I.

Nineteen Eighty-Facebook

It’s been a long time since I posted something.  And the fact that I only made one post and then stopped proves that I never really committed to the whole blog idea. Maybe I just really wanted to get that first post out of my head and then moved on.  I can’t say.  But another issue has come up in my life that I feel needs to get out into the electronic world that connects us all.  Well, to be more accurate, in a friend’s life.

A friend of mine recently had his Facebook account deactivated.  When he tried to log in, he received a message saying that his account had been deactivated for “sexual content.”  This was confusing to all of us who know him, since he had never posted sexual content in the seven years he was on Facebook, and hadn’t in this case, either.  He appealed the decision, and waited for the response.  What was Facebook’s final decision?  They decided he was done, account permanently deactivated, don’t ever contact us about it, we’ll never reinstate it for ANY reason.  Basically, “go fuck yourself.”  But the reasons they gave in the final eMail had nothing to do with sexual content.

After some investigative work, he found out that one of his real-life enemies had told an ex of his that he was hacking the ex’s account and sending this enemy messages from it.  Let’s stop right here for a moment and think about that.  Someone who was allegedly committing this cyber-crime, decided that he would start sending out messages, thereby declaring that he was committing the crime.  Any normal people, even half-wits, would immediately see a red flag waving furiously in front of them.  Unfortunately, this ex panicked and reported him to Facebook for hacking her account.

To be fair, he had one major issue working against him.  He wasn’t using his real name with the account.  But this wasn’t an alias or even anything that sounded like a real name.  It was a phrase.  It would be like someone having “You’re Fired” as a username because he/she is a fan of “The Apprentice.”  His phrase was, “Swader Than You.”  This is not something someone who plans malice would use to hide his or her identity.  That person would chose an alias that sounds like a real name and might fool the authorities at Facebook.  Now, I know that Facebook says in their TOS that all users must fully represent themselves and not use an alias.  However, this would be an opportunity for Facebook to force him to use his real name or face account removal.  “Hey, you can’t use phrases or nicknames.”  Such a simple solution.

But the conclusion that he and I came to is that whomever at Facebook reviewed his account, saw the alias and immediately denied the appeal, without doing any research whatsoever.  If he’s using an alias, he must be guilty, right?  Forget the fact that he has his real eMail address and real phone number linked to his account and would frequently “check in” at home with his real address.  That’s all irrelevant, the three lines where they ask you for your name is all that matters.  There are seven years worth of data that proves he is not on Facebook to commit cyber-crimes, but at the word of an ex-girlfriend and a real-life enemy who is only out to destroy him because she can’t have him, Facebook deactivates an honest person’s account.  Without a second thought.  Without a real investigation.

You may ask how I know they didn’t perform a real investigation.  It’s quite simple.  If anyone had taken five minutes to check the IP addresses of his account and the “hacked” account over the last few months, they would have seen that all of the logins to the “hacked” account were done by her from her home computer, phone, or any other places she usually uses to log in.  They would have been able to check all of the places that he normally uses to access Facebook.  And they would not have found a single anomaly.  And I can guarantee this because he is, in fact, innocent of this crime.  And this is only one of a million options that they have to verify or refute this claim.  They ARE the site! They could break down every single element to its binary code if they wanted.  But, it was much easier to just assume guilt rather than take the time to make sure it’s accurate.  As my friend said after this happened, “Well, I guess Facebook never promised anyone a fair trial.”

The issue I want to shine a light on, here, is not that some petty, angry girl went all “The Crush” on him and is trying to ruin his life.  It’s the issue that Facebook has made it clear that they are willing to deactivate any account on the word of anyone else.  That’s the message you want to send out, Facebook?  “Hey, if you don’t like someone, just report them for hacking and we’ll deactivate their account. Actually, just report them for anything; we’re not really going to look at it, anyway, so it doesn’t matter!”  The last thing Facebook needs right now is bad press, so I may be next on the chopping block.  “Hell, why even bother with waiting for users to report people?  Let’s just round people up that are causing trouble and say that people reported them.  No one’s ever going to look into it.  It’s just social media, no one’s going to care enough to investigate us for any wrong-doing.”  This kind of attitude may not be that far around the corner.  After all, as my friend said, no one was promised a fair trial.  Hell, no one was promised a trial at all.  So, be wary, Facebook users.  You may find one day that your account is gone, and all you have left is an eMail from Facebook full of vague accusations with no return address.  And there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it.

“People simply disappeared, always during the night. Your name was removed from the registers, every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out, your one-time existence was denied and then forgotten. You were abolished, annihilated: vaporized was the usual word.”

– George Orwell, 1984, Book 1, Chapter 1

The Morning

The happiest I had been in a long time was in the brief, sublime moment in between gaining her affection and learning how she felt.

I had slept over, wearing a borrowed shirt that was a bit too tight.  I kept my hands to myself, stayed on my side of the bed, and just slept.  Waking up in the morning, I rolled over onto my back, staring at the ceiling.  The circular patterns in the paint swirled around the ceiling like cigarette smoke.  Or maybe it was smooth.

I continued to lie, dozing in and out of sleep.  My thoughts were drifting to her.  How beautiful she was.  How much fun I had with her the night before, just drinking, smoking, chatting.  I had been trying to meet her for years.  And now that I finally had, I wasn’t disappointed.  She was funny, articulate, clever, smart, and she seemed to enjoy my company.  Her hair was wild, artistic, but controlled, just as she was.  She dressed like a boy, but managed to make it look sexy and uniquely feminine.  Her own style.  Her own grace.

Then, without warning, she rolled over and put her arm over me.  In that moment, my mind was overcome.  In that moment, I was soaring at heights I had forgotten existed.  Up amongst the clouds, all I could think was, “My God, she likes me!”  The joy and bliss overwhelmed my senses.  It had been so long since I had received that kind of affection.  Her skin was warm, soft, and spoke to me in electric waves.  Washing over me, bathing me in light.

The next few hours were spent holding one another.  Neither one of us wishing to exit our ethereal world.  We simply stayed.  Enjoying each other’s touch and affection.  I could feel that she liked me.  A warmth in the pit of my soul that grew and became stronger with every passing minute.  The darkness in my heart slowly washing away as she held me tighter, and I her.

She then explained to me, in detail, her inability to maintain a romantic relationship.  What would happen, and why it would always fail.  She did truly like me, but anything serious was beyond her ability.  So, no matter how we would proceed, we could never be.

She would fill my life with many happy and loving moments in the short time that would be our journey together.  But nothing could compare to that morning.  When she held me close, and nothing stood in our way.