A Very Scientific Explanation Of Why Old People Suck

Remember when getting old was a sign of wisdom? When the elders of the tribe were the ones with the most experience and knowledge and respect? That was way before Toffler's Future Shock kicked in, when generations could pass by without a whole hell of a lot changing technologically or socially. In that environment an older person would be wiser, if for no other reason than they lived through more, they put in the time.

Now things change so fast that an old person, whose mind has become rigid and less adaptable to changes, is basically useless. Who cares how things were in the 1950s, you old fart? Quit driving so slow! Quit holding up the grocery line with your hundreds of coupons!

Now, it's not that I think that old people are worthless, per se -- just that I think that most people overall are worthless, and people in their 20s-30s are better looking and have more flexible minds than people in their 70s-80s, and they can walk faster too, so they are not quite as worthless as they will be given another 50 years.

OBAMA PASSES LAW, BOGARTS KRETEKS

One thing that really gets me cheesed off is the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, which was signed into law by President Obama on June 22, 2009. This law, designed to regulate the tobacco industry and make things safer for kids and soccer moms, is a bunch of crap. And why do I say this? Because now clove cigarettes, or kreteks, are outlawed.

Not just cloves, of course. All flavored cigarettes are outlawed. With the exception of menthol -- and just try to get the black president to outlaw menthol cigarettes. Some people are crying conspiracy, that Phillip Morris makes menthol cigarettes, that once again Big Tobacco has reared its ugly head.

I am just mad that I can't get cloves anymore.

I am mad because I voted for the guy that signed them out of law.

I am mad because instead of legalizing more and cooler things to smoke, the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction.

I should have known that this would happen when the Democrats took power. Goddamn liberals trying to legislate self-destruction out of existence. I like to self-destruct! I like to smoke cloves. The crackling sound they make as they burn (hence the onomatopoetic term "kretek"). The pleasant numbing sensation in the roof of the mouth. Menthol cigarettes are like smoking a damn cough drop – utter crap in comparison.

Now the first Democrat president since the one that tried to outlaw Internet porn (with the Communications Decency Act of 1996 for all you young heads out there) has come in to outlaw clove cigarettes.

Good job, Obama.

At least under the Republicans all we had to worry about was people getting tortured and phones being tapped and shit.

A thought: Does this mean some enterprising soul is going to start selling black market Djarum Blacks? I mean, just because a commodity is outlawed doesn’t mean it’s unavailable – Lord no – it just means it’s more expensive and when you get ripped off you can’t complain to the Better Business Bureau.

Let me go back to my earlier point. It is 2009. Instead of outlawing clove cigarettes and fruity flavored cigarettes and whatever other flavors Phillip Morris doesn’t sell, why not legalize every cool drug and even some of the weirdo degenerate ones your black sheep uncle is out in his car doing during awkward family get-togethers? I mean, if health is the issue, we could try making a better health care system. That way, people who get weird illnesses from smoking cloves or salvia or doing lines of ketamine on the men’s room floor could be treated, and go back to enjoying their alternative lifestyles. Isn’t that what America’s all about? Rugged individualism? A nation of men, not laws? So instead of banning things that are fun to do but may be harmful to the health of the individual that uses them, reform health care.

What’s that? You say they already are, and it’s a big controversy? Shows how little I get out. I don’t really pay attention to the news anymore. We are so far away from mankind’s actual destiny that by the time we get there everything happening now will be wholly irrelevant.

So why can’t I just have my damn cloves?

Liberals Saved My Life

I definitely had a Columbine in me. Here's a secret I don't think I ever told anyone: I sat in the back of the crowd at my high school graduation, watching the proceedings and seeing all the different ways I could be killing these people. Later in life I would joke that I was just too apathetic, but the fact is that being raised in a post-hippie liberal household saved my life, prevented me from making these idle daydreams into a reality.

Had I been raised in a conservative gun-nut household, I would have had easy access to weapons. And without the liberal touchy-feely huggy-huggy feelings-are-real and everyone's-are-valid mindset, I would not have had the only value structure that would prevent me from using said weapons willy-nilly. And while it could be argued that in the long-view that was a mistake, that I passed up a real and direct chance to clean up the gene pool and do a favor for future generations, it is also true that it would not have ended well for me personally. So, in a very real sense, liberals saved my life.

The Hate Files

There is a calm clarity to my hatred that is missing in me at all other times. In love I am awkward and unsure. In indifference I am scattered, apathetic. But in hatred -- not red-hot rage, not white-hot fury, but cold and calculating hate -- there is a kind of purity, a peace, at my center. The proverbial eye of the storm. An understanding.

a brief anecdote from today at the park

Sarah and I are sitting at a picnic table overlooking the Hudson, eating our BLTs (with too much mayonnaise for my liking) and strawberry Twinkies (just as vile as they sound). Making conversation, Sarah says, "Seventh grade is going to suck. We have to take health class!"

"Do tell," I say noncommittally, wiping excess mayonnaise from the sandwich.

"They're making us take health class instead of art class. Isn't that stupid? Wouldn't you choose art over health?"

I take a sip of sugar water and reply, "I did."

Study Hall With Booze (An Almost True Story)

          One weekend Doug called me up and said "I think we should go to the quiet party."
          "The what?" Everything was buzzing very badly and I was sure I had misheard him. More high paranoia.
          "The quiet party," he repeated. "It's this thing, it's in some hotel in Manhattan, and you can't talk."
          "I beg your pardon?" This time I had heard him perfectly.
          "No, really, everything you want to say gets written on index cards instead. Like at a monastery or something. Oh, and there's drinks too."
          "I dunno. It sounds lame."
          "You say that about everything. It'll be a novelty."
          So we traveled by subway from the Bronx to Manhattan and began our exploration into the seamy world of silence. At the door we each had to pony up five dollars, then on the inside a cheery woman told us "There's a two-drink minimum. Fifteen dollars, please." Everywhere you go there's someone trying to shake you down. I coughed up another three fives and my hand got stamped. Inside the place looked like any bar or club might, except that it was almost entirely silent. Excluding at the actual bar, where talking was still permitted -- bizarre social experiments apparently only go so far.
          "So far this seems like the lame art snob version of a frat party," I muttered to Doug as we entered the room.
          "Ssssshhhh!!!" someone said, louder than I'd been speaking. Then someone else shushed that shusher, even louder. I imagined everyone shushing everyone else, louder and louder, but it stopped there. We sat at an empty taple. On it were a whole slew of index cards, and those short pencils you get on standardized tests. Someone came and took our drink orders. Then we sat in silence, watching everyone trying to maintain the atmosphere of the quiet party. People were shuffling around, passing each other notes. Every once in a while there's be another outburst of "Sssshhhh!!!" in clusters. It was all quite silly: "Someone violated the code of silence so I will reprimand them even louder!" I wanted to laugh but I didn't want to get shushed again. So I wrote HA on an index card and crumpled it up. It wasn't the same.
          Doug passed me a card. "SO."
          "SO WHAT?" I scribbled back.
          "SO WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE QUIET PARTY?"
          "SO LAME."
          "SO TRUE." He took the card back and added "CIGARETTE?"
          Outside it was noisy the way the city is supposed to be. Doug lit a cigarette and handed it to me, lit another for himself. It was chilly, and we basked in the loud and the dissonant.
          "Okay," he said finally. "So the quiet party is lame. It could have been interesting. It still could be. Maybe in the fourth quarter someone goes nuts. It could still get good."
          "Please. It's study hall with booze."
          Then, more smoking in silence. Traffic sounds. People talking -- to other people, to cell phones, to themselves -- as they walked by. Sirens in the distance. Then the cigarettes were done and we returned inside.
          "Oh, you're just in time," the cheery woman said after checking our stamped hands. "They're about to begin the silent poetry reading." Me and Doug exchanged glances, wordlessly turned an about face and left.

Post-Ridiculoid (A Haiku On Haiku)

It is all so real --
building syllabic cages
to house our verse in
(April 8th, 2003)

Scatalogical God Knowledge

My real belief is, we are all given a pile of shit that had no right to be there. We inherited this from our ancestors, both biological and cultural, and before there were humans from a harsh nature that is "red in tooth and claw." The ones that came before us didn't do enough to absorb this pile of shit, and in fact some of them actually just piled more shit on it instead. So here we are, in the pile of shit. It's our job in this life to do what we can to clean the shit up and not add to it so that the next generation will have an easier time cleaning up the shit we didn't, and so forth and so on until we (not us, we'll be long dead) finally clean up all the shit and heaven dawns on earth. This is the secret occult meaning of "turning the other cheek" -- when you get shit dumped on you you have to absorb it and not pass it on, otherwise the cycle goes on forever and this is the best it will ever get.

The Lesson We Didn't Learn From Hitler

The lesson we didn't learn from Hitler is this: that Hitler was harmless on his own. The millions of people that listened to him, that put him in power, followed him and carried out his orders -- they're just as much to blame, if not more. Without them, Hitler would have been just another harmless crank ranting about the Jews. We all know one, some crank ranting about Jews -- a drunken uncle, the creepy old guy down the block, whatever. Harmless cranks on their own are, well, harmless. It takes the entire mechanism of society, government and military to turn a harmless crank into a Holocaust. If they had all just laughed at him and his ridiculous notions of racial purity -- for when you subtract the atrocities and the genocide, what's left really is quite laughable -- he would have been powerless. Maybe he could have become a serial killer or something and still personally taken out a few dozen Jews / gypsies / homosexuals / non-Aryans but a few dozen against a few million is a staggering difference and, dare I say, acceptable loss. Instead, the people gave into their worst instincts, allowed themselves to be led by fear and swayed by nationalist fervor, and a black mark on human history followed.

Because we do not want to admit that the people were responsible for allowing Hitler to be Hitler and not just another crank, we demonize the man. Hitler is the closest thing to the personification of evil in my society, and yet again I stress that he was virtually harmless on his own. There will always be people like Hitler. Rather like how single celled organisms come together cooperatively to form more complex lifeforms such as ourselves, and yet we cannot stop rogue cells from going cancerous and destroying that which they are a part of -- so too will we always have people like Hitler. Rogue elements even in paradise. What we won't always have is the sheep-like drive to be led by these rogues, these predators, to do their bidding and elevate them above us. The reason we won't always have this characteristic is because either we will eventually grow up and stop doing it, or because we will follow the wrong cancerous leader straight to complete annihilation.

Just something to consider during a quiet moment of reflection.

On Morality (An excerpt from "Things I Have Learned")

If you flip a coin, and it comes up heads, that is right. If you flip it and it comes up tails, that too is right. It is the nature of a coin that if it is flipped it will be heads or tails. If you flip a coin and it comes up “rainbow trout,” that would be wrong. But that cannot happen, because it is simply not in the nature of coins to do such. Anything that actually happens CANNOT be “wrong” in any sense that is meaningful to the universe at large. There is no “right,” there is only “right for me.” No, not even that, just “seems right to me.”

Religion is NOT the basis of morality. Morality evolved from the necessity to distinguish between White Hats and Black Hats; once certain impulses have negative connotations and others have positive ones (say, the difference between the feeling of hunger and the feeling of orgasm) the world gets divided into Right and Wrong by the individual. This tendency was co-opted by societies as bodies in themselves to preserve their own structure through the creation of laws and rules. There's a reason every society on the planet has had a taboo against killing another one of Us - a society that allows its members to go around killing one another won't last. Killing one of Them, on the other hand, has always been, if not openly encouraged, at least not particularly discouraged. The problem is where Us ends and Them begins, something every society and individual has to judge for themselves.

Some people will try and argue that there is some sort of Universal-Morality-By-Consensus: “Every society in human history has considered murder WRONG. Therefore, murder is intrinsically wrong, aka EVIL.” But already there is a magic trick going on in the words: literally, murder is "wrongful killing." Note how an intrinsic "wrongness" has at this point crept into the definition of the word, so you can now offer the proposition "Murder is intrinsically wrong" and technically it's true, when in fact there is still nothing intrinsically wrong with KILLING per se. And in fact, this is where the difficulty in making it a universal law comes in: what’s the difference between killing (which is okay) and murder (which is bad)?

The Problem of Definition has again reared its ugly head. Everybody has different views of the same abstract concepts (Plato’s “perfect forms”). For people thousands of years ago, human life was sacred, but the folks in the tribe over yonder hill weren’t really human, so it was okay to wantonly murder them. In the middle ages, human life was sacred, but non-Christians, or people not of one’s particular sect of Christianity, I should say, weren’t really human, so it was okay to torture and enslave and murder them. In the pre-Civil War South, human life was sacred, but slaves weren’t really human. To your average sociopath, the only real human is the sociopath himself, or herself. Proponents of the death penalty think convicted murderers aren’t really human. The Nazis didn’t think non-Aryans were really human, and they considered their mass genocide to be nothing more than a large-scale pest extermination. But on the flipside, Vegans and their ilk have expanded their concept of “humanity” to include all members of the Animal Kingdom. For that matter, most people consider their pets to be honorary humans.

So you see, human life is sacred to everybody, but no one agrees on what a human really is. When we say “human,” we really mean our tribe, our species, our nation, our family, our race, our gang, our pets, whatever. The abstraction “human life” is the same, and everyone considers it sacred, but the definitions are always different. In the end, it all comes down to Us vs. Them, with wildly differing subjective views of what constitutes Us and Them. The Problem of Definition prevents human word-magic from ever becoming completely real (think of Orqwith bleeding over into the world and be glad) but it also leads to some major misunderstandings. Here we see that almost EVERYONE considers the killing of a member of Us to be intrinsically WRONG, but who is in the Us is entirely a matter of perspective. We create these abstract notions to explain the world, and then turn them into concrete cages with sharp borders. The universe knows no absolutes but we always try and turn an infinite scale of gray into black and white. It is how our minds work, both a great strength and a great weakness. The Double-Edged Sword strikes again!