Things That Don't Matter

So the other day I was thinking (I’m always thinking) and I discovered what I now believe to be just about the awesomest word in the English language, ‘just’. Not when it’s used in the context of fairness, for instance, the Justice System, about as unjust as you can get, but rather when you put it in front of a noun. It’s just a ______. It automatically makes whatever you’re talking about unimportant. It’s just a homework assignment, it’s just your life, it’s just the universe, it’s just ‘just’. Whatever it is it’s no longer of any importance. It’s great! You never have to worry about anything again. Whatever it is that’s bothering you, just put just in front of it and it won’t seem so important anymore. You’re just an alcoholic, you’re just terminally ill, you just don’t care any more. It’s awesome!

Also great: ‘only’. It works just as well in most of those situations, maybe better in some.

The War on Christmas is the phrase coined by Christians to make the efforts of those living in the 21st century and trying to make the world a fair and even playing field sound evil and mean spirited. The war on Christmas is not so sinister at all, it is simply trying to tone down the in your face attitude that Christmas takes every year, taking over commercials and pushing its way into supposedly non secular public schools. I do not at all mind a holiday where the point is to buy stuff for people, it’s great economic stimulus, and you get stuff! I’m not one of those people who thinks that we need to change the name, that’s never going to happen, but I like it when commercials refer to it as “the holidays” rather than Christmas, which for some reason has people up in arms. The American Family Association or something sickening like that which is really just a front for white christian supremacy started petitions to get big chain stores like Target and Walmart to call it Christmas in their commercials, which is stupid, stores can call it what they want, and I’m glad that they went with the non secular one. The sad thing is, the stores caved. Maybe I could start my own petition to get it back the way it was… If you want to sign, start your comment with “Petition” and then go back to writing about how awesome I am. Anyways, I don’t think we should stop celebrating Christmas, I love the holiday, but I think it would be great to get rid of some of the icky religious stuff attached to it. It was just recently proved that the birth of the “savior” couldn’t have happened in December because there wouldn’t have been a bright star in the sky at that time, it would have happened in July, so there, Christmas isn’t about the birth of Christ anymore. Face it, you’ve lost control of Christmas, Santa Claus and the free market have taken it away from you and you can’t get it back, it’s ours now. I’m officially declaring that Christmas no longer has any religious associations. You may say, “Hey, you can’t just declare that!” but I say, “Well, you just “declared” that there’s a god.”

Unlike my previous story, this one has absolutely no connection to anything I’ve ever done, I just thought it was a funny idea. Enjoy!

The Basement

The three of them sat around the table in the basement. It was one of those stereotypical basements. Cement walls, pipes hanging from the ceiling, monsters stored away in dark corners just waiting for unsuspecting little children to mindlessly wander too close. In general, the basement liked to mind its own business, it didn’t mind that it didn’t get as much usage as the other rooms. It liked the solitude. Sometimes it had interesting conversations with the furnace. But of late, it had found that a few of the houses inhabitants had taken a liking to its dark unfurnished caverns. The kids who it had terrified as small children hung out down here now, and smoked. Not just cigarettes either, it smelled horrible, and the basement wished that they would take it to the garage, where there were plenty of noxious gases already and it wouldn’t matter. Of course, the basement couldn’t say any of this, because it was a basement, what did you expect? So it was forced to put up with it.

This particular evening, the smoke hung thick in the air. There was the one that belonged to the basement, quiet looking with inconspicuous brown hair, a kid with frizzy red hair, and a cool looking blonde. The basement didn’t like the blonde much, it suspected that he was the one who had started this whole thing.

“Heeey man, you ever wonder what clouds are made of?” said the blonde.

“Yeah, I was wondering that too,” said the ginger.

“You dolts, clouds are made of water.” Said the basement’s kid, who had as yet refrained from participating in the activity at hand.

“No way man, how could water be so fluffy?” asked the blonde. The basement itself had no idea, but it trusted the knowledge of it’s own kid, and thought the blonde an idiot.

“It’s water vapor, like steam,” said the basement’s kid. “Does that stuff totally erase your mind?

“Yeah man, it’s great,” replied the blonde.

“Alright, hand it over,” said the basement’s kid, to the great disappointment of the basement. He took the weed, and took a drag. He exhaled slowly, and with him the basement sighed. Soon he would be talking nonsense like the others.

“Hey, you know who’s hot? That chick, uh what’s her name, the one with the uh, thing,” said the blonde.

“Yeah, I think I know who you mean, that one who’s always saying stuff,” said the red haired kid.

“Yeah man, she is so hot. I would do her in an instant.”

“Yeah, like you’d ever have a chance,” put in the basement’s kid. The basement agreed.

“I would so have a chance.”

“Yeah, keep telling yourself that.”

“I’d have more of a chance than you would.”

“No way, she’d totally go for me.”

“In your dreams, she’s mine.”

“Dudes, isn’t she with that Bret kid?” asked the red haired kid.

“Oh yeah, forgot about him,” said the blonde.

“Lucky bastard,” said the basement’s kid. And they all agreed.

“You know the government can read your thoughts,” said the blonde kid, as more of a statement than a question. The basement sighed again. This was the umpteenth time he’d said that, and the basement happened to think it was a load of crap, the government had better things to do with its time than reading the thoughts of a bunch of stoned teenagers, or did it?

“That’s ridiculous,” said the basement’s kid.

“Is not man, it’s true. I heard it somewhere,” said the blonde.

“Where?”

“Someone told me.”

“Who?”

“This guy.”

“Oh, a guy, that makes sense now.”

At this point the basement stopped paying attention. There was a spider weaving a web in a corner, and it watched that for a while. It wished it could set off the smoke alarm and clear them out, but they’d fiddled with it so it wouldn’t go off. The basement’s kid was good with stuff like that. The basement sighed again. It guessed it would just have to put up with this for couple more years.

This is the prequel to one of my previous stories, The Beginning of the End. I put this up at great risk of people getting the impression that I’m some emo kid who scribbles on his shoes and wears black because “that’s how I feel inside”, because there is a lot of emotion in this piece, as there is in all good writing. And yes, it is about a girl, but I bet you there isn’t a single teenage boy out there who doesn’t feel at least something like this. Just so everyone knows, the guy is me, and the girl is real, but this is exaggerated almost to the point of unrecognition, life is never interesting enough on its own, you need literature for that.

The Beginning

Every day he saw her. Every time his heart leapt into his throat. Sometimes she would come out from an adjacent hallway and he would stop in his tracks, unable to think for a moment, before shaking his head and walking on. He did a lot of walking on. He had a couple classes with her, high caliber ones at that, she wasn’t ditzy like so many others. She probably hurt his performance in those classes, but he didn’t give a damn. He didn’t give a damn about anything. Except her. He needed to do something. What the hell could he do? He was a nobody, a nothing, and she was an everything. And then there was the added complication of her boyfriend. The thought of it struck something inside of him every time.

In math class he gazed at her. He loved the way her hair shone in the bright fluorescent lighting. Sometimes she would run her hand through it, or tuck a strand away behind an ear, it would always fall back into line perfectly. She was quite adept at solving the math problems, maybe even better than he was, especially when he paid so much attention to her rather than his teacher. He sat next to his friend, and they would converse, but he would only ever be half interested in their conversation, and often as not he would talk while looking in the opposite direction, in her direction. She never noticed him, never turned around and met his gaze, which in a way was a relief. If she was to turn around and look at him he would probably glance sideways quickly and come off looking sketchy. He wished he could be calm and cool, he wished she would look at him and he could greet her with a cool confident smile. He wished he could smile like she could. Well, smile wasn’t really a strong enough word for it. More like beam, it lit up her entire face and radiated happiness throughout the whole room, especially through him. She was wonderfully liberal with that smile, and it never ceased to give him the sensation of being lifted by some invisible force, away from the classroom and the world. Just him, and her.

When it came down to hard facts though, he just couldn’t see it happening. He could imagine the two of them alone, on dates and scenes of intimacy, but in social situations he just didn’t see it working. There was no way, they were practically on opposite sides of the world, despite sitting only a few seats away from each other. His friends weren’t her friends and her friends weren’t his friends. Yet there were other times when he thought that all that wouldn’t matter, if only there were some way to first gain her affections. He imagined all sorts of scenarios that would cross their paths in a way that couldn’t be undone. Most of them were totally ridiculous, and none of them would ever happen. He should just talk to her, he told himself. That’s what people do, they talk to each other, so why can’t you talk to her? She’s nice, she’s not the type to discriminate based on social status or anything. Just talk to her. But he couldn’t, and wouldn’t. There was never the right occasion. No situation in which saying hello wouldn’t have been weird. Maybe that was all in his head, maybe he was the one who was discriminating.

He could write. He could write a letter, or a poem, or something. Maybe leave a series of such anonymous works to build her up before revealing his identity at the point where she was madly in love with whoever this mysterious admirer was. Yes, that was a good idea. He drafted such writings in his head, even wrote some of them down, but never made it to the stage of printing them out.

It hurt, to love someone and not have them love you back, not even know that you love them. But it was a good hurt, he enjoyed it really. He preferred it to not having any feelings at all. He knew that probably nothing would ever come of it, and eventually his crush would fade. But he didn’t want it to. He enjoyed it even if it never amounted to anything. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like not to love her. He tried thinking back to before he had known her, it was only a year or two, but it didn’t come to him.

It was silly, he told himself, he didn’t love her, he couldn’t love her, he hardly knew her. How could you love someone without knowing them? It was just a dumb crush. But these thoughts always felt forced, put in his head to protect him from getting too attached to something he didn’t have. He had to do something, he had to say something, anything, just anything. She wouldn’t mind. Who wouldn’t like being told that someone likes them? No, he couldn’t say something, he wouldn’t say something, he would never say anything.

So my last post got me thinking, (Death, not the stupid update one), if death isn’t so bad, why do we keep on with life? Life can get pretty bad sometimes, I don’t think anyone will disagree with that statement, so why do we still trudge on? The easiest answer is because it might get better, but that depends heavily on your definition of “better”, and even if your life does get “better” which I take to mean as having more stuff and not having to work very hard, whats the difference? This is the point where someone will invariably bring up god. They’ll say the reason we live is because god wants us to. So why does god want us to? Just because. That’s what religion always comes down to, “just because” which reminds me of being a little kid and getting annoyed at my parents whenever I had to do something I didn’t want to do and they said “just because”. But my rant against religion, (believe me, it’s coming), is not for right now. So that’s religion down, what else could there be? Now someone will say the point of life is love, soppy sap that they are. This I also disagree with. Now, I’m not one of those people who is all out against the concept of love, I believe that there is love, but that really it’s just another human emotion and stems either from a parents protective instincts over their children or one person’s sexual attraction to another, it’s not this all powerful force that’s holding the universe together, it’s just another thing, albeit a nice thing. So now we’ve also eliminated love as the driving force that keeps us going. Next on the list I guess is just plain science, my favorite of the explanations. Science would say that we are here because of all that sciency stuff that’s happened up until now and that we keep living just because it’s a part of our brains. We’re programmed to keep ourselves alive so that we can reproduce, no two ways about it. This is probably the most reasonable of all explanations but it’s still a little unsatisfying. Generally what people are looking for when they ask why we’re alive is some sort of instruction on how to fulfill this great purpose. I guess with science you could say the instruction is to go have a lot of sex, which is a pretty great instruction, but we unfortunately live in a world where you can’t just go around having sex with everyone. So we’re pretty much back to where we started, clueless. I guess the reason we live and keep on living can be different for everyone. Some people live for god, others will say they live for love, and others will say they’re alive because of chance and math. I say we live to do whatever the hell we want. The world is your playground, play in it.

Also, today is the one week anniversary of my blog, so hooray me!

Also also, I realize I have started to call this a blog, but that’s just because writing out online journal of whatever the hell I feel like writing about would get tiring. Whenever I say blog, online journal is what I mean, so every time you see me say blog, think to your self, online journal of whatever the hell I feel like writing about.

If you were given the option to know the exact date of your death, would you? Supposedly most people say no, and I don’t get that. I think that the people who say no are fooling themselves into a false reality in which there is the possibility of living forever, which there is not. You’re going to die someday, so why not know when? People fear death way more than I think it deserves to be feared. I actually find it comforting to know that I’m not going to be around forever, someday I’m gonna be dead and nothing I’ve ever done will matter. It might matter to people who are still alive, but what do I care? I’m dead. I don’t understand this feeling of responsibility people have leading up to their deaths, when you’re dead, you don’t care, it’s someone else’s problem, so why not spend your last moments not worrying about it? A big problem here is all this afterlife B.S., people who feel that if they don’t do well in life up till the last moment they’ll spend eternity feeling guilty about it. Religion is a huge topic I’ll get to some other time, but that is just total nonsense. I don’t want to be around forever, in any form. I want to live it up while I can, and then get the hell out, no heaven, no hell, just nothing. (Unless heaven has video games… and sex, which always seems mysteriously absent from everyone’s beliefs of what heaven is). Whenever I have something that’s weighing on my conscience, I often think to myself, oh well, I’ll be dead some day and this won’t matter at all, (works great with school assignments) I don’t want to be stuck in some afterlife with all those things still weighing on me. Now, don’t take this the wrong way, I’m not suicidal or anything, I’m not looking forward to death, I’m just not fearful to the point of giving up reason in the hopes that some “god” will take mercy on my everlasting “soul” so I may live forever in bliss, if it even would be bliss.

Update: Someone pointed out to me the other day (because this is all my friends and I ever talk about) that I negelected to consider the category of people who don’t fear death, but wouldn’t want to know when they want to die so they could live normally right up to the last minute, which I guess is a valid point. There probably are people who think that, and I can understand why, but it doesn’t change my position. If you know your death is coming, then it might motivate you to get out there and do all the stuff you’ve always wanted to do, where as if not, then you’ll just keep on living your daily life putting those things off right up until you’re dead and it’s too late.

So far I’ve only done posts that fall into the things that annoy me category. It’s time to write about something that’s awesome. It being December, I thought writing about one of my favorite bands, The Decemberists, would be appropriate. The Decemerists’ music falls into category often referred to as “indie”, but that doesn’t make much sense, because their latest album was released on Capitol Records, a subdivision of EMI, but I really don’t care. Yeah, EMI is a part of the big four and is in on all that RIAA stuff, but that doesn’t stop me liking the music. One of the things I love about The Decemberists is that while being modern, they don’t act like it at all. Their music is heavily influenced by bands like Pink Floyd and R.E.M.. The lyrics to their songs are inventive and most of the time actually form a narrative rather than some phrase repeated over and over again. Most of their music tends to have a very strong message. Take for instance, the music video to their song 16 Military Wives, which I find quite hilarious as well as very true:

Funny story about The Decemberists, they got into a fight with Stephen Colbert after he accused them of riding on his coat tails when they produced a music video in front of a green screen and asked people to fill it in. (Stephen had recently performed a similar act on his show). The feud culminated in a “shred off” in which Stephen “injured” himself and had Peter Frampton fill in for him. The winner was decided by audience applause which of course went to Frampton, but the closing statement came from Henry Kissinger who declared “Tonight, I think the American people won.” There’s alot that’s funny about the Decemberists, their bio says they met in a Turkish bath and a footnote claims that “The Decemberists travel exclusively by Dr. Herring’s Brand Dirigible Balloons.” The Decemberists clearly have a lot of fun with their music, and thus is it fun to listen to.

Up until recently I was of the opinion that most music released post 2000 is crap (Rap, hip hop, all that stuff). However, The Decemberists stand out from the rest, thus I am adding them as the first entry on my things that are awesome list.

People tell me that because I haven’t read the books or seen the movie, I have no right to criticize the Twilight franchise. To them I say, I can criticize whatever the hell I want. From people who’s opinions I respect (my younger sister) I have heard that it wasn’t that great. Way over hyped. From people who’s opinions I have little to no respect for (most of the rest of the people at my school) I have heard “Oh. my. god. It was so great. I saw it, like, 10 times on, like, the first day it was out.” While I don’t respect the author’s work, I respect their ability to milk culture fads and exploit the very easy target audience that is girls between the age of 12-18. They have made a lot of money off this whole thing, and for that I respect them. I could probably do the same thing, but I have morals. Here’s something I don’t get, where the hell has this vampire obsession come from? Now that Twilight is such a huge deal I’ve heard all these people talking about other vampire novels. What’s so exciting about vampires? And how did vampires go from being scary to the main characters of romance novels? I don’t know about anyone else, but if I were a girl I’d be more than a little uncomfortable making out with a vampire. That is one hickey, or “love bite” that is going to take a loooong time to wear off.

Maybe I’m just bitter for lack of having one, but high schoolers in relationships annoy the hell out of me. There’s a kid I know who about two weeks ago got a “girlfriend” and his Facebook status updates were all “I love her so much”. That lasted for a number of days I could count on one hand. Then it was “I made the right decision” and everybody was writing sympathetic things on his wall. Two to three days later they were back together again, and once again it lasted 4 days max, and once again everyone was saying “Oh, if you need to talk just call me”. Jesus Christ, they were together for a total of 10 days maximum, probably less. How attached can you get to someone in that period of time? I could maybe understand if it was something that had lasted a while, like 5-6 months maybe, but 10 days? Get over yourself.

I don’t get high school relationships. They all end when you go off to college, unless you’re one of those sad people who stays in your home town bagging groceries in which case your girlfriend will probably dump you and look for someone less pathetic. So all high school relationships end. So why do people bother? I guess maybe the reason people like it is that there’s no real commitment, it’s expected that you’re going to break up, there’s no two ways about it. I don’t know about anyone else but I don’t think I’d want to stay with my high school girlfriend, no matter who she was. I’d want to go off and try other things, no one wants to be tied down right at the starting gate. Now, all this criticism of people high school relationships is a bit hypocritical, because if given the chance with um, shall we say, the right person, I would totally have one. Until then though, I remain ever the critic.

Short story I wrote about all this:

The Beginning of the End

She lay on the bed, which was a mess, and he sat in the chair by the desk at the computer. The silence was penetrated every now and then by bursts of clicking from the mouse. She picked up one of his computer magazines from the floor and flipped through it.

“What do you find so interesting about all this?” she asked after a minute.

“I don’t know, what does anyone find interesting about anything?”

“Well this, it just seems like a bunch of numbers and names that don’t make any sense.”

“It makes sense to me,” he said, and then it went quiet again, the clicking resumed. But after a few minutes he stopped, and then he spoke.

“It’ll have to end someday,” he said.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

He swiveled around to face her.

“Our relationship, it can’t go on forever.”

“Why not?”

“Because we’re in high school. We’ll go off to different colleges, have different lives. Marry different people. That’s what happens. You don’t expect us to be together forever do you?”

“Oh, well thanks, it’s nice to know I mean so much to you.”

“Hey, don’t take it like that. That’s not what I meant. You mean the world to me.”

“Well how am I supposed to take it? You just said our relationship is doomed to fail.”

“Isn’t it?”

“I… I don’t know. I never thought about it much.”

“Well I do. You know me, I think about stuff, I think about us a lot, this comes up once in a while.”

“I wish it wouldn’t. Yes, all relationships end sometime, you’re just supposed to enjoy the ride. It isn’t any fun if you’re pointing out the end all the time.”

“Fine. I’m sorry I brought it up. I’ll never bother you with anything again.”

“Oh no, don’t be like that. You know I love how we talk about stuff. It’s just that there are some things better left unsaid. Things people don’t want to hear.”

“Then those people are avoiding the truth. I’m sorry but I’m always thinking about this stuff. I never stop, even when we… you know… get intimate. When others’ minds would go blank I’m still tossing it all around in my head.”

“Great, you have no faith in our relationship, and I’m bad in bed.”

“That’s not what I said at all. This is silly, we’re both just trying to one-up each other at misinterpretation. I love talking with you, I love being with you, I love you.”

There was a pause in the conversation, “I love you too,” she said. He turned back around to face the computer, but didn’t resume using it.

“How do you think it will end?” he asked.

“I honestly have no idea,” she replied.

“Do you think we’ll go quietly, or will it be one of those messy breakups?”

“I really don’t know, and I’d rather not talk about it. You act like you’re looking forward to this.”

“No, I’m not at all.”

“Then quit talking about it.”

“Fine,” he went back to the computer. “Wanna go out somewhere this weekend?”

“Can’t, I have stuff to do.”

“May I enquire as to what?”

“You may, but I may not answer you.”

“Oh.”

“I should go now,” she said. And she left.

The guy is actually mostly a self projection. I suggest that no one ever have this conversation with their girlfriend.

Yesterday on The Daily Show the guest was well known religious fanatic Mike Huckabee. Now, up until a little while ago I liked Mike Huckebee, he seemed nice, and when he lost the race he went on SNL and made jokes about it. But a few weeks ago I saw him on TV debating religion with Bill Maher (god on earth, as ironic as that may be) and I found Mike to be pretty obnoxious about his beliefs (Baptist). Then yesterday he was on The Daily Show and Jon Stewart cornered him on the issue of gay marriage, which Huckabee is very strongly against. It was quite the slaughtering, I recommend you watch it here. Now, let me clear something up here, whenever someone brings up the issue of gay marriage and there are people who support it, there’s always some idiot who says “Oh, you support gay marriage so you must be gay dur dur dur dur dur”. No, I’m not gay, I just don’t support the pointless oppression of a people by a bunch of single minded idiots. Supporting equality between blacks and whites doesn’t make you black does it? So why on earth would supporting gay marriage make you gay? Anyways, Huckabee proceeds to bring up the tried and failed argument that giving gays the right to marry somehow hurts the sanctity of marriage, which is total bullshit, I’m not even gonna abbreviate that for the sake of tastefulness, it’s bullshit. How does a gay couple getting married affect what you have with your wife? It doesn’t. Not at all. It doesn’t somehow decrease your love for each other, which is what marriage is supposed to be about, love, not legal contracts and definitions. Jon Stewart of course does an excellent job of bringing this up and all Huckabee can do is fumble and blurt out the same stupid arguments again and again. At some point, he loses his resolve and goes to the Bible for help, which if anything hurts his case. Religion has no place any where near this whole mess. What ever happened to separation of church and state? The arguments against gay marriage are almost all religious, so it should automatically be legalized based on constitutional grounds. Near the end of the debate Huckabee says something along the lines of “Well I’m not going to change your mind (because you’re right) and you’re not going to change mine (because I’m stubborn)” which is just about the biggest cop out ever. He’s essentially saying “Ok, I’m losing this, (at this point the audience is applauding Jon Stewart’s every word) so I’m gonna back out before this gets any worse for me. But I’m still right!” Let me clue you in on something Mike, when you can’t come up with a valid argument, and the crowd is on the verge of heaving rocks at you, you’re wrong.

I was very disappointed with California voters back on election day when they banned gay marriage. I was mostly mad at the mormon church, who funded xx millions to the cause. I’ve always had some respect for mormons as being one of the (slightly) less offensive sects of christianity. This totally changed that for me, mormons are now on my list as being just as bad as catholicism, the “holy grail” if you will, of offensive religions. I was, however, proud of my own state (Connecticut) for voting against a constitutional convention that could have led to the overturning of our supreme court’s recent decision to legalize gay marriage. There is hope. I normally like to think that America today is pretty accepting, but it’s issues like this that I think are still holding us back from being the great nation that we have the potential to be.