It's Not Communism

There is a key to success. I figured it out years ago, when I was pondering the great Plebian question of life.

In order to be a "have", you must be willing to create and keep "have nots".

It does not change for situation. Regardless of who you are. If you have money, the only way to keep having money is by not letting other people have your money.

And it's a far cry from the dream they sell to you in school or on TV. The dream where you work really hard and someday, when you're about 30, you'll get rewarded with millions of dollars and everything is going to be fine.
But we can't tell everyone that it's not true when they're younger, or they're not going to want to work. And the people who have already figured out my message have already started to abuse welfare, because they can eat and clothe themselves and their children. Any calls to force such people to work are met with arguments of assumed racism.

But being a have not isn't all bad.

We work hard for our possesions, but we can sleep at night.

My food tastes better, knowing that it didn't come at the price of someone else's.

Life is ok, but we need to stop living in some dream, before it becomes a nightmare. And I will happily work every day for the rest of my life.

Because there are countries where the dream is different.

Where if you work really hard, you might be able to eat tonight.

Just Ain't Satisfactionin' Me

All this reminiscing about days past has got me awful contemplative about times past and the meaning of life.  Or, really the progression of life.

The worst thing about time passing is that there is no substance to it.  There is nothing left of it as it passes.

Are we corporeal beings?  Or do we simply experience things in our existence in a sequential manner because it makes the most sense to us?  Do we have any control over our futures, or is this all just played out in a sequence, like a gigantic symphony?

The weirdest part about the whole experience is the nostalgia you feel.  Sometimes, it's like you're in two places at once.  But are you?

Does 'I think therefore I am' apply?

All this is why I feel particularly horrible about breaking one of the cardinal rules we were taught that civilized humans don't break:

I ate the soggy waffles.

Advice for the Young at Heart

It's almost time for school again and an odd dream about attending high school at 23 had me contemplating a cadre of reticent rules which are learned, much to my dismay, only after the end of your school years (including your college years).  Interestingly enough, most of the advice I can provide applies to both college and high school.

This doesn't apply to college:  Are you a Junior?  Thinking about college?  Start.

Are you a Senior?  Thinking about college?  Apply,  you dumbass.

Not going to college?  Join the military.  You need job skills.  Out of high school, you're unemployable.

I blame your parents for not letting your teachers tell you how worthless you are to the real world.

This does.  Girls.  If you're wondering why the guy you like doesn't seem to get the hint, a quick and dirty way to get his attention is to STOP TALKING ABOUT YOUR BOYFRIEND.

Guys.  I know you think you're cool.  You're not.  Stop acting like a douche bag.

Girls.  Stop dressing like whores.  You're gonna get raped.

Guys.  Pull up your pants.  Pop your collars, though.  It may look weird, but it's fine by me.

Girls.  That nerdy kid that you expect is going to help you, is not going to help you unless you put out.  It's a new generation.  And the internet is full of porn.

Guys.  Sex completely changes relationships.  If you're only there because you want sex, you're going to have to handle the break up.  It is your fault.  If you really enjoy the company of that person, don't have sex.  Either way, you're gonna fuck it up.

Both of you.  The other sex doesn't know what you want, they're not magically going to get it.  Not tomorrow.  Not 50 years from now.  Just say it, you won't ever see them again after 4 years.

Lastly.  You know that friend of yours that doesn't have to do homework and doesn't have to study but magically passes every class with a B or better?  You're not them.  

Do your fucking homework.

I'm dangerous, like Maverick, except... in a kitchen

Before I met my wife, the only things I was capable of making by myself were Mac and Cheese and ramen.

You hear this story from every man alive.  Sometimes it's present tense.  "The only things I am capable of making..."  Other times, it's resistant, like my father:  "I never cooked and I'm never going to cook.  You cook one meal and you have to cook every other meal for the rest of your life."

But I'm an anomaly.  I love to cook.  I even prefer to cook over going out.  But I would never have learned anything if it weren't for my life.

At this point, I'm still looking at cook books, but I've graduated beyond measuring everything out.

And I've mastered chicken.  I make gorgeous, delicious chicken.  I can make it golden brown.  I can make it really white.  It's always tender.  And always tastes like real chicken (even when it's stripped of flavor from freezing, bleeding and packaging).  

But how do you explain something to that with your peers?  When your peers are mid-twenties to early thirties men who still believe pizza and Chipotle constitute a weeks dinner menu?

How can you explain that in ten years, you'll be begging me to let you eat at my house?   That you'll buy cases of beer on a whim, knowing that this might purchase you entry to sit at our dinner table?

You'll see... I may be a scant 24 now... but you'll see.

You might even let me drive your Ferrari Mid-Life-Crisis edition.

Poetic Justice

Today, I ate a cookie in the car.

Eating a cookie in the car could be likened to eating a cookie in bed, but then, you'd be stupid for saying something like that.  You wear shoes in your car.  You wear a raincoat.  If sulfur and hellfire and brimstone rained from the heavens, you'd bring that in to your car, too.

It's only natural that if you were to drop a minute crumb from the edge of the cookie, you wouldn't let go of the steering wheel and cause a tremendous accident.  You'd just let the crumb make its way to the floor.  And eventually disappear.  Or be vacuumed.  

Funny story.  Cookies, as it turns out, are bio-degradable.

But then, from the corner of my peripheral hearing...  I thought I had heard.... yes...  it was... a scoff (I'm half deaf in my right ear).  Slight... like a cough, half between that and laughter.

But a scoff none the less.  One to indicate my foolishness in dropping, then abandoning that fragment of cookie to the nether reaches of the vehicles floor.

And yet... almost immediately, from my beloved's mouth...  almost silently, "oh no."

This fragment, punctuating her own folly.  She was now the owner of a smaller cookie, nearly a tenth smaller.  The remnants now buried deeply in between the seat back and the seat bottom.

A moment too sweet to let pass.

Love you, sweetie.

No need for introductions...

/wtf?

Ok, this one needs an introduction... but apparently the big box of toilet paper at Sam's club is good for 400 shits.

Not just a ... well... you know

I've never understood the idea behind denying that you're gay.

I've understood the idea of condemning it in the Bible.  And never taking it out.

You want your congregations to grow.  Every member is another head and another income.  And if you said, "Gay is fine,  we don't mind.  Do what you do."  Then, the future of your church is in jeopardy, because 3 generations from now... you might not have members... or enough to support you.  The way I figure, it came down to money.

These days, you've got people so worked up about being gay.

It says you shouldn't be in the Bible, I get it.  But it doesn't seem to me that it should still be there.  I don't know about this whole "word of god" thing works, but for me, it was still written by man.  And it is corruptable.  Same with the Qur'an.  Men have translated them.  You don't know who these men were, they're not in the credits.

But, then there's faith.

And you scary people who believe god is talking to you.

One thing is clear to me, there are plenty of church leaders who are gay, and have gotten in trouble for soliciting gay sex.  There are politicians who are gay, and have gotten in trouble for soliciting gay sex.  There are men and women who do nothing but preach to you harder, because they're fighting with their natural urges.  But denying you're gay?  Just reaffirms that you're gay. 

There's nothing wrong with that.

Soliciting sex in the bathroom?  There's definitely something wrong with that.

That's disgusting.