All Your Problems Are Self-Inflicted

This is how I imagine the conversation going. I tell you you are no longer allowed to complain. And then, in agonizing detail, I explain to you point-by-point how all of your problems are self-inflicted. I imagine that you are rendered mute and immobile for some reason because otherwise I wouldn't be able to get through the whole list I have prepared. Or perhaps time itself is warped in some way because in my mind we are in a public place and the world around us stands still as I speak. Just so you understand how much I have thought about this.

- For reasons that are unclear to me you went to college for two years to attain a useless major that you decided to abandon in favor of going to college for another four years to attain a possibly more useless major (so useless that even the internet is vague in describing what it is exactly). As a result of these decisions you have a fair amount of debt you must now repay. You complain about your debt even though it's much less than what most people are working on repaying.

- You cannot attain a job having to do with your major. You complain about this even though you seem to be aware that your major was 'not as practical as other majors' you could have chosen.

- You have a lot of bills to pay every month because you choose to live alone in a one bedroom apartment. You complain about this despite the fact that you are aware a one bedroom apartment is nearly as expensive as a two bedroom apartment.

- As a result of your decision to live alone and your inability to get a well-paying job in spite of your college degree you have to work around sixty hours a week at two menial jobs in order to make enough money to pay for your rent and such. You complain about this profusely rather than doing anything to change the situation you're in.

- You often have to get up early in the morning. This is a direct result of your having to work but you complain about it regardless.

- You do not seem to like your boss. You complain to me about this person even though I do not know them and likely the only reason you dislike them is because they're your boss.

- Your work schedule is worthy of complaint and having to work 'doubles' (as in, a shift at one job and then a shift at another even though this may only account for ten hours of work in a day) is something you bring up every time they happen. You complain about this though if you did things differently you wouldn't have to work as much.

- You rarely get whole days off never mind multiple whole days in a row. This, again, is a direct result of the fact that you work two jobs and you still feel the need to complain about it whenever possible.

- You are often tired. You complain about this constantly though it is an obvious result of how much you work.

- Any physical ailment no matter how minor is worth complaining about at least twenty times a day for a week. You once complained about a tiny superficial cut to one of your fingers for no less than a week and insisted on giving me the play-by-play action for how it happened originally and how the healing had progressed in the meantime each time I saw you during this period.

- Any physical ailment worth complaining about is worth bringing up again long after it happened. You complain about injuries to your person long after they occur even though it should be obvious that a healed injury is not worthy of sympathy.

- You once complained to me that someone else we know does not like you. It turns out that this is because you never have anything new to talk about since the vast majority of your choice topics of conversation revolve around creating a giant pity-party for yourself.

I am willing to give you the benefit of a doubt. It is theoretically possible that you were somehow unaware that other people's live suck too and that often other people's lives suck through no fault of their own. However, now that you know this I am going to have to require that you no longer complain around me because it does not stir any kind of empathy in me- just irritation.

Bad Punchline: Objectivity

I generally describe myself as bisexual though this is largely in part because I like the stuff rattling around inside people's skulls better than whatever features might be situated on the outside of it. I have dated both genders and I will openly admit this. However, I have been told that I must merely be bi-curious as I have not had sex with both genders. The distinction is not entirely clear to me at this point. Given that the previous assertion has something to do with the "How do you know?" cliche* I can only assume that the difference is a matter of objectivity. Objectively I cannot say that I would enjoy being with both genders unless I had tried it. This is, I suspect, a key point in many people's argument against other people being gay because obviously how can you objectively know that you only like your own gender if you have never attempted to be with the opposite gender? To which I would urge the response that I intend to use when the opportunity next presents itself: How do you know you are heterosexual if you have never tried being with the same gender? Objectively you cannot say that you are heterosexual without trying both genders any more than you can say you are bisexual without having tried both. You must merely be hetero-curious as I am merely bi-curious.





*As in: How do you know you're gay? How do you know you won't like having sex with women if you've never tried it? Et cetera, et cetera.

2031: The Next Apocalypse

My roommate figures that we should start thinking about the next apocalypse after 2012 so that we can start capitalizing on the merchandise and books and memorabilia as soon as we all survive 2012. So based upon my very scientific* research and calculations I've determined that the next likely apocalypse will take place in the year 2031 sometime between May and October. It will likely be due to plague, financial collapse, war, or some combination there of. Fortunately none of those things preclude the continued existence of humanity afterward (though what the state of the world will be is hard to speculate upon with any accuracy). But everyone loves a good Apocalypse scare. People have been waiting for the Rapture for many years. And every time some loud person who apparently only selectively reads the bible (because when the apocalypse happens is supposed to be 'unknowable by anyone' so I paraphrase from the bible) says that they've determined the world is going to end there's a least one person rushing to believe them. Obviously the end of the world however real or imagined it might be and no matter the basis upon which people make their predictions is an event people want to believe in and capitalize upon. I highly encourage you to spread the word about 2031. I'll start working on a book right away and leave the t-shirts and things to those who are good at that kind of stuff.









*The books I used for research are all from a genre with 'science' in it, at least.

Bad Punchline: 2012 Resolution

I'm not really big on resolutions for New Years because they seem sort of silly and arbitrary to me. I'm not against wanting to lose weight or quit smoking but if you require a mystical backing such as our baseless calender system in order to find the will to do something it seems unlikely that you will succeed in it. If you want to do something like lose weight or quit smoking then you should do it. On the other hand, however, while it is illogical to create resolutions I doubt that the tradition is going to stop anytime soon so I try to view it as a form of personal amusement. I think it's a little funny when other people fail theirs and it gives me a good excuse to say something bizarre to see how people react to it. So this year I have resolved to survive the End of the World. Again. I was nine years old the first time they told me the world was going to end. Evidently God is fond of big round numbers. Or I guess that was the theory. Apparently I survived the end of the world a couple times prior to then without even realizing it and in the past year I survived it twice more (all of these predicted by the same man). Due to the incredible lack of logic in betting that the world is going to end I choose to bet that the world is going to continue on. I think that this is a resolution that anyone over the age of ten can agree on. Resolve to survive the End of the World with me. Again.

Duff Shot

The Man Who Golfs in Thunderstorms: Duff Shot

If you aren't acquainted with my friend the Golfer you should go back and read The Man Who Golfs in Thunderstorms before continuing this post. If you do recall the Golfer then you might be wondering about the creative soap opera that is his life. Well, aside from his constant state of having no money (even though he earns more than I do), his recent car troubles, and managing to get his license suspended in his effort to 'contest' his speeding ticket (when I say 'contest' you read 'put off paying it') instead of just paying the fine. But aside from that excitement there's been a new bomb in his love life that the Golfer, so inured to shocks of reality that it rarely even breaks through his twisted defense of unrelenting optimism, failed to even notice it.

I believe that when I last left off the story of the Golfer he had two euphemistic 'buns' in two different ovens. This new snafu has to do solely with Ruska but I owe you the wrap-up to the story of Thorn so I'll do that first. Despite having mourned the clump of cells Thorn thought she had miscarried (or maybe aborted or maybe didn't have at all- who knows?) she, after realizing that the Golfer wasn't going to get back together with her in spite of her machinations, told the Golfer that she got a abortion. So the sequence of events for her pregnancy goes: Fails to realize she is pregnant to the point that she has an IUD implanted which causes her to believe she's had a miscarriage and they then name and mourn the dead clump of cells after which she then fails to tell the Golfer that she didn't actually have a miscarriage until after he gets together with Ruska and then only does so in a ploy to get him back and when that doesn't happen she gets an abortion anyway. Though, to be honest, between Thorn's cancer, MS, and medications for the aforementioned she couldn't have carried to term regardless because the medications would have killed a baby and the lack of them would have killed her so the whole situation was absurd to begin with. Weeks after Thorn and the Golfer were finally finished and the apparently-not-miscarried fetus was aborted he still chose to get himself permanently marked with the dead fetus commemorative tattoo that he had been planning. The tattoo is a large circle about four inches in diameter centered over his spine between his shoulders. The design is of a tree with tangled branches and tangled roots and as though it is carved into the tree are the initials of Thorn's dead fetus.

So because Ruska was still pregnant with his child (he had claimed he was going to find out if it was actually his when he first told his brother about it and when asked again said that it was though not how he knew) the Golfer chose to stay together with her even though when they first started hooking up he had said that he was not at all interested in a long term relationship. In early December when Ruska was about five months pregnant I saw her for the first time in ages and she didn't look particularly pregnant. Granted, she was skinny to begin with, and I know that some people don't 'show' much when pregnant (my mother likes to say that one of her sisters, when pregnant, merely looked like she had put on a few pounds until she was close to seven months along and then she suddenly looked like she'd swallowed a basketball) but in retrospect I feel I should have been more scrutinizing and suspicious of this. Another detail I feel in hindsight I should have been more suspicious about than I actually was happened around this time as well (though I honestly do not know or care if it was before or after I saw her). The Golfer told me that Ruska was concerned she might lose the baby. He went on to say that the doctors had told her that the fetus was not getting enough nutrients. I told him that this didn't make a whole lot of sense. If they were concerned about the fetus then they'd have told her to take more supplements, put her on a special diet, maybe put her on bed rest or given her a IV if it was really that threatening. They would have done something and not just given her a 'Oh, by the way, you might lose your kid, so sorry' and gone off to do whatever it was they had next in their schedule.

About a week after I saw Ruska the Golfer failed to come home from swimming one night until mid-morning the following day. He explained that the night before while they were swimming Ruska had gotten kicked in the stomach and had a miscarriage. They'd evidently been up all night because of this. This seemed suspicious to me because while I don't know the statistics regarding miscarriages in women I remembered from biology that trauma resulting in miscarriage is largely a myth- something that neither the Golfer nor Ruska seem to be aware of. But I suppose that after her malnutrition ploy failed (quite possibly because of my pointed questions regarding the situation) she had to go with another plan to 'lose the baby'. After speaking with a coworker of mine who is going to college with the eventual goal of being some kind of obstetrics administrator I was aware of even more evidence. By my calculation Ruska had been at least five months pregnant (based on how long she would have had to have been pregnant for her to have told the Golfer about the pregnancy when she did) and at that stage it is no longer considered a miscarriage but a stillbirth and she would not have 'just bled' as the Golfer said. And she wouldn't have stayed home. She would have had to go to the hospital to have her placenta removed and there would have been remains.

Given this evidence it seems likely that Ruska is a dirty faker. She faked a pregnancy to keep the Golfer from leaving her (probably assuming she could get pregnant before he noticed) and when that didn't happen she had to fake losing the baby but couldn't do so before she was sure the fake pregnancy had done its job in securing him so she waited as long as she figured she could before he got suspicious that she didn't yet look pregnant or anything before pretending to have a 'miscarriage'. And of course she couldn't go to a hospital or her deception would be all-to-obvious. So the Golfer, in his ignorance, was easily duped. Apparently, at least for the Golfer, that's how love is born.

I wanted to end it there but I just couldn't stop without saying this: The Golfer, to be completely inconsistent in his insanity, does not seem to be preparing to get a second dead fetus commemorative tattoo for this dead fetus.

Nought vs Aught

Now that we are a couple years into the second decade of the twenty-first century you may want some way to refer to the first decade of the twenty-first century in the same way that we now say 'the nineties' to refer to the decade between 1990 and 1999. I recently heard someone refer to this decade as 'the noughties' without being ironic or indicating that they were quoting someone else. I guess the theory behind this term is that 'nought' means nothing or zero and the years could be stated 00, 01, 02 and so on. However, I disagree with the term nought because of the massive amounts of confusion it would cause in verbal conversation. Nought's homophone 'naught' (which, yes, does mean more or less the same thing) would cause some confusion never mind the word 'not' or 'knot'. Then there's the fact that 'the noughties' is pronounced precisely the way you would pronounce 'the naughties' which sounds like some kind of sex act. This being said I am in favor of calling those years 'the Aughts' as it means essentially the same as nought and does not cause any confusion or bring to mind sex acts when you say it.