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My high school English teacher was a lying stink of poopie pants

Written by on March 26, 2012
Filed Under Personal Reflections

I got to thinking about high school today, and I remembered a random conversation my English school teacher had with with the class one day.  She was one of those types who thought every poet and major writer in history was gay and how poems like “Mending Wall” by Robert Frost were classic examples of repressed homoeroticism.  I mean, totally, it’s so obvious, amirite?

Really learned a lot in that class, I did.

Anyhoo, we got to talking about our high school years and she openly pondered how all of us were going to deal with the fact that high school would be the best years of our lives, and that after that there would be nothing left to look forward to.

I’m serious.  She actually says this.  Out loud.  Wistfully.  I really hope there had been no students who were prone to clinical depression listening to this, because I’d really hate to think about where they might be now.

So, let me get this straight.  College won’t be better than high school?  Graduating college won’t be better than high school?  Getting married won’t be better than high school?  Witnessing the birth of your child won’t be better than high school?  Being able to travel, on your own dime, to exotic locations around the world and experiencing the wonders of this planet won’t be better than high school?  Having the joy of owning an Apple iPhone won’t be better than high school?  Having grandkids won’t be better than high school?

Yeah I could totally see it, the years in which I had no money, no driver’s license, no place to call my own, and where I got to go to homecoming dances (alone) and watch the captain of the football team Hank McDouchewagon get crowned homecoming king while he dances with the hottest girl in school.  The same guy of course, who dunks my head in a toilet every Tuesdays and Thursdays after fifth period Spanish.

Yep, best years of my life.  Oh God how I miss it.

The scary thing though is that some of my friends back then actually bought into it, even when they had absolutely no reason to.  I had a real geekazoid of a mild friend who, even 2 years out of college, would not shut up about the glory days of high school.  “Those were the best years of our lives man, and we’ll never get it back,” he told me once, right before he started crying.  Like, actual real tears.

Um, no they weren’t.

 

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Raylan Givens is a fricking badass (and why I might be just like him)

Written by on March 2, 2012
Filed Under Personal Reflections

Raylan Givens is a TV character from the show Justified, a Deputy U.S. Marshal who has this habit of shooting people, or sometimes groups of people every other episode.  They’re always “justified” though, which is why he gets to keep his badge.

It seems telling though that he constantly has to draw down on people because just about everyone in the world seems to want him dead, including his father.  Naturally, this makes Raylan a somewhat less than positive and happy person.

This is my happy face. For realsies.

The more I watched this show the more it started to dawn on me just how much Raylan and I are alike.  For one, we both work in law enforcement.  We’re both loners who could count our friends on one hand, and sometimes, just one finger.  We’re both content to live minimally (Raylan lives in a motel, of all places, which ironically enough, is how I lived for 6 years, albeit not by choice.)

We both have the worst luck with women, though he tends to lower the bar somewhat by sorta dating one girl who blew away her abusive (but unarmed) husband with a 12 gauge or something, and his ex-wife, who leaves him for a douche of a real estate guy who, to his credit doesn’t kill anyone, he just hires people who do (namely, to kill Raylan.)  Good to know women’s propensity for abandoning decent guys for flaming crap heads remain constant even in fiction.

We both have the worst fathers on earth, men who wouldn’t think twice about selling us into sex slavery if it meant getting a buck or two.  In one particular scene, Raylan sees his father’s betrayal during a sting coming a mile away, and gets the drop on him before Daddy is able to reach for his own gun.

“When did you know?”  His father asked, somewhat surprised.

“Well… Arlo, I guess I’ve always known.”  And then he shoots his dad in the leg.  Greatest moment in TV history, EVER.

We both live in a town/locale we are intimately familiar with but have desperately tried to run away from, namely because we are utterly and completely despised by everyone around us.  Though fortunately in my case, I don’t have to deal with locals constantly drawing down on me just for daring to pollute the air they breathe with my existence.  At least not yet.

We both have an outer shell of civility and even pleasantness that belies a tumultuous, perhaps even unhinged rage beneath.  There are moments in this show where that shell cracks and Raylan just loses himself in a fit of violent wrath (and yet still justified, as each violent moment is usually triggered by some stupid idiot dipwad who seriously does not know when to SHUT UP.)

For me, that rage is often expressed online, which is why I have a tendency to get banned from generally every forum, blog, Facebook group and whatnot I participate in.

That’s why I sometimes wish my own life were a TV show people could watch, so that in the same way they feel for Raylan Givens and love him to pieces, (despite him you know, shooting almost everyone he runs into), they could also understand me too, witnessing the things I’ve endured and just kind of nod knowingly through it all, thinking “Yeah, I totally get why this guy wants to kill everyone.”

Instead I’ll just have to find some solace in knowing there is at least a TV character out there with shades of my personality proving, if just occasionally, that even the unlovable can sometimes be lovable.

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I am… THE TIN MAN

Written by on January 21, 2012
Filed Under Personal Reflections

Funny thing after writing my earlier post on putting up walls:  I did some extensive research on my personality profile (which is INFJ if you’re curious), and came across this little tidbit about The Tin Man.

Yep, that would be me.

I think the reason I have difficulty letting down these barriers is because being emotionally hurt doesn’t merely sting like it does others.  It’s more of a… Temple of Doom priest experience where you physically have your heart ripped out of you, then get tossed into a pit of raging fire.

You know, like that.

Now imagine me having to endure that, over and over again before I finally meet some kind soul who for once isn’t a shallow and self-centered whoring whorish whory whore with whorishness on top.

Actually I have endured it, and I think after so many knife stabs to the heart I’ve started to become numb, and that concerns me.  My worst fear is that I’ll wake up one day and I just won’t be able to feel anything anymore, that I will wind up a true sociopath.

I think my only solution is to volunteer somewhere to keep my mind and heart occupied, else I fear I will become completely dead inside, having no empathy at all for the pain I see around me.

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When a friend isn’t a friend mostly because they were never a friend to begin with

Written by on January 12, 2012
Filed Under Personal Reflections

I need to get something off my chest.

I’m an introverted guy with a somewhat anti-social personality, brought on I think by the fact that I don’t like people.  It’s not that I generally have anything against them, it’s just that I hate them and hope they all die from the plague.

Naturally this attitude makes it hard for me to gain friends.

Actually that’s not true, what’s hard is people being able to find a way into my inner exclusive circle, a circle consisting of those I can remotely stand for more than five minutes.  It’s a privileged club, yo, and I don’t let just anybody in.

But that’s the thing: when I let people get inside, it’s because I feel I’ve connected with them, believing we have a common bond that can form the genesis for a great and lasting friendship.  Usually I keep people at arm’s length, so it’s rare when something like this happens.

But not too long ago, it did happen.  She got on the inside, and for a time it was great.  Our friendship was growing, we chatted on a regular basis, met a few times in real life, and things were fine.  I had someone to talk to, and for me, that was more than enough.

And then she just… stopped.  Weeks would go by without a word.  She’s just been busy.  Ok.  I accepted that as a legitimate excuse.  I’d still hear from her, just not as often.  Just too you know, busy busy busy.  Eventually things would settle down and get back to normal, sooner or later.  Right?

Only they never did.  I knew it was the end when Christmas and New Year’s went by without a word from her, despite her Facebook wall still being active.  Too busy to text me a Merry Christmas, huh?  Busy, busy, busy…

That’s when I took a step back and took a long hard look at this “friendship.”  I’ve done a lot of things for her, but I couldn’t think of one thing she’s ever done for me.  Nothing beyond a few texts and tweets.  At least nothing of any real substance.  And I would have been fine with that, because all I ever really wanted was her friendship, which I assume should obviously mean setting time aside to talk every now and then.   And by every now and then, I don’t mean once in six months either.

I’m inclined to think that if you genuinely like someone and value their presence in your life, you WANT to talk to them, hang out with them, do things for them.  So it was a hard thing for me to accept that this person really did NOT want to be my friend.  I had called it wrong.  I had let the wrong person inside, and I got burned for it.

Some people, namely the extroverted types, will tell me to get over it, that I’m making too much out of nothing, or how dare I, seriously, DARE I expect someone, a woman especially, to sacrifice 5 minutes of her time for me.  OUTRAGEOUS.

The same people though (and this is pretty much why I hate humanity) don’t really place much value in friendships.  Like their Facebook list, they keep a tally of hundreds, if not thousands of names in their “black books” that they would claim to be friends with, yet it’s all a mile long and an inch deep.  So when someone drops out of contact inexplicably, it doesn’t mean anything to them, because the friendship itself never meant anything to them.  So when somebody like me whines about this crap, they just can’t see what the big deal is.

This thing where people just kinda breeze in and out of each other’s lives effortlessly and without any form of emotional attachment has never been something I could understand though, and it’s sort of hardened me from wanting to befriend anyone again.  I have one good friend now who’s proven himself, the rest of humanity I could do without.

So now I fortify my wall even more, careful never to let anyone else inside again.

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I just don’t want to do anything anymore

Written by on January 10, 2012
Filed Under Personal Reflections

I’ve been in a funk lately.  I’ve been told it’s the winter blues but it seems to be more than that.  Not just a lost of initiative or ambition, but a complete lack of desire to do just about… anything, to the point that it’s starting to concern me.

I think it started when I began actively searching for a new job.  I check the federal listings every now and then, but when I start to really dig past the cryptic government speak to learn what a job truly entails, I’ve started to think to myself:  man, this blows chunks of meaty monkey testicles.

I mean, there’s nothing I remotely find interesting about the work for any of these jobs I THOUGHT I’d like to do.  So I start checking the private sector, mostly for internet marketing, social media related work since that’s the only other area of expertise I have besides being a government stooge.  Sent out tons of resumes, no response to any of them.  This is why I hate job hunting, because it’s quite much like the experience of trying to find a girl to date, an exercise in futility until I finally come to gripes with the reality that nobody wants me, nobody has wanted me and nobody ever will want me.  One can only endure so much of that before he makes like Rambo hiding out in a hut rambling “%^&* the world” after a pacifist weenie beseeches him for help.

And it’s not that I’ve given up that I find so distressing either, it’s that I’ve lost the desire to even bother anymore.  I try to conjure up the excitement of finding a job I enjoy, or finding a nice girl to date, or even gearing up for a new place to travel to, but the well is dry.  I’m just kinda “meh” about it all now.  Meeting the girl of my dreams?  Yawn.  Don’t see the point anymore.

And yeah it’s true, I can’t even get excited about traveling either.  I had a few plans going for another week long road trip to the south, but now I’m ready to cancel that as well.  Had four days off last weekend and I didn’t leave the apartment for four days.  My car just sits in the lot wondering what became of me.

Blogging?  Forget that.  I don’t even know how I’m mustering up the will to write this post let alone anything else.

Instead I’m basically living the life of a semi-zombified hermit, existing only to eat, sleep and play Nancy Drew games on my PC.  Oh, and catch up with the latest Michael Connelly read.

Beyond that… meh.

 

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