Tag Archives | life

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.

Comments { 2 }

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.

 

Comments { 18 }

It’s official, I’m really going to the Rockies (assuming I don’t get hit by a train before then)

Written by on August 12, 2011
Filed Under Personal Reflections
Looking down the valley toward Ouray from the Camp Bird Mine, Ouray County, Colorado. (LOC)

Ouray, Colorado

First I booked the flight, then I booked the rental, and today, after fighting Priceline for 2 days with bids on top of failed bids, I finally booked the hotel, right next to the 16th Street Mall.  It actually wound up being closer to the bus stop (where I’ll arrive from the airport) than the rental place, so I may end up checking in first to drop off my bags before picking up the car.

Colorado.  Sheesh.  It only took me 20 years.

Ever since I got it in me to dream about living in a log cabin surrounded by snowy mountains, with a wolf-dog named Caleb and a wife who looked like that girl in the soap opera that I used to crush on, Colorado was always on my radar.  I would live there, in a dry climate, with cool summers and snowy winters, and beautiful autumn seasons.  I would bake my wife pizza and in return she would bake me cupcakes.  We would sit by the fire and snuggle and talk of life and poetry, while Caleb happily dozed away near our feet..

And right before I graduated college in ’98, I thought, if only for a moment, that I would actually achieve that dream.  I had applied for a job back then with the Boulder Police Department (yes, THAT Boulder Police Department) to be a computer forensic technician.  Since that was the kind of job I had been studying in school for since the beginning, I thought it was meant to be.  I was going to move to Colorado.  I was going to get the job I wanted, working in law enforcement, living in the mountains.  I was going to meet the girl of my dreams.  It was really going to happen.  At 21 years old, this was truly going to be the beginning of the rest of my life.

And then I came in sixth in the applicant process.  Out of a pool of, well, six applicants.

And the dream slipped away.  I would never see Colorado.  I would never find that log cabin.  I would never find her.

I tried again, I think, hard to remember what I exactly did after that, but I’m pretty sure I tried for other jobs in Colorado.  But… the Darkness that was New York swallowed me whole and sent me spiraling down a bottomless pit of misery and despair.

13 years of plague and darkness.  Until finally… a dim light breaks through.  The light… of a computer monitor, as it displays my confirmed reservations for Colorado.

Comments { 6 }

I have had an epiphany (which I can’t do ZIP about now)

Written by on January 18, 2010
Filed Under Politics

While I’ve been thinking about ways to get more traffic and links to my site here, something occurred to me: there was one particular way that I could have easily gotten a huge spike in traffic and finally put my blog on the map.

I could have gone to Massachusetts and volunteered for Scott Brown’s campaign. Seriously. A mad dash to Worcester just for the weekend would have put me in the middle of all the action and given me so much blogging fodder that people would have been hard pressed to ignore me then. Think of the possibilities: me blogging live while I meet and greet Brown supporters at rallies. Or posting photos of me shaking Scott Brown’s hand. And then photos of me flirting with his daughter Ayla Brown, begging for her phone number. And then photos and vids of Scott Brown punching my lights out after flirting with said daughter.

Oh, the possibilities… :-D

I could have done it too, except ironically enough my money was already tied up in launching a marketing campaign. Um, whoops?

It was a missed opportunity, but I’m sure others will come along, especially as we get closer to the 2010 elections. I’m glad I had this revelation now though. In order to breathe life into my blog, I really do have to put myself out there, instead of waiting for the action to come to me. I even thought about going down to Haiti too, hitching a ride with Red Cross and just going down there to help out wherever I could. And then of course, I’d blog about the experience. And blog, and blog, and blog…

That’s been my objective for a while, to somehow bridge the desire to help others with my love for writing, but I had been so narrowly focused on trying to bring more traffic to my site that I had failed to consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, the traffic would take care of itself if I instead focused on writing and living life the way I’ve always wanted to. So I’m not self-employed just yet, but I can certainly ACT like I am. :-D

Maybe instead of chasing the dream, I should be LIVING the dream, and the rest will fall into place. The battle is already won, the race already done, the future made, the foundation laid, and I need only claim the victory. :)

Comments { 4 }

Life is just a series of random events… or is it?

Written by on December 1, 2009
Filed Under Personal Reflections

“Not all those who wander are lost.” – J.R.R. Tolkien

One of the things that I got sucked into believing about dating was that it would be far easier for me to meet likeminded people online than in real life, because life was simply too random and chaotic for me to easily find the kind of people I could relate to and hang out with (especially hot looking wimmins.) I mean seriously, am I really gonna run into an avid fan of Sarah Palin (who also happens to look just like Jessica Alba) at the local supermarket, in NEW YORK? The odds simply don’t work like that in my favor.

Or does it?

One thing about pursuing this new hobby of geocaching, it’s definitely taken me to some interesting places. Last weekend I climbed to the top of a lighthouse, then drove to a Target and found a space right next to the door, shopped around and went to an empty checkout, all this only a day after Black Friday too. Then I ran into a tea party that was having a demonstration inside a Lowe’s parking lot of all places. It was amazing. I simply did not expect to see any Tea Party dudes in New York, but there they were, protesting against Obamacare and the corruption of Albany, with Derringer’s “I am a Real American” blasting in the background. It was a wild scene. :-D And I never would have found them either had I not been out geocaching.

The day after that, each cache I hunted took me on a trip down memory lane, one at a park where I used to be a camp counselor, which also happened to be the same park where my grandfather used to maintain the grounds. Another took me to my old college, where I also took the LSAT exam that would start me on my failed journey to law school, and still another took me right past the house I was once evicted from so many years ago. So many memories, most of them painful too. And yet when I revisited all these places from my past, it was like I had never really been there. It all seemed only vaguely familiar to me now, like trying to remember an old dream, the faded memories of a distant life best left forgotten.

After I had wrapped up my cache hunting, I drove off and stopped by a 7-11 nearby for a drink. It was past midnight, yet even then I saw a cute girl behind me coming in as well. I held the door open for her and though she ignored me, I wondered: if I simply did this long enough and often enough, eventually the pieces would all fall together, and someday I’d be holding the door open for the girl of my dreams, and she certainly won’t ignore me then. Or maybe I would meet her at the top of a lighthouse. Or at a Target. Or at a tea party. The geocaching hunts that I’ve been doing all weekend were randomly put together, and yet they didn’t seem very random at all. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in life, it’s that the true value of things is often found in the journey itself, rather than the destination. I’ve been avoiding the journey too long, trying to live it out instead on the Internet. But I’m beginning to realize it should have been the other way around.

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