Why not to bring an umbrella.

I've become a model adult, and I'm pissed. I pay all my bills on time, I have a time table for being out of debt completely, I have a savings account which I make regular deposits in, I have a stable job, I made my own appointment at the dentist, I have dental insurance to cover my visit, I see my family on holidays, I'm dating a wonderful girl with whom I'm happily engaged, and my x-mas shopping is already done. Most of you who still make time in your lives for my occasional tl:dr armchair philosopher life critiques are still in college with real life on the horizon. Allow me to throw this out there for you, this shit is boring as fuck.

I couldn't really tell you what I expected, but I guess I thought life would put up more of a struggle. It doesn't fight back, it lulls you in and then distracts you from moving. Stagnation with idle amusement is where I currently find myself. Is this what I was supposed to achieve when I reached adulthood?

To briefly address the potential issue of economic disparity: yes I know the unemployment rate is currently very high, many of my friends are currently looking for jobs or soon will be, and I should be happy with my position, but I would contend I'm fairly average coming from a white middle class suburban home with no college diploma, so yes there are those worse off, but I'm assessing the final goal. I feel it would be more of an insult to those currently climbing to arrive and find this bland cold vista than to tell them that perhaps climbing a different mountain would be a better option. With that out of the way, back to the IKEA nesting instinct.

Since it is tricky at best to change the entire system, my recommendation is to take cheap shots at it every chance you get, even if it only results in victories in your own head. Fight dirty, and the best way to fight dirty is to include sex. I went to work without underwear tonight. A small thing? Absolutely, but any little piece you can take back from what is expected of you is worth it. It was also oddly arousing to take a couple grand off people at blackjack while my balls were swinging freely. There is another thing I love to do in public involving sex, and although the commando dealer was a new thing, this next thing I've been doing for years.

I want you to think of your deepest and darkest fetish. You'll know it is the right one if just thinking about it gets your blood going. The one that causes you to close your eyes and take a quick breath because of how good you know it makes you feel. Next time you're sitting in class or at your job imagine applying this fetish to someone around you, the less you know them the better.

If you're into BDSM imagine that guy in class bound, gagged, and at your mercy. If you like being bitten and some girl you're talking to smiles imagine what shape of mark her teeth would leave in your neck. If you're into feet imagine the moans you'd elicit from the quiet guy in class while you lick his toes. If you like sex toys imagine what that girl across the room from you would do if she had a vibrator in and you held the remote for it. Make it public and make it dirty. I can't even tell you how many gamblers have come to my table only to find themselves subject to my personal fetish.

Your actions will follow your thoughts and at the very least you entertained yourself and broke up the monotony. Again, I don't think any of this will make 'the real world' any more bearable for everyone, but it will make it easier for you. Who knows soon you might move from going commando and thinking with a little deviancy to bringing your own mug into the cafeteria and publicly disagreeing with illogical, insipid, and inexcusable bullshit. I know I hope I can take more steps down this path and away from whatever it is I'm currently doing.

This post had several fight club references and in general I hoped to encourage similar behavior. I saw the movie and read the book years after they came out, and sadly I've never been in a fight myself, nor could I join any of the legally questionable fight clubs that started when the movie came out since I missed that boat. In the book the main character mentions wearing the bruises from fights in public as badges of honor. I view the scratches from female nails in my back with a similar adoration, but at some point I would really love to go at it with someone until one of us blacks out or taps out. I have a feeling I still have a few steps to take down this golden path that I hope will save me from myself before getting to that level though.


"In the US you have to be a deviant or exist in dreary boredom. Make no mistake; all intellectuals are deviants in the US"
~William S. Burroughs

Early in life I always experienced hate in a very general way. Hating to lose, hating a principle, or an idea, those sorts of things were common. At my new job I experience hate in a much more specific way. I have players at my table nightly at the casino who I honestly hate. This puts me in a tough position as there is no way I can really get back at the individual. There are a few small things dealers can do which are irritating and extremely passive aggressive, but overall I'm powerless. Fortunately no one is ever powerless inside their own head.

This has led me to a new strategy for dealing with people/scenarios that make me see red which is serving me well at the casino and I would like to share it with you. I used to sing insulting songs in my head and direct them towards people. If by Four Shadow and River of Shit you Cunt by The Aristocrats were my preferred mental melodies. The former can be found here: www.youtube.com/watch. Unfortunately I'm unable to find any links to either a performance or the lyrics of River of Shit You Cunt, but perhaps if someone could tell me how I can upload a file and link it to this journal, I will gladly provide it to you. I'm certain it will brighten your day if you listen to it while thinking of someone you hate.

Recently I have changed my tactics. People often sit at my table for hours on end and singing one song to myself that long becomes torture in and of itself. I know little to nothing about these people before they sit down. I've started making up people's histories in my head so that they are either complete morons or constantly having worse things happen to them than the main character of a greek tragedy. These fake pasts have brightened my days emmensely and I would like to share a false history I've made up for the tea bagger movement.

These people gather in mobs, have high levels of rage approaching bloodlust levels, and are impossible to reason with owing to a lack of higher brain function. There is another creature that has those characteristics, Zombies. What if the fact that these gatherings are being labeled as a politcal protest is a government cover up of the fact that zombies are among us. Fox News is the main news organization covering this group, and they were never fond of the truth to begin with, so they could easily be lying about this. The war of words between the White House and Fox News is manufactured to make everyone think there is no way the government is involved in the tea bagger rallies. It also explains my desire to shoot these people in the head.

Everytime I hear about another tea bagger rally I'm going to think of the above scenario and it really blunts the edge of the strong emotions. It is difficult to operate under the influence of hate. The faster I can move past it, the sooner I can start getting real things done. On a side note anyone interested in a d20 modern campaign using the above setting?


"I reject your reality and substitute my own."
~Adam Savage

For those of you have had sex with me, you know I like foreplay. For those of you who haven't had sex with me, I like foreplay. Call it girly, but I find it very crucial to become familiar with every inch of my partner's body before inserting every inch of me into my partner's body. I enjoy my time exploring where they like to be touched, squeezed, caressed, and occasionally bitten. So you'll excuse me if before we hike the old Appalachian trail together we have a little warm up, and like any good biologist I experience a slow build of arousal not only through good foreplay but also the reading of biological case studies presented in Discover Magazine in 1999.

I stumbled upon this essay in the book Monkeyluv and Other Essays on Our LIves as Animals, but originally Robert Sapolsky's "The Genetic War Between Men and Women" appeared in Discover magazine in 1999. It contains an interesting study done at UC Santa Cruz, and if you want any more citations go read the article because I'm paraphrasing from this point on. Suck it APA.

Fruit flies are awesome for genetic experiments because they breed so quickly that changes through the generations are visible within days. These creatures have a massive amount of unprotected, random hook up, non commital, polygamous sex. The males have developed a rather awful (read:effective) way of ensuring they are the ones that actually impregnate the most females. Before they ejaculate their sperm, they first release a spermicide into the female. This kills anything left by any previous males and clears the way for their genetics. The issue here is that this spermicide is incredibly toxic and the females often die from overexposure to it. Feeling frisky yet?

Now through a clever bit of artificial selection, scientists were able to breed out this toxic sperm. This increased the life expectancy of the females and resulted in overall higher birth rates, since longer life=more sex=more babies. But if reintroduced back in with a group of wild type fruit flies their genetics were quickly lost since they couldn't compete with the spermicide packing males in terms of actually impregnating any females. I'm getting hot, how about you?

Obviously this adaptation hurt the species as a whole, but was inescapable once one member of the species had it. This evolutionary fluke obtained by one male some untold number of years ago caused him to outcompete every other fruit fly on the globe, but once adopted by all, the species was worse of for it. Oh yeah, now my blood is pumping. I told you Discover magazine was good for foreplay.

The majority of Americans would tell you this country is capatalist and we should stay that way. The most often used argument for capitalism is that constant competition will keep the marketplace consumer friendly. Sounds similar to 'survival of the fittest' and 'the strongest survive' in many ways. Capitalism assumes everyone being equally selfish will balance itself out causing no one to truly ever win. Which in theory is great until someone cheats.

I don't even think many of the things that financial groups were doing a year ago were malicious in nature. I think someone tried them and they worked so well they kept doing it not realizing what would happen if it was all the entire system was based on. The method made a ton of money so stock holders demanded more. The strategies were then deceminated amongst all financial institutions and the average life expectancy of the 401K dropped off as a result.

Fruit flies will never be able to get rid of this trait. Even if we could isolate the whole species and remove this gene it would pop up at random at some point in the future just as it did in the past. We can, on the other hand, isolate our financial system and regulate the living hell out of it. Unfortunately many of these groups won't give up their power readily. It will take something more powerful than what has already happened to convince voters that selfish group plus selfish group does not equal consumer prosperity in the same way that toxic sperm plus toxic sperm doesn't equal healthy species. Was it good for you too?


"The one who loves the least, controls the relationship"
                                          ~Dr. Robert Anthony

Entries on back to back nights? What is this world coming to. Oh well, as long as we're here we should probably make the best of it, but let's not strain ourselves. The old metaphor muscle still needs some more stretching before starting to tackle new issues. I think the next entry will tackle our entire economic system, so if last night was dinner, tonight will be a light dessert, and tomorrow will be deliciously dirty sex. Please dress appropriately.

Dessert for this evening will be a New York style cheesecake with a dark chocolate sauce, a classic which is slow cooked and has just a touch of bitterness. In truth my problem tonight comes from a single line which I have heard far too often now. I deal cards at a casino, and have studied both statistics and gambling for years now. When I stated this job I often tried to offer advice to player's especially regarding some of blackjack's more iffy hands. I was often met with a variation of the following, "I've been playing this game longer than you've been alive."

Technically true? Yes. An idiotic justification for refusal to change bad habits? Yes. I have actually started lying about my age so I get this line less. Now to be clear, I don't feel I have the same amount of experience in love, long projects, or some of the other emotional swings that one can only understand with the accumulation of years. However, the cards don't give a shit how old you are since obviously the probabilities don't change based upon age of the player. Ignoring the inexperience of youth is pointless when the situation isn't something you need experience to understand.

I am certain every generation probably feels this way. Their opinions are ignored and society would be better if those old folks would just listen up because they clearly don't know how the world works. Allow me to cite the two reasons that I see for our generation to step up onto this pedestal of self-righteousness. Firstly, and most importantly, the divorce rate. The peak that hit in the 80s has largely leveled off and started to decline, but if you were born after 1980 there is a 40% chance your parents are divorced(1). This obviously forces children into adult roles much sooner than would normally be expected of them. The second reason is 9/11, but most generations had some strong tragedy that solidified the fragility of life for them, so I'm not leaning on that as much as the divorce rate. You can tell because I gave that one a citation.

Do the whipper snappers often think the geezers are wrong? Yeah, it is your job when you are young to think everyone else is doing it wrong. If you think they are doing it wrong then you come up with a new way to do things to try out. New ways is how our societies get to change and grow rather than stagnate. A fresh perspective can come up with countless new and potentially useful solutions. But I would like to reiterate, there are times when the right and wrongs are statistical absolutes. In cases like that it doesn't matter whether it is the old telling the young or the young telling the old, ignoring sound advice because of age is just as bad a reason as creed, sex, gender, race, or cheesecake topping preference.

1: Sratling, Cassandra (9 June 2009). "Blended families can overcome daunting odds". Burlington, Vermont: Burlington Free Press. pp. 9A.


"In America, the young are always ready to give to those older than themselves the full benefit of their inexperience"
                                                                                                       ~Oscar Wilde

Well hello again. Before we get to far in I can assure you the table has been set in accordance with past rituals. It is past midnight, all housemates are absent or asleep, and I have had my piping hot shower. A new addition to the table would be the glass of white wine. A sauvignon blanc which is a little weak in the legs, but still gives the appropriate shiver present only in the tail end of wine bottles and orgasms. Of course the music is still being played by headphone, so without further adieu let us dine.

It has been a while since last I made time for a meal for the two of us. Last time was Valentine's of 2008, and now it is Halloween of 2009. Although I can assure you I did not forsee my leaving, that post explains where I went rather nicely. I'm fairly certain I couldn't have written a better good bye post if I was trying. A good thing it wasn't a good bye post though, b/c at this point I would look quite the liar or fool. But as this isn't the first gap of over a year between my posts I'll call you the fool if you expected more from me, and I'll call myself a liar for thinking at all that I'd moved past the necesity for this soap box of mine.

I explained in previous entries that this journal was the spring from which my anger could partake and be quenched, but that now just drinking in the beauty that is my fiance slaked its thirst with equal ease. For those of you who are close to me do not worry that me returning here in any way says negative things about the state of my relationship. It is instead the fact that now the majority of the people I come in contact with on a daily basis enrage as opposed to endear. I don't have friends to rant with over a crossword and a caf dinner any longer. Truly I undervalued those times.

So as simple math will tell us we need to add more outlets to balance the equation once again, so I repeat, well hello again. I would like to tie up one loose thread left dangling at the end of last season before proceeding. I wrote the Best Break Jade just over two years ago now. Little did I suspect life would pick up the mantle of writing part two that I truly left by the wayside.

Part two largely had to do with the fact that people of our generation(18-29) grew up with politics being largely Lewinski blowing Clinton or Bush blowing being president. If that demographic's pick for president in '08 didn't win I doubt many of us would have voted until we had AARP cards just because we no longer saw the point. Low and behold Obama was elected. Many groups that often don't show up at the polls came out to vote for this man. So he did it, he got through to the jaded.

My hat is off and my fingers are crossed that those who voted for the first time for him will vote for a second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh time before there is even another presidential race. Ignore the fact that there are only midterm elections between presidential years. Instead of me writing a best break jade part 2 I would instead instruct everyone to watch this precidency very closely, If it it works, millions might decide a democracy is a worthwhile form of government. If not, well, back to a state reminiscent of a mineral held in high regard by asain cultures.

So, I'm back and the slate is clean. But wiping it so will be enough for tonight. It won't be two years before we have a bite ot eat again. I'm aiming for entries on consecutive days for the first time in the history of this journal. We'll see though, I am fond of teasing.


"Absence from those we love is self from self - a deadly banishment"
                                                               ~William Shakespeare

Well I haven't got my blackjack gum, I am sitting here naked,  I am without my cock ring, but despite batting one for three I have that familiar feeling. You know that feeling that something rank is going on out there in white bread land? A peculiar feeling to have for a post on this night of valentine's don't you think? But I wouldn't worry about that part if I were you. I'd worry about why the long hiatus from this community only to return once again discussing gum and cock rings. To have that explained though you'll have to wait a few entries.

Let's start by explaining the absence and the title. Cleverly enough they link. It became relatively obvious in my last post, but it might come a shock to my readers that almost all of my post were inspired by anger. Yes dear friends of mine, I get angry. It would be a lie to claim that I haven't been angry between that post and this, but it would also be a lie to claim I am angry now.

My anger traditionally has three outlets. The first of which is to play games, sports betting, poker, halo, any game you can think of. As long as I could win at it the anger would go away. Outlet two was to exhaust my body or mind to the point that it couldn't handle the emotion of angry anymore. I'd either bike until my legs cramped or I'd enter data into spreadsheets until I'd get headaches from staring at the computer screen. The third method was to rant about whatever it was making me angry. Often this resulted in me just talking to myself(a rather enjoyable past time in general), but this journal was another nice way to achieve a similar result. Even though this is written word and by this point you know where I stand on that issue.

So if football is over, my 360 only recently arrived on campus, I haven't been posting here, and my gym shorts still lay in my clean clothes pile, where has that emotion been going? Not to put too sappy a point on it but it paled in comparison to love(see it is a valentine's day post). Turns out it's incredible how much easier the rest of your life seems when that one thing gets taken care of. When you feel comfortable in your own skin, you know there is a second heart out there beating in time with yours, it is hard to stay mad long enough for me to post here.

Yet I return. I come back and continue to rant to those who for some reason pay my words heed. I still find myself driven to talk to the masses. The vehicle has changed though. For one there is a gorgeous blonde riding shotgun, but it seems that falling in love has some peculiar affects on you that I think I'm finally mature enough to identify. You do your best to eliminate every flaw you have to make yourself perfect for your partner. This is an extremely difficult process, and what I see happening in myself is that every thing that was a vice is simply being reapplied. What I mean is everything is still there, but the motivations behind have shifted. Almost as if everything in life balances in the end....curious.

I still ramble until early in the morning when the rest of my house mates have gone to sleep. I still put on my headphones while my hair is wet from the shower that I thought up this entry during. But instead of feeling disgust as my veins pulsed to the beat of the hypocrisies of our time I instead feel inspired to change the world. After all I've now found someone who truly deserves the rhythm and the flow of a universe that can hold a flawless jazz progression. Unfortunately my talents are in moving to that beat, not creating it. That's where everyone else comes in.

I want the band perfect not b/c I'm sick of hearing shitty music and I just want some fucking sleep. Instead I need them to have the counts down otherwise I can't dance with her all night. Everything I've said in my previous posts still stands, and I'm not done writing them all yet. I'm still here and you better to believe I have no intentions of leaving anytime soon. I really will finish The Best Break Jade, but I felt I should explain this revelation, and how I'm continually amazed at the number of patterns in life that are painfully inescapable and yet entirely unpredictable. It all practices and performs a wonderful chart entitled 'The Illusion of Chance and Fate Alike'


"The world needs anger. The world often continues to allow evil because it isn't angry enough"
                                                                                                ~Bede Jarrett

 I know that normally the quotes in my entries don't come until the end, and there will be one there, but on this occasion I feel the need to mix it up a bit.

"I would  like to present you, dear audience, with a number that will shock you to your very soul. When I spoke that last sentence, five square miles of rainforest was incinerated, and a whole species went extinct from the face of the Earth, erased from all creation for eternity! How can we retain our sanity when faced with such a statement? How can we justify sitting here, in the comfort of Apple Valley, Minnesota, driving our cars around, consuming products at an alarming rate, laughing, smiling as we do, busying ourselves with things of the absolutely most questionable and trite nature? Perhaps you have not let it soak in fully,"

There is more to this speech but I wish to interrupt for a moment. I want you to reflect a  moment on what the speaker said. Specifically I want you to identify how you reacted when you red those opening three lines.  Did you frown, cry, smile, keep reading, brush hair out of your face? What were your emotions and actions after reading that. OK, back to the speech, sorry to slow you down.

"The figure is made up, I just made it up. This may surprise you, as I appear to be an honest person. I, however, am not surprised in the least. I saw not one wide eye, one mouth agape in sheer horror, nor any scream of injustice for the planet that gave us birth. A statement like that logically should chill one to the bone, but it doesn’t. That’s because we’ve heard it before."

I had the pleasure of being present when this speech was given. I'll post most of it as my ending quote today, so if you would like to read the entire section this comes from you may. The point I would like to make is best explained in the above two quotes though. To many things in life we are a jaded group of people.

Almost anyone can take a group of people who is new to a given situation and motivate them to action. It takes a great speaker to get a group of people who has been told about the situation countless times before and get them to achieve the same level of intensity and desire in their work towards a goal.

This particular speech was talking about environmentalism, and certainly it makes a damn good point. We aren't shocked by the terrible numbers any longer. The images no longer burn themselves onto our retinas so that their ghosts follow us well after we have closed our eyes to the world. We've grown accustomed to the guilt being constantly slung at us, and now walk comfortably as if there was no burden on us at all. This hurts the world, but it's not why I bring up the subject of people being jaded. There is a different part of the psyche much more encrusted in a green mineral, but that will be for next entry.

In the interest of keeping this entry relatively short, I will leave you for now with a closing thought, a promise, and the rest of the speech. After you read this, go to CNN, BBC, MSNBC, the New York Times, or USA Today's websites. Look at the very first headline on the main page and try to read that article as if it was the first time you'd ever read anything in that category before. It's not an easy thing to do, but I have faith in my readers. My promise is that I will post the real point of all of this within a couple days. The distance between my last entry and this one was a little on the extreme side for me.

"I would  like to present you, dear audience, with a number that will shock you to your very soul. When I spoke that last sentence, five square miles of rainforest was incinerated, and a whole species went extinct from the face of the Earth, erased from all creation for eternity! How can we retain our sanity when faced with such a statement? How can we justify sitting here, in the comfort of Apple Valley, Minnesota, driving our cars around, consuming products at an alarming rate, laughing, smiling as we do, busying ourselves with things of the absolutely most questionable and trite nature? Perhaps you have not let it soak in fully, but I have known this figure for over a month, recited it numerous time, and yet I retain coherence, and refrain from tearing my clothes off before you to live nude among the creatures of the forest. Well it is simple: the figure is made up, I just made it up.

                This may surprise you, as I appear to be an honest person. I, however, am not surprised in the least. I saw not one wide eye, one mouth agape in sheer horror, nor any scream of injustice for the planet that gave us birth. A statement like that logically should chill one to the bone, but it doesn’t. That’s because we’ve heard it before. The problems of the Earth condensed down into seemingly digestible sound bytes, with incomprehensibly large numbers and guilt coursing through every word. For so much of America, this is the face of environmentalism, which is not helping anything at all.

                'A terrible cataclysm is occurring inlands unseen, and it is your fault, send money today, lest your soul be consumed by the poisons you have created!' When I was first presented with this, it hurt my feelings and tossed me into a seemingly endless depression, for twenty minutes, when I was seven years old. After that, all the figures seemed to lose their potency, and the guilt lowered into a dull ache that eventually subsided into nothing more than a negligible rash, flaring up only when a particularly upsetting photo was shown. But even in a matter of moments the image of an oil-covered heron, leveled forest, or even a starving child of the third world can be forgotten."
                                                                               ~Alex Nee

My reasoning for the subject line continuity abandonment is quite simple. Firstly I found that I'd pause before I wrote to come up with an appropriately aquatic title. I do feel I'll continue to use water as a metaphor in many situations during the post, but I'm tired of feeling bound at the very start of my entries. The other reason is that although I like using metaphors, I enjoy being understood even better. I've seen people who feel the only way that people will respect their opinion is if they make it ambiguous and or complicated enough for it to be barely understood. I feel metaphors and analogies are powerful tools, but I also believe that a tool, no matter how elegant or well crafted, is only as useful as the final product.

There is something curious about being understood isn't there. You can apply the desire to either be understood, or to understand more, to almost every situation. The gossiper who listens in on a conversation between people and the scientist who looks in on interactions between cells or planets both seek the same thing. Anyone who attempts communication(speaking, writing, typing, drawing, acting) is looking to be understood on some level or another. Sometimes the desire is for the person to understand a lie, but thats still a desire to be understood.

The Greek myth of Cassandra comes to mind, She was given the gift of prophecy and the curse that she never be believed. Of all the curses the Greek gods placed on various transgressors hers, in my opinion, is the most cruel. Having to forever push a rock up a hill, always having food and water move out of your reach if you attempt to grab them, having your intestines pecked out by vultures, these seem like slaps on the wrist comparatively.

The desire to be understood is of course what I'm attempting to do with this journal. I have all these odd thoughts in my head about how I think the world does work or how it should work. I certainly don't think I have the gift of prophecy, but its comforting to know that I'm not cursed as well. In many versions of the Cassandra story she ends up going insane, and I can't blame her. There are few more comforting things in the world than to know what you just said/did was understood perfectly. Hell I'd venture to say we can't love someone if we don't believe they can understand us and if we can't understand them.

Now when Cassandra wasn't believed, she was always telling the truth. Certainly sometimes it is a lot easier to believe a lie. To you liars out there, yes it feels good when someone believes a lie you've told them but(and I do know from personal experience) it feels infinitely better when they believe the truth because then they are believing something that is a part of you.

Take complimenting women as an example. Certainly you can lie and make up a wonderful fabrication about how gorgeous they are, and sometimes they'll believe it. Again I'm drawing from personal experience. I stopped fabricating compliments one day when I was really paying attention to an especially attractive girl. I didn't tell her anything fancy, I just told her she was beautiful. It came from my heart not my head, but the smile she gave me warmed both. I couldn't fake compliments to her anymore because her smiles after those made me feel empty because I was purposefully deceiving someone who, in my eyes, really was perfect.


"Tell me and I'll forget, show me and I may remember, involve me and I'll understand."
                                                               ~Chinese Proverb

I do my best to practice chivalry. Some things I try to do most of the time are: open doors, allow women to go first, pay a little bit more than my share of the bill, but those all get forgotten from time to time. One thing I do without exception is avert my eyes when a woman is ever changing or undressing in my presence. This even applies to women I have seen naked plenty of times before and my sexual past with that woman doesn't matter in the slightest. Women who fall into one of those categories will often ask me in confused tones why I do this since I've seen it all before and its no big deal. I tell them in that situation I had clear permission to gaze upon their beauty in its entirety, but thats a permission I never assume is given again at any later date.

The unfortunate thing regarding chivalry is that it is a double standard in terms of gender equality. Chivalry is one of many such standards, however there are others which are much more destructive then someone pulling out a chair for someone else to help them sit down. One I hope to touch on in a later entry is society's expectations that men be uncontrollably horny and women always hold back. Thats a double standard which is inaccurate on both sides of the equation, but this entry is about something else.

Women are allowed to strike men physically. Now I'm not talking about a playful nudge or a light shoulder punch, those are fine. I'm talking about winding up and smacking with all of your force another person. It is viewed as well within any woman's rights to use all of her strength to leave a stinging hand print across a man's face. People stand up, applaud, and yell, "You Go Girl," when they see something like that. Once again I'm talking about using anger as the motivation for hitting, not anything being done between friends for fun.

If a man were to respond in kind they would be thrown in jail. Think in your head of any situation that could possibly happen in which a man strikes a woman and people around them congratulate the man afterwards, tell him he did the right thing, or the most shocking of all tell them woman she deserved it. Even if the man strikes back it is his fault. Societal permission is never given to the man to express his anger physically towards the opposite sex. Women are given a constantly renewing pass to smack, kick in the balls, punch, you name it a woman will be absolved of all blame 1,000 times before the man gets the nod even once.

There are many inequalities between men and women. My hope is that by performing chivalry I don't encourage people to think different rules apply. As with all things the difference between men and women creates ugly problems at the same rate it creates elegant solutions. The goal of course would be to be able to avert my eyes without worrying about seeing an open palm coming my way when I look again.


"Justice is better than chivalry if we cannot have both."
                                                              ~Alice Stone Blackwell

I had an excellent book recommended to me a while back. The author of the book regularly sent things to the London Times, and after getting tired of not seeing his letters published he decided to just write a book instead. The book is entitled Crimes Against Logic by Jamie Whyte. If you want to see a little more about it just search Amazon. It is an excellent read and I'd highly recommend it for anyone who is sick of people making no sense during arguments.

Now there are many logical arguments debunked in this book with a great deal of skill and eloquence. One of the most fascinating of these is he discusses in an early chapter why you actually don't have a right to your own opinion. Meaning the use of, "Well I have a right to my own opinion." is not only inaccurate but a terrible method of trying to make a point. As fascinating as it is I'm not going to expand upon that right now, I just wanted to demonstrate how cool this book is.

The section of the book I'd like to focus on is the chapter in which he discusses the pot calling the kettle black argument. Often this is used as a rebuttal. Someone berates a person for a crime they themselves are often guilty of themselves. The person responds by saying well that's calling the kettle black. This may be true but remember that this doesn't change the fact that the pot is indeed black.

Now we are all guilty of this a little bit, and often its ok because sometimes an error we ourselves are committing is something that we are very qualified to give advice on. Taking our own advice can in fact be more useful then taking another person's. We know our situation best. It is wrong to ignore words of any kind, but to ignore our own is a crime far greater than any racial profiling by and/or of kitchen utensils.


"All of us are experts at practicing virtue from a distance."
                                                                ~Theodore M. Hesburgh

After my last entry you may have easily gotten the impression that I am not a fan of the hand life has dealt me. This could not be farther from the truth, but I felt setting aside some time to explain my appreciation for life would be a good idea. I was planning on my next entry being an angry rant about Ingrid Newkirk and everything she stands for, but I waited a little too long and the moment has passed. But I have the utmost confidence that if I wait a little while she'll do something else that brings her crashing back to the front of my brain with the grace of a Senator from Idaho propositioning sex in an airport bathroom.

My grandpa once brought up a very interesting point. We were talking our family tree, and he told me the following: Every one of your ancestors, going all the way back to when we were monkey, back farther to when we were fish, and still back further to when we were small bacteria floating in the ocean, every one of them lived to the point they could reproduce before dieing. One bacteria dies several hundred million years ago dies and you're not here. Its an interesting perspective to take on life.

It brings into rather sharp focus exactly how improbable life itself is, but this is something that can be extended a little further. Obviously if your life is improbable then anything you might do becomes equally improbable if you're looking at the universal  picture. However even if you zoom in to just a single life, the odds are still infinitesimally small that any given event could happen.

Take a look at just things that have happened to you in the last year. What percentage chance would you assign to that time you looked up just in time to see the sunset at its peak, when you were only speeding for a little bit but that was the section the cop was waiting for, when you dropped toast and it lands butter side up, when your internet cut out in the middle of a key conversation, when you opened your eyes and saw a perfect face with their lips firmly pressed against yours. Now some of the above moments are good and some are bad, but they are all unlikely.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I believe knowing how a flower works increases its beauty. Well the same goes for understanding how unlikely some events are. A sunset, a piece of toast, and a kiss all seem like unremarkable things(except for the kiss, those are always remarkable, but I've already ranted on that) until you take into account the chance of each occurring. A cloud could be blocking your view, the butter could have been on the other side, the other person could have been busy that night. All things outside your control that lined up perfectly for that one single moment.

It is a simple aspect of human nature that we put value on things that we perceive as rare. Once we understand how incredibly improbable not only life itself, but all the little things that make it up are, one can't help but gain a deeper appreciation for its beauty. The difficulty in this is that since these things are happening to us it is tough to think of them as rare. I'm just an average Joe why would anything special happen to me. Now I'm not asking you to gain a new love of live based on probability, but what I am asking is to make an attempt to understand two things.

First take some time to ponder what my grandpa said about all of your relatives living. Even if you're a creationist you've got 4,000 years of people who managed to make it to the point of procreation. Secondly, and more importantly, take some time to think of the countless other places your life could be right now and then figure the chance that it would end up where it is.

I'm not bitter about where or what I am in life. I'm constantly amazed that I'm here at all. Recently I've been taking a lot of time to think about one specific situation I've found myself, and how if you were to ask me a year ago I'd tell you this sort of thing could never happen to a guy like me, it is impossible. So as I glance over at the blue rose on my nightstand I reflect on all the impossible beauties in my life, and how much more glorious they seem because of the fact that if statistics were to be believed I wouldn't be here to enjoy them or have them to enjoy.


"The new always happens against the overwhelming odds of statistical laws and their probability, which for all practical, everyday purposes amount to certainty, the new therefor always appears in the guise of a miracle."
                                                                               ~Hannah Arendt

Before I begin I would like to make two notes regarding the title of this entry. First of all I'd like to say that although I really liked the idea of having a water reference in every subject line, I'm not certain how long I can keep this up and still have any sort of link between subject and entry. Secondly the title for this entry is what is because the following logic train is one of the very first that I ever road to completion. There were others before this I had to briefly derail for other projects, but this is the one and only first piece of the puzzle that was put in place.

Like all good epiphanies, this one started with a very simple and innocently asked question. "Why can't men control their erections?" OK, certainly there is a little sway. There is the choice to think about baseball or 'insert favorite fetish/body part here', but when it comes down to it the erection is an involuntary response. But why?

Wouldn't it make more sense for this highly expensive use of bodily resources to be under conscious control? Clearly the answer is no otherwise this trait would at least be present somewhere in the population thanks to natural selection. This means there must be some very serious problems that arise from this level of control.

It would seem to make sense that the man would better be able to identify a situation that might lead to sex than his subconscious could. This would save energy for the body since an erection isn't cheap in the metabolic sense of the word. Also the prevention of erections at inopportune times would decrease the chance for injuries to a very evolutionarily valuable portion of the body. Especially if you add the fact that cavemen probably didn't have access to the best in technology to keep it tucked back. All of these seem like pluses.

There is only one thing I could come up with that would outweigh all of the pros. It had to do with the first sentence in the above paragraph. Men would be picking when they were aroused and ready for sex. Saving the erection leaves more blood for the brain and I have the distinct feeling allows for more logical processing to occur. What I'm suggesting is that with control of their erections men would actually have less sex. This unfortunately leads to an extremely depressing conclusion.

Evolution favors those which pass on their genes faster and over the broadest area. If given the option men would have the thinking power to become choosey in terms of who those genes got passed along to. All of a sudden the man would be having sex for the benefit of himself instead of for the species. Men who got caught up in lust and passion bread more often and out competed those who made rational decisions.

The erection is meant as an survival tool to rob men of their common sense and allow the genetic floodgates to open to any willing female in the area. If there was ever a man with the gift of control bestowed upon him he probably led a very happy life with a wonderful women(or who knows maybe man) of his choosing. They were happy, right for each other, had sex with no regrets, and had very few children. Unfortunately if all men were so lucky our species wouldn't be.


"It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value."
                                                                                  ~Arthur C. Clarke

I think about sex a lot. Now certainly part of that is your typical American male's sex drive. But the majority of it is actually having to do with they why behind the whole thing. Its an activity that everyone thinks about, and the vast majority of other activities we do during our day are in some way related to it. So why? And not why sex, that much I have figured out. But why the other stuff. Why fetishes, why foreplay, and why all the innuendos regarding this simple thing.

Now this why in most cases has to do with evolution. Life is very stream lined thanks to natural selection, and there are very few useless or 'extra' behaviors. It isn't efficient, and after many hours of thinking about the different parts of sex I've actually managed to rationalize almost everything. I've even been able to find good explanations for almost every fetish. But there is still one thing I've never been able to put my finger on. Kissing.

Now my one consolation is that anthropologists are still debating whether it is a learned or instinctual behavior, but I'm going to do the rest of this entry with two assumptions.
1: Kissing is an instinctual behavior.
2: Evolution and natural selection still have a strong enough influence on the human race for this journal entry to matter.
On a side note I do not consider evolution and natural selection to be assumptions, if they are scientific theories that I need to spend time describing the merits of to you then please ask me and I'll be glad to sit down and discuss it with you. If you consider me evil for giving evolution serious thought and think I'll probably go to hell for doing so....I've got nothing, frankly I'm surprised you managed to figure out how to work a computer with a luddite mindset like that. Anyway I'm digressing.

A kiss is such a simple thing in concept too, thats what gets me so much. Two people pressing their lips together, yet there is so much more to it. So I suppose my first step should be to define what type of kiss I mean. The Romans identified three types of kisses.
1: Osculum- A kiss between friends
2: Basium- A kiss of affection
3: Suavium- A kiss between lovers
Number three is the one that intrigues me and puzzles me to no end. The first two I can explain pretty well. A simple extension of grooming practices seen in most other primates, and that leads me to another quick point to support my first assumption from before. Kissing has been seen practiced amongst primates other than humans. Anyway it doesn't seem like too far a stretch to bring social grooming a little bit farther to social kissing. Social kissing isn't something commonly practiced in the united states, however in many Latin American countries and Europe kissing friends is a very common greeting. This explains the first two types of kissing nicely.

Normally I would consider the suavium kiss to simply be a continued escalation of the first two, but I can't accept that because of the fact that it exists where the other two do not and have not. Now I will grant that there are of course cultures where kissing doesn't occur at all. It is in fact so foreign to the Burmese that there is no word in their language for the practice. I'm just writing those instances off as cultural spins on the same act, think about how differently all cultures treat sex after all. Still instinctual, but certainly with a practice shaped by your surroundings.

The other explanation I've heard for kissing has to do with it being the best method to sample the other person's chemistry. The human body can pick on different smells and tastes that can be identified as good characteristics in a potential mate. But that leaves the problem of it continuing throughout the relationship. Once someone has been selected as a potential mate they don't need to be continually retested.

Then again maybe I'm just rejecting all these hypotheses because I can't bring myself to apply a logical explanation to such a fantastic thing. Now don't get me wrong, I don't believe understanding how a flower works makes it less beautiful. In fact quite the opposite usually. Seeing the inner workings of a thing and then being able to take a step back and look at the whole thing gives you a greater appreciation for all the beauty a thing possesses.

I won't go into how much and all the ways I find a kiss/kissing to be beautiful. Suffice it to say that I love it in every form it has, and there are many more than three. Maybe this whole thought process I've been on is simply my desire to love the act even more than I already do, and the only way I can think of to do that is figure out how the flower works.

I wish I had a theory that could do a better job explaining a kiss other than ones that I've already mentioned and shot down. I'm a guy who has a theory for just about everything, but not this. It is one of the few things that continually escapes my ability to come up with even the poorest excuse for a rational explanation. But I just don't think the right answer has been found yet. I think there is more than needs to discovered yet, and I promise if I have an epiphany you will be among the first to know. You'll probably hear me mention this again among any other posts I do regarding sex and natural selection of intimate behaviors. But for my first entry on the subject I wanted to make certain everyone knew exactly how clueless I am on what I consider to be the most perfect and enticing of all the physical, and maybe even mental, activities that can be performed with another human being.


"A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous.  "
                                                                                                           ~Ingrid Bergman

We all agree on colors, or at least the basic crayola 8 pack. Once you get to salmon, olive, and champagne I'm of the opinion those are foods and not colors. But in terms of ROYGBIV plus black and white, I think we're all on common ground with those.

Strawberries=Red
Oranges=Orange(not creative, but accurate, leave me alone)
Sunflower=Yellow
Grass=Green
Sky=Blue
Plums=Purple

Hopefully everyone is still with me, since now we move on to the fun thought experiment. Some of you (since I assume I have a well read and scientifically literate audience) may have heard about how we don't know if every brain interprets colors the same way. What we both agree on as the color blue might look totally different to each of us. I might see blue the way you see red, or you might see purple the way I see green. The point is we have no way of actually confirming how each of us perceive the world.

Now apply that bit of knowledge to behavioral patterns. If someone sees almost all the colors on earth as oranges, yellows, or reds are they more prone to be happy and bouncy. If all the colors appear dark are they more depressed. In general I don't believe in color therapy to modify behavior, but I imagine if the entire world was a certain way that could have an affect over the course of your whole life.

Of course I'd prefer to think that we all have the same perspective, at least as far as our senses go. But that has to do more so with my intense dislike of fate than my scientific knowledge of optic nerves. Anyway maybe next time someone says you should walk a mile in someone else's shoes, you should instead suggest that you attempt to see a day through their eyes.


"Humans have the ability to shift perspective. We can experience the world through our senses. Or we can remove ourselves from our senses and experience the world even less directly. We can think about our life, rather than thinking in our life."
                                                  ~John J. Emerick

Allow me to simplify life. All things balance.

Now what do i mean by all things balance? Am I referring to karma, emotions, good, evil, sex, physics, numbers, love, death, religion, god, evolution, football, poker, life, the universe, and/or everything? Yes. ALL things balance. Can things exist out of balance? Yes, but everything always desires to be in a state of balance and will naturally drift calmly/move violently in that direction.

I feel I should tell the story that caused me to arise at this philosophical/metaphysical conclusion. It all started with me trying to answer a simple question, why is it that the good guys always seem to win? It seemed in movies, books, and in most of the stories I'd heard in general the good guys won. On a side note this thought experiment was when I was about 12 or 13. So the question then became why did the good side win so much of the time?

I came to the conclusion that good and evil are always supposed to be in balance in the universe. Evil seemed to be inherently more aggressive and would attempt to tip the scales more often than good would. Now if the universe desires balance and evil tips the scales then naturally the balance will eventually be restored. By restoring this balance evil is weakened and the illusion that good has triumphed is given.

After identifying this balance I started to wonder what else in life has this natural tendency. To this day I've yet to find anything in life not governed by this rule. Now I'll probably have another post regarding this later so I'll end this one now, since I could probably go on for countless pages with different examples and stories. For the moment I feel as if I've gotten my main points across. If I post on this again I'll talk about how this grand scheme applies to each individual.


“There’s no secret to balance. You just have to feel the waves”
                                                                                                                  -Frank Herbert

Its been almost two years since my first post. I look at all that has changed in the last two years and frankly I'm shocked that this account still exists. The person who started it is long gone, and in his stead sits a new man. Unfortunately this new man may be committing the same mistakes as the old. So despite my promise to never talk about my personal life, I must bend that in my second entry. I'll discuss it in a broad sense of these issues for everyone. But there will be something unusual about it all. These issues are being raised in my head because of one person. She's the only one who would be able to figure out exactly what I'm talking about, and she's the only one who knows I have this journal. Despite all that I'll still address this entry to every person out there who finds themselves drenched in the overflow of private rants.

It hit me last night in a post midnight shower. On a side note there are few things better than a long shower in the middle of the night. I once again became frustrated. I had been riding an awesome high for a little over a week now, and the wave crested. My surfboard was provided to me by a woman, and who knows maybe if i post again I'll do an entire entry on women. But I'll sum up my opinions right now by stating that if it was indeed a man who invented art, poetry, and language he did it because he was looking for any possible way to express how much he cared for a woman. Anyway I digress. I'd been riding high for a while because of her.

I don't know if its because of my desire to please people or if its just an innate part of me, but I change to be what people want. Sometimes I change into something I like and sometimes I don't. I chose who I hang out with by deciding if I like what they change me into. This girl makes me everything I wish I could be. I become eloquent, caring, charming, focused, and a good person. She assumes that the compliments I pay her are ones that I could give anyone. She's partially right. I can think of them with anyone, but everything that comes out of my lips is put there by her. I highly advise everyone who is out there to take into account when they're looking for new friends that they make sure to take into account how they act around those people compared to others.

Some of you may be wondering where the problem occurred and why the wave is crashing, life sounds good right? Last night was the first night I made a crack about us dating, it didn't even occur to me at the time what I had just done. I had purposefully not even considered it in my own head. Now again you may be wondering, but you just talked about what a wonderful person she is, why shouldn't you consider this?

Now we come full circle in talking about the new man making the same mistakes, and don't worry there is a question at the end of all of this that everyone should ask themselves. I promise I do have a point.

I seem to have an innate ability in making people happy up to a point. Unfortunately for me but more so for them this point seems to be soon after we begin to date. I did that twice and then said I'd had enough of it. I was just going to make people happy without dating them. I thought this was such a simple solution that only good could come of it. It only switched one thing. Instead of me being that one who was hurt it was them. All of a sudden I became somebody who refused to make people happy after that point for fear that I couldn't anymore. But if I didn't reach that point with a girl then they assumed I was simply being nice the whole time and didn't really mean what I said. That has happened twice now that I've been friendly, kind, and damn close to loving a girl only to stop.

And now for the fifth time the cycle is starting, so hear is the question that has driven me crazy for years. I do my best to forget the question and just hope an answer will present itself, but last night in the shower it hit me again with all the force it could muster.

If you know you could make a person happy now, but in doing so it becomes very likely they will be hurt in the future, can you with honest and good intentions be what they need?

I'd managed to push this question out of my head and continue to drive boldly ahead in the making people happy direction. But once again my car has hit the wall that this question always presents. But who knows maybe this time I'll get the answer right.

For you who are wondering why say all this to you and pretend she isn't reading, its really quite simple. The play is the thing in which I'll catch the conscience of the king. And as for the one who he considers to be at very least a Queen, it might be a good idea on her part to beware of Jack.


"When life itself seems lunatic who knows where madness lies. Perhaps to be to practical is madness. To surrender dreams, this may be madness. To seek treasure where there is only trash, TOO MUCH SANITY may be madness. But maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be"
                                                             -Miguel De Cervantes in Man of La Mancha

Welcome. I'm not sure why you are reading this. I purposefully didn't tell anyone I know that I'm starting this, and even if I had told them I didn't fill out any info on me. Despite all of this you are still here, and for you I lay down my thoughts for the first time in words. Several times I thought about starting a journal, but it never quite worked out. I guess I thought why write it down if only I will read it. I guess I have no guarantee that this will get read either, but I don't care because at least there is a chance. Maybe someone will read and enjoy, or not.

In this journal you won't find a lot of what happens in my life. Instead you will find what I think. You will find who I am instead of what I am. I intend to write down how I think things are and why things are that way, and by things I mean everything. Basically my thoughts on life. If you decide to post I don't care if you agree or disagree just tell me why you think what you do. The why is much more important than the what, but that issue is for another post.

While you are here I certainly hope you will enjoy yourself, and at the very least come away with a new spin on some old ideas. I will cover all subject matter eventually, but if there is an issue you'd like my thoughts on by all means ask. Right now I can't think of any subject I wouldn't speak on, I'm certain there are a few, but I'll deal with that problem if it comes up. In the mean time I once again say welcome and invite you to step into my stream.


"I am lost, and I rejoice in the openness I cannot decide where to go, so for now, I will dance where I am and be. There is no goal, no destination, just wilderness and life and being. I sing and dance and live in the wilderness, and I am home."
- Tziporah