It's not me, it's you.

The age old words "you cannot make another truly happy, they must do so themselves" is flawed.  I lived therefore I have learned and in my experience to this point, that even though this saying and one's that closely mirror it, are mostly true, they have a loophole that I would like to shine some light on.

Unhappiness can come from many different sources, whether it be a chemical imbalance in the brain or an external event which has deterred any hope one may have, it can come from anywhere.  The loss of a loved one can only be healed with time and nothing anyone says or does can change the depth of melancholy experienced by this life matter.  Hereditary depression, firstly, must be identified, then taken care of by whatever means necessary, whether it be medication, therapy, or distraction, one must first grasp the situation firmly and make sense of it.  Sometimes we relish in our own misery, because as we all know "misery loves company" and sitting in that room with all the negativity can be more comfortable to some rather than extending themselves beyond their comfort zone to find something that might make them happy.  We have all hit our form of rock bottom at some point; those that are high energy and easily diverted can quickly shed the skin of  misery; those that are more cerebral and rooted to their ways, may wallow in the mire until they are sick of their own inaction.  It is this person, the cerebral entity, the person whose mind rules all, whose instincts are trumped by thought, are usually victims of themselves.

I am guilty of this.

Myself, the over-thinker, has the tendency to apply too much focus on their own life.  These people use reason to hem and haw over any and all trivial matters, which creates stasis in life.  The application of their minds to their own lives is usually of detriment; how can you be happy if your whole existence is the contemplation of your own happiness or lack there of?  The cure-all for this is external.  The cerebral person must look to outer venues to find escape from their own thoughts, they need an escape route, and by partaking in the lives and activities outside their reason...they find happiness in the form of relief.  Sometimes being unhappy is just the simple act of staring in the mirror too long.

The ability for another to come into your life and make it better is very real and true.  In my case, drawing my attention from myself to another has been success enough for me to want to share it with you.  Meeting someone special, someone stimulating can single handedly steer your ship clear of any treachery, and in sharing your life with them and vice versa, you can find the selfless existence where real happiness hides.
So therefore, in some cases, another person cannot only make you happy, but save you from yourself.

The Guilt of Expectations

Upon reading Bertrand Russell's "The Conquest of Happiness", I wanted to expound on the points he made about our "learned" guilt and shame that we carry from our early childhood into our adult lives.  Russell goes into detail about the shame felt when we find ourselves partaking in perceived sin:  "When I speak of 'the sinner', I do not mean the man who commits sins:  Sins are committed by everyone or no one, according to our definition of the word.  I mean the man who is absorbed in the consciousness of sin.  This man is perpetually incurring his own disapproval, which, if he is religious, he interprets as the disapproval of God.  He has an image of himself as he thinks he ought to be, which is in continual conflict with his knowledge of himself as he is.  If, in his conscious thought, he has long since discarded the maxims that he was taught at his mother's knee, his sense of sin may be buried deep in his unconscious, and only emerge when he is drunk or asleep.  Nevertheless it may suffice to take the savor out of everything.  At bottom he still accepts all the prohibitions he was taught in infancy.  Swearing is wicked; drinking is wicked; ordinary business shrewdness is wicked; above all, sex is wicked.  He does not, of course, abstain from any of these pleasure, but they are all poisoned for him by the feeling that they degrade him."

The ideals that are branded into our minds in our early years, are the perceptions of our parents; what they perceive as sin, we will perceive as sin.  Even in our older age, with mature minds and reason, we can still feel the effects of these second hand perceptions in the form of unconscious guilt.  Though one could reason with the self, that cussing is not sinful and even less so than a pointed "no", there is still shame hanging over the head of those "cussers" who take this supposed improper language into society, because generally it may not be acceptable to others.  By this thought pattern, how could one live happily if you are either incurring the disdain of others and the "learned" guilt they are projecting or contradicting the very lessons your mother and father ingrained in your own subconscious.  I have come to the conclusion that this cycle of society is completely without reason; you spend your childhood being programmed and your adult life trying to make sense of the programming which stands at odds with the reality you know and live.


In our adult lives we live with expectations, some of our own, and some that are learned.  The particular learned or imposed expectation I would like to speak on, is the expectations of success in life.  If a child is born into what we generally consider a good and healthy home(family) the child may find itself having the general hopes and wants of the parents pushed in his or her direction.  The idea of "you can be anything you want when you grow up" is externally at odds with society's perception of happiness which is directly tied to success. We tell our children, "you can be a doctor, a lawyer, even an astronaut", but do we say often enough, "I just want you to be happy in whatever it is you chose".  We delicately direct them into fields that are financially beneficial (re-gifting to them what our parents gave to us) because our belief as a society is that wealth equals happiness.  What happens to this child when he or she is an adult and did not follow the "future-by-numbers" path?  Not all people are interested or have the capacity for a university and not everyone wants to live with the day to day tenacity it takes to be one of society's successes.  Some people live with the "struggle" while simultaneously living with the guilt of expectations their forebearers superimposed onto them.  I think to a degree, we all subconsciously feel that we are destined for something greater than whatever occupation we are currently resided to.  This thought or feeling is the hopes of our parents- we were told we could be such great things, but not all persons are made out of the golden fabric of the great men and women, and when we, the average men and women, finally find a place in this world, we feel we are settling and even compromising ourselves.  We never reach this hidden goal, we never fill the emptiness, we are always searching for some other purpose and we never feel that we are good enough.

So what if a parent does tell their child to just try and be happy with whatever they choose to do?  You would think it would be enough for a parent to impart this to a child, but this is only a destination with no means and no map to guide them.  Many parents themselves are looking for their own happiness; the have been using modern society's blueprints:  a house, a marriage, and children to build their "happy" life.  But these are not the base structure of a happy life,  these are merely elements in life that can be enjoyed more fully by the content person, and for the "searcher", who has followed this blueprint concisely, these elements can be a resented dead end.  So we have come to a cyclical process that is lose-lose for all involved, the cycle is made up of  our own ingrained expectations and society's expectations, which is its own entity.  Society, like religion, is an ideal that we aspire to and not a physical thing we can touch, therefore it's expectations are borderline pious in it's own hopes for perfection.  My conclusion is that our society is failed in its attempt at this unattainable goal, that we, the cogs of this mechanism are imperfect in ourselves and our only, very simple hope, is happiness, the same happiness that will always evade us as long as reason plays no part in an individual's conquest for happiness.

The Upheaval of the American Dream.

Can this experiment known as the United States survive itself? Can we sustain our current lifestyles and perceived notions of a "good life"?

This is completely sustainable-this way of life we lead as a whole. You see, the powerful are rich, and we all (generally) aspire to that end. The powerful dangle that "rich" carrot and we give chase like a good greyhound in heat chasing this faux rabbit until we are breathless. We do not quit though, we recoup, we fill up our heads with more fantasies and give a good second effort- the rabbit now gone down the rabbit hole. The only thing that stops this way of life is when the middle and lower class ballast of this floating dream decides for a good and honest upheaval. The only thing stopping this of course is that carrot, that idea that we can all be rich, and all of our money riddled fantasies can come to fruition and one day we too can rub elbows with the elite. We have been sold into slavery, all of us indentured servants to the capitalistic pipe dream, thinking that we are sewing the seeds of a fruitful future, but then only reaping a final reality that our goals are just smoke and mirrors, shallow puddles and broken dreams, misguided consumers we are, the lot of us...hypocrites to what a TRUE life is while we fawn and fake our ways into insurmountable debt hoping to summit this faltering society.

The pillars of this nation: Freedom, Liberty, and Equality have been sold into hock and generation after generation pass the "note" on while the interest piles up. This has segued into the shared mentality, that generally speaking, Americans, live by. We, ourselves, are in hock. We are indebted to the ruse known as "credit", we tread frantically in pools of bills trying to live out what we see on TV (the right house, the right car, the right clothes...just good enough is wrong). It was an easy sale for our "illuminati" government, the elected used car salesmen coerces us without much effort, because regardless of what they are pitching, we are buying. We are a nation of Sinners who project themselves with a spoon-fed guilt, we were trained well by religion. Our sensibilities have been garnished away from us by the wolf in the guise of our government and have been replaced with programming. The bed of sand this nation stands upon, is one of CASH. Money rules everything, our economy is based on the greed and need of the populus, and the populus has been well trained. There is a picture in the mind of everyone of what the American Dream is and it is by no mistake. The system feeds from the bottom and we are the bottom, it is the fulfillment of this imposed fantasy which drives this machine and we are nothing but passengers who gleefully rest while the big wigs do the "important things". More and more products flood this society. More and more advertising floods our eyes and ears. More and more of our precious limited time is focused into the desire of being the proud owner of a plastic life. The only reason for OUR existence is to perpetuate the stream of cash flow, whether by taxes or purchases, to the powers that be. This system can not change, (with the exception being a revolution) because in order to throw your hat into the ring of politics you first must be rich. To campaign for any particular seat will cost you a king's ransom, and once there, you are simply the smallest cog in this clandestine clockwork .
So here we are, stuck in a rat race against thoroughbreds, waiting for that last straw to break, hoping and praying to feel the urge to stand up and rage against this machine. To tear down the curtain and hold the man at knife point, to tell him things are going to change with a seriousness in our eyes that had once sapped the soullessness of this perceived existence.

Mayflowers bring Religious Dowers.

Inspired by Jeff Aicken.













You would think America would be much cooler, but its not. Though it was founded by pirates, settled by Jesus, and beaten into submission by manifest destiny, it really is just a Neo-Protestant Reformation of an archaic religious system. Pilgrims shoved off from Holland seeking freedom to practice their religion, which was the same one they practiced in England(their initial home), but were pissed off when the Church of England was reformed by Queen Beth Uno and decided to separate and move on. Pilgrims didn't like the idea of the Church going all glitzy and glamourous with garbs and vestments for the Priests, there was confusion about the Eucharist, I mean is this bread Christ's ass or thigh? Did Jesus have Hepatitis...should I be drinking his blood? Anyhoo, these shitheels hit the high tide and sailed across the ocean blue to stake their claim in the New World. They wanted to worship their Protestant God on their own terms and free from the tyranny of force fed theocracy that ruled their homeland.

Fast forward to today.

Pirates, slaves, Jesus, politicians/criminals. We are a melting pot of "holier than thou" mentality and sublime criminality. We are the perfect country of moral mischiefs, untouchable with our Jesus anointed GET OUT OF JAIL FREE cards and of course we are a gaggle of tail chasing hypocrites. For a country built by those seeking freedom from the totalitarian Church Of England, we have bricked up walls and raised steeples and christened ourselves the Church of USA.  We have become the monster we escaped from once upon time, we have broken all the mirrors and are content with the blind ignorance to this fact.  Oh yes, what freedom we have now my friends.  This ocean-spanned freedom is evident today in the most ironical form, just look around anywhere, you won't see the Ten Commandments in any government buildings(except for half the country) there are no dreary crucifixes on the walls of our schools (unless you are in the South), religion plays no part in law making, well unless it is gay marriage or abortion, and we have no dominant singular religion, but if you aren't Christian you're fucked.

So here is what we did. Left England and moved to Holland for freedom, they were a bunch of heathens so then we decided to head for America. In America, we establish a settlement and build a church. Now this Church has grown into a gaudy misrepresentation of what pilgrims were seeking. Church's are bigger and better than ever, they are arenas the size of God's ego and we pack them full overdressed in our absolute best hoping to save our souls with what is truly ecclesiastical vanity. The country we left, England, is now a shining example of what was initially sought after.  Let me think....were these "separatist pilgrims" the real issue with the Church of England?  Were the Pilgrim Fathers just uptight rabble rousers?   The bones that make up our modern day Church of USA were the uber fundamentalists of their time...kinda scary huh?

Church is a dog show, it's all about pomp and parade. We prance through the doors hoping to draw eyes, we give praise to whomever or whatever, and then graze in temple of self content.  We pat each other on the back and nod to one another, silently recognizing our successful materialization of what we conceive as divine, all of us humble dependents fawning fake.

So what do you think? Do you think England would take us back?

No Thanks!

Tis the 32nd Thanksgiving of my lifetime and I am still not thankful for anything! I refuse to be based on the lack of knowledge, that this entire life, this entire world and all the outer space that we can fathom, may just be a ruse. To paraphrase and ad lib a Vonnegut quote, "I won't know if I should be thankful for this life until I am dead", yeah basically this is just my quote, his was about should he take things more seriously. Anyway, here I am, an ungrateful bastard and I couldn't care less. Much like Vonnegut I don't take anything seriously, this world and society is purely satire, you just have to look at it with the right kind of eyes.

I am not a "back patter" nor do I like pats on the back. I do what I must, I go from here to there because I am good little pawn. What is there to be thankful for? Why are we taking pause to all these impermanent things? I refuse to take part in half-hearted thanks, to look back endearingly and sigh, to think that all of these things I have done are worthwhile and that I am blessed. The fact is, I have a great family, I have to amazing little boys, I have friends who care about me, and generally my life has always worked out. All of this and I am still not thankful! Families SHOULD love one another and help each other out in times of need. I always knew I would have children and love them dearly. Life is purely what you MAKE of it, so if it fails it is mostly your fault.

This is a very HIGH and MIGHTY stance I know. You might even say "I bet this guy is a Republican" but you would be wrong. I am not thankful, simply and purely, because I have never had to struggle, I have never had to crawl through the muck, I have never scraped at the walls, or been halfway to digging my own grave. It is hard to be thankful when you have never truly suffered. This might explain my tendencies towards melodramatic self-inflicted suffering, ya know, when I get on here and whine and complain about things not going my way. I am pathetic, I know, but I guess I wouldn't trade my "life preserver" world for another existence. It's a good thing when you only know that families should love you and you should love your own, that your life will always work out if you apply yourself.

In the end, I am still not thankful. My family is doing their job and I am doing mine.

Of course, in the end this life may just be an escalator to a better existence, it may be a science experiment for some teenage douchebag, we might all being living in a protozoa on some godly dog turd. I know this doesn't change anything, but I'm just sayin'.

Deep sighs, red skies.

What happened to moments in life? I remember from my youth, that feeling of something bigger, like time had slowed just for a second and I was give an extra second to take it all in. This feeling has been lost from this adult lifetime, maybe it is only a child's mind that perceives these moments as gravitas. Regardless, I miss them, and feel like my life is missing these unspoken momentous sighs, that feeling of connectedness with a specific time and place.

It can be something completely simple. One moment that I remember from when I was 20, was nothing more that listening to Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds rendition of "Crash into Me" on my headphones while jogging through a park as a red sun sat low on the hill side. Fall was at the threshold and the wind was getting cool, the sky was surreal and everything was exactly in its place and it was beautiful. That moment still sticks with me and there was nothing particularly special about it at all, other than it effected me.

Have I sold out? Am I not truly living my life?

We get old and jaded, we walk in lines and do what we are supposed to because there is the idea that we are to live our lives by a set standard. I am walking someone else's line or maybe I don't have a line to follow at all. All I know is that my existence is shallow and lacking any true richness or soul. It makes sense that I am lacking these "moments" if I am just walking around with my head down, always running from point A to point B. I feel the anxiety in me, but I don't believe it is internal, I believe it is some kind of force outside of me, pushing me like the opposite polarity of two magnets. Identifying this isn't exactly difficult, the problem is, how do I get back on track? How ignorant is that? I don't know how to live my own life, I am the lost puppy, but even more pathetic.

Thanks NIKE, "Just Do It" right? So I guess I will, I guess I just put one foot in front of the other and hope something good happens. I wait for others....always, I never make my own move, so in effect, I am living another's life. This is discombobulated I know, I am writing and putting the pieces together simultaneously, working through my issues while explaining them. Thanks for listening, thanks for helping.

All these things that I know.

I expected this. It is the holiday season, the first one since the divorce, with this split family I have. I knew it would be rough and it has officially started and for no good reason at all. I just simply woke up depressed today and nothing has changed. Those of you who know me, know that I like to wallow in the mire, I like to drink in the depression like a fine wine. Here I am, feeling like shit, not wanting this Christmas or Thanksgiving to even happen. Last year this time I had a house, a wife, a dog, two kids and all under the same roof. This year I have me, in my mom's house no less. I don't want to hear the Xmas music that I normally love, I don't want to see my family this season, I don't want to hear that fucking question "How are you doing?" I just want to eat that deadly mistletoe, slip into a coma and wake up in 2010. I hate being this cerebral person, I hate internalizing everything, overcooking every thought and emotion. I wish things slid off me, never penetrate, just bounce off and have no effect on me. I am stuck here in my head with all these things I know. Nothing that makes me happy, nothing to look forward too, nothing that even helps me grow as a person, just these pathetic thoughts that spin and repeat over and over. I live this life untouched and cold, separated from myself and those who love me, I am an island. This is all I know, these are all the things I know, negativity and feeling sorry for myself. I guess I could just stand up and brush myself off, hold my chin up high and act like nothing is ever wrong, but my brain will not allow that. I am a man with a demon on one shoulder and a slave on the other, I am obedient to the negativity and the sad part is, I am not even that disgusted with myself. This is all that I know.