I started this off thinking I was going to stick to rules. Verb tense, person perspective, any others you can thunk. But forget all that nonsense this space is mine, don't misunderstand you're welcome to be here, no seriously stay. It's just that I'm not about to do any mental gymnastics to make this purty for you or them because I don't want to and I'm not being paid.
They say there's only so many times in a life you can hit the reset button, but that's a damn lie and I'm semi-living proof. Not like I'm sick or diagnosed with anything, I just can't really call what I'm doing right now living. There I go descarting with horses again(I am therefore I think). Listen things have gone tits up multiple times in my adult life, but I always bounce back. Truthfully, I've been in a deeper funk than even I was willing to admit.
You see something magical happened about a week ago. I spoke with a friend, a friend with whom I'ven't caught up with in a spell. Like before the original fracture of spirit. Someone who remembers the fresh- faced barely an adult me with stars in his eyes. During the course of our brief conversation she asked if, while doing all the other things I am to try and re-rail the train of my life, I was keeping up with my writings because she always loved reading them so much.
This isn't a phrase I'm unfamiliar hearing, but there's something about the clouds in your conscious that resist when it comes from those who've been by your side the whole time, and there was something special about those words coming from someone who's trusted but been absent for all the shithole scaling you've had to do to keep your head above ground. As though being from the before when all the skies were blue, she brought those blue skies back.

What I'm Saying is Thanks LW

Well with that fun business out of the way what should we talk about today? Oh is the world on fire?! Holy Shit it totally is. Well damn, there's not much we can do here. let's all take a minute to daydream. Because it's my favorite hobby, that's why, Billiam. Honestly I don't know what I'm doing here, I know what I'd like to do. and someday I'm sure I'll get there. Look it took me a week to make the damn thing look like this and it's still not the way I really want it. Give me a damn break, I built this from scratch, did I do a ton of googling along the way? Do Bears wear funny hats? Did I do a lot of trial and error? Does the Pope poop in the woods? I'm newish to this stuff, I first dabbled back when we were all confined to our dwellings—remember the last year with a Feb 29th? Now I'm learning all about the security side of things so I can make sure I keep all the gremlins out of my stuff and hopefully get a better job so I can work on this more in my downtime instead of just drinking the depression away.
What were we talking about, oh right, the true dream for this page here is something wildly different than what you're currently seeing, although I kinda like the aesthetic, that might stay. For now I think while I work on the infrastructure to fulfill this site's actual destiny, I'll keep hopping on here randomly to scribble some gibberish about whatever's in my brain at the time.

Good with You?

I'm kidding I don't care.

So here's the thing about me I'd like to change the most: I'm overly passionate. This often manifests as me diving head first into something that interests me only to quickly grow bored once I realize that I'm not an immediate master. I've owned this domain with a plan for what I want this site to be for 18 months and while this is nothing near my final vision it is at least something. Of course, upon seeing the first entry out there live for the whole world to gaze upon my works and weep, that circus boy with his pretty new pet came jojoing right to the surface. This ethereal devotion has always made me question if I was someone with adhd or autism, however my mother the early childhood specialist on development claims I'm not, I was never tested so I still have my doubts. It's all a spectrum anyway right.

I'm trying to be better which is why I avoided writing anything the past two days. See I know I could write something each day or even every few hours right now. But that would lead to a rapid burnout which would mean in less than two months I would ignore this completely and then nothing would get done for another two years. And honestly I just don't want to be that guy anymore.

Speaking of guys I'm not trying to be anymore, did I tell you during the past 3 years I've managed to put on a whole second person? Well not quite, but at the start of the panini I was carrying an extra twenty to thirty pounds. Over the following three years I managed to pack on another hundo until I plateau'd in September at 295, I've managed to hover at that number for a year now. I want nothing more than to be on track to a healthy 165-175 by my fortieth birthday which is ten months away. As I mentioned before I've got to not dive in head first or I'll get discouraged when I haven't shed 50lbs in six weeks.

I don't think I have anything else to say on the matter, except wish me luck.

Or don't, if you wanna be a dick about it

Good Goddess did I used to love starting the day by reading the paper. I might still like it, I don't know I haven't done it in a long time, we're talking almost two decades. Maybe I wouldn't like the paper as my morning routine anymore for a number of factors. The largest being the last time I had a habit of reading the local paper most weren't owned by major media empires, backed by soulless corporations owned by ever worsening examples of humanity. But most of what I enjoyed back when, was the tactile feeling of holding, folding, reading (unlike most) straight through letting my mind have to connect the stories that spanned multiple pages because I didn't want to read them in order, I wanted the snippets mixed in together.

Of course this was when the paper was much more substance than sponsor. And multiple sections took five or more pages. And that's not including the classifieds, which were their own section! These days it seems if you stripped out all the advertisements, you'd have a total of 5 pages left and two of those would be sports scores and comics strips.

Less isn't happening in our world so what's happened to the glory days of the newspaper? Where are the stories about what's happening in the capitol building of my state? I want a robust metro section to rival the A pages, which should cover Federal and International happenings only. Give me a sports section with loads of commentary both local and broad, cover high school happenings in the area. And cover all sports not just the ones that happen on television.

Ideally what I driving at here is that I miss when the metro section rivaled the front, when sports balanced with special interest(which was also it's own section) and on Sundays the whole damn thing could kill a small mammal if dropped from the second story. Honestly I don't know if that was ever true, but I remember the heft of those Sunday papers and they damn sure felt hazardous to miniature wildlife.

But my absolute favorite, the very best thing about the paper, Sadly has grown to become what can only be described as an eldritch horror.

That's correct, I'm talking about the opinion page. And it was a single page. Sure there were Columnists who had weekly pieces mixed into their section of expertise, but opinion was just one damn page. It had two long pieces: one by an expert of whatever subject, the other by a leader or notable of whatever industry; typically. Then there were two shorter pieces each representing a side of something local or recent by regular ol' civilians, your neighbors. It was beautiful; a snippet of public subjectivity in a sea of objective reporting.

When I was young, having cable wasn't by any means standard, but it also wasn't all that surprising. Like having a computer in your home, you were doing well. Then computers and cable some how became standard for the middle class when I was in middle school and the rise of the 24 hour cycle began (clutch your pearls, harder than that!).

People love to blame the rise of all day news broadcast for a lot of things, but there's enough happening in the world to report objectively on a whole day's events. The issue is the people who own these news churning beasts, don't want certain stories told, so they focus on the ones you're allowed to hear, then they hyperfocus, then they've said everything there is to say factually, and there's still 17 hours left.

What to fill it with, Advertisements like everywhere else in life? Anyone else remember when people were getting face tattoos of company sponsors?

Nope, hire more opinion jackals. Let the Op-Ed grow and feast on our dwindling media literacy until there's nothing but husks of humans wandering around debating what is actually fact. In a short time, we'll have large portions of the population believing the earth is flat again because an MTV side character was allowed to say it is on a News program.

Do vaccines cause autism, welp a former playboy model said it happened to her son on a talk show, personal anecdotes are now the foundation of causation!

Some crack pot wrote an email accusing an entire local population of something horrendous and it was shared, liked, and reposted all through the great opinion is truth monster until a candidate screamed it during a debate, while all the rational people now chuckle at this man's idiocy, an alarming percent of our peers believe that fiction to be fact. Because after all it was on the News

Opinion v. Reporting was easy to spot when the paper put OPINION as the header on the page. But now we have shows lasting multiple hours a day purporting to be news consisting of one or more people spouting off their personal views. Sadly for too many of us, it's easy to believe they're are reporting real facts because they're saying what we want to hear, and nothing's nicer then being told you're right.

...right?

I've been trying to figure out how to approach this subject for days now. It's a bit of a minefield for a person like me, who presents as a cisgender, white, hetero male. Truthfully, I'm only one of those three things, if you saw me on the street you would assume that I am all three and therefore on the top of the shit social system in which we find ourselves stuck. And that's why I'm having such a hard time trying to find the right words to convey what I'm feeling like bringing to attention today. Which is the notion of being offended for a group of which you're not a member.

I don't understand where you get the audacity to infantilize an entire set of the population by telling them what they're allowed to laugh at about themselves. Because that's exactly what you're doing, you're telling adults what they are and are not allowed to find funny about their lived experience. Now I'm not talking about demoralizing or dehumanizing statements, because those obviously aren't jokes. And that's part of the point, an actual comedian can find the funny in a situation without saying something harmful.

Jerry Seinfield (you love that nasally fuck, don't ya?) recently apologized for his rant years ago about cancel culture because he came to the realization that if he was actually funny he could talk about whatever he wanted because he'd be able to make it funny in a way that made everyone laugh. Sadly Jerry Seinfield was never funny, just well connected. Seriously the best thing he ever did was accelerate Julia Louis-Dreyfus' career and give Larry David a platform. And yet, even someone so up their own ass can still see the truth of the matter, some things are universally funny and everything else can be presented in a humorous way, if you can find the angle.

I guess what I'm asking for a world with a little more compassion, empathy, and some goddamn common sense. If you're in a room full of people who don't look like you laughing at self-deprecating jokes, don't stand up for them; they're fucking adults who have a voice, and they'd fucking use it if they were offended. Sit there and enjoy the fucking show and calm the fuck down for your sake. Life isn't long enough to not laugh at the funny stuff. k?

I'm sure I could have worded that better or even said nothing at all. GOOD NEWS, you can chime in, I've added socials and an email. Check the Post-it.

So this here's a thing what's been kicking around in my brain space for some time now. And before we get into it, please don't get offended on behalf of your personal belief of what made the world. I won't make fun of you for having an imaginary celestial friend and you don't get all pissy with me for calling your celestial friend imaginary, cat-feesh?

Now before we get too deep, shove me in the shallow water. Just Kidding. but seriously, we need to have some kind of establishable timeline. It's generally agreed upon that written history started sixth thousand years ago, agriculture began fourteen to fifteen thousand and was wide spread by nine thousand years ago. Great so we've got humans putting down roots to farm land and build communities, of which storytelling is a huge component. It is, arguably the oldest art form, before we could write, before we could draw, we conveyed ideas vocally.

Now of those stories, patterns start to emerge. For instance, during written history there have been six or seven Resurrection Cults which is essentially the Jesus Myth. A messiah, born of a virgin, dies and comes back days later. Happened half a dozen times around the ancient world in the span of two thousand years. So how many were lost to the three to nine thousand years before we developed written words? and Why haven't there been any since?

Welp, I have a theory about that. And before you jumo up my ass about Jesus being the path and the lamp or whatever horse hockey you were taught before you learned how to think critically and are now too lazy to question. I'm gonna be placing this argument in the vein of your delulu sky daddy hypothesis.

See, Big Bad VooDoo Papa in the Sky had tried raining fire, water, shit even stones(the brim kind) if the Old Tales are to be believed. But our way back ancestors kept doing things to anger the Cloud Commander. So he took a different track and started kicking it with young chicks, leave a bit behind and try to teach the world to love.

In my real life travels, I've met at least one former spy. It ain't like the action movies, it's mostly boring. Apparently sometimes you take someone to dinner to see if they'll let anything slip after a few too many libations, but otherwise you exist kind of how a sleeper cell does. Just looking to the outside world like regular old Jane or Joe Public awaiting the day you're called upon.

And that's where we intersect! See I think, if there was ever one god-child doing the yo-yo with their soul, there's at least one every century if not generation. Space Padre just got tired of watching them die for fucking nothing. Seriously the least faithful people I've ever met are the ones who scream the loudest about believing.

Now like any leader, Honcho forgot to shutter the program, easy mistake to make there's a lot going on up there. So every let's call it.... hundred and twenty years or so, some timid heavenly minion has to ask if this is the one they should activate, gets the "we're still doing that?" schpeel, and has to rely to some shabby thirty year old that sadly they're not going to die in three years. Imagine that.

Now you understand why that guy in the park is muttering to himself or screaming at seamingly nothing, right? He didn't make a plan for the future, he wasn't even supposed to live this long. What the hell is he going to do with another forty damn years? It's all a crock of shit.


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