Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Why You Probably Shouldn't Fu*k With My Family

Because I will drop your own house on you.

And then I will cause the earth to swallow up you and your house. (See that guy? He's your neighbor. He never liked you, either.)

And then I shall heap stones upon the ruins, and speak over the stones an Irish curse, that shall last a thousand generations.

And then I will go eat a sandwich. And drink a beer.


     Dear Person Who Said Ugly, Hurtful, and Untrue Things About A Member Of My Family: 

     You must be feeling pretty good about yourself. Especially after you said what you said in a public forum, and your two or three friends "liked" what you said, and commented on the righteousness of your position, even though not a one of them has a single fucking idea what is actually going on. 

     But you know what I love? I love this pious, self-satisfying quote that you posted on your timeline a little while ago: "The moment you decide to keep a secret from your spouse is the moment you step out of bounds. Marriage must be built on a foundation of complete trust and honesty." I love it, because I hope that what I'm hearing is the sound of you choking on your own hypocrisy, considering that the reason you are currently married to my family member's ex-spouse is that the two of you were fucking each other while they were still married. The irony of posting that platitudinal horse shit should be enough to at least give you a severe nose bleed. (I will pause here, to give you a few moments to look up the definition of "platitudinal." Go ahead. I'll wait.)

     What exactly do you hope to gain out of being ugly? Why is meanness your default position? Were you raised by parents who taught you to "hate first, and ask questions later?" Were you raised by wolves? (Because, seriously, if you WERE raised by wolves, I could almost understand. Wolves don't teach civility. Or vocabulary, or grammar, or anything that would help one to appear even marginally intelligent when using the written word. If anybody asks, you should probably tell them you were raised by wolves.) I suppose, ultimately, it doesn't matter. I can't change your heart on the subject, so instead I'll just tell you what is up. And what is up is:

     I can use words like the motherfucking weapons they can be. My words are arrows, war hammers, swords and cannons. And my arsenal is full. And I'm pissed.

     If you want attention, I'll give it to you. This ridiculous little space is read by thousands of people each month. I'll make you famous. And for all the wrong reasons. 

    Or, you can make a different choice. You don't have to like my family, but you might want to start being civil, if and when it's necessary to communicate. That's something we can all do, isn't it? I think that's the way to go. And, I think I've been pretty clear about the alternative.

     The Irish have a saying: Ná dhéanamh tinn le mo dhaoine.
  
     Translation: Don't. Fuck. With. My. People.

     I'm off for a sandwich. And a beer.


     

     

     
     
     


Monday, January 20, 2014

Turns Out I AM Kind Of Fu*ked in the Head. And That's A Relief.

This is not how I actually pour my tea, though. I'm more of a coffee drinker.

     Major Depressive Disorder. That's what they call it. Say it like a surfer, and add "dude" to the end, and it sounds pretty funny. (You totally just did that, didn't you?) Also, please don't think this is about to turn into a sad, melancholic, "oh-feel-bad-for-me-because-I-have-this-disorder" kind of post. I'm fucking glad as shit about this news. Because it's an actual thing. And because it's an actual thing, there's some actual stuff I can do about it. 

     The first thing is therapy. Now, I'm not new to therapy, but I do believe this may be the first time I'm working with a therapist who knows his ass from his elbow, clinically speaking. He's not telling me to do a bunch of Stuart Smalley-esque affirmations every morning. He's not telling me that, if I just believe in Jesus a little harder, the neurotransmitters in my brain will miraculously reconfigure to make me a better person. (And yes, I once paid a guy a lot of money to tell me precisely that. Or something to that effect. Jackass.) No, we're talking about my actual brain. About how it actually works, and how personality, intellect and self-image are created over time, by nature AND nurture (or lack thereof), and by genetics, and how deficiencies or abundances of one or more chemicals in your brain - sometimes in very specific areas of your brain - can enhance or distort beliefs you have formed about yourself and the world, which can lead to all kinds of things, like bi-polar disorder, or schizophrenia, or panic attacks, or a depressive disorder. It can also lead to really poor decision-making, precisely because the lens through which you are viewing the world is so distorted. So some people cut themselves, and others kill themselves, and then you have the dumbshits like me, who blow up their marriages. Repeatedly. And not even because I was unhappy in my marriage.

     It's because I'm unhappy with myself. Ain't THAT a bitch?

     I really thought I liked myself. Really. I talk like I like myself. I can be as self-deprecating as the next guy, but I don't think I've ever taken it to the extreme. But, as it turns out, I don't like Larry very much. I can actually start processing that now, because of the second thing I can do about Major Depressive Disorder, which is:

     Medication. Ho. Lee. Shit. Where was this stuff when I was thirteen? I cannot begin to explain to you how different the world began to look a month ago when this stuff started to kick in. I am a complete believer in better living through chemistry. Thanks to a pill that I take every day (quite possibly for the rest of my life), the serotonergic neurons of my central nervous system are able to synthesize a closer-to-normal amount of serotonin, a neurotransmitter associated with feelings of well-being and happiness. No, everything isn't lollipops and unicorns. But it's better. So when my therapist tells me I don't like myself, and why, I can go, Oh, shit. Yeah. I can see that. Because no way could I have seen it before. The really hard thing about my current mental state is, I can see just how well and truly I have fucked up my personal life. I suppose, ultimately, it's better to see the dog shit on the floor, and know you need to clean it up, than just walk around it like it's not there.

     I don't sleep anymore, so my psychiatrist (that's right: I have a therapist AND a psychiatrist, and you don't) prescribed Ambien as well. If you've never used it or heard of it, everything you need to know about that particular drug you can learn in Patton Oswalt's awesome routine on the subject. (You should watch the second half of the video as well, to hear about his second favorite Christmas memory of all time.) Actually sleeping is the bomb. I'd do it all the time, if I could. 

     My point here, guys, is that this is some shit I'm not actually making up. That's a comforting thought, because otherwise I'd be in need of a rubber room, and a sport coat that ties in the back. I'm sure somebody has got one of those rooms reserved for me, just in case. In the mean time, I'm gonna write, and act, and take my medicine. And I'm gonna try and remind myself that I'm not actually crazy.

     Just slightly fucked in the head. And that's a relief.

     

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Nobody Look At Me. I'm Writing. In Public.

Or looking at Facebook. Or playing Candy Crush. The important thing is, I look busy and thoughtful.

     I'm trying something different today, something I have always been averse to doing for two reasons. The first is, I'm not terribly comfortable in public spaces. The second is, I've had this tendency to think of people who work on their laptops in coffee shops as douchebags. I recognize this as completely irrational. I'm sitting in a coffee shop right now. Working on my laptop. So either I'm a douchebag (I can actually hear some of you screaming "Fuck yeah!" as you read this), OR there are actually good reasons why people choose to hang out in public spaces and do some work. 

     My problem is, I've never had an office job. (Actually, I've never really looked at that as a problem; I'm talking perspective here.) So I've never had that feeling of being cooped up, stifled, looking at the same cubicle or office walls every day, wishing I could just get out for a while, that I'd be so much more productive and happy if I could work someplace that wasn't HERE. That makes sense to me. It's also probably why you don't find a lot of free wi-fi in bars (because I've looked). 

     My actual problem with trying to work in a public space like this is I'm so easily distracted. Like the man and woman sitting at the table next to me, both in power suits, and when I first got here they were both working on their laptops, and I know they were working because I couldn't understand a damn thing they were saying, because I don't speak Spreadsheets or Power Point or Outlook. But now they're watching YouTube videos, and it's not like I'm eavesdropping, because they have the volume turned up to "Irritating," and I think they're watching every parody of Miley Cyrus' video "Wrecking Ball" that's ever been made ( two gazillion and counting), and now they're flirting with each other, but it's morning, and you're not supposed to flirt in the morning because you have coffee breath. But I notice that they're both wearing wedding rings, so I guess it's okay to flirt with your spouse, even with coffee breath, but then I immediately go to What if they're not married to each other?,  and now I really wish I'd gotten a better look at those spreadsheets, because what if they're hatching a plan to murder their spouses and collect the insurance and flee to Bora Bora? Two well-dressed people like that probably would use one or more applications in Microsoft Office to plan that out, wouldn't they? And they both just simultaneously looked over at me, and now I'm thinking, Shit. They know I know. Now I have to get the hell out of this coffee shop, before I wind up on their Excel Murder Plan.

     This was a terrible idea. I came here to get out of my comfort zone, because that's what you're supposed to do from time to time. And now I'm on the run from an attractive, power-suited, evil business couple, who have obviously added me to their hit-list, and just because I sat at the one table I could find near a fucking power outlet. I should have stayed at home and dialed up this website, which provides you with free coffee-house background noise, which is supposed to boost your creativity, without the risk of overhearing a murder plot, which probably didn't happen and I just made that shit up. 

     I'm not sure. I need more coffee.

     

Monday, January 6, 2014

Equal Opportunity Stupid.


Sometimes, natural selection misses a golden opportunity.

     I first read about this incident here at The Huffington Post. At a festival in Costa Rica, a woman got tossed by a bull. No, the bull was not loose on the town, running around the streets and terrorizing women and children. No, the bull did not charge into a cantina and randomly select some chick to fuck up. No, the woman was not riding the bull, as they do in rodeos, where professional bull riders do that kind of shit for money. Here is my favorite blurb from the article:

     "At the Zapote Bull Festival in Costa Rica this past week, a bystander standing inside the ring had quite the scare when a bull, released from its pen, charged straight for her."


     Let's all agree to one thing, and just one thing, right off the bat. If you are at a Costa Rican bull festival, where bulls are clearly involved, and you are standing inside the bull ring, YOU ARE NOT A FUCKING BYSTANDER. You are a lot of things: drunk, high, delusional, suicidal maybe. But you are not standing by. 

     It's not like this woman was on the corner, focused on rolling her own cigarette, because in the long run it's cheaper, and money's tight these days, and then some bull just comes running up behind her, while she's standing there, minding her own damn business, rolling her own damn cigarette, and this bull - for no reason at all - plants his horns between her ass cheeks and tosses her fifteen feet into the air. Any bull who did that - especially on a busy street corner - would be a real asshole.

     But this bull was in a bull ring. The one goddam place in the world that bulls are actually supposed to be, because that's the name of the ring. If it was called a Person Ring, or a Lady Ring, or a Vagina Circle, then, yes, the bull would be completely out of place. But she was in the one place in the world she definitely was not supposed to be, because she was not wearing a matador's outfit, with the tiny jacket and the spangly pants and the Mickey Mouse ears. 

Like so. And she didn't have that giant bulge in her pants, either. Which is probably a potato. Or a tumor.

     You actually only need to watch the first eleven seconds of the video to see what happens to this lady (and I use that term in its broadest possible sense). Then they replay the scene, like, a gajillion times. In case you didn't actually watch the video in its entirety, the woman - incredibly - wasn't seriously hurt. They even interview her after they get her to her feet, but I can't understand any of it, because it's in Spanish. But unless she's saying something along the lines of, "It's a good thing I'm so fucked up on tequila, or that might have really hurt," or "How in holy hell did I get in a bull ring? Last thing I remember, I was eating frozen yogurt," then she made a choice to get in a bull ring, with an actual bull, an animal who only does two things: 1) have sex with cows; and 2) fuck shit up. Now, you can call that a person who is participating in a time-honored tradition of her culture. I call that a person who is wasting perfectly good oxygen that the rest of us need, because we have something to live for.

p.s. I just watched all the way to the end of the video, where they present this woman with one of those big novelty checks for fifty thousand colons (Costa Rican dollars). And then I went to a currency calculator, where I learned that one colon is worth about twenty cents American. So I take it all back. Getting ass-jacked by an angry bull to win $99?

     Totally worth it.