The Million Word Year

One man. One blog. One year. One million words.

Archive for July 5th, 2010

Mood Ring : Watermelon red and grass green

Jul 5

Posted by MegaWordMan in Journal | No Comments

In other words, summer colors!

It’s a lovely summer day out today. Sunshine filtered through light clouds to take the edge off. Kids playing around the apartment complex. My brand new desk fan provides a nice breeze that helps keep my fever’d brow from overheating from all this creative energy crackling around.

So it’s been a nice day.

I’m happy about the fan. I have one fan already, but that one is part of my bed setup, so I can get cool enough to sleep even when it’s hot out. I have a tendency to overheat in my sleep, and the fan helps with that too. Plus, honestly, I think the soft white noise of the fan running about a foot from my head helps me to sleep by masking other ambient noises.

I’m still pondering setting up a mini-kitchen here in my bedroom, right next to my computer. I know that the main reason I eat so poorly is that I don’t like hanging out in the kitchen while things cook. I’d rather just grabs some stuff and get back to work. So I end up eating whatever is fast, usually peanut butter and jam sandwiches plus a piece of fruit. Not the worst diet in the world, but hardly nutritionally complete and definitely lacking in variety and pleasure.

If I could cook more or less without getting up from the computer, I’d be far more likely to do so, and hence I would stand a better chance of actually eating real food.

That’s the theory, at least.

So I’m thinking of getting a microwave, a rice cooker, and a mini-fridge together and setting them up to my right here, and seeing if I can’t cajole myself into nuking some Ramen now and then.

It’s sad to think that Ramen would be a diet upgrade for me right now.

World : The Liberal Case For Israel

Jul 5

Posted by MegaWordMan in World | No Comments

This guy, Bret Stephens, who is a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, appeared on Shalom TV to make what he calls the “liberal case for Israel”.

Here it is :

It’s complete and total bullshit. It’s bullshit and it’s intellectually dishonest bullshit, a clear example of someone attempting to confuse and cloud an issue rather than illuminate it.

Because all of his points are completely irrelevant. It’s entirely besides the point whether Israel is a nice progressive place in many ways, a place liberals would approve of, because none of that changes the fact that it’s currently run by a bunch of Arab-hating racists who are one breath of irony away from establishing concentration camps for Muslims.

Perhaps it’s because he’s a conservative who works for a conservative magazine that Bret Stephens can’t imagine someone being capable of holding such a nuanced thought in their heads as “While I applaud Israel’s progressive politics, nothing excuses their atrocious and inhuman behaviour against Palestine. It’s not a matter of who we like more, it’s a matter of basic human rights, which they have chosen to ignore. ”

Maybe that’s just too complicated for a conservative mind. And I am sure that when he gives this talk on college campuses, it does confuse the issue for young, impressionable minds who are not yet sophisticated enough to easily make these kinds of necessary distinctions.

But it wouldn’t confuse them for long. Any group of them will likely have one or two people capable of resolving the conflict and putting it into words for the others, who will then be inoculated against this specious and dishonorable argument in the future.

No matter what a nice guy my neighbour is, no matter if he’s my favorite guy on the whole block, and thinks just like I do on all kinds of political issues, and we always vote for the same politicians. I’m still not going to look the other way while he robs his neighbours at gunpoint and shoots their children, even if he does claim he is just doing it to protect himself.

And at the risk of committing a second Godwin in a single day, we always must remember : even Hitler thought he was only acting in self-defense against those evil, corrupt Jews.

Perhaps his mistake was not having the unquestioning support of the USA in all things.

Oh, and I know your public speaking course told you to scan the audience with your eyes to make it seem like you’re connecting with each any every person, Mister Stephens, but you’re not supposed to do it so fast that it makes you look like a sprinkler attachment. You look like you’re watching a Ping Pong match for crying out loud. Turn your windshield wipers from “rapid” to “intermittent”.

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Weird : The worst thing to find at a crime scene….

Jul 5

Posted by MegaWordMan in Odd, World | 2 Comments

Subject line inspired by a line from an episode of CSI, where Grissom asks “What’s the worst thing to find at a crime scene?” and Sidal replies “Another body?”

In this case, it’s an accident scene AND a crime scene.

German police were investigating a head-on car crash in which two people were killed when they discovered a third dead body…. in the trunk of one of the cars.

One woman, 27, driving a Volkswagen, died after her car caught fire. A 59-year-old man driving a Mazda was killed by the crash impact, police said. In the boot of the Mazda, there was the body of an unidentified woman “who most likely did not die in the crash,” the spokesman told AFP.

You can see why this made me think of CSI. It would make a kickass cold opening for an episode.

My theory : our 59 year old man killed the woman in his trunk (wife? mistress? business rival?) and was freaking out with panic and guilt and decided to just end it all by steering right into oncoming traffic.

That would make him a murderer twice, as he killed the woman in the other vehicle as well, but as he’s dead now, I’m sure he does not care.

My theory is supported by the fact that the police say the road the accident occurred on is straight and there was no bad weather.

Of course, that doesn’t prove anything. It might have been just a garden-variety fatal car crash due to driver error that just happened to catch someone in the middle of murder.

Heck, it could even been the female driver who was trying to commit suicide, and she just happened to have decided to plow into the one car that, by sheer chance, contained a guy who might have deserved it, and the key evidence as to why.

The real explanation will, most likely, turn out to be something quite dull, or at least, as dull as anything involving a dead body can be. It’ll turn out the girl in the trunk died of natural causes, cancer or somesuch, and he was just trying to save on funeral costs by transporting the body himself instead of paying for the ride in the hearse. Something like that.

So this is one story where I probably don’t want to know the real details. Speculation is a lot more fun!

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Thoughts : Do I scare people?

Jul 5

Posted by MegaWordMan in Articles | No Comments

Maybe scare isn’t the word. Intimidate? Unconsciously bully? Something like that.

I made an ironic statement on Twitter today : “I would have been way more of a rebel if anyone had cared enough to bother trying to repress me. ”

And I have felt that way for a long time. By and large, in my life, I had nobody trying to stop me from doing what I wanted to do. I grew up largely unsupervised. I kept to myself and didn’t cause any problems and nobody paid much attention to me. I was left to my own devices. With three older siblings and two working parents (and three defective ones we kept around for parts… just kidding! ), it was just easier for everyone if I took care of myself and faded into the woodwork.

So I did.

But that’s only part of it. I think the other half might be that even when people, like teachers and other adults, might have been trying to help me, I was so stubborn and intelligent that I wore them out. And eventually they stopped trying.

In fact, what I am start to wonder is if I subconsciously give people the impression that I am more than they can handle. Being intelligent, stubborn, and willful are a powerful combination and I wonder if I haven’t, on some deep level, learned to use that to assert myself in a way that operates well below conscious level.

So on the surface, I’m friendly and reasonable and pleasant and funny, but underneath it all is lurking this underlying message of don’t-mess-with-me will.

I don’t mean to exaggerate. It’s not like I suddenly think everyone is secretly terrified of me, or that I am some weird secret hypnotic master, or the like.

I’m just trying to make sense of some of the things in my life, and something that I think has been a part of me that I have completely failed to own or even acknowledge for a long time.

I know I have a lot of deep down anger and a lot suppressed pain. There’s a lot of unfelt anger and fear from decades of isolation and social neglect that acts like tectonic forces in the deep structure of my psyche. The human mind’s ability to make emotions seem to disappear is truly amazing. But nothing is every really gone, it’s just pushed below the surface of the water.

I think that, for a large part, this deep well of molten red-hot emotion is the reactor core to my creativity. It’s what powers the whole thing. Perhaps, then, the foolishness was in thinking that this could be the case without any consequences.

I know that if I ask people I know, people who know me and like me, if I scared them, they’d say “Of course not! You’re so sweet and silly and gentle and funny. Who could be scared of you?”

And that’s certainly how I like to think of myself, and how I have been thinking of myself for a long time. I’m just this harmless funny fellow, right?

But there’s more to me than that, and I’m starting to understand this fact. No matter how much we sometimes wish differently, we are not the mask we wear with others. We’re the ones wearing the mask, and the mask, by and large, is something we make, not something we are.

Perhaps, deep down, every shy person is an angry person, the side of us that, despite our loneliness, is so filled with rage and fear because of things that haven happened to us that at the same time we’re trying to be friendly and fun and interesting, this hidden part is putting out a message that says “Go away… don’t try to mess with me… just leave me alone!”

And a person so divided against themselves can’t help but put out confusingly mixed messages to people, who don’t understand the nuances but know they find you “weird” and “unpleasant”, and so what do you know, it works. They leave you the hell alone. In droves.

And that angry scared animal inside is happy because it feels safer, even if the rest of you is miserable because you are so very alone.

I might be on to something here.

Politics : More Arizona douchebaggery

Jul 5

Posted by MegaWordMan in Politics | 1 Comment

Admittedly, it’s no Bill 1070, but it’s still a depressing sign of Arizona’s descent into evil and madness.

An American Legion branch in Arizona has, out of nowhere, voted to ban Cinco de Mayo celebrations at its location. Because apparently they really wanted to get into that festive “beat up on brown people” mood that is sweeping through the old and evil these days.

It’s just a small-town Legion branch, so it’s more a symbolic act than anything else, but still, how small and petty and sad. The official reason :

… because Mexico does not celebrate Cinco de Mayo as a national holiday, there is no reason for the Post to conduct festivities for it..

Which, of course, is a giant steaming pile of fresh-shat Fox News.

I have a news flash for you old bastards : they don’t celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day in Ireland, either. So by your logic, all Saint Patrick’s Day celebrations should now be banned at your precious Legion.

But that’s different, right?

Like I’ve said before, old people getting all riled up about illegal immigrants is just “get of my lawn!” taken to the level of politics. People get old and tired and cranky and they lose their moral center, their humanity, and are reduced to reptile-brain functions only, like TERRITORY. It’s not about money or crime or disease, those are mere paper-thin justifications for xenophobia without compassion, without mercy, and without relent.

These people are like old dogs barking themselves hoarse in their front yard because STRANGERS! STRANGERS! STRANGERS EVERYWHERE! WHY ISN’T ANYONE DOING ANYTHING ABOUT THE STRANGERS? STRANGERS! STRANGERS! STRANGERS!!!!!!!!

It doesn’t matter that these people are harmless, present no threat to the household, and are just passersby. The dog is too stupid to tell the difference. As far as the dog is concerned, all that matters is STRANGER! STRANGER! STRANGER!

And all the bogus statistics and fear-mongering bullshit about crime rates and “diseases” is just a smokescreen for pure, basic racism. Racism has always had its appeal to the tiny of mind and tinier of heart, and it’s always put on a thin coat of justification by just flat out lying, telling people what they want to believe is true and counting on their willing complicity to cover for the lack of objective truth.

Did you hear? Crime and disease come from immigrants! I heard it from someone! And I’ll believe it and you’ll believe it and it doesn’t matter that there’s absolutely no truth to it, because it confirms what our callous and evil minds want to think anyhow! Blame the strangers! Especially the strangers who are a different color and looks different and makes us scared and nervous and they must be bad if they scare us like this, right? Because feelings are always justified!

It’s depressing and disturbing and disgusting, and anyone who partakes of this lowers the net humanity of the human race and is nothing more than subhuman throwback to primitive times.

And yes, I’m looking right at YOU, Lou Dobbs, you cunt!

And this anti-immigrant racism always wears the same colors and says the same thing. It doesn’t matter if you’re a modern Arizonan brown-hater or a 19th-century eugenicist advocating sterilization or, yes I’m going to go there, a Nazi in Hitler’s Berlin, you’re talking the same talk and walking the same walk. Immigrants are dirty, filthy, sneaky, lazy, primitive creatures who come to take our jobs and money and breed like rabbits. They aren’t people, they’re a contagion. First it’s Cinco de Mayo and the next thing you know, there’s a neighborhood where some people don’t even speak English! A WHOLE NEIGHBORHOOD where there’s SOME PEOPLE who DO NOT SPEAK ENGLISH out of the vast cultural hegemony of an ENTIRE NATION! Well, obviously, someone has to be done about THAT. If there is just one teeny tiny speck of not-here, I will focus on that like it’s an out of control plague that will somebody result in my deepest darkest fear : that some day, I will not be part of the dominant group any more.

It must be true, because I’m so scared!

And don’t try to tell me it’s not racist. When these people go on and on about “illegal immigrants”, they sure as hell don’t have a picture of illegal white people in their minds. I lived in the USA as an illegal immigrant for many years and nobody gave a crap about me. I didn’t fit the ‘profile’.

In fact, being a fat white male approaching middle age, I look a lot more like the people at the anti-immigration rallies than I do their target. I could have gone to one of these rallies and shaken my first and ranted and raved about all those dirty filthy illegals ruining everything for us good, honest, pure, law-abiding, God-fearing Americans, and nobody would have thought to doubt me.

I’ve been tempted to do that. Infiltrate right-wing groups and destroy them from within via subversion. Deliberately provoke them into showing their ugliest side. Encourage them to be outspoken about their REAL views. After all, it’s just the same views shared by the silent majority of right-thinking Americans who are just too afraid to speak out. They’re sure to rally around the first person with the vision and the leadership to speak the truth, right? So go out there and tell them about your theory that immigrants should be sterilized before they are deported. The world is waiting to hear you!

Good thing for them I am primarily too lazy, and secondarily too honest, to do so. Even if I had the necessary ambition, I could not stomach lying to people for long. I’d feel too guilty, even if it was for a good cause. I’m funny like that. I place a high value on my own integrity, sometimes past the point of reasonableness or my own best interests.

But it’s still nice to imagine worming my way into the heart of evil then betraying it by revealing its true face to the world.

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