17 More Days...

Can't say that I've done too much this vacation so far, but I'm surviving so far. I've had a lot of time to think and that doesn't particularly bode well. Usually when I start to think it means I start to get a little sad. Things never quite turn out the way you want them to. Things never quite work out. Just in general. There's always something that we can criticize about ourselves if we can think hard enough. It's probably key to human survival -- the urge to constantly get better and progress further in whatever interests us. I don't know. Maybe it'll be our downfall too. At least on an individual level I'm sure that happens. Specially, maybe.

Oh well, enough rambling. I hate Joe the Plumber. If I see him on TV again I will take up voodoo just simply to poke him with pitchforks and hatpins. Of course, I'd have to get the J the P doll and the Bill-O doll to "share a room". It would only be poetic I think. But I digress, making fun of fundies -- satisfying as it may be -- is still inappropriate in this fashion. An eye for an eye would make the whole world blind. I wouldn't want them to shout some sexual epithet at me, so I won't make jokes about them. Tom Cruise on the other hand... well, never mind. Curse my empathy.

(Is it redundant for one to hate their own empathy? Is it even possible? Hmm...?)

Regardless, or irregardless (if flammable can have two negative prefixes certainly regardless can have one) of my current predicament, which is frustrating to say the least, I do hope someone is enjoying their break. The way I see it, if I get all the bad ones out of the way now, it's nothing but sunshine and daisies thereafter. Hey, one can hope right.

Let's see what else... Oh, the porn industry wants a bailout. A heavenly slice of Americana. Seriously. The porn industry truly does epitomize the American condition. Say one thing do another. Russia invades Georgia (the country :P) and we are angry. We invade Iraq and Afghanistan and whine when everyone else doesn't get on the bandwagon. This nation's highest birthrate among teenagers is currently in Mississippi. Abstinence only? More like a good way to get pregnant. (See there's a perk about being gay!) Apparently those who don't know about condoms or how to use them are more likely to have unprotected sex. Go figure. Ahh... the American double standard. That's where the porn industry comes in. Abstinence, Focus on the Family, pro-family, anti-gay, anti-porn America. Of course, the porn industry still exists. We just hide it away in the back rooms of video rental stores and back alleys behind shopping centers. We are ashamed of them, ashamed that we're human and have the urges that we all do have. We have to hide them and cover them up. We're supposed to be pure and chaste like the Church wants. Bull crap. Give them a damn bailout. Besides the fact that it makes this bailout process a huge joke (a bigger joke?), it provides relief to a sect of Americans who are so repressed that they won't allow comprehensive sex education to be taught in public schools, so embarrassed about their own feelings that they sequester porn to darkened rooms with the shades drawn and the volume turned down real low and they feel so bad about themselves afterwards. I was Catholic people, I KNOW what I'm talking about! In this nation of corrupt, Rethug nitwits, we need a relief valve, and for them what better than the porn industry? Nothing. If at least it keeps them from seeking sex from public bathrooms and making the GLBQ community the butt of every late night comedian's jokes then it would be worth it. And besides... I like it too!

Peace and FLYFREEFOREVER

20 More Days...

The Buried Life
by Matthew Arnold

Light flows our war of mocking words, and yet,
Behold, with tears mine eyes are wet!
I feel a nameless sadness o’er me roll.
Yes, yes, we know that we can jest,
We know, we know that we can smile!
But there ’s a something in this breast,
To which thy light words bring no rest,
And thy gay smiles no anodyne;
Give me thy hand, and hush awhile,
And turn those limpid eyes on mine,
And let me read there, love! thy inmost soul.

Alas! is even love too weak
To unlock the heart, and let it speak?
Are even lovers powerless to reveal
To one another what indeed they feel?
I knew the mass of men conceal’d
Their thoughts, for fear that if reveal’d
They would by other men be met
With blank indifference, or with blame reprov’d;
I knew they liv’d and mov’d
Trick’d in disguises, alien to the rest
Of men, and alien to themselves—and yet
The same heart beats in every human breast!

But we, my love!—doth a like spell benumb
Our hearts, our voices?—must we too be dumb?

Ah! well for us, if even we,
Even for a moment, can get free
Our heart, and have our lips unchain’d;
For that which seals them hath been deep-ordain’d!

Fate, which foresaw
How frivolous a baby man would be—
By what distractions he would be possess’d,
How he would pour himself in every strife,
And well-nigh change his own identity—
That it might keep from his capricious play
His genuine self, and force him to obey
Even in his own despite his being’s law,
Bade through the deep recesses of our breast
The unregarded river of our life
Pursue with indiscernible flow its way;
And that we should not see
The buried stream, and seem to be
Eddying at large in blind uncertainty,
Though driving on with it eternally.

But often, in the world’s most crowded streets,
But often, in the din of strife,
There rises an unspeakable desire
After the knowledge of our buried life;
A thirst to spend our fire and restless force
In tracking out our true, original course;
A longing to inquire
Into the mystery of this heart which beats
So wild, so deep in us—to know
Whence our lives come and where they go.

And many a man in his own breast then delves,
But deep enough, alas! none ever mines.
And we have been on many thousand lines,
And we have shown, on each, spirit and power;
But hardly have we, for one little hour,
Been on our own line, have we been ourselves—
Hardly had skill to utter one of all
The nameless feelings that course through our breast,
But they course on for ever unexpress’d.
And long we try in vain to speak and act
Our hidden self, and what we say and do
Is eloquent, is well—but ’t is not true!
And then we will no more be rack’d
With inward striving, and demand
Of all the thousand nothings of the hour
Their stupefying power;
Ah yes, and they benumb us at our call!
Yet still, from time to time, vague and forlorn,
From the soul’s subterranean depth upborne
As from an infinitely distant land,
Come airs, and floating echoes, and convey
A melancholy into all our day.

Only—but this is rare—
When a beloved hand is laid in ours,
When, jaded with the rush and glare
Of the interminable hours,
Our eyes can in another’s eyes read clear,
When our world-deafen’d ear
Is by the tones of a lov’d voice caress’d—
A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast,
And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again.
The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain,
And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know.
A man becomes aware of his life’s flow,
And hears its winding murmur, and he sees
The meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze.

And there arrives a lull in the hot race
Wherein he doth for ever chase
The flying and elusive shadow, rest.
An air of coolness plays upon his face,
And an unwonted calm pervades his breast.
And then he thinks he knows
The hills where his life rose,
And the sea where it goes.

New Years' Resolutions

I love New Years' resolutions. Why? Because they're stupid, naturally. It says something about the human psyche that we make them in the first place. Think about the timing for starters. We conform our resolutions to the beginning of the year, yet rarely the problems they are supposed to solve actually begin at the beginning of the year. Rather they begin at any point of the year. Lose weight, get out of debt, find love, etc. None of these ideas are more likely to come to our conscious mind at exactly the stroke of midnight on New Year's Day. We put them off until then though under the premise that somehow the very fact that there is a marker delineating the beginning of the year that we are more likely to go through with the resolution. Of course we don't hold onto them at any better rate than any other "promise" we make to ourselves during the year. Why should we? Dates hold no significance in this sense to our psyche. It's just foolishness. And besides, we're always frightfully vague about what we want to do, as if by simply saying we want something a lot it will come true. We want to lose weight, but we don't eat better. We want to get out of debt, but we keep spending money. We want to find love but we keep sitting at home doing nothing.

New Year's becomes a point at which we can bullshit ourselves over. Instead of the fact that we didn't plan out how we are going to accomplish the goals we want to, we bullshit ourselves into believing in this curse of the New Year's Resolution that because we asked for it, it won't come true. Of course, in the end, we are just bullshitting ourselves.

Some Happiness

Usually when I write it's about something I'm passionate about. Therefore, usually it's also to complain about something as it is now. Of course that's not all I am, but it does tend to be the most vocal part in this forum. After all, I'm rarely inspired to take the time to write about things that I like or that are going moderately well. And more so, rarely do things go so absolutely well that I feel compelled to write. Understandably, I come across as angry or cold or argumentative from time to time. Thusly then I would like to break up the unpleasantries... Enjoy.