Uncertainty

There's a sinking sensation here, in the center of the universe. An almost imperceptible feeling of ineptitude. There is a wrongness in this place. I get the sense that I've taken a wrong turn, but there haven't been any turns for miles. So I bite my tongue and think of something else. Something brighter, but bright things seem ever in the past, tangled up with people and places I've long since left behind. It is almost as if the best of things are done and gone, and only the slow trod of time remains. I'm not unhappy here, not exactly. Not unhappy, but unusual.

Things have gone beyond my control. Far past my comprehension, in ways I can't begin to grasp. I lost my edge somewhere, that indomitable part of me that demanded solitude for the sake of my sanity. Too many people, too close, and not a single one of them afraid of what I am. Perhaps they can't see it. The domesticity seems to have leeched into my bones, and I spend my nights thinking of stories I can't find the words to tell, escapes that I have no way to put into motion.

And yet, for all of it I'm not unhappy.

There is a mildness to me, now. A sort of numbness. I have always been a creature of routines, but I don't crave this one the way I have before. It isn't that I don't care, that I don't feel. I just don't care the way I should. I don't feel as strongly as I have. Little hope for salvation. Perhaps this is salvation. From that old, wild spirit. That raving lunacy. The madness brought on by drink and food, by the words of bards and the tales of heroes. The unquenchable thirst for ever more adventure, roving far from home and finding that there's newness, even in the oldest places. I miss the sky. I miss the taste of new flesh. There are parts of me, deep and dangerous things, that yearn for it again. That roil and writhe in rebellion against this new, petrified self.

I find my fists clenched. Eyes wandering wildly. Heart racing. I want to run and fuck and feast. I want to create. To destroy. To rend the myriad worlds I've built and then build them anew. I want to savor every sultry inch of the earth, to take her in wild flights of need, to succor and sate myself upon her. I want to be alone of it all. The wanderer, spinning his tales over a drink and then vanishing. A spectre and a story.

I'm not unhappy here. But then, I have never wanted for happiness. There are better things in life.

Fleetingly Yours,
-S.R.

Glorified Nonsense

So what the fuck is up with airline food, amirite?

If that didn't chase you off, then...awesome. You can sit through bad jokes. That's a skill you're going to need here because this shit is about to get wacky. I mean, it's after midnight here. I worked all day, I have to work again in like, six hours, and I've spent most of the time I allotted for "awesome stuff" bitching about how bullied kids are pussies and watching funny videos on the Internet. I'm living on the edge of my seat, is what I'm saying. Gabbing life by the sack and just...I don't know. Pulling on it? That sounds like kind of a dick move (hah!).

In fact, I don't even know that I have something to say. I'm just so damned happy to be posting something on here. I'd like to blame the holidays, you know, or literally anything but my own sincere and yet unbelievable laziness. But, no, just lazy. I've been reading and playing through Oblivion again and I've even spent some time at work doing things I get paid for, but the old blogosphere just sort of gets ignored in the fast-paced life I lead.

I'm still writing, though. Novels and what-not. I think if I ever tried to stop my colon would literally grow limbs, climb out of my body and devour me. Because that would be the ultimate way to shove my head up my ass (GET IT?). My blogs, though, I seem to go through spats. Like poetry. I'll go through a week or a month or four years of high school where I just compose like a mad...composer, fingers all aflutter and reams of words spilling out of my brain. And then, silence. Save for the long fiction, nothing comes. I've even got about a dozen posts I started writing on here (not to mention the other two blogs that I'm involved with because monogamy is just terrible, but don't tell this one because it gets jealous of the attention I give the younger ones). I just never finish them. I get a few sentences in and then I'm like, "Oh, right, porn is a thing I can do for free."

And then I remember that there are other people here and fapping isn't an option so I go outside and rake leaves or whatever.

I just realized two things. First, I used the word blogosphere and second, and more importantly, my browser didn't correct it. Is that an actual word now? Did I miss a meeting somewhere? It's not cool to do that to me, you guys. Don't just make stupid things socially acceptable and not tell me. If its a real thing I can't use it sardonically and if I can't use it sardonically I might as well just piss off.

For serious, though, I'm into this story. It's got everything. Comedy, boning, Vikings (kind of), zombies, badass action, characters and an intriguing plot or something. And I titled all the chapters using the names of metal songs, because fuck coming up with chapter titles and copyrights are for wusses.

And that reminds me.

Wait, no it doesn't. Nevermind.

There's something of literary merit in those last two lines, but I don't really know what it might be, honestly. Probably nothing. Just glorified nonsense.

Oh, dropped a title-bomb right in your mind parts. I win Internets.

Ridiculously Yours,
-S.R.

Bullying (Or, Stop Being Such Ladies)

Let me preface this by saying that if it offends you, I firmly believe you are the problem. That said (because saying it means I can instantly galvanize my readership into two sides and stir up a whole bunch of shit) my intent isn't to be provocative (that's a lie) or to insight a riot (also a lie) but to weigh in on a hot-button issue that has come upon a bit of a lull in its media coverage.

I want to talk about bullying. Candidly, I should add. You should know by now that I'm always candid. I don't do dress rehearsals before I post these things. I just spew them out into the Internet. I'm like an articulate You Tube commenter. Full of irrational thoughts and nerd-rage that mask deep-seated insecurities and latent homosexuality. Only none of that, and much more awesome.

Anyway, bullying.

I don't agree with bullying. Only sociopaths think bullying is a good thing. But I do think its a necessary thing. Necessary things aren't always positive, naturally, and too much of anything, necessary or not, becomes a problem but I think the issue of bullying in this country could be curbed pretty easily. If kids would just stop being such pussies.

Ah, there. Four paragraphs to get to the inflammatory statement.

I'm not saying this as someone who has comfortably walked through life. If you knew me before college (because my idiosyncrasies were accepted, fuck encouraged where I went to college) you know I was kind of a target. Scrawny, quiet, frequently dressed in women's clothes and Crow-esque makeup. I was into things like books and Japanese RPGs and writing just the worst poetry you've ever seen. I smelled funny because I was like, "Fuck bathing" and I wore a lot of leather. Seriously. Like, so much black leather Dimmu Borgir would have asked me to calm it down.

I got picked on a lot, is what I'm saying. The ugly truth about being kind of weird and insecure and way, way smarter than your peers. Unfortunately, despite years of playing football (both the American and rest-of-the-damn-world versions) I wasn't ever particularly imposing. I went to school in rural areas where kids rode four-wheelers and shot at beavers for fun. Ten-year-olds started chewing tobacco and beating up kids like me for kicks about the same time their mothers finally stopped breast-feeding them whiskey and sour milk. So I was a small, quiet, presumably gay (at best, goth) kid from a low-income family and that meant I had, well, quite a bit of time to get used to what fists and dirt taste like.

And you know what? No big deal. Because after a while I figured out that those kids were fucking idiots and, despite my long-standing refusal to consider myself better than another person, they were clearly outmatched. First, I stopped being so afraid. There's only so many ways you can call someone a fag before it stops stinging. There are only so many times you can get shoved into a locker by some douchebag in a crowded hall before you realize that if you step just a little out of his reach, he falls down and looks like a moron.

There are only so many times a kid can call you a name before you leap over a desk and beat the everloving shit out of him in front of all of his friends. And while I was never all that big, I did have blind, Viking berserker rage for that last one.

And, quite frankly, social media made it easier. I didn't have a Facebook until somewhere around the middle of my sophomore year of college. But I did have a Myspace page during the height of its popularity and you know what I realized? Bullies are dumb, guys. Really, really fucking dumb. Even in a world where reality television exists and the most successful forms of entertainment have an embarrassing story-to-explosion ratio, people will read the things a bully says, all hate-mashing keys with his gorilla fingers and spitting on the screen because he can't understand that you aren't actually there in the room with him. Then they'll read the articulate response you crafted, because Internet conversations aren't, in fact, identical to real life conversations where you have to be witty at a moment's notice and you have plenty of time to think up something awesome before you reply, and even the cretins will realize that, holy shit, that guy might actually be retarded.

Now, I know kids these days are constantly being social which means that even though I could escape that bullshit when I got home as long as I stayed the hell off of Myspace, they're always logged on. But you know what? Log them the fuck off. Just because your phone can access Facebook and Twitter and Cracked.com at any time doesn't mean you should. And if those cyber bullies we're always hearing about are such a problem why don't you just block them? Facebook has some pretty convenient privacy settings so people you don't want to talk to can't talk to you. Sure, its kind of a hassle but, I mean, so is being bullied until you kill yourself.

That, or catch that little twat by surprise in the hall between classes and cave in some of his teeth. Or her teeth. Lesson learned. And if your school throws you out for standing up for yourself? Well, fuck it. Those guys were dicks anyway.

What I'm saying is that bullying isn't a sudden epidemic. It's been around forever. My parents had bullies in school. My grandparents might have, but they were all so brutal I doubt the bully survived to adulthood. It isn't some new age, modern world problem. But being a pussy about it? That's new. Having parents that are too busy tweeting inane bullshit and sharing pictures of stupid cats to check up on what their kids are dealing with? That's new. In fact, having parents that are pussies? That's new, too. I think I complained to my mom once that a kid at school was picking on me. She asked me if he ever hit me. I probably said something like "uh...." and she responded that, if he took a swing at me I was, under no circumstances, to let him walk away without enough bruises to make sure he never pulled that shit again.

Physical bullying goes away. All of those "it gets better" speeches will tell you that. In fact, by the time you get to high school physical bullying is probably all but completely gone from your life. Its the mental stuff that really gets you, right? The emotional torment. Well, folks, if you have ever had a boss who was a total prick, or a co-worker who kept getting you into trouble for shit they did, you've found exactly where those people end up. Bullies don't grow out of it, but the power they have to hurt you does get weaker. Because as you get older you realize that those people, the ones that want to make you feel like shit, are nothing. They're empty, worthless people and their opinions don't matter to you or to anyone else.

That's what I learned from being bullied. That those assholes you encounter in the real world? Those human failures (no matter how materially they may appear to be successful) are the same jaded, bullshit, fuckheads you learned how to ignore (or beat senseless, if the situation called for it) in school. The kids who never had to deal with bullies? Those are the kids that have a hard time adjusting to real life. The ones that have a mental breakdown every time someone critiques them. They didn't endure years of abuse and now they're crippled every time someone disagrees with them.

Of course, I don't think every bully needs his ass kicked. Actually, I do think that, but your kid is kind of a pussy (as I've established) and is in no way going to fight a bully. In fact, if he did, your kid would get fucking destroyed. And violence isn't always the answer. Or even always necessary. Sometimes telling an adult that gives a shit, or a friend that gives a shit, or a parakeet that gives a shit, will be enough. Sometimes I got frustrated with it and I vented to, well, myself because I didn't understand social cues and couldn't bring myself to talk to other human beings unless they approached me first. But I vented, and then it all seemed so...petty. I got over it. Because it was silly to be upset in the first place.

Kids calling you names makes you want to die? Kids throwing things at you or embarrassing you in front of people you haven't known long enough to remember their names makes you want to end it all? For fuck's sake, really? Say that out loud. See how insane that sounds?

Of course, you could always start wearing a long, black trenchcoat. Then at the very least everyone will be so terrified you're about to shoot them they won't dare bother you. Worked pretty well for me for a little while (although it was entirely unintentional, I started wearing them because they look badass). Obviously don't actually shoot them. That makes you a pussy too, just a pussy with a gun. But you can use the reprieve to bulk up, learn some kickboxing, grow a bitchin' beard.

Then go back to school in September and shove every one of those damn nerds in a locker for picking on you.

Irascibly Yours,
-S.R.