Discrimiantion

I don't know if I've already gone off about this before or not, but I'm going to go off on it again!

They say you can't judge a book by its cover, and with this I mostly agree. More accurately, this phrase should be "you can't judge a book by it's cover material." Because let's face it, if you picked up a black leather-bound book that read "Titwick and the Garden of Feelinghood" you would be more than inclined to have a peek and almost guaranteed not to buy that book. Just the same, if there was a nice hardcover titled "Your Inner Tiger" you would ignore the book altogether for being lame. And we all know some of the cheap old paperbacks are where the good shit is at (and yes, a substantial amount of garbage). This is the metaphor for opposing racism and sexism and other visual-isms. They say not to be discriminatory.

But discrimination is key to our very survival. We discriminate against panthers for being ferocious, but we like kitties. We discriminate against rapists, but love lovers. Yes, there is a big fucking difference, thanks for pointing that out. There is also a difference between cool people and douchewads. So, while you shouldn't judge a book by it's cover [material] (but, hey, you can do whatever the fuck you want), you can judge a book by it's preface. If you hate a book by the preface, you are entitled to put that book down and say "that was dumb". If a jerk is a jerk, you call them a jerk. I don't care if they're black or a girl or handicapped or poor or what. Jerks are jerks. If they're going to be jerks then don't tell people they're okay. They don't to be given your chance. They've been given chances not to be jerks to thousands of people. They need to just stop being jerks.

I forgot how fucked up everything is out here...

Have things always been so complicated? Has the world always been this way? Maybe we were just too young to understand, or maybe we were too distracted to see it, but the world sucks. But not in a Captain Planet/starving kids in Africa/social injustice/ongoing communist threat/McDonald's deficiency in undeveloped nations kind of way. The world sucks on a personal level.

Maybe I'm a pessimist, but I'm starting to wonder if all the good things in life just make us ignore the bad things. Have a pint and forget about work. Eat and forget about the one that got away. Fuck and forget the disease. Are these the things that make life enjoyable, or are these the distractions?

I suppose a lot of things are inevitable. Maybe forgetting what you cannot change is as good as abolishing it as long as there is nothing you can do about it. Maybe distractions are productive.

We can't be purely hedonistic, but we can't dwell on everything. Where do we draw the line?

Being mad is easy

A lot of things have been going on in my life that make me mad. And what's worse is there is nothing I do to make it better. I can't say anything to the people I need to because that'll only make things worse. And there is always a good way around any issue, but the good way is so much harder. It's hard to be calm. It's hard to sit back. It's hard not to flip out at people when you feel they need to see things the way you see them. It's hard to tell someone they are being selfish when you yourself gain from them doing something different (or in some cases, simply lose less).

I'm going to be a responsible blogger at this point and engage you a little. You know who you are.
What makes you mad? What do you want to say but can't because you know it'll make things so much worse?

I'll even get the ball rolling:
"This is so much bigger than just you and you haven't given the first consideration to anyone else."

Fatherhood, The New Cycle, and Unbalanced Skills

I'm not going to make a very good dad.

Sure, I'll be great when my kids are growing up, but as soon as girls enter their heads, I'm hosed. You see, I have fallen out of the old cycle and into the new cycle of gender relationships. In the old cycle, the women wanted to get married and have children and men wanted to rich and successful. The man that every girl wanted was the one that shared the girls' interests which, at the time, involved family. The rule still applies today, only girls want different things. Maybe they caught on that men were being raised to be loving, caring, and sensitive and didn't want to let things be easy for them. So, as a collective, women decided that the important things in their lives would be having a career (nothing wrong with that) and not having a family (something wrong with that).

I'll explain that last pointed remark. You're you, yeah? You like you, don't you? You wouldn't be you if you didn't exist. You wouldn't exist without being born. You wouldn't be born if you didn't have parents. Your parents wouldn't have been born without their parents. In fact, 100% of the human population that has ever lived is a result of a very long tradition of having a family. Everything in the world exists as a direct result of having a family (for without family, there would be no you or me, and without us, who would there be to enjoy the world? Not to mention there would be a severe deficiency of electric guitars). In short, my argument is that you're awesome and I want to keep the awesome train rolling.

But back to the point. Women want different things. I, however, have been equipped for the old cycle. My skills and interests include cooking, doing dishes, sewing, fixing things, appreciating loved ones, building sand castles, having children and a family that I will love the way my family has loved me. These are things I like because these are the things my dad likes/does. The things I do not like and do not want to do: dancing, going to clubs, "seeing the world before I'm 25", being the right balance of asshole to keep a girl interested, living only for myself... I'll explain all of these:

1. Dancing. I rarely fall down. I run down steep rocky terrain for fun. I can navigate the iciest streets without losing my cool. If I had to choose between being able to command my feet to move in an attractive fashion to the sound of music or be able to trust my feet never to let me down (ba-dum tish), I would choose, and have chosen, the latter. I like listening to music, but it doesn't make me want to wave my arms in the air like I just don't care. I do care. I reserve grace for preventing personal injury, not for wooing girls (though, if I had known it would be such a big thing, I probably would have traded. Somehow girls can adore a klutz that can shake it on the dancefloor, but a man that you can trust will never let you fall in the icy streets isn't worth a second glance.)
2. Going to clubs. It's like drill camp for beginner dancers. Here's a beat. Dance. Do it. Do it again. Do it again. Do it again. I don't know where the line is between doing the same move over and over again and acting like you're having a seizure is. Yeah, I know, no one cares how you look. But if you were to, say, trip up the stairs at school, no one would care. You'd still be embarrassed. Club logic fails. Also, you can't get to know someone at a club further than the observation of how she acts at a club.
3. Seeing the world before I'm 25. I'm 22. I have $600 to my name. So, first of all, I can't afford it, and would rather save for a house or a car than say, "I saw Thailand, too!" Not to mention the fact that there is so much to experience at home. What about love and making a place you call home? What happened to finding your place in the world? Why do we feel the need to travel to places with big spiders when you could vacation in Europe occasionally when you're 40? 40, when you can afford a nice meal, a decent hotel, maybe rent a car and see the world on your terms. Sure, you have to come back to your job and the real world, but look at it this way: you come back to a job and the real world. That's called security. I've never understood peoples' fear of security.
4. Asshole. I'll never get it. Sometimes I hate clichés, but when it comes to nice guys and women, they are all so very true.
5. Living for myself. I've never been good at this. Living for me is what I call surviving. Getting by. What's the point of being happy alone? You will die and your happiness will die with you. Your existence on Earth is a moot point unless you do something that benefits all of mankind. If you don't make it into a grade school history textbook, your contribution to society could have been made by any one else. This is sounding very bleak, but that's what I imagine life alone to be. Where's your mark? If you love, you leave your impression on the world with the person you love. If you have children, you live forever through your lineage. Your importance to the world grows exponentially as your children love and your children's children love. So it's not me that is important. It is the person I love that is important. She is worth going to work each day for. She is worth eating properly. She is worth exercise and everything else I "should do for me." If my life doesn't affect anyone, why should I take care of myself? I'm going to end up in the same place.

Where was I? Oh yes, skills. I have husband skills (not to be confused with husbandry, of which I know little). I don't have... uh, attract the ladies skills. It's like being a fully licensed scuba diving deep sea treasure hunter without knowing how to swim. Once I'm down there scubaing I'm okay. It's just getting there that's the problem.

And with absolutely no knowledge or advice in the "be a dick, learn to dance, see the world, don't have a family" department, I'm really not going to be able to equip my kids with the tools to attract girls. I really hope girls change in their 30s.

Maybe if all my children were girls I wouldn't have to worry about it.

Exorcise equipment

1. The body of something once breathing
   
2. Salt
   
3. Alcohol
4. Rainwater
5. Infra-red radiation
   
6. At least two of the following pieces of a woman:
• Eyes
• Heart
• Hands
• Lips
• Skin
  
7. Strings
8. Brass
9. Time
   
10. An angel
11. A friend
    

Kids These Goddamn Days.

Normally when I use the phrase, "Kids these days," I'm talking about rap music, weeaboos, lack of respect, and the new demographic of Hollywood. But today I saw something just plain unacceptable.

I was on the Facebooks keeping tabs on a fictional person (I'm not sure whether he/she creeps me out, or intrigues me) and I come across one of his/her "friends." Her profile picture looked suspect, so I creeped around- er, I followed an investigatory lead.

This girl's a mom. She's barely 18 and is married with a kid. Married to a kid, in my opinion, too. This puts me ill at ease, but it's really not that bad. Thirty years ago this sort of thing was commonplace. A hundred years ago and her parents might have been saying, "Finally!" And it's not that I think they're too young to be having kids. If God didn't want kids to be having sex, he wouldn't fire up the baby-makin' factories when you're thirteen.

Obviously I don't endorse kids to be having sex. They were less capable of raising a child ten thousand years ago. In modern society, kids are completely incapable of raising children of their own. There's too much to know and prepare for. You'll always have to spend approximately 25% of your life expectancy learning how to survive the last 75% of your life. And, maybe not so obviously (I only came to this conclusion earlier this year), if you're not done growing up, who are you to coach someone else in growing up?

Okay, a few tangents there, but I felt they were helpful groundwork for what I find appalling. Are you ready? This girl's latest profile picture is her at what I hope is a party with a pill on her tongue flipping off the camera.

She has a nine month old child*!

It's worse that she is married. If it was a single 18 year old mom who was so strung out that she had to go out and party and do drugs and the baby wound up starved in a crib, drowned in a sink, or eaten by stray dogs, it would be horrible! But I think we could all file that away in the "Disdain" folders in our brains. But the fact that she had something going. Yeah, she got pregnant, but she also got married. And he stuck around. And they sound like the kind of couple that could make it work. It sounds like the setup for meeting these people seventeen years from now when their kid is graduating with yours and they're almost ten years younger than you, but their kid is on the honour roll because they knew a thing or two about working hard even when times are tough. But instead, she's at parties taking chemically manufactured drugs and acting like a lady-douchebag (is douchebag a unisex term in this context? Most female specific derogatory names are too aggressive. Douche is a much more passive term. Anyway...).

So, I say again, "Kids these days..."


*See comments

Deer in the Headlights

It was a few days ago now, but it still is bugging me...

I was out tobogganing with a friend of mine and her 7 year old niece (second niece, I think) and I was having the time of my life. It was the first nice day of the year and everyone was out on the sunny Sunday on their toboggans. I remember Rachael (the 7 year old) and her excitement to go down the hill and how insistent she was that we watch as she went down without holding on. I remember the thrill, the excitement, soft spoken words then being pushed down the hill.

But among all those good memories, I can stop thinking about the kinds of people on that hill. The people-y kind of people. People who don't know shit about common sense, simple physics, or plain old tobogganing with others. The act is simple: slide down a hill on something smooth and laugh and have fun. But the activity is wholly more complicated. You careen down a hill at uncontrollable speeds, slow to a stop, and take an exhilarating pause while you sit at the bottom...

... At the bottom of a hill lined with dozens of other people careening down at uncontrollable speeds.

Get out of the goddamn way!

We all managed somehow to pile onto one toboggan (it was more of a sled, but that's a story for another day) with me, the heaviest person at a whopping 150 pounds, stationed at the front. Our combined weight of a portly fellow and large dog barrelling down at mediocre lightning speed (I'm used to the dangers of the 8-man election sign make-shift toboggan) was suddenly confronted with a man, and two small children, maybe 5 and 9.

We make eye contact.

He stops. Stares.

Fuck you.



Fuck you, too, Mr. Stevens.

I dig both feet into the snow, full Fred Flintsone style. A plume of crystalline snow engulfs our party. I dig harder, into the frozen grass. I'm heading straight for the 5 year old. I have a 7 year old on board. We can't bail.

Dear God, don't let me murder this small child.

Keep stopping.

Yes, it actually lasted this long.

12 metre stop on what is maybe a 30 metre hill, not including the spill field. Two inch-thick tracks scar the hill from halfway down. So much snow I can't see. It didn't feel like I hit a kid. If I did, I bet he doesn't feel the same.

Turns out we missed the little one by a matter of inches. I check to make sure Rachael is okay. She's laughing, but cold from a face full on snow. I don't even realize that I am unquestionably covered in a centimetre of snow.

The man and his kids saunter up the hill.

I ask, what the fuck?

A few runs later Rachael and I walk up the hill. Some kid is headed for us. He's heading straight for Rachael. I casually pick her up in one arm and the kid whizzes by a few inches from me. Rachael didn't know better. I did. It's not a panic situation. It's just a responsibility to be aware, especially as someone who can move out of the way. It's easy. I saved Rachael from what would almost certainly be at least an injury in a tenth of the time to react as the other guys? Am I a hero? No. I'm just not a fucking idiot.