Let’s say an exceptionally selfish person is writing her autobiography, and, being unhappy with how things are, she edits and edits her “life story” until she can’t separate the written embellishments from the actual memories. You might say that doing this is an act of free will, however, consider what has led her to choose to lie about herself in this manner, aside from insecurities and a desire for recognition. Maybe looking at a memory, and externalizing it by writing it down, then editing it, and re-editing it creates a feedback loop that creates a critical distance that changes how the memory feels and what the memory means, and so, with that, it creates a kind of drift, because reflecting on the writing alters the perception and the perception alters the writing alongside what ever feelings or current influences happen to interfere in the remixing. Well, that and of course knowing that other people are going to read the story, and feeling bad about lying, she subconsciously closes the loop by identifying with the fiction instead of the reality through repetition and choosing words that mean what they mean but have a preferable emotional register, for example instead of saying that she was a bit of a bitchy wreck as a teenager, she says that growing up, she was a diamond in the rough, and so it goes. So in thinking about free will we also need to keep in mind the ways we can’t help but fool ourselves, even if that’s in a negative sense, for example someone who often blames themself for everything might, while not being like a paranoid schizophrenic exactly, still pick up responsibilities that aren’t real, like worrying if Sandra took the rude joke they made at lunch in a bad way and that, that’s the reason she’s dead now, and so on and so on…
~
It’s just a glorious thing to know that there is a phenomenally heavy darkness at the center of our galaxy (massive black hole), effectively pulling, if ever so slightly, on everything we’ve ever known.
~
One morning an 84 year old widower suddenly realizes, that he has forgotten the name of his beloved wife of 57 years, his heart sinks, and he just spends the morning sat in his chair by the window, absolutely heart broken at the thought that his love, his sweet sweet love’s name must escape him now, after a lifetime spent together.
What cruelty is this?
~
So We Try:
Reason is just a motor, not the vehicle.
Emotion is the fuel, not reason.
Feeling is the compass.
Time the terrain.
Being, its sky.
And Earth?
It’s why.
~
K: “Coffee!”
B: “Coffee.”
K: “Ugh, I drink too much coffee.”
B: “Nonsense, it’s too good not to be good.”
~
“You are only good to me when I give you things!” Yes, of course, because giving me things is the only thing you managed to do with minimal damage and strings attached, everything else was just your way of domineering and making yourself feel better about yourself, I was never a full human being to you, just a self-help project, a way for you to say that this wreckage you call your life, meant something.
~
When you’ve good leftovers to eat but it’s covered in ants and being the slothful poor fuck that you are, you search online if anything bad will happen if you “accidentally” eat some ants, and the result says no it’s just extra protein really, and so, you just heat up the food and eat it anyway with a bit of extra sauce to mask any unexpected flavors because that’s just life.
~
Of all the ants for some annoying reason crawling over my screens, if only they knew the shit they were stepping in.
~
C: “Gimme the diagnosis Doc.”
Doc: “Alright I’m afraid you suffer from severe normalcy.”
C: “Oh no that’s terrible!”
Doc: “No need to worry, it’s not a very serious condition, it’s quite manageable.”
~
Making or becoming a satisfier to a mutual need, now that’s a purpose. Ah, but then there be online classifieds like: “Pet looking for adoptive Dom, must include housing, outfits, and food.”
Purpose don’t got to be pretty.
~
A: “Things that are profoundly fucked-up are wrong.”
B: “The denial of moral nihilism or moral error theories.”
1: One’s believing B isn’t justified.
2: But, believing A implies B is justified.
3: If A and 2 are justified, then so’s B.
4:= A is not justifiably wrong.
~
To write a voluminous tome consisting entirely of ANDs between short sentences dedicated to everything that is past, decayed, and half forgotten.
The irony? Finding solace and solidarity with a past belonging to no one in particular, especially not you.
It’d be called: “A Series of Timeless Statements”
And the person writing it, struggling with mental deterioration, would take such care, maintaining several notebooks and checklists, to ensure the same statements are not written twice, or thrice.
~
C: “My, you have a really negative attitude.”
B: * absolutely flabbergasted * “My God! You don’t say?”
B: “So.. what do you propose I do?”
C: “You change it. Just love yourself, be mindful and meditate, stop complaining and go manifest your dreams. Find a mantra for your heart, and say it every day. Eat fruit and fiber.. and, be strong, be your own rock. That’s all.”
B: * jaw droppingly astonished * “Yes, that’s it! All I ever needed, right here. Oh thank you kind stranger, thank you so much.”
C: “Hey anytime dude. Also, yoga gains.”
B: * squealing inside, biting lip, holding a thumb up * “…”
~
The Answer: [everything]
Or no, it’s still too dangerous, we need more padding.
[([(everything)])]
Ah, better yet, infinite epoché.
…[([([([([([(everything)])])])])])]…
~
B: “Oh hey, what ya doin there buddy?”
A: “Eh, nothing much. Same as usual, you know, just mining for a morsel of enjoyment, a reason to not go insane, and a reason not to circle the drain. You?”
B: “I think you’re already there.”
~
Sure.. Ok, so I look like some kind of cave dwelling creature, what you do want me to do? This is how I look, fuck you. It doesn’t tell you anything about what I’m like, or what’s going on with me. I know what I look like, I know what people think of me. But seriously though, fuck you, if you think your opinion is going to make me spend one minute feeling bad about it.
~
I’d scream my lungs out, but the neighborhood watch would complain.
~
“I don’t mean to speak out of the house, but..” yeah, and then they spill out all your follies and private matters for the guests to hear and be entertained with; nothing is sacred. But, that’s what happens when you’re such a lousy excuse for a human being that, the only way you feel you can substantiate conversation, and make yourself liked, is by spilling other people’s beans.
~
How egregious and idiotic is it that in order to be deemed a “real man” or a “real woman” in the community, one must be mutilated and/or horribly humiliated and broken-in for it.
~
A: * in the comment section of some obscure questionable video * “Oh my, well fancy seeing you here.”
B: “It’s a small interweb.”
A: “Don’t you know it.”
~
When some peoples from Papua New Guinea ate enough of the brain matter of other people, they would sometimes contract an incurable disease called Kuru. Basically, what goes down is that they’re ingesting malformed proteins from these brains, and this eventually causes them brain and nervous system issues, but one of the weird symptoms of the Kuru disease is its incredible bouts of laughter as more a
nd more deterioration sets in. And of course, then there also comes the thought: the “laughing death” is the spirit of the deceased taking its revenge, so maybe the last laugh isn’t the best laugh after all. Don’t eat the brain of a long pig, you might just die laughing.
~
And when the TV is so fucking loud that the neighbors’ neighbors can hear it, but there’s nothing you can do to make them understand this.
~
Non-Proof:
* In a quiet corner shop one early Friday morning *
Customer: “Hi, Hello, yes, I want to buy a, uh.., a shenanigan.”
Shopkeep: * whispering on the down low * “Just the one?”
Customer: “Uh-huh, yes please, just the one.”
Shopkeep: * goes to fetch one from the back *
Customer: “Ah, beautiful.”
Shopkeep: “That’ll be about $3.50” * smiles commercially *
Customer: * forks over exactly $3.50 *
Shopkeep: * smiles commercially again while ringing it up *
Customer: * smiles back, anticipatively *
Shopkeep: * lifts the shenanigan from the counter and puts it through an opened hole in the glass barrier between them *
Customer: * holds up arms to gently take it from the shopkeep *
Shopkeep: “Thanks for coming, have a great day!”
Customer: * halfway out the shop, offers a hand gesture that’s the same for hello as bye * “Bye.”
~
And old Gabe tried and tried, but they all said yuck, until he found The One, but she made him a cuck.
~
“OBJECTIVELY, it was observed, and subsequently corroborated via rigorous empirical method, with colleagues Dr. Wubbalubbadubdub and her graduate student Mr Coen, one nation under science, that the squirrel verily had his nuts stuck between the fence planks surrounding a local person’s domicile. It had been proposed that efforts were to be undertaken to ameliorate the situation, however, objectively speaking, it has been determined, via thoroughly rigorous logic, that, no sufficient “ought” could be conceived to attempt the feat. Since the initial observation, a thoroughly sanitized and scrutinized snippet, from a local anthropologist’s thick description of the emic opinion of his fellow locals, has according to certain interpretations, supposedly indicated the possibility that the squirrel is allegedly deceased. It is therefore that one hesitates, objectively, to conclude this statement.”
~
“Don’t smile at me! I don’t want to humor your existence.”
~
And you had your silly childhood dreams of what it’d all be like, but sadly for you, as we all know, they fell and died on a pike.
~
Writing fragments is like chipping off little pieces of your mind, wrapping them nicely, and handing them out [for a pittance] to strangers who don’t know what to do with them.
~
Back in the days before everyone just streamed movies, we were in a video store where you could rent movies for the weekend or so, so I’m there minding my own business, I have a stack of two shitty movies and one good one so far, and I see an acquaintance from my school just a DVD rack over, he’s there with his mom and little brother, and the usual hellos and niceties are exchanged, then randomly, his little brother approaches me and starts telling me, I can’t even remember what, but he was so excited about it and talking all about how he’s going to get to watch a movie that’s related to the subject of the excitement, and I’m smiling and nodding, just listening to this kid and trying to be polite, when all of a sudden his mother tells him straight up, “come on finish up, he doesn’t care about your stories”. Oh man, I don’t know, but when I heard that something changed, I mean, I was trying to listen, but it’s true, it’s really true, I didn’t care, I was just trying to be nice and not ignore the little guy, make him feel bad, you know. Ugh, but maybe his mother was right, maybe it’s best, even that young, to understand that this is the way people generally are, every one is on their own track and you really don’t matter in their eyes, and depending on your situation only very few people ever really take interest in what is for you the most awesome of awesomes, whether that’s music, games, or something, or like for that little kid the cartoons or whatever it was he was really into. But that’s how it goes, everybody is the center of their own universe, and we’re alone together in a big indifferent world just for a little before it’s over, and eventually no one even knows that it happened, that you were human too.
~
Of all the petty frustrations in life, that one should bang furiously on the computer desk, because the task manager is not responding.
~
Some Slop: Oof, tonight at dinner, an idea fell into my soup, it was rather disgusting! It was one of those dark shelled types, but with spines protruding, like some kind of sea creature, not nice. Anyway, alone at the time, of course, I just stared at the damned thing as my soup grew colder and ever more unsalvageable. Some black ooze was seeping out of it. Ugh. I just sat there thinking about.. *sigh* thinking about, just what exactly I’m supposed to do with it. I mean, I know what it means, it’s not an uncommon idea, it’s the one where you hate yourself for everything you are and everything you’re not. But then, at once, I thought, perhaps this absurd manifestation would best be handled with a reciprocation of something equally unpleasant and just as absurd. So.. I slammed down on the dark spiny-poky-idea with the side of a bread knife, and hurried it to the kitchen, holding a tissue under for the dripping. And with a spoon, I detached it from the knife straight into the microwave, closed it, set it, and turned the microwave on. Well.. it’s a hell of a mess, but at least the stupid idea is dead, it popped and boiled and oozed and steamed and stank, and now it’s gone. Eh. I’ll clean up the mess later.
~
A tin, which reads:
Social Sciences (98.4% Organic)
You won’t believe it’s not real science!
Warning, may contain nuts.
Or alternatively:
Social Sciences (98.399% Organic)
You won’t believe it’s not political!
Warning, may contain radically indignant fanatics.
~
C: “Oh and what cost is a bit of mud in the water if it saves you from a lifetime of unhappiness?”
A: “It means you’re blind enough to make a whole new generation suffer the same fate, just as they’ll indict more generations after them to suffer. If a sufficient density of people in the world could bear but one brief stint of lucidity, life on this planet would end entirely, or at least human life would.”
~
And a little slice for this evening, one for the insult this morning, another for that time, one just cause, and one other to complete the set.
~
B: “So when did you first learn you were common?”
C: “I’m not!”
B: “yeah…”
C: “Yeah? And what makes you so special then?”
B: “My loving embrace of the sweetly enduring and sufficiently scrupulated infinite and absolute Nothing which is buried in everything and awaits us all. I’m afraid it’s lodged up there really deep.”
C: “Oh god.”
~
There needs to be humane, but strictly enforced, parental licenses to radically reduce over-population, malignantly useless people, scarcity, unwanted and unlivable lives. Of course, the objection is going to be: Ah, but who sets the standard for qualification? It doesn’t matter, hell, as ineffective as it will be, make it democratic, set up sensible options and let people vote.
What could the basic qualifiers be?
— No carriers of inheritable genetic diseases or mutations that could make life unlivable.
— Not over the age of 35, because old parents are terrible to have and die earlier (also mutations).
— Must be able to provide proper shelter, food, safety, and the time to spend together.
— Be emotionally stable and mature.
— No harmful irrational dogma or forced religion.
— Must actually want children (for sane and unselfish reasons).
— Have an untraumatic domestic and social environment, where they can participate and feel needed (instead of wasting away at 28 in a trailer and/or doing crime because there were no other opportunities).
Morsels for the Depressed, Depraved, Pessimistic, and Otherwise Declining Page 9