I gave up being overly political about 5 years ago and to that end I resigned myself to listening more than speaking on the subject. Recently I’ve been recouping from a second ankle surgery to remove some bone spurs that were getting to be a physical hinderance. In this downtime I’ve been revisiting a few things that I’ve put on the mental back burner.

The anniversary of my 48th year on this planet will be here in the next couple weeks and for my 49th spin around the sun I have come to the extremely stark reality is that— I really couldn’t give two shits how people feel vs. facts. This goes down to a very base level and it’s not meant to demean others or say they are “wrong” to spite them. This goes on my own personal hubris as well. I write this blog because sometimes I feel certain things about my life and I want to be accountable to that perspective. One day I will be gone and somewhere on a server, hopefully this will go on and perhaps someone will see it and commiserate/celebrate the words I have scribed here. That being said. The harsh reality that some of the things I write here go against the facts of everyday life. That causes me a fair amount of depression, over analyzation and downright loathing for the real world. But, Facts are facts- and as desperate as many of us are to see a better world– the reality is that we have been doing the same thing since humans first felt the concept of need. So I present to you– The Lost Tribes of Conquest.

War is not waged by the dead.

War is waged by those who, by greater numbers or technology, remove their opponent from existence. And when I say opponent, outside of a surrender, means every man, woman and child in their entirety. They are removed from history.

That is a brutal and visceral truth. But let me explain it without adding feelings. I know in todays day and time we are extremely polarized over the war in Ukraine and the war in Israel/Palestine. I know some of you reading this may have very deep feelings toward this subject and I respect your stance on it. It is not my intention to try to change minds or sway feelings. Matter of fact I’ve found attempting to hardens people to any conversation on the whole and further polarizes.

You would think that in a few thousand years of semi-modern society we could elevate ourselves to a point were we could do away with war. Or at least find some way to resolve conflict with more of a focus on peace. I will tell you right now- and I’m sorry if this hits hard–it will never happen. We could go down the rabbit hole of the Military industrial complex or the concept of faith and religion– but not of that matters. What does matter is that there is some basic fact that has been hardwired into the depths of our lizard brain— kill the enemy.

If you want an example- 2 words. Genghis-fucking Khan. And I use him and the Mongol empire because there is prime example of “fuck around and find out” in terms of the Khwarasmian Empire , which covered the majority of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and modern day Iran. The Great Khan sent a delegation in the form of a Muslim caravan to the Governor of Otrar to engage in trade. The governor had the caravan executed.

The Khan took this as a personal insult.

One would think that he would raise the city of Otara to the ground. But the Khan now saw the Khwarasmian Empire as the enemy. And yes, he did lay the city of Otara to waste…. by killing every man, woman and child. And then he went to the next city–and told the people to surrender or die— and even when they surrendered he instructed his armies to kill every man, woman and child. Historians debate whether or not it was tens of thousands or perhaps millions of people that lost their life. Genghis Khan erased the Khwarasmian Empire from the face of the earth–removed them from history.

This is not the only tribe that Genghis Khan erased from the world in conquest. There have been others by different names. And what was….is… and will be again. Because the truth is that we live in a closed system on this planet and we don’t really live long enough to truly learn from our mistakes. We keep doing this 150 year repeat…. just with better headphones and footwear. Better ways to annihilate each other because that’s the enemy.

I don’t give a fuck about Israel, nor do I give a shit about Palestine. It’s the same thing that Genghis Khan was doing in the 1200’s.

Ukraine and Russia are doing the same shit they’ve done since Ivan III claimed Ukraine to be Russian all the way back in 1476. The wheel spins and somedays you are on the upside of the revolution….or on the downside of being conquered.

I don’t know. Seems for what it is, maybe the United States could just say fuck it and focus on things at home for a bit. That’s my only opinion in this. We are hurting here in the U.S… on way to many levels. You can have you own opinion and I will respect it, but I dont have to like it.

For me, I feel fortunate to have been born in America. You will never change my mind on that.

Maybe it’s because I look for them… cause I know, no matter hard I try to ignore them, I cant stop being amazed. In these places where the collected treasures of our lives end up…. the thrift stores…. the salvation army encampments….those places of Goodwill toward our fellow man…. they are drawn like moths in the dark to a single gas flame… compelled to sift though old tomes of meaningless and pointless yellowing paper.

The Print Addicts.

I’ve asked myself time after time what amazes me about these vaudevillian archetypes over the years? I think I’ve tried ,on numerous occasions, to quantify and qualify… define them to some kind of dichotomy while observing them in the wild….only to be left stymied.

When I was younger and lived with my grandparents for a short time, I lived in a basement bedroom of their ranch style home in Lake Orion. It was a finished basement, but had long been surrendered to being used as storage for my grandmothers odd collections of Christmas decorations and plastic tote collection ( all empty ,but filled with such potential). Next to my bedroom were stacks upon stacks of the Readers Digests, some with protruding bookmarks and others tied together in small stacks of 3 or 4. Upon inquiry I learned that the stacks had multiple part stories and it prevented them from getting separated. I guess, amongst the anarchy that was the basement, I could appreciate my grandmothers logic. The thing was, in all my youth… from diapers to my driver’s license…. I never once saw my grand mother read one. In my later years I offered to help her clean up the basement, in hopes that tripping and avalanche hazards could be avoided. My first point of contention- the yellowing pages of the every growing compendium of Readers Digest–upon mentioning the concept of throwing them away my grandmother sneered at the thought. “Christopher…I have things in there I want to read and have some recipes bookmarked” she stated with such a fortitude I knew I had lost the battle without firing a shot. Hell…she spotted my recon team far in advance and sent in assassination squads to do my idea in before I could mount an attack. I retreated with an ” Ok, Nana… I wasn’t gonna throw them away without you permission, shit…. just don’t have them fall on you, OK? “

Now it wasn’t only the Readers Digest that had it’s own little wing in my grandparents basement. There was the religious philosophy annex, the self-help atrium, and the all too risque’ book nook I found in my early teens. Before your mind sinks into the gutter and reprimand me for coloring my grandparents in a bad light…the risque’ book nook encompassed a copy of the “Joy of Sex” by Alex Comfort and the partial collection of a National Geographic collection from the early 70’s. I remember finding the book and feeling like I had found some opus for unlawful carnal knowledge. To this day I look back and laugh at my younger self, not only for my naivety, but for my downright unscrupulous way of keeping it hidden… my preeeeeshhhus. I related the above because I thought it may shed a little light on my fascination with the Print Addicts. Cause, much like my grandmother Lillian, the entities I see deeply scouring the used book sections are doing the same thing that my grandmother did without knowing…mining the potential of ” things in there I want to read”

On my last trip to the Salvation Army here in our little burg of Mt. Pleasant I was in search of some decent work pants. Because of my size and my tendency to attract stains….used work pants are a boon for me when I can find them. The one thing that has always been an issue for me in the realm of visiting thrift stores is the undeniable aroma of…Old. Old couches, old bedding, old clothing, old dishware, old electronics, old …old…old…. but most of all … OLD BOOKS.

I wasn’t surprised to see the one or two Print Addicts slowly droning down the large south wall–reserved exclusively for donated books–of the Sal. The one gentlemen is there almost every time I go…. He looks like if you were to approach him he would mumble some runic words and cast a spell on you …. and disappear. His white hair and beard covering most of his face, his clothes a mismatch of tweed overcoat with a t-shirt underneath and rolled up jeans over loafers. He usually has a stack of books in a cart and I’ve heard him protect his bounty to another encroaching Print Addict. “Those are mine, Sorry”… firm but not abrasive is usually his warning. I always try and steal a quick glance into his cart… maybe a intrusive glimpse into the looking glass of his obsession ( and make sure he’s not buying every copy of catcher in the rye).

There is no pattern to his menagerie of wild print. Self-help, Histories of, Better homes and Gardens…and, yes, the occasional Readers Digest. I thought for awhile that perhaps he was a re-seller. Taking the tossed scripts of decades past and selling them for a profit on eBay or the like. But his mannerisms and attitude failed that litmus test. He was an addict. The incessant need to acquire more because held within is…. knowledge. Knowledge of how to make birthday cakes that look like a superhero, or how to adjust a carburetor, or how bubble theory and string theory both are possibilities in theoretical physics. How to heal your heart, how to heal your relationship, how to build a house and the bestest of them all….How to win friends and influence people. The stories and knowledge in all of these books…was this addicts opium…his heroin. And for that… despite the outward appearance, I could find no fault.

Somedays, if I had the time to wait, I would watch him bundle up these books ( cause some of them are in a series and you dont want them to get lost) and situate them on his bike and peddle away with his newest bounty of print. I hope that, in retrospect, that the comfort my grandmother had in her readers digest is afforded to him in his own library. I cant fault the Print Addicts, as I find I am one of my own… but I have found that audio books and ebooks are much more to my pallet and come with less aroma.

Cheers…until next time…

I ask myself why I write these things. Why I feel compelled to bumble my way through the telling of my thoughts and life. But here I am…sitting in a room with 3 dogs vying for position at my feet and me typing into the robot box.

You ever see shit that makes you just want to pull the vehicle over and think in earnest about what you just saw? Cause you want to make sure that that experience you just had was authentic and real. Well that was me today, sitting there in the Scientific companies parking lot because I wanted a moment of focus.

What possesses an old man to get a dog? I have 4 right now and at 47 I know I will prolly say goodbye to my last one in my 50’s. I don’t know if my heart will be able to say goodbye again after that… not to another one… losing Stas was hard…it just compounded the grief of losing Eric…every time I sat down here over the summer to try and say something… get feelings out… the rush of grief was just too unbearable. So I would just leave this alone…. and a part of me still feels the same way.

The old man was not moving fast… and the small dog that accompanied him was in no hurry to pass his master. There was this shuffle shuffle sniff sniff cadence that I think they had come to an unsaid agreement on. I could tell by his gait that he was no spring chicken… and I could tell by the wobble of the dog that his sevens had been adding up. It was right then I just had this firework go off in my gray matter…or maybe my heart… or soul. Just this befuddlement.

I started creating all these tangents in my mind about him and this dog. That he had a wife at home and that this was “their” dog. And that if he was suddenly to pass that the dog would be a comfort and companion to his widow. Conversely, if the dog passed the old man would have his wife to grieve. Inevitably I came to… what if either or dies. And they have nothing…. the thought made my heart sink and I was straight back to losing Stas… or that phone call about Eric passing. IT DIDNT GO ANYWHERE… the stages were bullshit… it just hid itself in warmer and longer days of summer. It just hibernated until the point it became hungry… and the simple act of seeing this old man and his dog was a tripwire.

I was pissed I felt that way… could feel that way. I didn’t want to be “triggered” . But there I was… feeling like I wanted to punch something, cry out loud, and go pee all in the same breath. All over the fucking shuffle shuffle sniff sniff of some geriatric duo.

Life is quixotically unhinged at the strangest points in my life. The lessons that I’m supposed to learn riddled with symbolism and fuckery. It’s like playing Pictionary, but just when you figure out where the cards are to make a match… there is this karmic ” ah got ya, shithead” moment where the cards get shuffled and you start again. It’s not that I’m struggling… far from it… I just wish the picture was a little clearer sometimes.

The old dude and his dog wasnt the issue… I want to tell myself that it was this learning moment where I have become a little more self aware of my own mortality. That this time we have is finite and to be happy. I believe I said it before… perhaps the best advice I could give myself, and maybe you, is….

” Enjoy yourself, It’s later than you think…..”

Cheers….

I passed into my 47th year on this planet a few days ago… unfortunately and unexpectedly my dog, Stas, didn’t pass his 7th on the same day. 8 months ago my best friend left before he could enter his 46th. The loss of both of them in such a short time has given me a perspective on death that I am not entirely comfortable with. Perhaps it is the reset in the grief process, whereas I wasn’t there for Eric when he passed, I held Stas as his last breaths left his body. It felt like taking the batteries out of my soul…the light that I thought I was rebuilding after losing Eric was now slowly dimming with this animals final moments.. Then the flood of impossibility… the questioning eyes of the other dogs….the chaos of the mind.

It was my birthday and the worlds gift to me was Death. Death I can understand because I’ve seen it’s face a lot in life. I’ve lost many in the past few years… not to Covid… but to time… mental illness… and their own hand. Death cares not about your intentions….it just is. The act of Death is a fleeting experience… one second they are there….the next they are a construct. Flesh without purpose. A box that what was important came in.

I buried Stas next to his pack brother, Licorice, on my birthday. I wrapped him in his favorite blanket, nestled a ball under his chin, and gave him one last hug before laying him into salted earth. I bellowed low and fell on the ground like having a tantrum… apologizing to him for not being able to save him. Apologizing for not spending as much time I thought I should have with him. Apologizing for not being able to cheat death for him. Then he was gone. He was now in the earth and there was nothing I could do.

The other side of Death’s coin is that of grief. Grief is a prison inside our heart where you send yourself without knowing. No matter how you try and prepare… that is where you end up. No short cuts or cheats. It’s this black hole of emotion that infects every aspect of your existence. An oily black sheen that you cant ever truly wash away. I haven’t said much about Eric, and I’m not ready to. I may never be ready to. Parts of my life will be forever dimmed from his passing. There are truly no words to express how much I appreciated his friendship and his loss will weigh on my heart til my last breath. I had never truly experienced the depths of grief until he was gone. But now that I have…I feel its crawling back out of it’s pit to bleed me from within. I write this not looking to sympathize or to process…but to tell you that I am not OK… and I’m ok with that.

Death and Grief have taught me that I am not alone. That I have had a connection to some wonderful souls…and in losing them… I have glimpsed the true meaning of love….and it’s OK to hurt…It’s OK to not be alright. I truly don’t expect anyone to understand it. Maybe I don’t want it to be. I don’t want to sit here and quantify what my friend and dogs lives meant to me in steps. I refuse to heal on anyone’s terms except my own and that’s such a odd feeling. Cause one moment I’m fine… and then I’m blubbering like a child… my hands clenched tight wanting to hit, kick and punch… at life.

Death has taught me humility about my life…and maybe that also comes with age. I dunno. I find many of the things I was so concerned with just a few years ago now seem pointless. I just want to be happy but don’t know if I have allowed myself to be without a bottle in my hand. I, unfortunately, try to tell people I’m a “realist” when ” pessimist” rings true.

I miss my friend… all of them.

it’s been a tick.

And honestly we didn’t want to start writing tonight…and for the WordPress logarithms ,you may be digesting this for longer than it’s relevant.

I know what you want me to write about. But Im not. I’ve given him a year to rest , because I cant…I need him to find a place in my soul to rest. You don’t hush a dragon…you let that power find it’s place to seek solace and then marvel at its beauty.

I’m not a writer. I’m a fuck. And I’ve been a skilled fuck for about 47 years now. For those of you who know me… I’m am admittedly an odd duck….for those who don’t and may have landed on this blog out of desperation and /or believing that “Dirty White Walls” was in some way associated with lonely white housewives.. the joke is on you.

I’m here tonight because it’s mid winter in Michigan. It’s this war of attrition between alcoholism and sanity and if you don’t live in the mitten , then you will find afore mentioned symbolism something of artistic license…for those in the throw of the Mit… we be drunk.

I get a lot of memories.

Facebook finds it’s duty to accent my grief.

Luckily each are force fed to me by Zuckerberg. ( Zuckerberg is in your autocorrect btw… forever guaranteed in the history of the world. When your kids misspell his name in class…. they will have no recourse… Mark made it so you couldn’t mess up his name. Not taking into account for those of Greek descent with names like Triantafyllidou… this name will literally give your spellcheck a hard on… but Ol’ Zuck will make sure his title and namesake are there with a screaming red hard on to fuck with your submission)

I wrote a couple years back about a couple of young kids in converse shoes chasing each other innocently. That summer friendship with some weird “My Girl” overtones. ( watch out for the pollinators). That’s what Mr. Zuckkerburg….Zurkerzwizel…. Ok , Zuckerberg has afforded me.

Each day I wake up and I see the memories. And I dread those I see with my friend. It’s a slap in the face. It’s not a big slap, but it’s a grieving slap because there is no denying how someone was so ingrained in your life. It’s a bitter reminder that all the stories you heard from your grandparents about losing “people” and how they changed you is now your story.

The sad thing is you keep trying to tell yourself that you are not repeating it.

But wait…I’m not old… I’m not…..

I just need time to heal… wait…

Time.

I have no concept

I’m 23

I’m 46

I lost my friend

I’m 2….screaming for my Mom because I’m afraid

I’m 46……and I’m a big boy now

I’m 46 wishing I was 2….

Then you wake up.

The dogs need to go outside and you need to get in the shower.

All these mundane things.

You stand in the shower and ask the universe to take….

take from me

my time.

my time to give my friend

time better spent

time I we both cant get back.

the time for one last drink and a smile

one last time around the world to ” up the academy”

Today seemed like a good day to get this down. I’m feeling a little morose about life lately…just behind the curve of where I think I should be lately. Could be a few things… just so much to do and not enough time. I would like to think now that this experience I’m going to relay was one of childhood ignorance. Something we all must go through , in one way or another, to zero our more compass and let us establish a true heading.

When I was 7 I was given one of the most sacred of entitlements a young boy can have. I was gifted an BB gun. I think in todays vernacular one would describe it as an “air rifle”. But in 1982 in Lake Orion, Michigan I was presented with the legendary Crosman Pumpmaster Classic with wood stock. I was bequeathed this piston powered pandemonium machine by my grandfather. Per my grandmothers concern, I was given all the precautions and warnings of the dangers owing this new “firearm” and released into the wilds behind my grandparents house to hunt down wild beasts and pop bottles. ( It wasn’t til a year later that I was able to sit in a movie theater and commiserate with a young Ralphie Parker about almost shooting ones own eye out)

For months thereafter I would take off into the pines behind my grandparents’ house looking for pesky critters to dispatch. There was the a very defined “no kill” list… robins, cardinals, chickadees. Cats and Dogs…. and most of all Skunks. I was engaged to kill as many chipmunks and red squirrels as I could because they were the mortal enemy of my grandfather who did battle with them weekly trying to assault his 4 bed room, 2 bath ranch home in the suburbs. Not only was I on patrol to fend off vermin… I was now the only boy on the dead end road that openly carried a rifle down the road ( this was actually pretty normal back then as in the fall the much older neighbor boy would go rabbit hunting in the nearby fields with his shotgun following my same footsteps) Since I was younger it drew the attention of some of my compadres in the neighborhood. We would sit at the end of the driveway and shoot Pepsi cans off the split rail fence as fast as we could suck them down. It was good being the only 7 year old gun slinger on Neuman Road and I thought this may be my career when I grew up. Well, as fate would have it, I would learn a valuable lesson in the next few weeks as summer faded into fall.

In all honesty I never killed a damn thing until October of 1982. Yes…I had set a mouse trap.. I may have gone fishing… blah blah blah. I never shot anything and ended it’s life until that day when I shot the dove. It was something that has stuck around in my head for decades and it surfaces now and again when I’m at my low points. My grandparents lived on a dead end road but that was changing. People were moving to the area and a new road grade had been plowed into the pines behind their house. It was a mire of mud, uprooted trees and dying pines about 50 feet wide. Soon it would be cleared off and paved, but for the time being it was this path through the trees. The day had started off as any other and found the neighborhood kids and I at the end of the driveway tossing a ball and talking about what had happened at school. On a whim I busted out the Crosman because the collection of cans needed to be thinned out before they could organize an ambush. Plink…..Plink…. Twunk…. Plink. The sounds of accurate and precise marksmanship. ( I cant tell you how many misses there were between the sounds…but they greatly outweighed the success rate). It was about that time that the neighbor girl, Kelly, passed the gun back to me. Kelly was a few years older than me and was going to be my wife. She didnt know it yet.. but every story I had been read to told me that the good guy with the gun gets the girl and lives happily ever after.

The dove sat alone on the telephone lines just above where our shooting gallery of cans were arranged. I had spied it there before we started plinking. It never moved…just sat there with the occasional “cooo….cooo”. Its distance from the ground and the inaccuracy of the bb gun just made it a fruit just out of reach. I don’t know what made me level those iron sights on the thing and pull the trigger–but I did…. the pwathunk of the air escaping the end of the barrel made the dove jump and ………………. nothing. It just sat there on the line. “What are you shooting at? That bird?!?!” asked Kelly…. which attracted the other kids. ” Yeah… but you cant hit it… too far away” I replied. I started the ritual… Puff-wack—-puff-wack—–puff-wack Three pumps. Pulled back the brass pin that fed the breach…checked to make sure the little death ball bb was in the chamber…. aimed… and pwathunk. Once again the dove moved abruptly, shaken, but reaffirmed it’s grip on the wire and steadied itself. “See….it’s not even afraid of it” I proclaimed.

We spent the next 4 or 5 min taking turns lobbing salvos of bb’s out of the gun. Always with the same result… a startled bird… and us saying maybe a couple more pumps to get it up there. No one thought that what we were doing was wrong…no one thought eventually-with enough pumps–that we may hit this poor creature and then what.

Then it happened.

Before I could level my next shot–both Kelly and the neighbor Todd had both took their turns–the dove departed. It flew upwards and then took a sharp turn and descended abruptly into my grandparents yard… a twisting display of feathers and despair. I ran up to it thinking Todd or Kelly must have have connected with one of their shots. On closer inspection… the bird was riddled with small holes… some bb’s imbedded just below the skin… others deeper where small tears of blood started to weep from wounds. If you have ever have the feeling of dread come over you for the first time you know that part of you goes numb and cold for a brief second and that there is a massive sinking feeling in your chest as the realization of your situation and your actions become a reality. I did this. We did this.

I heard this voice from up the road. “Did you kids shoot that bird?!?!” It was Kelly’s mom looking down on us from her porch. Yes…No… Yes… Our replies a mingled aberration of guilt and admission. “Is it dead? “-she demanded “No, Its just hurt” I confirmed. “You better take it and put it out of it’s misery and dont ever let me see you kids do that kind of shit again” she scowled at us. And trust me… we took it as gospel.

I ran up to my grandparents garage and grabbed some of the rags my grandfather kept in his shop. We took the dove and put it in a small box surrounded by my grandfathers torn up socks and white t shirts. It would struggle for a second…then stop.. it’s head slowly dropping to one side as it’s injuries took it’s life. We managed to make our way to the newly plowed road behind the house. It seemed like a place where we could hide our sins from the eyes of adult for the time being. We sat there all looking at this poor bird… asking each other what we were supposed to do. There was finger pointing and blame and even the fires of a fight were brewing… but it quickly faded as the October evening set in and streetlight warnings told us we all needed to be home soon.

All except me.

There I sat with this bird… watching it die. I’ve really thought about this over the years and it comes to mind quite often when I’m driving and I see roadkill or a overzealous squirrel trying to cross the road– and the thought is this– ” That really just… just is shit. That ” insert animal here” got up today and decided that it was gonna go about it’s business… fly here… waddle over to that side of the road… and bam… it’s whole existence is muted by a bad decision and an oncoming chevy emblem. That animal was just trying to live… what a raw fucking deal, man”

The dove died a useless and silent death. I buried it at the base of some pines and left nothing to mark it but this memory burnt into my mind. I’ve killed many things since… deer, rabbits, coyotes…and yes…even a skunk or two. The thing is… nothing has filled me with more loathing for my own existence than that first feeling of dread about needlessly taking a life than when I was 7. I took time away from a creature that never did me any harm and I took it’s life with no intent of feeding myself or using it’s sacrifice in any beneficial way. I did it because I was ignorant and I could. I have since changed that about myself… tempered my steel in a way.

I guess we all have to go through these growing pains… I just wanted to get this down before time may steal it’s vividness away.

Ping Ping Ping….bong bong bong bong bong…..ping ping ping…

Flash… Flash….. FLASH FASTER FLASH FASTER… MORE PING PING PING PING>>….. BONG BONG BONG BONG!!!!!!!

OK!!!?!?!?! I’LL SUBMIT!!!!!!! I’M PUTTING ON MY SEATBEALT!!!! JESUS CHRIST!!!

I loathe that we have no control over this. We literally get into our automobiles and submit ourselves to an visual and audible torture until we capitulate.

Idiot lights…Dash gremlins…. Government regulatory suppression devices… mounted there to make sure you comply.

Yes I’m feeling a little sensitive today. It’s not that I am railing against the machine… I wear my seat belt ( one roll over accident without one was enough for me) It’s just that I don’t like being TOLD I have to. And I guess that brings me to my point. Remember when it was just a warning light? It wasn’t coupled with this torturous droning of a buzzer that NEVER STOPS!!! Here check this shit out:

“Table 1. Descriptions of seat belt reminder sounds. Sound. Description. Slow beep. A tonal signal that plays at a rate of 1 Hz, with an on duration of 0.65 second.”-https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/810848_0.pdf

That little tidbit of info comes from a 120 page paper from the National Highway Safety Administration. Someone… well a group of people if you look at the notes …spent who knows how long figuring out how to annoy the shit out of you with the correct Hz and time duration to get you to do what they want! It’s “Nudging Theory” in it’s most pure form!

I guess what I’m pisses me off is that I see it more and more daily… the guiding of the herd with simple, but effective, annoyances to achieve complicity. What bothers me about it is that it’s generational. When I was growing up you really didnt have alot of lights regulating your safety in your car. Now mind you I’m only 46 years old…but the majority of my cars to date are still pre 2008… One of the first things I do is purchase a set of “mechanical gauges” for my vehicles. I was taught at a young age that a “warning light ” comes on when a problem has already happened…a gauge is in indicator of what’s going on currently. I really want you to think about that and the inherent wisdom it affords. The same wisdom can be applied across many aspects of our lives. We don’t care about anything to we start seeing flashing lights and 1Hz repeating at 0.65 second. We think everything is “OK” until it isn’t….cause the light came on… but if we had a gauge we could see the trouble comings… we could check ourselves before we wreck ourselves.

Think about your relationships. Those ” red flags” are just ” warning lights” with a coat of paint. It’s like buying a shitty Grand Am that has the oil light on, airbag light on, and the tire low pressure light on. What does that equate to human beings… What “warning lights” do we look for on Tinder? What ones do we expect and ignore? Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a few gauges that showed what’s really going on under the hood? I mean… I have all the lights on…my radiator cap is leaking…. and my emotional tires need a good rotation… but other than that…I’m cherry.

There are “warning lights” in other areas too…. Politics is a good one. And to many… those ones are subjective. They follow a narrative and what may be a “ping ping ping” on one side of the aisle is situation normal on the other. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a gauge to see how far the needle swings from left to right? Know if there is a developing problem within the cogs of the machine before the warning light comes on? But… somehow I think it would just degrade into being the usual conservative/liberal /Ford/Chevy bullshit it always does. I’m serious when I say I know people that say ” follow the science” and also believe in the Earth is fucking flat. I need no gauge for that person… their light shines bright.

I guess what I’m trying to say is…. Check ya shit, homie. Check ya gauges… dont assume that warning light is gonna give you a heads up… cause it’s made for after the fact… it’s a confirmation of your ignorance… it’s your idiot light.

Another scribble in the brochure of my life… hoping to drum up some tourist to come visit my mind. Step right up… step right up. A penny a thought… guaranteed not to disappoint. Step right up.

I turned 46 a few weeks ago…. and in the time since I have lost a friend, quit a relationship, and embraced may apathy for just about 99 percent of existence. It’s quite liberating if you really want to know the truth. I literally walk around chanting this mantra ” Fuck em’…. oh…a little fuck em’ over there…. didn’t use your turn signal… fuck you….” I’m dishing it out like a fat kid at the self serve ice cream station at Ponderosa with all the sprinkles. Cause why? Cause why not? Do I need a purpose? Are you concerned about my mental stability if I don’t have this critical issue that has lead me to the conclusion that we are so genuinely fucked that no matter what I do… outside of killing someone ….. would change anything in this country… let alone this planet? Nope… I’m sane as WebMD says I can be. I passed the sane test… so I must have the upper hand in this game of dopes.

Our species is the supposed to be the most intelligent life on our planet. We rule this mud ball… but here we are acting like the cast of Star Trek fucked all the My Little Ponies as the Care Bears looked on in judgement. You cant say anything without going through the ringer o f political correctness and virtue/cancel culture. You can’t have an opinion without the fear of groupthink judgement. Your radical idea is good as long as it follows the narrative of my radical idea… but to really delve into the reasons behind the issues becomes moot because we are more concerned with sensationalism and playground politics and how many shares and likes on twitter and Facebook.

Point in case. Lets talk about this ” look at me I got my vaccine” bullshit. I’m all for vaccines. You will never know if I got one or not. Why… cause it’s my personal choice, and I don’t need to be a part of your Orwellian virtual-signaling ” Look at me..I’m now part of the correct people … trust the science…. ” blah blah blah. All you want is someone to know that you did your part to combat the Covid. Sitting there with your little card like you got some special privilege …not only once… but twice. Look.. good for you… you did your part… heres a cookie and naptime is at 1.

Personally, I was sorta hoping for more. Zombies… tears in the fabric of space-time….Hell, isn’t about time for aliens to show up… I’m talking the lizard people, pleiadians, the grays…. you know… the anal probe dudes? It’s shit like this that makes me sit down, cut the end off a fat stogie and pour 3×2 fingers of scotch into a glass and utter ” What in the ever living fuck?” and then to proceed douse any ambition inside with a salvo of nicotine and alcohol.

I did a few things in the past 6 months… I took a solo canoe trip down the Au Sable river here in Michigan.. it was 3 nights/4 days of solitary bliss. it rained 3 of the 4 days… but ” The Lucky Bastard” rode the current from Grayling to Mio with all roguish charms of a pirate ship. I plan on doing a couple more trips this summer… The Manistee and maybe the Muskegon river. I cannot tell you the peace it brings me being carried along on those cold currents with so many possibilities around each corner. My only wish is that there was a good bar and cigar lounge intermittently placed along the route for restocking and a cheese burger.

I lost my friend James to a sudden blood clot. I don’t feel the need to go into it further but his loss will be felt in my core group of friends for the rest of our lives. Farwell, Bones… I hope you meet up with Matt at the gates of Valhalla and await the rest of us when we are called.

It’s difficult to speak about my relationship that I ended because there was nothing wrong with it. My person did nothing wrong, did nothing to drive me away, and it wasn’t because I didn’t feel a connection… a deep connection with her. It was because I know who I am…and I eventually would disappoint her… and in that time afterword we would both come to resent each other and ultimately turn away. The words ” know thine self” comes to mind saying those last sentences. I am a selfish man and I can’t turn away from how I’m wired. I’ve tried and I end up loathing myself and the connection I have… ultimately becoming dark and brooding.

You aren’t supposed to admit things like this about yourself. Why not? Is that why for years I keep pushing things down because I feel like I’m supposed to fill some kind of emotional checklist to be “OK”. So there are no red flags or warning lights. I was single for two years and I felt something for someone…but I realized before it got too serious… before years were in the rear view…. to stop it. For that…I gladly take my lumps as an asshole. I did waste her time…and mine too. But you don’t get to back to being 22 and say ” hey, I like hanging out and getting naked with you, but I’m gonna go do guy stuff now for a few weeks” Women sorta take offence to that I’ve heard. So I’m gonna stay single…I’m going to realize…that at 46 it’s better to fly solo….. like the canoe on the river…. than to waste someone else time and break their heart because I cant grow up.

So here I am…. chasing windmills…. galloping toward some challenge that I’ve made up in my mind to be worthy of my time— all the while… life goes on- I’m very aware what I am missing…but I am resolute all the same. I don’t feel anything except the challenge of dealing with those that clog up my world with their existence…

Perhaps the next time you look down the river you may see me… paddling away… hoping to get away from anything of substance…. for it’s all a joke with old age as being the punchline.

Paddle on , Sancho…. Paddle on…