Human Dum-Dum

“I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness – a real thorough-going illness.”

–Fyodor Dostoyevsky Notes from the Underground

Bukowski once said something to the effect of: It was writing and the bottle that kept me alive…something like that. For a while, maybe a year…or two, I’ve been trying one half of that equation–vigorously. I haven’t really been writing a lot, and it’s a bit depressing. So I think I’ll try both halves and see how that works out.
I’m not sure why I set an arbitrary 1000 words per post rule. I think I do this to myself for nefarious reasons. I can’t be 100 percent sure. I can remember why I didn’t want to go over that number, but I can be under. This is me giving myself permission to do shorter blog posts. Clearly, this is a throw away paragraph and will not be in the final draft. What? How did you do that, you scrappy paragraph? Well, at any rate–I can’t stay mad at you, you rapscallion.
That last paragraph was a breach of the trust that we have built as writer and reader. And I apologize. This is obviously a blatant attempt at word-padding. And it is beneath us both. But you try and tell that paragraph to get outta here. You can’t; can you? I ain’t mad. Group hug: me, you, and the paragraph.
I recently quit my job. I tried to stay on as long as I could. That’s a lie. I could have stayed on longer, but things were getting dumber there and I’d lost my sense of humor about the entire mess. So, I gave them my three days notice and bounced. Generally, when quitting a job I give two weeks’ notice as a courtesy. But that is if I’m moving on to another opportunity. If that company was inclined to terminate my employment, they would not give me two weeks’ notice. They’d tell me to hand over my keys and leave the property. And I was less quitting my job than firing them as my company. So that’s a justification. But it’s an honest one. As honest as can be expected from the likes of me. This is our unwritten agreement. That made me giggle more than it should’ve.
The fact is, I came up with a philosophy years ago that follows–roughly: “There’s gotta be an easier way to die broke, and we all die broke”. I don’t know if it’s a life-hack or a rationalization. Either way, I’ve a propensity…possibly an addiction…for hitting the reset button on life. But, I’m not the one who made the button red and candy-like. You’re welcome, Ren and Stimpy fans the world over. This blog gets read in Korea, though I’ve little evidence that it’s gaining any traction in that time-zone. But I regress, daily. That made me a giggle an appropriate amount.
Of recent, I tried a thought experiment. I did it on accident at first, but then it became more deliberate. It happened on Facebook, the: “Boys of Summer” (Don Henley version) of the internet. I’d over-estimated the collective intellect of Facebook (I realize that people get offended when one questions another’s actions intellectually; I don’t like it either but as the great sage Lil’ Weezy is wont to quip: “I don’t go around fire, expectin’ not to sweat”.) I commented about Planned Parenthood in response to a hoax video that I’d already known as a farce (me and the rest of the interweb), that The Face had not come to terms with…or: with which Facebook had not yet come to terms. I do not mean to be vulgar. The baby parts “selling” video…it’s not real…Bing it, or Google it, or check out the front page of the internet: Reddit…it is fake.
My next post is about my interactions with some people whom I love. People with whom I can discuss a great deal of issues. But people who seem to have determined that the suggestion of Planned Parenthood–as a positive–communicates that you are pro-abortion. Which is unsettling for this pro-choice/pro-life human dum-dum…