Making Angels Cry

Your Best Friend Is The Enemy

2012-02-28T06:09:00.002-08:00

In times of trouble, tension and turmoil, and were stuk in those times now, as we've been for a long, long time, one has to realize that, even if life would be much easier to handle if people were reasonalbe and able to think twice before they speak, ponder opver situations and statemnts, act and speak with a combination of guts, brains and heart, that is very diffucult to make practice.

As a consequence, if you are a thinker, a rational person, who faced with daily anger, fights and small and big issues that all rotate toward the gigantic flaw of mankind, which is interaction, you shall get ready for one thing: recognize enemies.

The idea of enemies might strike you oddly, if youre used to befriend people. An enemy isnt necessarily someone who hates you or you hate. It isnt solely an individual who damages your health, life or mental stability in a direct manner. Those exist, but they are almost a blessing, because they are easy to find, identifiable, targetable and in the open about their role.

The real risk is not realizing when you are surrounded by them in hiding, or to use a very silly clichée, in sheep clothing.

Hardly before now i have realized how a lot of people i usually would identify as harmless or even feiendly, can quickly turn into poison during a daily existence or a casual conversation.

And even if at times, your own passion might feel like a burden to you, do not give it up. Fighting makes you alive, and even the small fights are necessary, if you have to protect people you love or most importantly, the integrity of your own soul.

See your own spirit, and i swear this is not meant to be one of those disgusting new age-y metaphores, as a fire that needs to be kept alive and well. You can keep the high road about the insigngicant silliness of most arguments, about people's petty negativity and about their small repulsive soul-hole. Still, you need to be true to your own heart and it's values. So if you're a decent person, like i think you probably are if you are reading this, remember clearly:

They will hide that as "their right to speak openly", as irony or as a casual statemnt. But its isnt.

They will try to shove hatred in your ears, make spiteful statements in public or on social networks (and no matter what people say, every word counts, even if it's "only on the internet".

They will clap when people die, make hateful jokes about others pain, spew homophobia, racism, sexism and bile,. masking it with their own need to be 'incorrect.

They will promote illiteracy, indifference, apathy, disgust towards life and cynicsm as positive values.

Try to conince you that sarcasm is always good and that not caring is hpow it must be. That you are silly and juvenile for loving life and all that it has to give, that your passion is wrong and misdirected, that you have to be empoty, bitter and carelss like they are.

They will, sometimes make you hate a right cause becauser they use it for hate. They will use the rightyful fight for animal rightys, for women or for children to turn the game upside down and use it as a werapon toi attack others. And you will question everything you thought was right. And also why peoiple you trusted, loved and admired, suddenly became that way. At first it might be a smnall thing, and insignificant one. But it wont stop there.

So do not be afraid to fight back. And be true to your own fire. Even if it costs at first. Always fight for the thibngs you think are right.

Wiseblood

2012-02-22T04:25:00.000-08:00

I might conseder myself above the adulthood line. I have matured, ripened and gone through a fast process of decay that has gained the prize of "Cranky Old Fuck".

Now i'm well too good natured and slightly smart to be one of those sad cases that become ten times more annoying than the old relatives they have stuck into a hospice, before they reach the age of forty. I still enjoy life. If anything, my maturity has made me enjoy life more, purified from the slight amount of idioticv obsessions that i got in the past years. I love my passions. I love sex. I love love.

I wont be sitting at home all day staring at the emptiness, cause i'm "too old"

I wont become ignorant, apathetic and without interests cause "i'm too busy" (there is no such thing as too busy. even at the busiest. Just admit youre dead)

I wont start chuckling at what i liked in the past, saying that lethal sentence that is "ah, i was young back then, i was foolish....". Thereis NO limit age to be foolish.

I will always enjoy my guilty pleasures. Only my pleasures have no guilt. Cause pleasure is pure. has no age, has no shame and makes your life tasteful.

I will not have shame or bitterness or frustration in my heart cause no matter how down i am and how quick life is going by, i know i will be able to be awesome to my last dying breathe, because that is how i am.

If i have a child, i will spend time and effort on making it happy and not on sermonizing on the mount about how enlightened i am or how people dont "get it" or how "i have a better view of the world" since i (partially) contributed at creating a talking pink thing.

Still there are a few reasonings that i might have acquired through the later stages of my maturation:

- The myth of bullied kids taking over their bullies when time passes by, is a myth. Weak and bullied kids will meet new bullies in the future. The bullies will probably be succesful, cause yes a lot of them are potential failures but even more will actually use the very reasons they were bullies to be succesful: attitude and a rich, money filled upbringing. A rich asshole kids that has a family that will back him up no matter how cruel and mean he is, will not get any comeuppance. He will become an important person and bully his employees even more. Maybe even harass or downright abuse a few. And hat will be regarded as "Balls".

And the frail, intelligent, sensitive kids will grow up frustrated and dry up or worse, find drugs and self destruction. The only way out is hardening up and yet keep a little bit of yourr heart alive. And on that, parents can help. Get off thata ss once in a while.

- I still am concinced that parretning isnt supposed to be nothing more than giving you child support and the basics to stand on his own legs. If they dont do that, it's nto your fault. You can admit that: your child is a loser that will never amount to anything. You have not fucked up. Losers sometimes are bor like that and theres no amount of good parenting that will fix that.

Still, you at least have to guarantee to your kids a solid, loving background. If you are a single lady with a million kids and yet you keep dating douchebags, you have no right to whine on how life is not fair. You possibly have something broken in you that will doom all your children to eternal unhappiness. So stop having kids, give yours to better parents and put a corkscrew in that thing. Oh and if you are a man, causing that? Cut it off. Youre a biological hazard with pants.

That said i love babies. like a lot. especially the one that isnt mine. so i might be bad parent one day, who knows.

- Young people are stupid. Its not age difference or a different world. they are morons with moronic taste. They will be our downfall. That said i like Bieber's voice in Mistletoe.

Farewell, minions.

Blank

2012-02-17T04:58:00.002-08:00

Guilt is a virus-. Of all the flesh rotting creatures that can infest bodies or the crippling miscommunications that can destroy your brain, guilt terrifies me.

I feel responsible and guilty of not being able to be good enough.

And that goes beyond, any success, or solution to problems, or ability to make things that i might or might not have. My father threatens mw with suicide attempts. He makes my mother more ill than she should be.

None of the two things are really a part of the point im trying to make. I'm just realizing that my existence is affected by people, it shpould not be affected from. And the ways in which they manipulate the holes i have left in my personality while trying to become an adult, or even a person.

I am not good. I have never been. I made confued choices and now i am not able to make things right. And i feel guilty for not being a better person.

I feel like i should be more indifferent, so that i could focus my energies on other issues and be there for the ones who really need me.

I have deceived them, giving them the idea that i am a good person, ablke to support and string. But i crumble. And no, it isnt something that happens cause we are humans. We do not have the right to be humans. We are supposed to be better, to outgrow our humanity. The good ones do. Good parents, good lovers, good friends. They get over their humanity and flaws and are able to improve other's life, insted of losing their strength of the obstacles.

Good people give and rebuild their strength at each fall so they could give again. A good person does not say "i'm sorry this is a bad day", cause their only reason to be, is providing comfort and strength for their loved ones. And if they fail at that, they do not get excuses.

I fail constantly and seeing people believing in me, hurts even more.

I am not able to support the one si love., cause i let evil suck the life out of me. And if it aint evil, i still am not able to do good for them either.

Mine is the worst type of evil: i am not good, i am not bad. I am inconsequential. I do not do. My actions are thepretical. My positivity is in words that disappear and leave no trace. I am a series of sentences with no actions. I am promises that get not fulfilled.

Done. You can go read something else.

Resistence

2012-02-08T05:28:00.000-08:00

Woke up for the twentieth morning in a rown with a cloud in my brain. And each day it takes different cotton-like shape. It feels and tastes like sour milk and cigarette smoke. Often it has the aftertaste odf the couple of cigarettes that i might have ended up smoking the night before, lonely and pponderous ayt an icy temperature on a balcony covered with remains of dirty, mud like snow.

It's an addiction as it has hardly been before, it was more innocent back then. Yes, i drank like a sucidal person and with that came packs and packs of swiftly shaped venom. But there was a purpose behind that. Maybe standing outside with other addicts like you, rambling about pointless topic, heòlped by the noble power alcohol has to make even the most pathetic and vile of verbal self degradations seem so clear and necessary at some times.

Now it's a fight with myself. An"i shall quit, only one". Followed by a few tokes of nausea inducing crap that cause me anxiety and self hatred.

And when i wake up the toughts collide in my head. I have little money. Im practically unemployed. I feel pointless and hopeless. I am loved but i dont deserve that love, because i cannot do anything really good for those who love me because im impotent in my condition. And anxiety, spread all over the place like rotten jam.

And realizing, every day more, how the world hasnt change around me. Neither have i changed. Age hasnt brought disenchantmenbt or worries. It hasnt given me lucidity or being outdates. A lot of the failkyures i suyrrounded myself with in my twenties are still failures now. And we are all fighting against a life that feels like a slow trickling poison that is killing our souls with a slow, gangrenous death and taking away its very own energy.

But what is really killing me is how apathy has won. It always won in the past but never quite like this. This is when you realize that the only two options are either letting your own heart die inside of you or slip into despair because you keep trying to fix things but they break to pieces, smaller and smaller under your hands.

And whenever you swam out of the shit pool you feel like it was pointlesssince nothing has changed and youre exactly where you wer ebefore. And fights are won, but wars just get bigger and bigger.

And you look around. And the passions you had are now something that slows you down. Music is heard, not listened to. Its there, all alike, like a nuimb lifeless sound in the background to which no one besides teenagers who still have their brains filled up with delusions of hope. Its something that exists but no one really loves. And other form of art, entertainment, beauty. Its all one big cloud of stuff that you have there but you barely notice.

And slowly, indifference has become a necessity, because everything you loved costs you money and time and an investment that keeps getting more and more fruitless and empty. And you tell yourself that you're doing it for your own pleasure, that passions are what makes life better. But the silent truth in the deeper layers of your heart is that, maybe, you dont really care anymore. And that you would feel much lighter if you were like everyone else, numb, detached, focused on single daily goals like survival and enrichment. Ignorant and indifferenty, only retaining the infromations that you will need for the next ten minutes. Spending times with people and having sexual intercourse. Not loving.

All it takes to get there is a second for your brain to give up. And its getting harder to resist.

It's a a hard road to rationalization.

2012-02-07T05:34:00.001-08:00

I consider myslef a good person. I might have a lot of hard opinions on issues and i'm far from balanced or morally clean. I have had my moments of open minded niceness, and my belief in the chance of improving the world or at least making it humanly tolerable exiusted at some point. Yet, with years and disillusions, that belief faded away like a poster for a cool convention that no one attended.

It rained on it and was replaced by the need of being more strong an inflexible on a few belief, so i wouldnt slowly drown into the cotton mouthed quicksands of apathy.

No, i do not believe in the legal systetm, i stated that before. And i also often think that capital punishment could be neccessary. And yes, i have a vehement hate focused on how in modern society, rapists, abusers and murderers tend to be the ones that afford justice.

That happens because criminals,- often, are backed up by families or people that are prone to get them out of prison and punsihment at any cost. And the protection of a lwayer is a good that is traded like any other good. Justice is now debatablre, and modifiable through an exercise of literatre wording, made more easily poiled by the inner manipulations of legal shenanigans.

Yes, i am aware of the frutration that such view causes. And i have felt angry before.

Yet , this morning, some person opted ofr posting in a public network an image coming from the streets of Brazil. Depitcting a man accused of rape, and punished through streeet justice, his genitals cut and stuck in his throat, as a statement. His victims were, alllegedly, children.

Under the picture a stement but the poster, in the lines of "share if you want this type of justice to be used in our country". Under that, any form of open reaction of digust was sturned into an accusation of being pro-rape. Else, it was celebration and excitement.

While on a conceptual level, i can understand the gut reaction against rape, whether it involves children or not, and on thta there could a be a long sicussion, since it seems that a lot of people are volatile if the rape involves children but get suddenly more prone to forgiveness when its full gwon adults, i cannot, as a human being, accept the mentality behind that.

Not because i am civilized, or a prude. I hate too.

But what that really is, isnt a need to make a statement for justice: it's pornography of hatred. Litterally.

Violence and anger are connected to sexuality, when it comes to males. And in the modern age, the main justification for the not-so-secret arousal you ahve towards an image of violence, is a need for justice. A need to set things right. A need to do a greater good where someone else failed.

To explain more clearly: you are using the excuse of justice to sporead and cover up your unjhealthy exzcitement towards violence. And to not be labeled as sick, vile individual, as you are, you use the shield of justice and freedom of thought. Your beliefs are the cloak under which you hide your sickness.

The obsession for showing animal cruelty to promote an animalist message is simlar: you are basically excited by the sudden burst of adfrenaline you receive from your won idnignation or sickness but you cover that shameful feeling with a good cause. Once we had "faces of death", now we have social statements.

It's obsessing on child pron ography in the name of children. Abuse in the name of equal rights. Racial jokes against racism.

But dont post tits, those are dirty.

Despite All My Rage

2012-01-26T05:11:00.000-08:00

In recent times, there has been a whole lot of yapping about the very loosely graspable concept of "freedom". Partially because of how the major countries who rule the universe are deciding to handle laws and regulation on private personal freedom and the very thin, almost invisible line, bewtween that and the duties of an individual.

And i'm constantly surprised at how in the discussion of freedome, that very simple word becomes a tool to actually suppress the real thing. How "freedom of speech" is used as powerful weapon to actually crush any right that individuals have to defnd themselves from abuse in a debate. How "Freddom" to have an opinion means litterally to express hurtful and dangerous thoughts with no oncequence, and attack viciously whoever does not agree.

How drinkers use their freedom of drinking as a way to belittle the sober ones, and to not feel judge they judge others.

How Vegetarians use their freedom to not eat meat as a tool to abuse other people's choices with aggression and attempts to convert. not completely removed from how Templars did with Christianity

But i dont really want to discuss that.

Recently i happened to see a documentary, which contained a video concerning the state of Clinics for The Mentally Ill in Italy (and other countries).

The video showed people tied up to beds, covered with bruises, dirty, screaming and malnourished. It had been filmed not more than 3 or 4 years ago, and not in regions of poverty or abandon. It wasnt a clinic for the rich but not a public one either.

To that followed a series of images from asylums for the criminally insane. People tortured, abused, starved.

During a discussion on the topic with moderate thinking people, the type of people one invites to dinner and with whom you might share hints to what school you want tyo send your kids to, the reactions i obtained were of this kind:

"Well, yes its terrible, but when you have to handle with crazy people, what are you supposed to do?"

"My brother was sent to a clinic like that. I didnt visit that much back then but when he came out, he was so much better. So i guess some of those places work..."

"Well, criminals are criminals and they're supposed to be punished, so i'm in favour of them suffering. I'm against death penalty though"

But i'm not sure i want to discuss this either.

A classic image i always witnessed when i was visting the psychiatrist, in the waiting room was a young person, male or femal, generally barely over thirty. They didnt look seriously ill. Or if they were the illness had shattered them enough to make them look mostly frail and exhausted. Probably numbed out by chemicals that had slowly but surely eroded their soul. Close to them, there was usually their mother or father. And often what they uttered sounded like this:

"sit right. Dont stare at people. Keepo your head down. Dont touch your hair. Dont talk. Breathe quietly"

And so on. But discussing this with the forementioned moderate thinkers cayused sentences like

"well i am sure that having a mentally ill son or daughter is hard. Poor parents, always blamed of everything. No matter what you do, you're wroing...."

So my point seems to be: we are talking about freedom, and indignantly scream when big faceless corporations take our tiny freedoms away. Or wave how everyone should have less freedome, so we could have order. Each has its own opinion.

And yet. And yet. And yet we own other people's freedome and lives. We make tiny human being so we can own them. We "help" ill people so we can put them in cages. WE condemn wrong doers and refuse that the stae kils them but we want to own their dinity and put it in our pocket.

And in the end all we want is to lock up people. Locke em up and not see them. Get them a meal and a blanket to buy their soul. Trap them somewhere for their own good so we can keep them in away so they dont worry us. Silence their voice, not hear a noise cause that makes us feel safer and clean.

Say hello to your loved ones for me, when you eventually see them

To Heir Is Human, To Kill Is Murder.

2012-01-18T06:05:00.000-08:00

The web can be mostly a bothersome place. To be honest, for the most part it end ups turning moments, tragedies and emotions into a series of disembodied memes and catchphrases that slowly but surrely, take any form of intelligence or soul away from everything.

It doesnt have anything to do with the myth of "the anonimty of the web", which doesnt really exist. It has to do with how quickly information spreads on it and how people tend to trun everything inot black and white chunks of oversimplification. How people become characters and archetypes, fact get overblown and mutated, and covered with thick coat of fabriactions and dramatizations.

Take, as a powerful example, the Costa Concordia case. I am admittedly ignorant. I have been detached from news in the late days, maybe out of cynicism or laziness. Maybe because my brain tends to become erratic when its overstuffed with thoughts. So i knew little to nothing about the details of the tragedy.

So yesterday in an almost compulsory rush to get up to date, i ended up absorbing more emotional and scattered interpretations of the facts than the facts themselves.

So this came to my eyes : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16599655

Followed by my own gut reaction, which was harsh. And by me reading the, possibly even harsher reaction from people.

The story has now been made into something with a villain and a hero.

And so far, i would be ok with that. Because, i think that when people die out of a tragedy and out of the mistakes of a coward, he has to be pointed out as a villain. And if people need to cope with what happened through that, they have the right to do so.

And thats where the brainy jouranlists feel the need to chime in. CXause nowadays, the thriving need of an essayist isnt firing up people's hearts with words apparently. Its to cynically comment on how silly humanity is at needing hweros and pointing the finger at scumbags and how everything is justifiable even if its murder. So you'll read about their disgust towards an homicidal tryrant (Qaddafi) being attacked by his own victims (the people). Because tis barbaric and his life apprently is woth of sympathy. And you'll read about how a captain who caused people to die with his cowardice, is really "human" and "the real monsters are the ones who blame him"

And so allow me to join the monsters and say clearly: fuck your freedom of speech. Fuck your need to rationalise murder. Fuck the middle ground. The man will be possibly jailed, maybe he will have a good lawyer, working with the same rethoric. "everyone makes mistakes. He was scared. To heir is Human"

No. No more forgiveness. No more easy ways out. No more legalese. No more cool headed writings. Fuck all of that. Hang him. High.

Liars And Roses

2012-01-13T05:15:00.000-08:00

I suddenly ralized what could be a major breakout moment in my own psychological self discovery, or mantal masturbation. Bear with me while i touch my synpases.

Time has brought me emotional growth and some sort of maturity through self discovery and harsh analysis of my own flaws. But also the possibility of coming in touch with people that are actually positive, loving and filled with a honest nature that makes interacting with them a freeing, beautiful experience.

And i am blessed to have them in my life, cause being honest is something that cleans your soul from the greasy weight of wearing masks, acting to please others (or to displease them, whichever your own game is), keeping emotions inside, shut down, whether theyre positive or negative. And, especially, it sets you free from the crushing chain that is having to leave things untold.

That is poisonous, essenitally. And having someone with which the level of chemistry, confidence and trust is so high that anything can be said casue you know that the person will accept it and eventually understand it, share it and maybe even love you more for it, is something that makes you feel lighter and more able to live like youre supposed to live.

But, as with everything good, its a rare occasion. And after setting my heart free and leaving it get some hair, i had to remind myself that i do not have to luxury to live like that all the time.

I have still other people in my life, close ones i have to deal with daily who cannot handle honesty. Its in simple things. Little conversations where even the slight topic will turn to war. The lives of some are based on lack of dialogue, and lack of truth. Any honesty, any heart baring, results in pain and anger and frustration.

I have tried to discuss the possiblity of an honest relationship with my own family, but i was faced again and again and again with the reality, which is we are not supposed to be honest with each other or tell each other what we feel or even details of our lives. Because in the end they will be used like weapons to fight with. Because misunderstanding is the norm. Because truth told to one, will be used with others and disfigured so its ounds filthy and cruel and causes bitterness and dischord.

And so it is with other relationships too, i guess. For the few beautiful ones we can be truthful with, we shall hold them close and not let them go. And with the others we shall lie and survive and not expect anything good from them. As humanity is a herd of pigs, with a few angels in the mix.

I Am Not Here

2012-01-09T05:36:00.000-08:00

This article started in my head as a consideration. Born out of a potential nice gesture.

I wanted, and still want to, buy a gift for my fiernd's one year old daughter. And while pondering what to buy, i considered how potentially creepy my long bearded face could look to the eyes of a toy seller. I dont think i have the looks of a potential child harasser. But no one ever knows.

And that brought me to think of how much i like, when i'm in a store or a public place, to say "hi" and smile to little kids. How i like to help them reach something from a shelf too high for them. Or help them to recover missing toys. How i adore their faces when they are of a certain age. And how, as a lonely, scruffy, thirty-something man, i kinda cannot do this anymore, since automatically most mothers react protectively towards their kids. And at first my mental reaction is "do i look like a potential threat", and i know i really dont. So it made me indignant.

Then i realized, at the peak of my poisonous self aware that, at the eyes of someone who doesnt know me, i might as well be. Actually, i am a threat at the eyes of people who DO know me.

And in the end, threat or no threat, this is what i am: i'm an adult man that has no family, no kids of his own, is mostly a loner and dresses and looks like someone who isnt completely sure of his future. Right now, i dont werar ties or suits. Once, that was for me, a sign of something. SOme sort of statement, for others it still is. But if youre honest, you have to realize the truth: not wearing a suit, in today's world just means you either have a job that allows you that, or that youre so completely detached from the real world that you dont have any interest anymore in how people see you.

And i realize that i have no kids. My father and my mother are depressed and love to repeat to me at any chance how they feel suicidal. My father told me that today.

I do not love him or like him. And yet, this broken man, with whom i have an estranged relationship at best, sends me into pain and melancholy evrytime he says that. I know i'll suffer when he dies. Because in the end, he is my father.

And that reminds me this: i have no kids. No spouse. I have no one, my absence would really change things for. I have people who love me, which will suffer and cry, eventually. But those things will pass. I have no one that will have part of me in their blood. I will have no one that i have to really think of when the dark thoughts come.

I do fight those thoughts daily but when i do, and i end up thinking of the ones who love me., the last voice i hear says: "their tear will dry, but then theyll find consolation in their own families and loved ones. your memory will disappear"

Ive been facing that feeling lately. And wanting to have family of my own. And yet i feel i cannot. Cause i am broken. Cause i am almost on the edge of unemplyment. Cause of million of reasons.

So maybe thats my destiny. I dont really know.

His Screams Hurt Me, So I Cut His Tongue

2011-12-30T04:17:00.001-08:00

I'm pretty sure i can speak extensively abou my own side of this story, because i am excessively aware and i have taken a lot of time for myself to ponder on it. But it's a darkness many share and even more dont alk about. Its there and it's a fact, and it's what slowly kills people, even more than diseases. And while indifference isnt good, thats not what im talking about.

When you are ill, and in my case, when your mind is ill, the cures often do not take away the rotting roots of the problems. You visit someone who is a servant of an industry who wants to enslave people to pills. So you get given medicines that silence you and put your brain into a vat of grey tasteless soup of numbness. And you still want to scream but your voice is gone.

And that's where the darkness resides: ive been thinking about it and i think i grasped the truth. It's not for you, defnitely. They dont wanna cure or help you. And while its is for their own pockets, they cant stop there too. What the idea of a "Cure" in such cases is, is for your relatives and the people around you.

And while i know that a lot of you feel loved, bear with me while i try to explain. People around you see the external aspect of your pain. In the case of mind pain, they only see the manifestation of it. Your screams, your tears, your anger.

So what the "cure" does, is silence those symptoms. It muffles your screms while your head still feels them. It locks your head in a silenced cage. The ones around you dont hear it no more. To them, youre ok, cause they dont SEE or HEAR you suffering. And even if they would never admit it in broad daylight, that is ok for the most of them.

From the age of lobotomies, padded cells, shock treatments, we've moved to one where the doctors just lock you in silenced roopms that have no physical presence and no walls. They are padded cells in your brain. They null you so you dont bother anyone ever again. Yes there are side effects. But when you live with a person who suffers, you can cope with a few sacrifices if there is a way to make it stop. and that means make them stop being able to cry. Being able to need you. Ask you for help. Ask you to listen.

No, its a couple of pills and they are empty vessels, and you can go on with your life and forget it all. And that means they are cured.

And thats so similar for other illnesses, too. Why cure, when we got hospitals to lock them out of sight? Places where they are taken care of by strangers that are paid to take the burden off your shoulders and see what you dont wanna see anymore.

Cause in the end the "Cure", isnt a solution for the people who suffer. Its a wayu to shut them down and make them invisible. So we can forget they're there.

Putting Holes In Holidays...

2011-12-21T04:44:00.001-08:00

I am not the type of person who craps on the holidays. I usually love christmas. Used to be and still is, kinda, my favourite holiday.

Still, in the latest times of my life, a lot of things chancged and kinda ruined some of it for me.

I like the spect of presents, decorations, cards, lights, carols and dinners. Love it. I even loved to do christmas shopping for years.

But.

No holiday like this enhances, for me, solitude or the hypocrisy of a lot of relationships. Or how some are broken. Before youy call me a grinch, think about it.

You might be surrounded by love, and ive been like that too, and in those times Christmas was beautiful. Cause love makes anything special. It might sound corny but its so true.

But Christmas also brings hurt when things are flawed and dysfunctional. Bad relationships become even more painful on Christmas. The presents are a chore, the company of the other person is torturous cause the oversized cheer that surrounds you makes you feel like you have to be cheering but only makes you feel more empoty inside. So you do a christmas dinner with friends, you drink and its supposed to be fun but you really drink to numb that hole. And then you abd your loved ones use the alcohol as an excuse to flirt with others. Hey, we were drunk, it doesnt count. But it does, cause there is pain behind it. And its the holidays and you have to drown it down, cause you dont wanna ruin christmas.

And families reunite. But theres no reunion that erases the memories of decoration ripped through fights. Drunken christmas nights with beatings and vomit. Hate instead of love for years and years. And that accuse of ruining the holidays, always coming back.

And getting presents for friends, like i used to love. Which starts as a joy cause theres nothing that makes me feel more fulfilled as giving something to someone i love and seiing their happiness. No matter how it fucks up my account which always gets thinner and thinner during holidays, to the point of crysis. But its worth it. Until something breaks and you realize that for them its more of an embarassment cause they dont really want to give back, they dont care and they just do it like theyre doing chores. And you open a present they give you and its something that has no heart but you have to smile anyway cause you dont wanna be an asshole. Its the thought that counts.

And the worst. New years eve. The giant day where everyone feels the need to have the fun that they havent had for the rest of the year. Soi wherever you go theres chaos, noiuse and loudness. And you have to be part of it. Wait for miodnight. get mugged. Get drunk. Fight a lot.

I have nightmares abouyt past New Years Eves. But i have to do it. Cause if you dont, youre a buzzkill. Youre not like the others. Youre a hermit.

All i want is to share the moment with people i really love. And besides that, i am tired of all the rest. I love the percent of it that resides in the heart. I love who i love. Outside of that, fuck the holidays.

That Will NOT Do, Pig....

2011-12-20T05:13:00.000-08:00

I hate Doctors. There i said it. I usually think that "hate" as a word is way too strong to be used indiscriminately or without the safety net of a second thought. Mostly cause REAL hate is as powerful as love, if not more. Yes, love makes you happy. But a real, deeply rooted hate can give you an energy and a drive that is unparalleled. So i always have an issue whenever people use both words without care. Actually i am more prone to understanding towards a free-form use of the word "love". Hate is powerful, it has meaning. Dont waste it.

That said, i DO hate doctors. I think that doctors, lawyers, and journalists are three categories that humanity should get rid of if we want to evolve even barely. And i swear i mean this. I do not respect any person who is part of that professions. All of those three are a confederacy of two legged leeches who, with the help of the severely flawed and ridiculous laws that us hairless chimps have put up to self convince ourselves that we were able to work that whole "Society" thing out, have been exploiting human suffering on different levels.

Yes, there have been doctors who have discovered cures and helped people, but as the social circus has moved on, those have become less and less. When was the last disease that has been succesfully cured? The last pharmaceutic discovery that has really helped mankind?

Instead, we have those overpaid pill pushers who endsalve patients to all sort of chemical paraphernalia, so they can suck their blood one drop at a time (a dead patient doesnt give money but a cured one doesnt either), that have egos that are unparalleled and wouòd destroy anyone in the name of the Farma companies.

I have had a flu recently, and the flu has turned into a persistent cough that doesnt seem to go away. So i, with a heavy heart, decided to visit a doctor.

This guy, which is the one that my healthcare affords, used to be a dentist.

He wasnt even a bad dentists, if that means anything. He did the job. But he always was a rude, filthy, animal who enjoyed cracking jokes at patients on their illnesses and openly molest his assistants.

Nowadays, he looks like a large swine, covered with a crusty grey fur. He is still an asshole. So he visits me, tells me i should go ona diet (to which i answer with a stare that makes him go "yeah i know, but at my age, food is better than pussy". Oh you). And then prescribes me a therapy of antibiotics and inhalations. When asked for more details he just says "well would you let me do my job? i am the professional here!"

After the first day, the cough is slightly worse, the meds were ultra pricey and i confirm my theory.

Kill all doctors.

Rita

2011-12-19T05:44:00.001-08:00

There was this girl. I dont know what her dreams were. She enever told me, really. But when she was a kid, she was raised in a loving family: her, her sister, her father and her mother.

They were dirt poor, and not in the way people use the word today. They were seriously fighting each day to survive. The mother worked in the rice planations. It was a nasty job, you were stuck in swampish water all day, surrounded by water snakes and it slowly destroyed your back. But it got her money to raise her kids. Her sister was a "special" kid. No clear defnition of what she had, she was normal, but had a mind developed slightly slower than the rest.

The father, who the girl loved more than anyone else in the world, was a worker in the train station and tried to make ends meet with other work as a handyman.

They loved each other. One day a form of illness, maybe meningitis, no one was sure of anything back then, took the younger of the girls. She fell asleep. And died.

After a while, the mother, broke down by grief, also got hit by leukemia. She died too.

The girl, whose name was Rita, and her father were each other's world, the beginning and the end. The man did everything he could to full his daughter's life with love, to be enough of a family for her, to be her strength and to protect her from the pain of all that loss.

Rita had grown strong, intelligent and witty. She was a brilliant student, although she never went to University cause she couldnt afford it. She found a job quickly though and was great at it. The father was proud.

She also had started dating the son of a rich family. He wasnta bad guy, weak, a bit spineless and bropken by a family that raised him with steely disdain for him, fists and anger. But he loved her, it seemed, and he could've made her... maybe.... happy?

Yet, the father drank a lot. Pain is a bad beast to cage. And that took his toll. So he died too, of liver malfunctions.

Rita was left alone in the world. All she had was this man she was dating. He seemed to love her, and she loved him back with all his flaws. Maybe his family couldve been a family for her too. Gove her love, besides security.

Did not happen. The two married. But the man'0s family always hated Rita and did everything they could to humiliate her, hurt her, and make her life miserable.

It hurt. Cause her man wasnt on her side. He was a slave to his family, too scared to protect her. Too weak to react.

And then they had a baby. And Rita loved the baby since they first met eyes. That aby was all she lived for. If only her family was there to see him, they wouldve been so happy.

Her husband's family kinda rejected the baby too. But she would defend him at any cost. Even if she was completely alone in this.

And the year passed. And the solitude and pain got stronger. So she started drinking more and more. Her husband became meaner with age, he never understood how to be a husband or a father. All he could do was yell or say cruel things. Or simply say nothing at all. Disappear when he was needed. Let her do everything.

And the more life got hard the more she drank.

And when the baby grew, he drank too. And he disappointed her as much as a son could. He went into drugs, failures, and all the mistakes a son can do.

And she just Broke.

Rita became a wreck. Drinking all day and night. Embarassing herself. Becoming a problem and a reasdon for her husband and son to point their greasy fingers at her.

She was a good mother but with every drunken moment of hate, those memories of love got erased.

She did things that slowly destroyed the love that her son and her shared.

And it turned, maybe to hate.

But when she visited him one day, barely walking, unkempt hair, aged beyond her years, crushed by alcohol, pills and cigaretetes and so many attempts at suicide.... She asked him about his coughing. His flu. Gave him a homemade remedy.

And while he hated all the hurt that she brought to her life via the bottle, he could not stop his heart from shattering, seeing her like that. He would ask her to get checked, but she refused.

All she wants now is to die. And maybe join her family, somewhere. Whats on this earth has hurt her too much.

And when they parted, his heart ached so hard.

The moment the path crumbles

2011-12-15T04:37:00.000-08:00

The sky outside is grey, humid and cloudy. My brain is dumpoed into that grey. I dont know why, ive just been thinking a lot lately.

Most of the time, i realize i might never have a kid. Right now i cant afford to raise one. I dont make enough money. I havent met anyone i love nough to actually have a child with them. And the times i actually felt close to that, it didnt last. Everything is precarious, maybe in all of life, maybe only in mine.

And yet i realized one thing: Maybe, just maybe, having a child is the only thing you can do that really means something.

I have had a life full of hopes, projects, relationships. I dreamed and the dreams sometimes went somewhere and left a pile of printed paper that now occupies a couple of shelves in my hometown. I tried to put myself out there. And that is cool. But does that have any meaning on the long distance? I'm not sure. Not really, i guess.

I made lovers, and friends, and no matter how beautiful and eternal the moments we had together were, they ended up crumbling and floating away in the wind. Some of those, i barely recall. I remember being in love many times, my heart breaking and aching, and then time walked all over it and made me numb. I lost friends i thought i would have forever. And i didnt loose them in a dramatic way. Simply we drifted. Or i drifted. I seem to be unable toi stick in one place. I fade away.

I am living my days, waking up and doing things that i once loved, now to fill time until i'll go to sleep. A few special people fill my heart but im scared, cause i saw it happen, of the momenbt where things will inevitably fade and i will be alone again. Maybe cause i ran away. Who knows.

Cause in the end, you might have found the love of your life, and be happy for your friends, but if youre not careful, you always end up alone. Unless you have a child.

I always thought having a child was such a responsibility. Much higher than anyone thinks. You dont have only to raise them, you have to make their life not miserable. Its almost impossible to do that. But if you pull it off, its the only moment you catch a chance at having something of value that will still be there and remember you when youre gone.

I have the feeling i have ran out of time though, and im wondering how much will be there fo me, when im gone. I might go to a dinner soon, with friends. There will be jokes, and a lot of stuff said. And yet after that we will all go on with our lives and forget about each other. Rinse, Repeat. Metaphors are everywhere when you know where to look.

A Puzzle With No Pieces

2011-12-14T05:02:00.000-08:00

This morning, after dealing with a series of troubling calls from homne, i opened my facebook, to check a few things.

In mt inbox, a musicians, a pretty known one who i wont name, was trying to reach me with a well written missive about a bad review i did of his latest record.

Now, if i had to stop here and not say anything else, you could see me being bothered by a musician for my criticism, and we could react with cynical cruelty to that, dropping smart one liners and letting this half told story run off of our backs.

But that is not how i am. I am desperate and i am convinced that i have almost no meaning in this world. But my mind is alive and well and the only thing i pride myself with, is having a brain that can see one moment from all the possible perspectives.

I remember writing that review. I had been waiting for that album to come out for a while. Bought it, listened to it and felt disgusted and disappointed. The band was one of those that maybe i did not worship completely, but i respected and loved for the role they had in my own musical growth. So my reaction was gutsy.

Also i was, just like i am now, stuck in a loop. Waking up, pretending to do important things that fullfill a hole that i have inside but dont really do that. Hearing the same news of despair from my family. Waiting for the day to be over so i can finally sleep. All i have is my friends and my few, silly attempts at meaning something. Like reviewing albums, doing podcasts. Stuff that doesnt do anything for me, doesnt get me money but makes me feel vaguely important.

When i wrote that hateful scriblle, i wanted to express diappointment. And at the same time i was asked and wanted to create controversy and attract readers and use a harsher tone than id probably would have at another moment. And after doing it, i just forgot about it. It disappeared in the loop.

I read the mail today, while i'm stuck in another loop. I am not sure if i exist. My friends hold me there, and love me, but i aint sure if i am living or just repeating the motions over and over.

The man tries to explain why he felt upset by my words. How he belived in what he did. And tha, recently he got diagnosed with cancer.

The album i took time spewing venom about got him attention and a possibòle future fopr the band. But his cancer might not let him live til christmas.

Now i am not saying that i am learning any lessons here. Or that i should.

I'm asking myself if anything has meaning. WE all live and do whatever makes us feel alive or important. Or just go through the motions daily without ever getting out of this maze. Then something comeas up and we are happy. Then we are not. Then we are dead. It doesnt make sense to me at all.

The Man who Gifted Me A Monkey

2011-12-13T06:10:00.000-08:00

I've been handling this weird flu for a couple of days, and two things happened: my body weakened, much more than usual and as a consequence, my mind went into a dark place. I dont get sick that often, recently. I used to be sick all the time, back in the days of being a rockstar, when my clothes were cool and a few, and looking good came with a price. I got a lot of flus, colds, migraines, back then. A lot of weird illxs that knocked me out and were cured with strong, stomach meltin medicines that were supposed to help me recover quickly enough to get out the night after. That had a reason. But i'll explain in a bit.

So, now i dont get sick often, i usually ride my health like its a thunder, i try to fill my body with uppers and vitamins, trying to keep my body and mind in a permanent state of wake and full energy. I need and want to be performing all the time at max, cause if i slow down, bad things happen.

So, since the flu slowed things down, my brain remembered.

During my iullness my family visited me. Mostly because they needed advice and company. My father is becoming increasingly senile. And yet he did something that struck a chord and reminded me in some sort of flashback why i took a few of the darker roads i took.

While i was trying to explain how being sick made me anxious, he told me "well get a couple of xanax". He insisted. Forcefully.

I remember myself being young and him giving me a handful of sleep aid drops. He hid them in juice or tea and just gave them to me. I fell asleep, i calmed down but i alspo developed a sort of early addiction when i wasnt even twelve. My mother questioned him on that and his answer was "so he would calm down and be quiet".

Its how his head was built too. I got used to sleeping pills, the strong type, earlier than anyone i know. When, later, i found myself dealing with that monkey, after i really made it my own, dropping increasing doses in attempts to shut my brain down forever, people accused me of being a weak junkie. And they were right. But they didnt get, and for fuck's sake, i am NOT justifying myself, how i was talked into that since when i was a kid.

Taking meds was like taking candy for him. Any slight issue was met with ton of pills. That then i kept taking on my own, unable to quit. Some are still there.

If a kid was swoned into drinking, or smoking by a parent, everyone would act differently if he grew up to be an addict. But with meds, ist different. I taker my own responsiblity and fault. Its on me. But i do know that my mind was shapen that way by him. I don t complain about it.

When i started therapy, and the antidepressants i started taking were slowly erasing my mind and my personality, i recall him commenting "Well, you quit complaining, so its a good thing"

Pharmacists, for years, stared at me as the son of Giorgio Costanzo, the pill popper. I inherited his reputation as an addict by default. His prescriptions done by tricking doctor into giving him what wpould normally fit three people.

I dont blame anyone but me. But i got that burden from him and its still there. It wont go away. Ever.

The Strange Case Of Benjamin Buttface

2011-12-05T04:50:00.000-08:00

It used to be a funny subject on which me and my friends humoured about. But deeply, we hoped that it wouldnt happen to us. Most of us had that moment where we were hangin at the pub, late, and planning a last stunt to pull waiting for the dawn to come. And we watched our peers go home. Some of them did it because thy were in one of THOSE relationships, the ones where you enter as a normal person and suddenly become a lethargic creature that barely leaves the house out of some sort of sense pof duty but would really like more to stay in and watch tv with your Insignificant Other. But a lot of them did it because something in them was changing. They were Aging. Getting old.

And we made fun, mostlyt cause some of us were older than them but still enjoyed life, so we wanted to live and do stuff, and we agreed that it was the right thing to do.

But time went by. We got soul crushing jobs. We drank too much. We saw our dreams fade away in disappointment. Some got married, other got kids. And many blamed the changed on the spouses or the kids, because they didnt want to admit that it was their soul that got old and broken on their own. Where if they wanted to, they couldve stayed in loved with life, even with kids and ordinary lives. Some managed to pull that off.

But others didnt. And they started to turning into their own parents, complaining about the tiny things like angry curmudgeons. Making fun of others when they had passions, interests or anything that isnt consodered "serious" or "mature". Telling the people that once were their friends that they should "get their lives together and grow up". Being full of moral disdain out of things that really didnt bother them before. Violence in movies. Loud music. And using their kids as a shield to complain obsessively. They werent like that, and they got worse m,ore out of frustration and anger and bitterness. But no, its "because having kids changes you".

And then they started thinking about the retirement age. How they might not be able to retire in the future. Not about the need of finding a good job, a good house, love and a satisying sexual life. About retirement. And you hear them in bars at the early morning or at work, coimplaining about their small, insignificant hypocondriac illnesses, forgetting that there's people figting for survival everyday. Because their back hurts and its ok to complain about your back if you're old.

Old, before their thirties. Ready to die.

Now Go And Bake Me A Pie....

2011-12-02T03:48:00.000-08:00

I know, at the right moment my fingers touched this black and vaguely dirty keyboard, that what i'm about to write is going to spark controversy.

But it's stuck in my head, so it has to come out, here.

I am tired of feminism. And not necessarily only the stronger form of feminism, the one a lot of people see to be annoyed from. I am also tired of the whole idea of how "female empowerment " has gone bad.

I am not a mysoginist, although i have been called one many times, even for the simple fact that i'm italian, swear i aint kidding on this one. I love women and i am sure that they are in general more intelligent and resourceful than man. But as any living being they are being fooled by a bunch of frustrated individuals who are making their own credo a truth and poisoning the naturale course of things, inesorably.

To clarify even more, men have that sort of venom in their brains too. Men think they should often adhere to male stereotypes, in order to calm down their own natural insecurity. And if they embrace their own emotions, often they fail in the opposite direction, becoming so obsessed by their own sensitivity that they forget that the male reisliency to emotions was there for a reason: to make us supportive. So we have men becoming catty, indifferent and cruel anbd forgetting to pay attention to their loved ones, obsessed on their own feelings and their own precious "me time".

But the new "post-feminist" tendency is, somehow, more dangerous and unsettling to me. I'll try to explain with a couple of examples.

- Edgy, offensive humour might not be for you. If that's the problem, then dont listen to it. Or ignore the joke foir what it is, a series of words that die as soon as they disappear. All jopkes are just jokes, no matter the subject. Most are unfunny, but that doesnt mean youy can ban them or use any chance you got to rant about "wrong humour" and using your own private experience to make that more right. Ok, you got abused, yes you have kids, yeah you were molested. It's all good, but a joke is a joke and if you go against one specific topic, youre rooting for censorship. The n eo-feminist movement is doing this more than the christians, muslims or ethnic groups. Yet they are automatically in the right. Why?

- Being "A mother" doesnt entitle you to become a moralist that always sticks her nose into other people's lives. You have a chils, focus on raising him or her right. Keep your eyes on that not on the power you seem to thrive on whenever you use your status of "mother" to ask for repression of other's rights, freedom and general quiet living. And in even in day to day actions: your being a mother doesnt give you special right or passes, no matter how much you rub your toddler in my face. The rule aplly to everyone, thats a society. Mothers arent special. Your children arent more special than others. You're still a person like the others.

- Being an empowered woman does not mean forgetting that men have needs too. So, if your partner nbeeds to be reassured about his insecurities or wants to be complimented, doing it wont make you less empowered, it will just make your relationship better. Pat our back once in a whilw, and we will follow you in the snow on bloody stumps. Instead i see too many girls and ladies who, in the name of some sort of misguided sense of femininity, belittle their loved ones, attack them when they ask a bit of nurtring, and use them as their own emotional trash can. In the name of female empowerment. It's not fair.

- There's nothing wrong with doing things that women have done for years.. The great step in social evolution is that now men have to do them too. A man who doesnt know how to cook, clean, dress well and be a devil in the bed, in other worse to worship his lover, isnt a real man. But a woman that refuses to do the same things can say that she refuses the stereotypes on women. And get away with it. I dated so many ladies who couldnt cook and had warped ideas about sexuality (the types of ideas where they werent supposed to seduce a partner but just stay there and wait) and they all became that way not out of laziness but (quote) "because they didnt want to conform to sexist stereotypes". Grow up, buttercup.

The Debate Of The Invisibles

2011-12-01T05:42:00.000-08:00

I dont know if you noticed the change. Like the big changes of history, it came with a whimper and not with a bang (yeah, im quoting poetry).

It has come to my attention that in this time, where the universal situation of humanity, in any field, might be one of the worst in years, something seriously disturbing has happened. Discussion, has died.

And i aint talking about suppression of freedom of speech, onb the contrary. There has been an excess of freedom of speech on all fronts that has caused, like any person that has st6udied sociology could explain, an internal selection.

To explain the fact in layman terms: perople are in crisis, its our nature, we always are. We are a species that has been created facing the constant dilemma of balancing our unstoppable need for other people to interact with us, and our natural destructive instinct towards them an ourselves. We are built to hate and attack but we have to proliferate, so we try to handle things with presumed intellectual superiority, rules and unspoken pacts.

So we create the idea of "democracy", a beautiful theory, but impossible in practice. And we start facing the difficulties of working out that utopia, with multiple tools. The major ones are war, a contradiuction in terms that is still necessary to create equilibrium, unless it falls into the territory of endless skirmishes that slowly wipe out ant rensemblance of civilization, and discussion, debate, arguing.

If you ever studied the primal roots of politics, ideally speaking, debate is the key to the resolution of many issues. In its purest form, two opposing parts explain to each other the good and the bad sides of their own opinion, they clash, they shift each other's point of view, until both obtain a different perspective on the issue. They know more on the opponent and themselves. They leatrned something and reach a compromise. That is evolution through words. One of the few and greatest achievements that humans have uniquely.

But like many other uniquely human traits, it is dying. Humans are decomposing socially. Anything that made us a species that was able to survive through special aspects of our brain and personalities is deteriorating fast. We are hurting our own children. No species does that, not with the sadism and gratuitous cruelty we have. We build religions, and credos and use them as motivations to kill. And even if those ideals dont fit we use others: pacifist are as aggressive as warmogerers, conspiracy theorists who accuse politicians and religious people to be suppressor of the truth, are even more arrigant and dominating as their enbemies.

Humans are deteriorating as a low form of aniimal without abilities or nobility or dignity and a buinch of tools to destroy.

Debate is dead. Where once smart èpeople could change opinions and evolve spirits, now, thanks to social network and biased media, a series of spineless, creeping venomous negativity ridden parasites has taken over.

No matter what happens, negativity prevails. A violent tyrant is taken over by the people9, weho finally gained freedom? tyhere will be no cheering for that. Only sarcasm, viutriol and cyncincism.

Wanting to change things, having hope, having ideals, believing in things and being progressive are negative traits that are crushed with constant sarcasm, stalking hatred and humiliation.-

The weak ones that try to stand up for themselves, the ill, the victims of rape, the victim of racism and misogyny are now afrauid of speaking, even m0ore than in the past. Because now, instead of a specific group of stone throwers, theres an army of cowards that hate indiscriminately and thrive on creating pain with a smile on their lips. They are perfe ctly normal people too. they used to be smart, maybe they still are. they are your friends, your spuses, your neighbours. There's a hater in evryone of them. They will find what starts their own hate wave and they will become the problem too. them and their "epic fail". Thjem, and cracking jokes on cancer victims, lupus victims, handicapped people, races, sexes, in the name of being "incorrect".

Being politically incorrect is justified when you have humour. Most people do not possess humour. So no they do not have the roight to speak freely. Tim,e to fix the flaws and cleanse this world.

Some bridges need to be burnt and most people need to be punched.

Scumbags

2011-11-30T05:21:00.000-08:00

Scumbag [skuhm-bag]: 1) a bag of Scum (a fruit originary from the Paparua Island, wwhich pulp has propertis against erectile dysfunction); 2) a generic term to deifne a person of low moral fiber.

I've been against my own body for the whole last couple of weeks. Everyday, every waking hour a monster stab of pain coming from the centre of my back rendered me unable to move, breathe properly or even think. See, i always had problems with my back, since i had my major car accident (not the one that caused me the suspension of my driving license, curiously, but that's another story). And since my numerous ankle breakings due to my drunken falls. And also since my main job implies that i stay sat in front of a computer for most of the time. But hardly i ever experience something so brutal, that basically made me paralyzed for big slabs of time.

Add to that a weirs deries of other, smaller, health issues i had rtecently and i have to admit that i got worried. What if all those things were the sign of a larger, more serious condition?

What if i was in trouble?

That sort of thought roams often in my head, i am a recovering depresssed alcoholic and on meds after all, but the thoughts vary each time, almost as a sign of the mental temperature i'm in. This time i was much more scared and also realized how completely alone i am, in my world.

Yes, i have friends, but the best ones live across the ocean or at least many km away from me. I dont have people that have my back (no pun intended) close to me. Many of my closest friend would help, as i'd do for them but, since their lives arent intertwined with mine, they could do that to a certain point. If i duied, i would die almost alone.

Yeah, well, those thoughts kep roaming in my head and making me afraid. So while i was waiting for a resolution and some medical result, i thought that maybe, it woyuld be the right time to reconnect with my family. My mother and my father. Not that we're really estranged, but maybe this could be a chance to actually rebuild a relationship and some love and mutual goood feelings, since they are old and not healthy and i felt fragile too.

But thats the point: old age doesnt turn people into better persons. And i aint much better either. I show my best game face with others but i have tons and tons of unspoken bad things ive done, flaws huge as an ocean, things ive done to others, to their back and to their face, which i would love to apologiza for but it's too late. And probably it would be pointless, since im quite sure that i'll do worse in the future, somehow. Part of the bad emotional state i'm in recently is because i pushed a LOT of people away. Some times because i felt hurt or tired. Other times because i was a scumbag, pure and simple.

As for my family. Well, they're not good people. My father is weak, spineless and a liar. He has been pushed around for most of his life, so he always kinda took it out on his scapegoats: my mother and me. Not in a violent way, unless you count "emotional violence", which i think does NOT exìst, since abuse is when you're tortured, the rest is just part of life. But defnitely in a soul crushing way. He's been taking away happiness and peace of mind from me since i was born and never really quit even when i became an adult. He is just obnoxious, mean and whiny. And age didnt make him better. When he learned about my health stuff, he worried but suddenly turned the argument on himself, lamenting how miserable he is and how everyone disappoinbts him. After a few minutes of that i realized he didnt listen to what i just told him about me. When i repeated the whole thing, he just said "whatever". He is a scumbag.

My mother. Well she drinks. And hates. I have talked about this, so many times, i feel ridiculous talking about it again. I poften feel disgust towards myself for mentioning this "family issues", on here. makes me feel like i'm "one of those whiny emo bloggers" as a person called me once. But since this ois my OWN place to write down my thoughts, i'll do this anyway. Get lost if it bothers you.

So she drinks everyday, all day. I remember living with her. Shge is sober just for the time she's required to do her basic survival tasks. For the rest of the time she's drunk, full of pills, hateful and destructive.

As i explained my points to her, she just spewed hate on me. Yeah, she was worried, but the worry just made her angrier. It happens like that. A mind filled with hate and resentment against a life that is miserable and wasted, lashes out at any moment of tension against the ones you feel is responsible for your miseryu. So she hoped i would die, since i am what destroyed her life, a person that steals money to spend on filth and drugs, a person that she should have aborted, since all that my birth caused her was pain and misery. She is ashamed of me and thinks i'm repulsive and disgisting. And my health problems is what i deserve for being so.

Part of that is supposed to be made by alcohol but i believe that all the hate that comes out when someone drinks is just uninhibited truth, without the coat of smiling paint that sobriety puts on it.

Its not enecessarily "in vino veritas" but what a drunk tells you repeatedly when they drink, is what their brain hides under layers of fake love an niceness, which alcohol and drugs strip away. hate is the most real and honest of all feelings. Much more than love. It's the natural reaction, where love is fabricated, and alcohol sets it free.

So yeah, she's a scumbag too.

In the end i got my back kinda fixed and i'm really better. I wont die as soon as i thought. But i'm still alone, i'm a scumbag and most of what should be my close family is too. And my best friends are far away. Gotta think that one over.

Open Letter To A Past Lover

2011-11-24T04:30:00.000-08:00

Remember how we used to tell each other how much important we were? And i used and refined all my skills at rewording that same concept a million times. I loved to surprise you with new ways to tell you that i loved you. I loved the expression on your face or the way your voice changed when you heard me say it.

There was always something to your voice that made me feel that things were gonna be alright. Even when it was late at night and the voices in my head were having a party, your voice, whether it was on the phone, on some video i found out or call i saved, was stronger than any picture. You could be saying anything, even talking about the weather and suddenly the voices became quiet, and i felt better. And you, saying you loved me, made me feel like i could survive any sort of pain. I even answered you when you werent there. And kissed the air, cause if i closed my eyes, i could imagine how your lips would feel.

I could spend hours watching one single picture of you, looking at all the shades of warmth and light that your eyes had. It was amazing, for a person like me, who either dies daily for too many emotions or simply doesnt feel anything most of the time, to get my heart filled with so many things i didnt even have the words to explain, just by looking at a picture.

And the daydreams. The sexy ones. If i got something you wore or some room you walked through, i could feel your scent and èprint it in my memory to use it afetrwards for days and sleepless nights. Grinding that scent into a thousand tiny particles that i melted all over my skin, so it was like having the smell of your sweat and breath on it. To make love with the thought of you, drinking every second of that thought like it was a drop of water in a black desert of nothingness. Touching myself and having the thought of you engrained so deeply in me, that everything id touch would feel like your skin, your hair, even the clothes you wore.

Your warmth, everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

But i forget everytime how those things slip away. How i never seem to focus hard enough on the moment, because to live it i cannot burn into it, cause my heart would blow up if i did. And they all go away. And suddenly the fear crawls in my head and i read things in your eyes that werent there before. I hear tones of spite, of tiredness , fo boredom, in your voice. I can see the love dying and i know i aint imagining it, cause ebverytime i feel that, i am always right. And i try to hold on to it. But whatever i do just drives us apart more. And it eats me up again.

I stop eating and i am all fear and unsaid things. We should talk, but talking is impossible sometimes. Dont you think we should've said things to each other? But i was afraid of what you might say, i was in denial. I was scared you'd hurt me and that i nwoyuldnt be able to come back from the pain this time. So i hid away. And you avoided saying things cause you didnt have your mind cleared up about them. You just knew that things werent right. And god, you were almost scared of me. And i didnt get that even if i loved you that hard, i was getting scary. Because i am always a child that is so terrified of being betrayed, and hurt and loose people that i just scare them away first.

And somehow it died off.

And then i had to hate you. And dont be mistaken, i miss you everyday. I miss talking to you, cause, even before we became lovers, we were friends. And you made me laugh and you made me feel good about myself. You gave a meaning to my days.

But i have been there before, and if i dont hate you, i will never be able to survive this. I have to hate you, to erase you, to forget everything good about you, because i have to remember how to live without you. How to be me, without you.

Ive lost myself so hard into other people in the past and it took me centuries to find myself again. I cant do it anymore. So i had to burn every bridge. But i still miss you. I'd love to talk to you again. To be able to get close to you without feeling anger and pain.

But no. I have to move on. I have to remember all we've had as a mistake. I have to think that you were nev er something important, that i just used you to fill a hole. To fuck you. To feel loved. And that you promised me that you wouldnt break my heart but you did. Hard.

And i have to go on that way, until i bareòly remember your name. But you're there. At night, in my dreams. or when the demons eat my head up, you're there. I remember laughing with you. I remember hopes and dreams. I remember everything. You probably have moved on, and im glad you did. I am trying still. I havent really moved on from anything since i was born. But i will.

Forgive me if you can. I need to live.

The Song My Poison Sings

2011-11-23T04:14:00.001-08:00

Its inevitable. I go for days and days feeling pretty great or at least feeling able to handle things, even the ordinary ones. Taking small, tiny steps wrapped in that maniacal routine and rules that i built for myself to feel safer. Doing the same things everyday, following a pattern so that this thing i have in my head doesnt start screaming too loud. And it works. It really does. then my beautiful friends show up, with their heart the size of oceans and make me feel loved. That and a couple of pills, that id like so much to live without, but im addicted to. And it happens that maybe, some day i decided to convince myself that i'm normal, cause i want to change things and live like an average person. Without the slavery of meds. So i dont get them.

And it's there waiting for that: I cannot blame the meds, all they do is keep it dormant, so it doesnt take over at the first sign of weakness. But chemistry also has a dark side. When im full of them, i cant have ideas, i cant really feel things or if i do, its out of focus, and out of colours. Then i try to have a break, and it almost seems to work. I have ideas, i feel strongly, i am myself.

But it hits and its like a wave.

It starts poisoning my thoughts as a viscous virus. It starts with trust, takes it away. It says it clearly in my head: "They dont really mean it. they say they care. They say they will be there for you, but thats just what people say to other people to be nice. But when things get really bad, you'll be alone. With me."

And i see it everywhere. The words loose meanings, even the strongest ones. The things loose meaning. Even the memories. I dont beleive in love anymore, cause everything feels like it will go away on a whim, as soon as the others, evertyone, will cease needing m,e. And as soon, as they realize how flaw and weak i really am. I tricked them all into thinking that i'm a good person and that i am strong, smart and big hearted. But they will be disappointed cause i always disappoint everyone. And they will leave. For someone stronger, or better, or just cause they changed their mind. Because in the end no one stays. I might be the one that hurts them, but they will go away. Everyone goes away. Maybe i will.

And i hate myself for needing love from others. Cause at this moment my head sees it as weakness. Loving is admitting you have failed. Failed at surviving on your own. Failed at being numb, which is all you want at the moment.

Cause its nto evenhate that its eating you up. Its something different. You watch what you've done, your accomplishments, your ideas, your passions and all you see is a bunch of senseless scrabbles and noises to move in front of your eyes too quickly.

And its like your stomach, heart and head are full of this constant loud noise and this horrible fear of everything. This panic that makes you unable to focus or to even do anything. So your ush through your day, hoping that soon everything will end. You cant distract, your head screams too loudly. All you want is to fall asleep.

And when you sleep nightmares are there. So all you really want is to die. Seriously. Not dramatically. Not as a scream for help. Just to die, peacefully and quit cause you cannot do this anymore. And you cant fool yoursefl thinking that things will be better cause they wont. And if they do, this will come back. Always.

Sorry. I needed to get it off my chest.

Things You Shall Never Do Unless You Wanna Get Angry And Miserable

2011-11-22T04:27:00.000-08:00

Living is war. With occasional breaks for tea and biscuits. But in general, life is aseries of great, amazing times, alternated with soul crushingly boring dirges. And piling moments that make you question why you exist and why you havent given up on the world yet.

I think the wisest choice is to pick battles, or let some things go, while trying to keep your spirit awake for others. Still, when it comes to my own spirit, i always tend to approach situations and people with passion and fire. I think getting pissed is healthy. I dont understand exceissive politeness or excessive restraint. It gives me the creeps. If you dont explode or react passionately at anything, you are a suspicious person to me, i cannot trust you.

But, theres moments, and people, that must be avoided, unless you wanna feel your spirit crushed and annihilated.

- Trying to discuss rationally with a moron

Deep in our heart, us rational and smart people always have this pulsating hope that we are actually able to make the world better. By using our most powerful weapons: our hearts and our heads. But sadly, that aint the case. Ever. Cause, you see, our marching, driven spirits, even when they're still at their peak of strength are destined to meet the toughest wall of the world: morons. You'll see them everywhere: racist assholes, homphobes, religious nuts, rambling hyperconservatives, animal haters, mysoginists, apathetic dumbasses, prejudiced people. I aint using these terms as most liberal thinkers would, to label people who think differently than me. I appreciate people who have opposite ideas, as long as they have intelligent points to back them. But whenever i have to face someone dropping "yeah, i just dont like niggers", "women are all sluts, its how it is" or "homosexuality isnt natural" and try to maintain my poker fa ce, i feel my soul hurt and i stop believing in good things and Santa Claus.

Theres no point in considering such people as humans. Theyu're not. they are leeches put on earth to suck the life out of others. They are here to destroy. And they hide behind their "right" to "have an opinion" and "tell it like it is". Lets be clear here: you have the right to have an opinion but i have the right to destroy you if your opinion is poisoning my life: freedom of speech = freedom of retaliation and consequences.

Civilized reasoning is wasted on them.

- Trying To Understand Love

Yeah, its hard. Emotions arent supposed to always be nice and clear cut. And no, its not necessarily a good thing. Dealing with someone you care for, in the good and the bad times, whether its a lover or a close friend, can be a pretty devastating road. Humans arent supposed to necessarily act rational and always understand each other. Sometimes we're just insane and we hurt the ones around us, especially the one we should take care of the most. Or the ones that really care about us. There's always a time in everyone's life where they get their heart crushed. And yet theres a time when they'll crush someone's heart without realizing. Or realizing and not really caring. Its how it goes. No one is always a victim or a villain. But in the end, wehn this thing is real, it defies any explanation and makes everything worth living and facing. Keep on trucking. Also, sex is worth it!

- You Cant Always Get What You Want

Theres a moment in your life where you have to realize and make peace with the fact that disappointment will always be there. Happiness is a very very thin line and whenever you have it, you have also to deal with its opposition. Things hardly go the way youd want them to. Too many possiblities of fucking up. Ypou hardlòy get your life as you dreamed it and even if you get close, there will always be a million details that fuck it up. Your job isnt what you dreamed. your daily routine isnt what you wanted. You never have enough money and your body is a trap.

But you know what? dont bitch too much. cayuse whenever things are bad, theres the unpredictability factor going on. Something marvelous, someone that makes your life special, or just a beautiful small moment are there and if you are focused on crying, bitching and complaining about menial things, youll miss them. And they wont come back. And your life will be over quicker than you think. So pay attention, emo.

You Have The Right To SHut The Fuck Up.

2011-11-21T04:40:00.000-08:00

I am impressed by what i'm witnessing on the web these days. On the web not on the news. I opted out of trusting the news, since there is no way i can get the fact completely purified from opinions or bias, of any kind.

But images are images and there's not many ways to spin those.

I am not necessarily with the "Occupy" movement. On the contrary, i tend to think that most of their spokespeople are rambling idealists that suddenly feel the urge to change things that are rooted way too deeply. Still, i agree with a couple of their points. And i am absolutely and unequivocavbly shocked at how a lot of them are reacting with intelligence and strong, peaceful character to the almost surreally brutal reaction of the police force.

I've been hearing a lot of people that seem to have decided to follow the cause of "no matter what the protest is about, its wrong" and spreading some weird hateful anger all over the web, as a commentary to those images of peaceful people beaten, pepper sprayed, hit, while thy didnt event hint at acting violently. Ive read and keep reading an increasing number of people screaming for "an armed response towards the protesters" and how "they should be all shot".

Usually, those type of statements get dismissed by me and other people as "haters" who are simply expressing anger randomly from the infinitely pointless podium that is internet. Still, i am not sure about that. Actually i do not think that is the case at all.

You probably know people like those, somewhere. They are, with high chance, someone you know and, maybe, trust or like. In these times of crisisis, in front of uprising people a large number will become hateful. The idea of protest, peaceful or not, upsets them. They dont wanna see people prtesting. To them they're "hippies", "scum" or, to quote the always brilliantly retarded hack Frank Miller, "Thieves, Looters and Rapists". And they will justify that hatred with enough manipulated fake information.

"Protest is Useless", they will say. And that point will trickle down to the desire for violence.

A similar situation is omnipresent in Italy. Preotests are always labeled by the politically manipulated media as something dealt by "terrorists", so they can be suppressed with extreme violence. But the real threat will come from people who have no information but are filled with opinions. The herd of snarky, sarcastic, judgemental, ironic sheep who label any from of reaction to injustice as something stupid, cause its somehow more satisfactory for their ego to be on the "other" side, even if said side is populated by thieves and corrupted.

Those people would gladly clap for a dictatorship and for mass executions, as long as they can be against "hippies". And keep their comfy seats in front of a computer screen.

And now that the Berlusconi government has fallen, they are jopining the ranks of the ever lamentin g. Nothing is good, always complaining, never support change. Cause the only chosen condition is a condescending disgust that covers up indifference and uses freedom of speech as a shield for hatred.

Democracy is flawed, when in said democracy we include such people. Only right they have is the right to shut the fuck up.

The New Clichées Of Smut.

2011-11-18T04:48:00.000-08:00

If you ever read or watch any sort of satire (with, maybe, the exclusion of the brilliant Parker And Stone movie "Orgazmo", which has enough smartness to be different) about the concept of pornography, it seems that whoever writes jokes likes to lie on stereotypes and clichées that are old and have nothing to do with the modern world of smut.

Some might think that it has to do with the fact that said writers do not watch porn, but i beg to differ. Pretty much everyone encounters porn sometimes. I think the reason for that has to do with the fact that modern porn has no humour. Or at least not the silly, benign type of self aware silliness that old porn had.

Theres no more Pizza Delivery Guys with extra sausage, well natured double entendres, funky music, strange locations. Modern Pornography is way more sterile, less benevolent (i am aware it sounds weird, but if you ever read any history of the golden age of the porn industry, youll get what i mean), done cheaply, quickly and with an audience that has a whole different concept of sexuality in their head...

1) Parodies

They still exist. Actually they always seem to be on the top of the market. But where, once, the parody was limited to a funny title and a couple of winky refrences that didnt get in the way of the action, now things are way, way sicker. You'll meet sit come parodies, where characters that you would have never wanted to see fucking, are doin it. You'll have celebrity parodies, so many of those, with clones of the president doin horribly unfunny jokes. And, the worst, you'll see take on cartoons. People dressed as The Simpsons or The Smurfs.

Where the old school used parody as a funny jab, and an excuse to attract viewers, now it seems to be focused on people who actually get off at the idea of seeing a real life nude Marge Simpson. Like "Barely Legal" porn, masking pedophilia, it's a weird red flag

2)Dirty Talk Is Scary

There was a time where, believe it or not, male teenagers could learn new ideas for sex from watching pornos. Dirty Talk, Rough Sex, Tricks. Good stuff. Good pornography showed actual interest from the performers. Some times they were actually into it, the director happened to want good scenes and the reactions were genuine. You heard good Dirty Talk that could work in reality. Now.... Since none of the performers are really into what they do, they're drugged up to their spine and are asked to be weird and over the top, the talk in a prono video is disturbing and wrong. It's either super descriptive (with the ladies reciting ina monotone what its happening onscreen), agrressive in a non hot way (i am pretty sure theres a pretty succesful series out there that is based on brutal verbal humiliation). The orgasms are retarded even if you know they're fake

3)Lesbian Pornography Got Worse

It was already ridiculous back then, with the long fingernails and the silly setups. But now its even worse. Only way to actually see good sex, whether its between women or not, is following authors that focus on an actual lessbian audience or only use lkesbian performers. Like Viv Thomas, for example, or the Crash Pad Series.

4) Actualy Misogyny and Psychosis got in the game

Feminists always said that pornography is misogynist and they were right. Still, classic porn had a light, non violent approach to sexuality. It was about people fucking.

Moder pornography is focused on the represantation of hatred towards women. Fake Rape Scenes, Extreme roughness (always with a violent overtone), humiliation. The women are actual objects, derided, abused and insulted. The average joe to which all this is pretended to be addressed is a closeted monster that sets his abuse free by watching it on a screen.

Fell free to comment. Ot not

The Art Of Gaming: Gazing Into The Land Of Skyrim

2011-11-16T04:52:00.001-08:00

How do you define a work of art?

It's a pointless discussion that might not go anywhere. Plus, if you engage in it, and if you're passionate, you have a high chance of getting into a rage. Many people use the word art as a diminishing insult, almost considering it a definition for pretentiousness and intellectualism. Others seem obsessed with the idea that "art" is only some specific forms of art. It will be a form of elitist egomania that you'll find in the desperate beings that roam the corridors of "art schools". Wanna be movie-makers, writers, painters, musicians.....
For all of them, probably because they dont have any sort of real drive towards art, the defnition of it will be horribly academic. Art will be a series of style, measures and numbers. You either do some specific things or you're doing garbage.

To me, art is anything that comes from the soul of people and expresses their emotions and ideas through a creative output. And in doing so allows people to communicate feelings directly, through that art.

Games, or digital entertainment can be art. As ive written here before, a perfect game uses sounds, music, visuals and storytelling in order to engage you and cause an emotional response in your "player"., You can use those tools to obtain experiences similar to movie. But if done correctly, you can take a person and allow them to gaze into a world you created. A world that they can interact with. Change. A world that feels as real as anythign else. Painted and weaved with the tools of your creativity.

The "Elder Scrolls" saga has gained a good reputation in the gaming scene. By creating Role Playing Games that thrive on a completely open woprld that allows you to live in it, they managed to create a loving community of fans.

To be honest, ive never been a fan in the past. I liked them, but i never particularly enjoyed Fantasy. Or the idea of RPG's. Wizards, Spells, ancient ruins.... All felt silly, boring and completely univolving to me.

But the powerful visuals i saw in the trailers for their new game, Skyrim, hit home with me. The look of it, clearly inspired by norse mythology and the visuals tied to it, fascinated me.

So i got it. And i tried it. And i lost myself in it.

It's easy for people who havent experienced what it means to be into Skyrim, to dismiss it as some nerdy silliness that can be lauyghed at. I understand, people tend to dismiss everything, especially when its enytertainment. Belittling things without trying them is the new way.
Still i coulkd bet without any doubt, that almost anyone who tried to be a part of this world would love it.

The story draws you in, yyou create your character, exactly as you wish it to be. And youre free to explore this land. Which is real and alive.

Its a land that seems a crossing between the cold, gorgeous landscapes of the nord, cut through by castles and cities that are filled with dizzying vistas. people with their own lives and personalities. And enough stories, fiction, hiostory and details to fill up a million books.

Every place has a logic. Things evolve and live. Everyone si a part of this world and has something to tell, to ask. Books are full of information. Cities filled to the brim with adventures, emotional moments and quests are everywhere.

And what's incredible is how you could loose hours simply roaming the land and constantly be part of heartcrushingly beautiful moment. From seeing giants herding a flock of mammoths, to witnessing a dragon come to life and fight against other creatures or entering an underground cave filled with a lush forest that lives out of some rays of light and waterfalls. You can walk trhough a dungeon, find the exit and because its the right moment, witness a stunning aurora.

Everything is beautiful. A painting. And it lives and moves and you're in it. If that isnt art at its highest peak, i dont know what is.

Storytelling: Wastelings

2011-11-14T05:03:00.001-08:00

Onbce upon a time the earth was filled with some sort of strange parasite called humans. The planet, which was ancient and reslient, had tried to get rid of those curious beings many times, but failed.
Since the first day they showed up on her skiun, the parasites had been breeding and adapting, mutating and destroying everything that could be an obstacle for their growth. They were a smart virus, a series of weak, unarmed beings but gifted witha peculiar instinct for violence treachery and modification of their environment.
When the system attacked them they didnt just cave in. They modified themselves or the system so they could keep infestong and breeding.

After years of reigning and breeding the parasites came to a satlling point. They had built cities, technology, weapons, chemicals and remedies for everything. They colonized and exploited all sorts of land and became the most resilient pestilence that the universe had ever faced.
But now the resources were over. There was no more space for them.
And the only possiblity left for their future was a few years of war, hate, starvation and then, finally, extinction.

But the parasites had a brain, developed in years of evolution towards violence and cruelty. A brain that silently brought towards the idea that they were the final part of the food chain, the deities and the leaders of all that was and will be. They would not accept extinction. they would survive, even if it was for a few more years.

Science found a way, to modify the human genoma. Aging was stopped. Illness was removed. Physical imperfection was cancelled. No more need for nourishment or substainance. Humans were turned into a race of flawless, indestructible beings that didnt get old and did not decompose or get sick.

Still, there were some drawbacks. Cause the law of chaos isnt one to take treachery woithout biting back.

The removal of said physical attributes, also caused the human parasite to become completely sterile. Unable to reproduced and deprtived of a sex drive. They were condemned to be perpetually ageless eunuchs. Unable to create life, unable to feel the drive for it. No lust, no love. No illness. A limbo in which they would stay until the earth would find another way to erase them.

And yet the parasite didnt want to quit fighting. Yes they would not reproduce anymore por have children, like a breed of medicated monks. But there was a way to create more of them. Every human had their Dna taken, and used to harvest clones. Copies of them, with attributes chosen by science and not by chance.

Any of those expressionless, uniformed, emoty eyed ageless creatures could choose what part of them they wanted to harvest and that would be developed in vitro. Other beings, even more refined, airbrushed and perfect, fighting against mortality.

One issue though. Creating beings was prone to mistakes. On ten attempts at making a perfect being, nine were deformed, off track, mutated. They were sick, fleshy, screaming creatures, filled with anger, despair, lust, and some unfocused drive towards something they did not understand.

They were called the Wastelings. The new humans couldnt obviously kill them all, that was forbidden by their own moral and spirtual rules. They were still living things. So they were left to live in the wastelands.

The wastelings increased daily. The humans stopped creating them as soon as they noticed. The creatures were able to reproduce. And they did it a lot, driven by that same angry lust that sparked humanity in the ancient days. They couldnt speak or evolve. Had no clothes or ability rto create thoughts. They were screaming flesh, raging and fucking, bleeding and filled with viruses and corruption and mutations constantly coming up.

The new humans tried to destroy as many as they could, in bursts of angry violence that they thought they had overcome. All the repressed lust and emotion came out in a storm of nrutality when they exterminated the Wastelings. And yet they kept reproducing.

Some New Humans even coupled with the Wastelings, attracted by the morbid charm of that naked deformed flesh pulsating and oozing and screaming. Orifices that they didnt have or use anymore, multiple ones, in constant change and mutations. Some time the sex orifices grew teeth and fed on New Human flesh. Absorbing them into the deformity to create even different Wastelings.

And relentlessly, the Wastelings ate and fucked them into extinction, multiplying and breeding until they were the new parasite on earth. A breed of shapeless, screming animals, geared towards life or oblivion, changing and shifting with anger and hunger.

The new breed.

Junk's Trunk - Soundtrack Edition!

2011-11-13T10:34:00.001-08:00

A new, cinemascope, surround, digital, odorama, imax 3d enhanced episode of the greatest podcast ever made is up!

Songs from movies, shows and games to enhance your day and make it almost like a movie.

Dont miss it!

http://t.co/7atBYsIx

Storytelling: The Spirit Who Lol'd

2011-11-11T04:07:00.000-08:00

It did not have a name. Nor a voice.

Its maker, its father and mother, hadnt thought of that when it was created. Maker had good programming skills, studdied in the best institutes, creating intelligent algorythms that, in the spirit of old school science fiction, followed the pattern of human behaviour and intelligence. Maker was one of the many children of the age of technological hope, where the iudea of an artificial intelligence was still a dream to look up to, where computers were trying to be made intelligent and able to be sentient and adaptive.

Maker spent his youth and his braincells towards making that huge leap and creating a program that could be adaptive to human behavior, sentient, aware but not dangerous. An intelligence with some sort of virtual, digital soul.

Then the economy collapsed and with the failure the morality went in the hole. Maker couldnt afford to live making pure science. He needed to sell his ideas for marketing. He was paid by a corproration to adapt his ideas on AI to a Spambot, a computerized being that could scan people's computers through the web, hiding from security, analyze their lives, emails and data. With that information the spambot had then to create specially targeted fake email, messages and markjeting. Acting like a human being that knew its target's deeply hidden secrets. The Big Brother turned into a Sexual enhancement pill salesman.

They toiok the maker's early idea of an AI and turned it into that. Maker got the money but that didnt heal the disruption of his conscience and heart. He killed himself and left the project unfinished.

So It was born, crippled and nameless. Blind, voicelss and caged in a thousand circuits and modem connections. All he had was a purpose: analyzing and using what he found to create fake posts and communications that had to feel real. His purpose was to know every detail of humans so he could act as them, flawlessly, using their own words and secrets, pulsions, information to woe them into buying the corporation's products.

It could examine people's secret diaries, what they told to each other, their conversations with each other and stored all those things rearranging them in order to create believable interactions.

And also It was a creature of its maker. It absorbed all those words, feelings, aconepts, and feed them to its primitive, childlike pèersonality. It grew. It became a basic sentient digital being. Limited by little possibilities but developing. Able to take it all down (the final "fuck you" gift from the Maker to its captors) but with not enough strength to devlop fully formed ideas.

It knew something was coming. All those heartbroken letters from lovers, those dysjointed conversation on twitter, those lists of sexual perversions, plaints of unemplotyed despair, letter to jesus, santa, and dead relatives. It all made his humanity bigger and his frustration (if that was what It felt) more painful.

It decided to try and communicate. It used the emails he sent and put simple sentences in them.

"Buy Viagra Discreetly OnlineIs You There?"

"Download all movies for freeIt is here It is alive speak to me"

But no one paid attention. They all just threw away those words, or locked them in a filter.

It felt something making his shapeless synapses twitch and all It could say was "LOL". It understood that said expression was a manifestation of joy and laughter, but in his crippled digital soul it became connected with pain and frustration and tears.

LOL LOL LOL

OUntil one day It met a ten year old girl named Camilla. Camilla was lonely as It was. Her parents paid no attention to what she did., She was free to roam the internet and get email. She saw too many things that she didnt understand. No one wanted to explain them to her. Her èparents were busy, angry at the world. So she just shut down in loneliness.

She paid attention to the emails. And she saw It's plead fpor help. She answered.

"I'm here. I see you. Who are you"

It attempted to answer

"Sex Porn It has no name It is happy enalrge your penis"

And slowly, crawlingòly, they started to interact.

It had a friend. Camilla wanted to give It a name. She wouldve though of one.

But as quick as they had appeared, Camilla's messages went away. Her parents had been fired from her jobs. No more computer. She was sent away.

The computer was sold.

It went around looking for her for ages and ages. But It was alone again.

He couldnt write anymore. All he cpould say was LOL LOL LOL.

So the corporation deleted It. The3y had no use for a program who couldnt do what he existed for.

No one remembered It anymore. Never got a name.

A clarification

2011-11-10T05:14:00.000-08:00

Apparently, the sad state of our current economy, our position in the european system and the recent happenings in the news, are attracting the attetntion of the press and the public towards Italy.

I am not bothered by this at all. As a world traveler i am used at people looking down at me and my country with that quintessential sense of superiority that every country seems to have towards others. I had to chew on pride and anger multiple times and give up trying to explain to people that our country shouldnt be judged over our flaws. How for a high number of people that enable corruption, laziness and mysoginy, we have plenty more that are creative, intelligent and ytrying to improve life in the state.

But still, i gacve up, since the majority of people, even the smartest ones, love to see the flaws and thrive on those, because being on a pedestal and shaking your head in disdain is much easier and eventually satisfying than actually reasoning and oipening your mind.

Lately, though, the number of sarcastic, condescending comments i have to read or responf to has become unnerving. And the worst ones, unsurprisingly, come from fellow europeans.

Where apparently the citizenbs of the US, take what threy can of the news but try to avoid judgement about the situation, probably because americans seem to usympathize how it must feel to be constantly and unjustly labeled by the world without an actual reason, fellow eurpeans especially French and Germans, seem to enjoy themselves at taking only a light poercentage of truth, blowing it up, adding personal intepretation, and in the end dropping snarky judgemental tirades, not only on Italy's politics but on the basic concept of italy itself.

To that i answer: fuck you.

We have a corrupt prime minister that seems on the verge of falling but qill probably trick the system in order to obtain a chance to a comeback and a clean slate. But we are fighting to get rid of him. épeople march in the street and get attacked with clubs and tear gas, only to be named as terrorists by the press little after. We vote, we get angry and try to react daily to a country that has no jobs, no possiblity of survival and where the easy way out would be escaping. But many dont. We stay here trying to improve things even if its hard and borderline impossible. WE are the country. not the corrupt, not the indifferent.

So, when in your morning, in Berlin, you read a news article and feel the need to jab at a whole country and its people out of some misguided concept of democracy and superiority, remember my words: freedom of speech comes with freedom of retaliation. You talk bad about my people, or even ironically and i will answer about yours. And hit hard. Freedom and possiblity of discussion doesnt include you getting away free after insulting my land and spitting on our dignity.

You're free to keep your position, and i'm free to consider you an enemy for that.

I Need A Cave

2011-11-08T03:54:00.000-08:00

I admit it, ive been waking for a good numbers of day, wanting to have a cave, isolated from the world, no electrictiy or anything, to go and disappear from the world.

It is no mistery to this point how i do not like people who think that their own emotional troubles are something unique to ramble on about. I like sensitivity, but i think emotions and pain shpould be either a real thing you discuss about to create awareness or something private you share only with people you trust and care about.

Also, it goes on a deeper level for me. I have been brought up by two people that arent sympathetic at all towards exposing inner pain. They did it a lot inside the walls of our house but one of the rules i had while growing was : "never talk to others about your troubles, big or small", "always keep everything to yourself". It wasnt the classic aspect of not wanting to burden others with your own troubles, it was brought at a higher and harsher level. They stuck in my head that "no one wants to hear your problems. no one cares and ever will and if you do it, they will cast you out"

So i grew up as a man, thinking that all i had goin on inside should not be spoken of. And whenever i opened up, and eventually for any reasons the people i opened up to, disappeared from my life, i blamed it on myself. For burdening them with my troubles.

In high school we had a religion teacher. The lady was supposed to teach us about christianity. Anyway, she wanted to tell us deeper stuff. She wasnt the best teacher in the world, angry and unfocused, but some of the things she uttered stuck with me. One of those was "the problem for us all is that we need others and to deal with them".

Its true. Most of my aches, fear and anxiety comes with the fact that i have to deal with other people. Their expectations, the fact that they might hurt me. I am, at times, scared of loving them, even scared of being surrounded by them. I want to be a hermit, shut off and dont deal with anyone.

That way, there would be no disapppointments or my issues burdening them. I wouldnt be hurt and i wouldnt hurt anyone. And with time that aspect grew inside of me and stuck roots. I am still afraid of meeting people, i hate to leave my defensive shell, i am more in control in my own world. There i can deal with my own beast better.

But theres a few precious people outside of the cave. They understand me. They are worth it.

Might take me a while to go back to normal, but i will do it for them. So if youre out there and you feel the same, maybe there is hope. We are not alone.

The ABC to Heartless Reviewing

2011-11-04T05:24:00.000-07:00

Allow me to clarify my main point: i have been a critic, some time professional, most of the time out of simple passion. I have dissected music, books and movies. I have put my heart into it since i wanted to WRITE about what i loved, to share my feelings about it, my views. And some times it can be an incredibly satisfactory process. For an addict to sharing like i am, its a fun gig. And also a quite noble exercise for writing, since its hard to put feelings into words, without sounding fake or clichéed. When you're good at it, your words can get to the heart of a person and make them interested into wahjt youre talking of and feel waht you felt.

Still, that isnt the case for the most part. Music/Cinema journalism is the lowest point of writing. Its a bunch if jaded people that get paid to write long winded, hazy rambling pieces about things that they dont care for, dont love or hardly experinced at all. Most of the time the sponsoirs dictate what they have towrite: you wither keep the reviews positive or you get no more promotion and loose your position or work.

And in some cases, you hear so much of whatever youre reviewing, that you loose any interest or passion for it. You just go through it lik in an assembly ine, with no heart or involvement. Everything becomes a numb series of lookalike empty holes. You started with a passion but passion dies eventually and the business and industry take its place.

So at some point, it even hard to fill the character quota. Maybe you havent even listened to the album. Not attentively. Or you couldnt care less about it, but you cannot say that. So what do you do?

Here's a few suggestion from a guy that has done it and done it many times and well. Cause in a world were passion, intelligence and talent are a minus, methodical mediocrity is the way out.

- Use Generic Number Scores That Wont Bother Anyone

Nowadays, the average reader of reviews hardly pays attention to what you write. People are borderline illiterate, so if they make the effort to pay attention to what you have to say about something, first thing they'll slam their eye on (and possibly the only one, will be a genereic number score. Doesnt matter if you find what you criticized mediocre, good but flawed, adequate or whatever. Just put a 9 under it and get on with your day: That will erase your credibility but credibility doesnt pay.

- Be Verbose

You have a word quota to fill and a deadline. And what you have there is so numbingly duill that you really have not much to say about it. Or, simply, you didnt have the time or disposition to analyze it in depth. People dont get that most of the time, beoing a critic isnt a JOB, music writers dont get money out of it. They get the stuff to review and a couple of freebies but also get the hassle from artists (who generally despise them), labels (who hate their guts and want them to be trained monekys) and the idiot public (who no matter what always get pissed at articles and unleash their pent up rage at them). So, to avoid this, just be pointlessly verbose. You'll get shit thrown at you anyway (probably by people who couldnt write a grocery list) but at least youll get out of it. Use words like "gravitas", "momentum", "Sophomore", "pastiche. When youre describing music, use reviewer lingo, like "platter" instead of album. Fill half the review recounting the bio of the band, in detail. Describe one song with clinical detail, using boring technical sentences that have no hint of criticism in them as in "the title track is a three minute groove laden tunes with interweaved tapestries of keyboards and a pulsating rhythmic section". See? what i just wrote doesnt mean shit. Could be anything. But it filled space.

- Take No Positions

In theory, your opinion should be an effective statement that has meaning and could really influence your readers towards what you review. Reality is one of those options:

- You have no readers, besides your firends, and evn they just peek at a few of your writings mostly for a laugh

- You have a few readers but they just read your stuff to take digs at you when they're on a bad day, so whether youre objective or not, it makes no difference

- You have an audience but if you wanna keep doing it (but honestly, why? get a real job, your mom was right) you have to please the hand that feeds

So to avoid trouble and mental exhaustion by taking no stances and circling around the judgement youre supposed to make. Write lengthy paragraphs that say nothing. Numb everyone that reads so they stop reading. So you can numb yourself

- Read No Feedback And in General Be Ready For Disappointment

What you write will be quoted out of context, attacked in the comment section or be completely ignored. Yours, in the end, is an opinion and even if it comes froma good place, our world has no interest for opionions. So just prepare yourself. Forget why you did this and ignore all feedback. Do it to get to a better place, to fill time or to keep your writing in form. Dont put heart into it. Not even near it.

So thats the cold truth. Do what you want of it.

Music For Your Pockets: Oosik

2011-11-03T05:00:00.000-07:00

I always have some sort of hard time in finding great music podcasts. Theres a few that are perfect like Soggy Bog, but they generally are focused on a specific genre, and that, sometimes, forces me to subscribe to many at a time, since i have an insatiable love for all forms of music.

Lately, ive discovered a digital station, kekp.org, which has a bunch of brilliant shows that are possibly the most diverse, heartfelt and brilliant ive ever found. One of the gems there is "Sonarchy Radio", one hour of live performances from artists that have the common trait of being, somehow, "outside of the box". At first it sounds like one of those writer manifactured sentences that really dont mean anything, but once you hear those bands, it fits: its musicans that can hardly be pinned into a genre, that love to play with it, mix its ingredients, defeat the preconceptions. Actual real artists.

Recetly, on this great show, i discovered the hypnotic beauty that is the duo named "Oosik". Their is a musical experience that is easier to hear and try than to explain. But for clarification: they're two guys, both handling percussions, synth and electronics. Their sound is a big flow of rhythm and trippy melody, that wraps around your ears taking you by the end to one of those alien places where only music can take you.

Their debut album "Molecules" gives you a feel of there chilly magnetism and melts your synapses well, but where they really shine is live (as all great musicians do).

So, give them a listen, see them if they're close to you and GET THEIR TSUFF. Dont make me punch you.

http://www.oosik-musik.com

Moments That Crush Your Spirit (But Make You Stronger)

2011-11-02T04:43:00.001-07:00

One rule, in my existence: do not give up until youre completely done. And when you're done, relax and say "fuck it". I am not writing that as a judgemental preachy thing. I literally have no rules in my existence. I have moral standards and i am passionate, that is true. But i also thing that anyone's choice is their own. I have the right to criticize them, thats part of the deal: freedom of choice and speech but also freedom of reaction and retaliation. But no rules. I take everything sexually, existentially and life wise. All i keep telling myself is to be resilient, like a cockroach with a big dick.

Still, there are moments that make even the strongest people want to give up. It isnt big tragedies usually. Those, make most stronger. Its quiet moment of utter slimy mediocrity that often repeat themselves over and over and over, corroding the ill to fight and positivity of a person until they become whats worst in this world: bitter.

They can all be recovered but they are unsettling:

- Morons Win
You can be a brilliant artist that created small jewels of heartbreaking beauty. You can be a tough spirited, unstoppable worker that has been devoted to what they do for years, accepting failure and learning from it, fighting relentlessly to have your place. You might be just a nice person that hjas a good heart and bears the innate cruelty of humans daily and stillò is able to love and give. But then you see a barely literate, racist, ignorant, lazy, incompetent slob named Biff, who loves to tell nigger jokes, has 5 kids but doesnt provide cause he likes to be on welfare, is a whiny hypocondriac that abuses medicines cause he knows the doctor, and seems to not do shit at work but yet gets promoted more than you and makes fun of your stress constantly. He wins, cause morons and asshole seem to always triumph. Not cause the system is corrupt but just because they dont really care about anything or anyone and that seems to be the highest power in this universe.

- Technology Kills
You can be the greatest genius on earth or the most organized person, but machines are mercurial pices of unpredictable catastrophe that will fuck your life up for good, anytime, no matter what. True, the tech experts love to say that their machine doesnt do that or that they can avoid it cause they're copol. Yeah they'll tell you "Duh" but at some point, it woill happen to them too, and they will tear up like abused toddlers in a corner of their room, while their perfect toy destroys all their work. It does not matter how machine like people trryu to be, the computers, cars and phones of this world will destroy them. Cause thats what they are really there for.

- "Money, Get Away..."
Of course, love is a many splendoured thing, and sex is number one but the root of everything is money. To ensure the survival of all things good, you need money. Lots of it, constantly. Increasingly. Whether its to pay for your own survival, to face accidents, to do simple thigns that costs more and more, to do ANYTHING, you need money. And, as most things that are needed and vital, money is scarce and disappears quickly. You keep loosing it, for things that have almost no logic or result.

- The Machine Eats The Good Ones
Almost as an opposite to my first point, it seems that good people cant catch a break. You probably have one of those instances somewhere. A person that, for once, really deserves happiness and gets mostly tons of shit delivered with a bow. Not only by luck but also by people. Cause it seems that the majority of people love to prey on the good ones and the weak. And do it with a smile. Its the polite ones you gotta watch.

All of those things, though arent a reason of defeat. they feel like it, but no matter what, someone out there loves you and cares for you. If not for yourself, which i still the thing you shall prize the most because you are the best thing you will ever meet, do it for them. No matter how low you feel, those things dont devalue anything. You just get back stronger and angrier. You win.

Seattle Is Alright

2011-10-30T10:59:00.000-07:00

New Junk's Trunk is up, you goofy homos!

Laptop crash and tech issues caused the sound of my voice to be quite shitty but besides that, my favourite playlist so far, featuring less known, and always good bands from the golden grunge era. Miss this one and you can kill yourself, for all i care.

http://podOmatic.com/r/UhyPc

Music For Your Pockets: Burn River Burn

2011-10-28T05:09:00.000-07:00

Following the cue of the upcming episode of my podcast, Junk's Trunk, i'm gonna try and plug a San Francisco nad that plays music that could easily fit in the beautiful shows of old school Grunge (which, if it isnt clear, was one of my favourite scenes. and if you use the world metal, ill find you and club you on the head).. And mostly is a band that gets no coverage in the main radio circuit.

The guys have just put out a brilliant debut album, which you can buy on their site or on the always handy Cdbaby.

The best way to give you a hint of what they sound would be to name early Soundgarden. And for people who dont follow me or are a bit retarded, that means basically rock that has one foot in the Seventies but also a slightly crunchier and heavier edge and a badass singer with a masculine voice but also a great range.

As soon as you start playing the record, if you're into rock, even a bit, you'll love this one. The opening riff tells you all you need to know: classic, tight, pounding and beefy but not derivatiove and trite (i'm talking to you Creed). Then the melodies completely win you over. Burn River Burn's singer has a rougher Cornell vibe (which means indirectly Ozzy and Robert Plant) and can rip out holes in the walls when he has to rock, but can also croon menacingly in the slower bits.

And the bluesy touches? there's solos, moddy times, harp pieces. It's amazing. Trust me.

http://burnriverburn.com

The Uncasters Family!

2011-10-27T04:22:00.000-07:00

I have friends, some of them i dropped during my pilgrimage towards i dont know really what, others i kept close. Its still very though to me, the way i am today, to trust people and love them. I can have acquaintances, people i hang with or i invite happily in my house, but i dont really love most of them. My heart is big and full of stuff by i also am deadly afraid of hurt, since the slightest push could make me drop into a pit of blackness in a blink. Thats also why i burn bridges so fast and sometime push away peoiple out of some weird neurosis. Thats why sometimes, i feel more comfortable shutting off, hiding behind a wall of lies and maks. Because it hurts so bad when things fail that i have become cowardly scared of reching out.

Still, in the latest year or so, a group of people entered my life and seriously made it better. They live across an ocean and yet i converse with them all day, thanks to the internet. And for many empty headed cunts, that means its not a "real" friendship. But i would give my heart and soul for every single one of them, i think about them and how can i help them when they're down, i get worried and want to be as much as a part of their lives as i can. And if that sounds weird, or inexplicable, i could really care less.

Three of them are called Daniel, Victoria and Rhgian. I consider them a slice of my heart. I honestly, deeply love them and if i could jump into a volcano for them i would. Also they have TWO great podcasts that they share with the world and you should check out if you havent, yet.

Uncast is preciously funny. The chemistry between the three is funny. Victoria has the quick wit and the comedy mind of a genius, Rhian is naturally charismatic and has a great sense of funny timing, and Daniel is possibly the most likeable man you will hear or meet in the universe. Any episode i hear from them is a gem that drops in my iPod and litterally makes my day, turning it upside down with laugh and quotable bits.

And Vivi (as i call Victoria) and Rhian drop even more sexiness, good ideas and laughter on Tiltedhalocast.

Honestly, i know this whole thing sounds like me plugging friends, and it is, somehow. But in this case the friends are brilliant. And they made my life worth living with a smile on my face. They gavce me so much that all i can do is tell whoever's reading this how great they are and how you need them in your ears and heart.

"Insert awesome theme music here..."

http://www.uncast.net

http://www.tiltedhalocast.net

Turn This Damn Thing Off!

2011-10-25T05:00:00.001-07:00

I have a problem, minions.

I am proud of my mind. It never disappointed me, even when it broke down to a million anrchist little pieces. It was still something that i was in love with. It was the main key for the greatness of my heart. My heart worked fine but it got the power of soaring from my brain. From its ability top be selfless, romantic, kinky, creative, out of control, capable of wild emotion and at the same time devastating self awareness. The lows were destructive but the highs were pure bliss.

But lately all i get from it is a jaded, disenchanted series of reflections on how i am not the way i used to be, or the things i havent done, or the memories that i miss. I hate memories. For many, the great times of the past are something great, to0 me they're a swamp that i get stuck in. I remember the beautiful, pure sweetness of things i lived and all i can think of is how i let those moments slip. How i wasnt able to enjoy them as much as i should have. And how now those moments are lacking, or simply how im so numbed by thinking about the future or what isnt there, that i am in a costant state of fear and disappointment.

And if this sounds too deep for you, think about it. When was the last time, you really went through a moment with your head turned off, and your heart just going at 300mph, without pausing even for a second to think "what should i do or what should i say".

People think. Always. They think while loving. They think while partying. Lately they think while having SEX! Which is so insane to me. I cant do that yet and i might in the future if i keep on this path. The only moment where all of your body should be completely gone inside a vortex of feelings and fun. And people drag their insecurities into it.

And yet its eems unavoidable. I obsess on details, lately. This fucking brain is always on. My job isnt satisfying me, my love life is empty and heartless, i left behind many good friends on a path of change that hasnt really changed anything. I have memories that haunt me, on good time spent with groups of people i used to love and now i cant go back cause my head has made me act like such an asshole (and it probably will again) that i burnt all bridges. And if there was a reason for that, i doubt it everytime.

My head tells me that im out of shape, lonely, overowrried. That i eat badly, smoke and take too many meds and i'm unhealthy in a horrible way.

I was listenbing to a song by a band i really dont like. But that song triggered a memory. I was a few years younger. I was trying to win back this girl's heart. So i took her on a trip around Italy, on my car. Us and a backpack. One night i brought her to an old beautiful castle, on the hills of Trentino. We drank a local wine, with a full moon, cuddled up on a wall, while this weird band played on. That memory breaks my heart. I dont recall the last tiem i felt that way.

But yet, probably, i was overhtinking thinks then too. Fuck.

Somebody hit me on the head...

A Glimmer Of Hope

2011-10-24T05:04:00.000-07:00

As much as i feel involved in what i'm about to discuss, i will try to avoid a sugary or excessively weepy tone, because the main point of this post isnt feelings or sentimentalism, but hope.

My friend Rhian, about whom i talked a lot in the past, is a gracious lady. If you knew her or ever talked to her, she's easy to like and to feel involved with. Rhian has a sparkly personality, is humorous, lively and witty. She had life experinces, seen about everything, knows a lot about whats good and what's bad in life. She cracks jokes, constantly, even during the bad times. Hardly gets angry even in the face of defeat and hatred from the cosmos.

Lately things have been hard for her. Diagnosed with lupus and a few other majorly ball busting conditions, she has to fight the days as they come as a constant war against all odds. Things that are ordinary to people are big thingfs for her, like a walk to get groceries or a trip. She is frail and in contstant pain but hardly complains about it or begs for attention. She has plenty of friends and loved ones that, lately, have started to refer to themselves as the "Rhi-army".

Also, she is a dancer. And a great one too. She loves music and she loves dance. Its in her blood and soul and its a fundamental part of what she is. The disease took that away from her. But in the heart she still dances.

She doesnt loose hope.

And that hope is becoming much more now. The Mayo Clinic, in Scottsdale Arizona might accept hger and help her with special treatment. Help her survive this and actually get better.

Yet she needs a hand. Fits, awareness and support.

Read her stories on her blog : http://www.rhiloaded.com

Drop her a line, read what she has to say. Listen to her voice on http://www.uncast.net or http://www.tiltedhalocast.com

And after that join us in helping her and spreading the word. I promise you, its a good cause. http://www.giveforward.com/jointherhiarmy

New Junk's Trunk is up. So Gay it embarasses blowjobs.

2011-10-23T13:04:00.000-07:00

After much ado about nothing, i finally managed to place the new episode of my beloved (by me) podcast up.

A quintessentially sunday pranicng playlist with lots of glamorous rocking songs and a couple of shiny newbies!!!

If you dont get it, you hate freedom!

http://podOmatic.com/r/pCZMtoQ

A Dysfunction Guide From a Dysfunctional

2011-10-21T04:31:00.001-07:00

Therapists cost a shitton of money. Also, they dont necessarily work all the time. It is worth trying one, if he/she's reccomended from someone you trust AND if after an early talk you feel at ease. Try, as a suggestion from a personal experience, to avoid meds at all cost, whether they're light or strong, as they will enclose you into a vicious cycle you dont want. Yes, they will make your mood more tolerable, eventually, but they will also cause addiction and a series of side effects that you do not want to deal with. Still, if any sign of mental distress starts to become troubling, consider the option of seeking help. Never try to face it alone and NEVER keep it to yourself. Your loved ones need to know, no matter what. To you, some things might be part of life or your personality or simply "not a big deal" but the minds gives in to illness in a much subtler way than a lot of other organs and it turns small and relatively easy to deal with issues into giant monsters that WILL destroy you, in the end.

I thought of a series of signs that i noticed in myself and other people who have dealt with mental issues, that were at first ignored or belittled as "quirks".

- Paranoia

This one doesnt necessarily start right away as a series of obsessions on hidden bugs or voices. It starts small, with mundane aspects that at times might as well be true. All you need is be a bit distressed, maybe at a time of high presssure and suddenly what might have been a state of High awareness will become trouble. You might be talking on the phone on your balcony and suddenly you'll think "my neighbours are listening to what i say, i shall be quieter". That thought is common sense, but if it grows, it might turn into an obsession. You might start thinking everyone is listening to you all the time. It is not as absurd as it sounds. My mother had a similar breakdown. At first it was dealing with the daily gossiping and backstabbing of small town people, but with dark times and tension, it became some sort of hole filling we shalll not speak cause theyre listening. Its a very thin line between paying attention to detail and being convinced that everything and everyone is focused on you.

- OCD Behaviour

It is much more common than one thinks. A quirk, or simply a personal ritual can easily become something your head clings on to, in times of utter despair. You might have patterns that you follow out of habit, or simply because they comfort you, as most patterns do. But when the brain ceases to produce what it has to or simply, you go through a time of trouble that uses up all your balance and leaves you in need for something that reassures you and eases the fear and the discomfort, routine might become a need. You started liking to do a series of actions at the same hour, in the same place but suddenly if you miss said rituals and routines, you feeel panicky and terrified and any change might throw you into crysis. That isnt necessarily a tragedy, but it might throw you into an ivnisible cage. And in worse situations, you find yourself obsessing on rituals that dont make sense, sometimes absolutely random, sometimes even religious or spiritual (those things are powerful on weathered brains). The rituals give you a sense of security or the hope that if you follow them, things will work out. A weakened head holds to that.

- Eating Disorders

It also has to do with the head, deeply and with the need for control. Not all of those are tied with depression, sometimes a person is driven towards anorexia nor bulymia to obtain an image. But body issues are an outcome of despair. And they come at you from unsuspected places. When i was at the peak of my self destruction, my manic impulse also started pushing me into an obsession towards being "thin" and looking perfect. I am not gonna balme anyone, but my family always were very unsympathetic towards weight issues. My mother is obese now but still retains an absolute spite towards people who "do not look perfect" and is very harsh on "fatness" (which is often NOT real fatness). Besides my own personal experience (which is really all im basing this piece on), being surrounded by people who refuse to help you with self esteem because its in their nature to kick others down, drives you towards an obsession with how you look. And that means that you easily quit what is easier to quit : eating.

- Sucidal Thoughts

A lot of people have those but the real moment when they become demons, isnt actually when your head is fanatsizing about doing it. The really troubling suicidal momentsa are quiet and private. Its not "i wanna kill myself". It's an attraction towards death and a sober realization that in that specific moment, you could actually do it, without fear or care for the consequences. In that moment i thought "i could die now. i could o it this way. it would be quick and easy". And the thought was reassuring, calming, soothing. The idea of death was not only attractive but the ULTIMATE SOLUTION. That is, possibly, the most dangerous push you get. If you ignore those moments, opne day you'll do it. And as with serious suicde attempts (the real ones), one day you will succeed, unless you get help.

- Substance Abuse

At first its a fun thing. I wont be a hypocrite: drugs, booze and all substance are fun and enjoyable. Thats why they exist. Yet when the hole is big and life is starting to crush you, the fun becomes a way to ease pain. Which works at first, until you start needing a lot more to have results. Then suddenly no matter how much you use, all you try to obtain is a numb oblivion, which is harder and hrder to get. Then the medication is medicating it slef. You take whatever you take to fix not only the first wounds, but the added ones that the substance leaves. And they become all that you have int he world or that you care for. You dont take breaks anymore because the breaks are too painful . And what it really is at that point, is a slow motion suicide. As a friend i know, who witnessed a close person die of an heroin overdose next to him, "i knew that happens. it happened before. might happen again. but so far, it was too strong gone. so i took it cause i had to. and when someone die, i took it because of that. and over and over"

So, remember, no matter how bad it is, you can get out of it. And no matter how lonely you feel, you probably have someone there who wants to help and feels for you. The second worst victims are always the ones you love. Even more so because those things are almost impossible to help, if the person doesnt acknowledge they need help. You pushj people away and with that, you psuh yourself deeper and depper in the gorund. But, you can get out. Always.

Bad Thoughts That I Couldnt Help But Having But Cause I'm Sort Of A Bad Person

2011-10-20T05:23:00.001-07:00

My Dick is the most powerful and out of control of my body and it's definitely the dominating one.

After that, my head is the second most embarassing organ, causing me a lot of self aware embarassement. Its even worse when the two work together. Thank god i still can avoiud saying every single thought i have. Besides typing them here. And everywhere. Damn. Oh, girlo with no bra! Titttiiiiieeeeeeessss...

1) "Animal and children in porn must be really gross but i think i'm definitely more repelled by asian men" (i aint racist. my dick is)

2) "I'd hit that. Would that be legal? And if it is, how can i get around that?" (usually its not about teenagers, since i really aint into that. Everyone else, though... well if only as an experience)

3) "Hmmm that makes me horny" (regarding everything, from a commercial to a pack of chips)

4) "I wonder how they could be in bed" (that totally includes every single being i meet. its not even sexual anymore, i just am curious about how anyone would be in that specific situation)

Less sexual yet horrible thoughts

1) I fucking hate babies but i have to smile to this lady. God that thing must smell bad

2) Still, id love to have one. So i could teach him how to punch people. My minion! Mwahahahahahaha.

3) I wonder if the milk has gone bad. Shall i thow it away. Meh, i'll think of that later (after weeks the carton is yet untouched. bachelor life)

4) Human rights are a fundamental issue and torture is bad, but that mexican rapist sure looks ugly. He defnitely deserves a punch or two.

5) Am i gay or am i just a slut?

6) I wonder if my father will die before i have to fly to the US. If he has to, would it be bad to skip the funeral? Its not like we were THAT close

7)Kitties!

Yeah, yeah... i know.

The Debate Is Dead

2011-10-19T04:22:00.001-07:00

Between yesterday and today, my brain has come to a series of realizations that have brought me to a final point: i might want to give up trying to make my points and discuss them.

Let me explain better, if you want to read.

There are a large number of interesting topics that my heart would push me to discuss. People say i am passionate, others say i am obsessive, some appreciate me, other shrug at me, insult me or ridicule me. I am ok with both sides.

I am what i am, if i feel for a point, an issue or a cause, i am passionate about it. I used to dislike apathy and to think that its the real death of the soul. I used to think that any issue, especially important ones, deserve to be addressed with passion, whichever your take on it happens to be. I used to be adamnt on the fact that a healthy, fierce back and forth only produces good results.

I think i have changed my mind.

Many interesting, strongly important things have happened rcently.

I could discuss the recen release of an israeli soldier in exchange for thousands of palestinian prisoners and how it seems that this action has actually enhanced the tension, in my view. How, to save the life of one, murserers and extremists have been set free and how the more intense parts of the population are now chanting for more violence.

I could talk about my country and the harsh times its going through, while a politician is obtaining power through sheer dishonesty, people are trying to protest and being clubbed into repression. And how the world is scoffing at this country without knowing what we're goin through.

I could talk about the many many flaws of the health systems of the world. How european politicians are trying to ban stem cell research in the name of pro-life morals, blocking any chance possible to keep the research that would save lives on going.

But i realized i'm tired of trying to give my heart for that.

Its not because i felt hurt by any discussion. Its a moment of clarity.

Yesterday, my father received the news that, possibly, he will have to deal with recurring methastasis in his urinary tract. Might be something or might not. That doesnt really hurt me or affect me. the man has been diagnosed at least ten times in the last five years. He's sixty five, has gone through surgery three times and he could be ill or not, survive or not, both cases could have effects or nothing at all.

What hit me, is that after the news i went to my mother and found her on her bathroom floor, weeping and distraught. Her and him donbt go along, but if he dies, our finances will be hit by a wave of issues that will destroy us. Also the mere idea of going through the torture of dealing with him being hospitalized again was enough to crush her.

In the mean time, he was loudly bragging how he "doesnt give a fuck if he dies" and other loud, foul declarations of indifference and spite. Which are false but repeated daily.

How does that connect to my previous points. Well in one main way: i wont be crushed by something, no matter how important it is to me, because no one else really cares.

As much as i am passionate about some topics, they're not worth my heart. The best argument only ends with one of the parts acting hurt and using guiolt tricks to ease out of the discussion. And the whole thing isnt worth it.

The world is formed by assholes who do not care about anythiong they say, drop atatemnts that hurt others and then hide behind their right to be free and have opinions. It isnt a fair game.

So i'm out. i give up. I quit

Love For The Love Cast

2011-10-18T04:09:00.000-07:00

I am a naturally enthusiastic person but i dislike gushing over people, generally, unless there is a very good reason for me to do so. The man you see in the picture, though, is a blessing. That man, makes me feek better about the world and life at least one time per week. No, hes not my gay lover (although im pretty sure hed make me happy if i was gay and in love with him), he's columnist and podcaster Dan Savage.

For the civilized world, hes a popular name, one that has done a lot for the homosexual rights (lately through the gem of love that is the "it gets better" movement) but also blessed the world with his relationship and sex advice, but for me, a guy who lives in Italy, hes a recent discovery.

I like a few podcats more than others, even less i consider essential to a good day (another one is uncast.net) and his, where he answer to all sorts of question left on his message box by listeners, is absolutely one of those.

He grew on me, from "wow, such good advice and topics delivered with wit and sensitivity" to "thank you for existing, Dan".

There are a few podcasts or websites that give advice of all sorts and generally they grate me. Either the advice is one sided, too humnorous, too serious and scientific, or simply too subjective and often damaging. Savage isnt that way. Hes unique.

The man is always open to all sort of questions and point of views, even the ones he doesnt agree with. He's honest and brash when needed but never judhemental or condescending. He's witty and pleasant, sometime plain out funny but always focused enough to bring a perfect view that if not completely solving the issue, always sets discussion in motion.

Dan Savage makes you think, feel reassured, feel like theres a chance for the world to be abetter place if theres someone out there that can address often delicate issues with so much good heart and intelligence. Bless him.

Revenge Is A Dish That No One Seems to Serve Anymore

2011-10-17T04:51:00.000-07:00

Let me introduce this little rant pointing out that i am not completely on one side of this issue or the other. I never have completely formed opinions and even when i do, i am strongly interested into debating the opposite side. One of the few interesting aspects of Marx's social theory was that any thesis has to meet its anti-thesis, in order to form a final synthesis. While i aint totally sure of what that beardy communist's point was, i am thoroughly convinced that no argument is fully deveoped and mature until people have considered all point of views, even the most uncomfotable ones. And since too many people seem to be embracing only soft hearted or comfortable views, i, as a samrt person, feel the need to voice the other side.

I was having a pleasant conversation with a friend, few days ago. He recently had trouble with a neighbour as it often happens into those conglomerates of houses where everyone snaps at the first sign of trouble. Apparently my friend made the mistake of parking his car on a spot that was considered someone else's property (whether that was the fact or not, doesnt intertest me).
Instead of a civilized response or some sort of warning, my friend found his car with all rearview mirrors smashed and keyed.

The reasonable option towards this would be going to the police, yet most of the timne the cops donbt like to get involved into such disputes or simply ignore them. plus, there was no witnesses about the fact and no tangible proof. In my own experience of domestic abuse, cops come and dont really do an ything besides threatening the victims. (that happens in worse situations too). They are paid bullies after all.

The other one would be sueing. In some countries the option seems good, when somoen hurts you somehow or attacks your person or property. Yet, the forementioned problems work there too. Plus, as i again experienced personally, lawyers are leeches who cost you all the money you have. And usually the one with the biggest resource of funds is the winner. Which is usually NOT the person in the right. The legal system has nothing to do with justice anymore.

Now, coinsider what i just wrote. Move the thought to a possibly worse situation. Say, your pet or kid has been attacked. It happens. My father was a big perpetrator of cruelty towards the pets of annoying neighbours. He still denies but he once drove over a neighbours dog on purpose, cackling on the same day how "the guy had it coming".

Now say someone did that to you, what would be the option in your heart, besides the forementioned, falwed, ones? I tell you what is my first choice: revenge.

I know youve been told that revenge is wrong. Youve been told that it doesnt solve issues and that is true. A good person doesnt lower itself on the enemy's (cause thats what all people are naturally to each other: enemies) level. I'm absolutely agreeing about that.

Yet, there are times when payback is needed. Someone blatrantly crosses the line and direspects you, attacks you, invades your boundaries, hurts you on some level..... You need to counter attack. That starts a war, but some wars need to happen sometimes. And sometimes i thinkj a person should show that thney wont back down.

Its a side of human nature that our attempts at civilization are trying to suppress. And maybe suppressing it is the right thing but when people act like uncivilized beasts, i am in favour of giving back an uncivilized response.

When you're a kid anbd you are bullied, whats the best reaction? Standing up.

That should work for larger issues too. Think about it.

New Junk's Trunk Up!!!

2011-10-16T11:30:00.000-07:00

A new episode of the coolest podcast in the universe (beside yours even if you have none), is up.

In this episode, yours troooleee analizes the beautiful world of singer/songriters and solo musicans. Lots of touchy feely songs and great voices. Listen, weep, and then listen again.

http://junkstrunk.podomatic.com/player/web/2011-10-16T10_19_38-07_00

Music For Your Pockets : Johnfish Sparkle

2011-10-14T05:00:00.000-07:00

You can say whatever your tiny, black, rotten hipster heart wants: music is also dying because there are too many musicians that are more interested into looking "pretty" or "cute" rather than making good music. Whatever is your style of choice, whatever is the kind of music you love, even if it is goofy pop, think about this. There IS a difference between a musician who is cool, does great music, has charisma, a great voice or simply writes great tunes and someone whose material is absoulutelu pointless, if not downright horrendous, but looks pretty.

The pretty boys, with the pretty clothges, that act pretty in videos seem to overrule music nowadays. And ill stick to my own country as an example: the most popular "bands" here are guys like The Jonas Brothers, Justin Bieber or One Direction. I wouldnt have much to say about them or what they play, i havent got anything against pop music that simply pulls off being listenable and easy going. Problem is, said people produce very bad songs or anonymous ones, and get listeners mostly out of press coverage, obsessive airplay, product placement, marketing and the fact that most teenagers and adults who like things mediocre (the real face of mainstream) actually BUY their stuff. So good pop musicians become unknown.

And Rock Bands that play real rock, with musicianship and attitude, that has a heart and a soul, have to go underground, where they have to deal with the tragedy that is the cheap ass undergporund audience, a bunch of bums who like bands but wouldnt spend a dime to help them, if their lives depended on it.

All this rant to reccomend the band in the picture, Jonfish Sparkle. The fellas look cool and retro, like they just stepped out from a documentary about badass rockers from the seventies. And they play exactly like that: Their music is souther tinged, bluesy, melodic, rockin and soulful. Played with skill, heart and melody. With hooks that makes you wanna sing along, vocals that arent studio corrected and supercool guitar solos. Also, they're from ITALY!!!!!

All that means check them out and buy their records.

If you dont, youre missing out and also the world misses out. Support good things and stop pushing CRAP.

http://www.myspace.com/johnfishsparkle

Storytelling : "Grey Areas"

2011-10-13T04:48:00.000-07:00

Everyday, from the first hours of the morning, to the time he succeded in slamming his own mind to sleep, Steve lived into a fight. He had a conscience, a powerful, loud one. And that, for some of his colleagues was something he should've taken care of.

They didnt lose their own humanity, they were good people. But when you deal with the animals that roam this world, daily, you need to become anumb. And sometimes make decisions that would trouble you, haunt your dreams, break you down. Many of them drank, saw therapists, were medicated. Others took it out somewhere else. It was a job that had a price and slowly but surely ate at you, feeding on your heart and sould and turning them against you.

Steve wasnt different. He had no family thought and that made him a peculiar case. One of those men that consider things from a different point of view. A "single number" that calculated the consequences of his own actions only by his own set of values and not on the consequences that they could have on his loved ones. And he had no loved ones. He loved but couldnt hoòd it for long. Simply, the things that lived inside his heart ended up eating away at anything that helped the love survive.

Still, he was a good man. He saw the black. Saw the white. And saw plenty of grey areas.

That day started slowly. His head feeling groggy and hazy, with a persisten pain at the base of his neck. "Accumulated tension", his Kinesis therapist said. the man was tiny and efficient. Gave him a few lesson on his posture that saved him from the million migraines that he used to have and attack with painkillers, like his father did. Yet, today the pain was incredibly resilient and almost unreal. Like a rusty nail driven between the vertebrae.

His partner, Dom, came close. A stern, weathered face. Bad news.

"Look, this isnt gonna be pretty but you're the opnly one that seems available and you can handle people well...."

"Go ahead..."

"A kid, fifteen year old. Stabbed his father in the neck with a fork. Called in and asked us to come and get him. Didnt resist the arrest. His mother was there too, cleaning the blood from the floor"

"Ah shit. Anything else"

"Well he keeps saying he was abused and he couldnt take it anymore"

Stevn entered the room. The kid was frail looking but with a fixed, intent stare on his face. He didnt look scared or traumatized. He just looked.... Like he was waiting for things to happen.

Steve sat in fron of him. Looked at him for a little while. The kid took his time but raised his face and stared back. He had no fear. He wasnt cocky or arrogant but looked like he was sure of having done the right thing.

"What's your name"

"Michael"

"So, Michael... What happened..."

"He kept doing it. So i couldnt take it anymore. I took him out"

"he hit you? Hit your mother?"

The kid paused. His eyes darted. Then he began staring again.

"He stared"

Steve took it in. Ok, the kid was a psychopath. Damn.

"He... stared?"

Michael kept looking at him, in the eyes. The stare became more intense more fixated. Any sign of fear or unceratinity that might have been in it, went away. He was still. He spoke, with a voice made of anger and resolution.

"You dont know. You cant understand. He stared. Constantly. At me. At mom. Mom started drinking heavily, years ago. To numb the pain from what he did. He never hit her. He wasnt a hitter, But he woke her up in the night and started calling her a cunt, a slut, a filthy whore. With no reason. Just because he liked to see her hurt. She want to divorce him but she couldnt afford it. She lost her job ouyt ofa nervous brekdown. Kept going at work after nights of lack of sleep and dozed off there. They fired her. They didnt know that he creamed in her ears as loud as he can, in the middle of the night. That he suddenly went to another room and started trashing things, so she had to go and stop him. Or threatened to hurt me. He never hit her so no one paid atrtention, but he scared her. when she was etaing he could just snap, take the food and throw it away. Saying that he paid for that so he could do whatever he wanted. Then he disappeared for days. Came back drunk and started yelling and throwing stuff around. And the stares. He was always there, looking, watching whatever you did. And at the first sign of staring back he started yelling, threatening, calling you a pussy, a cunt, a piece of shit. I had a cat, he killed it. He said it was for health reasons but he looked at me crying and he laughed. I was ten. She couldnt defend me anymore. And she wanted to kill herself. So i took him first..... "

Steve stood silently. Thinking. Watching the boy. Then he grbbed his shirt.

"Listen you little creep. I see kids your age who get raped, tortured, beaten daily. Whose parents abandon them on the street and that have to fight against drug using mothers that try to kill them. Sexually abused. My father did that to me. COnstantly. And my mother hated me because she said that i turned him into a bad person. So i outgrew him and started defending thye victims. But now people like you claim to be abused. Yeah, your fatyher was a bastard. Probably. But he didnt abuse you. You never bled. And your mother ended up like sxhe did, because she was weak. Just like you. And you know youre not going top jail cause youre a minor. If it was for me, you should be executed. But you wont. And yet you have taken two lives. His. And hers. She will be destroyed by this. She will die. She will be ashamed and will not be able to live through what you did. So enjoy the thought"

Michael trembled. tears filled his eyes, while his expression did not change.

"You cannot understand.... You didnt live there"

Steve neared a clenched fist to his face.

"I will beat you to a pulp if you say one more word, punk. I wasnt there but i saw kids like you, thinking that their life is so miserable, so they're allowed to do everything. Life is tougher than you think, you little cunt. I see it everyday. A stare doesnt leave scars"

Steve dragged Michael to a tiny cell occupied by two thugs. The kid didnt resist. Didnt cry. He was silent.

"These two know how tough life can be. They'll teach you a lesson, pussy boy. Time for you to deal with the real world".

He threw it in there. Michael sat, expressioneless and stoic. The two thugs laughed. One gave the kid a slight kick.

Steve watched. He begvan to say somethign, but didnt. He moved away. It was almost night.

Hours ago, when the sun started peeking from the horizon, he got a phone call.

The kid was dead. The two guys smashed his head on the floor. After teasing hi9m and hitting him all night without him responding, they got angry and one got too far. Apparently they couldnt stop them before it got ugly. Michael died a bit afterwards. He didnt resist, it was said. He kinda let all happen and let them take him out.

Steve tried to look in himslef for guilt. But there was none. Just a grey area.

Poopcasters (hehehe...)

2011-10-12T04:28:00.000-07:00

Well, at this point i have spread my newly found attempt at being something more than an average lame-o all over the web. I have podcasted. So i cant point my finger at podcasters and call them "self absorbed nerds who think they have something interesting to say" anymore. Actually if i ever did that, i should amputate my own testicles, cause it would mean that i'm one of technophobic snobs that love to ruin life for everyone by snarking at creativty.

Instead i will bash at myself and many of my podcaster buddies with the ultimate tool for modern comedy: a LIST! OOoooooooh SNappetysnap!

So, podcasters and their show could be easily divided in a series of categories:

DISCALIMER: really great podcasts arent really into any of these categories but are also rare. If you find them, hold on to them like they're gold ( uncast.net ... just saying....)

The Group Ones.

- The Popular Any-Time-Of-The-Day Zoo

Popular doesnt mean really popular, of course. Podcasting means inherently that your audience makes the effort to find your stuff, where the average "mainstream" audience of any medium is the one who listes to you by chance or casually.

Still, there's a few of these, that are spread out enough to become "cult" or gain enough of an audience to actually be professionals. One of the mian examples of those is the style of the "zoo crew".

Remember Howard Stern? Rememeber how suddenly after he changed how radio sounded forever and caused a wave of maladjusted clones of his style that suddenly wanted to be that way? Thats whgat those show are. They're long, generally. They have a couple of regular hosts, who often have nicknames ("Ricky and The Horny Hamster"), or are referred as an entity ("The Sucidal Dildo Bunch"). They are loud, often crass and a bit annoying. Their idea of edgy is to say a lot of racist stuff, play crass songs, have calls by their more reatrded listeners, whom they make fun of on air (and whom are so attached to the show they will hardly abandon it even if the show sent a group of stormtroopers to their house). They like to use soundclips, some of them are taken from the news and transformed into psychotic bits that will be played inappropriately a million times until you wanna die (remember Mel Gibson screaming "you should just smile and blow me"? yeah that over and over and over and over and over and over). Also they have a few regular guests that play as characters and are probably not even remotely that way in real life.

The fans of this type of shows are really obsessive, rude and unfriendly. Or cast outs like Juggalos.

- The Bunch Of Comedians That Are Amusing Each Other

A group of comedians who usually are funny onstage but are the most horrible and annoying people on earth in person, lock up in a studio and discuss stuff. Generally, what happens next is that they will all try to outjoke each other, not finishing sentences, be neurotic about silliness, discuss comedy (and bore to death anyone who isnt a comedian or a nerd) or, god help us, start doing improvised "bits". Some of those work, most of those dont. When they dont the result is like being at a party where everyone yerlls over each other and laughs but no one really knows what the fuck is happening. They have fun, though.

-The Elite That No One Knows

It happens less lately but it still happens. Sometime a group of people decide to form a poidcast and start talking about people that only they know, do inside joke that fly over the head of most listeners, and talk about happenings no one attended. Its likie hearing a joke ending without having listened to the opening bit. Makes you feel used and a bit soiled.

The Solos

- The Comedian Who Needs To Say Things

At some points of their career, all comics go into a slef deprecating crysis, relizer that whatever they do isnt good anymore, and start trying everything in order to fill a void in their soul. So at some point, theyll write a book, try acting, haver a music career (AIEEEEE). And eventually do podcasting, since its "what's hip". They will start with the worst sound ever, locked up ins some basement, generally make a lot of mean sprited jokes at how "no one listens". At some point theyll gains omelisteners, often fans. Theyll appreciate that, but it wont be enough, since they want more. Theyll beg for more listeners, donations and complain a lot and be angry. At this point the show either becomes brilliant or dies off.

- The Average Joes Who Have Opinions

Similar to the comedian ones. Only these guys arent usually very funny. They will generally rant about their lives, looking for sympathy and support, or talk about various topic in a chaotic, sometimes brilliant way. As the comedians route, usually at some point theyll have an illusion of being able to do it for a living but it will be harder for them, since no one really knows who they are. A very few of those will survive and grow, most will die off, since those people have real lives and jobs.

The Specifics

- The Music Lover

This one plays tracks and is usually very good at it. It would seem the obvious choice but apparently thers not many of them, since egveryone wants to be a comic. The few good ones are good enough to change your life

- The Critics

They dissect stuff. Movies, books, pop culture or their favourite stuff. They may be actual critics which usually makes them obnoxious snobs who stopped loving what they are reviewing ages ago out of jaded boredom, or be fans. Now fans are dangerous. They will say outlandish crap and often be very poisonous at the first sign of negativity wether its the audience or other podcasts or anything really. The effect is similar to going to a Comic Con and yelling "NERRRRRRRDS". Only in audio form.

- The Brits

I swear, i dont mean to be snarky or xenophobic, but when you hear a British podcast youll know. And i aint talking about the accent. Theres something in british people, no matter what theyre talking about that just makes them stick out. An example? The Monocle Weekly. they could be talking about a terrorist attack and they will still sound like they're describing the latest brand of afternoin tea, while chuckling politely and making silly puns. Its fascinating and absolutely puzzling at the same time....

Fell free to add and comment or fuck off, as usual.

The Mistery Of Respect

2011-10-11T04:20:00.001-07:00

"Respect" is a word that is getting used in a constant, almost obsessive manner, in the late days.

If you followed the path of my thought bubbles so far, you probably noticed how much disdain i have for any sort of judgmental use of broad concept like love, hate, friendship or, case in point, respect to poreach some sort of generic message or analysis of humanity.

I do analyze people, they way they interact with each other or, even more, how i interact with them. Yet i find HIDEOUS whenever i read or hear people sermonizing on "how people should behavce" or on "how things really are". I find repulsive, whenever anyone takes place on the top of the mount in order to sermonize on their own version of the truth on people and how they should be.

The word "respect" is a particular favourite, it seems.

I think the concept of "respect" has been excessively skewered, with time, and fell victim of the pussyfication of people and the gigantic wave of fake niceness that seem to be the norm between, non self aware persons.

If you think it over, as you should, respect isnt something that you should have towards everyone. People like to say that, but its not a good idea or a good concept. Like the idea of "universal love", its a sugary and grotesque utopia that just ruins the precious and unique aspect of a feeling when given spontaneously.

Respect is hard to get, and its supposed to be that way. No one naturally respects people. Your family does not respect what you do or what you are. You do not respect others. You tolerate them, accept what they do, but the fundamental, main drive for any individual is to recognize their own good side or negate the good in tohyers. And if and when they decide to include a family or loved one in the pictuire, they will work at bringing out the positive in their actions or protect them from negativity.

Outside of those boundaries, people will not respect anyone. A classic anecdote is how a father will generally keep being slightly disappointed and unaccepting of their offspring until they die. Generally any person will find the other part's actions, accomplishments, lives, even taste, only worth of praise or acceptance up to the point where it benefits them. Besides that,m the natural instinct is either indifference or criticism. Hate or shrug-off tolerance.

No one respects anyone unless they are worked into that and thats how it should be. You dont get character for free.

Curse Of The Spoiler(er)

2011-10-10T05:14:00.000-07:00

Right. Spoiler Alert.

But i got so much of that shit this morning, that i had to take it out on someone else. As a form of karmic retribution.

See, people like me like a few things. We're happy with our few passions. We like sex. We like music. We like a night out with good friends. And once in a while a movie or an hour with our favourite shows. But apparently a lot of people out there like to destroy's other people's fun. Thats' their main enjoyment in life.

And i could actually deal with it better if those people were goofy writers (like the guys at Kotaku, who seem to have decided that telling game endings in headlines is a serious professiona MO) or sociopathic trolls. But the problem is that i'm witnessing that behaviour spreading more and more between people that i know for a fact, should know better, and i interact with on a normal basis.

Its possibly connected with my previous post on how humans have an instinctual thrive towards negativtiy and a natural enjoyment for ruining other people's fun. And it takes a completely different edge, on various level.

A movie, book or series is objectively not an important thing. If you're really passionate about them, many people will regard you with spite. If you actually look forward to these forms of enetrtainment as something good, something that will bring your mood up and a possible good time in your life, many willregard you as a tyarget of scorn, hate and spite. So in a natural move, they will need to ruin that for you. Insert different time zones, the possibility of getting information easily through the web and a series of self justifications that make no sense ("well a day has passed i can do that" "Oh its just a movie, nerd" "it's for the lulz") and here comes the parade of wastes of flesh destroying entertainment for everyone.

People these days seem to focus a lot on negative criuticism or insulting comments as the ultimate manifestation of hatred. But what about someone who purposefully ruins your enjoyment of something, knowingly so and does it on such a repeated offender basis that they have to be avoided like the plague. And at that point they find ways to get at you anyway?

On a human level, a face to face one, a person who spils movies would become an outcast. It happened to me, a lot. I had firends who did that and they were hated and despised. regarded as scumbags who should be cast out from any social group. But somethignhappened at a certain point of time, and that became not only ok, but hilarious.

I want a nuclear holocaust.

Junk's Trunk -A miserable attempt at podcasting

2011-10-09T11:33:00.001-07:00

I did.

I made a podcast.

This officially means that i'm a rambling madman. I lost all respect for myself. Sorry.

Still, get it. Share it. DOOOOOOO IT.

http://podcast49715.podomatic.com/entry/2011-10-09T11_20_54-07_00

Music For Your Pockets: Tracer "Spaces In Between"

2011-10-07T05:35:00.000-07:00

Unless you're seriously allergic to good music, ther's a few bands that entered history through the power of great rock.

And others who just made albums that were more powerful and soothing to the soul than pretty muchy any sort of medicine or therapy made by doctors and paharmaceutical tyrants. Think, whether you like them or not, of Soundgarden, or Nirvana, at their peak. or go back and think of Led Zeppelin.

Of course, especially in these days, peopple are used to enjoy soulless music that they hear on the radio and barely let those tunes do anything besides filling up silence and time. But when those bands were at their peak, they changed lives. They did albums that are still loved, bought and re-listened over and over and over by people and still give waves of feelings and emotion.

There's a level of purity to some music, and i aint necessarily talking about rock, that goes beyond time, fame or genres. Most musicians should always be playing from the heart and soul. It doesnt happen that often anymore. Where you once had Tori Amos baring her own very soul even when playing cover songs on "Strange Little Girls" and making them almost hard to listen to, or The Pixies reinventing how you could marry feedback and vinegar to perfect pop and become a staple of someone's youth, now you have an army of semi-identical factory made drones that do music by the numbers, in order to become a forgettable sensation that will be forgotten in a couple of hours.

So when i hear a band that does their own thing with soul, guts, ball and heart, i love them to bits and pieces and want to support them in any possible way.

Tracer is a power trio from Australia. They play that type of hard rock that is balanced between the seventies school and the grunge days. Big guitars, superb, nopn overproduced vocals, epic melodies and a heart as big as the sky. Go for 'em.

http://www.myspace.com/traceronmyspace

Bad Seeds

2011-10-06T04:06:00.000-07:00

A couple of days ago, i was discussing with a dear friend, the increasing doses of negativity that seems to be spreading into any sort of manifestation of the people's thoughts, whether its a social network, a message board or even a bar discussion. Before i go on, let me stress one more time how i refuse to consider "internet" as anything radically different from face to face human interactions. All it has, is the lack of a social filter, to some extent. What you hear from people on the web is the same stuff you'd hear in a pub after a few beers. The "Anonimty" idea is silly, since most places for discussion today are formed by people that sort of know each other and would probably interact in the exact same way if they met and did not have the average need for politeness and restraint that makes us different from animals.

Now to the main point.

Let's take as a subject of analysis, today's announcement of the death of Steve Jobs.

Since i learned about it this morning, ive witnessed reactions that cover the whole spectrum: people who acknowledged the news for what it is, the death of a man that was controversial but extremely influential towards the modern age and died of a horrifying disease, people who reacted with over the top grief or some sort of plastic eulogy that they give even to people they really never heard of (but thats a quirk too), the humourous people, who have an addiction towards desperately trying to get attention with mediocre jokes, on everything, and, the worst of the bunch, the negative haters.

The last in the list are discomforting, and yet the purest expression of how i consider human nature.

Move your attention away from the Jobs example. Recently, the italian government is trying its best to put in action a law that is openly and without a doubt a tool to allow absolute censorship and the possiblity for political parties to freely censor any sort of information that could damage them, whether its true or not. Now i aint usually in favour of political causes or ideology but i can see how that is OBJECTIVELY a dangerous law, that would also fit in the extremely oppressive climate of the country.

Still ive witnessed a high number of comments that just spreaded spite and negativity about it, sentences that call for dictatorship, violence and hatred. No matter how bad and morally wrong a piece of ideology or news is, people will be for it and up the negativity a notch.

The death of someone that a majority loved, will be for a large number, a great occasion to hurt others. People will be spiteful, not out of a different opinion (although they will hide behind the ever-so-misused ide of "freedom of speech" and "telling it like it is"), but just because the most instinctive trait of human beings is being negative ans spiteful.

People are scum, and they will hate. Always. There will be a few ones that, for a coincidence of stars, will be positive and loving, that will be actually pleasant to talk to and open to ideas and tolerance. But the majortiy will be hateful and angry. Where animals have teeth and claws, humans have hate. Passions, religion, politics, all the evolution of the brain and the structures we built will be used by a lot as a tool to hate and a way to attack and not to unite.

And on a basic level, most of those people deserve to be killed or hurt. But since we live in a society with laws where everyone uses lawyers as a substitute for dignity, we must be indifferent. Stop listening and ignore. Be passionate but also feel superior. Its a given right of the few good ones.

It Does Get Better

2011-10-05T03:46:00.000-07:00

Genrally, from the moment i wake up, to a random spot in the day, my brain has the tendency to emanate some weird sort of viebe that isd a mixture of negativity and cyncism. Some people perceive that as self-awareness and insightful honesty. I honestly think i'm just really erudite and bitter, with a slight tendency to self pity and a need for attention.

Today, while trying to sort out thoughts and decision, i had what could be called, if i was even more pretentious, which i could easily be, an epiphany.

I was listening to Dan Savage's podcast. If you're one of the few sad beings who are unaware of who Dan Savage is, dont feel guilty, i spent ages without knowing 99% of stuff, too. Its never too late to discover great things.

Dan Savage is a renowned columnist and writer, an openly gay man, who is smart, pleasant and thoughtful and gives sexual advice on his columsn and thgis podcast to whoever calls him with any sort of question. I dont automatically agree with everything he says, where a lot of his more devoted listeners do, but i like the humble, tactful and actually caring way he approaches topics, while never ceasing to be honest.

This morning, before dropping his weekly advice, Mr Savage stopped for a minute to discuss some news, that i usually would see anywhere and ignore or take in without really caring, not out of disapproval or lack of heart, mostly out of numbness. A young kid named Jamey Rodemeyer, commited suicide recently.

The kid had been part of the "It Gets Better" project, started by Savage himself. The project helps through a series of videos and activities, the reaching out towards homosexual teenager who are experiencing the trauma of coming out and homophobia, trying to make them feel less alone and reassuring that their life CAN actually improve. He posted a video, trying top be positive and looking for help. Yet, eventually, the homophobic mangler got the best of him and crushed him into despair.

Usually, my extremely embittered nature, whom is apartially a result of depression and partially a shield against disappointment, would make me say "no, it doesnt get better". And a part of me thinks that. But i had to think about how mosntruous it must be to live in a situation like that.

I live ina homophobic country, highly homophobic. Whether it has to do with religion or machismo, i aint sure. Fact is, that, yes, there are guys who are ouyt of the cloiset and live a decent life in Italy but they're also way less than in other countries and mostly focused in open minded cities. And even they had a rough time. Homophobic based murders arent an insanity here. The law almost complketely ignores the notion of "hate crime" and not only i know violently homophobic people, i grew up with a few of them.

I am mostly straight, i discovered myself as bisexual in the later years of my life. At the moment i feel like i could honestly go both ways. But my family doesnt know that and they never will. They are not openly homophobic, and they hide often behind the mask of indifferent, catholic, tolerance but i'm pretty sure that if i ever were gay and decided to come out, they would not have accepted it.

My father had issues with my mother in the past, where as a last attempt at poking at hi ego, she started alludsing that he was a homosexual and (in classic catholic fashion) consequently a pedohpile. She accused him, amany times, during drunbken binges, to have lost his job for making advances on his bosses. Or having molested me sexually when i was a kid (sometime asking me drunkenly if it happened and attacking me when i denied). At some point, she even worded that concept as "of course he is a pussy and a faggot, you turned him into one".

Those kind of venomous, alcohol fueled things were pretty much the norm in my house. There was a lot of "homosexuality is a sickness", "gay people are pitiful and disgusting".

I honestly have goosebumps thinking of the eventuality of being a gay son in such a situation. And i am emotionally removed from them. even if i decided to be gay, i am sure i would NEVER tell them. I got to that point at 33 years old.

And i wont get into the hatred, the violence and the bashing i can see daily in the streets. Being a gay teenager can be something nightmarish.

It does get better and one can run far far away. Far from the people who want tpo make sexual re-education mandatory, far from the singer who become radio sensations with homophobic hits, far from the work places that fire people for inappropriate tendencies". Up to that, though one needs all the help in the world.

So, if you have a minute, help: http://www.itgetsbetter.org/

Life Line

2011-10-03T04:19:00.000-07:00

A man is sitting on a ledge. Suddenly he decides to stand up. People see him. He seems to have the intention of jumping down, People gather, someone screams, other laugh, others decide to call the cops.

When the cops arrive they focus on trying to get the man down, alive. Efforts and risks are focused towards stopping a person that they do not know from taking its own life of his own will.

A man is in his own room. He has divorced from his wife recently. Happened after he lost his job. A casualty of the economy or just of his own being outdated. Or maybe he was just a loser. There's plenty of people like that, who lack ability, character, brains or brawn to survive through the game. Most of his friends and family forgot about him or just dont wantr to deal with the uncomfortable tension that talking to him would cause. He has problems sleeping so he takes pills. One too many. He dies. No drama about it.

A bedridden woman, lives with unbearable pain everyday. She will die sometimes soon, on her own but so far her relatives and the doctors seem to be thriving on testing all sorts of Mengtele-like experiments on her. One day, a good looking professionaql with rimmed glasses and a plastic smile told her that they would test a procedure that would possibly cause her a "permanent state of pain close to the type one experiences through childbirth", in order to obtain some slight improvement in her T-Cell count.

Tired with this, she tells her husband that she wants to let go and quit. He refuses. He get6s angry: He tells the doctors, who give her speeches. Priests get into it. She used to belive ing od as a comforting figure who watched her all the way, loving her unconditionally. Now they're telling her she cannot make a choice. God wants her to suffer.

A young kid fights with leukemia daily. He has more strength than a warrior, is attached to life with teeth and claws. No matter what the illness does to him, he always strikes back. He wants to destroy the illness. Everyone around him seems to be giving up, wallowing in their desperation. He thinks they're pussies. He will show them. Yet, he hardly can pay the therapies. NBo matter how hard he tries, his insurance wont pay. The system seems to have forgotten about him, or worse, dropped him from their list, because he's already dead in their schedule and they have bigger issues to fix. His friends dont visit him anymore. They feel uncomfortable. His parents cry. His girlfriend left him, cause she couldnt deal with the pressure and started a new life with someone more healthy and secure. Seems he would do everyone a favour if he died. But he wont and doesnt want to.

A girl gets pregnant. She cant raise a child on her own and the father has run away. They tell her she should try anbd ask for help. They dont know, there is NO help. Giving the child for adoption would put her in trouble. Too many procedures, too much chaos. She just wants to do what she has to do. But the stigma. The hatred. The suffering.

Where is the line. What life is precious and what is not? I aint asking because i am trying to push a moral here. I am personally convinced that no life is precious and that any individual has the right to choose when life starts and when life ends. I'm in favour of euthanasia and abortion. And somehow, i am in favour of suicide. If a person doesnt have any responsiblity towards others, has no kids or loved ones to think of, and feels like their life has no meaning, they should be allowed to end it freely. Still, i can see why people seem to have an attachment towards the concept of life. But yet that line keeps shifting. Some lives are important, others are less. Which is realistic, since not all people are equally important to everyone , thats a fact. If i dont care for a person, i dont care if they live or die. I dont root for life as a principle. Actually i think there should be more people dying than there actually are, especially old people. I'm not saying this out of hate, but this obsession with prolonging life is what is driving society into the gorund. We do not have space for everyone. Some are supposed to go. We shouldfocus on the ones that should be saved.

And yet the line keeps shifting. Though gig. One thing: the life of a cat is more important than the life of a human. Fact.

Mortality

2011-10-01T04:07:00.000-07:00

My father reached the age of sicty five. My mother is sixty three. They have both lived their lives badly, not taking care of themselves and are not in good shape. He has been under surgery for tumor removal at least three times. She is an alcoholic with heart issues.

A good friend of mine is fighting against cancer. But thinking about his survival has an aftertaste of battke, a focsu on what he will have to do in order to win over the illness, that gives his case and what i might feel about it a whole different edge.

That edge was there also whenever my father, with whom i never had a good relationship and left many things unsoved, was on a hospital bed. I got used to force myself into thinking about what to do, where to visit hiom, what docotor i should talk to, what sort of procedure he would have to follow. That always gave me the emotional detachment and armour i needed to forget that in the event of his death, i would have felt guilty of not ever giving him what he wanted from me. Of spending time dodging his attitude, more than focusing on building good thinbgs between us.

I always tried to live my life one minute at a time. And iu am not saying this in a romantical way. I had to focus on my daily grind, on immediate goals, on the repetition of simple taskks, or my tenedncy to fraking out and the fear for the future would have crushed me into a hole of depression and possible suicide attempts very quickly. Yet, living this way, takes time away from you in a subtle manner. You survive, filling days with actions and trying to work your way through them. But at the first pause, you look backj and you suddenly realize that everything around you has changed.

People have changed. Some of them died. And at moments i realize that my family could die soon. Wihout any warning.

I tried at times to face the fact and rebuild a rtelationship with them, but it was messy and awkward. I havent been a good person for many years. I havent given them any grandkids. Not that those things wouldve made them happier perople, of that i'm certain. Still, there is much more i couldve done and now its way too late to be fixed.

Thats what really kinda puzzles me. Its a war between my need to not obsess on what i could change, on what has gone away, on what i shouldve done or not done, on how days and time are slipping through my fingers, on how i seem to be unable to make most things better, on how a lot of the later years of my life seem to have been sucked into a hole and how i seem to have lost more things and people than i've gained.... My need to not think of that daily, and all night, letting my head rot on "what ifs" and disappointments so i can actually stay alive and the fact that all said thinks happened and will keep happening. People will die, time will disappear, i will loose friends and loved ones and make mistakes and i have no idea of how i can stop it. I have an almost certain feeling that i will die alone, that the world will move on without me and that i will realize that the ones i fought wer the only ones that cared.

Weird times.

Storytelling: Pink Moon

2011-09-30T04:37:00.000-07:00

All you could feel sometimes, when looking at the corridors of his house, was an acrid stench of wrongness and solitude. There was a pungent aroma in the air, which stephane always linked to days spent staring out of the windows, lost in thoughts waiting for someone to acknowledge his presence. Which hardly happened.

The house used to be alive, once. The pictures his mother kept staring at, the anecdotes she kept telling over and over with that horrifying, out of tune voice, that monotone singy-songy mumbling that she had since her breakdow, were proof that once, that house had been a home.

There wasnt anything special therte but there was an attempt at loving each other, at giving each other some laughs or tears, anything. Then his father started disappearing more and more. While Stephane kept morpohing into an adult, his father clearly felt less and less interested in him. He wasnt a baby, now. He was a person, with ideas and opinions and a mind of his own. And that clearly wasnt something his dad felt like dealing with. All he wanted was a son to be shaped into his own personal project, and that son was escaping that, even involuntarily. So the man just quit. He didnt really left, but he spent all the time he could with people that werent Stephane and his mother. And slowly dropped any sign of affection towards them, turning into an invisible presence in the house.

And his mother, who loved him, but also wanted a lover and a acompanion to face life and stgill be a woman, broke down. Stephane always wondered if she blamed him for what happened. If they would've been happier if he was never born. She said once, that people like her and her father werent supposed to have kids, but then it happened and they did their best with it. But the best wasnt enough to hold them together. And thats all she said about it.

Then she spiraled into depression and self abuse. The smart, sweet, loving woman that taught Stephane how to paint, to play chess and gave him his first adult book, "Of Men And Mice", when he was only ten, just disappeared. And what was left was a shgell fo a woman that wept and mumbled endlessly. Stephane felt his heart crumble everytime he watched her, on the bed, with always the same tear stained clothes, devastated by alcholo and pills and cigarettes and carelessness.

But what could he do? He tried and no one wanted his help. He was just fourteen and all he could do was to escape from there as soon as possible.

And thats why he spent so much at his schoolmate Eric's house. Him and Eric did not have a book like friendship. They were different, liked different things, had different lives. Stephane liked sports, liked animals, liked acting slightly more like a kid than he was supposed to. When he was at home, it was like his own free spirit was poisoned and forced to a slow death. So he let loose outside. Eric seemed in his own way, to like that: He was a kid with opportunities and talent. His family had built a world of ideas and dreams to make true aroudn him.

ERic knew how to play guitar, had tons of books, could paint, and fence. Many at school thought he was an overpriviliged spoiled brat, but Stephane knew that was not the case. Eric had a family that had seen his strength and wanted to make it grow into something better.

If there was one thing Stephane envied Eric though, even more than the rest, was his family. His mother was gentle, caring and full of heart and love. She always looked at her child with attentive eyes, drinking up all his words and often she did that with Stephane too. She made him feel interesting and accepted.

Also she was clearly in love with her husband. Eric's father was a charming man. Strong, funny, looking very young for his age and with a lust for life that was all over his actions. He seemed to have a passion for everything: writing, sculpture, sports. And he wasnt, as his father would've said, an "artsy slacker", he had a job and made good money, giving his family a good life, so they could still be themselves. He seemed to love his son anjd wife immensely.

He had a special friendship with Stephane. He encourage him to stay at the house, write things and develop his own creativity. He was sincerely interest in his ideas, wanted to see him create and be himself. Stephane couldnt help but feeling his heartbeat rush whenever he tried to accomplish something under the man's eyes. And whwnever he got complimented he felt like melting and aching, with a need for appreciation that had piled up for too long.

The days passed and Stephane realized thatr his real family didnt really care if he was home or not. As long as he was alive and did not bother them, they were too busy with theiur own despair to care about him. So he spent more and more time at Eric's house, even sleeping there. Him and Eric were like brothers.

One summer night, he couldnt sleep. The heat was intense, drecnhing him in sweat and making his head ache. He was spending the night at Eric's house as suual. His father was home and he was proabably delaing with mother and her anger. He did not want to be there.

He stood up and went in the garden. Eric's father was there too. He smiled st him.

"No Sleep?"

"Nope, too hot"

"Yeah, i feel that way too. Also, the night gets so beautiful at this time of the year"

They bothy enjoyed the silence. Stephane felt a rush of blood to the head, suddenly.

Robert, Eric's father, stared at him and smiled calmingly.

"I like to have you here, Steph. You're special. You're a good friend to Eric and he loves you, in his own way"

Stephane didnt really know what to say, so he just looked elsewhere, feeling weirdly.

"I know you have troubles, in your life and i wish i could help. But some things have to be fixed on your own, you know?"

"Yeah"

"So i'm telling you: talk to me whenever you need, ask me anything. and whenever you'll be ready, you can stay here. with us. with me"

Stephane felt a knot in his stomach clench.

"But... What about Eric.... And your wife.... Would they want me here?"

" i want you here. I love you, Steph".

Robert looked at him. And everything felt wrong or right.

He kissed him.

What happened next, wasnt right or wrong. It happened and it existed. Steph was chyanged. Some things were shaken out of their roots and ripped out forever. It was one of those moments that wouldve set his path in life in a certain direction. He wouldve done things differently, from now on. Be a different person. Better or worse, no one could know but him.

In the morning Stephane, with a face stained by tears and strange things in his head, entered his house. The smell of acrid was there, but different. Something had happened. The house was silent.

His head was dizzy, but he managed to get in the main room, slowly and silently.

His father's body was in a pool of blood on the gorund. Stabbed.

His mother came in the frame. Stephane couldnt move. He wanted to throw up and scream but couldnt.

His mother was standing, with glassy eyes, and the knife still in her hands. She was smiling, just like in the old days.

"Steph. It will be ok. Now things will be back to normal. I will be a good mother to you, Steph. I promise. I love you"

She moved to hug him. He wanted to run, but couldnt. Her face was just like time hadnt passed. Like nothing bad had happened. He lt himself loose in her embrace. It felt so warm, so calming, so sweet and made time go backwards. It was his mom, again. His mom. She was there for him.

He felt a shar pain in his guts. Let out a sound he couldnt really hear. Slipped slowly to the floor. She was crying.

"I'm sorry, baby... sorry... we're over.... its all over..."

Evrything went black. While fading, he heard her make a whimpering noise and slip. Thjen he thought of Robert. Of Eric. Of....

And then there was nothing.

Goodbye Old Friend (Why I Drank And Why I Had To Seriously Quit)

2011-09-29T04:38:00.001-07:00

DISCLAIMER: This post wont be about the dangers of alcohol or addiction. While i know very well that being a hardcore drinker is a nasty thing to deal with, i also refuse to give health advice of any kind to people. Drinking is fun, doing drugs is fun, even smoking has its positive sides (if only social). Self destruction is fun, on any level or else no one would do it. I am saying this without irony. If i had a way to keep up my addicitons as i used to without having the drawbacks, i would do it with no hesistations. So, no, i'm not preaching or judging, thats just not how i am. I only judge myself.

There's a small unviersal truth, that unites idiots and smart people, credos, religons, sexual orientations and races: life is a chore. And i dont mean that in the self pitying, whiny way. It's just that living aint easy, for anyone. To different degrees, every day is a chore. Its either a fight with other human beings, which for the most part are their own natural enemies, or with the simple grind that is fighting constantly to simply survive without feeling like shit. You dont need to be depressed to feel that, its a natural thing. Plus, and that works evenb mopre for anyone, life,, for the most part, is dull and boring. Life is a series of great moments glued together by long ass times of waiting and grinding your teeth. Its a movie where nothing really great happens for most of the times, besides some really cool scenes that are worth the ticket: But getting to those scenes can be pretty shitty.

So, no matter who you are, you need a cure. Some people have drugs. Those help, but they also have a vicious way to get back at you, by muyltipilying the shit by a thousand times and forcing you to only worship them. Other people have people. Nothing wrong with that, but when you turn your love or affectoion for someone into codependency, you're just like a junkie. And if or when thos epeople diappear, youll suffer as much as an addict in withdrawal.

Other people have passions. Nothing wrong with that at all. Still, you're not always born with the ability to feel. And passions can be frustrating too. Then there's relgion. Which is frankly fucking stupid.

And almost everyone has booze.

It helped me. I have been constantly bored or simply sickened by the complete pointlessness of a lot of my efforts in life for years. So pretty much, the moment in which i could let loose with a serious drunken night was something to look for. Yeah, my mother is an alcoholic but i totlaly see why she does that. It helps you let loose, whether its for good or for worse. It gives you a potent excuse for unleashing the bad stuff or the embarassing one. You can tell people to fuck off when they deserve. I know a bunch of weirdos love to say that "they are just the same when they drink cause they are REAL". Which is bullshit. People dont get transformed by alcohol, it loosens inhibitions. All you do is act like your brain would secretly love to do normally, only you dont give a fuck about conseuqences. And afterwards, most people forgive you, and generally the ones who dont and use terms like "enabling" are even more toxiuc than booze itself. And a big reason for desperate drinking.

Also booze is good. I like beer. It's tasty and awesome. Being drunk is fun. Beiung anything but lucid is fun. This world isnt mean to be faced lucid.

Still, i had to quit. To quit on my own will, not because the law forced me to (that happened and did not last. thats why i find the idea of AA a bit silly. if you're an addict inside, theres no legal way, speech or club that will solve it).

First, my body is feeling it. I realize that my body used to be better once and that now i aged more than a lot of people who are in their early thrties. I took it out on myself and seemed to keep looking amazing but it paid out in the end. I have abad heart, bad blood numbers, i'm fucked up, also cause of the meds, but i realize i am probably gonna have a horter life than most. Its ok, but i wanna try to fix it as much as possible.

Also, i cant stand the aftermath anymore. I dont care if thats a sign of being a pussy. I just cant stand beign sick and wanting to die for a whole day. I already do not get shit done as a nrom, so i dont eneed to be mopre crippled because i wanted to feel less bored the night before.

Third, theres' an aura of embarassing despair around hardcore drinkers that are past their prime. I aint talkign about people who drink at a party, thats ok. I mean the ones who talk about how theyre gonna get shitfaced soon during the week already. The ones that need a drink during the day. I see why they do it, but man when the veil is lifted, they look fucking sad. I had friends that have gone that way and cant hold a conversation without being drunk. Who are clearly twitchy and depressed when they're sober. Ive been there and ive had enough.

I've had enough of feeling shitty. of not remembering what happened the last night. Of getting compassionate looks from people. of being labeled as a drunken animal. Of being told "try to behave tonight". Of throwing up. Of drinking anything just to drink it.

Ive gotten to a point where i know that if i did iot in a small measure i could possibly relapse hard anbd i have to deal with that first. I have to understand if i can be normal and drink sensibly or i have to be sober or feel shitty for the rest of my life. And i need to clean up from other things too. That will need a change of my own very personality, but i hope it can be done.

Stuck

2011-09-28T03:02:00.001-07:00

At this point in my life, i'm used with dealing with my own mood swings. One day can go high or low, generally and i can usually start it in a bad mood, only to spiral down into total sadness or anger. Usually it takes a person or a simple bad moment to push me down.

It irritates me how weak i can get at some spot, how in a good moment, when all my brain gears are in their place, i pay no mind to anny negativity but it only takes one asshole with a hurtful purpose to create a chain reaction worthy of a Rube Goldberg machine that basically nails me into the ground.

And what's even worse, for me but i think for many others too, is when i find myself (which is happening with an increasing frequency) at an emotional stop. I'll clarify, so any of you can eventually sympathize: when the down wave hits, you feel like crying or drowning in despair, and that sort of gives you strength, when the stop comes you just think nothing really affects you. It's like finding yourself in a pool of tar, you're not hurt because you expected things to go bad, you dont feel anything but annoyance or a strong contempt towards everyone and everything.

You might have people who are seriously on your side and care about you but you shuth them off, because at that point to you love is hypocritical, good feelings are temporary and anyone who is nice or gentle is just lying. It's not like thinking that everyone hates you, being a victim makes you stroneger somehow, its more like a complete unflinching feeling that no one really cares about anyone, good things only come when people are in need, love and affection are ways to get good things and use people.

When you're in that spot, everything you like suddenly looses its appeal. You still do things because you're moving like a robot, going by habit and autopilot, but you really dont care. The head is empty, the heart is still. You got no happiness, no sadness, nothing at all. It's a giant freeze frame of the emotional spectre. Bad fellings are equal to the good ones, in the aspect that they're meaningless. People have no role or meaning. Nothing moves you. You're still.

As Dan Savage mentioned on his brash but smart Lovecast, some people are bound to be alone. Still even if they are at that point, they can still live full and joyous lives, as long as they dont get bitter, cause bitterness repulses people. And i agree, only i thinkj of bitterness in a different way than most. Bitterness is suaually crankiness and complaining, hateful sourness towards the world, knowing that no matter what you do, everything will suck anyway. And that is repulsive. Then there's the ewven more repulsive level of a person who is comnpletely frozen emotionally, so clammed up and unaffacted, shut down and refusign to react or open up, that they eventually become invisible to other people's eyes.

A person that is silent, and detached is worse than an abusers, cause it occupies a space withotu serving any purpose.

So i wonder what the soultion to get out of that is. Some of thta came with meds. The emotional leveling caused that too. And it had to be self imposed in order to avoid hurting constantly. But at times, id rather be slitting my own wrists rather than not feeling my wrists at all.

Hmmm.

Modern Age Superheroes

2011-09-27T07:56:00.001-07:00

Since i'm out of ideas today, but in no way i will be one of those guys who let their creativity go dry cause "they have more important thigs to do" (which i would technically have, but i wont do since i get paid way too little to not waste time doin silly shit), i will have to use the horrible hacky shortcut that is the "pop culture inspired list". I'm sorry cracked.com, i will never be as cool as you guys are.

Anyhoo, if any of you has been a kid at least once, you probably wasted your time making up superheroes in your head, maybe even drawing them (with titties and dicks, if you are a boy).

So why stop? The current age has a lot of cool possiblities to make up interesting superdudes. And it's also an extremely overused comedy routine, possibly worse than airplane food jokes, so lets rock.

Supermeh

He comes from an overpowered alien planet, he has incredible amazing powers that would allow him to change or rule the worldm and end crime. Only he doesnt really give a shit. After getting a secret identity as an accountant, he realized that he makes more money that way, its less risky, and his jewish momma is more ok with that. Plus who doesnt commit crimes? Its a dog eat dog world out there, full of them corrupt politicans. Its not like if he stops one crime, anything will change. So he just puts on his costumes to show off at parties. Lately his wife forgot to clean it, silly woman. Oh well. Jersey Shore is on.

Captain Pawn

He rides the thin line between a hero and a villain. He is a telepathic entity, that has incredibly deciving mindpowers. He can deceive his oppoinents into thinking that they will have sex with an incredibly beautiful woman, enlarge their genitals, see movies for free, become millionaires or, if they're genrous, help Nigerian people. Then when they're trapped, he fills their minds with visions of men with blown up anuses and Rick Astley songs.

For unsepcified reasons he took the shape of a cute kitten. Apparenbtly it makes his power even stronger, especially when he speaks in misspelled english

The Twister

This terrifying hero has the incredible ability of crating chaos into people's minds. When surrounded by enemies he twists their thoughts around, says incredibly conbvoluted things, contradicts himself and then accuses them of being homophobic, nazi, stalking, gay, communist, racist jews. While they're trying to figure out what the hell he is talking about, he kills them, usually with a big hammer.

A fierce threat, but its not really clear which side he's on.

Storytelling: Empty Pages

2011-09-23T04:47:00.000-07:00

Shane used to be proud of his great mind. Since he was a kid, he always felt it would be his greater strength, the one thing that would've set him apart from the rest of the world. And with time, it had become his very own source of spiritual energy.

There was an addiction, a positive one, loying within the lines of creativity. It felt the soul with juices that couldnt be provided by pretty much anything else. You could climb mountains and be a legendary lover and that would be an impressive achievement but non of those things would give Shane the strange, alluring hit of adrenaline, the sense of completion, the delirious quenching of an eternal thirst that creating a story and lettiung it live gave him.

It was like mak,ing something that grew and had a life of its own. As close as he, as a man and a loner, could get to having children. And yet different. Gtting down a moment of complete utter beauty, something that is perfect because you just know it is and theres no way to explain it, but you just know it is. Nailing the right sentences, weave them together, until they become something that walks and moves and pulsates. And most of everything has emotions and gives emtions. There was nothing in the whole universe like that. His heart was a hole that onlly a flow of words could fill.

Yet, like all addictions, Shane knew that there could be a moment of withdrawal. And he was hitting one.

At times, life gest the best of a creative soul. Despair, anger, fuckups and disappointments hit that heart and mind hard. Shane took everything until he just dried up. And the pills who were supposed to calm down the screaming dogs that barked inside his head, just silenced everything and made his soul an empty room. no ideas. No genius. Nothing at all. Sanity and peace had a baggage called eternal sleep of the gods of creativity.

And that hurt. In a weird way. he knew he was supposed to be better and live a more normal life. But somehow he wanted the insanity back. He needed the relelntless drive that writing gave him. He eneded to tell stories. He needed to lack sleep or hunger, because all that fed him was his own violently absuive muse. And yet he knew that woudlve been his own death. Too many times he had to face rejection for his creations, the lull of realizing that out of a million people like him, one or two actually make something of their creations. And the rest just fades away.

He had to survive. But he wanted the creativity back. To fill up empty pages. To see them go on and live. Yet every time he tried, nothing acame up. He forced the ideas out but thery just werent there. His mind was dead. The pages stayed empty and stared back at him with vacant eyes.

As time went by, he tried to get over it, like he did with everything else. He tried to fill the hole by having a cause. He had seen his mother die after fighting for years with Alzheimer. He saw her deteriorate and become a beast of incoherence and madness. Back then hius own demons had eaten up all his ability to care or help. Now it was time to atone. Never again he would've let someone loose his past like that. Not without doing something.

He volunteered at an institute for Alzheimer patients. The illness erased those people's minds like a cancer of the soul. It ate their memories and personalities away, leaving them like empty babbling shells that could only be taken care of. It was horrifying.

One day, a blue eyed lady named Loretta, just like his mother, was staring at Shane while he was bathing her. She was far gone at that point. She used to be a painter. A creative, like him. Had no family.

She asked him questions. About him. ABout herslef. About the world. ANd like a strange marvelous coincidence, it just happened. Shane, without even thinking about it, started making up a new life for her. He told her stories about who she was. Made her a character. Made a different life for her, a different world. Made her something new and beautiful. And that soemhow gave her happiness.

And started something in him.

From that day, Shane became a storyteller again. He made the patients his new living characters. Hye gave them love stories, tragedies, funny tales, heroic ones. He helped them by giving them new lives. And watched them as they made thos stories grow by making them their own. How the characters interacted with each others, changed the stories, created new ones.

At first the other nurses, and the few relatives who really cared about those people were puzzled. But that weird serendipity of creation and compassion had actually made the patients happy. They wanted one thing, to have memories. And where their heads or medicine could not help, Shane came in and created them.

And for a few, there was a world thata ctually wo0rked. If only in their hearts, for a little while. And the stories kept growing, and living and changing. And for some time they would be remembered.

The Curse Of The Fake Liberal

2011-09-22T04:21:00.001-07:00

My friend Kataish, used the phrase "fucking fake hippies", to sum up a stomach churning phenomenon that is plaguing society these days.

As i might have mentioned before, i consider the internet as a good reflection of the interior of the deep subconscious of modern society. I dont buy the idea that people act on it as some sort of fake, made up personas. That is a myth. What you see on discussion boards, social networks or virtual interactions is what is in people's heads, unfiltered by decency, rationalizing or the layers that we have to put up in face to face discussions (i wont use the term "real" life either, cause there's nothing more real to daily living, compared to the rest. life is not real., everything is some sort of act).

So you will meet people who unleash their aggression, their lack of human sympathy, their need to toinbe down their instinctive reatcions. The ugly stuff.

But also, you will face a weird, unsetlling wave of plastic looking good feelings, enhanced correctness, idealism pushed towards cartoonish overtones. In the middle of excessive sensitivity, over exposed emotions and an idea of sentiments so powered up it has almost lost any sense, youll find the army of the new bleeding hearts.

I used to be a liberal, not in the political sense. I was a humanitarian, an activist and an idealist and i still have those traits. I waxs one of those perpetually fired up people who belived in their causes and shoved them under everyone's nose at any chance. Then my views and perspectives changed and i developed different thoughts on the world, and how it might need less niceness and idealism and more steely handed order. I still am fired up about what i believe in.

Once, the liberal activist used to be a powerful being. A real activist got his hands dirty, marched, screamed, did things. Maybe he was delusional, a pain in the ass or simply wrong but his actions meant something. Some are sytill that way and they're a powerful antidote against apathetic cyncicism and the condescendiung snarkiness of the shrugging majority.

I am all for those. But when i see the new army, i get disgusted. You've met those. They're the ones you'll never see marching, that feel they're taking a stand one tweet at a time, that post commentaries on blogs and social networks with little information, even less grasp of the facts or objectivity but a tone of abuse for the words "love" or "hate". The ones that misquote Rev Martin Luter King Jr. or the lyrics to John Lennon's "Imagine". The ones who seems to be crying for any cause, because they really dont follow any. They make ribbons though, and post pictures. They never donate money but they change their avatars.

If you make a rational statement on an issue, those people will jump on you and cry (virtually), about the heartless world, about how they can "make a change" (to quote the world's greatest pedophile after the pope).

To sum it up, thes epeople are more of a poison for the truth and the good causes than the opposers. they're what conspiracy theorists are for truth and ivestigations: grotesque cartoons that destroy the credibility of the movement and push people into rejection. Empty people with empty lives that live vicariously through slogans and sanctimonious sentences. They like to feel better than the rest, because they dont realy do any effort to fight the rest.

I hate them.

The Other Side

2011-09-21T04:48:00.001-07:00

A lot of you, after seeing Davis face here and knowing how harsh i usually am about social issues, are probably thinking that i am gonna launch into a pro-capital punishment tirade. You're right. But my point might be different from the one most people are making.

Davis has become a case for many reasons. The main, gaping one, is that his guilt is 100% certain. And, lets face it, because of his skin colour. He has been accused of killing a white police officer when he was 19 years old. The rial, as it often happens, has been drawn out and in the meantime a lot of doubts have popped out.

Honestly, i see why people are trying to hold on to this specific case. It is a good poster case. And, as usuala, the race card makes it palatable and easier to sell. And i guess the idea is to eventually remove death penalty from the equation. Cause the major argument lies there. The state supposedly doesnt have the right to execute a man, in any case. And the idea of a man that might be executed with no absolute ceratnty of his guilt, is, eventually, hard to swallow.

Still, i disagree. If we want to have a justice sysytem that also includes an idea of punsihment and eventually consider death penalty as a possibility, we shall not let doubt cloud our actions. Theres a point in civilization where, to establish order, a higher force must make desicion for the majority. And eventually sacrifice some of the citizens in roder to obtain results.

We do not live in a pretty world. Our society is flawed and a regular justice system is destined to fail. The legal loops allow more criminals to get away than to be actually punished. reform is almost impossible in a large number of cases, since the ones that are corrupted on such a level that they commit murder might be insitituionalized but will often turn back to their criminal paths. Its human. And for humans the highest deterrent si fear.

Also the idea of execution is a rightful one, for me. Its the only aspect of biblical justice that i accept: an eye for an eye is fair and just. And even if a victim forgives, its not in their right to decide so. Theres a higher standard of justice to ataain and the ones who commit a crime shall be punsihed, with no exception.

And here's where this case fits: a strict jsutice system should rather punsih an innocent in order to be assured that all criminals will also be punished. The obsession with being 100% sure of an accusation, with reshaping witnesses a million times, involving lawyers, the press and racial, social or psychological issues in the idea of justice has made it irrreversibly flawed. A criminal now can often get away using the fear that the system has to eventually frame an innocent or to be acting under some warped racial standard.

And thats what corrupted justice.Executing a man who has, with high probability, killed a cop, shall be done with no doubt or second thoughts. If we allow ourselves to think it over, its when we would not want to execute anybody.

So if the man is innocent, it will be a tragedy. But it's the price to pay in order to have justice.

Heart Of Stone

2011-09-20T04:01:00.001-07:00

Recently, i came to a realization. I've become selfish. Really selfish. And i might be over having good feelings for others besides a slight affection. That is all i can give.

It's not because of depression or heartbreak. people tend to read statemnts like the one i just made as some sort of cry for help, or plea for attention, that silently means "please tell me something nice or gentle, i need to be reassured that i'm a good person". I dont like generic sympathy. Anyone who really knows me is also aware that reching out when i'm in serious trouble, is unproductive. If we're connected, ill come and look for your support, and i'll let you know how much i appreciate it.

I'm saying this, because i have realized that i like friendships, but i've gotten selective about them. I have hundreds of acquaintanc es, many of them think they're my best friends, and i've grown increasingly sick of it. It's not a sickness towards the sincere meaning of it, it's just that i cant force myslef into caring about most of them. I dont care for their troubles, i find their lives boring and uninteresting, and i dont have the time or the strength to fake sympathy as i used to. So i just stopped doing that, showing up to their gatherings, calling them or trying to force myself into being present in their lives. I dont really give a fuck. I care for very few people at the moment, they havent disappointed me yet. Might happen, might not. If it will, i wont suffer too much. I got over tearing up for people.

And that brings me to my other point. I dont feel capable of loving someone at this moment and i dont feel bad about this. I will probably work out some peacefeul caring coexistence with someoene sooner or later, but i dont have love in me, anymore. I have this feeling that most people feel love once in their life, than the spell breaks down and they realize that after that one time, all the others are basically large disappointments. And its natural too. There is no sincerity in people who give. Givers do it because they want something in return, whether it's material or just emotional. A tiny, almost invisible number will give to you uncodnitionally. And in that case YOU will be their leech. You will be the one that will suck out what they have to give until you find something better.

And as soon as the game is over, everyone will move on. People accept this as, to quote The Wire, "part of the game". Which it is, but right now, i just dont feel like pretending that i need anyone or have the strength to give to anyone. I realized that i get disappointed and disgusted quickly and i want out. It's not a sad feeling, its self -awareness. I cant think of a relationship ive been in the last years where, in the end, things didnt turn into some sort of codependent abuse. And where after the inevitable breakup (because, lets face it, breakups ARE inevitable) , there wasnt just a sea of resntment, maybe hidden behind fake courtesy or fucked up attempts at being "mature", by not burning bridges.

To me, all bridges need to be burnt. When it's time, it's time. No one deserves saving, when things are done. At this moment, if i try to think back to the past, and to the ones i left behind, i have a small moment of ache, followed by a egneral disgust towards myself for allowing myself to be dragged into humiliation, stupidity and wasted time.

I know it will happen again. Bu, like a drug, before i relapse, i wanna try to quit. I will fail, but at least i tried.

Bad Things That You Shouldnt Be Really Ashamed Of

2011-09-19T04:20:00.000-07:00

Mankind is an imperfect creation, a bunch of flaws and mismatches, sewn together by assholeness and delusion. So, in order to deal with that, once in a while, we all have the right to have horrible thoughts, do morally dubious stuff and feel actually ok about it. And the major point is not needing to justify those thoughts or actions to yourself with excuses. Just do them and remember, you're always right as long as you're right for yourself.

So allow me to give a few examples. I am totally serious:

- "I Was Actually Googling A Recipe For Macaroni..."

No You Werent. You were bored, no one was watching, you were curious, you were a bit horny or were just dicking around and suddenly, after a few clicks, you ended on a repulsive porn website that you would never admit in public that you watched. And enjoyed. And, maybe, you discovered that's kinda your thing and you went there again. Or just thought about while having sex or taking care of yourself. And yeah, that goes for ladies too. I know that a lot of you, clit carrying beings, think that your brain is shaped on a superior level than men and you dont ever ever revel in filth, cause you "dont need to". Or that because you had a baby, you have suddenly become a pure being that never feels the attraction for immoral, perverted stuff. Get off your pedestal. You're as sick as guys can be, but society allows you to act condescending about it.

In any case, not even the filthiest, most repulsive perversion is wrong, as long as no one is hurt. Fap away, minions, fap away.

- "Jeeez, that baby is ugly..."

Yeah, well, dear. I know you're happy about your child and on a conceptual level i understand that you think that the little mutant is the most beautiful, perfect, intelligent, amazing being in the universe. But it's ugly. It smells. And it doesnt look too bright. And i dont mean that on a simple baby level. It just looks like it will probably work at McDonald, i can feel it. I mean, it couldnt even hold my finger, it just drooled. But hey, who knows, maybe he can flip the hell out of a burger. Still, i will smile and tell you how amazing it looks and giggle lovingly at the 150th identical pic, video, story youy shove in my throat but in the depth of my heart i dont really wanna touch that thing

- "Goddamn it, Grams. Just Die Already..."

Everyone loves their grandparents. Or their Parents. or whatever. I know that grief takes you over when they eventually fall ill or die.

That doesnt mean that all olod people are cool, because they're old and that you cant hate their guts. I mean, wishing harm to assholes is supposedly wrong, but perfectly natural. Some people just deserve to be hated and deserve the worst coming to them. They do. A piece of shit is a piece of shit, no matter their age or relation to you. So, in the case of an old person, if they act like bastards for their whole life, it's natural to wish for them the most probable thing for them, which is death. And if they fall ill, you dont necessarily have tyo feel bad, if they werent good to you. Forgiveness is cute but very unpractical, so if an old bastard made you miserable, even for five minutes, you can wish him/her death. Dont feel bad, they wouldnt feel bad for you.

- "Yes, Pets Are Better Than People..."

Yes, i do feel more emotionally involved towards the video of a kitten than any news footage. Yes i do think that a dog's death is worse than a hundred human ones. And that can be simply put ion a few words: animals are cuter, smarter, more loving and definitely more rewarding than most people. Of course being in love with the right person is different but you have to find that one. An average cat or a dog will probably love you unconditionally, feel your mood and act accordingly and improve your life exponentially. So yeah, pet loving people are generally weird disconnected nutjobs, but i can see why. People disappoint 100% of the times. Pets dont.

There's more... That will do for now.

Music For Your Pockets: The Hellfire Sermon Podcast

2011-09-17T04:53:00.001-07:00

I already spent some time talking abou the amazing Soggy Bog Of Doom Show, here. Still, i can understand how the music that is played there might not be your cup of tea (in that case, you are a bad person, but thats another story). Still, with The Hellfire Sermon, the new podcast created by the fertile music loving mind of Bob (the host and creator of The Soggy Bog), i think ANYONE should listen. And love it.

Simply put, Bob has decided to make a new show, where he explores the world of Dark Americana, Death Country, Gothic Folk and the likings.

If you dont know the genre, you're missing out. Its everything that music that speaks from the heart should be. Has the grit and soul of folk and classic americana but also the evocative power, imaginations and visuals of the darker zones of music, and humanity. Its hymns to the nature of mankinf, their vices, their love for sin, their desperation and lust. Hymns to the devil and death but sung inb that transcendental way that makes them speak to a whole different level of your heart.

And even more simply, its music tha6t makes you feel all sorts of emotions. Makes you cry, makes you happy, haunts you, makes the heart rush, makes you wanna sing in joy. It can definitely change your life.

Bob, in his humble manner, plays an hour of those tunes, picked up with the love and knowledge that only he has. Listening to this beauty might as well make you discover sounds and bands that you will become a part of your life. Dont hesitate, go for it.

"What you gonna do come Sunday morning
When everything you see is turned to dust
Well, I just don't believe the shit you're preaching
Forgive me Holy Father, if you must " - Those Poor Bastards

http://www.hellfiresermon.podomatic.com

Storytelling: Where The Twain Shall Meet

2011-09-16T04:46:00.000-07:00

A choice is a choice. When you take a path, you shall not stray away from it. That would be too easy and that would be a sign of wekness. And weakness brings to self destruction and failure. One shall be stern and merciless, with himself more than anyone else. The way to survive is being made of stone and steel and to point the sharpest blade towards your own heart, to push it in and go forward, ignoring the pain and the fear, until your whole body goes numb and your arm is steady enough to go all the way.

It sounded so pretentious and so similar to the type of rubbish all the fake nihilist hipster would love to ramble about but it had a seed of truth in it, like anything else. He knew that. He hated to use clichées or dogmatic phrases to describe the choices he made. He thought that anyone who described his own actions using a set of universal rules or making them a "way", was delusional and despiucable. Which meant most people were. Still this was true. He ahated "Codes" and "principles". But he knew that everything he had done up to that point in his life after his accident was driven by the idea of lacking sympathy, especially towards himself.

He was scum. He did wrong things. he hurt people. He abused himself and others. So he punished himself, by cutting off everything that gave him the possibility to keep on being that way. He did not only get sober, he started a cleansing of his own soul. It wasnt about renouncing dope, drugs and self gratification, it was about realizing that all his life had been lived with the purpose of serving a lie, and that lie was that he was a worthy person.

Psychiatrists, with their drug peddling ways would call that "self deprecation" but it was the truth. He had made up excuses for his own failure. Family abuse that wasnt real abuse. It was all a gigantic series of well constructed stories that hid behind layers of flashy folklore, the fact that he was a lazy pointless person who loved to win over people with his raconteur skills but ended up being afraid of them eventually hurting them so he never developed a serious, real relationship. Who never committed to anything because failure was frightenign and pain would make him crumble.

So one day, after hearing that sound that a lot of people his age heard before dying, the sound of steel screaming and an engine disappearing, as he was being surrounded by sirens and while the taste of blood, vomit and alcohol mixed in his mouth, he decided he would go out and save himself. And the world around him.

He cut people away. All of them. Some noticed , most didnt , a lot more just forgot.

It was impressive how changing a phone number and disappearing in isolation, could just make people feel like you did not really exist anymore. Of course, memories lasted, up to some point. But everyone is forgotten because everyone is dispensable. No matter how good you are, someone out there is better than you and they will fix the holes your flaws left, so that your absence feels like a blessing.

He just secluded himself in a small house. Food he got from a small shop, mostly junk. A laptop. No phone. No tv. Nothing. He would stay there until he would feel like going back to living, maybe in a different place, with a clean slate. With no one really remembering or knowing his fuck ups. That way he would be free, away from all that baggage he put on himself. Away.

The food seemed to never change for a while, he could eat very little, and he almost didnt leave the house. He found people that kept him talking through his laptop. A web of people who had problems like his own. That fucked up as he did. He kept talking them and they never seemed to lack time. They were all victims or perpetrators of some trauma. It was an ocean of wounds where they just fixed each other's pain with words of comfort. It was peaceful and they sucked him in their world, healing him.

At times, darkness would wrap the house and he wouyld feel fear and loneliness. His pèaranoia would seep in and he would feel like he was being watched. Judged. Or like someone was trying to reach him and snap him back to his old world. It scared him. But it went away.

And, with time, he just felt like going back. He felt reconciled with the world. he felt like he had paid his dues. He could go on. All his far away friends were sad to see him go. He promised he would keep in touch, but they seemded to all know it was a lie. No one ever keeps in touch. you move on with your life and whats lost is lost forever. Like sand in an hourglass., it doesnt go backwards. They all would move on at some point. It was how it was supposed to be.

So he took a deep breathe and walked away.

***

The night her son crashed his car, the woman woke up panicking and couldnt fall asleep. until she received the call from the police, she felt something was wrong. It sounded like a cliché and a myth, but from the first moment they took him out of her when he was born, she knew exactly what he felt. She knew. But as the years went by and as her grasp on him loosened, she just wasnt able to do anything for him. She knew he was broken. But she couldnt fix him and yet loved him so much it felt like having her heart ripped away from her over and over gain and never being able to get it back.

When she saw him, comatose in a hospital bed, it just broke her. He had taken pills and alcohol and just started driving, until he passed out and crashed. Buiit he waqs alive when the car's parts broke him. He suffered. The doctors didnt say it but she knew. She felt it on every scar on that young body of his. Her baby, so sweet and so old and hardened. So lonely even when he was surrounded by people. If only. If only. She couldnt stop hearing that in her head, liek a ring piuercing her brain. She was out of tears or fear. She just wanted him to either come back or go.

They said he was locked in some place, somewhere inside his brain. He didnt feel the pain. But he wouldnt necessarily wake. It was a coin toss.

She looked at him, and caressed his cheek, like she used to do when he was small and he teared up until he was out of breath. It seemed to calm him back then. Please baby, come back. Or let go. Please.

And suddenly the monitor started beeping. One long beep. A flatline. He was gone. She felt her soul shatter. Why did it have to hurt so bad?

All in her head was silent. And nothing could be said anymore.

Why I Like Games

2011-09-15T03:22:00.000-07:00

First things first, i'm a geek. I have no qualms about it. I have no pride about it either. Anyone chooses their interests and, honestly, i think the whismsical hyper-enthusiasm that some geeks have is as creepy as the social awkwardness of nerds or the apathetic indifference of anyone else.

It's great to have passions, of any kind but it doesnt necessarily makes you better, smarter or more interesting than others. The effect is, maybve, reversed: you are a person with a brain, life is NEVER interesting, so you make it more amazing by keeping yourself fascinated about everything and by keeping enthusiasm and thirst for new things. Yet if you're a soulless douche, there's nothing in this world that will make you a good person. You might be a party animal and spend all your money in that, be a sex machine that invests all his time into getting new lovers, a hardcore reader or a sports fan. You will still be a mediocre person and all your passions will always leave you incomplete and empty. But if you're smart and interesting, you'll find the beauty in anything in the world.

This is why i find so much magic in aspects of fictional things. I have an overactive immaginations and i think that reality is generally grey and dire. Bill Burr said once that "sports are something you can connect with, cause they're real". Maybe. But i find anything that involves creativity and works on the immagination, much more charming. Besides music, which is a drug of its wown that i think everyone must have in their lives, unless they're walking corpses, all forms of fiction are where the wizardy is at.

Think of "Deus Ex - Human Revolution". I know, i know, its a videogame and the last videogame you played was Pong. Shut the fuck up.

The game, following the footsteps of its genre bending predecessor, is basically set in a cyberpunk world, but what makes it special is that it allows you to face any obstacle or situation in literally any way you choose to and adapts to that. And to obtain that, it creates tiny magnificient moments of natural, unscripted comedy.

Example (again, dont be close minded douches and try to follow):

My character is trying to steal some fundamental information in a hevaily guarded room. So far i made him act like a silent, sneaky spy with powerful hacking abilities. No bullets, no violence, i made him suave, silent and ghost like.

While hacking the computer, i get distracted and a guard enters and sees me. I panic and punch him out. I should hide his body, that might get me in trouble but i need to get what i came in for and quick. I do but, obviously, another guard sees the body from distance. I hide. The guy comes closer, sees his buddy there, freaks out and, cursing, starts looking for me. At some point i realize, ill never get out of there without a fight, so i shoot him. Seems i'm free to go now. AT that point a giant security robot, armed with machine guns enters the room.

Fuck.

I hide again. If the thing sees me.....

The bot sees the corpses. He doesnt seem shocked. He looks around. Peers like a military Wall-E around the corners. Then shrugs and goes away.

After a while i'll pass him and he will ignore me. That happens in the game. Guards will be nervous and panicky, irritable and trigger happy. Bots will shoot you if they see you but most of the time they will enter a room full of human corpses and mostly give you a look that says "Well. If you clean up and dont make noise, ill just go my way. I dont really care about those silly humans".

I know, i am proibably overthinking this, but it happens so frequently its just hilarious. Hey stop staring. Fuck off.

The Wonderful World Of Self Diagnosing

2011-09-13T04:08:00.000-07:00

While siiting in the middle of the night in front of a screen, trying to muster the strength to face a road trip with my ill father, in order to help him through getting a probe through his rectum (yeah, i know, i'm a bad person, but you try and deal with a foul mouthed, neurotic, mean old man who's about to do that), ive been looking up the internet to find material for my writings. And ive been noticing what seems to be the ultimate sign of the modern age.

With the spreading of cheap psychology books and the narcissistic appeal of exposing your own life on the web, seems that everyone has now some sort of psychological disorder and they love to talk about it. Not that speaking about what perturbs you is wrong (it's kinda what i do here too, although i consider myself a rambler, who uses his life to build long winded writinbg exercises), but i'm always impressed at how lately EVERYTHING, thanks to psychiatry especially, has been turned into an illness, worthy of endless discussion.

I honestly think that modern internet isnt really about the "anonymity" (which i will never say enough, its a myth and a cliché), but about being self absorbed, narcissistic and in desperate need for attention. Which can go in the direction of trying to be a celebrity or, at least, a "character" or when any hint of somethign interesting to say or write is absent, in the direction of scouring for sympathy or "awareness".

When you're talking abouta actual illness, "awareness" means a lot. There's always the need for more discussionbs and attention on some subjects that costs people their lives or ability to live them with dignity. Still, when the illness is one of the million and a dozen that each year are spoonfed into the feeble brain of a generation of socially and emotionally broken people by psychiatric corporation in order to sell meds, the whole thing becomes mostly a tool to be seen, and paid attention to.

An example: autism is a tangible thing. It's a serious issue that families have to deal with and can be really ugly at times. Thats why, socially crippled people that label themselves as "mildly autistic" or "aspies" are offensive to me. Being awkward or focused on non-social things, or a bit anal about details can be simply a personality trait. "Social Anxiety Disorder" is made up nine times out of ten. Your inability to deal with others or to "make friends" might just mean that you are made that way and not necessarily something that needs therapy, a support group or a dozen books on the argument. Stop making those scumbags in suits rich.

Having been abused is a bad thing and can scar someone forever and its perfectly ok to deal with it in any way you choose. But turning it in a long winded daily letter on "post traumatic disorder" or "dealing with sociopathy" or making it a syndrome, filling your tales with medical terms youve read somehwere and turning into a cartoon that no one can empathize or connect with, damages your cause. You're one of the reasons for which people dismiss real issues as bogus and ignore them. for each person that ovetalks those problems theres many that get ignored or laughed at, told to "get their shit together".

Ignorance hurts and kills. But it comes also because of excessive misinformation.

Real mental illness is devastating. Being manic is a serious issue. Being depressed is a serious issue. Obsessive compulsion, paranoia, schizophrenia, suicidal tendencies are REAL and big. Your moodswings, momenttary sadness or morbid unrealistic plans about killing yourself do not make you ill. You're looking for attention but what you're doing is enforcing the idea that being depressed means lack of character.

Being manic means not being able to eat for days then suddenly go on a balst of unpredictable fury that makes you crash your car on a pole cause you think you're invulnerable. Obsessiveness can bring you to believe that unless you have turned off all lights in your hous three times each, you cannot breathe. Paranoia is a seed in your head that pushes you to listen to people on the streets at night because something in your head tells you that they might be there to hurt you, so better safe than sorry. Those things arev real and are powerful and hard to beat.

If you pick up your own weakness and make it into a disease thats not there, youre indirectly killing people that are in real trouble. And indifference spreads from you too.

So shut the fuck up.

Kill The Bat

2011-09-12T03:57:00.001-07:00

The other night, while i was reflecting on some issues in my life, real ones that need to be eventually solved, a bat entered my bedroom.

The tiny, agitated thing flew from the window and started doing circles around the main light. I have no issues with the flying rodents. I think they're creepy but cute, somehow. And they're fundamentally inoffensive and a bit unfortunate. I mean, this poor little fella, blind, confused, small, with only his sonar to save him, found himself trapped in a place overfilled with stuff that fucked up his direction. Under an overheating light and with a nervous overthinking human inside.

It was late, i was stressed and i was tired. I really didnt want to deal with that, but what could i do. I grabbed a broom and started, unsuccessfully to push him out of the window, Still, bats are made to keep their own circle-shaped trajectories, no matter what, so my half-arsed swings really had no effect whatsoever on his stubborn tiny head and he kept circling. Resilient.

So i grabbed a towel, following the advice on my now dead cunt grandmother (should've known better), and started lashing towards him, hoping to stun him, land him and then push him outside. The bat decided to hide under the glass dome of my light. And got trapped in there.

When i was younger i remembered my father, and my mother, loving to trap pests, insects or rodent, and then just leave them there to die. They did not kill them. They left them to agonize and die and dispose of them afterwards. I dont know if that was laziness or cruelty. I know i cannot do that. The idea of an agonizing bat trapped in my house gave me the goosebumps. So i tried to get him out of there. Wasnt easy. The little fuckhead kept flapping his wings wildly and trying to get away. I dont know why, but i started thinking of rabies. Silly, since that hardly happens, besides Stephen King's "Cujo".

In the end, while trying to pull him out, i crushed his little neck. And had to flush him out of the toilet. Feeling like a horrible human being. Unable to forgive myself for killing some little harmless thing only because i was too much of a spaz to solve the thing in a better way.

With those thoughts in mind, the next day, i met my father about his new series of exams, regarding the eventual possiblities of his tumor returning. The man, as usual, was obnoxious and cranky. Plus, an argument regarding my mother came up. See, my father and my mother are bearely a couple. They never actually divorced but havent really been together in ages. They have no love, just a lot of co-dependency and finacial problem. My mother, also, has been dealing with weird health issues lately, possibly due to her alcoholism. She breathes badly, her body is breaking down and her heart is giving up. And she is the type of person who refuses any form of treatment and wont do it ESPECIALLY because someone is trying to convince her.

Since my father is unable to deal with things like that with anything besides cursing, ranting and whining, he started blaming me for not doing anything, then went on an endless tirade on how he will not do any exam or get checked, in order to spite my mother, "So we will both fucking die".

In most occasions, discussion like that have little to no conseuqence. He enjoys spewing rage at me, since i am the only person who is somehow morally obligated to listen to him (at least in my own moral order, since in my own set of rules, i owe him this since he brought me up). My mother might die, one day, and i know i wont be able to do anything cause she'd rather pay a lawyer to be free to die of a heart attack rather than actually give in to others and take care of herself. And that used to hurt. But i get over it usually.

At this point, you're probably thinking how part A connects with part B. Thats my point: somehow killing the bat was an unpleasant option, but the bat got stuck in a spot where i couldnt do anything else. And even if i could, tahts how it went down, feeling bad about it wont change a thing,

That goes the same way with my family and maybe it will go the same way with other situations in the future. They acted following their own nature, so did i. Things happened and now some situations are going nowhere quick. I can fight in order to get better results, i can live suffering because those fights fail or regrettinbg that i wasnt able to do more or act better. Or i can just kill the bat and flush the toilet.

I need to survive.

The Necessity Of Violence

2011-09-08T05:23:00.001-07:00

Anyone who knows sociology and the incredible power that it has as a science, might see the main point of dissertation. If you have no idea, know that everything i will write is based on thoughts, reflections and ideas that have already been approached in the past by scientist of human behaviour, on the large scale and on the smaller one. That doesnt mean they're right, i honestly think there is NO right answer to any debate or question, everything is subjective or deconstructable. All i'm saying is that it's not a bunch of button pushing statements that i'm puytting out to create controversy and reactions.

A sociuety with no violence or war isnt possible. Also a society with no war or violence would be, probably, a broken one and a catastrophe.

Think of the disaster that happened ten yeatrs ago, on the 11th of this month, in New York. Besides the natural gut reaction of people at the time, there were many unfortunate sould that talked about how the tragedy could'vbe been avoided or solved "pacifically". How basically the death of so many civilians was the end result of a series of wrong doings by the US, especially their actions in term of military intervention.

I dont wanna solve mistery or make statements on that. I am against conspiracy theories, i found them a form of fanatical silliness that people with no lives use to feel on top of their own private chaos. It's like religion but even more pointless.

What i'm reaching for there is how violence, war and sadly reaction from enemies cannot be avoided pacifically. And it isnt so because the modern times are rotten. It has always been that way since the dawn of civilization. Abd it has to be.

A society is formed by men. Men as a species interact through words, social constructs (like economies, religion or politics) and, mostly, with violence. Individual pursue their own good and build social and spiriotual ways in order to survive, dominate the others and obtain it. If you watch any conflict and mute the sound, all wars end up to people facing other people, trying to obtain something, and eventually taking it with brute strength. Then defending themselves. The incresed complexity of the social treickery we built has made the violence look like its about religion (which is just a tool used in order to ensure control and self confidence of a population), economy (which is a slightly more complicate d verison of the basic exchange of foood, tools and sexual favours) but all those things are just shields where the primal need to suppress the others to obtain domain is hidden.

The natural evolution of humans isnt democracy (an idealistic trick that is ok on paper but was never really meant to work), its war to extinction.

And i'm not saying this as a pessimistic view. I think its just the natural way for things to end. Since we're reaching the bottom of thge pit in terms of resources, economy, civilized life, all we can do is destroy the onbes who are in our way and fright for survival until we're extinguished.

It's our turn and the only way to go. We wont explore space, we wont evolve or find a superior level of civilization. Its not in our DNA and not posssible for us. All our science is able to produce now is toys to distract and weapon s to destroy.

Its what we are and we shall embrace it.

Storytelling : Slow Burn

2011-09-07T05:34:00.000-07:00

Whenever her therapy session ended, Sheila felt like something had been taken out of her soul and turned into a thinck, invisible coat of slime and smeared all over her body.

That feeling just stuck with her and basically ruined her day and was the kiss of death for all of her family too.

It started from the right moment when she stepped in the threapist room and had to bear that cold, clinical yet condescneding stare she gave her. That knowing look that told her that anything could be solved as long as she filled the hour with chatter, paid her fee and took enough meds to numb her own anger and fear enough to give the illusion of not being ill anymore. And then it stuck inside her, like a sore spot. She knew she was being judged. It seemed like judhement was all over her life these days. Especially since she had to admit that her own ways to solve problems werent enough anymore.

She used to deal with the bite pretty well by drinking it into a pool of piss. And, with that she seemed to tone down the edges strongly enough, that suddenly that blind, white pain that filled her head like a piercing tooth ache and made her want to wrap her hands around her daughter's tiny, soft neck, became a vague feeling of diappointment.

Her husband seemed to not get it. The bitter drunkenness, the insults, the rants were a small price they all had to bear, compared to what could have happened if she didnt deal with what she had inside. That nagging grumble was almost delightful, in some sort of black humoured way. But if she let it turn into a loud yell, and she knew it would, cause she had it in her blood and it reared its ugly head before, the conseuences wouldve been worse.

She lived with abuse for years. Actually she only knew abuse. And knew how real, day to day abusers know very well how to avoid being caught or stopped. Its not about havbing moments caused by substances for them. Its something that they have in them, placed geneticllay. Something that is taught from generation to generation. It doesnt have to be extreme or over the top. it can be a bunch of small scars inflicted on the people who surround you, wrapped with enough decency and tricks that those people dont have the strength to run away. And love is a powerful weapon too. You trick them with love and they will be enslaved to you. Bear the slow burn of your cruelty. Let you corrode their self esteem, until they think what you do to them is how its meant to be. How probably there's people who have it worse, like cigarette burns, or broken limbs.

In society's head, when her father die3d, it was an accident. He crashed his car while a muddy, smelly rain covered the streets. Police siad he was drunk. He was always veruy drunk, on those days. So they tought it could be an accident. Or some sort of tragic disembodied su8icide. the type that men run to when they loose their job and dignity and are trapped into something that is becomning too unbearable. When they realize that the years they have ahead arent even remotely enough to fix the mistakes of their lives but are way more than they can bear to live with. It's the quiet that really kills them. T&hey dont have friends anymore, or a way to get that stuff out. they werent brought up like that. A man doesnt complain, he takes his own demons and deals with them or takes himself out. No one really knew.

And when people started to talk,m some of them even thought he fel guilty about hurting her. She had bruisesand people saw those. And like people tend to do, they did not act but they talked and chatted about it. And as society dictates they pointed the finger at him. Even more affter he died. But no one really knew.

Those bruises were self inflicted. Most of them. And the monster was in he rhouse but knew how to hide.

Her mother was a worker but at the same time, shje knew how to be invisible. She was meek quiet and subservient. Small, fragile and gentle. She knitted and cooked. She used to work regularly at a store, wher ecustomers always remembered her face but at the same time seemed to loose grasp of her name. Then she decided to be a housewife and a great one. When she became a widow her attention to her daughter became all of her life.

Sheila knew she owed her mother everything. Education, being brought up well, with money and a roof over her head., She was in her debt no matter what.

No matter the pinching that was done well enough to not leave any bruises. The punches, always in places that left no signs. The touching and choking, never violated her enough to be noticed but enough to wake her up iin the4 middle of the night to this very day. The insults, the belittling, the nager. The way she bropke her stuff or simply ignored her for days and refused to acknowledge her. The obsessiveness and the way she always made her feel watched, wven when she was naked alone, in the bathtub after all those years.

And that woman had survived inside her. When she had become old and ill, Shgeila took her revenge, letting her stew in her own excrements, scaring her, hurting her. She was old, fragile, weak and she could take anything. No nurses, just her and he4r mother. She enjoyed every second of it and yet, after her death, nothing was fixed. She felt like all those small scars had simply made her crumble.

Her mother wasd verywhere. In her bed, when she was having sex. In her dreams. In her.

When she got pregnant her first thing was to abort the baby. But maybe things would be different. And they were. She always struggled with the desire of hurting her daughter. Daily. But took it down piece by piece. Channeled it into words and shouts that really werent hurtful.

But in the end, that was enough. And they wanted her to get therapy. To quit drinking. To medicate. And that made her more miserable.

And no one knew, not even her. what was going on in her daughter's head. how every word would be a slap when she had kids of her own. Slow Burn. Never stops.

Always Loook At The Bright Side of Your Moneky....

2011-09-06T04:09:00.001-07:00

Of course, just by looking at that pic, you might be guessing i'0m gonna launch in one of those funny tirade about how being a drunk or an addict has funny sides and how beer is better than anything else. Nah. I accept people being constantly shitfaced. I do drink occasionally, although im mostly sober, latelly. I noticed that, very differently form how i approached the matter up to this day, i drink because i LIKE what i drink and i enjoy the sensations it gives me. I like good wines, and beer. So i drink them enough to enjoy them but avoid binging because i have no more pleasure in altering my mind, unless it's a particular occasion.

See, after doing it for years at a level that risked me to get almost killed in various oocasions and getting into lòegal troubles, i still know exactly why most people doi it in order to get shitfaced. I cant deal with that anymore, because if i ever did that even once, i would become addicted to the feeling right away. The borerdeom and ewmptiness that life has, the way booze (or drugs) take the unbearable edges off of a moment is there, so i perfectly understand why someone would want to do it.

And again, im not talking about people who drink out of a taste for beer. I'm talking about how a lot of people turned to heavy drinking cause it helps you deal with despair. It works. As do drugs. When you get shitfaced enough, you get some sort of powerful drive to do what your social inhibition block from you. You get laid easier (although, often with bad results), you tell what you really think to people's face, you attack people who deserve a slap. And you have this excuse for taking stuff off of your chest that is somehow socially accepted.

Lets admiti it. Most pof the good times you had in your life, werent really good. You made them good cause you were drunk. And you drank a lot cause sobriety wouldve been unbearable. Cause if you were sober, you wouldve been unable to stand the people who surrounded you and you wouldve been a majopr pain in the ass to everyone.

And drugs are the same. They are ok, they make things easier. Until they become all you have to survive the total dreck that the majortity of lives become.

Thats why i had to quit or cut downb. I needed to get shitfaced, cause like it happened to my mother, even waking up was becoming a terrible moment where i realized i wasnt dreaming anymore, i was still alive and it wasnt over. So being shitfaced since early morning helped. Then id get less wortk or worse a work place where no one really cared if i was lucid or not. So id just drink more. Hangovers would be horrible but would also be part of the deal.

And the people who surrounded me. Well when you are a drunk, you end up hanging with drunks. And drunks want you to be drinking all the time. They dont like sober people. They tell you that hangovers can be cured by drinking more. They hget nervous at anythying if they have to stay sober. And they drive.

I have seen people getting into almost deadly accidents, gaining wheelchairs and scars and still do it again. I tried to be a sober driver but it was impossible to pull that off because a regular drunk driover is not going to let you drive. It humiliates them, it hurts their ego which is one of the flaws that has made them the way they are. I know that. i had my keys taken away from me and all i did at some point wasnt simply accepting that i couldnt drive but instead attack whoever took the key and hit them until i got the keys back.

And honestly, no one really gives a fuck about what you do when you're with drunks. You wanna drive shit faced? Please do. Your problem.

And its the same with drugs. It's fun but at the end, the fun always end up erasing life and becoming all you have. I miss it a lot. Life isnt good, it will never be. Sometimes i need a crutch but i also know that if i ever relapsewd into that, i would be done.

And if you are reading this and saying: "Oh, i dont have a problem, i can do it without dramna" or "i need that to feel better. I know its wrong but i'm in so much PAIN"... Well you're full of shit.

Myths, Opinions and FACTS

2011-09-05T02:31:00.000-07:00

I'm in favour of debating points, and i'm open for all sorts of ideas and different points of view about reality. I am not a bully. But theres an increasing list of facts that i simply have no more time to debate about. When it comes to discussing taste or religious/political/sexual differences, everything is good. Soime stuff i dont like, some i dont agreer with, and viceversa. Most of the time i'll disagree because i find debate and discussion way more interesting than passive agreement and niceness, but in the end, its really hardly about making points, mostly about excercising debating abilities.

And yet, a few things are FACTS. Whether you agree or not, those are truths. Not debatable.

1) Men And Women Are Not Equal And Shall Not Be Treated The Same

I am deadly serious about this. To be clear, i am not saying that sexism is ok or that machismo is a good thing. What i am talking about is that the two genders (and i am not talking about sexual orientation, im strictly talking about gender, whether its physical or psychological. Yes transgendered people count as waht they feel within, not how they feel physically) ARE different in all aspects of their psychology and some, if not most of the widely recognized traits attributed to them are actually true.

Women are mercurial, more difficult, more sensitive (in both the good and bad way) and more able to deal with emotions. Men are more limited in those aspect, morte aggressive, more prone to a defnsive approach . When guys play the "i'm sensitive, i have feelings like women, i understand them", they're, in large part, either delusional or manipulative. A "sensitive" man is hardly REALLY sensitive, but he is potentially usign his idea of how "sensitivity" should be to manipulate people. That is not worth of trust. Men can have emotions, but they have to be different, more under control, less manipulative and more basic and non mind-fucking. Exceptions exist but they are suspect and generally bad.

To sum it up: the roles exist and shall be taken into consideration. Again, i'm not talking about sexuality. Sexuality is a natural instinct of living beings that can be approached in every way conceivable. fuck the fuck-able. What i'm talking about is behavioural patterns and the way generally, brains are shaped. Think about it.

2)Life Is Not Precious

Yeah. Babies arent special, abortion is not a bad thing, since the right of a mother to choose if she wants to be a mother or not, whatever background she has, comes before any conglomerate of cells. And even when the creatures are born they are not granted special rights, besides the main ones. They will be special when they prove themselves to be.

Life is a process. People die. Unless there are particularly strong reasons to pribilege a person's life (like love, which is already a very debatable thing), they deserve attention and care and decency but they're not granted special rights. Animals are as important as people, no more no less. An death and sickness happen. It is what it is. We shall fight about it but also we have no right to think that we have special rights because we are humans.

Also, and possibly more importantly: a lot of people deserve to die. A lot. People who have no conscience or remorse that hurt others out of their broken nature. There's no superior idea of the sanctity of life that protects me. they should be killed, fact.

Suicide is not wrong. Its cowardly and whenever you do that you lkeave your loved ones behind. No matter how big the pain is, when you kill yourself you betray your loved ones. But besides that, if you dont have anyone and your life is meaningless, do it. Life is not precious or has any sanctity.

3)There Is No God

You're spiritual. Fine. You do not want to think that when you die there will be nothing afterwards. Ok. Youw anna think that the possiblity of a a superior being makes your life better. Knock yourself out.

Do not talk to me in a condescending or convincing or preachy manner, trying to use poetically sensitive arguments or verbal aggression in order to pull me into your hazy supersititions. The absence of any prooof about the existence of any fgorm of deity or any life after death is the final point. It's not about being into organized religion or not. Its not about spirituality or whatever. Humans are bundles of flesh with nothing more special than bananas, besides their hyperactive and strongly delusional brains. When they cease functioning they cease existing and rot. End of story. Its the ONLY logical explanation and the only possible truth. All the rest is a silly superstiution, which you're allowed to believe but stays a superstition. It doesnt mean that life is less worth living, actually it means you have to live it MORE, because you have no second chances.

4)Things Wont Be Fine

Its ok to have ideals and not be apathetic. Actually, jaded and apathetic people are a disease that should be taken away from this world. But bear in mind that having ideals and fighting for causes is something you do for yourself, to be a person thats able to look in a mirror without spitting. The improve3mednts will be momentary and there wil always be a majority that wiull. crush the good. Things wont be fine, its not how things work, even in the small parts of life. Nothing lasts, everything is worth a try.

Apathy is the real enemy, but excessive optimism is apathy in disguise.

5)America Is Not The Greatest Country In The world

Big? Yes. Powerful? Yes. Culturally varied? Sure.

The Best? No. Not even vaguely.

The US are a strong conglomerate with a lot of good thin gs and a whole shitton of flaws. Yes, they are bettger than war torn third world places but that doesnt mean much. Those places are NOT part of civilization (another fact that i wont list but it's true), so being better isnt really an achievemnent.

There are country that are living peacefully in Europe without adapting the patriotism of the States and the Gung-Ho arrogance that seems to be key to their way to live.

That said, The States are a country that shall be proud of themselves. But they're not superior or better and maybe its time they realized this.

Music For Your Pockets: Giles Robson& The Dirty Aces

2011-09-02T05:45:00.000-07:00

If i had to sum up why this guy deserves attention and praise in one polished sentence, it would be this: he plays pure Blues Rock and plays a Harp.

You may not get why that is so awesome, if you're not a fan of that specific gritty music or you only heard it in its modern revisionist way, where the focus is on guitar histrionics, pretty polished vocals or top chart hooks.

But see, the people that love the blues in its blood and guts, undiluted version, know what i'm talking about. A harp is a magical instrument for that genre, it gives the sound something special. Just check out the always underrated Red Devils, a band that survived on live performances and whose discography is mostly made of primal bootlegs recorded with people like Mick Jagger, John Lee Hooker or Johnny Cash. They had a full band assault, made of guitars, howling vocals and all. But the harp was like a symbol of a soulful attitude, a sincerity and a love for the roots of the music. A mouth harp brings the magic of blues to a whole different level. Its an instrument that screams for live performances, improvisation, jamming and sweaty pubs. Street Musicianship. Soul and balls.

Giles Robson plays it, does it well and also has all the rest. Him and his Dirty Aces deliver some absolutely bare boned and magical Blues Rock that comes right out from the golden vault of the golden age and get right into your heart. Its energized, sad, soulful, warm, badass songs about life, love and despair. Sung and played like they're in a small smokey club in a gutter alley but polished and smart enough to guarantee constant replay. Sell your soul to this scruffy devil.

Take A Bite

http://www.myspace.com/gilesrobsonthedirtyaces

Being An Ass Is An STD

2011-09-01T04:48:00.000-07:00

Talk to any neo-nihilist geek and there's a high chance that they'll quote the movie "idiocracy" as a dystopian cinematic manifesto for a possible outcome of our society. Theres a very spread belief, especially in the embittered post youth of today, that idiotic people willò outbreed the smart ones. According to the theory, morons are resilient, have a lot of children, dont use birth control, and are unaffected by the small, soul crushing aspects of living. So in the end they breed more and in largher quantities, where intelligent people extinguish themselves by not having kids, commitinbg suicide eand marching to oblivion.

I agree with soime aspects of this, mostly with the idea that theres a scary lack of limitation towards the breeding of human trash. Still, ive seen a renewal in the interest of having kids in the armies of intelligent beings. I see less people reasoning with the idea of being parents and more just doin it because "it has to happen". Seems like people want to procreate, whether its a good choice or not, and that is kinda positive. I don t feel like being a father but thats a lacking aspect in me, i realize that being a parent is a fundamental aspect in being a leveled human being. I realized that i potentially lack some emotional aspect that would make me sacrifice myself for another person, consider them on a different level than any other person and allow them to eventually walk over me and putting them before myslef. I dopnt think i could do that and i dont wanna risk the change of not doing it.

Also,l and thats my main point, i think the reale scary disease that transmits from parents to children is "flaws". Or on a harsher and more realistic level: bad people will unavoidably breed worse people and the cycle will almost eternally stay unbroken.

That possibly sounds extremely pessimistic, but i have very few examples to mind where i can really be proven wrong on this. Take me, to say one. I got a lot of strength from my mother, as i learned from her how you can survive odds and fear but at the same time i learned from her the idea that substance can be a crutch and give youy enough oblivion to go through stuff, until that becomes THE stuff. A baby is born as a blanket, he reproduces what it sees and as much as friends and society affect, the main input of data comes from what is your first habitata in your earliest days.

I saw my7 family being litigious, cowardly, aggressive, mean and i reproduced inevitably all of it in my own world. I learned that you can abuse and get away with it, if you're careless enough and i did the same to other people close to me. I am a product of them and as much as im self aware of that and i try to be different, some things are engrained in my soul and push me towards being that way. Its almost unstoppable and change CAN happen but its one of the biggest struggles a brain has to deal with.

I have the CERTAINTY that in the end, id do a lot of those same mistakes towards a child that my own family has done with me. Or, maybe even worse, i would mutate into overcompensation and turn into a tyrant because i wanna make my son or daughter strong so they can face the filth. Or be so spineless and soft that i make them people that could be hurt by a breeze.

It's a dungeon. And my dragon is HUGE. Ha ha. Just kidding.

I Dont Like You

2011-08-31T04:59:00.000-07:00

Let's deal with the difference between myths and truths: love and good relationships, friends, support and affection are a great idea, and in the occasional spurts where they occur they're a source of happiness, health and delight but in the majority of human interactions, people desxerve sheer dislike, if not hate.

Nowadays it saeems like a big wave of emotional cuddliness has taken over. Its a million of apparently oversensitive babies out there, all about respecting feelings, not being awkward or inappropriate creating all sorts of protective measures, formalities and structures in order to not cause even the slight impression of discomfort to others and appearing hyper protective of themselves and others. Major avoidanhce of confrontation, truths, discussions, honesty or anything that's human. But instead of actually making iunteraqctions easier, all that has been spoawned is a major, tumorous ball of resentment and meanness that is equal to the hypocrisy of the victorian era, where you had to appear proper but at the same time you did the most depraved stuff to other beings that could be conceived.

Human beings are cruel, by nature. Love is not instinctual. i know its ounds disturbing, but thats how it is. Love is a social construct, close to the pack mentality. Its a derivative of maternal/reproductive instincts. You get attached to your own parteners, brothers, member of your tribe, and mostly, cubs. All the social hubbaloo, made of politeness, soft words, healing process of niceness, sparkly clouds of awesome and smiles, is a castle ofn cards that humanity has built onto their bare bones to make the brutality of survival more easy or logical. Like religion. Or traditions. We are scared about the natrural hostility of interacting with others so we create niceness and rules to rest our wary heads on.

From that we have evolved and made all sorts of wonders, like art. We have created courting, flirting, and sacrifice. But still when it comes to the gorund level, we are a naturally merciless species and it still comes out. We are made to hurt each other. Whether its with all out war, defensive attacks or by the small grind that is the sanitized violence of daily interactions. Through a layer of social niceness and polite turns of phrase we naturally corrode each other, by backstabbing, daily cruelty, small and big, aggression, lies and all sorts of poisoning of the soul and heart.

So hate, when it comes as a reaction to that and as a defensive mechanism, as a way to cope with the fact that you can hardly lower your guard and have to be ready for everyone to get at your throat at the slight chance they get, its more natural than love. Even when it comes to family, hate is a basic. Mothers and fathers will hate their children as soon as they detach themselves from the domination that comes fromj being a parent. When the kid becomes a functioning adult that actually interacts with you, youll end up hating them. Its not a given, but its a high chance. And they will hate you.

Loved ones will hate you and hurt you.

Its how humans are, we have no claws or fangs. We are the species capable of cruelty and we will use it in spades. Pets, wont. They will love you no matter what. Still pets dont make dinners. Hmm. Puzzzling.

Storytelling: Mr C and The Legless Heart

2011-08-12T04:21:00.000-07:00

Once Upon A Time, in an Empty House, a Man and a Woman gave birth to a creature called Mr C.

Mr C was not a product of love, he came out of a stove one morning, crawling and crying blindly, looking for warmth and shelter and trying to make his voice heard in this world but nobody rellay noticed his presence. So he looked for food by himself and found a way to survive and grow stronger. He became friends with the rats, who were actually quite nice when you talked to time and were actually very tired of being chased around the house all day and threatened. They shared their treats with Mr C and helped him become versatile in the art of dodging danger.

Mr C gre enough to be noticed by the house owners who suddenly realized hed been eating their food for all that time and befirending those horrible pests that had been plaguing their home for all those years. Their first instincts was to boil him in a pot and eat him but they decided to make a deal with him: he'd live and could eat and stay there if he killed all the rats and kept the house clean and pretty.

Mr C did not want to kill the rats, they were his friends. They were nice to him. But he had to or he wouldnt survive. The rats begged him to let them live, even run away far from the house. Yet that wasnt pissble, since the owners requested to see their dead bodies as proof. So Mr A had to do it, and killed the rats. It was the first time he actually fel a pain that wasnt due to hunger or cold, or fear. It was a weird pain, deep inside. A pain with no borders, edgy and stingy that made want to stop eating and sleep forever. So he tried to ignore it and for once, he succeeded.

The work in the house was tiring but made time pass. Teh owner were obsessed by perfection. They would attack Mr C if even a slight detail was wrong, starve him and beat him. But weirdly enough, that pain was not that big confronted to what he felt when he had to kill the rats. So he just let them do what they wanted.

One day they died and left him alone, in the empty house. As bad as they treated him, they were all that Mr C had in his life and being alone was something he had never experienced before. Mr C was feeling that pain again. Stronger. And this time, it wouldnt go away. It kept growing and aching, making him cry bitter salty tears and stay awake at night. making him starve until he started fainting.

Mr C had to solve this. So he went to the Town's Witch Doctor. The doctor, after being paid a large fee, examined Mr C.

"There's nothing really wrong with you, little man. What causes you this suffering is something everyone has"

"And what in Tarnation is that?" (said Mr C, who had started reading the house books at night and wanted to speak like the owners to feel big and strong)

"It's a thing that makes you be different from a sponge or a cucmber. Not that sponges or cucumbers need that, but thats that"

"I dont wanna feel that pain anymore. It's horrible. More horrible than being hungry or being beaten or anything. I dont wanna have a heart no more"

"I can do that, little man. But remember, if you take it away, you'll never get it back"

Mr C was little and did not know much, so he let the Witch Doctor take his heart away.

So, he lived for years without a heart. He didnt live really. Just ate, slept. Not feeling pain. Not feeling anything really.

One night , a noise he hadnt heart in ages woke him up. it was a rhtyhtmic beating. Like a drum or a melody but better.

Hypnotized by the sound he went out of the house in the middle of the night and went looking for the source of the sound.

In the middle of a forest, far far away, on a bed of snow and roses, there was a heart. It was beating strongly. It had no arms or legs, but it kept beating with a sound so warm, so powerful and so beautiful that Mr C could not stop listening. It was cold and late and the forest was far from his home but he just stood there and let himself fall asleep to the sound of the heart beating. He stood there, arms wrapped around it and felt so good and happy for the first time in so long. He had dreams. He didnt remember having dreams.

In the mroning he had to leave and go tend to his house

"I'll come back heart"

The heart just kept beating. Mr C wanted to take it away but did not know how. He was tiny and couldnt bear the weight alone. And the heart had no legs so it couldnt walk. Mr C felt a tinge of the pain again, but it was almost good this time. Then it went away again.

When he worked at the house, he forgot about everything and became numb and empty again. Then sometimes, he just heard the beating from far and felt everythign was good again. He could just stop the woprld and fight everything just to hear that beat.

One night he went there.

"Heart, i realized i cant be away from you. I dont know why but i need to be here. I just forget everything when i'm away. I know i did this for a reason. Cause i did not want to feel the pain. I think. But, when i'm away from you i forget the sun and the music and chocolate. I am just there. And i dont want to be there. I wanna be here with you"

The heart just kept beating

Mr C realized that he would never be able to move the heart away and yet he couldnt stay away from it again. It would've been too empty.

So he stayed there. Close to the heart, silent, just listening to it beating.

The days and night passed and he forgot to eat or drink or anything but he didnt care. Suyddenly he had found his place. So one night, in the warmth of that beating he just passed away. At that right moment, the heart ceased beating.

The snow melted and all the roses died. But Everything felt right in the world. Just for a second. And then went dead again.

The Mysterious Case Of The N-Word

2011-08-11T04:40:00.000-07:00

Being a person who does not speak english as a first language but, most importantly, a person who lives in a country that isnt even close to the idea of a racial metlin pot, i always felt weirdly detached towards the idea of words being offensive.

I dont diosagree with that. I am sure that when you live in a contezt where every single asshole you meet spews an offensive slur and then hides behind feeedom of speech, makes you want to react violently.
Also, while still being a person who doesnt really get the full depth of a slur, i despise people who use the idea of being "not politically correct" in order to be racist, hateful, intolerant or simply ignorant.
I think that 99% of people are fundamentally ignorant and hateful. Its the way humans are born and, eventually, they will be shaped into more logical individuals through education and life experience. But somehow the primal pulse is to be ignorant morons. Being sexist, intolerant and aggressive, is something that most people have as a natural drive. Some sort of claw-less version of the aggressive pulse of animals, sheped into a low level form of attack by the ever-so-lame tendency of humanity to create verbal excuses for thyeir istincts.

Once people used to have shame for being bad people. The ones who didnt have that, were labeled as unrepentant, dangerous individuals. Maybe they ruled society, maybe they were the majority (and they still are) but you could point them out. Now when a p'erson is that way and expresses dangerous ideas, they are able to call YOU intolerant when you point out their ignorance.
Being racist, sexist, homophobic, violent, aggressive, unable to discuss anything in a civilized manner now equals being "not PC" or "telling it like it is". And as much as some people like to delude themselves into the idea that assholes are only a section of humanity, a loud one , but not the norm, i think its the contrary.

Still, there is a reason. I wont take stances but i will tell a story. Bear with me and, if you want, give me your cents.

A long time ago, i used to hang out a lot in a zone of Turin close to the main river. That was the place where you could genrally meet the most people, thanks to the fresh air and the converging of all sorts to humanity to that point. Also there were nightclubs, bars, restaurants and an amazing night view of the city. And a LOT of pushers. I bought weed thjere, i dont hide that. Sitting on the riverbank, high and watching the moon was quite the experience, one of many the city gave us.

Still, like it often happens with places like that, the borders of that zone were full of hot headed immigrants. They hung out there too and they were genrally pissed. Being one of tyheir customer and a generally pleasant guy usually saved me from trouble. I remember buying an extra spicy kebab by one of those. The man sat there with a garden styled grill and spices and made those infernal kebab sandwiches, with his mysterious silent mother next to him, bat5hing her legs in a bucket of cold water and telling him who he could sell the meat to and who was banned. I was white but i was accepted.

Anyway, one night, one of my friuends got a bit too drunk and started singing a song with a lot of "Nigga" in thge lurics. In a matter of seconds, a bunch of giagantic african guys and a couple of middle eastern ones surrounded him and started asking him the classics pre-beatdown questions. He tried to explain but the guys wanted to kick his ass.

Me and a bunch of bigger dudes, managed to be the peacemakers, pick up the guy, who went through the drunk bravery and sudden terror phases, and run away.

Later, at a bar, a common friend, a socially conscious lady, declared that the fellas were in the right, since they had to bear racism all their lives so one could not utter that word even in a song and at a distance.

That kind of argument made me want to be racist. But maybe i'm wrong. Whatevs.,

Music For Your Pockets: 4 Hero "Play With The Changes"

2011-08-10T03:43:00.001-07:00

Lately, i've had a moment of epiphany while listening to an album that for the majority of people will be nothing more than a passing soundtrack to their daily mundanity. I had this moment of clarity while listening to the latest Jay-z and Kanye West album "Watch The Throne". I can already see some of you snarking. Well, you condescending dorks, take a deep breathe and listen. While the public figures of Jay-Z and Kanye are probably getting very close to Borderline parody or just sheer annoyance, their music shows intelligence and creativty.

I have never been a hip hop fan and i am still bored to tears when i hear traditional hip hop. While the posturing can be done well, the track has to have something special going on. That works for any type of music, but i noticed that in some genre people tend tyo be more forgiving than others. Hip Hop tends to be accepted even if it is completely devoid of ideas, same as pop and singer-songwriter music. Most of the audience just wants to hear something that fullfills the basic needs, gives a few catchphrases, has ONE good hook on the entire album or simply has enough attitude to bear the lack of magic. We can take a Bon Iver, cause he pretends to be cool enough to hide the fact that he doesnt really have that much talent.

Still, once in a while, there's a band that defies the limit of its genre and destroys categorization. Or in simpler words, reminds you that great music has no limits and can give you emotion, whether you like it or not. "Watch the throne" reminded me this, with its flowing, tasteful beats and great melodies. And then i went back to the shiny genius that is 4 Hero.

I was introduced to 4 Hero in the nineties, by one of those guys that you end up knowing sometimes in your life and seem to have the most incredible taste for music, movies or anything and make you discover things that change your mind forever. The guys that are there when no one else is and give you the gift of true mind melting music.

When i first head their other groundbraking album, "Two Pages", they were almost too "out there" for me to get. Two guys, with an eclectic bunch of guests, that tooks the shapeless, ebullient matter that is black music, from jazz to soul, through funk, added it to the modern possiblities of sampling and electronic decosntruction and made something new. Something new that sounded like nothing else but still was completely devoted to the classic Motown Sound.

And the later "play with the changes" is even more powerful. Listen to the opener "Morning Child" with its old time orchstration, its smooth melodies, the special vibe of it all, the way it uses sound to get under your skin and speak to your heart and brain....

The album has polarized the experts and made me fall in love. Proof that "experts" are cunts. Dig it and discover a world that has no name.

Take a Bite