Arguments between the Id and other abstractions #1: the Conscience?

I finally figured out the difference between us, sir. You are Haughty in Righteous Cause. Sometimes even with righteous cause! Not I.

I, I, I am arrogant in all matters of inconsequence. So long as they call to me, I thrill to rush in, conscious in my exaggerated sense of self and worth! This is arrogance: to hold an exaggerated or falsely high estimation of self or self worth. I know I am arrogant. I glory in it, I glory in what calls me, I rush in to it - dauntless more than brave, heedless more than courageous - but those as well, surely. In valor, we may say, so long as we leave the better part. I find I have rushed in before conscious of the call, and as I fly through and out of the frame gang-tackling it, I feel at the very least equal to it.

Superior, maybe. But that isn't a bad thing! If it can be managed, one should find ways to be superior to all one's calls.

Things that threw me Vol. 1

Every now and then we come across people, places, or situations that stop us in our tracks and make us think "Hang on, what was that about exactly?" and what do we do about things that throw us? We write about it and then regret having done so later maybe. Probably. It is highly likely that I will regret this later. Now onwards!

Instance #1 - Oh daddy. 

A lovely lady, who shall remain nameless, saw fit to share existence with me once, and in the throws of passion one night began to say "Oh daddy". My issues with my own father as well as my rejection of child birth aside, this really fucking threw me. What where the implications of that exactly? Where did it come from? I'll never know as I was too afraid to ask at the time, but it keeps me up at least three nights of the year. I should have asked. 

Instance #2 - Ice Bucket Challenge

I get the efforts to raise awareness about a cause, but seriously, what the fuck? Is it really prudent, especially now of all times when even the first world countries are having water shortages, to be dumping an excess of the stuff as if it were worth nothing? The arguments for this are odd to say the least. "The total sum of the waste is akin to what we lose from pipeline leaks in a single day" they say, as though that were a satisfactory justification of the flagrant entitlement they're swimming in. Surely if that is what's lost in a day as it is, we shouldn't be so eager to throw more out? Is viral video really worth throwing it into the faces of the less fortunate on a global scale? I dig that they raised awareness and donations for this ALS business but I can't say I agree with their methods. It's sad that that's what it takes to draw some much needed attention these days. I dread the day there's a "totally fresh and clean food bucket challenge BECAUSE WHATEVER THAT 30,000,000 ODD PEOPLES SUM TOTAL OF WASTE IS AKIN TO THE FOOD WE LOSE IN WORLDWIDE DRUNKEN VOMITTING IT'S TOTALLY LEGIT". But I digress. 

Instance #3 - Cinnamon Bun Flavoured Potato Chips

I don't need to get into this one, do I?

Instance #4 - I Just Don't Like It

Y'know the sort of people I'm talkin' about. If you are having difficulty articulating just why it is you reject a particular person or idea, it's probably because that rejection is totally unfounded and you're just being a contrary-for-the-sake-of-being-contrary dick. If that's your thing though, by all means, enjoy ambling around with no real opinion of what it is you claim to dislike. Who needs reason, anyways am I right? I am.

I reckon that's enough for now. I hop off the soap box. Now I've finished with you, you may go.

Clearly, it doesn't matter. CLEARLY, IT DOESN'T MATTER!

Why is that always the cry, huh? Why should it matter before we partake? I can't for the life of me understand the logic of the "unless it amounts to something specifically geared toward my interests in the long run, I shant be a part of it!" mindset. When you break anything down in this world, can you honestly say any of this shit matters? And who decides what makes the grade and what doesn't exactly? You can't say it's each and every one of us that decides because it's fucking not. THIS matters to me. THIS can matter to others. Even if it didn't though, that's a shitty reason to avoid doing something. 

I try to think of a place, nay, an idea to live in. An idea that doesn't stifle creativity, but nurtures it. The idea? That nothing has to matter to exist. That this inconsequential thing can be given the opportunity to matter one day but need not worry about it now. That this meaningless thing can perhaps inspire a person, or several people, to do something that matters if it only had a chance to be. We are all a swarm of matter whose lineage can be traced back to Father Nothing. I feel like people like to forget that. I wish it weren't so. 

So I say to you my faceless, mouthless, duodenumless cult of whiskey slayers. Dare to do those things that don't matter. You might just find a universe of possibility in them. Now, a Dead Poets Society quote. Ahem:

"We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, "O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?" Answer. That you are here - that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play *goes on* and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?"

Does Anybody Else Love Sherlock Holmes!

This one time, the old professor in the crime scene house (the murder occurred downstairs - the prof's assistant) was a smoker; he had some particularly NICE ones which Holmes recognized, enthused over as an aficionado - next thing you know, Holmes conducts the whole interview pacing back and forth, chain-smoking like a spaz and gesticulating wildly, filling the whole fucking room up with smoke as he and the prof have their little talk.

The whole point of this big act (apart from to put the professor at ease with all this unforced camaraderie) was so he could pop his head in the door an hour later and see where the murderer had been hiding! The tracks were right there in the scattered ash. She had been concealed in a cabinet or something. The professor knew it all the time.

HOLLLLLLLLLLLLMES!!

What a fuckin' weirdo that guy was, you know? Or what about the time he knocked the fucking oranges over and blamed it on Watson! Watson was like "what the fuck?" Still, Watson kept a cool hand, suspecting Holmes had a big fucking foot in the game. Which he did. Which he always did. I can't help but love Sherlock Holmes and his outré ways! It could be he is even as arrogant as myself.

It wasn't always so. Me and my love of Sherlock Holmes, I mean. I had a copy of the big huge A. Conan Doyle collected, "Compleat" as it were - couldn't fucking get any headway through it at all! Why, it might as well have been the fucking Bible at that age. I forget how old I was at that point, but I wasn't understanding the charms it had hath. So to speak. Anyhow, then years or decades later I see the Robert Downey Jr. / Jude Law ones - fairly recent films. Now I'm the first to admit Downey Jr. looks nothing remotely like Holmes-as-described, OK? But I have to admit, his take on the role made a mark, and when I saw that big ol' Conan Doyle doorstop kicking around, I said "let me have another go at it."

DELIGHTFUL! I tore through the whole thing in essentially, one sitting! Punctuated by several standings and a lying down, okay, but I assure you the book was open and in progress. Just, one's bodily needs, okay? You got to get yourself a cheese-grilled sandwich, you get yourself a cheese-grilled sandwich. Unlike Holmes, we the readers aren't necessarily compelled to ignore these things just because Sherlock's all hot on the scent and shit.

And you know what? It was Downey Jr.'s incarnation of Holmes that spirited me through Doyle's collected stories. All through that book and since, I just keep on picturing Holmes as Robert Downey Jr. Every time the story mentions or describes what Holmes looks like, I'll say to myself, "that's peculiar," then pass it by. I can't seem to picture Holmes another way, now. I think it's that wide-eyed look he gives us - that look of pretended innocence in some or another matter where we know full well Holmes is up to something! Picturing Sherlock Holmes in his usual classically-depicted unimpressed bird-nosed long-limbed gawky asceticism just wasn't doing it for me. Who wants to hang out with that guy? I don't care how smart he is.

Without changing the peculiar nature of Holmes's character - his acerbity, his impatience with others and disdain for ordinary life, his delight in a challenge and in the exercise of his powers, his pride in advancing the so-called "science of detection" (basically just some bull shit he knocked together himself that nobody else can even do right), his instinct for the dramatic flourish, with all secrets kept for the big reveal - something about Downey Jr.'s take provided the key to the character for me. He made all these things click. With previous Holmeses, a lot of the time I just thought "this guy's a dick, but we need to humor him if we want these crimes solved." Basically you bite the bullet for the greater good. Whereas Downey Jr. makes that same cocktail of characteristics delightful! Delightful. I love to watch him work!

Mind you, I'm not saying a bad word about Rathbone. My mom would kill me. This Cumberbatch guy does a damn good job as well, but something about seeing Holmes running around modern London makes me say "Why not just put him on the Starship fucking Enterprise at that point?" It's not fucking Sherlock Holmes, man. A perfectly valid update/reboot, of course - putting a character in a different setting, hey, it's just done. It's one of those things they're allowed to do - whether I buy it or not. And if you're going to do it, best to do it well. In particular, I must cite the brilliant job they've updating and adapting those methods of observation and deduction. Holmes trains his magician's eye upon all modern details to deliver a classic performance each time, very much in tune with the original. A neat trick.

There Have Been No Reasons.

For a very long time now, well, an eyeblink in geological terms; no wait, a mudslide in geological terms? An eyeblink in biological terms. A ring stained in wood, in botanical terms. In relative terms, a dead uncle. In inverse cosmological terms, an eternity. In terms of vague understatement, for a while.

For a very long time now, there have been no reasons. Well, then I see no reason to start having them now. I have no truck with reasons. I don't need to explain my reasons. I don't cotton to those. You're not the boss of me, but you are pretty boss I must admit, and I need to do a better job frankly. No reason. It just feels like it. Not even I feel. It feels.

I am going to go worry some people. I will use fingers and possibly lips, and possible a soft brush of some kind for a delicious variation in texture and sensation. I will worry them deep inside. I will worry them at their borders, at their edges, at their fringes and see if they fray. If they do, I will claim the fault for the idea, and vice-versa, and I will refute each of those claims, and I will do it easily, each in turn. See what they have to think about that! Feel what they have to taste about that. Hear what they have to stink about that. Smell what they have to say about that. Halitosis, you see, and synaesthesia: an unbeatable combination you can't get anyplace else but the human brain, or so we perceive dimly, as if through a looking twice. The human brain: a miracle of Intelligent Evolution, now on sale for a song, for a steal, for what that and a cup of coffee will get you, which depending on the steal could be fine, imprisonment, I don't care.

There have been no reasons since I gave up that last cigarette, and the one after that, and the one after that. Technically, what I'm giving up is less the cigarette than the butt. Are you surprised that I would give up the butt? I couldn't help it. My health was at stake. To be honest, what I miss now was that smooth, relaxing, satisfying flavor. And you could say this whole thing may have gone South, and not even ventrally - which would not be so bad, which could be lovely depending on one's pet taboos and the disparate acts and personal variables of persons and attraction-math that all add up (as far as you're concerned) to the magic number 144 on your personal scoreboard: gross! That's right, and you shouldn't be surprised. I am running the dozens now. Ask your mother. She will tell you the same damn score, and give no reason. She isn't the whore in this particular yo' momma joke, pimp. Look in the mirror.

I am.

Regarding Birthdays

Fuck the usual disclaimers, let's get straight to the asinine bullshit. 

So. Birthdays. Hip hip and tally ho! What is a world without a little celebration, yes? We get together and we do things and occasionally those things do us, or maybe we do those things to each other and it's great. Why? Because you reluctantly slid out of what will eventually become an angry vagina for a very long time afterward, or were given the old birthing ice cream scoop procedure as I like to call it. Caesarean Section for all you folks with more than two brain cells to rub together.
I like my way better personally but then I would, wouldn't I. 

Anyway. This is your day, man or woman or whatever. Eat, drink and be merry, for on this day you are more than a hairless monkey baby. Oh no. Today, you are a golden eagle soaring majestically over the land. We take all the shit you've dumped on the world over the last year and just shovel it down our necks for you. Forget that time you got way too drunk at the Halloween party last year and tried to finger my girlfriend. It's okay. It totally doesn't matter that you backed over our dog when you made good your drunk driving escape either. Water under the bridge, pal! Because IT'S YOUR BIRTHDAY, BRAH! LET LOOSE!

Or at least, that seems about the jist of it sometimes. Even without all that sweeping of shit under the carpet for an evening, as far back as I can remember I never particularly cared for birthdays. Oh sure, like any kid I was receptive of the gifts I totally didn't deserve, unhealthy snacks and cakes, and the absurd activities that can go hand in hand with the potential onset of diabetes. But deep down, there was always this sense of dread there for me. I still don't know exactly where that comes from to be honest. Maybe it's the reminder that death is a full waltz closer to asking you for your hand as you sit against the back wall, nursing a warm glass of life. I really couldn't say. Anyway.

People tell me it's to celebrate ones life and the like, and indeed that is a very sweet sentiment to put across. I can dig it. At the same time though, I wonder why everyday we spend with one another isn't celebrated, excluding the days when you're an asshole naturally, because there are those days, right? You need to vent, you need to chill, you need time to stop pondering how hard of a punch the offending party deserves and sometimes it's you but that's okay. We make mistakes and we punch each other for it and maybe we don't do that offending thing again.We probably will but look, we forgive. WHY CAN'T THAT BE A THING, WORLD?

Y'know, it's funny though. Even with all that shit I just said, and how much I truly believe it...sometimes I remember someones birthday that I no longer spend time with and I get a little sad. I start obsessing about it until nothing else feels solid and it's at this time that I start to see my own little piece of beauty in what I consider a yearly spit in the face. I don't feel sad for the parties we'll never have, or that I couldn't celebrate that particular day with them. It's not even that I'm grateful for the day their parents fucked and gave my old friend life, though serious kudos go to them for that.

No no, mine is a sadness altogether more fucked up, but potentially far more sweet if you're broken enough to see into this shitty mirror I use to reflect. 

I'm sad because I'm reminded that we aren't slowly dying together anymore. I loved slowly dying with you. You died in ways I'll never know or get to share in this year, and that's a bummer. I still celebrate your existence everyday, but it's just not the same. 

So this is me, Mr. FuckBirthdays saying Happy Birthday, old friend. Wherever you are.

Derf out.

Happy Whatever The Fuck

A new year is upon us, a new time ahead of us. A time of recollection, restructure, and resolution!

At least, that's what some people tell themselves. I can't say I found "New Years Day" to be exactly that, but then I don't see a lot of things. None the less, a pox on the whole affair. Never has it been so widely embraced by so many that so few promises should be kept, and embraced with a mighty yawp at that. We act as though each year is a film that ends, giving you an opportunity to pitch a new screenplay. Completely baseless vows can now be made scrutiny free. Regrettably, the only changes that really seem to occur are of a less virtuous variety, namely that of the blatant lie. Not to others per se, but on a much more criminal scale. No, we lie to ourselves.

This year I'm going to do those things I quite clearly, specifically do not subscribe to. This year is going to be different. This year I'm going to be different, we say. We say. And it having been said, gives way to the traditional echo of years long past. So enamored with looking forward are we that we often forget to look to the past and remember those many MANY broken promises made to no one in particular. And on the off chance a promise of change is kept, one has to wonder just where the drive for that change came from. Can it even be said that it was a conscious effort when it's so bloody a la mode to make these outlandish claims annually? Ask yourself, was that change for you, or for the sake of calendar squares? Was it not a change you could have made any day of the week? And if so, why haven't you?

I'll tell you why. It's because that hideously idealistic vision you've spent your whole life painting is the last fucking thing you want. There are no twirled moustaches hatching schemes to derail your preferred development. The only thing stopping you is ultimately you and that, my friends, belies your hopeful yawp amid the chorus of promise. From where I'm standing, it seems to me that this holidays foundations lie less in the realm of change, and more in the realm of absolution, specifically of years lived horribly. Past transgressions completely forgotten only to be replaced by eerily similar ones.

I don't know why some people do this. Maybe the self deceit runs deep and they're just going through the motions. Maybe they're afraid, not of failing, but of succeeding at being the best version of themselves. That's really not for me to decide. If you're dead set on making empty promises though, promise me next New Years Eve that you'll remember every good choice you didn't make, and how nothing stopped you from making them.

As to you lot with integrity, I tip my hat to you, and apologize if you in any way felt painted with the same brush as those I mentioned previously. That really wasn't my intention and I am aware not all are as I've described. If you still feel upset by my ramblings in a week or two, please feel free to write down your thoughts on the matter and then put them in a drawer and leave them there. Forever.

Happy Whatever The Fuck, world. I'm out.