A Second American Civil War?

A Second Civil War in America is possible…hell, civil war is possible anywhere.

The underlying cause remains: you can’t have a stable middle ground between right and left, individualists and statists. Government keeps getting bigger no matter who’s in charge, a constant of life that always will be until space aliens take over.

At some point down the path, the mouths are going to outnumber the food, the indolent will outnumber the working and the ignorant masses performing harmful, mindless actions will outnumber mindul but inertia-bound, apathetic thinkers.

Disasters are forthcoming; it’s always the way. God doesn’t care, isn’t threatened. The Plan is working perfectly and on schedule.

All you can do is know yourself: what you believe in, what you’ll fight for, what you’ll die for. On top of that, try to be someone who can live and learn to endure the unbearable.

What else is there?

Quoticle – “tempted?” I thought we have to actually do it

Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats.

~ Henry Louis Mencken

Political Rant III

I’m going to get this down and done quickly because this blog isn’t political.

Some posts back I promised to expand on my hatred of liberals.

Well, a bold statement like that demands a clichéd disclaimer, which is that some of my best friends are liberals, or rather have an unhealthy surplus of liberal ideas. I myself support two ideas not just liberal but radical: decriminalizing drug use and prostitution.

In my view there are now only a minority of old school “left-of-center” liberals with the rest of them degrading into moveon.org marxist nutjobbery. I dislike and distrust the former and HATE the latter, which might as well be islamofascists for their lack of love and respect for anything American.

How do conservatives differs from liberals?

1) Conservatives support traditional values. Far from being a simple code word for Jesus, traditional values, simply defined, are values that have worked and will work anew if you’re trying to build and run a functioning society based on laws and not cults of personality. These values have been “field-tested” for centuries and therefore any attempts to “improve” upon them should be forced to run a gauntlet of intense criticism and questioning before even being considered. In the last 50 years we’ve lost whatever mechanisms were in place–mainly citizen patriots with a good history education–to defend the Proven Ways. Moral relativism has poisoned the well.

2) Conservatives believe in something greater than themselves. The modern atheist/leftist is a narcissist who believes she is the arbiter of all things good and evil, and that she was born knowing right from wrong. Better yet for them, these delusional self-anointed embrace the moral relativism which makes anything good or evil to suit their needs at the moment.

3) Conservatives distrust government power and see it as a last resort, not a panacea. Obviously the current conservative crop in office have failed this one, but that doesn’t mean the value itself is wrong or doesn’t work. Liberals equate favoring small government with favoring big business. Granted, some biz regulation is required, but business is what creates jobs and wealth and a better standard of living for all, whereas government creates nothing and can only take from what already is.

4) Conservatives learn from their mistakes and learn from history. This one’s a stretch really, because anyone in government on either side of the aisle depends on the ignorance of the masses in order to (re)introduce the same failed government schemes to fool the rubes. Maybe a better way to put it is that conservatives tend to trust factual data, whereas liberals only go with gut feelings, which too often are absolutely backwards on a larger scale.

Example: We would all rush to help a child we saw living in poverty, but when the government program to “help poor children” begins, most of the monies thrown at it end up being spent on a huge bureaucracy rife with fraud and abuse. The end results are the poor child getting only enough to stay poor and the rest of us now a little bit poorer, whichy means less money to take care of our kids, while the bloated government program lives on in all its failed glory decade after decade.

These days I don’t bother arguing politics. If you’re over age 25 and haven’t learned how politics work, you’re either a liberal, a woman or both.

I’m not against “polarization” either. Choose a side. If it takes another civil war to get America back on track, then so be it. End of line.

Myspace superior

There are reasons myspace is the shit and turdpress isn’t.  The main reason the former rocks is ease of use.  You don’t have to be a code monkey to figure out how to change the font size, and although my myspace page is plain like this one, over there I have the option of styling it (open source).

The for-pay turdpress version probably has additional control features not shown here.  I wouldn’t know. 

An aura of menace and gloom

At the gym tonight I ran into LaPasta, a younger fellow who quit where I still work over a year ago.  I didn’t know him too well but we’re friendly enough and could joke around, then and now.  

LaPasta had the balls to quit without saying a word or calling in, good for him.

We discussed “old times” but it was obvious at the end that I’d brought him down a little.  After he disappeared around the locker room corner I began shouting, “My life is a warning!  Don’t screw up!” which got a laugh.

It is within the realm of possibility that I really am surrounded by an aura of gloom.  My father had the nerve to describe it as menacing, which (naturally) pissed me off.  
While I’m against victimhood in principle, there’s something to be said about being the product of your environment.  My present situation is humiliating and degrading, never mind that I landed myself in this trap.  

Ultimately it’s the dissatisfaction with my current predicament that will cause me to take action, either through suicide or getting better.

I proceeded to have a kickass workout.  Almost threw up afterward, so fuck everyone.

Quoticle – and bend over for the Soap of Excellence, bee-yatch

People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.

~ Zig Motherfucking Ziglar

It’s not steroids, it’s justice.

Here at Meatlights I’ve christened all health-related posts for the Hit Points Category.

That said, I used to play Dungeons & Dragons as a kid but not religiously or seriously.

D&D greatest lesson for me was discovering that it’s damned near impossible even for 9-to-15-year-olds to share 4 hours of uninterrupted time free of outside distractions; this only gets worse as you grow older.

D&D also introduced the concept of Hit Points. Wikipedia, that glorious mecca for cut-n-paste losers, charlatans and the intellectually slothful, explains hit points this way:

Hit points, also known as health points, life points, HP, damage points, life bar, or just health (and countless other synonyms), are points used to determine a character’s health and show how much damage attacks deal in role-playing games, computer and video games and wargames.

I remember being amused as a yoot, reading an article in Dragon magazine about the estimated HP level of human non-characters (people in our “real world”). Our HP level hovers around a puny score of ‘8’ while role-played characters can have an almost infinite number…

——————

I’ve been struggling lately with my strength training, taking too many days off “in-between” when I’m supposed to be in that damned gym six days a week.

January 2007 I weighed at max 295…now at the end of September I weigh around 260, but with some decent muscle growth. Since I’m lifting as well as cardio’ing, I can only safely lose a max of 3lbs. per week. This way is better than crash diet/cardio-only exercise. I’ve made some great .  gains but want to do much better before the end of the year.

The routine does get boring as hell.

The worst, however, is since my gym’s renovation some months ago, membership has soared and the Asshole Factor has sextupled. The others around me in the gym piss me off so much I swear I’m going to wear out the heavy bag upstairs.

My biggest complaint about these roid-pussies, besides their mere presence, is that they saunter from machine to machine doing ONE set at a time, as if they were Tarzan and all the ‘chines were their personal vines. Circuit training my ass, they’re merely “maintaining” while I’m trying to get shit done!

I don’t like tanktopped apes flitting around me while I’m vulnerable lifting heavy weights…and the pricks just don’t seem to have any couth or courtesy. I allow them to get to me and it hampers my “performance” (gotta love quasi-gay gym-speak).

Today I lightly injured my shoulder and the overabundance of dickheads in there caused me to leave early (after whopping the crap out of the heavy bag).

That’s all I’ve got about the gym. Oh! A medical test has revealed my testosterone is one point low, so when I see the VA endocrinologist in mid-Oct, I’ll try to get some topical creme to make up for what I’m missing but deserve to have. It’s not steroids, it’s justice.

Twenty times two

By describing these events I’m cheapening their karmic impact, but here we go.

I lent a guy at work who’s perpetually fucked–especially financially–twenty bucks.  The rule of money is, ‘Don’t lend it if you need it back’.  I don’t expect repayment but if he can manage it, great.

I live at home, as in the home of one of my parents.  I’m not judging today.

After work and gym, while coming out of an Office Despot, I was ‘bumbushed’ by a guy begging for a ride to a place about a mile away.  For a brief moment I fantasized about killing him, there’s a hatchet under my car’s seat.  The car is a green 1995 Geo Metro which looks like a ladybug on wheels.

After the psycho moment I turned my back on the bum and walked faster when another voice said, GIVE…even to those you don’t want to give.

All right.  I believe in karma, even if it makes me a sucker.

The bum-guy was obviously fucked, still youngish but with skin as red as a beached lobster.  For the second time in a day I reached into my wallet and pulled out a twenty.  I offered it without saying anything, which dampened the kind gesture.  The bum didn’t care about words, he thanked me profusely and apologized for bothering me, promising to take a cab.  To where? I thought.

Geo started and I drove away.  It’s my car and I own it–I’d even lived in it for half a year on the streets of Long Beach, CA.  As I merged I began tearing up, (“teer”-ing not tearing) fighting a horrible admixture of pity, self-pity and even a dash of cowardice at handing over money to a guy I outweighed by 100 pounds.  Of course, the bum’s not counting on people to give him the ride…

It’s impossible to know the ultimate effect of small gestures.  You can’t expect shit in return, the act of giving and any good or bad feelings will have to suffice.

a real live book of poetry

my friend published
his own book of poetry
and I bought a copy.

it is beautiful, this book,
with glossy covers and UPC and even an ISBN so it won’t get lost
in the Library
of Congress like
the Ark of the
Covenant in a crate
across town.

the fact the book was created
and looks and feels like a real book
excites me the most.
as for the poems I can’t read them:  they’re all about love.

bloodwords?

bloodwords?

only two poems forged in over two months,
might as well hang a mummified
dog penis
in the window.

without love
this whole town dried up
and like a tumbleweed or fag
or suicide with a shotgun in the tub,
blew away.