The Last One Standing

Competition is the act of striving against others or yourself for the purpose of achieving dominance.
It’s a cut throat game of winners and losers. And we’ve all been a little of both. The individual is society and creates it. If you want to change society, change yourself. I cannot say competition is no good without being called a socialist, and even I do not believe its completely bad. Like other subjects it is a relative concept, beyond law. I’ve won and I’ve lost. And in my current relationship with society, I feel as if I’m the last kid picked in dodge ball, but with competition (or should I call it survival?) I will eventually reach some level of tolerability with my lot. Competition, in our culture, is now accepted as a friendly concept. He is the one you invite over for drinks and has a great golf swing. It brings about innovation. It brings misery. That is why I refer to it as a relative concept, there can be no judgment that this is good, this is bad. Most job screener tests ask whether you think healthy competition is good. It’s a silly question, and we know the “right” answer. To even get a job now days you have to betray what you think, your sensible mind. Like that hallmark ethics question about your dying wife/son/dog needing medication to which it becomes necessary to steal. We know the right thing to do, but societal right. Are we being extorted into going against what we think? For we think if we do not put the "right" answer, we will not get the job? To be comfortable in this world, you have to conform to the standards of the culture you're in. We want survival, satisfaction. I want a good wage, no worries about paying bills, but to get what is necessary to survive, we have to betray ourselves.Arm-wrestling with the invisible hand of economics...

...This extension beyond ourselves to power, dominance brings the problems of modern society. “He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage.”

I was thinking how we express ourselves, how we’ve become to express ourselves due to our conditioning. To say you are good at something perpetuates societal misery.

There is a difference between: knowing you’re good, expressing that you’re good, and not caring if you’re good. If I come across to you and tell you I’ am a good writer, a good athlete, an industrious person, it might be to you that I am implying that I have surpassed you. It stirs envy within you, and hence competition, and misery between us all. Even though you didn’t express it maliciously, you contribute to making society worse. Your gentle rain of pride has created puddles of envy that people step in. Your expressions are also geared toward vanity, setting yourself higher. Your craving to be appreciated. You want others to know how good you are, comment to the effect, and become PR for you. Its for others to decide. Some might say, “God what an asshole.” Others might follow you. And it becomes a sad state, because you read the books but never write them. The leader’s system is good enough for you, you follow under it, but will never know the bliss of freedom under conditioning, under system. You won’t know how joyous and frightening it is to stand alone.

People hate those who make them feel their own inferiority.

Knowing I’m good is more tolerable to others, but quietism is yet just another form of very refined hypocrisy. Not saying anything about how good you are is an expression too. You’re expressing something without saying anything. You don’t have your sword drawn, but everyone can see its on your belt. It is more admirable than the ostentatious prior, and I see it as a progressive step up. We start at the first, then with either humility, wisdom, maturity we move to this state. Hidden pride is tolerable-to others at least. Would that make you cooperative on the outside but competitive in? My pride is still there inside, and I would have to live with this disease. There may be peace outside, and others might admire the mask, but it covers all hell that’s breaking lose inside. I suppose there is a glimmer of hope, because knowing, living with the disease is the only way to be free of it, and through that small window, you might come to…

Not caring if you’re good. The Effortless. Strange Industry. One of the most prevalent quotes that has lodged itself within me is “Effort is the antithesis of grace.” The mark of a great artist is that everything seems to be done without effort. The most elusive of the paths, and you have to walk it alone. Undertaking no activity yet nothing is left undone. Producing and rearing things but not taking possession of it, without taking pride in it. Do what you feel needs to be done, then leave it. Giving up the “desire to force, direct, premeditate, and strangle the outside world within me and outside of me in order to be completely open, responsible, aware, alive.” I think this is the highest state, and not many people reach it before they die. But these are the high born of society, they create no misery that makes society worse. Maybe they cause no harm because they are outside of society, out of system. Ex Stasis. Ready to live, ready to die. I haven’t come to understand it completely, I know something is there, so I’ll keep searching. But like being lost in the woods, when we think we’ve found it, we’ll be either horrified or ecstatic to find out we’re at the same place we had started. That return, the center, the true self?

politics

I think about people. The amount of humans in this nation, let alone the world is a massive number that I'll never be able to fully rap my my around. And yet I can't help but to think about how much alike we all are. Yeah, little Johnny, that's right. I said it. We're all the same. Yet we divide. We're selfish.
We form groups like mad. Little infestations plotting against each other. We're a never-ending checkers game. Skip you, jump you, Crown Me! But why? Everybody wants to be happy, be satisfied; can we not all find our place and be happy about it?
The rich stay rich, the poor stay poor. One success story for every infomercial. People grab on to something and refuse to deny it. But a place. Are we just taking any open seat like some elementary musical chairs game. The music has ended. We're all gasping for air, grappling; slinging even the closest friend aside. Fiendish people.
What if, and just what if, We don't have a place for everyone these days. The poor stay poor. The "housing developments" that look like dreadful ghettos when their built! If that is what we surround people with, what do we expect the product to be.
The rich stay rich. Surround people with money on a platter and what do you expect. Money.
So here's the point. Can we not be creative? Everyone is not just banished to a particular social group. "Oh well, somebody's got to be poor/rich" What the hell? I don't understand why we don't sink billions a year on people in need. Not someone's ambitions. I'm drowning in this political bath.
We divide. I'm from America, my dirt is better than your dirt. Does it matter? Spilling blood for no reason. Defense is a different subject.
I'm presbyterian/methodist/baptist/pentecostal/southern baptist/church of god/church of Christ/lutheran/catholic and last but definitely not least "non-denominational" (isn't that not just another group?) Odd, for believers that believe God is Love, we divide. We divide.
There's no more to this. My thoughts drag and stutter. It's all a mess. Not my thoughts, but the rest of it.

Whale

Sitting at a bar, and here, and in this place I'm Sharing the bar with other magic city moths who came to this show, hoping to be entertained, hoping for the warmth, if only fleeting, before we bounce off the screen and try again. And I'm the gargoyle, Anchored hard to the stool, ankles locked, looking out, but thinking in. A smoke chandelier hangs above my head, churning like a storm. You could cut it with a cake knife. The smoke here is even too tired to leave. My friends and I are too tired, too bored to speak to each other. Starting a conversation between us, about as meaningful as a fake yawn. My eyes are a unsleepy tired, and they rest on the pillows below my eyes. And everyone else has this socketed look.
I rip the labels off my beer and make crude tiny pictures of them. Dicks. Handguns. Tits. All displayed on the canvas of my sweating bottle, pasted on with condensation. I steal glances but wish I could give them back. Theres a woman, she aggressively stands beside me, on me, screaming in her "I know you" voice to her casual acquaintance of a bartender. Grinding her hip and the side of her breast against my shoulder. I don't want this weight, and I'm invaded once again, and i'm sure my beer is warmer than her. I try to lean. I stare out into space, twirling the whiskers on a weak mustache. You really have to get your nails under it. But in, I'm really thinking about smashing my pint on her head..public shaming. I bow my knee outward, to press against her thigh, in a futile attempt to make her just as uncomfortable, to invade her space.
Do you think, god forbid, shes attracted to you and making it known, or
Do you think, maybe she sees you as so much of a nothing that she can lean against you as she would the corner of the bar? Are you the statue everyone takes a funny picture beside? What a devil. She's Attractive and nasty. Her voice propels through centuries of bar patrons' disgust.
Across the bar, reptilian eyes focus on her, wondering if they could have her.
But they don't know her,
not like I do.
And I carry a stronger emotion for her, than any other suitor could offer.
Pure hate.
With little attention from the busy bartender, she pulls out a piece of plastic and talks to it. Her voice, a trashy Old South abomination. Haughtily, she bears down every sentence with a drawn out weeeell.
Whale, Whale, Whale,
Wha-el'
Everyone tells me girls in the south are the most beautiful in the country. Shapely and doe-eyed, and The accent, that accent, is the charm. But hers is overdone, molded over, fell off the tree, filled with yellowjackets, and caustic. It makes your bones itch.
She puts on her lips, a 120 mm cigarette. Like a white scepter, it crashes down hard to hit every syllable, I feel sorry for who is on the other line and has to take that beating.
A 120mm howitzer, hollow smoken rifled tube. I wonder who she's wounding, she's a gun dressed up for costume ball, spinning and dancing around but everyone's ducking. I wonder if she knows she's a gun, and if she is, I doubt she cares, because nothing that empty has a conscience. I'd take no power in having that in my hands.

Talking shit about my lack of innovation.

So it appears there's also a blog titled Talking Shit About A Pretty Sunset. Thats what you get for quoting mouse lyrics from a bygone year. Thats what you get for assuming that you don't share the internet with a million people. One day, everything will be said, every thought already thought. On a long enough time-line nothing will be new. Or has it already happened?
Here lies Invention. He is survived by his loving son, Novelty.
I bet we're nothing new. Egotism makes us feel special. But someone, from some time period, could have been "me." Its just culture that makes us feel like someone special. I'm native american. I'm a Catholic. I'm a socialist. etc. Are we novelty?
Need a new name for this blog. Something novel.
But then after I define it, it will be old. Not novel anymore. But I think I can live with this.

Connected

It’s a fight against insincere communication. We have 43 things I want to do, you want to do, we should do, and collectively we can cheapen our goals and hopes, to-gether. I got the facebook so,

I.know.where.the.fuck.ing.party.is.dude.
And you should have seen your face.
Myspace the temple of the connected. 500+ friends, a weak foundation to be somebody. Quality is the connected.
And the Queens of Quality, the web-cam girls who seduce keyboards, are what we are really aspiring to be. Now I know the definition of a Myspace whore.

Quality is the connected. The electronic social butterfly has taken flight. I’ve lavish adornments of comments, pictures, interests, activities. Social gatherings. Poke you and hope you poke me back.
Expression is deadly, do you feel the guilt in going off on a tirade about a subject and it breaking those invisible social rules, to keep it simple, to keep it safe. Ipod safe. Can we only talk about what happened last weekend? The web, a reflection of our real lives, and you better know who you’re talking to, or you’re going to feel real lonely. So connected, but I’ve never felt so lonely. And this machine runs off insincerity. We're connected and interchangeable and the parts grind so hard without the oil of our vanities.
LoL.
Lmao.
And I’d rather feel alone than lonely.
But just because we’re holding hands doesn’t mean we’re sharing minds.

blogging

So I see we've met here once again to discuss the ongoings in the world, at home, abroad, inside and out. Who are we to speak out? Who are we to speak for or against anything? We are the two bumps on a log, lying helpless, infesting, molding over some timber bed staring at a sunset; the sunset. The world is a buffet, here for the taking. And we will, I will, take and eat. So here begins the beginning, hopefully the end will evade our path, as destructive or constructive as it is.

Kanasns nam

A man from kansas went down to the well to fetch his key. Without pants to not be ensnared on any roots. He found a hole an put it in his pocket.