Oh Boo Hoo

I don’t watch as much television as most, don’t have cable, and only have two shows I plan to watch each week. Yet even limiting my television viewing I see countless advertisements for antidepressant medications. The ads are obviously flowery and beautiful, with smiling people and sunny days—but that isn’t where my train of thought took me after seeing them. I began to wonder why it is that now in our history, when we, for all intents and purposes have everything we NEED, now have the want (contorted into a need) for constant smiles and medication to help us to it.

Are we more unhappy now than ever? If that is the case, I am not surprised at all. Humanity needs to realize that there is more to life than the necessities. When people work jobs indoors with no windows and never spend more than five minutes outside, it is bound to result in a listless existence. We are animals no less than deer are, and when we are penned up we react like an animal in a zoo. We find ourselves pacing, whether literally or figuratively, dreaming of days filled with sunshine, and yes, flowers.

I cannot help but to think of the Victory Gin in 1984, and the Soma in Brave New World. Perhaps we should dwell on the fact that these were meant (at least by most interpretations) to be avoided in the actual world. In a society that necessitates drugs in order to maintain sanity and order—perhaps there is no society at all—but an artificial existence only.

Western society tends to pretend that death does not exist, any mention of it being ignored and covered over before true emotion can be expressed. The concept of suicide cannot be grasped by most people, and so to avoid the chance of it drugs are ingested at a startling rate. Those considering death in a society wrought with destruction are labeled as “crazy” and those ordering war are “heroes”.

I am not telling you all to go out and stop taking your mind altering medications, but I am telling you to evaluate what is making you unhappy in your life. Are you frustrated with your cubicle job? Are you wishing you could be outside more? Is it too cold for you here? Well I have a crazy idea! Think of what makes you unhappy, but in the same breath consider what it is that makes you happy as well. List the things you love and that make you smile. Then, GASP, go do them, live them, be them. Our society of psychologists and prescription writing fools seem to fail in this one simple conclusion—this society is created to cut out your mind and let your soul float away, leaving a drone that works 40 hours a week and cooks out on weekends with other drones.

Refuse to be another Soma addict, toss away the Victory Gin, and find happiness beyond the pill bottle.

Change you can't forget to QUESTION

My views on inauguration day were mixed. I was excited, and there is no question about that, but I was pretty scared too. I voted for Obama, as most of you know, and I am nervous for him and all that he will have to face in his presidency. More than experiencing nerves for him, I am nervous for the well being of the citizens of this country. What on earth could I mean by that? I mean that blind faith is a very dangerous thing to play around with.

I watched the swearing in and the inauguration speech by Obama while sitting at work, and the obvious bias of the newscasters on MSNBC unnerved me even more than the clouded and slightly shadowed bias that was apparent during election time. I watched as the nearly two million were brought nearly to tears (some did cry) by the swearing in of “America’s first African American President”. I found myself go from anger to joy as Obama said all of the things I needed him too, and as he filled me up with the hope he has preached for the last two years.

As I sat in my office I kept hoping no one would walk in because I was so entranced by the proceedings. I was merely 18 during the last presidential election and didn’t pay much attention when Bush continued his term. This was, for me, the first inauguration I will remember into my adult life, and so I paid attention. It was while I paid attention over the last two days that I began to get a little panicked.

I know that Obama just had his first full day in office today and that not much is expected to happen, but I am panicked because I feel like the American public is brainwashed. For those of you who know me, or even read this blog, I am sure you know I don’t think much of the average American voter to begin with, but this is different. I have watched as my insanely intelligent and critical friends cease to question, cease to push, when it comes to Obama. They tear up and smile, and that is all.

If Obama is to be successful we cannot hand him a get out of jail free card before he even unpacks! America, we have to be sure that our President understands that we will not follow him no matter what. He is elected because of what he promised to do, and if he isn’t going to follow through on his word (or at least most of it) then he has to know we will be outraged.

The media all but slaughtered our previous president over the last four years he was in office, yet they label Michelle Obama as “the next Jackie O”. The media talks about the handsome youth of our new president and fails to mention how he stumbled over his words when he was sworn in. I understand he was nervous and that stumbling over words doesn’t mean much when it comes down to it, but I haven’t seen ONE mention of it since I saw it happen live.

When will the media stop gloating over their young handsome president and start treating him as what he is, the leader of a nation in trouble. A leader that will, undoubtedly, make mistakes. The media is responsible for sharing the news, telling the truth, and (hopefully) showing many sides to a story. I have not seen anything negative about Obama on mainstream media since Hillary dropped out of the race, and that worries me.

To my friends and fellow educated people out there—don’t forget to pay attention and to question, because when a media is openly biased and doesn’t even hide their favoritism anymore is when we are most called upon to look closely.

Hope is a very powerful thing—but without pressure many, namely politicians, tend to accomplish much.

Stop digging for a problem, America

I am so sick of people doing study after study to prove that we as a society are racist. Umm, okay—I understand that some people are, but why are we focusing on this? There are problems enough in society without creating and expanding problems that are slipping away. Humans as a whole are intolerant to differences between themselves and others. People tend to congregate and socialize in groups that are most familiar to them. Perhaps then, it has nothing to do with race, and a hell of a lot to do with perceptions of cultural beliefs, practices, and upbringing that are so often taken as judgment on a certain race.

I grew up in a predominantly white community. I have come into contact with relatively few black people throughout my life. There were only two black people in my high school. One I didn’t know well, the other I did. The black man I knew turned to drugs, dropped out of college, then randomly decided to move to Florida. I had a black roommate several years back, he was my age and had a girlfriend who lived an hour away that was pregnant (he was 20). He was on a full ride scholarship at a university that didn’t accept me with a 3.5. How did he get in? He went to an inner city school that had a program for students that guaranteed admission to the best university in the state if they simply passed their courses. So, he had no debt for school, and get this! He had already failed out of college once, and they let him back in, continuing his scholarship!

And people wonder why there is such bitterness toward race. Here I am, white, raised in a middle class family, with good grades—and I can’t even get INTO the college I want to go to. Now, I have graduated college, and I have piles of debt because the system doesn’t help those who have a family that has helped themselves to become middle class. I will be paying off loans for at least a decade—my old roommate? He dropped out of school again, married and divorced his girlfriend, and now struggles to pay child support while on welfare.

Can I be blamed for my anger?

No, I am not racist, but every black person I have known personally has been given everything—and come to nothing. So the people in cnn’s most recent article that were polled and found to be “subconsciously racist” I think are far from it. People tend to stick to what they are familiar with. If they are anything like me, I am not surprised they chose the white person in the room to be their partner in an activity.

When digging for a problem, you will undoubtedly find one. Affirmative action, scholarships, and the like, tend to favor minorities—and thus cause bitterness in the “white” population.

So perhaps before studies are done to scream racism, we should evaluate the underlying bias that created the ideas for them in the first place.

CNN Article: http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/01/07/racism.study/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

Do we live longer because we have forgotten how?

It seems that bizarre philosophical thoughts always come to me when I should be sleeping. The other night my mind was wondering through random fact after random fact, when it got stuck on one. I started to think about life expectancy and how it has changed over the course of human history. With a few cultural oddities, humans now live longer than they ever have in history (as a whole). I started to wonder why.

I shrugged off the boring scientific answer that has to do with advancements in medicine and other boring, non soul-wrenching facts. I started to bend my mind in order to reach outside of the cultural box we are all placed in at birth. With that bend I started to wonder if there is, perhaps, another reason entirely behind why humans live longer now. I thought that maybe this reason is what stands behind the medical advances, what drives them.

I began to consider quality of life, and the differences between the way we live in modern western society and the ways in which people used to live in nomadic societies—notably many Native American nomadic societies. As often happens, things I have recently read (especially in Derrick Jensen’s A Language Older Than Words) started to play into my take of things. In his book, Jensen discussed how food of all sorts used to be so plentiful that many cultures spent most of their time in leisure activities. With just a bit of conservation and understanding of the environment many Native American tribes could focus on the arts, love, and nature in general instead of constantly worrying about providing for their families.

These people had time to really enjoy and experience life almost every single day. They truly LIVED every year of their lives. That is in stark contrast to the predicament western culture has gotten us into. The wondrous industrial society that so many embrace and essentially bow to makes it impossible for anyone (even people who have removed themselves from it) to truly live life every day.

The rivers that once ran so thick with Salmon that you needed only to lower a bucket into them to get dinner are now dammed, and empty. The few remaining salmon launch themselves fruitlessly at the concrete structures we have built to create ‘clean energy’ and lakes that we in turn, pollute. The fields once so thick with Bison that the ground could not be seen for miles are now empty, dusty, and dry. Those that remain walk penned and domesticated—perhaps wondering where the days of old have gone to.

I think life expectancy is higher today because it needs to be. In order for us to truly live the 30 years that our ancestors lived in 30, we need to live 80. We spend the other 50 wasting our lives in front of computers watching YouTube videos, pretending we are intimately connected to those we only communicate with on FaceBook, commuting, shopping, and wondering why our lives hold no meanings.

If we restored the environment to its former glory, and gave up our consumer driven lifestyles would we not live as long? I of course do not know this, and no one ever can. The environment is too broken, our population too large, for that to be a realistic experiment. Perhaps we should start be fixing what we have broken, and go from there.

I for one miss the days I have never seen. The days when salmon ran nearly solid in the waters and bison shook the ground with their mere numbers.

Did Christ Have Bad Timing?

Driving home to Madison from my parent’s house in Lake Geneva, I found myself drifting into thoughts I don’t typically catch myself having. Perhaps it was the insane amount of coffee I had consumed, or the Christmas songs I had playing at full blast in my car. Whatever caused the meanderings of my thoughts—the consensus they seemed to come to was startling to me.

The fact that I started to think about Christianity while listening to holiday music is no jump of imagination, but where I went from there wasn’t exactly pleasant. I found myself tracing time from when Jesus came to earth over two thousand years ago, to the modern day. I looked at the wonderful things Jesus did, and the horrible things that have been done in his name. I thought of how he spoke of loving neighbors, no matter how different. I remembered the story of him saving the woman who would have been stoned to death. With all of these thoughts I began to wonder where Christianity went so wrong.

Jesus was a strong leader. He spoke of love, tolerance, and faith. He lived simply and shared everything he had with his friends and with strangers that didn’t necessarily share his beliefs. I wonder what he would have said to the forced faith that was shoved upon Native Americans with the choice of Christianity or death. Would he have said anything? I think he may have just shook his head, and wondered what had happened to the loving souls he had died for.

Maybe Jesus came too early. Perhaps if he had come in the early 1800’s to America, things would have been different. Yet, I think he still would have been killed for doing the horrible deed of spreading love and hope. Societies don’t ever take kindly to those who speak truth with love in their eyes.

Where and when would have been a good time for Jesus to appear? Does one exist?

Perhaps he came too late. Maybe if he’d been there when Mesopotamia was formed. If he’d appeared the very instant consumerism started to take hold. Maybe if he had told man that being nomads was the only way to peace—that greed would corrupt every soul the second they settled down into one place. Even then, would anyone have listened?

Maybe then, there was no better option than the time that he was born into. Messiah or not, he changed lives and history forever. Perhaps, even the son of God cannot change more than several generations of hearts.

Where does that leave us? If even someone as prophetic as Christ cannot change things for more than 100 years before they again become corrupt—do we stand a chance at all? In a society where we are shunned for saying Merry Christmas—a culture where people call themselves Christians while declaring war on those who are different—is there any hope of redemption?

I have shown you in every way by laboring like this, that you must support the weak. And remembering the words of the Lord Jesus, that He said, 'It is more blessed to give than to receive.
-Acts 20:35

Sprint I Loathe Thee

Bad Sprint jokes I made up while on the phone wasting two hours of my life:

For being called Sprint you sure don’t move very fast.

It is a little ironic that you asked me to call back from a land line because the phone I was on (a Sprint phone) had poor service.

So, the story—well let me first say that I might be a little spastic and ADD-like in this entry because I just wasted the last two hours of my life being transferred from person to person in Sprint’s wondrous network of good humored, clueless, individuals.

What did I want to do that it took so long to not accomplish anything? All I wanted to do was transfer my number out of a family plan into a plan in my name. I was told by approximately ten individuals in the last two hours that this was possible, only to find out that it is not possible, not at all.

I gave out my social security number and address to two random strangers from the southern united states that are probably opening their own cell phone accounts through other providers as we speak. I was asked why in fact I want to keep my phone number. I heard about fifty different pronunciations of my last name (that I pronounced for them about eighty times) and none of their takes on it were correct.

I threatened to switch services to AT&T about ten times and got very little response. I was hung up on twice and transferred more times than I am years old. I found myself carelessly discussing the cost of hand guns in the Cabela’s flier when I had been on hold (with a constant 30 second loop of hold music) for over five minutes.

I considered drinking beer (I am now). I considered the meaning of life and how warm it was where the people I was speaking to were sitting. I even considered how bad it would really be if I had no cell phone at all.

You folks that reside in Wisconsin have likely dealt with the horrible state of what Charter calls customer care—well this was worse. Because quite frankly I would rather be bitched at for several minutes than smiled at for two hours and still accomplish nothing.

So long story short—screw Sprint, I’ll try At&t…at least they don’t have a name that gives the illusion of speed.

Sometimes Lessons Learned Need to be Reiterated

“Play hard to get”

“You need to act uninterested”

“Be unavailable for awhile”

This is advice I have been given time and time again, and as many of you know, I don’t take advice very well. The moral of the entire Thanksgiving holiday was simply that I am fed up with men—and I don’t know why I bother at all. I know, I know, same old story from good ole’ Amelie, complaining about men…blah blah blah.

But here’s the thing, men, listen up. Women are not always at fault when things don’t work out. That isn’t exactly earth shattering, but getting it off my chest is important. Also, one night stands don’t necessarily get taken in the same way by both parties. I have had this reversed on me, so I can’t hold much blame—but it’s annoying as hell when one party thinks nothing of it, and the other really thinks there was a connection. This will be a major philosophical insight for the history books: avoid one night stands.

I sound like a religious freak now, but randomly sleeping with people is never a good idea. I don’t care if you know them, care about them, or just met them—it still doesn’t ever work out well. You fall for them, they fall for you, or you feel like a total hung-over whore the next day. Breaking up with someone you aren’t dating, but slept with, is a messy situation. It is also no fun at all to sit by a phone waiting for someone to call that you inadvertently fell for when sleeping with them.

So, girls and boys: random make outs at bars are fine, but don’t take someone home you aren’t dating, it just turns out messy, annoying, and infuriating in the end.

I am not innocent here—I have both inadvertently and purposefully played guys in the last year. I have watched as I crush them when we weren’t even dating, and lacked the emotional response I assumed I should be having. I have ignored phone calls, listed people in my contacts list as “do not answer”, blocked people on Facebook, and mostly been a total bitch. Having the situation reversed on me makes me neither feel guilty or innocent; mostly it just makes me angry.

I can play hard to get like a champion…until I get more than three drinks in me. With that I decide I am in love (only takes two drinks if it’s wine) and I decide that I am nearly an old maid and should go for it. I act like I would if I just found my true soul mate and likely end up at least kissing them. As I have learned time and time again, soul mates aren’t quite so perfect when sober—and lead to awkward situations.

The real problem is, that I typically have at least three drinks in me—so how on earth can I find a man? I think the answer is simple—I need to choose: alcohol, or men.

I think alcohol is a more reliable choice.