The Point of the Story

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Category: Shit Gets Heavy

Don’t Worry, I’m A Professional! What’s Bugging You, My Man?

1 May 2022 / / 0 Comments
5 Min Read

Sometimes simply being a listening ear can mean the world to someone.

Mainly because then you’re not a running mouth…

“Just hanging in there the best I can…”

I gave a slight smirk upon hearing the exterminator’s response to my question, “How ya doing today?”–my attempt at basic pleasantries one might be expected to proffer when interacting with a stranger.

He had come by for his bi-monthly visit to spray for bugs around our house, and, as usual, he was at our front door letting us know he was there and what he planned to do that day–you know, to preempt us from calling the cops upon seeing a random dude wandering around outside our house.

Now, I’m not really big on the whole “basic pleasantries” thing, on account of the overly-honest gene in my DNA that gives me a near-unhealthy penchant for authenticity in all of my inter-personal interactions. So it’s always a treacherous gamble to engage in such activities with me, as you might just get more than the usual lie of “I’m doing just fine” that typically serves as the lubricant that keeps society running smoothly.

Anyways, the bug guy had caught me in a particularly hectic moment, so let’s just say that he had no idea what he was in for…

“That was about to be my exact response!”

I didn’t want to leave the guy wondering why I had a half-grin on my face, so I was letting him know that I could relate to how he was feeling. But before I burdened him with my current woes, I decided to let him share first what was weighing him down.

“Yeah, I hear ya…what’s ailing you these days?” I continued.

Who says that two complete strangers can’t share a sincere human connection, amiright?

“Well…” he said before pausing for a brief moment.

“Don’t worry, Buddy, you got a listening ear in me.” I gently encouraged him.

“So, I just recovered from COVID after being knocked on my ass for couple of weeks…”

“Oof. That’s rough.”

“…but what was really tough was losing 3 family members to COVID in just the last 2 months…”

“Oh man, I am so sorry to hear that.” I asked for ‘realness’, and whether I liked it or not, he was sure delivering.

“And then…”

“Wait! There’s more?” I thought to myself. Hadn’t he suffered enough already?

“…I get off work two nights ago, and come home to find all my possessions on the front porch.”

Sh*t. That could mean only one thing.

“Turns out, out of nowhere, my wife leaves me for another guy. I had no clue; I was completely blindsided.”

“Oh, man, that is so terrible–on top of everything else, too…”

Honestly, this was new territory. The closest I had previously come to having to figure out how to respond to a random person sharing some incredibly personal trauma with me was that one time I tried to give $20 to a guy loitering outside the local Korean fried chicken joint, and, well, I don’t have to tell you how that went.

“She said she’s taking the house. So I’ve been sleeping in my work truck the last few nights since I have nowhere to go…”

“Dang…” I was pretty much speechless by this point. I just couldn’t believe The Universe would kick a guy so squarely in the cajones when he was already down.

“…and I’ve got exactly negative $124 in my bank account, so yeah…I’m just hanging in there best I can.”

I was officially speechless at this point, doing all I could not to cry in front of another grown-ass man who just poured his heart out to me.

“Welp, today I’ll be spraying around the perimeter of your home as usual–gotta keep the creepy-crawlies from getting in the first place. Oh, and have you noticed any issues with bugs inside the house lately?”

“Here you go, I want you to have this. It’s not much, but hopefully it’ll help take the sting off a little.”

I had been an unexpected emotional wreck for the past 20 minutes while he had sprayed around the house–and I was just as worried that he would leave without checking back in with me. After rummaging through a couple dressers, I found what I had hoped to pass on to him: a Ziploc baggy with a modest amount of cash in it–serendipitously within a couple of dollars of his negative bank account balance.1Not to #HumbleBrag, but I had discovered that they were $20 bills when I thought they were $50s or $100s, so it wasn’t as much as I had hoped to pass on to my hurting amigo. So I was rather relieved (and nervous!) when I heard the doorbell ring again.

He graciously accepted the gift, and just stood there for a moment.

“I’m doing all I can not to cry–this means so much to me.”

I, too, was doing all I could not to cry.

“I know hugs aren’t a good idea right now, but how about a fist-bump?” he offered.

I took him up on that, and in that moment, the much-maligned fist-bump became the vessel for one of the deepest connection I have experienced with another human being…

“You ever pondered over that part of the Bible where Jesus talks about ‘what you’ve done unto the least of these, you’ve done unto me'2https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Matthew-25-40 and what-not?”

“Yeah, I suppose I’ve given it some thought…”

Over a month later, and the Boss Lady and I were road-tripping to the beach for her birthday get-a-way, and I had just opened up to her for the first time about my encounter with the bug guy–it had been so emotionally heavy that I hadn’t been able to share it with another soul for weeks on end.

And she was indubitably wondering where I was going with it by bringing in theology.

“Well, I can’t help but wonder if I’ve just punched my ticket to Black Heaven3It wasn’t explicitly stated, but the bug guy is Black. So on top of everything else he has to deal with a baseline of systemic racism and racial inequity.…”

After a pause, my mouth rambled on to finish that train of thought.

“…and of course, by blasting my good deeds to the whole world, I’m no doubt voiding that ticket and going straight back to Caucasian hell…”

Empathy, generosity, and now humor?

Though I hadn’t meant to, my little tale had assaulted my dear wife with the Trifecta of Character Every Woman Wants Her Man, and thereby winning her heart back over after a little run-of-the-mill, very incredibly stupid 24-hour marital spat.

Again, yes I know that telling the whole world about my kind heart and valiant deeds kinda nullifies everything, but there really is a point in sharing all this.

I mean, it was her fault for trying to be infectiously gracious in the first place after I had mumbled a few choice expletives at an inept teen driver with whom we were stuck in traffic.

“Dear, don’t be so harsh–you never know what kind of day she’s been having…”

“Sigh. That’s true. Speaking of which, boy, do I have a story for you…”

“I’m crying! I’m crying!”

Fortunately, the Boss Lady was crying tears of laughter at this point, despite the gravity of The Bug Guy Story I had just intimated to her.

“Whew! Oh boy, I can’t get over the thought of you sharing your woes first instead of him–what was it you were about to say again?”

“Well, first, in my defense, things had been pretty stressful for me then. At least relatively speaking.”

“Just tell me the exact phrase you were about to tell him, explaining why you had the need to ‘hang in there’ the best you could.”

“Fine. I was about to say, and I quote:

‘Yeah man, life’s been rough on me lately. I’ve been trying to upgrade our front and back porches with this really expensive composite decking, and it’s just been taking forever. And on top of that, me and the family are leaving for a 6-day Disney World vacation tomorrow, and I feel completely unprepared. I’m totally stressing out here, man!’

There. Are you happy with how incredible close to being utterly embarrassed while simultaneously making him feel even more horrible?”

*gasp! gasp*

“One moment while I catch my breath…”

I couldn’t help but roll me eyes.

“Are you finished with your schadenfreude yet?”

“Oh, Dear…again, it all comes back to you, Disney, and your First-World Problems…”

Content created on: 29 April 2022 (Friday)

Footnotes & References:[+]

Now That’s What I Call A Second Act!

15 November 2020 / / 0 Comments
6 Min Read

And now…your fun and cheeky conclusion to Zen Death Meditation!

Last time we talked, I was sharing with you the joys of contemplating my own death in light of what I was convinced would be an impending positive COVID test. If you haven’t already read And Now…Your Moment Of Zen Death Meditation, take a quick break and catch up–if nothing else, I won’t have to re-explain what the heck Maranasati is. But, given that your time is indubitably precious, I offer to you a brief summary.

In reverse chronological order, here are the two main conclusions I came to during that fateful COVID-induced Maranasati session:

Death may not be the end of my time on Earth…

and:

I am most definitely not ready to die…

Scratch that last thought–what I really should say is that I’m not ready to stop taking care of my family.1This makes more sense if you have read the Death Zen Mediation post already. But I’ll stop beating a dead horse now, I suppose… Death be damned.

In fact, I started to be downright belligerent about the matter: if I die, I’m going to simply refuse to “move on to the light” or whatever other long-term options supposedly await all the Bougie dead folk. All y’all can enjoy your shuffleboard in the sky or what-have-you; I got business left to tend to here in this realm, and I plan on keeping one foot firmly planted in this world.

First things first: I got some, um, “marital” duties that need to be fulfilled.

With all due respect to my overly-competent wife, she would be lost trying to handle the family finances in my absence (she may bring home the bacon, but I’m the only one who knows how to fry it up just right). I’m not kidding one bit: this is the very first thing I started fretting about when imagining my death.

Well, guess what? According to all those ghost-hunting shows your grandma watches, I should be able to manipulate most electronic devices. And guess what is done almost purely via electronics? Our finances.

Okay…so things are starting to look up. I may not necessarily have to leave my loved ones completely high and dry upon my departure.

Now, what else could I conceivably do on the Other Side?

You know…my employer wouldn’t really need to know that I’m legally deceased, would they? I’ve been working remotely for the last 8 months, and I’m honestly not seeing any hard and fast reason I couldn’t keep fulfilling my job duties from the grave. Just keep depositing those paychecks, baby, and I’ll keep on delivering those deliverables!2Web-based passive-income businesses (such as The Prissy Pet Project are another great candidate for providing longer-term financial security.

At that point in my thought adventure I realized, “Holy sh*t, for real what all could I do were I to take up a ghosting gig?” The fact that this whole crazy concept may not be entirely impossible was really getting me pumped about the prospect of dying. Oh, the places I could go!

Of course, “the places I could go” might be limited by whatever The Rules are–and I have no ----- clue what those are–so I technically have to include the disclaimer that the following claims have not been evaluated by the Food & Drug Administration, and should in no way be construed as a guarantee of what one might be able to do with their Afterlife. I’m just letting my imagination run wild here, folks.

Now without further ado, here is a sampling of things I might attempt to do if/when I arrive in the In-Between:3Alas, though, since I’m stuck with a Second Place Survivor’s medal–aka a negative COVID test result–and I don’t know if I’ll get to actually try out any of these theories any time soon, for now all these ideas will have to suffice as fodder for short stories, mini novellas, TV show premises, and/or movie scripts.

  • Do you know what an “incubus” is? I’ve heard the term, but am curious to find out what all the hub-bub is about.
  • I figure being a “guardian angel” to my daughters would keep me plenty busy. Especially when they’re of dating age. Guess who has 4 thumbs and getting chaperoned on every date until they’re engaged?!? Also, guess who has 4 thumbs and will never have to worry about being sexually assaulted?!? That’s right, these gals.4Images and names have been redacted to protect the privacy of minors, but you may know them as The Elder and The Younger. Why? Because their Ghost Dad will strangle anyone who has not obtained proper consent with their own limp ----- . Consider yourself duly warned.
  • I also plan on doing all the other “normal” dad things I already do. Critical to this plan is finding a way to have long-ass conversations, though. Using a Ouija board to communicate with the girls would never get the job done on account of how ----- tedious my verbosity would be one letter at a time.
  • Oh, you thought this blog was going to die with me, eh? That’s cute. You can rest assured that resting in peace won’t stop me from sharing all my wonderful philosophical thoughts on life (and death).
  • Well, if ghosts have unfettered internet access… I figure I would take advantage of having plenty of time5Interestingly, there is reason to believe that the dead have shit to do, including a very active social calendar. See: “Champ” from Spooked Podcast (https://bit.ly/3bfT6PJ — Luminary subscription required). to take online courses. I’ve been thinking about picking up a few more programming languages and perhaps an MBA from Strayer University…
  • Hacking could also be another delightful new hobby. It should be a snap to steal people’s passwords just by peeking over their shoulders! No doubt I would use this to clandestinely advance my radical political causes.
  • Speaking of politics, could I be a political assassin? At first I thought about being your run-of-the-mill assassin whose end game is the death of the target. But then I realized it would be much more entertaining to ----- with the targets instead. For example, I’m thinking of lightly choking them while they are publicly speaking so that their health and/or mental well-being is called into question. I’ll also have to look into whether straight-up possession might be an option. In that case, my first order of business would be to troll prominent Republicans by making them randomly blurt out “Black Lives Matter!” on the record. Oh, the horror!

Of all the fantastic ideas I’ve had, I think my favorite scheme is “Scientist On The Other Side.” This is exactly as it sounds like. I would be making observations like crazy, coupled with designing basic, yet informative experiments.

Is gravity the same there as it is here? Is gravity even a thing?

I’ve heard that ghosts often complain of being cold. What’s up with that? Where does that fit into the basic laws of thermodynamics?

What are the limitations of the forces that we dead folk can instigate in the land of the living? And where does that energy come from? Also: how does living human fear seem to translate into energy in the non-living domain?

What is it about salt that distorts the fabric of the Other Dimensions? I suspect that its basic crystalline structure and associated eigenfrequencies come into play some how…but how?

As you can see, I’m a physicist, and I have a few questions…

My fantasy here, though, hinges on having a living accomplice to whom I can channel all my findings. Now, I’ve already started recruiting for this, if you were curious, but I’m interested if you’re interested, ya know?

Okay, so to be clearer about what I want to do here: I want to establish an entirely new branch of science, one that takes the metaphysical and makes it physical, and takes the paranormal and makes it normal.

Honestly, I’m a scientist to my core, and frankly, I’m not buying this “the Devil’s running around doing all this crazy shit to test your faith” hand-waving voo-doo bullshit. There’s got to be rules, and I wager that they can be reconciled with our current understanding of science. Or, better yet, blow the modern paradigms away the same way Relativity and Quantum Mechanics did. I suppose in that case, they would have no choice to break the rules and award me the Nobel Prize posthumously…

I chuckle heartily at the idea of struggling to be a mediocre scientist in life, only to turn out to be a trailblazing, Earth-shattering scientist in death. Now that’s what I call a Second Act, my friends!

And consider this outside-the-pine-death-box thought, will ya: what a plot twist would that be if I’ve anxiously worried my days away, wondering if I will ever really do anything meaningful with my life…but never realizing that it was what I would do with my death that would make me bigger than Einstein!6And finally bringing long-overdue glory and renown my sleepy l’il hometown of Rolla, Kansas!

Now you can see why that negative COVID test was so disappointing–I got me some BIG plans for my death/afterlife! But you know what? My overly-enthusiastic attitude is not deterred one bit.

Let’s see…how do I put this?

Content created on: 6/7 & 13 November 2020 (Fri/Sat/Fri)

Footnotes & References:[+]

And Now, Your Moment Of Zen Death Meditation

8 November 2020 / / 0 Comments
5 Min Read

What do you do with your life when Plans A-F fail?

Why, you move on Plans G-H-O-S-T, of course…

“Maranasati,eh?” I thought to myself. “Now I can feel fancy af next time I decide to deeply contemplate my own death. Lat-lat-lah!”

Yes, it’s true. Over the last year or so, on multiple occasions, I have found myself reflecting on my own mortality and the possibility that I might have to deal with it much sooner than I had ever expected. Between being on the cusp of middle age, and you know, 2020 and all, there has been so many exciting exit options for me lately!

Enlarged organs the size of cantaloupes!1See: No Shit Sherlock, Act III. Losing too much weight before the Apocalypse!2See: Death By Hangnail/Pants Epidemic. Leading the Woefully Unarmed Resistance!3Well, I never got around to writing this blog post, but FWIW, it was going to be pithily entitled “This Is Not The Michael W. Smith Reference You’re Looking For.” The wit of that title would have epically gone over everyone’s heads, I’m guessing. The 21st Century Plague!4See: The rest of this blog post.

(On the bright side, I have yet to envision how the 2020 Election cycle will possibly take me out, but hey, the night is still young…)

Now, you might be tempted to brand such thought patterns as “creepy” or “morbid,” but thanks to my new friend Maranasati, I can legit argue that I am instead “enlightened” and/or “healthy-minded.”

And if you can’t tell, I just learned the term “Maranasati” in the last few days, and am indubitably5Yes, please watch this YouTube clips so you get the friggin’ cultural reference! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUUJSj3AzKo going to take the opportunity to drop it into casual conversation every chance I get. Fortuitously, though, it turns out that it is eerily relevant for the topic at hand.

I came across the concept of Maranasati–aka Zen Death Meditation–recently when reading up on my go-to stress reliever, Qi Gong. In short, it is the idea of taking all the crazy sh*t going on around you, and putting it in perspective by taking time to think about the nature of death–yours and of the ones you love (including–wait for it–your beloved pets). It’s a rather interesting idea, and you can read a much better exposition on it here.6Official reference: https://flowingzen.com/21294/zen-death-meditation-maranasati/

The point is, now I don’t have to feel so bad if I happen to get you thinking about your death after reading this After-Life themed post. Come, follow me down this path. If you dare…

This time, I knew it wasn’t just another false alarm. The symptoms were too real; too obvious. Sure, I could still smell, but I was pretty sure I had COVID. And, knowing my luck,7See Touched By An Angel and it’s companion article, My Time To Go. it was going to take me out just short of my 40th birthday.

I spent the 35 minute commute to my nearest available COVID testing site, thinking my deathly thoughts and listening to one of my guiltier pleasures in life, the Real Ghost Stories Online podcast. And the results were…not what I expected.

Oh–sorry, I didn’t mean the results of the COVID test. That? That actually came back negative (and I’ve never been so disappointed in my life!). What I was really referring to was the results of what happened when I followed the black rabbit down the rabbit hole.

Now, where to begin…

My COVID Commute didn’t start too well, seeing as how my very active imagination was running amok, and I found myself overwhelmed with the thought of possibly dying.

But I wasn’t particularly sad for myself, though. You see, one thing I’ve realized through all of my impromptu Maranasati sessions is that I’m not necessarily afraid of death. Instead, its the thought of leaving behind the ones I love to carry on without me–that’s what scares the ----- out of me.

My kids. My wife. My mom.

If I can’t take care of them, then I have failed at the one meaningful job I have had in this lifetime. Sure, I have a bit of life insurance that would help supplement the Boss Lady’s healthy salary. But other than that, I wouldn’t be leaving behind much in place to continue providing for them.

And so down that logical rabbit hole I went:

If I die, I can’t take care of my family.

If I can’t take care of my family, I have failed in life.

I don’t want to fail in life…oh, wait. I get it now…

I am most definitely not ready to die.

Well, poop. That doesn’t seem like a very Zen-like conclusion to me. I’m starting to suspect that I may not be Maranasati-ing it up right…

Meanwhile, my ghost stories podcast happened to be filling my precious little head with some interesting ideas. The particular episode that I happened to be enjoying throughout all of this was about a guy’s uncle who died unexpectedly in his thirties, but apparently liked to still hang out with the family and pull pranks on them. It killed me when I heard his favorite way to get their attention would be to make their smart phones play the last video of him playing with his band in concert. You can’t be ambiguous about who it is that’s doing the haunting, I guess. At least if you truly love those you’re haunting, right?

Now, the idea of something like this was not a new thought to me, and this episode just served to remind me of something that had already been mulling in the back of my mind for awhile.

Well, I don’t know how to put this delicately, but…I don’t know jack squat about what happens when one dies. Is it a binary divine decision between Heaven or Hell? Is it absolute nothingness? Is it the last thought one has before death that persists after that final breath?

I have believed various flavors of some of these theories throughout my life, sure, but I can’t say I have ever known the answer. In fact, a key foundation of my worldview is no matter how well I think I understand something, my understanding will be, at best, incomplete.8I believe I first discussed this (somewhat clumsily) in Surfboard Waxes Philosophical.

But here’s the deal: I have listened to a lot of people’s personal experiences,9Via 2 podcasts in particular: http://www.realghoststoriesonline.com/ and https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/spooked. and whether I like it or not, there’s vastly more anecdotal10While I stress that this is anecdotal evidence, if you collect enough data points, you start to get valid scientific-method-level evidence. evidence of a ghost realm than there is of a heaven. Not to exclude the whole concept of there being a heaven; what I’m really trying to say is that I’m starting to strongly suspect that there might be something in between–and it looks nothing really like your traditional imaginatings of “purgatory.”

Well, that’s an interesting thought.

Death may not be the end of my time on Earth...

I’ll leave you now to mull over these two main trains of thought (“I am most definitely not ready to die” and “death may not be the end of my time on Earth“). I’m curious where your mind might wander off to with those to ideas in hand. Think it over will you?

Come back next week, and we’ll compare notes. Trust me. It will be a lot more fun than you might expect.

I don’t want to get too cocky here, but I’m thinking I might just make you a fan of Zen Death Meditation yet…

Content created on: 6/7 November 2020 (Fri/Sat)

Footnotes & References:[+]

Kaptain Kimchi Makes The Case For Social Responsibility

6 September 2020 / / 0 Comments
5 Min Read

“I hope there is a special extra-toasty, extra-pointy anus-bound-pitchfork place in hell for them.”

Whoa, that really took at turn there…

Okay, so today’s carefully-crafted thoughts are an extension of last week’s long overdue update of The Prissy Pet Project. If you need to get caught up on the glorious details of the whole project, you can check it out here.

If you don’t have time to go back to last week’s post, the relevant detail is that Amazon essentially blew up my internet kimchi business plans when they drastically cut the commission I–or any other so-called Amazon Associate–would earn by sending them customers. Like, a HUGE cut–5% down to 1%!

Unbeknownst to me, this happened back in April, at the beginning of COVID quarantine. Why did I have no clue Amazon was being huge Amazon-holes to us Associates? Because I was taking a break from the kimchi biz while I focused on more important things.

Now you can consider yourself contextualized for the two thoughts I’ve had in response to this particular situation…

Fortunate. I should consider myself fortunate, actually.

Why? Because I had invested a relatively minimal amount of time/energy/money in this project. Further, I’m not dependent on that income to pay any bills or other financial obligations.

So the fact that I got side-tracked by technical difficulties and quarantining turned out be a blessing in disguise, sparing me from the heartache of building up the business, only to have it demolished literally overnight.

Now, one critical thing about working on Be-My-Own-Boss projects is identifying assumptions that are likely to hold up in the longer term. And you know what has blown the ----- out of so many normally reliable assumptions? ----- COVID.

Slow-walking or abandoning other such projects that were under consideration has actually allowed me to dodge multiple COVID bullets. This list represents the a notable proportion of my pre-COVID candidates for income-producing projects:

  • Purchasing a property to rent on AirBnB? I’ve heard horror stories of people with those extra mortgages, finding themselves having to come up with thousands of dollars out of their pockets when all of a sudden they can’t rent their properties for months on end.
  • Brokering tickets to various events? Thank ----- the Boss Lady convinced me to drop this side hustle last year! It makes me sick to think that I could have been stuck refunding thousands of dollars in tickets when everything got cancelled. And it would have been 10x worse being a small-fry middleman…
  • Amazon Associate-centric businesses? Thanks to COVID and quarantining, Amazon no longer has any real incentive to fairly compensate Associates for the value they add. That, and they don’t really need the Associates to drive in customers, since everybody in America is an Amazon customer by default now.

I know my lack of progress on building passive income may seem disappointing, but in the end my family has been way better off because of it. To the tune of TENS OF THOUSANDS of dollars!

Who says there isn’t a method to my madness?

Let’s back up a second to those poor souls that had much of their assets and income tied to being Amazon Associates. For example, I watched a video on YouTube of one very pissed off Russian internet entrepreneur–oh, you know what, just let me share it here because I thought it was humorous just listening to his bombastic style of speaking:

Anyways, buried in that video, he implies that he had an income-producing blog worth ~$36,000 that he was getting ready to sell when this shit-show went down. Overnight, without warning–poof! About $29k just vanished.

Yeah, I would be pissed, too.

Amazon Associate shenanigans is not just “a dollar here and a dollar there”–it’s serious business. Or at least was.

But no, Amazon had to go and prove unequivocally true your suspicions that they be evil af.

And the worst part of this is the context: the worst economic downturn we’ve seen in a lifetime or two. Household after household are now finding themselves doing every last thing they can to try to keep their heads above water.

Of course, not so for Amazon, who is profits amidst the pandemic are mind-numbingly large–for example MacKenzie Bezos, was worth $36 BILLION when she divorced Jeffy-Boy last July. Thanks to the pandemic she’s now worth $62 BILLION.1https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielshapiro/2020/07/11/amazons-jeff-bezos-and-ex-wife-mackenzie-add-combined-22-billion-to-fortunes-in-one-week-walmart-walton/. Let me just say this: if you weren’t hurting for that $26 BILLION before, you ain’t hurting now. Like what the hell is one person going to do with all that money?!? (To her credit, I’ve heard that she is donating huge chunks of it.)

So I was shocked when I heard the news that Amazon was benevolently sharing in its new-found wealth by giving healthy bonuses to all the Associates upon which much of their business was built, to help them survive these tough times.

JUST. KIDDING. As you already know, in the midst making record profits off the misery of the average man, instead of doing good and helping out their fellow citizens, they can’t even be bothered to do nothing.

That’s right, if Amazon had done nothing, i.e. made no changes to their Associates program, then many of these households could have relied on that income and wealth that they had rightfully built. Even more, this would be safe income, not requiring them to put themselves in harms way to try to support their families.

What kind of bunch of ----- assholes are the people who made this decision?!?

I hope there is a special extra-toasty, extra-pointy anus-bound-pitchfork place in hell for them.

I really thought I was going to wrap this post up with the advice to only use Amazon for tracking down products, then trying to find the actual company that sells it via Google, and then purchasing directly from that company. It may not put Amazon out of business, but there comes a point when you know too much and consequently feel squeamish about actively contributing to such a ----- up system of greed and exploitation.

“Burn Amazon to the ground”–that’ll have to be the sub-point of the story for now.

Clearly, as I write this I can sense the Universe guiding my fingers to a bigger message…

I can’t help but wonder: Is this the exact result that would inevitably happen when the national religion of one of the biggest economic powerhouses in the world is Capitalism At All Costs?

Is this display of utterly shitty humanity on such a massive scale merely the natural extension of 200+ years of worshiping at the Altar of Free-Flowing Capital?

Folks, there is more to this life than the Almighty Dollar.

Health. Relationships. Education. A sustainable future for our children. An empathetic and caring society that will give a ----- when you–yes YOU–are down on your luck.

I could go on. But I probably should stop rubbing in your face all the wonderful things that other economically advanced countries have valued over the naked pursuit of cold-hard cash–and thrived because of it.

I may not be into true-blue Socialism, but ----- if I can’t stand anyone who craps their pants in faux horror at the mention of our nation doing anything that could be remotely described as Socialist.

How dare we give a shit about our fellow citizens. How dare we focus on the humanity of our fellow men and women, instead of inventing new and creative ways to dehumanize them. How dare we invest in the well-being of our society.

Spare me the excuses. When you’re ready to get over the romantic notion that American-style Capitalism is unquestionably the best economic system the world has ever seen (hint: it’s not), then get back to me.

We need to find some real solutions–and find them fast–if we think we’re going to be passing on anything other a steaming pile of foreign debt and massive socio-economic inequality to our kids (amongst other things).

Seriously, have we learned nothing from The Unfortunate Allegory Of The Gift Of A Lifetime?

Content created on: 28 August 2020 (Friday)

Footnotes & References:[+]

Mister Brown Ya Just Another Clown

2 August 2020 / / 0 Comments
4 Min Read

“Michael Brown? Pfft! That dude was a clown!”

Me, circa 2015

I recently had a social media interaction discussing the recent protests with someone that I knew to be much more likely to disagree with me than to agree with me. Despite this, I had reason to be optimistic that it would be an earnest conversation, even if we walked away not having changed the other’s point of view.

Sadly, that’s not how things went (to put it mildly).

Their response when I even indirectly referred to Black Lives Matter was most certainly negative and rather, uh, “impassioned”–and much more so than I had ever anticipated.

The whole ordeal left me a little bummed out and with a lot to process.

One thing I found myself pondering was, “why so angry, my friend?” Well, I’m guessing ‘angry’ is the right term…I think it would be hard to interpret it any other way if you saw their comment directed at me.

But once I got the chance to really think about it, I realized that not too long ago I think I felt pretty much the same way.

Yeah, that’s right, Buster: I too, was once just like you (maybe)…

This is where Michael Brown comes into the picture. Yes, that Michael Brown.

If y’all don’t recall, he was the young man who was shot by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri back in 2014. There was a pretty strong community response to this event, and the ensuing protests were often intertwined with the Black Lives Matter movement.

And damn, if all that didn’t ever make me feel uncomfortable. In fact, a part of it still does, to a certain degree.

I could only imagine how shitty it must have been to be Darren, trying to do his dangerous job in an at-times hostile environment, and then to be at the center of a tragic event like this. I could almost feel his pain of automatically and unfairly being judged as a “racist cop,” with an angry mob calling for his head without having all the facts.

In a way, it almost felt like it was a personal attack on me, and that it wouldn’t be long before I would find myself unjustly painted as a racist–potentially ruining my life. I think being so grossly misunderstood is one of the greater fears that I have.

I can’t help but wonder how many other white fellas had a similar emotional response to this as I did. Certainly I couldn’t have been alone, right?

Thinking back on this reminds me that we all deserve the right to have our own fears, emotions, and values. And whether or not its a surprise to you, my baseline response to BLM wasn’t exactly ‘sympathetic’.

And then along came Sara.

A friend of the Boss Lady, she was visiting from out of town around the time Ferguson was still regularly in the news and on the minds of the American people.

God knows how it came up, but much to my chagrin I found myself a captive member of a very uncomfortable conversation.

The worst part was that, as a white woman, she was speaking of the protests almost…positively.

I’m not gonna lie, even if it wasn’t her intention, I kinda felt like I was under attack. I felt like my perspective was being told it wasn’t valid.

It felt grossly unfair.

And it’s hard to hear anything when you feel like you’re being bulldozed over.

Keep in mind, though, that she was as gracious and kind as you could ever be in the moment. She never told me I was wrong. She never spoke down to me. She never for once assumed that I was an asshole.

I felt under assault, yet she gave me the space to feel however I felt, without judgment.

I eventually spoke up in defense of white guys like me, though I can’t remember what I said.

She nodded and acknowledged my contribution to the conversation. It wasn’t a completely unreasonable view, after all.

I’ll never forget, though, what came next.

Trying to hold back tears, she simply said “I can’t even imagine being in their shoes, to live every day with a basic fear for their lives that I’ve never had to experience myself.”

Something about the rawness of the moment, the selflessness, was just enough to knock me off my guard. It was just enough for me to catch a glimpse of the world outside my own perspective.

Indeed, I could only imagine what it was like to be the cop. That’s the person I could most easily see myself being in that situation.

It wasn’t overnight, but in time I came to understand that Mr. Michael Brown wasn’t “just another clown.”

I had never even began to think about it through the other lenses in the moment: Michael’s, his mother’s, his community’s, those who might say “that could have been me.”

Eventually, though, I was able to at least begin to entertain those very uncomfortable thoughts. Once I allowed for that, I gotta say that I felt like my worries and fears paled in comparison to the existential threats others were facing.

And guess what? Even in acknowledging these realities so far outside my own, I found my own was still just as real (and vice versa).

I realized I was going to be okay. I wasn’t going to have to lose any part of myself in order to love others better.

In retrospect, it seems so basic: consider others’ feelings and experiences. Such an easy way to make the world a better place, right? How hard can that possibly be?

Well, for what it’s worth, I still royally suck at it. But I like to hold out hope that, on occasion, I might be getting it right.

And maybe one day, I will have the privilege of being someone else’s Sara.

Content created on: 24 July & 2 August 2020 (Friday/Sunday)

Cowards Wanted-Apply Within

12 July 2020 / / 0 Comments
5 Min Read

Riddle me this, my friend: How did the hipster burn his hand? From touching the stove before it was cool!1Not my joke; author unknown. Bwah-ha-ha-hah!

Ok, righteous hipster slam aside, let me make something clear upfront: I am no hipster–a fact that should have been patently obvious from my most recent post, Here Comes The Pog Master.

What’s that? You thought my little vignette about Pogs was just another random story of mine? Well, amigo, don’t forget one simple, unshakeable truth: I have a story for every occasion. The Prize Pog Story2Get it? Get it?!? It’s a reference to The Prize Pig Story! was merely setting the stage for today.

So please, when it comes to social activism, don’t mistake me for a hipster–I can’t pretend that I stood up and supported Black Lives Matter “before it was cool.”

If anything, I’m a coward.3Yeah, like that time I said I wanted nothing to do with anything remotely historical?

You may be aware by now that I’ve started dipping my toe in some politically-tinged waters with my blog posts. Since this is a major departure from my self-imposed No Religion No Politics rule for this blog, I thought it would be worthwhile to go down the rabbit hole of the whys and hows I came to this not-so-light decision.

I attempted to explain it in one go in I Was Told There Would Be Pitchforks, before quickly realizing that–surprise, surprise–I had way more thoughts than what would fit in a 2-minute read.

You may find it helpful to go back and read that real quick; otherwise, suffice it to say that the point of that story was that I believe that there are a significant majority of people who, like me, have wondered to themselves why something as seemingly Golden Rule-ish as Black Lives Matter was so politically divisive, and have not previously supported it more openly because of that.

This is Logic Building Block #1, working towards the original thought that I wanted to communicate: please don’t slander thoughtful, giving people by dismissing and vilifying them as “A Mob/The Mob.”

An even more important point that I would like to eventually make is that it’s okay to support Black Lives Matter. Don’t listen to the haters–it won’t make you a terrorist.

Okay, so now that you have something of an idea what my overall train of thought looks like, let me focus on the today’s topic: risking something valuable for a cause.

As more and more people stand up and say “It is okay to be excellent to each other,”4That’s totally a Bill & Ted reference, and therefore you should go and read my instant-classic post, A Most Excellent Life Lesson, most immediately. the less risk there is for others who might want to stand up as well, but have more to lose.

But the nation is in the middle of this dynamic situation. While it is significantly less polarizing to express support for Black Lives Matter than it was even two months ago, there is still a long ways to go. True, it is increasingly being openly (and much more accurately) described as a human rights issue, and that’s incredibly encouraging progress.

Though the tide of public opinion seems to be turning in favor of BLM, the corresponding backlash is likewise increasing in terms of intensity, fierceness, and violence. After all, many have much to lose in a change to the status quo.

Well, there a few that have a lot to lose, but they tend to be somewhat effective at convincing others that they have much to lose as well.5This is a whole ‘nother topic, but I wholeheartedly believe that most of those that think that BLM will negatively affect them are listening to voices that don’t have their best interest in mind.

Anyways, you may be tempted to think that it is now trendy to support BLM. You know…the idea that it’s easy to mindlessly follow the mob mentality, without really thinking about or knowing what you’re doing.

But to this point I say there is still real risk.

If you go back and last Sunday’s post (and I highly recommend you do), Woke Whack-A-Mole, you’ll see that I darn6I really mean to say “d@mn well” but it kinda loses its edge once my Censorship code gets to it. well knew that my neighbors have already been targeted for having a BLM sign in their yard before I put up one in my own.

So if you think that I all willy-nilly spent $12.50 on a bi-chromatic sign and planted it in my yard without giving it much thought, you might want to reconsider that position.

The Boss Lady and I thoughtfully and deliberately wrestled with whether or not doing so was the right move for us.

We are risking relationships with our parents and neighbors who still might have a negative perception of Black Lives Matter and its supporters. We do not take that lightly at all.

We are risking unexpected violence towards our home and family by essentially putting a clear target in front of our house. Our girls’ bedrooms are at the front of our house, so if some armed anti-BLM folk gets too amped up on the rhetoric going around, there is a non-zero chance that our precious babies might catch a bullet or some broken glass.7In fact, my father-in-law has already brought up his concerns about this exact scenario.

So don’t tell me we’re blindly following the latest popular craze by supporting the BLM cause. Please understand that we are putting our most valuable possessions on the line when we do so.

I confess that I’m scared shitless at the thought of what I may have gotten myself and my loved ones into. I’ll admit that I am a huge coward by default, naturally running from danger in full risk-aversion mode.

I’m not the moral hero of the story here–otherwise I would have been bravely screaming “BLACK LIVES MATTER!” loudly and proudly since somewhere around 2016.

No, we gotta give credit where credit is due: I look at those who have gone before us and risked much more than I can even imagine. Thanks to them, I feel like the risk to us is at least manageable.

Now. you yourself may be curious about whether becoming privately and/or openly supportive of BLM is right for you. From my journey, I can say that I understand that what that risk looks like is very different and very personal for each person.8I mean, I can’t even imagine being back home in the woke wilderness of SW Kansas. I can’t say for sure that I would have the same courage as I find myself with here in not-completely rural North Carolina.

In the end, everyone has to make the decision for themselves, and I don’t fully expect anyone to hop on board just because of my public stance on the matter. My hope here is to follow in the footsteps of my more morally courageous trailblazers.

I hope that with the risks I take by putting a sign (give or take 127) in my yard and publicly blogging about it, that my neighbors, my family, and my friends will not have so much to lose in doing so themselves.

It’s sad that it should be so dangerous to stand up for what is right–but I have faith that we can change this.

So what if you haven’t been the loudest vocal of social justice all along? You’ve had plenty of good reasons not to put your neck on the line, especially when for so long it has seemed like an impossible uphill battle.

Just remember this, though: when it comes to building a better world, there simply aren’t enough hipsters to get the job done.

No, they’re going to need every last one of us cowards that they can get…

Content created on: 2, 9, & 10 July 2020 (Thurs/Thurs/Fri)

Footnotes & References:[+]

Woke Whack-A-Mole

5 July 2020 / / 0 Comments
4 Min Read

In my neck of the woods of North Carolina, we have ourselves a proper Con-federation in-festation problem afoot.

For some reason, uh…shall we say “Dixie enthusiasts” have been flocking to our sleepy little hamlet to exercise their 1A1If you don’t own a gun or at least wish you did, that is a “2A” reference–short for Second Amendment. The More You Know, Mofo. rights and show their support for their Stars n’ Bars heritage.2In other words, pro-Confederate flag demonstrators.

You typically would get excited when your small town makes the regional news, but lately we’ve been popping up for not-so-exciting reasons. I mean, who wouldn’t want to open the newspaper to see the headlines teeming with such beunas noticias3Spanish for good news. as:

So naturally, what does one do when the Confederate-flag-on-a-hockey-stick games begin?

Put a Black Lives Matter sign in their front yard, of course.

…and that is exactly what the neighbors directly across the street from us did! After all, the wife, “Alexa,”9Not her real first name. is a key figure in the local George Floyd-related activist group.

Well, actually they had had their sign up for well over a month by the time the hockey stick incident occurred, so it had become a regular part of my front-door vista.

Last Friday, which would have been the day after the incident in question, my mother dearest noticed a suspicious vehicle parked nose-to-nose with her Jeep in its usual spot on the street in front of our house. She couldn’t tell what they were doing, but about the time she noticed it, the guy in the car seemed to see her peeping out our front door, and took off.

Later that evening, she and I stood out in the spot where he had been parked, looking around trying to figure out what he had been up to. Our first guess was that he was from our HOA checking up on us, as we had recently received notice that some a-hole busybody in our neighborhood didn’t like the aesthetics of the tarp tree-fort mom and the girls had made out of the tree in our front yard.

The only other thing I noticed different was that the neighbors’ Black Lives Matter sign was not in its usual spot across the street, nor anywhere else to be seen for that matter. No pun intended.

I made a mental note of it to follow up on that theory later, but that would have to wait a few days, as Alexa and her family would be out of town until the end of the weekend.

It was probably just the HOA-hole anyways, but you can never tell…

Now you may need to brace yourself for this next part (unless you read my last blog post, of course).

It just so happened that, at that very same moment in the history of the Universe, we were in the market for a Black Lives Matter yard sign of our very own.

This idea had been brewing for a couple of weeks already, and I had heard rumors that Alexa had extra signs for sale for any wokals10Yes, Virginia, that is a portmanteau of “Woke” and “Local”. No, Virginia, that is not an Asian-oriented racial joke. And no, Virginia, the use of “oriented” in this context is not meant to be a pun or otherwise humorous. wanting to show their support and solidarity to the cause. So it was a happy coincidence that I could cover both topics when I reached out to her.

It wasn’t until Wednesday by the time I got around to actually working up the courage to potentially procure a BLM sign of my own. Fortunately Alexa responded to me in a timely manner. This was her response to my twin questions of “Can I have a sign?” and “Uh, you have any issues with your sign over the weekend?”:

So first the bad news: sadly, their sign had been stolen while they were out of town (but I love the idea of her “putting them on blast” if it happens again).

Also, a quick but very relevant side note: in a later email she revealed that this was at least the second time this has happened…and that these incidents just happen to coincide with our local Confederate flag hoe-downs. Go figure.

And now, the good news: she had one last sign for us, available at the below-market price of $12.50–from a black-owned business, nonetheless! The wokeness is getting out of hand real quick…

I decided to jump at the opportunity before someone else came along and snagged the last one, and tapped out a response as quickly as my fat fingers could go.

Unfortunately, the Mystery of the Missing Sign weighed heavily on my mind…

I mean, what would we do if our sign were to be stolen? And–on an unrelated note–is merely putting one meager sign in our yard doing enough to show our neighbors support?

Before I realized it, those quandaries were pouring out of my finger tips and into the email.

Let’s just say my train-of-thought was going a little too fast around that last curve…

Yes absolutely we want the last one! I had a thought...I say that any time the signs get taken in the future, let’s replace them with twice as many. I figure between our two yards, we could easily get up to 64 nicely spaced signs in each. Off the top my head, including the cost to replace the signs in addition to the proposed 128, that would come out to around $3500. If there is indeed another round of stimulus checks, then ours alone would almost perfectly cover that. I can’t think of a better use of that money than to troll whoever these woefully small-minded turds may be. They would basically be directly supporting a black-owned business, so joke’s on them. Sorry. My imagination got away from me there. We’ll be in touch.

To quote the Boss Lady’s secret hotty, Bane, from the 2012 Nolan Brothers blockbuster hit, The Dark Night Rises:11https://youtu.be/6GzUoK8VDAE?t=109

Let the games begin, you racist ----- dipshits.

ONe good ----- neighbor

***Subject to the approval of Boss Lady Matosha. Huhn…where have I seen those initials before?

Content created on: 2 & 4 July 2020 (Thurs/Sat)

Footnotes & References:[+]

I Was Told There Would Be Pitchforks

2 July 2020 / / 2 Comments
3 Min Read

Welp, it’s official. I became a card-carrying member of the Mob today. Well, maybe not the Mob–a Mob might be more accurate.

After much thoughtful consideration, last night we become the proud owners of our first Black Lives Matter sign. Then tonight, after having a measured and appropriate conversation with our daughters, we will install it in our yard with a solemn, yet hopeful family ceremony.

Aww, shit…bet you didn’t see that one coming!1Unless, of course, you read the previous post, Woke Whack-A-Mole, which was entirely about obtaining a sign…or 255. Oh, wait…I decided that will be my next post instead. Well, this will give you something to which to look forward.

On its face, you might be tempted to think that I’m breaking my own principle of broaching the topic of politics. Once you get over the shock of that idea, I ask that you hear me out.

Sorry fam, I love you very much. But I simply can no longer worry so much about possibly offending or alienating you that it holds me back from envisioning and building towards a better world to do, will, and bequeath to our collective kids.2Maybe it’s time for us to revisit A Parenting Parable in light of that last statement.

I hope that even if you don’t share my same views, that you are at least able to hear me with open ears and open hearts.

That being said, I would like to counter the narrative that bringing up Black Lives Matter and explicitly supporting it is “political.”

….which brings me back to my thesis statement, the declaration of my induction into the “mob.”

As you know, the last month has been marked by a historic amount of civic engagement on the part of not only the citizens of America, but of people worldwide.

Yet in response, certain unnamed political and media figures have consistently attempted to frame it as “the mob” or “mob mentality.”

I suppose you gotta respect the clever attempt at dismissing a large swath of our country by simply using such a negative term implying that it’s all mindless mayhem. Nice try, fellas.

I would like to respectfully propose to those Dear Readers that may be tempted to use that term to perhaps reconsider that choice of words. Not like in a gangsta, passive-aggressive kinda way. More like a Mr. Rogers, sincere af kinda way.

First, let me say that I find this disheartening, and somewhat angering. Many people are risking COVID, being met with undue and excessive force, and possibly being unjustifiably arrested. And what is most striking is the incredible proportion of these people that “don’t have a dog in the game,” so to speak.

If you’re risking all of this for your proverbial neighbor with little to personally gain, then I should be skeptical if someone tries to tell me3A little bonus for those of you who actually read the footnotes: I believe the proper phrase here is “if someone tries to jackass-splain to me…” that you’re not doing this without putting any thought into it.

Now I can’t speak for anybody else, but if any of them are anything like me, then maybe my take on the situation can provide some insight for those who might be genuinely wondering what the heck is going on.

I imagine that for many people, there has long been the desire to pursue equity and justice for their fellow Americans, but have been told either directly or via people they care about, that associating yourself with the BLM Movement in any way would essentially amount to an act of political terrorism.

But that false argument is fading fast. Cracks in our country’s self-image are forming, revealing one-too-many uncomfortable truths. It is become more exhausting to look away than not.

Even much more widespread than that is a thirst for some return to basic decency being a defining hallmark of this country. Regardless of your political views, it is incredibly difficult to make an argument that “decency” is any part of our current zeitgeist.4A German word that roughly translates as “the spirit of these times.”

No doubt that as people have watched the BLM Movement become quickly normalized, many thirsty folks have had the same thought that I did:

“How the heck was this ever a political issue?!?”

More people than you might suspect

Whether you suspected me before or not, the point of the story (for now) is: Congratulations! You can now brag to your friends that you personally know a member of The Oh-so-scary Mob.

Just think of me as your token Black Lives Matter friend…

But wait! There’s more!

I’m realizing that I have a lot more thoughts on the topic of next-level civic engagement that I wanted to share, but probably shouldn’t try to tackle them all at once.

I just wanted to at least get the conversation started for now. We’ll have to continue this discussion next week. I hope that you will join me then…

Content created on: 2 July 2020 (Thursday)

Footnotes & References:[+]

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