Marketing and Capitalism in America

The american interpretation of marketing and capitalism, the way I've observed it dictated to me:

Marketing is about a lot more than just being able to sell dog shit to damn near anybody; it's about more than making that dog shit seem like the crown jewels. Marketing is about having a consumer thank you for even having the opportunity to purchase your regal brand of dog shit. It's about that craze in the mind that makes decent, sane folks trample a mother and her two kids on black Friday for a toaster; but hey, that's just the nature of the beast because marketing is capitalisms fiber and if you have a better idea... Well fuck you... Communist...

The way I see commercials:

My get fit commercial:

"Do you want to lose that belly fat and look like a 21 year old again?  Well after millions of dollars worth of research and a few Swiss scientists walking away like bandits, we have discovered a miracle cure.  We call it: 'NBO' or 'Not being old'.  Research shows that if you're a 21 year old and still hideously ugly, unless you have a thyroid condition, the most minimal amount of exercise should be enough to get you into great shape but after a certain age, unless you're some body building machine of a human being or on a lot of drugs and/or surgery, we suggest you take care of yourself and accept what god gave you with some dignity.  We're sorry you're getting older but stuff happens as a result of that.  So if you want to look like a 21 year old at 60, stop, consider the beauty that you're still living when people just 100 years ago would already be dead and accept what great gifts you're giving.  For everyone else who can't accept that though, there's NBO.  Not Being Old is a product of the Johnson and Johnson family, all rights reserved."

The truth:

You tell me. I just hoped I made you laugh a little...

The birth of DOUCHE

When it comes to the ISIS terrorists, I would say anyone who wears an ISIS uniform needs a bullet to the head. That includes those little white girls from Denmark and the white, ex rock star hooker who left her two 14 year old sons. I would have no problem if everyone in the ISIS network were systematically exterminated like vermin.
Maybe that's their plan though: ISIS seems to be becoming the next level of hipster: "Hand in your fedora, fake glasses and ridiculous beard that makes you look like the Unabomber and we'll give you a flak jacket, a Kalashnikov and real bombs to play with. Hey! If you're careless and accidentally blow yourself up, great! That's actually the point."
It's like putting hand grenades in teddy bears and handing them out at Christmas. Everyone wants to be on board with defending the Muslim trend but when it comes down to it, they began as a bunch of insignificant Bedouin/Gypsies and sooner hopefully than later, people will see this desperate, 16 year old mindset, call for attention called ISIS and send them to their room where they can kill/ rape and demean each other's humanity in peace. Yes: there is a bomb in this great new trendy ISIS toy.
I'll just be happy when the Muslim faith goes back to being like Brooklyn Jews: the only thing that's loud about them is their outfits but hey, I'll be glad when the Christians do the same. The point is to believe in something higher than one's self and to deny the urge to indulge in hedonistic practices that lead to nowhere and help no one.

It's like: congratulations, Jesus saved you but that doesn't mean that a girl's dream of owning a doughnut shop based on pinups means she screws the devil on weekends or that NPH getting married means that he is secretly in the Hitler fan club. His haircut is evil but his sexuality has nothing to do with his love of the world or his fellow man. He loved one of his fellow men so much he married him, so he can't be all bad.
He's not the problem though: hedonism and extremism are and until we begin to focus on love, acceptance, understanding and human potential, we can only fight these pointless, coming of age, pseudo revolutions that get more dangerous all the time.
I propose this: instead of being called ISIS or feminism or Conservatism or the tea party, I say they all go under one super PAC called DOUCHE:

Domesticated
Ornery people
Urinating on the
Constitution while celebrating
Hedonism and
Extremism.

Be a man

I have often heard the phrase, "be a man!" thrown about like so much pocket change of wisdom to the angry young man.  From such a crude mouth of the average uneducated American, this usually means to take control of one's life but from an evolutionary standpoint, which is the only way I can view gender confusion scientifically and therefore accurately, being a man means hunting or at the very least engaging in the basest of instinctual triggers to take from the world around you without remorse.

As humans have evolved women started with a better base for the world today.  Men, because of our natural muscular build and social dynamic pre-women's rights movement, were made as hunter-gathers while women were made to tend the home.  This gives women the upper hand in world based on democracy, order and concise thought.  Men on the other hand, were made for instinct.  That's all that matters when one is staring at a mammoth with a spear and no armor.

The point I'm trying to make is what is being a man?  Are we really that far from those base instincts?  The most powerful men in the world have love children, engage in ludicrous sexual behavior, step on others to achieve financial dominance, regard dominance over diplomacy any day.  Americans like to believe that we try every diplomatic solution before we take hostile action but the truth is, we still take hostile action.  Let's just look at a conflict like the Middle East for popular reference.  We have a surplus of oil here in the United States.  We still have oil wells that would be able to supply us here but that doesn't matter because there are people that want to kill us there. So we have to go in and get them.

Where does the money come from in Arabic countries?  Do they make textiles for us or have the natural resources to do so?  Much of our clothing is made in China; our vegetables and fruits come from South America and Europe as well as from right here in the USA.  Our weapons both big and small are European, Russian and good old American born.  Our drugs are South American and to a smaller degree Asian and even our cars are Asian, European and American.  So with all our stuff coming from anywhere but the Middle East, why do we need them?

Is it because we need to protect Israel?  Well they fought a war in 6 days and won, so I think with us sending them money like we do, they'll be just fine.  I think it's because diplomacy isn't the issue.  The issue is that they defy us.  They want to think that their dick is bigger and we can't allow that.  The Cold War from 1939 to 1989 was the longest dick measuring contest in history besides the hundred years war which sought to control the throne of France.  To this day, the queens and kings of England refer to themselves in one of their titles as the kings and queens of France.  So obviously the dick measuring didn't end with 100 years.

The queen of England aside, since her natural authority compels her to at least act like a man, the point is that I believe inherently, "being a man" is about the natural urge to hunt and kill.  Some of us are better at hiding it and those who are may be the ones who end up with all the power because of their superficial diplomacy but even though some can't control it and become serial killers, some just indulge in different ways.  Poe wrote his death song into his stories, The writers of the the television show, "The Following" would later use that natural urge to hunt to translate Poe's urge to hunt into a television show.  Some men have gratuitous amounts of sex (this is where references to women as 'vixens' 'foxes' 'chicks' comes from because you wouldn't want to hunt a masculine animal like a dog or the commonly misunderstood (as it is one of the most vicious creatures on the planet) hippo).  The conquest of a woman is seen as an art form and the most dangerous game is man kind so I believe a woman fits into that dangerous hunt.

For all the evolving we've done as a species, it would seem as though we'll never get to the next level unless women take over in matters of diplomacy.  Women are far fiercer when they need to be and have adopted the manly qualities of fighting and hunting as it was needed to evolve so I'm not so sure even that would be a good idea but it's better than a man whose urge to hunt is inherent.  Maybe women will be able to choose to act on said urges because whether we want to admit it or not, "to be a man means to strive to be the best hunter with the littlest thought, the biggest gall and the greatest physical instinct."

Introspection for the creative mind

There is a time in one's life when we must reflect. However scary it might be, when we find ourselves confused by the person in the mirror, we reflect to understand the why. When I do this, I find myself to be quite insane, bonkers, Looney, coocoo in the coconut, off my rocker. The thoughts in my head seem ludacris although the conclusions seem (at least to me) to be logically sound.

It starts like this:
For most of my life, I have been able to avoid the god given talent of empathy and introspection with the escapist methods of drugs, sex, video, TV and computer games, TV (in general), writing, alcohol and all the other devices a creative person might accrue to escape reality. This may need some explanation.

When I was little, there were a number of things that went wrong with my childhood, numerous psychologists attempted to fix said problems, However the end result seemed to be the same, I would push all things that I found uncomfortable to deal with to the back of my mind while putting up a shoddy dam to block them from the rest of my brain. Unfortunately, I happen to be more aware than I would like to give myself credit for, maybe even intelligent if I choose to be.

The problem with this awareness is that I can recall the emotion of almost any given time in my life with an image and the thoughts connected to that moment. For instance, the glade plug in vanilla smell has the ability to take me back to the days of a college girlfriend and all of a sudden I will feel the romantic feelings I had for her while knowing that she's long gone. Overall, this will be painful and sucky for me.

While we're on the topic of emotion, however, we might as well go into the part two of my self diagnosis which happens to be the extroversion that came somewhere with this dam. If I had to guess, I would say that the plethora of emotions and memory recall, gave me the ability to identify said emotions in others and somehow jump started a part of my brain that could recognize the emotions of others whether I wanted to or not. My example of this would be the people I interact with daily. Sometimes I may not even seem like I'm reading them because I choose to ignore their emotions in order to interact how I want to and be free with it but I can see the boredom in their eyes, I notice contempt. I also notice the joys, frustration, anger, humor, feebleness and every other emotion permeating off them like cheap perfume. Whether I want to or not, I've trained my mind, somehow to recognize social ques. I see a slight eye twitch, a hesitation in their voice, the slight movement in a smile and it's like I can read their minds because my mind subconsciously recognizes the emotion and adopts it as if it were my own. Do this a few hundred times a day and you become quite exhausted.

The problem becomes when these two unique quirks overload. When I push just enough baggage past the dam in my head that keeps the pain back; right after I've collected so many emotions of others that I cannot distinguish my own anymore.  Bear in mind I did use the word, "subconsciously," to describe my empathic abilities, I don't have control over my emotions when my mind decides to pick up on others. In such a case, I push the empathy back in mg head just as I do the other stresses of life. At some point, however, the dam breaks.

In my case, I exhibit a very real step by step breakdown when the barrier collapses. I see it when it's happening but it feels almost as if I were holding a heated iron inside me that I wanted to put down but can't, inside of me.

Step 1: RAGE-
Rage for me comes on like a faucet being turned on. I get hurt by a trigger and it offends me minorly at first but my mind will cycle the thought. I will fixate on that trigger, cycling the intense pain and stress of it until it's all I can think of. At this point, the trigger, which is commonly an action of another person will become an object to be destroyed. My specialty is knowing psychological weak spots so I will usually attack that first.

Example of Rage:
A co-worker and friend of mine told me, "Don't talk to me," after I'd been an idiot and slacked off while working with him. In his mind, the reason I look mad is because he called me a poor worker but when he looked at me with disapproval and shame, it brings up memories fallen from the shattered dam in my head of my father telling me I could be doing more with myself. The feelings of helplessness, anger at myself, shame and anger at my father's shame in me, all create a rage that builds because my thinking immediately jumps to how dare somebody else look down on me?

Step 2: DEPRESSION AND TEARS -
This is usually after I've passed the point of no return whilst in the rage stage. My emotions have caused me to do/say/feel things I cannot take back. By this point, I've regained some of my control; however, regardless of my control over my temper, I am left with a literally dizzying amount of emotions (some of which aren't even mine), and memories innumerable that represent so many different personal feelings.

As it all spills out onto the floor like a smashed glass of Sprite, I am unable to distinguish what drink was there to begin with anymore. Am I upset about the time a girl read my, "do you like me?" Letter to the class in 5th grade? Or is it perhaps the look of disappointment and shame my father showed me when he caught me self mddicating with marijuana? Of course, this decision seems like it would be easy because I've simplified it but there are about a hundred other moments that cycle again and again like a hundred home movie film reels and all simultaneously. All of these thoughts and emotions, both good and bad; from myself and all those that I've picked up and retained from others, happen simultaneously to make the end result uncontrollable tears due to stress. True, at that moment, part of me is happy but I cannot call it elation; part of me is sad but I can't call it depression; part of me is aloof but part of me also realizes what's going on and is embarrassed so I cry because I feel helpless to do anything else and terrified at the multitude of things I do not want to be feeling.

It's like having a bad trip and you just can't wait for the drug to wear off...

Ultimately though, this leads us into a final stage: ACCEPTANCE AND DENOUMENT -
 In these moments, I feel nothing but the quiet and stillness of complete surrender.  The thoughts of all those around me grow gray and numb like death. Sometimes, I can even see the gray and black and gold dots like one about to pass out. Ironically, it's the same dim-witted and satiated verisimilitude I feel after the gratuitous sex that I would have, at a different point in my life, used to prevent this exact situation.

With drugs, sex and alcohol gone from my life, I suppose I'm going to have to go through some method of release but such fanfare is less easy to experience than the loaded feeling I had while running from this type of implosion. All I really want is that quiet and mindless satisfaction to begin with but also ironically, the silence never lasts long.

The ultimate conclusion to these episodes is that I still struggle with all these thoughts, I just deal with them one at a time and push them back into the back of my mind to try and pick up the pieces like so many scattered jenga blocks until the next eruption. I've been getting better at rebuilding the tower and dealing with the stress of it all but the real danger of an episode like this one is inevitable until I've gotten my life collected into a well oiled machine that runs its self. Sometimes I still smoke a cigarette to bandaid a bad situation and sometimes it works but it's not a permenant solution to the stress of a fractured mind. I wonder if sometimes, I might be better off with a drink to hold me over in sweet obliteration while I use the bit of semblance that I have in said stupor to get things done? What's the next step? Well for all the self diagnosing and psychology I've studied to try and repair myself, maybe I need a second brain to analyze the data for me but to find such a mind would be as easy as finding a soul mate. There's a reason I never stayed with any psychologist for too long: it's because they work slow and they don't understand how quickly I need results to problems that span years. As of now, I'll only be well when I learn to fix some of these difficult issues on mg own or learn a cleaver way to deal with them.

Nature vs. Nurture

It's the time old question of the nature of good and evil. Is one born bad (or good for that matter) or do we become who we are through a series of life trials? We can trace this debate back as early as man questioned his existence, however, the first person to discuss it (in reference to hereditary and environment on social advancement) was a cousin of Charles Darwin, named Francis Galton.

Galton was an English student of polymath and anthropology. For those who don't know, these are the studies of multiple sciences and studies to come to a concise conclusion and the study of human beings, past and present, drawing from social, biological, natural sciences and the humanities, respectively. Galton was at heart a statistician and as if to prove himself thus, he was the first to apply statistics to the study of human differences and inheritance of intelligence. He also was the first to introduce surveys and questionnaires in comunities in order to aid him in his research into anthropometry, which is the study of the measurement of the human individual. In anthropometry, he could literally study why one person sits in their chair at a 45° angle and why another chooses an angle closer to 90°. In these collective ways, Galton may have been the ideal candidate to study the question of nature vs. Nurture when he first asked it in the 1800's.

As I have previously stated, he wasn't the first to ponder the question but rather the first to construct such a concept concisely. The question of why are we the way we are has been going on for centuries and spans the interests of scientists, right up to Madison Avenue. One may recall, "Maybe she's born with it. Maybe it's Maybe line." Although it may be a bit of a stretch, the question of make up executives is how do we stray from the idea of natural beauty to convince the populace that human beings are far better off since they learned to put on make up.

Ultimately, the argument's good on both sides and god knows advertisers are great at setting fashion trends that we were definitely not born with but when it comes down to it, sociopathy and psychopathy both can be inherited genetically as well as being a developmental phenomenon. It's due to this realization that I say people are not as simple as an "either/or." We are a compilation of all things that include both genetics and how we were raised. Without the sum of our parts, we'd be no better than animals. In this way, Darwin was right: we evolved. We are not just nature or nurture but nature and nurture. More importantly, we are human and because of this, we will always be a product of chance beyond what we can comprehend.

Love

I have often pondered the meaning of romance and come to similar conclusions. I always sought out the over-the-top, highfalutin, Shakespear kind of love but real love, i never got to know until marriage.

A girlfriend can be let go or even leave you at the drop of a hat but once you're married, you begin to relax a little about the wooing of your companion  and are able to enjoy them in a kind of way you could never do with a date or anybody else. In this kind of relationship, you can really love someone.

Now what does that mean? What is love? From looking back on my past, i might have told you that it's a powerful motivator, an overwhelming feeling in your soul or even a death without them, life has no meaning otherwise, sort of thing. In earnest, I would say that there are many different kinds of love, the most powerful being the relationship between a parent and child because let's face it, you aren't getting sex, money, status or a lot of the time, even a thank you from your kid.

The relationship there is so awkward for grown kids that sometimes parents and kids don't even talk for long periods of time but from the moment you hold that baby in your arms and know that you're his/her whole world for the rest of their lives and yours, you're hooked. It's hard to even think about without tears because a parent will struggle with this mutated copy of themselves for the remainder of their time on earth. Have two or three or 14, which was the highest number of kids in a family I've ever met, and you can forget about it. Your heart will break and mend so many times that you will eventually transcend anything that resembles something as primitive as arm in arm, smitten love.

This, coincidentally, brings me to my purpose for this essay, of sorts, which is the discussion of real love versus being "in love." Being, "in love," requires very little commitment and it's as easily shattered as forgetting to duck in a boxing match.  It hits you in the face, when it shatters, with about the same amount of speed and force too. What I've realized about true love, however, is that the common denominator crosses different kinds of love.  You may not always like the other person. In fact, there may be times where you sincerely feel that you downright hate them; sometimes you won't show affection and sometimes you won't talk and/or show affection for a very long time but the bottom line is that true love comes back. A parent could get into a fight with their kid for years but if that kid comes back to their parent and says, "I love you, mom/dad," garentee they'll say it back at least 90% of the time. This is because, you can't say, "no he/she was never my mom or dad" you can't say there was never anything there because it's biological, that never changes. Husbands and wives can get divorced but a child ties them together forever. In real love, there's not as much fanfare and more being at the table after all the bombs have dropped.

My wife and i don't always cuddle like boyfriends and girlfriends do. In fact, she has problems with claustrophobia but that's ok because our legs touching or her foot on mine is a representation of that intimacy that is more powerful than the boyfriend/girlfriend crush. In real love, a fight can be had that dwarfs WWII and still you will be kissing them again and not be worried that it's your last time.  This is not to say that you shouldn't live every day as if it's your last or give up on wooing your spouse but real love needs no constant stream of fireworks, it simply works. As water will always flow in the streams and rain will always fall; As the sun will always rise and that guy who steals your parking spot when your having a flawless day will always come screeching in, engine running, love lives and breaths as life does. That's why real love can suck or be great but it's more than a kiss or a cuddle, it's the stubborn power of timelessness but don't take my word for it...

Gonzo sleep routine

After midnight and severe sleep deprivation sets it. I turned on Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which, just simply watching it, is like being hopped up on a cocktail of different psychadelic drugs but mixed with the lack of sleep and anxiety attack; it's like slipping into a dream going  unfathomably fast in a helicopter.

All concept of gravity and direction goes awry while the concept of reality melts away in front of you like an ice block in front of a portable heater.

All of a sudden, you wish you had drugs because they'd be a reprieve from the psychosis of sobriety and reality.

I need to write. Escape into a reality that's not this waking nightmare but at the moment writer's block hits like a jealous ex.

I need a different hit to induce lethargy and unconsciousness. Donnie Darko for the death sleep? That dreamless sleep or lively sleep full of such dreams that explode nonsensically without order or reason and cannot be disturbed by the noise from reality that makes the stir of an unabashed neutron bomb? Wake up wifette? Go upstairs? Get out! Sleep. Nothingness. I'll wake up when the world makes sense again.