Once more into the breach.
Like a long handled sledge hammer of truth, Winter has descended upon me with all of it’s sinus shattering force, sending me sprawling into a well bundled heap of beards, and dry skin. As I say goodbye to my twenty eighth fall, It occurs to me to make mention of some oddities I’ve only recently come to understand.
There are a very, very short list of things that are better than a new mattress. On Saturday I replaced a 14 year old, 6 inch thick strip of coiled steel, and barbed wire, for a brand new 18 inch thick double pillow-topped matrix of unmitigated comfort. An unbeatable avatar of repose, this mattress has already begun to change my life in ways I thought not possible, not the least of which is providing better sleep, closer to the ceiling, and the colony of spiders I have so desperately hoped to join since my inception… and though I am not excited to move the thing, I am beyond thrilled to continue enjoying it’s near sextastic level of competitive awesome.
Secondly, phone books, the yellow pages in particular make excellent kindling. The fireplace in my apartment is devoid of a gas starter, so the ladyfriend and I had to help the wood along on our weekend perusal of the lesser fiery arts. After 426 yellow pages, I was still unable to get the stupid fire going, so I was a bit surprised (though thrilled) when she managed it in the next 35 or so. Additionally, our old downstairs neighbor was one of the freaks that actually delivers these things, so we have about 8 more of them in the event that more fire starting is required (likely).
Drinking games with overly complex rules are… like many things that involve drinking, and complexity… difficult to understand. For my birthday a friend of mine gave me a game called “WTF” that pits you against an army of whomever might wish to make you drunk. The general idea is, dice are rolled ,and the roll corresponds with a number in one of two books. The three dice are color coded, one is for the first number, another for the second, and a third for the last, and the number should be read as such. The questions themselves are mostly comparitive… “Would you rather… a) eat player one alive or b) shit in mother theresa’s open yawning corpse mouth?”, and the player who rolled the dice then decides their answer, and indicates it by holding up the “A” or “B” side of their respective chip, and revealing their answer to the audience of onlookers. All other players also reveal THEIR chip, indicating which of the answers they THOUGHT the question answerer would’ve chosen. Anyone who answers wrong, drinks the indicated number of drinks (one, two or three), unless all players get it right, at which point the question answerer is the drinking target. Provided the moon is in the correct phase, and there is an apt amount of geothermal pressure at the bottom of the Atlantic, play continues to the next clockwise seated participant. Now I would (and did) have trouble following those rules while stone sober, so the idea of tracking them while completely hammered is beyond me… then again, I don’t really need an excuse to drink beyond “I woke up today”, so my perspective might be a bit skewed.
Lastly to everyone reading the blog, I want to thank you for sticking around through the last few weeks of slowdown. I appreciate the e-mails, and well wishes, but I’m doing quite well, and more than likely won’t be making significant contributions to this blog as regularly until after the Holidays are over. However do not let that stop you from Showing me your tits or otherwise participating in the growing phenomenon that is Impossibleblog.
Thanks for your patronage.
In the spirit of things
I know many people that rail against the idea of Family holidays for one reason or another, and though I don’t think that kind of thing is productive, I will take this time to speak my piece on what Thanksgiving means, and how it fits into my life.
The perspective of the domineering white folk coming to the new land, and murdering/feasting with/on the natives has been all but completely lost. All of me mourns that, but I’m in the uncomfortable position of mourning it more personally with 3.12% of my blood… The percent that was actually murdered by the other 96.88%. It’s a little weird to have a culture war dancing around inside your veins, but once you get used to it, you can at least pin down where your eye, and lip shape comes from and thank the appropriate ethic groups respectively while trying to not come across as just another white guy overcompensating, because though I maybe composed of almost every major identifiable racial, and ethnic group on this planet, I am not OF any of them… tangent resolved.
Here in America, we are not in the habit of thanking anyone for anything, ever. This country has a sense of entitlement only rivaled by it’s stalwart belief that it has to work it’s fingers to the bone for everything that it gets, and the irony of it never ceases to amaze. That being said, we do still gather and eat shit with our families, and act like everything is warm and fuzzy for a minute before going back to the isolationist/expansionist practices that make our country so loved* by the rest of the world.
I don’t want to harp about the national significance of Thanksgiving, as it’s something that I believe is permanently lost to America’s social memory, but the spirit of the thing might still be saved, and it’s humbling effect is not an insignificant one. You see, no matter how independent, strong, proud, or cuntacular you are, you owe your life, and your WAY of life to those around you, and sitting in petulant, ungrateful silence will only make you look like even more of a dick than you already do.
Simply put, to denigrate this holiday, is to disrespect not only the first generation of European Americans, and the Native Americans who saved them from the brink of a painful, starving death, but it’s to disrespect every generation of every nation, and every ethnic group since, because every one of them contributed something to your existence without even knowing that you exist. From condoms to cars to psychology to computer programmers to presidents to warlords to cancer meds and authors, every person who’s ever stood up for something they believed in, or pursued the course of right in human history deserves your personal thank you, because by this point in human history, we would no longer exist without them… YOU would not exist without them. Without big thinkers, detectives, astronauts, and oncologists, your life would be thousands of times more dismal, and being ungrateful for their contributions is a really, really shitty thing to do, and that’s not even counting the people responsible for giving you life, or making that aforementioned life worth living.
So, I hope you took a minute yesterday to consider the near infinite number of people, and events in human history that’ve directly and/or indirectly contributed to making your miserable, pathetic existence possible, because without them, you wouldn’t have the opportunity to read Impossibleblog.
Thank you, and you’re fucking welcome.
*read as “adoringly mocked”
No
In my life’s travels about the internets, I’ve come across a veritable smorgasbord of folks from very different places, different perspectives, and different humors. However, as an internet celebrity in his late 20s who doesn’t screw other dudes, my interest in tits is quite high, and I do my best to glean from each pair their many and varied insights, as often as I can… gazing deeply into your soul as I examine your lady-bits in an attempt to understand why they fascinate me so much.
But what I’ve grown to notice over the past 15+ years of being in constant pursuit of tits, is that… though not very many ladies will take me up on the offer to display them, damn near none of them will actually say “no”. Now this might be a roundabout way of getting to the point, but I have to wonder why this is the case. Maybe it’s just the circles I run in, maybe it’s my approach, or maybe the ladies in question want me to keep asking*, but I can’t help but think that it’s something more complex, but it begs the question…
What’s wrong with saying “No”?
This is not an exclusively Female phenomenon, either. Boys and girls across the country are dodging questions, changing subjects, and dancing around absolutes like they’re presidential candidates caught standing at a glory hole. Folks, we know that there are very, very few real absolutes, but I’d rather you turn me down flat than feeding me a line of bullshit, and I think that goes for everyone. There’s an undercurrent of the continual degradation of the meaning of the word “Honesty” going on here, but the disparity when it comes to “No” is so monolithic I cannot see past it, but… Ladies and Gentlemen of the instawebs, I have a little secret for you…
But not saying “no”, when you mean “no” you’re causes a lot more harm than good. It is not polite to lie to someone, and it’s not polite to string them along. I know I’m not historically known to have diatribes on the subject of politeness, but come the fuck on. If you’d really rather make little billy-shitface make him think he’s got a chance with you when he doesn’t, then you’re more than just a shallow bitch, you’re actually a shitty person; and when little Billy finds out you lied all those years, he’s going to firebomb your house, and your place of employment, and go to jail. Provided you survive the fire, do you really want to know it’s your fault an innocent little kid killed 65 people in the worst warehouse fire Philadelphia has seen in 60 years**?
I know it can be tragic to be rejected, but you can’t think of it that way. Rejection is infinitely easier to handle than the tragedy of realizing your hope was false, and you’re doing far more damage by “not hurting someone’s feelings”. Now, I started this blog talking about how girls won’t tell me “No” when it comes to showing me them titty, but I don’t really care either way. That attitude, however is unacceptable in most other situations, and in fact is pretty damn exploitative when it comes to romantic callers that don’t fit your ideals. I guess it’s noble in some manner or another, but the bottom line is, don’t give somebody false hope. Be honest, and then, if they still persist, against all odds, and even against your recommendation, then it’s their fault when the truth finally dawns on them, and they finally deflate in defeat.
*In my head, this is a confidence boosting mechanic, that just so happens to also serve as a means to procure custom pornography.
**The answer is “No”.
Nerdgasm.
Tonight, my roommate and I will be lining up in the cold with about 3 million other people in this country to buy a piece of software that we value more than any person should ever value a piece of software. You’ll judge us, and you might be right to do so, but you cannot take away this singular moment of glorious fulfillment which we get to celebrate oh so rarely. You see, my roommate and I are video gamers, and tonight the expansion pack to our video game becomes available for a few precious hours after midnight, before start of business tomorrow morning.
I wouldn’t expect much for Blog updates for the rest of the week, at least not from me. I’ve actually taken the next two days off of work to immerse myself more deeply into this little putrid pool of gratification… It’s kind of sick, really. Honestly I can say, for the first time in my life, that if you don’t play, you don’t understand and mean it from the bottom of my heart. If you want to see something truly unsettling, go check out your local Gamestop or EB games at midnight tonight, and see the weirdasses waiting in line outside, dressed as all manner of ridiculous whatnot. They’re not all guys, they’re not all awkward, they’re not all the Jr. Highschool video gamer demographic you remember from your oh-so-recent childhood… in fact…
We’re everywhere. We saturate everything you do, and we’re everywhere you go. We’re your waiter, and your Veterinarian, your IT guy, and your Florist. There’s more than 20 Night Elf hunters in your neighborhood, and a handful of Undead rogues go to your church. Half of your friends know who Thrall is, and no shortage of them have been through Karazhan, or known the glory of killing Onyxia. Tonight, we’ll do what we only get to do a handful of times in our lives, as we get a chance to take part in a new chapter in a history you don’t know anything about. Don’t be surprised if you don’t hear from a lot of your friends, or the bars you go to are a little more empty, and if you can’t find a 2 liter of Mountain Dew to save your life, because we’ll be in Northrend, stopping an ever advancing zombie scourge, and facing down some of the nastiest bad-guys Azeroth has seen in ten thousand years.
But don’t worry, we’ll be back in a few weeks when the novelty’s worn off, and your life can go back to normal, but don’t be surprised if you hear the whispers in dark corners about DPS scaling, and Hybrid itemization…. of calls for nerfs, and the unbearable injustice of ret pallys, because today is ex-pac day, and though you might not get it, the lines will still form, the nerds will still flock, and the instawebs will still choke on the diseased seed of ten million gamers rushing to be the first to down Kel’Thuzad.
For the Horde.
All kidding aside; Imagine, if you will…
Put yourself into a situation in which you’re made to rely on your contingencies, or when your will is called into question, and all of your grandiose statements of value, and merit are brought into a harsh light, and examined under a microscope. Imagine that the universe heard your boasting, and called you on it.
What would you do?
The last week has been an enormously dynamic one for me, in that this exact situation played out in techni-color before my eyes, and for the first time in my life, when the universe asked me if I had the balls to walk the walk that I so eagerly talk, I could look it in the face, and say “yes”. My love, and respect for the other people involved will stop that story from being told, but the effect it had on me is still fresh, and gleaming. To have ideals is simply not enough, it is our responsibility as people to act on them, or learn to be comfortable in the heavy gray nowhere of hypocrisy.
For my entire life I’ve been a coward of one kind or another. Hiding behind some half-hearted crusade or another to find meaning, and to maintain that sense of indignation which gives me such an abundance of strength, but my beliefs are so rarely challenged in this life, that I’d grown complacent, and had begun to believe that having ideals was the same as living them. It’s not hard to stand on my soap box, and proclaim that bigotry is wrong, or that you shouldn’t drink and drive. It’s another thing entirely to interject in the face of intolerance, or to take the keys from an angry drunk friend. It’s just not hard to live in a manner that never brings your ideals into question, and never requires you practice what you preach. I’d like to say that through this experience I’ve had a burst of emotional development that I thought I had a long time ago, and that is, to put it simply…
It is just not enough to speak in support of those who need your help, and those causes which benefit from support of people like you. It is your actions which define you as decent… your words are only as valuable as the experiences that back them up, and until your actions have demonstrated your resolve, then you’re only talking about helping, not actually doing it.
It is our job as people, as caregivers, as lovers, and as people of principal to let our actions be indivisible from our words, and to have our voices carry the weight of our fists, because only then when we have the right or the ability to change anything.