Today, in the middle east.
Here are pictures from the weekend, the demonstrations, the police brutality, and the violence.
But the Mousavi supporters keep coming out by the tens of thousands demonstrating that they will not allow this sham of an election pass. After this I am done harping about the middle east, but I can’t stress enough what a significant moment this is in world history, as the outcome of this skirmish could very well shape the globe over the next five to ten years.
We should be proud of Iran.
Right now, the youth of Iran are reminding their government why they should be feared, and why that government’s memory should last longer than a generation. I cannot say what the outcome of their recent elections were, but I know it is impossible that Mousavi lost by a 2/1 margin, leaving no other option than Ahmadinejad’s administration blatantly fucking with the outcome.
No matter what your politics, you cannot help but see that the outcome of this election is bullshit. Support the youth of Iran, and win us another friend in the middle east.
Go green.
EE EN MOH FOH
It’s not everyday that I’m a busy little worker bee, so I’ll admit I’m kind of relishing this new change in my workplace. It’s genuinely refreshing to not have time to write blogs at work, though it’s also frustrating to not have time to make significant updates… but so goes the new way of my life.
In order to solve this conundrum, I’m going to do two things.
First off (God how I love typing “first off”) I’m going to write more in the evenings, and on weekends, and by “more” I mean “a shitton more”. Writing multiple updates at a time, and then distributing them as I need them.
Secondly, I’m going to take this opportunity as the host of this site, to invite you… the reader… to submit content, questions, or essay ideas to the site via e-mail. You’ll be credited, and my job will be made easier, allowing more content for more readers, and I don’t know who doesn’t win in that situation… except maybe the Scientologists, but we don’t really want them winning anything, anyhow.
So while we’re on the topic of “absolutely no topic” I’d like to bring up something I find perplexing. As a recently 29 year old heterosexual man, I do not believe I am the prime demographic for the sinful deed of gardening, but I found myself in a position over my long birthday weekend to own just such a garden and I have to tell you I’m loving it. I thought I’d have entered decorating, or styling school prior to owning a flower garden, so you can imagine how surprised I was to genuinely enjoy sitting out by my enwoodchipped yard, drinking beer, and smelling fresh flowers… and just to clear anything up, no I haven’t had sex with another man yet, but I did consider putting pictures of my garden here… not that I’m going to… pervert.
So… you got anything for me? Stories of nascent bisexuality or drug addled threesomes in the basement of a sanitarium? Questions about how to come out as a nascent bisexual, or how to have a drug addled threesome in the basement of a sanitarium? Feel free to contact me here, and we’ll see about getting them posted, but in the mean time, I’m going to go sit in my garden and get head from your mother.
Keep going till it hurts.
If one were to take a historical look at my finances, they would notice a disturbing trend… the only time in my entire life that I wasn’t living check to check was a brief stint in Detroit when I was using someone else’s bank account, and we weren’t paying rent.
To say that I’m “Financially Irresponsible” doesn’t really put the right umph into the phrase… I like to think of myself more as a financial bouyancy experiment. My life up until now has been a search for financial equilibrium… My hobbies, and pass times are inexpensive, and I don’t feel the need to replace my wardrobe every year, or buy giant televisions. I drive my cars until they die, and do not value home ownership as much as our society would suggest I should, so my requirements are really quite low, however up until the last few years, these requirements were at a near perfect balance with my income, thereby… living check to check, but doing so without sacrifices, the need for credit, or any real chance of generating savings.
Now my entire adult life has been spent defending my practices to friends, and colleagues who would look down on my fairly hedonistic lifestyle as foolish, yet now in this economy my lifestyle is almost justified. Now the only difference between my lifestyle, and that of many of my friends who heavily invested in the stock market, or a house.. is that I don’t have any debt. Now please, don’t get me wrong.. I’m not saying the way I live is SMART, I’m saying that the skills I’ve learned in regard to living without savings or credit are suddenly valuable. Had the axe swung the other way, and I was the one who lost their job, I’d be living with my parents and working a coffee shop somewhere inside of a payperiod, while they’d have a cushion to keep them functional for a few months before they ended up in the poorhouse.
I’m curious to see where this goes in the future… As my financial requirements get fewer, and my income gets larger, I’m invariably going to end up swinging a positive average, and I genuinely don’t know what that’s like. To manifest savings is as foreign to me as eating ramen and plain tortillas for a month is to most other people, but I figure knowing how to survive without surplus income is more valuable in times of trouble than is knowing how to pay a mortgage, play the magic invisible money expander*, or arrange for home owners insurance. Either way I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing until it either stops working, and I’m homeless, or someone finally recognizes my genius and pays me out the ass to write letters to dead presidents about the many, and varied merits of legalized prostitution.
*Stock market
Time is an arms race.
Adulthood landed in my lap about 10 years ago with a sickening thump. I was 900 miles from home, broke, unemployed, and scared. It was this process, and the “jumping in feet first” methodology that turned me into the person I am today, however I’ve discovered that over the course of evolution my time has become an apparently vital, and rare resource.
I think I’ve done a phenomenally good job of doing nothing at work for the last 5 years, however now all of a sudden I’m fairly busy all day, cutting into my paid blog, webcomic, and nodding-off-while-staring-into-space time. Furthermore my non-blog hobbies are getting more interesting, and my relationship, more intense. Though I gladly hand my time over to the latter two, the first one is beginning to fuck me up a little.
I KNOW that this 5 day a week, 8 hours a day grind isn’t necessary, I KNOW there’s ways around it, and I also KNOW I won’t be satisfied in my life until I no longer feel like I’m living it for someone else’s bottom line. This blog was originally intended to be my window to the internet, to make sure people saw what I could do, and how well I could do it… to get my writing out here, and show the world what I can do, and that’s happened, but now my desire to write for a living is officially iron clad… I’m trying to turn my window into an escape hatch… So, if in the next few months some things change around here… maybe get a bit more pro, or a bit more frequent while (hopefully) my words start popping up in other places… it’s all a part of my plan to win this arms race like so few people ever successfully do. I’ve got to get out of this hellish cycle, I’ve got to get away from this grind before it turns me into something I hate.
So here’s to you, impossible reader. Thanks for sharing in my journey over the last year and a half, helping me get better at what I do, and providing the feedback I need to continue that process. I hope to someday be sharing these words with you on a much grander scale, but now… while it’s still intimate… I just wanted to say thanks.
*edit
Oh yeah! Party in KC on 6/6, wanna come? Let me know and I’ll see what I can do.