Thursday Rant Thursday

There are a lot of things that are wrong with this world, and I take issue with many of them. Today, however, I will limit myself to just one little snippet of my grievances.

While driving home today I saw a bumper sticker on the car in front of me that read "CHANGE is what Germany was looking for in 1932."

Wait...WHAT?!

This person's bumper was also littered with a number of other highly conservative, ignorant stickers that don't even bear mentioning here. The picture painted by the aforementioned sticker is an ugly one. It speaks of misinformation and general stupidity. It speaks to a fear of new ideas and renovation to any old regime that exists. This is a problem.

Now, don't get me wrong, a good number of Germany's actions before and during the Second World War were beyond reproach. But to condemn them for looking for change in the first place is ridiculous. Germany was royally shafted after the First World War by countries who were afraid of a recreation of what had just happened. This is understandable, but the actions taken at Versailles after the First World War set the stage for everything that came in the Second World War. OF COURSE Germany wanted change. They had nothing. They were left to rebuild themselves from devastation with NOTHING.

Damn right they wanted change. Again, I am not condoning Hitler or his actions or his beliefs. But when it comes right down to it, what were they supposed to do? Roll over and take it?

Let's take a look at that statement again. "CHANGE is what Germany was looking for in 1932." Anyone who spouts that snippet of incendiary nonsense is clearly not opening a discourse on what was wrong about Germany's aims throughout the 30s nor are they saying anything at all. All they are doing is snapping up a block against change in general. This is ridiculous. This is pointless. And finally, this is proof of idiocy.

If all you can do is spout random, pointless, incendiary statements in the hope that it makes you sound intelligent...please, for the sake of those of us who actually can hold a discussion on any of these topics, keep your damn mouth shut. You've done nothing but prove to me how idiotic you are, and I haven't even met you.

/rant

25.365 - Old Habits

I am notoriously bad at sticking to things. Any of you who have been following my 365 may have noticed this. At the same time, I am a creature of habit. This makes reforming my habits very difficult. I become very emotionally attached to the ritual of doing certain things, and this is (primarily) what makes quitting smoking very difficult.

I enjoy smoking. As a ritual. It is comforting in a weird, turn-about sort of way. I know it is awful for me. I say (time and time again) that I am under no delusion that smoking is good for me. In fact, I often cite, it is a rare smoker that pretends that smoking is--in any way--good for them. I am no different. I know it is horrible. It is a nasty, disgusting habit. I do not want to be a smoker for the rest of my life. That said, I attempted to quit smoking in 2009. We can see how well that went. For the most part, I was good. But, as is the case with most things, it is the exception, and not the rule, that matters. The fact that I smoked at all was not good. It meant that I had not truly quit. As is evidenced by this photo, I am still not quite over that compulsion.

I find that physically, at least, quitting smoking is not difficult. Emotionally, however, was a whole different ball game. I enjoy smoking. It is a highly social activity that has brought many things to my life. At the end of the day, though, that is not enough of a reason to hold on to the habit. Earlier tonight, when I was hanging out at Barefoot Coffee Roasters, a good friend of mine, Melissa, confessed that she had quit. Her reasons were not purely altruistic in the end--it turns out that the expense was one of her chief concerns. So, now that I feel like I have a bit of camaraderie in this endeavor, I make another attempt and chucking this habit for good. I thought a photo was in order for the occasion.

For those of you who have been championing this decision, this is for you. For those on whom I have made this decision very difficult, I apologize. And for the rest of you I say this, "It really is never too late." Go out and do the things that you want to do. Do what you know is best. You will always have someone to support you in the decision.

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All the commentary aside, I like this photo. It is not perfect, but I got what I wanted out of it. I had the perfect shot...before I realized that the card was not in the camera. So...this close second will have to do. :)

24.365 - Perspective

I have just regaled you all with the fact that I am terrified of self portraits. In truth, I'm really quite afraid of the camera lens in general. I know what I see, and I'm not so sure I want the rest of the world to see it too. If I point the camera at myself, I'm looking through a lens, at myself, and then posting it out into the world for everyone to see. All of those things that I am so terrified of are alarmingly obvious to me. What if they are to everyone else? What then?

All the same, here we are. I have pretty eyes. I like them a lot.

23.365 - Urges

This photo is from the 17th. It's two days late. I have no photo for yesterday. I'm really awful at this whole 365 thing, aren't I?

So...I've been completely terrible at this. And here's my attempt at explaining it.

First, I wanted to start branching out into self portraits. Only, there's a little hitch there. I'm TERRIFIED of self portraits. Absolutely terrified. Also, the whole self timer thing gets really old really quick. I REALLY ought to look into getting a remote shutter release.

Second, well...I've been lazy.

Third...there are no excuses. So, I'm back.

That said, I sometimes have an inexplicable urge to be upside down. Though I hadn't realized how difficult setting a self timer, running a few feet, and propping myself up into a bridge would be. You will notice that I didn't quite get the time to get my left hand back onto the floor back there. At least I was looking at the camera?

So...I meant to toss this into cs2 and edit it. But forgot. Then I uploaded it on accident...and by the time I realized what I had done, it had 10 views. Oops... Can't take it down now I guess. What's done is done.

22.365 - Vanity

Sometimes the real joy in doing a project like this (or, in truth, just having a blog) is the chance I am given to allow myself to be completely self-indulgent and flaunt it to the world. I had a shitty weekend, and I'm exhausted. Between being busy with family and friends and all of the work that entails by body went and decided it was going to get sick. By sick, of course, I don't mean just a cough or a sore throat. I mean full blown, laid up in bed, fever kind of sick. I was miserable. And still am. The really shitty thing about being sick like that is that I miss out on everything and whine and cry like a little baby.

So, now that I'm back to the world at large, here we go again. I debated attempting self portraits, but I'm not sure I'm brave enough for that yet. So, attempt number one. I ended today in great need of a hug. Luckily, I have a live-in-hugger. It's quite convenient you see. Any time I want a hug I can turn to Sean and say, "Hey, you! Hug me!" So, that's where I'm at today. Figured I'd toss in a bit of skin while I was at it. He's got pretty skin. :)

Vanity Blog #5: If Only I Knew German

My words fall on deaf ears but I continue talking all the same, for I have something to say. What I am trying to communicate might not be new or even revolutionary but someone, someday, will listen and it will be good. These words are old ones and I pair them together in an attempt to make people listen. I hope that they will hear what I have to say and will take that message and understand that it is an individual who is talking. My goal is not in the words. It is in me. The same message could be seen if someone took the time to look into my face long enough. The message is me.

We, as people, exist not to bear witness to the events around us. We exist, rather, to be the perceived. the problem is that the perceived does not exist without the perceiver. There must be a person to bear witness to our actions and words to turn them into something of value. My continuing search for an audience is for this and this alone. We exist in a infinite loop of both tasks. We have to be such. The infinite needs us to see it and be it. It is all so much easier with help, and I take no ones hand to help me toward my end. That leaves me with leverage, and my leverage is that I do not look until I see what I want. I talk until someone will listen. The present is as such as well. It is an infinite loop of that which will one day become "history". We are now at a point in this 'present' where we can say that truth is only that which you can make another person believe. The strength and validity of our truth is measured against how many people believe it to be true. And the methodology of creating that truth and honesty is repetition. Say something enough times to enough people and it becomes, for those people, the truth. This is why I keep talking, because for those people, it becomes grander than actuality. It is truth.

We misinterpret the naming of a thing with knowing it. For instance, how do I know a chair? Well, what is a chair? Is it the word? The sound, "chair?" The image in your mind of four legs, a seat and a back? Or is it wood from a tree that sprouted into being from a seed that traveled from tree to tree for millions of years, each tree's survival dependent upon a fragile ecological balance, a perfect combination of minerals, sunlight, weather, and, ultimately, sub-atomic particles that have been zipping around since the Big Bang? Add to that the billions of years and infinite forces needed to create the conditions needed for human beings to exist, chop down the tree, haul it to a mill, carve it into smaller pieces, send it to a factory, shape it into a chair, ship it to a store, purchase it, stick it in an car and drive it home so that an equally complex ass can sit on it, and you may begin to know a chair. In other words, when we truly look deeply into the one thing, we see it is, in fact, the all, and, of course, contained within the all, is the one thing. So, that nothing becomes everything. That nothing can be anything. I'm sitting on a chair now. What is that chair? What am I? And how should I refer to it if I don't know it? For though I know its name, I do not know its substance or being.

Even with this profound lack of knowledge of both truth and the existence of anything there is a place in this world for us. When we truly believe that nothing is anything without us, it occurs to me that the world might just be better without me. For without me NOTHING become ANYTHING. So, all those SOMETHINGS that I put value and merit in pale in comparison to the vast omniscience of the capability of NOTHING and ANYTHING. And that, my friends, means EVERYTHING.

I believe that voices of fear, both from without and within, can only be banished by putting trust the voice that comes from one's own heart. Be still. Listen to it. If it speaks of love and compassion for others, for the world itself, it just might be the voice of God--or a reasonable facsimile. If, however, it snarls with fear of the unknown, fear of losing what you have or of not getting what you want, then it just might be the voice of Adolph Hitler--or a reasonable facsimile. But, be still all the same, and listen. It has something to say, and if you believe it, it is truth.

So, when that voice comes to you in all its glory and form, give it is due. Then, and only then you may toss it away in a moment of derision and laughter. You probably have better things to do than listen to that nagging voice in your head anyway. Or instead, you may choose to be sane and make an appointment with your friendly-neighborhood-head-shrink. He will not tell you anything you do not know, and the most you hope to gain from any of those encounters is from giving this poor man a story to tell his wife when he goes home that night. Or a punchline to a joke that you will hear five years later in a bar. Something that would start with, "What do you do if you hear Adolf Hitler's voice in your head?" The punchline is almost unnecessary at that point, because the opening line of the joke sets it up to failure. It would be traded around bars and clubs for years until someone inevitably answers the question and says, "you listen". I would listen. I wouldn't follow the advice, and I might not believe it to really be Adolf Hitler, but on the off chance that it was indeed kosher, I wouldn't want to miss out. Would you?

Every voice, no matter how derisive or despicable the source, has something to say. And naming the voice or object does not define it. So, even some carbon-copy Hitler voice in your head might have something to say. Though, in the end of it, I think I'd rather have FDR. I don't know German.

Vanity Blog #4: I Hope For A New Dawn

For my own part: I have never had a thought which I could not set down in words, with even more distinctness than that which I conceived it. There is however a class of fancies of exquisite delicacy which are not thoughts and to which is yet, I have found, aboslutely impossible to adapt to language.

These fancies arise in the soul--alas, how rarely--only at epics of most intense tranquility, when body and mental health are in perfection. And at those near points of time, where the confines ofwakingworld land with the world of dreams. And so I captured this fancy, where all that we see or seen is but a dream within a dream....

Edgar Allen Poe

A shot of caffeine starts my every day and breath rushes to my lungs in a fervent desire to poison my every waking gulp of life giving air. The assumption that I want to live is an age old one, and people wonder why I favor to gulp down smoke instead of the clean air of this quarantine. This is a place I know far too well and have never visited for reasons of my own. I am here for another's pain and another's tribulations. Why must I feel it all?

The shot goes straight to my heart and jump starts it from the peaceful tranquility of sleep. Another day, another coffee, for that is what has replaced blood in my veins. My fingers shake as I've had no food and only espresso, a gift from a face behind the counter that knows my name, but not that the drug he hands me will keep me going for another hour.

I had a shot this morning when I awoke. It was enough to wake my brain enough to think. Not many do that anymore. I voted too. I had to think before I could do that. So much hangs on this choice that voting without a mind is unthinkable (pun intended). And because I voted, I get another free shot. The shot that reminds me how much is riding on this. A reward for something that should be done anyway. I think about how much this choice means and what it can do for this world.

Another shot and I see you face and I fall in love all over again. The simple beauty of a smile reminds me how little I need to think about you, and how okay that is. The words to describe those thoughts do not come because they are not thoughts at all, they are feelings. I may not be good enough, but if i can make you happy I am all that I want to be. Remember that when the world ends.

An IV straight to my blood adds some more energy to the mix and I cannot see for the world moves too slow. Speak quickly so that I might be slow enough to understand. If I have one more shot the world will end and it will all be over. I have made my voice heard, a thing all people should do. I have stood for those things I believe and know to be right, and I hope that will be enough. I have loved beauty, and I can call that good. This world will not end with a bang, for it started that way. Things should never end the way they began, it is not the way. Eliot has told me so, "This is the way the world ends: not with a bang but a whimper." And so with a whimper I cast my voice out into the world. All of our whimpers together might join to make a torrent of noise louder than the bang this world began with. Let us hope a new day shall dawn.

Vanity Blog #3: The Art of Being Right

I believe that I am unequivocally right about everything. This sort of self-righteousness manifests itself from the logic and rationale that has been instilled into me from the young years of my life. Being raised in such an environment I came to question not only those positions that disagreed with my own, but also those that I subscribed to myself. I believe that this, more than anything, can explain my cynicism and bitterness regarding the world. Not only do I regard other people's opinions with extreme pessimism, but I regard my own statements and opinions with the same doubt. I hold myself to higher standards than I hold others to because I believe that I am better than that. This is my vanity at its best. I hold myself to a higher standard than the rest of the world because, quite simply, I do not want to be like the rest of the world. I get somewhat stubborn when convinced of my own righteousness in any given situation that I refuse to let go when I've sunk my teeth in. I will argue a point to exhaustion. I take defeat very personally, and so I have learned how not to lose.

My parents, damn their intellectual hearts, raised me to be intelligent, self-serving, and rational. I never understood why everyone else in the world did not subscribe to this same definition of intelligence. I firmly believe that everyone has it in them to be intelligent, but that many choose not to be. Why they would do so boggles my mind. So, logical being that I am, I came to the eventual understanding that intelligence and the effort required to manifest it were overrated and not truly valued in this world. Even as such, I go about trying to impart some kind of impression on people that will make them see basic reason, basic logic, ANYTHING! My inherent desire to make this world see reason and my intrinsic laziness now cohabit in an apartment far too small for them and the divorce proceedings are still in the works.

I am, as stated, cynical and sarcastic. But, really, I'm an optimist. I just like to throw in a good dose of reality into my paradigm. I believe that people on the whole have the ability to achieve greatness. Until the rest of the world sees this, I will do it myself in small ways. Someday, I hope, it may add up to something truly great. I have nothing to show for my quest yet, but the day of reckoning is yet to be had.

You may have come to the logical conclusion at this point that I am merely a bitchy, overrated, egoist, arrogant girl who is capable of huge delusions of grandeur. You would be right if you came to that conclusion. However, it would require you to follow a basic line of logic to understand that, and as most people cannot, I thought it prudent to simply supply all the idiots with the answer. It's easier that way.

There is no hope. Only reality. Reality is a sad sad reflection of what it could actually be if people took the time to think. Unfortunately, as coherent thought seems to be a thing of the past and a fad that has seen its day, I await a new dawn.

Vanity Blog #2

I believe that a life left without scrutiny is a life not worth living at all. Oddly enough, I have also found that my life examined has left me with a big headache and a lot of heartache. I believe that this is a dilemma worth examining, even with the headache that it might cause. I believe that progress for people is gained at times of extraordinary difficulty. I believe that those times when peoples' egos and vanities are completely shattered and torn are when they grow the most. Unfortunately, all of this was wasted on me, because it required me to spend months and years afterward building up a new ego and new façade that was stronger and more resilient than the one that shattered before it. I believe that we so desperately seek connection with other people that we give them the ability to break us. We wait not for them to break us, which I believe many of them will eventually do, but rather we wait for the one who we give that ability to who does not choose to take that opportunity. I believe that this kind of fear of total breakage and pain is what we expose ourselves to when we fall in love. I believe that love is the highest form of torment that we can subject ourselves to. For in what other endeavor do we open ourselves to such opportunity to complete destruction? After each and every knock down that I've gotten has actually been a step up for me, and I believe that every step has been in the effort to create a stronger, better version of myself. I believe that the daughter, friend, sister, girlfriend, writer, artist, nerd, damaged-girl, gamer, coffee-drinker, sarcasm, history-nerd, snob, egoist, brat, success and failures in me have all been steps on the way to the ways in which I am now. While each of these steps have been false versions of myself because they were no more than passing fancies that were little more shadows on the wall or the light creating the shadow itself. None of them were…are the actual Siobhán. So where does this leave me? I believe it might leave me right where I started, without ego? I wish. No, I am as much of an egoist as ever. But it makes me wonder, is that enough?

Vanity Blog #1

This will be the first of a series of blogs that will occur at random, according to my whim. They are modeled after Chuck Lorre's Vanity Cards which would appear at the end of his TV shows for a brief interim and were usually loaded with a copious amount of text. These are based purely on my beliefs and thoughts as they occur to me and will generally cater to my own sense or pride, vanity, and superior self-worth. Sometimes they will stay on one topic, sometimes they will not. Occasionally they will be deep and meaningful, and sometimes they will be shallow. Deal with it, this is my shameless attempt to share my views with people.

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I believe that most people in this world think that they are better than everyone else around them. This is not true. It simply isn't. At the very least, for one simple fact. I AM BETTER THAN EVERYONE. At the very least, I am better than most. It is true, and I know it to be so. But, I believe that I would not be so amazing were others not so un-amazing. It is, after all, a matter of comparison. I believe that most people know this, but simply refuse to admit to it. But, seriously now, I also believe that a person's sense of superiority lies in the fact that they are better than another person. I believe that there is always someone better and some one worse than you out there which gives rise to Buttercup's line, "Only compared to some."

I believe that nobody is that fantastic. If they were, I believe that they might just spontaneously explode. I believe it would be so. I believe that my point of view is generally best. Whether it actually is or not is sort of a moot point right now.

I also believe that the very belief in something both manifests itself in our life and causes us to fear it. We cannot fear something that does not exist, and so as soon as we believe it into existence, we have created something both capable of inspiring awe, respect, or fear. Or, possibly, any other number of feelings in us. I also believe that our feelings are shaped by our experiences and are subject to our whim. This means that we are both capable of and responsible for managing our emotions, feelings, actions, and thoughts. I believe that no one (short of holding a gun to your head, vicious blackmail, brute strength, or a really cute pout) can make you do something against your will. Your will and body is your own to do with what you will and I believe that no one can make you feel guilty about that unless you already feel guilty about it yourself.

I believe that a person has only themselves to answer to at the end of the day, and if they are not happy with that, then they should change something about their life until they are. I believe that change is good and acceptance is even better. I also (for some God-forsaken reason) believe that there is good in this world if people would only care to take the time to look.

You are amazing and compassionate people, even if you do not yet know it.

Thank you.