AndrewBrunelle.com

THe biggest trouble I’ve had these past six months was figuring out why the hell I’m on this Earth and what this all means.  You know, the big picture.  Astronomy can be a very discouraging science to study as it really lets you know how insignificant you are.  It makes you think that nothing really matters at all.  And maybe things are better that way.  Think about it.  You do something you regret.  Deosn’t matter compared to the universe.  Compared to all of existence.  But if you really come from inside, you can find meaning in your life, but the meaning of everything and how it’s connected still gets to me.  I can’t connect the dots to this world and the gigantic universe.  Why was all of that even created if we never actually experience any of it?  How do we know there are other life forms out there if we’ve never seen any? 
I think it’s time for me to get into my spaceship and go see for myself because I don’t think I”m going to get any anwers here.  Just trying to figure it out this way is getting me nowhere.  I know that the universe exists, but I’m not sure to what degree.  How can we be sure that there are other things out there and not just projections of other things?  And what kind of pure randomness allowed for our planet to have life?  Why did we end up being in the perfect position for that?  And why am I me and not someone else?  Why me? Why not you?  It only makes sense.  Waht the hell are we here for and why should we care?  Even if we do build up the Earth to be really advanced and all that stuff, what will it mean with respect to the entire universe?  And why can’t I get any answers? 
It’s almost as if we really don’t exist.  How can we prove that this isn’t just some sort of weird dream that never ends?  And when we go to sleep, it’s like a dream in a dream.  But for some reason, this dream is very stable while the dream in a dream changes nightly, sometimes.  I’ve got a full time job in my dream world, although it’s the same on I have here in the “real world,” but I don’t get paid when I dream about my work because I guess there’s no reason to be paid as I can’t bring it back to this world.  That would be nice though, wouldn’t it?  Getting paid for dreaming about working.  And I don’t care about the Employee’s Dream Working Act of 1967, I should get paid for it.
But I wonder even about my dreams.  What do they represent and how do they connect to my real life?  Sometimes I have an idea, but sometimes I don’t.  It’s like if you dream something about your childhood, what is that supposed to mean?  That you should be a child again, or does it mean you have some sort of problem you have to work out?  How the hell should I know?  I just wish someone would tell me.
It’s almost as if we live in this world, have no idea why, but for some reason, we try everything to ensure our survival.  But for what?  What are we living for?  Is there something out there we seek?  When will we discover the true purpose of our existence?  Is there even one, or are we just here for absolutely nothing?  Is this God’s cruel joke?  “Let’s see if these people can last for 3 million years.  Any takers?”  Because we’re kind of the “new guys” in the world as many animals alive today were alive long before us.  So what gave us the right of taking over the whole world and even eating the other animal because they’re not as smart as us?  Does that really make sense?  What’s going to be next?  Eating retarded people?  Then ignorant people?  I mean we don’t even have respect for animals that have lived millions of years longer than us.  Think about that.  Our only thought when looking at them is, “Mmm, that’ll be good on Thanksgiving.”  Animals that live in harmony with one another and we build roadways and stadiums to disrupt their living space and if they ever try to reclaim it, we call an exterminator.  Killing animals and insects because they’re a nuisense.  Is that fair?  I don’t think so, but it’s the way we live our lives.
You’re probably wondering why this post isn’t that funny.  It’s because I’m trying to figure out what the hell is going on and why we’re all here doing what we’re doing and what it all means.  I’m simply trying to express my innermost deep thoughts.  Like supposedly there’s this path in life that we all have to follow or we’re crazy or something.  First, go to school, then college, then get a job, get married, have kids, get a house with a white picket fence and a dog named Sparky.  Eventually retire, and then do meaningless activities until you die.  Is that a way to live?  That’s what society wants us to do.  Well I’ll tell you something right now.  Very few people will find true happiness like that.  True happiness is going for what you believe in.  Doing things that may put you at risk, but doing them anyway because that’s who you are.  Don’t let other people and society stand in your way.  Compared to the rest of the universe, who are they?  They’re nothing but a triviality.  They’re not much more than you as an individual, so it shouldn’t be hard to resist its conditioning.  We don’t all have to follow the same path.  It wasn’t meant to be that way.  And that’s why I chose comedy.  Not because other people do it.  Not because other people want me to do it.  But because I want to do it.  Because I have a passion for it.  “But it doesn’t really matter.”  I know, but it matters to me, the only opinion that really counts in my world.   It’s me, the creator of my life that decides what matters and doens’t matter.  And that’s a wrap.

Perscription drugs are crazy.  They always claim to have a new disease out, and then they make some drug for it, which in turn creates side effects.  The side effects are usually worse than the condition you’re treating, so now you have to take more perscription drugs to treat the side effects, which in turn have more side effects.  And the cycle continues until you have every perscription drug on the market, wallowing in thousands of pills a day for the rest of your life.  So why do we put up with this?  Most of these drugs are just a quick fix to a problem.  There’s usually a bigger, better solution that people just don’t want to commit to, so they take a pill and it temporarily eases their pain.  But after awhile, they become used to the drug, and then they need to up the dosage to get the same effect, which means they have to buy more and the drug companies, mainly the FDA, gets all the profits.  I just don’t see how they can live with themselves. 

If you get on a drug that helps you with depression, it causes weight gain, so now you have to take a pill that induces weight loss, but that makes your heart beat too fast, so now you have to take heart medication, which causes inpotence.  So now you have to take Viagra, which leads to you having sex like crazy and eventually suffering a massive heart attack.  So now  you’re even more depressed, so you get put on Paxil, which causes hair loss, so now you have to get rogaine, which causes paranoid thoughts.  So they end up putting you on some anti-psychotic drug and now you just walk around like a zombie all day, all because you started out depressed.  Your perscrition bill is over $500 a month and you don’t even realize it because you’re all zonked out because of all the pills you’re taking. 

Then you buy into the whole Life Alert thing.  You know, that thing that if you ever fall or have a heart attack while no one’s around, you can press a button and the ambulance will show up at your house.  That’s another 50 or so a month that you give away.  You never use it, except that one time you rolled over in bed and accidentally pressed it.  The ambulance ride costs you seventy dollars, and you didn’t even ride in it.  It’s messed up.  But we all accept it.  And i don’t know why.  I think we need to stand up and do something.

Did you know that the FDA has a monopoly on any cure for anything?  They state that the only thing that can cure a condition is a drug.  When they know damn well that other things can cure people.  What about herbs and stuff?  What about good foods and a healthy diet?  Why would those cure anything?  They’re not drugs.  What a bunch of morons.  Like a pill is going to cure your obesity.  The only thing it might do is lower your self-esteem. 

 Then there’s the king of it all:  Restless Leg Syndrome.  You’ve got to be kidding me.  Supposedly this is a syndrome where right before you’re about to fall asleep, your legs start moving uncontrollably.  Come on.  And they actually have a pill for this.  I’ve heard of some fake diseases in my day, but this takes the cake.  If your legs move at night, you should tie them to the fucking bedposts.  Don’t spend money on pills that could just as well be spent on some good shackles.  I’m not going to push this point any further, but it just doens’t make any fucking sense.

Then there’s the Social Anxiety Disorder.  These are people who are afraid of people.  They’re afraid of social situations.  Get over it!  You don’t need a fucking pill to solve your problems for you, unless that pill is Get Over It.  If you’re afraid of talking to someone in public, then go out and do it.  Eventually, you’ll get over your fear.  Don’t think a stupid fucking pill is going to solve your problems for you.  It’s just a circular half centimeter in diameter drug. 

I guess that’s all I really have to say about them.  Too many side effects, too many pills.  Somehow to control all our problems, or so it seems.  But it’s when you get to the core of the motivation behind these bastards, you’ll see it all comes down to a bunch of green papers known as money.  So remember that when you see the next drug ad, “Have you ever fallen asleep watching TV?  You could have Dozing Off Syndrome.  here’s a pill that will help.  Side effects include: vomiting, death, SIDS, homicidal thoughts, suicidal thoughts, cancer, kidney failure, herpes, and restless leg syndrome.”  Good night, yall.

You remember when you were a kid and some other kid got something that you didn’t, and you would retaliate by saying, “That’s not fair!” and some adult would say, “Well, life’s not fair.” that’s kind of a cop-out isn’t it? They did nothing to rectify the situation. They just outright said, “Get used to being treated unfairly. That’s life.” And we’re instilled with this belief that life’s not fair. And we grow up like that. “How come that guy has a bigger house than us?” “Because life’s not fair, son.” But what if life was fair? What if we all were treated equally in the eyes of the world? What if we all had the same opportunities that the rich people get and the successful people have? What kind of world would that be?

It would be a terrible world. Nobody would want to be a janitor or a plumber. They’d all be doing things like climbing mountains, starting in big movies, being famous, and selling insurance at big profits. Nobody would be working at McDonald’s for five dollars an hour or selling clothes in retails stores. Nobody’s passionate about that stuff. Nobody wants to do things like that, so it wouldn’t get done. There would be no more garbage man, so we’d all have to take our own garbage to the dump. Nobody would grow much food because it’s not exactly the best things to be a farmer. No one would ever clean up public bathrooms, so they’d be filthy. It would be a terrible, chaotic world.

But I think we need a little of that. We need to experience some sort of chaos in our lifetimes. We need to stir thing sup a bit. It’s for our own good. We all lead these lives of security. Get a job, get a house, work until we’re sixty or seventy, then retire and do meaningless activities as we wait to die. And what’s it all for? Most people don’t have a purpose for going to work besides meeting their survival needs. If they got free food and free housing, there would be no jobs. There wouldn’t be a need. And we’d all live in perfect harmony with one another. I think we need to go back to the barter system. We each have something of value to give to one another. Let’s say there’s a farmer who needs a roof put on his house. So you fix his roof for one year’s supply of food. And if you cobble his shoes correctly, you can marry his daughter. It’s the way of the old world.

But eventually, that would all collapse, too because some people would want more and some people would think they’re getting screwed. How can you measure how many carrots it takes to equal one ox? You can’t, but there would have to be some sort of exchange rate set up, which would indefinitely lead us back to using money again. And in order to have money, you’ve got to get a job, and to get a job you have to act like a total conformist to the job’s values, which in turn has you die a little inside. But that’s the way it goes. You can never really be yourself at a job because there’s always that threat of losing your job if you say or do the wrong thing. So it’s all these low-volume gossip sessions I’ve been seeing. This is where all the workers, mostly low-level workers will gather in a circle and say bad things about the people in charge, their own fellow co-workers, in fear that if that particular co-worker heard this, they’d all be out of a job.

And I really think people get pleasure from bad-mouthing their boss and other follow co-workers because it allows them to all agree on who’s good and who’s bad. But the people they’re talking about really don’t know that they’re being talked about because they’re never around when it happens, so they remain oblivious to the fact that everyone hates them. I think most of the people who gossip about other workers are jealous that the others are in charge, which leads us back to the unfairness paradigm.

It’s human nature to want control over a situation and when you go to work, you really don’t have much control unless you’re the boss. If you’re not, you have to do what somebody else says is best for you. You really don’t have much of a say in that, and if you want changes, they never happen right away. There’s always a delay for the whole store to shuffle around and retool everything. So without direct control, it makes us feel powerless at our jobs, which in turn leads to getting depressed about the job, feeling like you’re going nowhere.

And we envy the people in charge because we wish we had that power, but we don’t. It usually takes years to earn that type of respect, and if and when we finally get it, we realize we didn’t even want it. Nobody wants to be responsible. You know why? Because whenever something bad happens, somebody asks, “Who’s responsible for this?” And if it’s you, you’re in a world of hurt.

Usually, when viewing things from the outside in you really don’t get the whole picture. You could look at someone doing a job and say, “hey, I could do that.” But if you were to try it, you’d see the job from a whole different perspective, the inside out. And it’s a whole different paradigm that really will change the way you think about it. But at least I’ll never have to worry about that stuff. I’m not planning to climb my way up any corporate ladder because it could be leaning against the wrong building.

Anyway, the whole point of this post is to clarify that life can be fair if you view it in that light. You can see it in the best way possible, or you can loathe those who have it better than you. But it’s when you appreciate what you have and just try to make the best of it that you really realize who has the better life. A bigger house and more money isn’t going to make you happier. It’ll just make you more of who you already are. Until next time, I’m Ed Bradley.

Supposedly those are the three most important things to making your blog work.  Traffic, traffic, and traffic.  I need traffic.  There’s no denying it.  I need to get more traffic.  Because without traffic, there’s no impact.  And without impact, there’s no reason to post.  So I have to do something to increase traffic.  Maybe do some sort of promotion or something or more advertising.  I don’t know.  I really just want to get my name out there and into the public eye.  I just want to help people as well as make them laugh, and I’m sure as hell trying like mad to do that.  So I guess it’s come down to this:  Either start putting my actual stand-up material up here or actually put my ideas for either a show or a screenplay up here so I can somehow express myself in a more concise and eloquent manner.  So I just have to do it.  Do it now.  That’s the quote of a lifetime.  Get the shit done.  That’s all I have to do.  That’s all I need to do.  So I’m going to do it…now. 

I just wish I had more capabilities on this blog.  There’s not really much of a vein in the sense of audio and I guess you can upload videos, but I really would like to put up some of my audio voices and stuff because I find a lot of them very interesting and I’ll just have to figure out a way to do that or convert this blog into a full website along with other elements.  I’m just really trying to move this to the next level.  If I can do that, I’m sure the visitors will come.  So here’s the plan.  In the next two months, my goal is to post at least 100 to 200 times, in different categories, with different themes and to be able to express my comedy the best way I can.  It’s all about providing the best value that I am capable of.  I’m not going to cut back at all.  I’m not going to fuck around, I’ll get right to the point. I’m capable of it and I will adhere to this task. 

So what should you expect to see?  Here’s a list of what I would like to include in the near future:

• Audio recordings
• Artwork
• Comics
• Partial Scripts
• Theories
• Conversations
• Things I Find Funny

There may be more additions, but it’s really up to me.  I am the captain of this ship, and it’s my duty to bring her to her destination.  So wish me luck along this journey and behold my immense power as I steer myself into comedy gold.  Just be careful about those barnacles.  I know I sure will.  Until next time, happy trails.

The Internet where I live has been so unreliable lately. It’s just terrible. And I’m starting to wonder why I even have it in the first place. Is this constant frustration worth $39.95 a month or am I just supposed to accept it? It took more than twenty minutes for me to go from the Wordpress homepage to the place where I post blogs. I actually typed most of this in a Notepad document. It’s just getting to the point where I may just get rid of this so-called Internet and maybe just do blog posts at my public library. I’m just sick of having to wait for everything to work. It’s a Cable Internet, too, so it’s supposed to be fast all the time.

All I know is that my computer is starting to act like a regular person more and more every day. It wakes up groggy when I turn it on. It’s very slow for the first hour or so of operation. It also can’t be left on all night or it suffers a very slow reaction, just like someone who went the whole night without sleeping. It’s just crazy. I don’t know what I can possibly do to make this thing run better. I’ve tried everything: defragmenting, freeing up disk space, restarting it, but it still doesn’t want to work. I’ve even tried yelling at it, but to no avail. Technology is supposed to make our lives easier, but it really just makes us more frustrated at how much more complicated things get. The only thing I praise the Internet for was making research papers that much easier, but besides that, it’s more of a waste of time than anything else.

I’m sure we’ve all been in the situation where you’re online and all of the sudden, your connection goes dead or evertying freezes. And let’s say you were having a conversation with someone or you were doing a project and you didn’t save it, and now your coputer is unresponsive, no matter what you do.

I am getting really pissed off with all of this shit. It just doesn’t end. Every day, my computer amazes me in breaking down in some capacity. My AOL is working like it is retarded. Every time I run it, all these error messages keep popping up and they keep popping up after I close them and it happens for like six minutes straight, then stops for two minutes, then starts up again and there’s nothing I can do to correct them because it won’t tell me what the error is. I may just get another computer and build it from scratch because I want one that will be efficient and also have certain qualities about it that will allow for massive storage and less errors.

An update on the Wordpress Page not loading. I have to now restart my computer because it still hasn’t loaded. Don’t you just love technology? It’s such a wonderful thing. I just restarted my computer, tried to log into Wordpress, and guess what happened? Error on Wordpress! Is anything more wonderful than technology? The only thing that comes close is the DMV, or as I like to call it, the Waiting Decathalon. It’s almost as if the world has come to an end. Because that’s what will happen if the Internet doesn’t start working. Imagine, no computers work anywhere, we’re all just wandering around now that we don’t have the resources to buy something on eBay.

Sometimes I think I should just throw my computer out the window. It will be easy, it being a laptop and all. But you know, I learned something today. The only thing you can actually trust is your own mind. And if you can’t do that, you’re screwed. Sure, a computer is nice because it can store million of letters of information, but that doesn’t mean your memory can’t either. I still haven’t gotten to the Wordpress posting template yet and it’s been about forty minutes. Usually, it takes about one to two minutes. On a good day. There must be some kind of problem with the Internet, but whatever. I really just want to get this on the web so people can read it. I’m not going to go websurfing after this. So please work, Wordpress. I’ll be good to you, I promise. I’ll post every day. Sometimes twice a day. I promise…

Well, it doesn’t look like it’s gong to work, and if it ever does, this will be on the web, unedited as usual and I really hope you enjoy it, if you ever get a chance to read it. Hey!!! It just started getting up. Finally, I can copy and paste it into the box. I sure hope those features are working today.  Now let’s see what happens when I press the publish button.  I hope it doesn’t suddenly suck my computer into a black hole.  I’ll keep my fingers crossed

Why is it whenver someone offers something free, everyone jumps to get it?  It doesn’t matter what it is, everyone wants it.  I’ve never seen anything like twenty-thousand men lined up to get a free tampon.  It’s amazing, it really is.  But if a particular store has some sort of promotion where you get a free hat with purchase, you’ll see thousands of people there just for the hat.  It’s like, “Well, I figured I’d get my free hat along with my purchase of $150 in merchandise.”  And the merchandise isn’t even something the person wanted.  It’s just the hat. 

The word “free” has so much power.  It can turn normal, law-abiding citizens into a mass mob running towards the free hot dog stand.  It’s insane.  I guess its appeal is that if something is free, even if you don’t like it, there’s no risk.  The only thing you lose is your time.  I guess people don’t value time as much as money, except for maybe the people who say, “Time is money.”  But it seems like if something isn’t going to cost us anything, then no amount of time is too much to justify receiving a free gift.  Why do you think companies offer a free gift with purchase of certain things?  They know that if you need to spend $45 to get a free paperweight, then you’ll do anything to meet that criteria.

What scares me is Wal*Mart.  You see, they’re always rolling back prices.  You never hear about them raising prices, so you know one day, it’s all going down to zero.  Everything at Wal*Mart will be free.  And you think it’s busy now.  I can imagine the second that Wal*Mart goes down to zero on everything in the store, the next second, everything will be gone.  The employees’ uniforms stripped off their bodies.  Bathroom stalls gone.  The gigantic letters on the outside of the building.  Gone.  And the employees will be looking around, thinking, “Where did everything go?” 

Which is why we must try and resist free stuff.  Free stuff is not really free.  It’s free in the sense that you don’t have to pay, but is it really worth the hassle of standing next to two thousand other people who are also trying to get their piece of the free pie?  I say it isn’t.  I will pay full price just so I don’t have to deal with another screaming mob.  That’s why I never shop at Wal*Mart.  Sure you’ll pay more at other places, but you don’t have to deal with all the people. 

Then there’s the people who say, “The best things in life are free.”  Yeah, I”m sure that Girls Gone Wild T-shirt you earned when you lifted up your shirt is one of your prized possessions.  Or that “Save the Tiger” T-shirt you got in fifth grade for going on a nature walk.  I’m sure that’s up on the mantle with your Emmy Award and Congressional Medal of Honor.  The best things in life cost something.  They either cost time or money or make you sacrifice something else in your life.  Sure, handouts are great, but they’re nowhere close to the best things in life.

This is why I think we need to start charging people for air.  We can charge anything we want, people will pay.  Because if they don’t, they’ll suffocate.  It’s almost like the rising gas prices we had this summer.  You can complain all you want, but the onlly way you’re going to stop is to stop driving.  And no one was ready to do that.  Nobody dusted off their bikes or anything, so they paid.  Then all these promotions came out for free gas.  Free this, free that, what I need is some free time.  None of this time share crap.  I want my own time free.  Peace out, everyone.

I’m not a morning person.  Some people are.  Some people wake up feeling energized and why shouldn’t they?  They’ve spend the last eight or so hours resting.  But that doesn’t mean you should have to deal with them at the office, on the bus to work, or at the coffee shop.  You ever been really tired or had a headeache and you’re at work and one of these “morning people” comes by, all full of energy and laughing it up and you’re like, “Could you tone it down a little?  I’m kind of groggy.”  There are two solutions to this problem and let’s get right down to it:

The first solution is to avoid them all-together.  Lock the door of your office or simply don’t show up to work until you’r enot groggy.  Who cares what your boss thinks?  He’s not the boss of you.  You are the ultimate boss in your life.  Another thing you could do is just not respond to the morning people.  What you do if you see them passing in the hall is to just snub them.  And they’ll naturally say, “Is anything wrong?” but don’t fall into that trap.  Just keep walking.  That’s bring their little happy trip down about three notches.  These people are like energy vaccuums.  They take the little energy you have and use it to exhaust you to the point of not return.  But total outright avoidance is pretty good.  I recommend it.

Another tactic is to become a morning person.  Here’s how you do it.  Let’s say you’re groggy for the first two hours at work.  So wake up two hours earlier and maybe go to bed an hour later and you’ll be a little more energetic.  You may not be able to be as peppy as Jim from accounting, but maybe you’ll be able to withstand their barrage of, “Tony! How are you?!  It’s so great to see you!!!”  Or you could come up with a witty remark about them.  You’ll probably have a little more of your timing back, seeing as you woke up a couple hours earier, so you could say something that makes them question why they’re so damn happy in the morning.  Maybe that will shut them up.  Probably not.

A third and alternative option is for the people who have had it completely.  Just throw all the morning people down a flight of stairs.  That’s all.  Let them know that  you don’t mess around.  You get right to the point.  And when they haul you off to jail, you’ll have some other types of people to deal with.  The morning rapists.  But at least they you won’t have to sit through another, ‘How are you?  O wonderful!” seminar.  I haven’t tried this approach personally, but I’m sure it works pretty well. 

I’m not trying to offend morning people.  I really think that’s great if that’s the way you are.  But even if you feel really good in the morning, keep in mind that around four or five P.M., when you’re starting to lose that energy, an afternoon person might stop on by and do the same thing to you, leaving you for dead, in energy of course.  That’s why I always try and concserve my energy until around four.  That way I can get my revenge and then I’ll be beaming on the way home from work. 

Remember when you were a kid and you used to play video games, like a role-playing game and right before you shut it off, you would save it? Because if you didn’t save it it would be like what you just did never happened. And that would be bad. But wouldn’t it be awesome if we could live our lives like that? Like if we make a bad decision one day, to not save and just repeat the day over again the next day? It would be like if you were playing the stock market and you made a bad trade and lost all your money, you could redo that day and make a better decision. Hell, you could keep redoing that day until you had the one that’s perfect for you.

But life doesn’t work that way, does it? And it’s a shame because I believe that we would be more inclined to take risks and be who we truly are. Without being afraid of the consequences of our actions, we could do anything and then just not save and the day would start over. And we’d be able to make it all right again. Because you can’t usually make something right if you screw it up, so if we could somehow adopt this into our lives, we’d be able too expand on ourselves to the point of becoming amazingly powerful.

Some of you may be saying, “It’s like Groundhog Day.” No, it’s not like Groundhog Day because if you do make progress, you can save it. In Groundhog Day, no matter what he did, he couldn’t save any of it, except his memories of the day. With this, you can save each particular day you find to be to your liking, and if not, you just restart that day. It’s kind of like a video game. Just some food for thought…

It would be like you get a second chance, a third chance and even a 105^th chance at each day if you so desire. I really think it would be something to put into consideriation if we could all make this happen. Peace.

Which would you rather have?  A chaotic, dangerous world that had no rhyme or reason to it or a law enforcement-controlled, sticler society?  It’s a question I often wonder about.  What would it be like if there were no rules?  Well, to do that, I just look at all of the world leaders.  It seems no matter what they do, there are little consequences.  Certain leaders could gas half their country and they’ld be looked at as heroes, mostly because the other half does not want to be gased as well.  But look at our president.  If he wants to go to war, he goes to war.  It doesn’t matter what the reason is and as long as he gets approval from Congress, he can go ahead into war, even if it’s just to bully a smaller country into submission.  It’s like anything he wants to do, he does and gets away with it.

Let’s face it.  The only reason most people (not including myself) don’t do things that are considered wrong don’t because they fear of being punished for what they did.  Otherwise, there would be no reason not to, unless they have a conscience.  But if one day the law enforcement was abolished, there would be an insane amount of chaos and everything would go downhill.  Up would be down, black would be white.  We’d be so out of it, it would be like we’re no better than the rest of the animals, but they never kill one another.  But just imagine what would happen.  There would be terrible things going on, but I do retain my thoughts that some people wouldn’t change their behavior at all, except to ensure their survival in a much harsher world.  A world like this would have lower life expectency and all that stuff, so maybe it’s not the best thing to go about doing.

I’m kind of segueing this into censorship on television and radio.  What would an abolishment of censorship do to those media outlets?  Would every show all of the sudden swear three hundred times an episode or would they be exactly the same.  I know that some people value censorship because of their children.  They don’t want their children to be exposed to bad language on television, even thouggh they are exposed to it at school.  Eventually, they are going to be exposed, so why not just get it out of the way.  The same goes with nudity.  Did you know in other countries, it’s no big thing to see a naked human on TV?  It’s commonplace.  Because they make it seem so bad in America, one slip-up by Janet Jackson in the Super Bowl can totally throw a nation into preoccupation.

But we are starting to get away with more.  Cable channels and pay channels are allowing more foul language on TV, which isn’t necessarily a good thing all the time, but sometimes a script calls for something to really exentuate the mood.  And you can’t do that with TV-safe words all the time.  You have to go outside the structured box and understand that once in awhile there should be some flexibility in the FCC’s regulations.  I don’t know if you’ve ever heard the phrase, “Sticks and stones maybreak my bones, but words can never hurt me.”  If the people who said this really believe this, then there wouldn’t be so many complaints every time the word “shit” or “fuck” appears on netword TV. 

What I’m really defending here is the First Amendment.  I have a right to say what I want to say how I want to say it.  And there should be nothing you can do to stop me.  Sure, I may not even choose to swear at all if I get on TV, but I should at least have the possibility.  No, it won’t crate chaos.  It will just allow for people to express themselves in a manner that is true to them.  I’m tired of people judging someone every time they let out a profanity.

Just last night, I was at work and I was about to go home and a woman who works there was counting my register and another woman that works there was standing beside her and they were talking and one let out the word “fuck.”  The other woman said, “You’d better put a quarter in the swear jar.  We don’t tolerate profanity here.”  Now, I’m one who hardly ever swears at work unless it’s under my breath.  I’ve done my share of that.  I also swear sometimes to one person that works there to enahnce the conversation.  But I don’t do it that much the same way I don’t say “exentuate my bustline” that much.  They’re all just words.  I use different words in different frequencies.  Not because I was conditioned to do so, but because I have ways to express myself in a more poignant manner than the swear words.  And that’s fine for me.  But other people who can get their point across with a swear word have every right to do so without being judged. 

So just remember that all words should be created equal and that no matter how someone says something, they should be able to do it.  You know, I don’t think I swore in this whole post except for the examples of words I used.  That’s just great.  Peace.

This is a term borrowed from calculus, although here it is used in an  entirely different manner.  It’s just a way to live your life.  It’s more of a way of blending in.  I’ll have to convey this in a picture or something later, but here’s the gist of it:

Okay, in life there are people who are the best at certain things and there are people that are the worst.  Then there are the people who fall somewhere in between.  This is the basic sandwich.  The people who are the best are the top slice of bread, the people who are the worst are the bottom slice of bread.  Then you have the people in the middle or the “meat” of the sandwich.  This group usually makes up the most people and they are at all varying degrees of competency in this field.  Now, some of them are near the top piece of bread, trying to become one of the best, while others are sinking down towards the bottom part of the bread, or moving towards the worst people.  There are advantages and disadvantages to being in each position, however.

If you’re one of the best, there’s a lot of pressure on you.  People want to know, “What’s your secret?”  People are constanly asking you for advice on how to improve themselves, as well as how to become like you.  Also, you have to maintain that position and guard it like it’s gold.  Because if you let your guard down for even a second, someone could and very well should take over your high position.  But you’ll come to realize that guarding that position is futile because it will take away all of your other time to just relax.  You’re constantly warding off other overachievers who want your spot.  It’s not a very good place to be in, and one the other get there, they’ll face the same connundrum.

Now let’s talk about the bottom.  The bottom is also a very dismal place to be.  People will look at you like, “You’re worthless.”  So you have to defend the fact that you’re not worthless and that you are getting better.  You have to show momentum in a positive direction or else you will be constantly criticized.  People will say you’re not trying hard enough and you need to get your act together.  But some people prefer this to defending a position that will be eagerly taken over because of one misstep.  There is a lot of room for mistakes at the bottom because you really can’t get much worse and you can always improve.  When you’re at the top, improvement is very slow because there’s not much more to improve upon.

Now let’s get to the meat of the sandwich.  This is the part where there is some animosity, but there’s also more relaxation.  If you’re in the middle, people will often forget about you, relieving you of having to defend your position.  You can relax a bit, but watch out for the bottom feeders trying to take over your position.  THey’ll be the only ones who seek out your advice, but you don’t have to worry much about them because they have a long way to go.  But in the middle it’s your decision.  Do you want to stay where you are or try to improve yourself?  Do you want to slip back a tad?  So what, nobody’s really going to notice much and you can always build yourself back up before anyone notices.  I don’t know.  It’s just a very abstract theory I’ve been working on. 

But nobody really wants mediocrity.  The middle meat in society are all the people who have the one house with the white picket fence and a distorted feeling of security.  Those are the people who just get by with what they have and live a simple yet average life.  They can always look down on the people who are on the bottom to feel good about themselves after wondering why they aren’t on the top.  It’s a great place to be because you’re secure.  But security is only half the battle.

If you find yourself at the bottom or in the middle, why can’t you do better?  Most people do not want responsibility.  Moving up in this metaphorical sandwich increases the amount of responsibility one has.  Like if you were to move from a sales representitive to a manager of the store, that would increase your responsibility tenfold.  Which is why many people do not want to increase their position in life.  They feel comfortable.  And they’ll do anything to protect that feeling of comfort.  But it’s almost as bad as being on top because you’re always wondering why you’re only halfway where you want to be and have to come up with reasons to defend you staying at your current position.  You wonder if you take a chance and leave it, when you come back all that will be left are positions lower than what you have now.

I guess you could call this type of thinking a mid-life crisis.  Should you quit your job to do more meaningful work, even if it means a cut in pay?  Should you chase your dream or succumb to the fact you’re more worried about how to pay the bills than living your life on purpose?  I say we weren’t meant to be domesticated in one area for our entire life. Take that chance of moving upward.  Even if you end up lower than you were, you’ll be glad you took that chance.  Believe me.

I think the main problem is that people are so attached to the fear of failure and fear of success.  Well, if you can conquer those two fears then you’ll not even care about where you are on this sandwich anymore because you’ll have experienced all aspects of it.  And it’s more about enjoying the journey, not the destination.  You spend far more time on the journey so it only makes sense that you should enjoy it more.  If you’re going to spend twenty years of your life trying to reach this pie-in-the-sky ideal life, then you might as well enjoy getting there.  Because you will find once you reach this idealism, there’s an even better one off in the distance and you may need to sacrifice all you’ve worked for to get to that new utopia.  So it’s an evergoing struggle, if that’s the way you see it.  You can also see it as a wonderful journey, no matter what the outcome and you’ll tend to enjoy it more. 

Race you to the top of the sandwich. 1-2-3-Go!