For part one, go here
I’ve already explained to you how much I hate having to go to the grocery store. I mostly hate it because we all have to do it, so you are thrown hodge-podge into a bunch of people that you have nothing in common with and who wouldn’t be there themselves unless they had to be.
Well, I hate work for pretty much the same reasons. Of course, there are plenty of people that by fortune(or misfortune) of wealth or disability don’t have to do either, but I’m not one of them. Not that I want a disability, even if it means never having to work again. At least, I don't think I do.
Let me preface this by saying that I believe we are all trapped in a society whose rules have been made by the wealthy and powerful elite. We are told that we should be proud to work ourselves to death and thank God for the opportunity to make someone else rich in the process, and so on. But the purpose of this is not to sound like a dorm room communist railing against the system, I just want you to be aware that I am aware of it, for all the good it does.
I’m past the point of hoping for a revolution, because they all tend to peter out, or the winners become just like the regime they replaced. I only have two modes: anger or apathy, and when it comes to politics and world events, apathy wins out more often than not. It is sad that today it seems like people are so self destructive that they are finding new and convoluted ways to be stupid and vote against their own best interests.
The human race has a death wish, but like all things, they can’t even get something as simple as that right.
Some people have a hard time getting up and out of bed when the alarm goes off in the morning. They lie there, staring at the ceiling, aghast that it is again time to get in the shower and prepare for another soul crushing day of labor. As with most things, I am much more advanced than that.
I usually start dreading the next day of work as I am leaving work the day before. All night(or weekend, God forbid) before, my brain silently keeps track of the hours until I need to get up and go back to my place of employment. It doesn’t matter what I am doing, my brain is always ticking away the minutes, counting down until it’s time to go back to work, like some efficient and shitty doomsday clock.
Work is a lot like high school. You had to go there, and you were stuck in a place with a limited selection of people to choose from for your friends. Not that you couldn’t luck out and find some people you would actually hang out with if you weren’t forced to do it, but mostly you just picked a few people that you could tolerate for whatever amount of time you were locked in a room with them.
The other option was if you happened to fit in with some clique, the cooler the better. Fitting into an uncool clique was better than having no friends in some ways, but it also made for bullying on a wholesale level. Whereas a lone loser might disappear into the crowd and evade misery for a bit, the group of losers was easy picking. Either by picking off the lame and weak one by one, or driving the whole herd over a cliff or into a Canyon, like the indians did with buffalo.
In case you’re too dense to figure it out by this narrative, I was not one of the cool kids. When you get older, you come to realize that the cool kids were very insecure and picked on the smart or unique kids because they were jealous or intimidated. At least that’s the version we nerds tell ourselves.
I did know a couple of kids that were some of the real outcast weirdos, and they didn’t care at all. I envied them, because they wore their oddities like a badge, and they seemed so together and above it all. Now that I am older, I kind of have that mindset, and I realize that it doesn’t really make things a whole lot better, but it does keep most of the idiots away from you, so that’s a plus. They seem to resent you even more, and it is fun watching these morons try to get to you the way jerks did in high school and wonder why it isn’t working anymore.
There is some satisfaction watching one of these cretins wander back to their hole like an ocelot with a faceful of porcupine quills. Yes, an ocelot, you bunch of Mutual Of Omaha's Wild Kingdom ignoring assholes. Maybe if you spent more time watching educational TV you would know what I’m talking about and our president wouldn’t be an ego-driven lout with subpar intelligence and the temperament of a five year old.
The one thing that brings me comfort when it comes to most of the “winners” in high school is that high school was usually their peak, and now when they get home from work at the car lot or Denny’s, they wonder what happened and how it all went wrong. Not all of them came to such disappointing ends, and we’ll get back to those assholes in a bit.
Like all things that involve leaving my house, driving is involved. Nothing is quite as infuriating as driving, which I have talked about before. I could swear that people are dispatched along my route, and as soon as one slow moving troglodyte turns off the road, another one pulls out up ahead to take their place. Like some horrible tag-team relay race where the object is to come in last.
I don’t understand why anyone would drive below the posted speed limit. Drive as fast as is legally allowed, and faster if there are no cops around. It’s like extra strength pain relievers. Why would you ever want regular strength aspirin or whatever? “Hmm, I’m looking to get rid of most of my headache, but I still want some pain lingering there.”
Whenever I’m behind someone driving extra slow on a secondary or back road, it always seems to be a Subaru. Unless it’s someone that can’t afford an actual Subaru, and is driving some stripped down, base model, cheapest available SUV, perhaps a KIA. Whatever it is, it will have a bike rack on the back, and a roof rack. I assume they are driving slow because they are scouting future sites to go trail riding, or kayaking, or mountain climbing, or spelunking.
I am basing that solely on television ads for the aforementioned vehicles, where young hipsters in love, or young hipsters with families where the kids can’t watch TV or have gluten, or some slightly older hipster with a senior dog, is looking to explore the lost corners of America in their hipster car. Never mind that there are no lost corners left, and they aren’t discovering anything, and most of the time they are probably left with the feeling of “is that all there is?” as they trudge back to their car and curse the ad campaign that made them believe that they might find meaning in the woods somewhere. You’re not getting to Walden in a Subaru, my friend. Well, you can in fact get to Walden in a Subaru, but the thing that made it Thoreau’s Walden is long gone.
I’m sure that the owners of these slow moving hunks of metal hardly get off their couch, and in fact only use their cars to go get fast food or crappy consumer goods. I base this mostly on the fact that many of them love to participate in 5k runs. They are 5k runs because that is shorter than a 5 mile run, which would probably kill most Americans. 5k is actually 3.1 miles, and it’s funny that the United States as a whole rejects the metric system entirely, except if it cuts two miles off of their run.
“Run” is a misnomer also, as almost none of the participants are doing anything resembling running in the slightest. “5k wander” or “5k trudge” is more accurate. Personally, I am hoping that “5k death marches” become a thing, but like most of my dreams, I am not too optimistic.
Yes, the road is full of idiots, and to illustrate my point I will explain the most annoying of all things driving. Allow me to set the scene for you.
You are driving along, on the highway or perhaps a secondary road. You are coming up on a hill, or a slight bend in the road, but traffic is moving smoothly and all seems okay for a change. Suddenly, due to an elevation change or the aforementioned curve in the road, the sun is directly in your eyes.
Now surely everyone is aware that we are on a planet, locked in a heliocentric orbit, which means that the sun is going to appear in the sky at some point or another. Alas, that is not the case, because everyone in front of you will slam on their brakes, and proceed very slowly, apparently completely forgetting about the existence of sun visors or sunglasses. Perhaps it is some evolutionary throwback to caveman days, when our primitive brain was in awe of the sun god that decided to appear in the sky for another day. So you have a whole line of cars, blocking the roadway while their dimwitted drivers flail their arms and squint into the sun.
I really don’t understand this, because I wear sunglasses at all times if I am outdoors. Anything that keeps less light, and therefore less sight of the horrors of this world from entering my eyes, the better.
I would be remiss if I didn’t also mention bicycles in our driving discussion. The only thing worse than the SUV’s are bicycles. Somewhere along the way people got this crazy notion that pedestrians and bicycle riders have the right of way. The several ton weight difference begs to differ, but by all means, continue to ride down the center line like you own the road, or along a twisty backroad with no shoulder whatsoever.
I especially love when there is a whole pack of cyclists, taking up the whole lane, with their aerodynamic helmets and freshly shaved arms and legs, like they are getting ready to compete in the Tour de France, but are most likely going to Starbucks to add back whatever calories they burned with some horrible coffee topped with whipped cream and shaved chocolate, and an oversized muffin. Hey, they earned it!
Okay, I’m done cataloging some of the suicide inducing obstacles involved in getting to work, and ready to delve into the suicide inducing obstacles actually encountered at work. Just walking into the building is soul crushing. I usually arrive with no time to spare, but on the rare occasion that I get there a few minutes early, I sit in my car and try to resist the urge to flee.
It is an interesting matter of perspective that I think it’s ridiculous how employers will have time clocks and keep track of every minute you miss, yet I refuse to enter the building early and give them even one free minute of my life. Oh who cares? They’re wrong and that’s that. Like most people, I hate introspection that reveals that I might be even slightly wrong.
So if I decide to actually go into the building … I will pause here and talk about the fact that there have been times that I’ve been on the way to work and turned around and went back home and called in sick. I haven’t yet done it once in the parking lot, but I’ve come close. Oddly enough, on a couple of occasions I have come in, sat down at my desk, then decide to go home, but those days I was actually sick.
No, usually deciding to bag work after you’ve already left the house involves lots of complex calculations on just how many sick and/or personal days you have left, and what other things you might want to take off for in the future. If it’s been a particularly rough year already, you might be figuring out if you can deal without a day’s pay this week.
More often than not, you wind up finding that you’ve arrived at the parking lot at work while you were lost in your intense thought process and now you just resign yourself to the fact that you’re here already and should just go in.
So I enter the building and try to make it to my desk without being accosted by idiot coworkers. Like I said, it’s high school all over again as you are forced to be somewhere with people you did not choose to be around. And they all want to know how your night/weekend was since they last saw you, regardless of the fact that 99% of the time nothing of note happened in the least. Usually they are just asking you because they did some God-awful, mind-numbing activity that they want to tell you about, and they aren’t going to wait around for you to ask.
So even as you are responding that nothing much happened and trying to extricate yourself from the situation, they launch into a story about how they went to see Rod Stewart or planted a garden, or God forbid, drove to the woods in their SUV.
I already bought my coffee on the way to work, so I can bypass that whole congregation point in the breakroom entirely. Just what I want, over-caffeinated people, revved up and ready to talk to me about shit I could care less about. People sometimes wonder why so many will spend so much extra on coffee from Starbucks or wherever, and while some might need it for the drive in or the convenience, I think a lot of them are like me, willing to spend the extra money to save some of their sanity and miss out on more bonding moments with idiots.
I’m sure there is some evolutionary comparison between neanderthals and modern humans and living on a hill as opposed to a flood plain here, but I am much too lazy to make it. Leave the neanderthals and their large brows to themselves around the coffee maker. 99.7% shared DNA does not a human make. Ask a chimp who clocks in at about 98.8% about it, and see what kind of a response you get.
Once at my desk, I can get to work, or more importantly I can get to looking like I am working. A building full of employees, all pretending to be busy and put upon by the demands of their jobs. Meanwhile, echoes from coal miners and preteen factory workers through the ages scoff at our idea of a full work day. At the same time, the fetid spirits of ancient robber barons bemoan the eight hour workday, and the fact that modern man lives to collect his pension.
Invariably, your superiors will descend on you to ensure that you are giving it all you can. They are basically performing their own charade of looking busy for their bosses, but they get to do it by belittling other people.
Do you recall when I said to remember the “winners” from high school, and I would be getting back to those assholes? Well, most of the ones that didn’t flame out in their early 20’s became your boss. They are still douchebags, and now they think that they’ve been given some kind of referendum to act like it. They are encouraged to crack the whip, and use whatever means necessary to get those nerds and sad sacks to be productive.
So once again, most people that were part of the faceless crowd in high school are again part of it in some horrible, cosmic joke. Forced to trudge to work everyday, only to remain under the yoke of oppression of lesser clods by people they recognize from their traumatic adolescent years.
Some people adopt a shiny, happy veneer to help cope, and they fervently tell you that it’s not so bad and that’s how life goes and turn that frown upside down, but it is all a vain attempt to talk themselves into living a life that makes no sense to them, and to drown out the horrified voices in their heads that never agreed to this until they are dead enough inside to keep going.
I could further go on to talk about how a whole branch of the pharmaceutical complex has gotten rich off of supplying drugs meant to make it possible for the population to sit in a cubicle and perform their repetitive tasks and get the job done. I could, but I don’t really care.
I am not part of the herd, a member of the tribe, looking out for the rest. I am a lone outsider, scurrying along the fringe and scavenging my meals. I never wanted to belong to any club or group outside of Columbia House, and even then I feel I got ripped off in the end. The 12 albums for a penny seems too good to be true, but forget to send a couple of cards back declining the month’s selection and you soon fell behind for Tina Turner or Cher albums you never wanted. Yes, lumping yourself in with the crowd is like paying for horrible music you will never listen to. I care too much about myself to live like that.
Even worse than the bosses or the break room or the incessant hum of fluorescent lights and your drab cubicle walls is the projects they assign you. Mostly because these projects involve interaction with coworkers, and not in the same manner where they tell you about some great new fast food place while on break. No, you will have to actually work with them, or depend on them for data or reports.
It really drives home how much better you are at your job, or just breathing, when you have to team up with another human being. You think that you have seen the depths of stupidity, the lowest levels of common sense someone can possess and still manage to feed themselves, then you get saddled with a slack-jawed coworker and are astounded all over again.
Even if you had high hopes for your project, even if you were determined to do a stellar job and show upper management what you are capable of, it will soon dissolve into a race to just get the bare minimum done so the nightmare can end.
It turns out that most workers are deadweight. If you find that you seem to be getting more responsibilities, that bosses are using you as a go between with the cannon fodder that is the workforce, you are most likely reasonably intelligent and feel at least a vague commitment to your employers. Congratulations! Your life is about to become a whole lot worse!
It is now easier for your boss just to assign everything to you rather than try to explain it to some uncaring moron and risk having it blow up in their face. You will watch as your workload increases and the other workers are exempted from doing anything complex or important. It is like evolution in reverse, and like most things in life, your better qualities are rewarded with more aggravation.
So while everyone else leaves at five, laughing it up on the way to happy hour, you are stuck trying to complete some stupid thing that you know is probably not going to make any difference at all, but you still feel like you should do a good job because …. Well, you’re probably not sure of an exact reason. Usually just a dull needling from some strong work ethic drilled into you by your ancestors that basically marks you as a sap. Thanks, granddad!
If you manage to make it through the morning, you get to go to lunch. Usually you can’t wait for lunch, but once you get to eat and head back to the office, you are even more miserable than before, not to mention sleepy. It was like a taste of freedom to make the afternoon worse.
Speaking of making the afternoon worse, sometimes I occasionally stop at McDonald’s or some other fast food place if I’m in a hurry. I know what you’re thinking, if I’m so fucking smart, why am I eating garbage? Just because I’m smart doesn’t mean I want to live any longer than I have to. Please afford me the same luxury as you as far as killing myself by ingesting the same poison foodstuffs you partake in. Everyone always expects other people to be better than they are, which is just horrible and explains a lot about the human race.
There are a million things I hate about fast food drive thrus, especially McDonald’s. First off, they have two screen ordering, and that only serves to mess up your order. I really don’t understand because usually whatever screen you are at displays the order of the people at the other ordering point.
Then there are the people in line. They pull up to the speaker, and then scan the menu like they suddenly forgot what they sell at McDonald’s. It’s the same shit they always have, and if you pull into the drive thru without a clear idea what you want to eat, it should be legal to shoot you, assasination style and push your car out of line.
Even after they order, people tend to leave huge gaps in between them and the other cars in line. People can’t pull up and place their orders, while these idiots sit in blissful ignorance of the world around them. If you want to see how self-absorbed people really are, go through the McDonald’s drive thru at lunch time.
The thing that really bothers me most about the McDonald’s drive thru is the people working the windows. Most people I know complain about the disinterested teenage workers, that seem to care less about their job. That’s what I basically expect when I go to one of these places.
What bothers me is that now you have middle aged or older people working there, because they can’t find a job in their chosen field because most of those jobs don’t exist in America anymore. The problem is, they still have that older person work mentality, and they are striving to do a really good job, so they are extra attentive, and go out of their way to be super pleasant. They talk constantly, they hang halfway out the window trying to put their all into a job that only requires about 10% of anyone’s actual output.
They ask you how you are, they let you know your order will be right up, they announce the contents of the bag as they hand it to you, and they have to yell after you that “the straw is in the bag!” while you are driving the hell away from that nightmare scenario.
It doesn’t bother me because they are exuberant and attentive, it bothers me that these poor people obviously have a great work ethic, and are trying their best, but they are stuck working in a job that they really shouldn’t have to work at by this point in their life. The country has let them down, the system is broken and the people that are supposed to be representing them are instead watching out for the rich and wealthy.
At any rate, having them serve me crappy food from the window on the side of a building makes me sad and angry, and it should probably do the same for you.
The only good thing about the afternoon is that most of the people in the building have just stopped trying. They are just ready for the day to end. They want to go home, because home seems so much better than here. Ironically, many of these same people feel the same way about work once they get home. They start to look at work as a reprieve from family life, and so the circle is complete.
They spend their lives shuffling back and forth between one dull ache and another, not sure how their lives ended up this way. This is all blended together in one of the most wretched ideas ever conceived: Casual Friday.
The intent is to make work seem fun, if your idea of fun is wearing slightly more comfortable clothes. I usually try to make the most out of it.
One of my favorite shirts is a black t-shirt with white letters that simply says "misanthrope" on it. Sometimes people will ask me what it means and I'll just say "I hate you" and they seem taken aback, but they don't understand that I've simply answered their question. That makes me hate them more. I haven’t yet had the balls to wear this shirt to work, mostly because I think it will cause more trouble than it is worth.
What I do wear is the loudest, most tasteless flowered shirts I can find, with cargo shorts and sandals. I look like something someone from a Jimmy Buffet concert puked up. I do it just to try to showcase the absurdity of it all, but oddly enough it has made me somehow more respected and well liked around the office. Instead of being a faceless part of the tribe, I am now becoming some sort of tribal leader, and that is not at all what I’m going for.
People have started dressing like me, asking me if I'm a “Parrothead”, and inviting me to after work hangouts at TGI Friday or Ruby Tuesday and such. Like that is going to happen. These are people that I would never willingly hang out with. I really hate them all. Although, Jerry really wants me to go, and I know he’s been down since his wife left him. I kind of feel bad for him. And Mary in accounting has been sending me evites all week, she keeps telling me that she really wants to talk about some things and needs advice, and values my opinion. God knows, she could really use some life coaching. Her boyfriend is a lout, and her mother needs to stop meddling in her life.
Oh my God! Why do I even care? I can’t stand any of them, I really can’t. Sigh.
I wonder if they’ll let me into Applebees with my misanthrope shirt on?
Wednesday, June 28, 2017
Wednesday, May 3, 2017
Excerpt From A Ghost's Diary, Part 5
For part one, go here
For part two, go here
For part three, go here
For part four, go here
March 3, 2007
Spring is coming, I guess. You don’t really feel the weather when you’re dead. You get a sense of it from the what people are wearing and doing, but you never know for sure. Like when it’s sunny and blue skies, but there’s still a wind blowing and chill in the air.
You don’t get that weird sensation when you’re a spirit. To you, that day must be warm, because it looks warm. Then you suddenly notice that people are wearing jackets and long sleeves, and you realize that you’ve been fooled again. You feel a little kinship with the folks you see in shorts or t-shirts, that didn’t check the weather before leaving the house, and just assumed, like you did, that it was warm out. You see them shiver a little, and rub their arms, but they try to be nonchalant about it because they don’t want to draw attention to the fact that they messed up.
People worry about the silliest things. Ghosts don’t care what you think of them, for the most part. We are too wrapped up in our own misery, or we know you can’t see us anyway, so why bother? So the world and it’s seasons go on for the living, and meanwhile, no matter how warm it may be, we spirits never lose this otherworldly chill that is our constant companion as we yearn to feel warm just one more time.
March 17, 2007
Today is St. Patrick’s Day. Parades are everywhere, and most of the world seems drunk. I guess people will use any excuse to unwind, and why shouldn’t they? A lot of them overdo it on this day, though. Then there is fighting, yelling, violence, and vomiting.
Many things that start off as an opportunity for a good time often descend into chaos and regret. I don’t know if it is because people have so much anger and resentment stored up inside and it all comes out the minute we let our guard down, or if we are all just bad drunks. Maybe that’s the same thing. I’m not even sure if St. Patrick’s Day is a holy day or just an excuse for a party.
At any rate, Saint or not, I see an awful lot of people vomiting, and that’s unpleasant, even if you’re dead.
April 24, 2007
As a ghost, you really have nothing much to do but drift through the world and observe. Perhaps that’s our punishment. Or maybe it’s a reward, I can’t say. Whatever it is, it surely gives you perspective.
As you drift pass the population, you can’t help but notice how many of them are anxious and stressed out. They are deep in thought if they are alone, brow furrowed, sighing heavily, muscles twitching with nervous tics. If they are with others, many times they are acting the same way I just described when they are alone, oblivious to those that love them, who are looking on in quiet desperation, wishing they could help. More likely, their loved ones are sitting across the table in the same state, furrowed brow and twitching along with them.
Sometimes these agitated people are with friends discussing what is upsetting them, but it always seems to result in the same outcomes. Either the other person listens dutifully, just waiting for them to finish so they can list their own problems. Or the other person then offers their take on what’s going on, and the person with the worries thanks them and continues to worry and stress anyway.
Once you are dead though, you realize that a lot of the interactions with others over most of the things you tie yourself up in knots over doesn’t matter in the least. Most of us just can’t help ourselves, we want drama and misery in our lives because it makes us feel like we matter and it gets us attention. Not to say that no one has real problems of course, yet the fact remains that we know the solutions to most of our dilemmas, but where is the fun in that? We must draw them out, poke at them over and over, examine them from every angle multiple times.
So we go on, fretting our lives away in a vain attempt to be noticed and told that it will all be alright, all the while surrounded by wisps of people that were once just like you, and now have no way of telling you what a waste of time and energy it was. Monday, October 17, 2016
Excerpts From A Ghost's Diary Part 4
For part one, go here
For part two, go here
For part three, go here
September 27, 2006
Fall is underway. I used to love this time of year when I was alive. I loved to hear the leaves skitter across the road, and crunch under your feet. Of course, now my footsteps don’t make a sound. If you really want to feel useless and forgotten, try walking without ever making a noise, going unnoticed everywhere you go. No one sees you when you enter a room, no one hears your laughter or sees you smile or grimace, or reacts to your moans of torment. You are completely ineffectual to those around you. Other ghosts notice, but as I have explained before, most of them are too wrapped up in their own little world, consumed by some past transgression or unfinished business to care about you and your problems. So now you pass through the world, undetected by those that are too self absorbed with their own issues to care or those that don’t even know you are there.
September 28, 2006
It’s not even October, and there seems to be Halloween stuff everywhere. I am even seeing Christmas paraphernalia appear. What is it with the living that they are always rushing life along? They never seem to appreciate where they are. It’s like life is so boring that they can’t wait for some event in the future that they think will make it better, but when they arrive at that point they are already looking past it to the next thing. Why do we look for fulfilment in things that haven’t happened yet, all the while ignoring where we are right now? The only chance we have to manufacture happiness is in the moment we are occupying at the time.
I also like to laugh at the people I see loading their shopping carts with Halloween candy on sale this time of the year. You are fooling no one, people. If you are buying Halloween candy in September you are just going to go home and eat that candy yourself. I don’t have to be a ghost to see that.
FYI: I can totally see that. Seriously, I pass through your walls and notice you on the couch, torn fun sized candy bar wrappers strewn all around you. You know what? Enjoy your candy. Who cares what a ghost sees? You are simply fulfilling that pledge you made to yourself as a small child, that when you got to be an adult you would buy all the candy you want and eat it all the time. You are simply making your childhood dreams come true.
October 3, 2006
I talked about how I used to love this time of year. Now though, it just serves to remind me that another year is coming to a close. If you think time flew when you were living, wait until you’re dead.
Time is relentless. It doesn't stop for any reason. It doesn't care about you, if you're awake or asleep, experiencing unparalleled joy or crushing misery, dead or alive. Time will steal everything from you when you’re not paying attention, and leave you far behind. True, time heals all wounds, but I’ve come to see that it is not that cut and dry. Simply waiting for time to make everything better is not enough. The wounds that it heals will heal regardless of what you do with those minutes or hours, days or weeks. You can just sit there and wait for the pain to become a dull ache, or you can get on with your life and help time with its work. We use the time it takes to forget as an excuse to wallow and feel sorry for ourselves instead of putting the effort into making our own happiness and fixing the damage others have caused us. All the while, time is slipping by you and somehow dragging you along with it at the same instance. It is a tricky thing to achieve, but it does it effortlessly.
Time is going to keep ticking away, counting down the days of your life(and later, your afterlife) without flinching. The same trait that puts distance between the events of your life, that brings you closure to pain, or causes more torment and loneliness, is a constant byproduct of its never ending march towards nothing. Time has it’s endgame set on a point trillions of years in the future, and you mean nothing to it at all. It is not your friend, but a thief, taking every precious moment away from you, even as they are happening. Take it from someone that has nothing left but time.
By the time you experience any moment of joy, it is already gone, and fading memories are the only thing time leaves you in its wake.
Sunday, May 1, 2016
A Series Of Legal Correspondence With Squirrels
What follows is a record of the legal correspondence between
me and the lawyers representing the squirrels that live in my yard.
Joseph Harkles
Dear Mr. Harkles,
Let me start off by saying on behalf of my clients, the
squirrels that live on and around your property located at the above address,
that we are very grateful to you for providing us with copious amounts of nuts,
seeds, and corn over these past few harsh winter months. Without this sustenance, our clients would
have had a much tougher time of it, scrounging for food and trying to remember where
they buried things last summer. Ah, summer,
it was a heady time for my clients, spent mating, raising children and running
around like crazy chasing other squirrels out of their territory. Oddly enough, the same squirrels always
seemed to be chasing the same other squirrels away everyday, but the purpose of
this letter is not to discus the effectiveness of my clients territorial
disputes.
To get right to the point, your constant supply of food
placed on your second floor balcony has resulted in my client’s morbid
obesity. While they are not complaining
about the morbid obesity itself, this condition has made it nearly impossible
for them to make the trip across the yard, let alone climb the trees and wires
to the balcony and get the food.
It is for this reason that we must insist that you provide
motorized scooters for my clients, as well as ramps and any other constructs to
make the balcony and thus the food readily accessible.
I have enclosed copies of the ADA guide, with special attention
drawn to Title III: Public Accommodations.
I’ll think you’ll find you are legally responsible, not only for my
client’s health issues, but to provide special accommodations to your residence
in order to comply with federal law.
We await
your swift response,
Jeffrey
Abrams, esq
Dunham,
Abrams, and Jones
Attorneys
At Law
Jeffrey
Abrams, esq
Dunham,
Abrams, and Jones
Attorneys
At Law
Dear Mr.
Abrams,
I am
dismayed that your clients would threaten me with legal action after I have
provided them with so much free food for so many months. I feel that it is the responsibility of the
squirrels themselves to monitor their own food intake and weight gain, and eat
accordingly.
I am
also upset that they did not just come to me with their concerns directly, and
had to drag legal representation into this at great expense to both of us. Of course I have noticed them chattering
loudly outside my balcony door, so maybe they did try to address these issues
and I just misinterpreted their behavior as a reaction to my cat, who likes to watch
them with keen interest.
At any rate,
I do not see that it is my responsibility to provide any sort of handicap access
for your clients, as
- I do not see that obesity is listed as an
official handicap. A quick perusal on the internet shows that most courts have
rejected “general obesity” as a “disability”, without showing some direct underlying
medical condition as the cause,
- While I am not a lawyer, I must question
whether the
So let
me close in saying that I see no reason for me to affect the changes you seek.
Sincerely,
Joseph
Harkles
Joseph Harkles
Dear Mr. Harkles,
Despite
what you claim in your letter, (which was not really very well written in a
legal sense, trust me on that, I did go
to law school), you could not be more wrong.
While it is true that some courts have rejected obesity as a disability,
there are still many cases in the system right now challenging that
interpretation.
As to
whether or not it applies to squirrels, do you really want to spend years of
your life and untold sums of money being a litigant in the test case to see if
that’s true? My clients have deep
pockets, thanks in part to you and the over abundance of seed and other food
stuffs you have supplied them with. There was so much that they managed to sell
a lot of it off to other animals in the neighborhood at a tidy profit. Don’t worry though, they were much more
responsible and made sure they never gave too much to any one chipmunk or
possum, so there will be no legal cases brought against them.
It is
really up to you if you want to face fiscal ruin fighting this in court. We are very good lawyers, and we know lots of
tricky law stuff to drag this out for years and years. Really tricky, scary
stuff, so just build the ramps and get them scooters already.
Hopefully
yours,
Jeffrey
Abrams, esq
Dunham,
Abrams, and Jones
Attorneys
At Law
Jeffrey
Abrams, esq
Dunham,
Abrams, and Jones
Attorneys
At Law
Dear Mr.
Abrams,
I spoke
to my lawyer about this matter, and the first thing he mentioned was that he
had never heard of your law firm. He
advised me that I probably had nothing to worry about and that I was in no way
obligated to provide your fat ass squirrel clients anything in the way of
handicap access to my balcony or any other part of my property.
I then
took it upon myself to look up your address on Google Earth and found that it
was the address for a Dunkin Donuts. I’m beginning to wonder if you are even a
law firm at all.
Please
inform your clients that I will not be acquiescing to any of their demands.
Sincerely,
Joseph
Harkles
Joseph Harkles
Dear Mr. Harkles,
Okay,
look Joe. We are trying to work with
you, but you don’t seem to want to this matter resolved in any timely or cost
effective manner. We will be forced to
file a lawsuit in the coming days if you do not agree to our demands.
We are a
law firm, a very successful and litigious one.
What do you think, we’re just a bunch of squirrels that got a hold of a
typewriter or something? Haha, that’s
ridiculous. Who would even think such a thing.
Certainly not us.
We’re
big, expensive lawyers, and we’re also very good at getting into birdfeeders.
Not birdfeeders, ignore that last part.
Come on already,
just build the ramps and give us scooters,
Jeffrey
Abrams, esq
Dunham,
Abrams, and Jones
Attorneys
At Law
Jeffrey
Abrams, esq
Dunham,
Abrams, and Jones
Attorneys
At Law
Dear Mr.
Abrams,
I’m
beginning to think that you are just squirrels with a typewriter. As a matter of fact, I notice that there is a
typewriter missing from my garage at this time.
I bet if I went out and searched the squirrel’s residence in the tree in
my backyard I just might find it there.
Joe
Harkles
Jeffrey
Abrams, esq
Dunham,
Abrams, and Jones
Attorneys
At Law
Joe,
Really,
you don’t want to do that. Seriously,
there’s no typewriter there. Besides, I
think you need a warrant or something for that.
How about just one ramp and one RC car from the hobby store and a bunch
of batteries? That’s not asking too
much.
Please?
Jeff
Jeff,
I’m
sorry, but I’m not about to spend any more money on your “clients”. How about if I just put the food on the
ground so you don’t have to climb the balcony?
Joe
Joe,
Really?
On the ground? With all the other
vermin? We got used to eating on the
balcony, it seems so much more refined.
I mean my clients. Oh, who are we
kidding. Of course we took your
typewriter. Just help a brother
out. It’s murder hauling our fat butts
up trees and across wires to get up there.
Jeff
P.S. I
know I already admitted that I’m a squirrel, but my name is actually Jeff, so…
Jeff,
I’m sure
you noticed that today I installed a rose trellis on the side of the house adjacent
to the balcony. Hopefully this will make
it much easier for you to get up there.
I’m sorry I can’t do more, but I spend more money than I already should
feeding the local wildlife.
Respectfully,
Joe
Joe,
I guess
that will have to do. We really do need
to lose some weight anyway, what with summer coming. Hope we didn’t make you too nuts with all
this. Haha, get it? Nuts? That’s some squirrel humor. As a token of our thanks, we will try to
resist chewing through your TV cable this year.
Looking
forward to seeing you on the balcony,
Jeff
P.S. Can
we keep the typewriter? We have some
angry letters we want to write to some crows and starlings that have really
been pissing us off.
Wednesday, March 30, 2016
Excerpt From A Ghost's Diary Part 3
Part one, go here
Part two, go here
August 12th, 2004
Hello diary. My only constant it seems in a vague, shifting existence. It’s summer now, and while I never much cared for the warm weather when I was alive, I do like seeing people enjoying the outdoors. So alive, out in the light and the warmth of the sun. Of course, I can’t feel the warmth of the sun anymore. If I had known how cold the rest of eternity would be, I might have made more of the opportunities I had to get out and enjoy it. People picture ghosts rattling around in old, deserted places, late at night and forlorn, but for the most part we are right there with you, at the beach, watching you play sports, laughing as you miss that three foot putt. We surround you as you live out your lives in the light, and we try to live through you, but we can’t fool ourselves. We will never feel the sun on our skin, we will never feel the touch of another living being. We just coexist alongside you, and what you think is the breeze is simply our lonely sighs.
October 30th, 2004
Well, tomorrow is Halloween, so I guess everyone assumes it’s a big deal for us ghosts. It really makes no difference, to be honest. Most of the other things you associate with the holiday aren’t real. No vampires, or zombies or werewolves and such. As far as the ghosts go, I think we’ve already established that they are nothing like we imagine them in movies or books. I don’t think I ever explained our appearance though. We are often dressed in the clothes popular to the period we died in. They change from time to time, did you know that? I think our outward appearance(even though most of you never see it, we are very rarely visible to the living and much of what you think are ghosts are simply tricks of the light or your imagination) is based on how we saw ourselves when we were alive. The clothes change slightly as our memory becomes fuzzy, but our appearance reflects how we saw ourselves in life. That’s why so many ghosts look like hideous monsters. We are an amalgamation of all of our insecurities and self love or hatred, and the result is rarely pleasing to look at. Most of us still look the way we did in life, but many times all of our perceived flaws and faults are magnified through our own psyche and we present ourselves to the world as we truly saw ourselves. Whenever one of us ghosts comes across a particularly attractive and normal looking ghost, we are all jealous and feel sad about the way we thought about ourselves when we were alive. On Halloween, instead of being frightened by imaginary monsters, be frightened of the way you see yourself. The you that exists in your mind’s eye is usually the scariest monster of all, and like most monsters, they don’t exist at all.
March 17th, 2005
Hello diary! I know it’s been quite awhile since I’ve written. It’s not easy getting my thoughts together and jotted down. As it is, I have to write this on foggy mirrors and in centuries old dust that accumulates far from other’s eyes. I don’t even know if anyone is seeing this, and I don’t remember where I wrote the last part down. Basically everything I’m doing here is pointless, but wasn’t most of the stuff I did while I was alive just as pointless? We attach so much importance to so many trivial things while we are alive and we often make decisions while in the grip of fear and uncertainty that we seldom get it right. The good news is that there are no right and wrong answers most of the time. Some moves set us back a little, some push us ahead, and most of the time we end up going nowhere. We just think we are because the scenery changes around us or we get swept along whether we’re ready or not. Being dead only lets you replay it all over in your mind again and again, but the time to make a decision is long past. Sadly, it seems that the more time you have to think, the more jumbled your thoughts become. That’s because there is no end game to examining and reexamining a problem or an idea. If you are afraid of something, the more you think about it the more frightened you become. If you are confused, the more you think the more confusing angles you will start seeing. If there is a tiny bit of doubt in your mind about anything, thinking will only ever increase that doubt. We are blessed with this amazing brain, capable of wondrous things, yet we only seem to use it to torture ourselves with worry and fear. We all want to imagine immortality, to picture an afterlife that goes on for eternity because we can’t accept that our minds and our consciousness won’t live on. Well, the good news is, it does. For all eternity, floating around wondering what might have been and realizing that all the time in the world does nothing to erase the fears and indecision you felt all your life. The only difference is, when you’re dead it doesn’t really matter at all, mostly like it didn’t really matter when you were alive, and that fact only makes it worse.
Tuesday, March 29, 2016
Beyond My Front Door
I hate venturing out into the world. It’s not the world I have a problem with, it’s the people that inhabit it. It starts before I even leave the house. I’ll be putting my shoes on and I already start thinking about the slack-jawed idiots and abrasive jerks that will come between me and my destination. Oddly, my destination is ultimately home again, a fact which more often than not makes me take my shoes back off and decide I can live without whatever it was I had to go get or do for another day. My laundry can always wait awhile longer. I have a whole separate store of clothes that I don’t really like to wear, but I will if I can put off conversing with someone at the laundromat for a few more days. So what if my reserve underwear is a little binding? I can endure the discomfort. Who cares if I have to wear my threadbare Frankie Say Relax t-shirt to work? Who am I trying to impress?
Also, I don’t need to like the food to eat it. If I only have some crackers, an old pack of French onion mix and a jar of capers, I can whip up something to eat so I can put off going to the supermarket today.
Alas, sometimes I cannot put it off and I have to go out.
One of the things I do, which is probably very common, is to make little stories and scenarios up about the people in the stores or in their cars. I invent a little backstory for them. Woman in a troubled marriage or on her way to a first date, man worried about his job or thinking of how he’s going to propose to his fiancé later, old married couple just waiting for each other to die so they can get some peace, that kind of thing. I really shouldn’t do that though. It just humanizes them and gets in the way of me realizing my dream of being a serial killer.
Well, not a dream, really. More of a destiny. I don’t really feel like killing people, I just don’t know how else this life can end for me. The way I see it, I’m either going to kill myself or everyone else, and I might as well try to kill everyone else first. It's like people who wish they were dead. Why punish yourself? I just wish everyone else was dead. Hence the killing everyone. Who knows? Maybe I could do it.
Probably not, though. Someone would figure it out.
With my luck, some real life Columbo will follow me around everywhere, pestering me and annoying me more than the people I murdered in the first place. The joke will be on him when I confess in the first five minutes, anything to get me away from him and into a nice, empty jail cell.
Ugh.
It already sounds like too much trouble and too much interaction with people, and again, there’s the having to leave the house thing in the first place. So you all are safe, by virtue of the fact that I already know I would just end up home again afterward, so why bother? Plus, I wouldn’t be able to tolerate even the minute or so of dealing with you before I could kill you. Talk about a dichotomy. The very thing that makes me want to kill everyone is the same thing that prevents me from doing it.
There is a certain beautiful balance in the universe. I hate it so much.
I have a cat. I call him Diogenes, and I hope you don’t know who that is and what the significance is and the irony is lost on you and I hope it makes you feel stupid. I do like the cat though, and it’s not his fault that I gave him a convoluted name that makes you feel like an asshole, so don’t take it out on him.
I like most animals, especially in comparison to humans. Yeah, I know, humans are animals too, aren’t you clever? If you’re so clever, what the fuck did you name your cat? Yeah, I thought so. Now shut up.
So most days I spend telling my cat why I like him better than people. It’s a very long list, but he is patient and sits and listens, and loves me unconditionally. At least as long as I’m the one feeding him. Sometimes I think he might be happier living with some old woman that has a cheery outlook on life and smiles all the time and talks about flowers or cookies or whatever the fuck old woman talk about to take their minds off dying. Then I realize that he would rather know the truth, even if it makes him unhappy. He still purrs, so I guess he’s made his peace with the absurdity and futility of life. Besides, he’s a cat, it’s his job to look annoyed.
Some people look at their pets as their children, but not me. I look at my cat like an equal but misinformed creature. Sure, he really has no use for most of the information I give him, but I like to think that he at least gets the general idea that people are useless. At any rate, I would rather have a hundred cats than a child.
How people can have children is beyond me. People full of self hate having little versions of themselves. That’s going to end well. Children are just little humans with a lot less self control or sense of decency. They are selfish, disgusting and have no empathy or concern for anything but what they want now. Actually, they are not that different from most adults.
Parents do their part to try to mold them into better human beings, mostly through guilt and shame, bribery or to deprive them of something they love. This teaches them nothing but the feeling that they are bad or a freak for having perfectly ordinary urges and feelings, so they grow up to be dishonest, and they better hide who they are or they will suffer and be ridiculed.
Or you could hit them, and they will grow up thinking that love is pain and the solution to every problem is violence. Or you can never hit them, and they will grow up and be shocked that the world is hard and no one cares about their precious feelings and they will spend their lives in an indignant huff and throw tantrums and feel no one is good enough.
You can’t really blame people, there’s no good way to raise a person correctly, and most parents give up by the time their kids are teenagers. They just point them out the door at eighteen, whether to college or a job, and wash their hands of the whole mess and finally get back to having disposable income to spend on drugs and pornography and whatever hobby they have talked themselves into to help pass the slow passage of time until sweet death embraces them.
Anyway, getting back to going out. For the most part, we have some say about where we will spend our time. For instance, I still enjoy going to the movies. Well, sometimes, but most of the time the movie is a horrible disappointment, made for a general population of morons that read at a 4th grade level and still think selfie sticks and rap music are a good idea. If I go to a movie though, I go at 9am on a weekday, and there is usually about three other people, misanthropes like me, and we space ourselves as far apart as the theater geometry allows.
Sometimes I wish I could start a support group for other people haters and me, then I think about the absurdity of that and just go back to wishing everyone dead, even the other’s that wish I was dead. You have to be careful with that. Sometimes you find yourself caring about others that might feel exactly like you, but you have to remind yourself that they are most likely just friendless because they are insufferable, not just a clear thinker like myself.
At any rate, there are things that you have to do and places you have to go, and the supermarket is one of those. It is life’s cruelest joke that I have to still go to the grocery store once or twice a week. Even if you go to the movies, or a museum, or a concert, you are usually there with people that at least have some of the same interests as you. Everyone has to go to the supermarket. They are all there, all wandering around in a fog, all IQ levels, all classes and cultures, all stumbling about trying to buy food to get them through another few days.
It’s like a constant reminder, played out every four or five days, smacking you in the face with the reality that most of the people in the world are being propped up by the whole of civilization and cheating the quick and lousy end evolution should visit upon them.
They continue to live on, blissfully unaware that they are dragging the rest of us down like a sacks full of dead mutant kittens that should have just died at the teat.
Please don’t misinterpret what I’m saying to support some racist or class based form of social Darwinism. I don’t care about race or poverty or social status, I just hate idiots. The world is full of them. You see them everyday, standing in line for Kevin James movies, filing in and out church, shopping at Whole Foods, driving around with NRA and Donald Trump stickers on their cars, flailing at a 4-way stop because they forget what order they arrived there in.
Morons are everywhere, and they all have some wacky opinion about things they know nothing about. Gay rights, drug laws, what women should be doing with their bodies, the world economy, global warming, whatever. Back and forth everyone goes on issue after issue, and never resolving any of it while the powers that be continue to manipulate the population based on what one group of dullards believes. These issues either shouldn’t be issues at all, or should be addressed rationally based on the evidence at hand. What do you do then when one side just refuses to believe the evidence? How do you convince a stupid person that they are stupid when they are too stupid to understand that they are indeed stupid? And we all think the other person is the stupid one, so it’s nearly impossible. Worse yet, many times the stupid one knows they are the stupid one and that just makes them fight harder.
For example, obviously the climate is changing and obviously it’s because of us, but some people just aren’t going to listen to facts. The entirety of human civilization is some segment of the population ignoring what’s really happening and then waking up one day to find themselves slaves or cannon fodder or buried in lava. When they suddenly find themselves under 10 feet of water, then they will wring their hands and wail about how no one did anything to stop it as they try to swim to higher ground. Hopefully they will sink from my view before they make it and I will watch them all go under one by one.
Or not. That implies that I am still alive and presumably on some smaller, more crowded patch of earth. If surviving means coming into contact with even more people I would just rather wash out to sea with the rest of them and eventually be devoured by hagfish on the ocean floor, finally happy and at peace.
Back to people that deny the obvious. There is a huge division between people in this country these days. Mostly it seems to be between people that accept facts and people that chose to believe that facts are dependant on whether you believe them or not. What’s worse, everyone seems to care about whether someone that is obviously in the grip of cognitive dissonance agrees with them or not. So some idiots spend their time badgering some other idiots, explaining to them why they are an idiot and what they should believe.
You are never going to get anywhere trying to explain something to someone that doesn’t want to hear it. You will hit them with some irrefutable fact, something so dire or shocking that it shake them to their core and have them on their knees, struggling with the sudden realization that they have been wrong all the time. That never happens. They will shrug it off like it was nothing and go on believing whatever wacky thing they believe.
As much as I hate people, they should all just stop trying to convert everyone into thinking like they do and making their lives even more miserable. All it does is break up friendships and family, start holy wars, and make for terrible “news” roundtable discussions on Sunday morning television. Let everyone go on in their ignorance and let them find out in the end who was right and who was wrong. Don’t deprive them of that one moment we all get. The one where we die realizing that none of that ever really mattered and now the end is here and we wish we had one more minute of life left, regretting all the time we spent arguing over what was better, Apple or Android. Or as they die by direct result of the thing they did their best to ignore. That’s really the best one. Not for them, mind you, but I find great joy in thinking about the comical look on their face as they react with utter shock that their house slide into the sea just like the house that was on the same spot a few years ago did, or when the new dictator they just supported in the coup gases their neighborhood to make room for his palace. Point is, people are going to do what they want to do, no matter what you want.
“You cannot wake a man who is pretending to sleep”
This is apparently some Indian quote. Yes, I know they are now referred to as “Native Americans”, but I find it funnier to call them Indians to remind people of the fact that as great an explorer as Columbus might have, he was too stupid to know that he wasn’t in India. Following some faulty map halfway around the world and not even questioning why he got there in half the time it was supposed to take, not to mention the fact that the people and culture, as well as the whole environment he found there didn’t match any known description of the place he was looking for. It is only fitting that the guy that discovered America was suffering from his own stubborn delusions.
I can’t really say one way or the other whether that is a wise Indian saying or if Dr. Oz said it and markets it on baseball hats. I know it is way too coherent to be Deepak Chopra, who is the other kind of correctly named Indian. The internet is full of lies and confusion, and people have a lot of time and money invested in staring at glowing screens and believing what it tells them.
So speaking of sleeping people, the supermarket is full of ugly and badly dressed humans, shuffling along, staring blankly at all the mass produced garbage made by the same three companies that supply us with our food. It’s not quite Soylent Green yet, but it might as well be. The day is coming soon when we will just grind up people and make food out of them. We grind them up and make everything else out of them, why not food? That’s the day I stop eating though and just get in line at the factory to become food. Not because I wouldn’t want to eat human beings, just because l’m hoping I’ll make a lot of people sick.
So the confused and slack jawed population meanders the aisles, and I try to get around them and get my shopping done and get out. I firmly believe that the reason zombie films and TV shows are so popular right now is because we are living vicariously through the people that get to blow the heads off of lumbering, brain dead people that are making their lives a living hell. Just like in real life, but you’re not allowed to shoot real people with a shotgun or hack them up with a machete when they’re taking too long at the deli counter.
They take too long everywhere, doing anything. I am not insane or delusional. I realize that everyone is different and approaches everything in their own way and handles it with their own tool set, for better or for worse. That said, there is no discernible rhyme or reason to the way most people do anything. Most people seem to stumble through life with no forethought or idea why they are doing anything that they happen to be doing at the moment. They drive with little regard to the minimum or maximum speed limit. They seem to have no sense of others or the world around them. You can find them standing outside their cars, looking at the door like they forgot how to get inside them. They might be looking at a slip of paper they are holding with a perplexed look on their face, like they are an amnesia victim that just came across a photo of someone they don’t recognize in their pocket. You come across them everywhere, just seemingly stopped dead in their tracks like their battery ran out, or they are rebooting.
Mostly you come across them in this state in the supermarket. Clogging the aisles with their meat and skeletons, their guidance system apparently down for a spell, so they just wait for a signal from high command to start moving again when everything is up and running again.
I used to sometimes get lunch at the salad bar. No more. If you want to see how far human civilization has regressed, just look at the state they leave a salad bar. Tongs everywhere, all the choices mixed together, dentures left in the olives. Well, maybe not that bad, but I’m sure it happened at least once. I’m not even sure why the grocery store has a salad bar. It’s like they looked at the operation and asked themselves how could we make the grocery shopping experience even more annoying and baffling?
When you look at the people using the salad bar it’s very strange. I assume people eating salads for lunch are at least trying to be healthy, yet I hardly ever see anyone that looks the least bit in shape picking over the greens. People dressed in hideous clothes that can barely contain them, with their kids screaming and putting their hands all over the food, then in their noses, then back in the food. The parents don’t seem to notice, they are too busy scanning the bins for the items that are least likely to be in a salad bar, but there they are! They always seem to load their salad with cheese and eggs and pepperoni slices, bacon bits and croutons, and then drown it in the creamiest, most fattening choice of dressing available. It’s like they are getting a snack to hold them over for the two minute ride to McDonald’s, where they can really get down to eating.
The salad bar is also loaded with things like macaroni salad, or egg salad or potato salad, and these are not really salad, people. They somehow paid off the salad association for the right to add the name to the end of whatever thing they decided to load down with mayonnaise or some other fatty cream, and because the name contains the word “salad” people think it’s healthy. I’m not sure what other countries are like, but I’m sure we’re the only one that has come to think of loaded, foot long sandwiches as health food.
Eventually I will make my way through this war zone and get to the end where I can check out and go home. I used to get mad when the self checkout lanes first appeared years ago. I got indignant, and asked the manager if I would receive a discount for scanning and bagging my own groceries. Of course, you don’t. I refused to use them because I saw it as a way to eliminate jobs, and I didn’t think it was right taking away people’s livelihoods. I soon realized though that checking my own groceries meant less interaction with people, and really, what did I care if some idiot I can’t stand loses their minimum wage job as a checkout clerk?
Early in life I didn’t care about anyone but myself. That’s typical. You haven’t learned about others and developed a strong sense of empathy. Once I learned of the horrors of the world, I started to care about people’s suffering and I tried very hard to do the right thing. This included deciding where I spent my money and not giving it to companies and corporations that used slave labor and poisoned the environment, or had political, philosophical or theological positions that I couldn’t support. When I met people with problems, people that suffered real trauma in their lives I did everything I could to help them and to show them that love made a difference.
These days I am back to the state where I don’t really care anymore. Everything I did, every time I tried to help, everyone I stood up for seemed to let me down. Nothing seemed to matter. After a while I started to realize that if the very people I was making a stand for didn’t care, why should I? Besides, nothing changes. Nothing I do matters to a billion dollar corporation or an oppressive government halfway around the world. Nothing I do even matters to those that claimed to love me.
Getting involved means getting hurt, and I have had enough of that, thank you.
It always strikes me funny though, that as disgusted and put upon as I am, whenever I encounter someone with a baby or small child, that child always looks at me and smiles. It’s like they can see something I can’t even see in myself. I stand in line behind them, or try to navigate around them and their stupid parents to get at the fresh produce. I try to glower harder at them, as if to let them know what they’re in for. A lifetime of pain and misery, disappointment and heartbreak over and over again until they wind up like me, broken and alone.
It kills me that they keep on smiling though, and sometimes they try to say something to me, but usually I can’t understand them and that’s even more frustrating. The worst part is, that usually I end up smiling back in spite of myself, and that seems to make them happier. It’s like they get joy out of turning me into a mockery of myself, and try as I might to hate those happy laughing babies for it, I still can’t help the smile that creeps across my face.
Sometimes their mother notices, and she smiles too. Now I have inadvertently brought joy to two people, and it sickens me. Why do they do this to me? Why do those babies with their innocent smiles and untainted happiness have to remind me of what the world could be like, and that it’s too late for me?
I hurry out of the store and leave the mocking babies behind. I’ll be damned if their faces don’t stay with me though.
Out in the parking lot, I always notice that no one returns their shopping carts to the holding pen. Fucking people and their inconsiderate ways. Just leaving their carts in the middle of the lot to get in the way. Probably some harried mother just trying to get the shopping done and struggling trying to balance a home and job and she probably has her mean spirited baby with her. Like that’s an excuse. Or is it?
What the hell was my point anyway?
I don’t want to do this anymore.
I need to get back home.
Also, I don’t need to like the food to eat it. If I only have some crackers, an old pack of French onion mix and a jar of capers, I can whip up something to eat so I can put off going to the supermarket today.
Alas, sometimes I cannot put it off and I have to go out.
One of the things I do, which is probably very common, is to make little stories and scenarios up about the people in the stores or in their cars. I invent a little backstory for them. Woman in a troubled marriage or on her way to a first date, man worried about his job or thinking of how he’s going to propose to his fiancé later, old married couple just waiting for each other to die so they can get some peace, that kind of thing. I really shouldn’t do that though. It just humanizes them and gets in the way of me realizing my dream of being a serial killer.
Well, not a dream, really. More of a destiny. I don’t really feel like killing people, I just don’t know how else this life can end for me. The way I see it, I’m either going to kill myself or everyone else, and I might as well try to kill everyone else first. It's like people who wish they were dead. Why punish yourself? I just wish everyone else was dead. Hence the killing everyone. Who knows? Maybe I could do it.
Probably not, though. Someone would figure it out.
With my luck, some real life Columbo will follow me around everywhere, pestering me and annoying me more than the people I murdered in the first place. The joke will be on him when I confess in the first five minutes, anything to get me away from him and into a nice, empty jail cell.
Ugh.
It already sounds like too much trouble and too much interaction with people, and again, there’s the having to leave the house thing in the first place. So you all are safe, by virtue of the fact that I already know I would just end up home again afterward, so why bother? Plus, I wouldn’t be able to tolerate even the minute or so of dealing with you before I could kill you. Talk about a dichotomy. The very thing that makes me want to kill everyone is the same thing that prevents me from doing it.
There is a certain beautiful balance in the universe. I hate it so much.
I have a cat. I call him Diogenes, and I hope you don’t know who that is and what the significance is and the irony is lost on you and I hope it makes you feel stupid. I do like the cat though, and it’s not his fault that I gave him a convoluted name that makes you feel like an asshole, so don’t take it out on him.
I like most animals, especially in comparison to humans. Yeah, I know, humans are animals too, aren’t you clever? If you’re so clever, what the fuck did you name your cat? Yeah, I thought so. Now shut up.
So most days I spend telling my cat why I like him better than people. It’s a very long list, but he is patient and sits and listens, and loves me unconditionally. At least as long as I’m the one feeding him. Sometimes I think he might be happier living with some old woman that has a cheery outlook on life and smiles all the time and talks about flowers or cookies or whatever the fuck old woman talk about to take their minds off dying. Then I realize that he would rather know the truth, even if it makes him unhappy. He still purrs, so I guess he’s made his peace with the absurdity and futility of life. Besides, he’s a cat, it’s his job to look annoyed.
Some people look at their pets as their children, but not me. I look at my cat like an equal but misinformed creature. Sure, he really has no use for most of the information I give him, but I like to think that he at least gets the general idea that people are useless. At any rate, I would rather have a hundred cats than a child.
How people can have children is beyond me. People full of self hate having little versions of themselves. That’s going to end well. Children are just little humans with a lot less self control or sense of decency. They are selfish, disgusting and have no empathy or concern for anything but what they want now. Actually, they are not that different from most adults.
Parents do their part to try to mold them into better human beings, mostly through guilt and shame, bribery or to deprive them of something they love. This teaches them nothing but the feeling that they are bad or a freak for having perfectly ordinary urges and feelings, so they grow up to be dishonest, and they better hide who they are or they will suffer and be ridiculed.
Or you could hit them, and they will grow up thinking that love is pain and the solution to every problem is violence. Or you can never hit them, and they will grow up and be shocked that the world is hard and no one cares about their precious feelings and they will spend their lives in an indignant huff and throw tantrums and feel no one is good enough.
You can’t really blame people, there’s no good way to raise a person correctly, and most parents give up by the time their kids are teenagers. They just point them out the door at eighteen, whether to college or a job, and wash their hands of the whole mess and finally get back to having disposable income to spend on drugs and pornography and whatever hobby they have talked themselves into to help pass the slow passage of time until sweet death embraces them.
Anyway, getting back to going out. For the most part, we have some say about where we will spend our time. For instance, I still enjoy going to the movies. Well, sometimes, but most of the time the movie is a horrible disappointment, made for a general population of morons that read at a 4th grade level and still think selfie sticks and rap music are a good idea. If I go to a movie though, I go at 9am on a weekday, and there is usually about three other people, misanthropes like me, and we space ourselves as far apart as the theater geometry allows.
Sometimes I wish I could start a support group for other people haters and me, then I think about the absurdity of that and just go back to wishing everyone dead, even the other’s that wish I was dead. You have to be careful with that. Sometimes you find yourself caring about others that might feel exactly like you, but you have to remind yourself that they are most likely just friendless because they are insufferable, not just a clear thinker like myself.
At any rate, there are things that you have to do and places you have to go, and the supermarket is one of those. It is life’s cruelest joke that I have to still go to the grocery store once or twice a week. Even if you go to the movies, or a museum, or a concert, you are usually there with people that at least have some of the same interests as you. Everyone has to go to the supermarket. They are all there, all wandering around in a fog, all IQ levels, all classes and cultures, all stumbling about trying to buy food to get them through another few days.
It’s like a constant reminder, played out every four or five days, smacking you in the face with the reality that most of the people in the world are being propped up by the whole of civilization and cheating the quick and lousy end evolution should visit upon them.
They continue to live on, blissfully unaware that they are dragging the rest of us down like a sacks full of dead mutant kittens that should have just died at the teat.
Please don’t misinterpret what I’m saying to support some racist or class based form of social Darwinism. I don’t care about race or poverty or social status, I just hate idiots. The world is full of them. You see them everyday, standing in line for Kevin James movies, filing in and out church, shopping at Whole Foods, driving around with NRA and Donald Trump stickers on their cars, flailing at a 4-way stop because they forget what order they arrived there in.
Morons are everywhere, and they all have some wacky opinion about things they know nothing about. Gay rights, drug laws, what women should be doing with their bodies, the world economy, global warming, whatever. Back and forth everyone goes on issue after issue, and never resolving any of it while the powers that be continue to manipulate the population based on what one group of dullards believes. These issues either shouldn’t be issues at all, or should be addressed rationally based on the evidence at hand. What do you do then when one side just refuses to believe the evidence? How do you convince a stupid person that they are stupid when they are too stupid to understand that they are indeed stupid? And we all think the other person is the stupid one, so it’s nearly impossible. Worse yet, many times the stupid one knows they are the stupid one and that just makes them fight harder.
For example, obviously the climate is changing and obviously it’s because of us, but some people just aren’t going to listen to facts. The entirety of human civilization is some segment of the population ignoring what’s really happening and then waking up one day to find themselves slaves or cannon fodder or buried in lava. When they suddenly find themselves under 10 feet of water, then they will wring their hands and wail about how no one did anything to stop it as they try to swim to higher ground. Hopefully they will sink from my view before they make it and I will watch them all go under one by one.
Or not. That implies that I am still alive and presumably on some smaller, more crowded patch of earth. If surviving means coming into contact with even more people I would just rather wash out to sea with the rest of them and eventually be devoured by hagfish on the ocean floor, finally happy and at peace.
Back to people that deny the obvious. There is a huge division between people in this country these days. Mostly it seems to be between people that accept facts and people that chose to believe that facts are dependant on whether you believe them or not. What’s worse, everyone seems to care about whether someone that is obviously in the grip of cognitive dissonance agrees with them or not. So some idiots spend their time badgering some other idiots, explaining to them why they are an idiot and what they should believe.
You are never going to get anywhere trying to explain something to someone that doesn’t want to hear it. You will hit them with some irrefutable fact, something so dire or shocking that it shake them to their core and have them on their knees, struggling with the sudden realization that they have been wrong all the time. That never happens. They will shrug it off like it was nothing and go on believing whatever wacky thing they believe.
As much as I hate people, they should all just stop trying to convert everyone into thinking like they do and making their lives even more miserable. All it does is break up friendships and family, start holy wars, and make for terrible “news” roundtable discussions on Sunday morning television. Let everyone go on in their ignorance and let them find out in the end who was right and who was wrong. Don’t deprive them of that one moment we all get. The one where we die realizing that none of that ever really mattered and now the end is here and we wish we had one more minute of life left, regretting all the time we spent arguing over what was better, Apple or Android. Or as they die by direct result of the thing they did their best to ignore. That’s really the best one. Not for them, mind you, but I find great joy in thinking about the comical look on their face as they react with utter shock that their house slide into the sea just like the house that was on the same spot a few years ago did, or when the new dictator they just supported in the coup gases their neighborhood to make room for his palace. Point is, people are going to do what they want to do, no matter what you want.
“You cannot wake a man who is pretending to sleep”
This is apparently some Indian quote. Yes, I know they are now referred to as “Native Americans”, but I find it funnier to call them Indians to remind people of the fact that as great an explorer as Columbus might have, he was too stupid to know that he wasn’t in India. Following some faulty map halfway around the world and not even questioning why he got there in half the time it was supposed to take, not to mention the fact that the people and culture, as well as the whole environment he found there didn’t match any known description of the place he was looking for. It is only fitting that the guy that discovered America was suffering from his own stubborn delusions.
I can’t really say one way or the other whether that is a wise Indian saying or if Dr. Oz said it and markets it on baseball hats. I know it is way too coherent to be Deepak Chopra, who is the other kind of correctly named Indian. The internet is full of lies and confusion, and people have a lot of time and money invested in staring at glowing screens and believing what it tells them.
So speaking of sleeping people, the supermarket is full of ugly and badly dressed humans, shuffling along, staring blankly at all the mass produced garbage made by the same three companies that supply us with our food. It’s not quite Soylent Green yet, but it might as well be. The day is coming soon when we will just grind up people and make food out of them. We grind them up and make everything else out of them, why not food? That’s the day I stop eating though and just get in line at the factory to become food. Not because I wouldn’t want to eat human beings, just because l’m hoping I’ll make a lot of people sick.
So the confused and slack jawed population meanders the aisles, and I try to get around them and get my shopping done and get out. I firmly believe that the reason zombie films and TV shows are so popular right now is because we are living vicariously through the people that get to blow the heads off of lumbering, brain dead people that are making their lives a living hell. Just like in real life, but you’re not allowed to shoot real people with a shotgun or hack them up with a machete when they’re taking too long at the deli counter.
They take too long everywhere, doing anything. I am not insane or delusional. I realize that everyone is different and approaches everything in their own way and handles it with their own tool set, for better or for worse. That said, there is no discernible rhyme or reason to the way most people do anything. Most people seem to stumble through life with no forethought or idea why they are doing anything that they happen to be doing at the moment. They drive with little regard to the minimum or maximum speed limit. They seem to have no sense of others or the world around them. You can find them standing outside their cars, looking at the door like they forgot how to get inside them. They might be looking at a slip of paper they are holding with a perplexed look on their face, like they are an amnesia victim that just came across a photo of someone they don’t recognize in their pocket. You come across them everywhere, just seemingly stopped dead in their tracks like their battery ran out, or they are rebooting.
Mostly you come across them in this state in the supermarket. Clogging the aisles with their meat and skeletons, their guidance system apparently down for a spell, so they just wait for a signal from high command to start moving again when everything is up and running again.
I used to sometimes get lunch at the salad bar. No more. If you want to see how far human civilization has regressed, just look at the state they leave a salad bar. Tongs everywhere, all the choices mixed together, dentures left in the olives. Well, maybe not that bad, but I’m sure it happened at least once. I’m not even sure why the grocery store has a salad bar. It’s like they looked at the operation and asked themselves how could we make the grocery shopping experience even more annoying and baffling?
When you look at the people using the salad bar it’s very strange. I assume people eating salads for lunch are at least trying to be healthy, yet I hardly ever see anyone that looks the least bit in shape picking over the greens. People dressed in hideous clothes that can barely contain them, with their kids screaming and putting their hands all over the food, then in their noses, then back in the food. The parents don’t seem to notice, they are too busy scanning the bins for the items that are least likely to be in a salad bar, but there they are! They always seem to load their salad with cheese and eggs and pepperoni slices, bacon bits and croutons, and then drown it in the creamiest, most fattening choice of dressing available. It’s like they are getting a snack to hold them over for the two minute ride to McDonald’s, where they can really get down to eating.
The salad bar is also loaded with things like macaroni salad, or egg salad or potato salad, and these are not really salad, people. They somehow paid off the salad association for the right to add the name to the end of whatever thing they decided to load down with mayonnaise or some other fatty cream, and because the name contains the word “salad” people think it’s healthy. I’m not sure what other countries are like, but I’m sure we’re the only one that has come to think of loaded, foot long sandwiches as health food.
Eventually I will make my way through this war zone and get to the end where I can check out and go home. I used to get mad when the self checkout lanes first appeared years ago. I got indignant, and asked the manager if I would receive a discount for scanning and bagging my own groceries. Of course, you don’t. I refused to use them because I saw it as a way to eliminate jobs, and I didn’t think it was right taking away people’s livelihoods. I soon realized though that checking my own groceries meant less interaction with people, and really, what did I care if some idiot I can’t stand loses their minimum wage job as a checkout clerk?
Early in life I didn’t care about anyone but myself. That’s typical. You haven’t learned about others and developed a strong sense of empathy. Once I learned of the horrors of the world, I started to care about people’s suffering and I tried very hard to do the right thing. This included deciding where I spent my money and not giving it to companies and corporations that used slave labor and poisoned the environment, or had political, philosophical or theological positions that I couldn’t support. When I met people with problems, people that suffered real trauma in their lives I did everything I could to help them and to show them that love made a difference.
These days I am back to the state where I don’t really care anymore. Everything I did, every time I tried to help, everyone I stood up for seemed to let me down. Nothing seemed to matter. After a while I started to realize that if the very people I was making a stand for didn’t care, why should I? Besides, nothing changes. Nothing I do matters to a billion dollar corporation or an oppressive government halfway around the world. Nothing I do even matters to those that claimed to love me.
Getting involved means getting hurt, and I have had enough of that, thank you.
It always strikes me funny though, that as disgusted and put upon as I am, whenever I encounter someone with a baby or small child, that child always looks at me and smiles. It’s like they can see something I can’t even see in myself. I stand in line behind them, or try to navigate around them and their stupid parents to get at the fresh produce. I try to glower harder at them, as if to let them know what they’re in for. A lifetime of pain and misery, disappointment and heartbreak over and over again until they wind up like me, broken and alone.
It kills me that they keep on smiling though, and sometimes they try to say something to me, but usually I can’t understand them and that’s even more frustrating. The worst part is, that usually I end up smiling back in spite of myself, and that seems to make them happier. It’s like they get joy out of turning me into a mockery of myself, and try as I might to hate those happy laughing babies for it, I still can’t help the smile that creeps across my face.
Sometimes their mother notices, and she smiles too. Now I have inadvertently brought joy to two people, and it sickens me. Why do they do this to me? Why do those babies with their innocent smiles and untainted happiness have to remind me of what the world could be like, and that it’s too late for me?
I hurry out of the store and leave the mocking babies behind. I’ll be damned if their faces don’t stay with me though.
Out in the parking lot, I always notice that no one returns their shopping carts to the holding pen. Fucking people and their inconsiderate ways. Just leaving their carts in the middle of the lot to get in the way. Probably some harried mother just trying to get the shopping done and struggling trying to balance a home and job and she probably has her mean spirited baby with her. Like that’s an excuse. Or is it?
What the hell was my point anyway?
I don’t want to do this anymore.
I need to get back home.
Thursday, April 16, 2015
Excerpts From A Ghost’s Diary Part 2
Hi there
diary. I haven’t written in you for a
few weeks, what with the New Year and all.
The holidays are a busy time for ghosts.
All the family atmosphere and remembrances of the past really get things
stirred up in the ether. All the ghosts
can seem to do during this time is circle the living and blather on about past
glories and how much someone misses them or talks about them.
Not me. There were people in my life I loved and cared
for, but that part of my existence is over now.
I try not to dwell on my memories, it just makes me nostalgic and
melancholy, and I don’t want to turn into one of those wailing, hand-wringing,
walking the parapet type of spirits I run into all too often. They never moved on, never grew, never
discovered new and interesting things about the world and themselves. You can be chained to the past when you’re
alive and when you’re dead, and it’s an unfulfilling existence either way.
Of course, when I
was alive I never really took advantage of all my opportunities. Often I was held back by laziness, or more
often fear of the unknown. Well, not
really so much the unknown, more like fear of looking foolish, or appearing
that I didn’t know what I was doing.
Anxiety held me back from doing so much in life. I missed out on countless adventures,
romances, a million little joys I could have experienced but didn’t.
I missed out on
some injuries, to my body and self esteem, and some heartbreak, I’m sure, but
that stuff goes with the territory. The
bad things that happen along the way are lessons you can learn from, or
sometimes scars to be proud of. Some of
the emotional pain can be debilitating, but if you learn to let it go and leave
it in the past you find you can live with it there. Rather than keep revisiting the past and
reliving the trauma I should have moved on to the next thing to see what that
might bring.
When you’re dead
you can really see how much of your life you wasted while you were living.
That’s why I want
to move on and do more interesting things now that I’m dead. I have nothing to fear, from physical harm or
the opinions of other spirits. Strange
though, that I still feel a little uncomfortable for a moment whenever I realize
another ghost is watching me or when I float into a new place. I guess that never completely leaves
you. I suppose that’s because even
though I’m not human anymore I’m still not a sociopath. I still have empathy, even if it manifests
itself in negative ways at times.
Not like
poltergeists. Some of them are just
mischievous, but most of them have lost whatever humanity they may have
possessed when they were alive. They
care about no one and no thing, and have no understanding of the consequences
their actions have on the world around them.
They just tear through the spirit world, selfishly not caring who they
hurt or upset. In one respect I’m
thankful in that ghosts really can’t do too much to affect the living
world. There are some spirits here that
would make the worst serial killers in history look like amateurs.
Fortunately for
people, most ghosts are just sad, self-absorbed wretches wandering for eternity,
reliving the past again and again, harmless and no more dead now than when they
were alive.
I was thinking
about what I wrote a couple of weeks ago about doing new things. I have found something that brings me a
little joy, but I admit it’s rather trite.
I have taken to
messing with parapsychologists. Ghost
hunters, they call themselves. I hate to
break it to you, but no one is really any better than anyone else when it comes
to detecting ghosts. In fact, a lot of things you associate with ghost behavior
has nothing to do with us.
Sure, we can
sometimes manifest a faint apparition of ourselves if the conditions are just
right and we exert a lot of effort. Most
ghosts either don’t know how or can’t be bothered. I don’t even know how, but I am trying to
figure it out. I have asked a few other
ghosts if they know how to do it, but they all just look at me like I’m
crazy. Be thankful they can’t all appear
to humans. You would live your life in
an eldritch fog, everything obscured by all the barely opaque beings crowded everywhere.
I really haven’t
gotten anywhere with it and I will probably just quit trying. One thing I have learned to do is manipulate
the ether so it produces vibrations in the air that the living interprets as
sound. I can’t make any intelligible
words, but that doesn’t matter. The
bozos with their ghost equipment will hear whatever they want to hear.
They get so
excited! They try to give me commands, things to do to let them know if I can
understand them. The trick is to never
do anything exactly the way they request. That way no one is ever really sure. That’s the fun of it, at least for me.
Of course, we
probably can’t do what they want. Interacting with the physical world is really
hard and takes a lot out of you, and there is no real precision involved. Besides the faint noises, I have only ever
managed to manipulate anything physical once or twice, and even then it was
barely noticed.
Swinging
chandeliers, slamming doors, all that stuff is not us. Once in a while a really determined
poltergeist might make something fall off of a table, but that’s about it. None of us are speaking through anyone, none
of us are making tables float or moving Ouija boards.
In many ways we
are just like most of the living, floating through life hardly affecting the world
as we pass through.
Today is
Valentine’s Day. If you think it was
depressing when you were alive, imagine how it is when you’re dead. Anyone you ever loved has moved on. They are in new relationships and while they
may think of you from time to time, they don’t really care anymore. In that respect, it’s a lot like when you’re
alive, I suppose.
I see a lot of
things in relationships that you people never get to see. I see how couples act when they are alone
together, and then I also see how those people act when that other person isn’t
around. I will tell you this, and I’m
not saying it to make you nervous or to feel bad about your relationship, but
you never really know another person.
Never.
You think you do. You tell yourself that you are someone’s soul
mate, that they complete you. You
believe everything they tell you because you have to believe it. You couldn’t be in love if you didn’t. The majority of it is nothing very
devastating. Everyone wears some
different masks for different occasions.
Little white lies to spare someone’s feelings, just keeping quiet
because you think the other person couldn’t handle some weird thing you feel.
Every single
person has someone outside their relationship that they bitch to constantly
about their significant other. You
expect that.
I see most people
deceive their mates on a regular basis though.
I’m not talking about little things.
I see people cheating, lying, sometimes having a whole other life that
their partner doesn’t even know about.
Sex, drugs, sometimes even things that are just hobbies or activities
that are relatively harmless, but they never let the other person know
about. So many people do these little
(or big) things behind their lovers backs just to prove that they can. I think all lovers carry around a little
resentment for each other. Perhaps it’s
because even though they are happy and in love, they had to give up a little of
their freedom, a little of themselves to get it.
It’s a way of making them feel that they
aren’t being controlled or told what to do, even in instances where no one is
doing those things. Of course, many
times they are.
From my invisible
vantage point I can see how so many things people say to each other carry
undertones of insecurity and suspicion.
Most of the things people talk about are very self-serving, and it’s just
them crying out “don’t leave me!” but never really telling the other what they
really need to hear.
Mostly people don’t
want an answer to a direct question. You
want to be reassured while not digging any deeper than you have to lest you
learn something you don’t want to know.
I spent much of my life wondering what the people I was with really felt about me and if any of them
ever truly loved me.
Then one day you're a ghost and you realize that you knew the answers all along.
Then one day you're a ghost and you realize that you knew the answers all along.
© David Ferraris 2015
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)