Category: Rage

A pissed off mother of No Toast

I’m Not a Bigger Person

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Have you ever sat up nights dreaming of someone’s demise? Have you ever focused so hard on someone getting their just desserts only to be disappointed by their head not exploding? Have you ever envisioned that someone running so hard, running hard but slower than you, from a bear?

Or are you lame?

Hm?

Don’t give me the “forgiveness” diatribe, either. Fuck forgiveness.

I read the best news today. I can’t wait for the rest and I hope it hurts. God, I hope it hurts someone responsible.

UCSD Investigated for Bullying

I’d explain more but I’m too busy celebrating these people who had the cajones and credibility to stand up to a system that has encouraged systematic abuse and unethical behavior. There’s more unearthing to go yet and I hope it gets muddy.

Keep on, heroes, for the countless number of us who never got our moment. We’re cheering for you every step.

And Throw In Something Witchy

Charles-mansonbookingphoto

One of my favorite quotes of all time is one by Charles Manson.

“Do what you do, do it well…and throw in something witchy.”

Now, before you get outraged, there’s a reason it’s my favorite and not what you’re probably assuming.

I don’t like it because it’s creepy/scary and makes me all shivery—it doesn’t. I don’t like it because it’s counterculture and I’m some misinformed hippie—I’m certainly not.

I like it because it’s rare to sum up someone’s true ethic—a glimpse inside their true self—from one little quote.

What this quote means, and he himself has admitted to it, is that he didn’t really care why his followers were going to do what they did as long as they did what he said, and did it well. He told them what they wanted to hear to motivate them (aided by a lot of speed and LSD.) He didn’t care about the state of race relations in the U.S. or starting a race war. He just wanted to hurt people as he’d felt he’d been hurt. He wanted to hurt and he wanted to make headlines.

Manson knew that if Tex Watson was to “throw in something witchy” along with the brutal murders,  the press would go crazy for it. And they did.

Manson was right but he’s not a genius. He’s an opportunist. He rode a societal wave that handed him vulnerable people who fulfilled what he was lacking and were fulfilled by him what they lacked. It’s mundane.

Charles Manson wasn’t and isn’t some Svengali. He wasn’t and isn’t some evil, demonic minion of Satan. He’s a man who hated his lot in life; who had a lot of anger towards everyone who got to enjoy a life he never got to enjoy. He is someone who happened to be at a place in geography and time where shoveling out answers to people already grasping for them happened to dovetail sweetly with his one charismatic skill.

Charles Manson was an happenstance-opportunist who got “lucky”. Lucky for him, not lucky for anyone who happened across his path. Lucky because he got what he wanted his whole life: acknowledgement, out of a life of irrelevance.

And that’s what he is, a “lucky”, angry, vengeful, opportunistic little man. And that’s all.

He’s human.

All of this stems from a preview I just saw of an upcoming ABC show “reminiscing” about the “evil” that is Charles Manson. There is no evil here. It’s human nature, whether you deem him devil or angel.

Despite the fact that they are gifting this man with what he’d always wanted, and what drove him to do what he did by revitalizing it…they are also perpetuating a myth about human nature that I find more disturbing.

Again, Charles Manson isn’t a devil. He’s human.

The myth is the push, the need, to deem people who commit terrible acts as evil or crazy or inhuman…the need to see people who commit horrific acts as anyone other than ourselves. I get it. I understand.

But to do that is ignorant, lazy, and cowardly.

Ignorant for not seeing that everyone in every way has influence. One can be a hermit, living in a cave, yet that runoff from their sewage is poisoning the plants, killing the bees that should pollinate the vegetables miles away. Ignorant for hoping that we’re separate entities who hold no responsibility for anyone else’s existence. It is simply not true. Not knowing or acknowledging your influence doesn’t lessen its effect.

Lazy because shame on you to anyone who thinks, “Hey, not in my yard.” And shame on you again.

Cowardly because we need to acknowledge that it IS our responsibility. Not addressing what’s causing and perpetuating whatever is your concern, makes you a coward. To think that you or a group of you can’t make a difference, is cowardly. To stand behind the excuse that, “nothing changes” is cowardly.

(Did you know that writing to your state’s congresspersons about your particular issue sways how they vote about…well, everything? Everyone? Who YOU are to be in this community and your power in it?)

Write your congressperson

It’s all of our responsibility to know what we’re doing for all of our fellow humans. Good, bad, and irritating. Because if we don’t, we get Manson.  He didn’t start off bad. He got his shit handed to him hand-over-fist. It made him bitter, angry, violently vengeful.  He was a kid that grew up in a shit-hole existence; uneducated, unguided, and uncared for.

It’s no excuse but it was all preventable.

I do blame him. But I also blame us.

Giving Manson a special on TV reassuring us that he is different, “evil”, “the devil”, and “powerful” is taking away our responsibility for helping to create the monster out of a boy.

Just because you don’t know anyone on the wrong-side-of-the-tracks doesn’t make you less responsible for the three-strikes law. Ignorance doesn’t validate you for voting in programs that promote incarceration and recidivism instead of rehabilitation. Turning a blind-eye doesn’t excuse your hand in this because you don’t want the icky-ness in your yard.

Charles Manson is an extreme example of what can happen when you’re born into a world that beats you from day one, where anger is your only connection, where violence is your only outlet.

He’s not the devil, he’s a possible outcome.

And it’s all our fault.

Beautiful Day for a Bitchy Rant

BoschHere’s a little tip; something you may not know about me. A Pro-Mo tip, if you will. There’s no real reason why you should know this so don’t get all angsty for not knowing something, even though I’m totally appalled at your misstep. How can I count on you, faithful reader, to properly stalk me and compile a truly complete dossier on my extraordinarily exciting life if you have these gaping holes in your research? Huh? Shameful, really.

I’ll let you slide this time.

This little tidbit of info is difficult to admit to because of the stigma that surrounds it. I would like to preface this ‘reveal’ by saying, please don’t pigeonhole me by my admitting it. Just because I indulge in this activity doesn’t mean I’m one of them. I promise you, I’m not. Besides, there are functional research reasons for doing it. Kind of like social research to better understand the strange creatures…out there. Outside. You know, public. Ugh. Yuck.

Anyway, here it is: I watch daytime TV. I don’t just watch daytime TV but am quite religious about catching the 3pm “Dr. Phil “and then almost immediately taking a nap. I can’t help the nap part. Something about wanting to pretend it was all a dream or just being soothed by that holier-than-thou, sanctimonious Texas drawl that puts me to sleep.

Also, the other reason for watching is that Dr. Phil actually did do me a tremendous amount of good once.

There was a time that I was subjected to complete bullshit perpetuated by a mannish-looking whore who somehow slimed into my life for 15 years and then left it explosively, leaving a trail of sour-smelling drug store fragrance and half-decomposed roofie-puke. Upset and confused as to why I would allow someone like that to share my same existence instead of stomping on it like the slug she is, Dr. Phil talked me through it. Of course not me specifically but, during his self-congratulatory hour every day, he was able to convince me that there are people out there that just suck.

Very much unlike Oprah, Dr. Phil doesn’t ask that you, us, we accept that all people may have pasts that cause their evilness so therefore we must empathize with them. He admits that there are some people out there that just suck, who are truly evil, and to just get the fuck away from them. I like that. The “Oprahfication of America is over,” to quote another self-righteous, sanctimonious character.

(And if you can guess where that quote is from, message me. We can toss quotes to each other from all 20 seasons. I’m not ashamed to admit where it comes from. I’m just curious if anyone else can place it. )

I find this refreshing. Refreshing because there is something doubly injurious to take away the anger and resentment rightfully owed by justifying another’s evilness through their demons and I want that to stop. All this bypassing of responsibility is making my head spin.

–There’s a point here, I swear. Somewhere. Cut me some slack, my chick-ness demands that I talk in circles. I can hang with the dudes but I’m still a chick no matter how much better I can swear than they can.–

What was that point? Oh! Evilness.

A while ago, I met up with an old “friend”. She was a former BFF from middle school who is one of those evil people. Just like the man-whore who insinuated herself into my pristine adorable existence except meaner. Sure, she has a past and feelings that were maybe stepped on and because of that she could still be a festering, hopefully infected, sore from all of it, but…

Fuck her for taking it out on me.

As opposed to the slut, the depth of this canker sore’s evil is much deeper, more sinister, crueler, and, if it weren’t unleashed on me, somewhat admirable in its insidiousness.

Long story short, –yeah, yeah, yeah, shut up– having reached out to this festering boil to make amends over my completely erroneous impression that I, too, was somehow at fault for our falling out, she took it upon herself to inject her venom in me yet again, almost 30 years later. The conversation we had was over 2 years ago and I’m still pissed. I’m still angry about how she tried to make me feel and now even more pissed that I’m allowing her to rent out my head. You can’t learn that kind of evil skill, it’s born. It’s burst forth like some Bosch-style nightmare creature born out the ass of Satan trailing mung fish minions.

dog thing bosch

Not only did this diseased-freak-of-a-human imply that she, and other small people I had known, spent an unusually long period of time discussing the cruelties I had inflicted on them 30 years prior. Sitting around spewing fecal tales about me that were untrue and then had the audacity to tell me about it, it comes to my attention she lied about all of it.

I don’t know why that lying part galls me so much. I don’t put it past her to do something so intentionally mean because I don’t put it past her to do anything mean. What I didn’t expect was ANYONE doing that. It’s so beyond any consideration, will, or energy of mine to bother.

Because of my lack of ingenuity, I guess, here it is 30 years later and I’m stupid enough to extend an olive branch so we can both go on about our lives without baggage. Yet she comes slithering in carrying a steam-trunk full of bile and vitriol, holding it out for me to take like a porter on the Titanic. I should’ve known even though I didn’t.

Back to Dr. Phil…

One of his go-to’s is this piece of advice that has served me well after the fact. He says, in essence, that as good people, we can’t anticipate or know how really evil people can hurt us, because, as good people, we can’t imagine it. It is beyond our capabilities as decent people to produce imaginations so indecent, much less act on them, that we can’t prepare. It’s like when people assume that getting murdered would be the worst thing that can happen to someone. It’s not. It’s so, very much, not. There are far worse things in this world people do to others that would make them beg for death. You don’t want to know what those things are, just assume you never want that kind of knowledge.

Knowing this about them, however, doesn’t make you better able to prepare yourself for that kind of evil. You can’t prepare against something you don’t know exists. You can steel yourself. You can move cautiously. You can decide to not assume a polite, politically-correct stance that flies in the face of intuitive caution regardless of how rude it may seem.

Because it’s better to offend someone when the other outcome is to bleed profusely out of a hole made in your neck by some hate-filled assfuck you crossed paths with, only because you didn’t want to seem rude, despite what your nagging intuition told you. Because being rude is not the worst thing out there.

Remembering that there are worse things out there, as Dr. Phil has suggested, may be the thing that keeps me in the future from getting too close to the evil I know not of. Being cautious and keeping my guard up could possibly save me from having to write another long-winded rant about some worthless piece-of-shit who insulted me just for fun two years later.

garden boschDon’t get me wrong. I’m not naive. I know that the scandalous, entirely-surgically-modified-except-for-the-huge-Adam’s-apple-that’s-not-fooing-anyone whore, and the waste-of-oxygen hate-filled throat-aerator, and even this last slimy Hell-baby who’ve skittered their way into my life aren’t the faces of extreme evil. They are blips on the scale. They wouldn’t have, however, wreaked as much damage as they did had I been a little more cautious; had I been a little more conscious; a little less idealistic. Armed now with Dr. Phil’s podunk-idiom-rich advice, I’m praying that I can at least deflect other stupid fucks from getting close enough to reach me. It’s not much but it’s something.

I’m not 100% sure what my point is, really, now that I have written circles around it. It could be that I have a blog that I can write whatever I want, which today is a vulgar, profanity-filled rant about assholes who deserve to be called assholes. Or it’s that Dr. Phil isn’t as bad as he seems, maybe having a good lesson to share, seeing as his show really has helped me when I needed it. Or that I’d rather no one think I’m one of those people who sit around all day watching crappy TV and comparing it to nothing concrete because I don’t leave the house and by writing something about all of that using an occasional 50 cent word makes me feel justified in my “research” continuing. Who cares. I feel better.

Total lack of point notwithstanding, it’s time to go. Dr. Phil is airing soon and I need some ice cream and grab a nap, I mean, work.

And kids? Watch your back.

–NTZ

 

 

Reflections on the Moon

Laugh, Goddamnit, or I’ll cut you.

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Don’t fall for its deceitful beauty

The moon was so amazing tonight. So much so that I even pulled my head out of my ass long enough to, not just notice but, remember and still be thinking about it when it’s already packed up its game and moved on to another house to play.

Cherishing a memory of what is actually a mundane, everyday occurrence, of its rising and moving on, its blind automation, doing what it’s been doing for billions of years, exemplifies the moon’s profound effect on us. So profound that it pulls our bodies, hearts, and minds to directions we don’t tend to normally swerve. It has a physical, emotional, mental, spiritual pull on us that, unless you’re trying to be oppositive just to be a dick, is undeniable.

Of course, it just could be my mood.

It could be the “reflective” part of my PMS swing. The part that is deep, contemplative, meaningful…right before the terror begins.

The thoughtful phase is a good one. It keeps me mindful of where we all come from, where we all began, and how we’re all to return. You know, earthy. Once in a while, everyone needs to feel the Earth, the Moon and the stars in their body and soul. Especially before a knife-wielding banshee comes flying through the door demanding ice cream.

You’re going to want to know your God then, my friend.

My thoughtful reflectiveness, or “soul petting” as I’ve only just made up now, entirely depends each time on how late in the evening it is and how much wine I’ve had, whether I’m getting along with my mate and if he needs to be drawn up and quartered, and/or the imbalance in my hormones that is tied to the pull of the moon and how God hates me. All determining the severity in which I’m going to take it out on you.

Granted, my getting along with my mate and his “moods”, (I mean, come on, moods? Men don’t know moods. Am I right, ladies?) or how much wine I’ve had, has nothing to do with these particular quirks in my day-to-day swings. Those things don’t really cause how badly you’re going to have to endure the destruction of the release of the Kraken. It has everything to do with that beautiful, hateful, deceiving moon and, its absentee landlord, gravity.

There is science to back up my assertions but I’m not going to bore you with all the technical shit. And I’m especially not going to read right now in order to explain it. But it’s true: the moon’s gravitational pull has an immense effect on, you know, cycles. Don’t make me say it. Let’s be adults here and act like adults. Let’s insinuate, infer, and randomly assume things until we’re all offended by something not intended for us but still hold grudges for life, i.e. adult.

But back to my point, this moon I was gazing so lovingly at is, at the heart as all things too good for us, evil. It is the cause of so much drama and pain in my perpetually annoyed existence. It rises, swoops in all pretty, like a smooth-talking, bouncing, fruit-bearing snake in a fast car, sweeping me off my feet only to make me pay for his abandoned bar tab. And I fall for it every time. You’d think after month-after-month for 30 years of this shit I would know better. You’d think that I’d be able to predict, summarize, talk myself out of, or rationalize my taking these mood swings out on random strangers that don’t know how to drive even though they all went to the same fucking driving course in high school that I did. You’d think there’d be a remedy. There isn’t. There’s no remedy for bad driving. Just stay off the fucking road, Goddamnit.

Anyway, it is a beautiful moon and I’m grateful for the experience. Evil, though it may be.

Okay, you either get the reference from an earlier post or I’m starting to sound crazy.

-Waitaminute-.

Yeah, I think “soul petting” has ended.

zombies-598387_1920 Now, hand over the fucking ice cream…

-NTZ

How to Deal

turn-730511_1280Here’s something I rarely do…rant.

Just kidding.

Anyway, I was talking to, seeking advice from actually, a good friend of mine about her success in her relationship. She then sought advice from me about Depression/Anxiety/whatnot. Especially, what to do about thoughts that just won’t go away. Ruminating, Obsessing, Freaking out, Mo’s normal Tuesday, whatever you call those thoughts that haunt you in your waking and sleeping hours. Those. They’re terrible and horrible when they’re benign, they’re downright menacing when they’re not.

Considering my obnoxious list of things that bother me, afflictions, excuses, fucking-pick-one, I have become somewhat of an expert in the art of un-fucking my mind. I mean, c’mon, no one else is going to do it for me. Especially not one. single. therapist. who has ever lived a life. So, I’ve adapted.

And here’s what I found that has helped:

For those thoughts that are raging, when you feel down, when you feel downed-upon, when you feel angry, when you don’t feel angry enough, and if you don’t mind some incredibly loud cursing, then this is what you do:

Play Rage Against the Machine’s ,”Killing in the Name of” as loud as you can stand it in your car, preferably somewhere safe, when Zach de la Rocha starts in on, “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me.” sixteen times… you scream along until your voice hurts, capillaries burst, and your voice hurts more. Finally, he hits, “Motherfucker!” and you scream it as hard as you can.

Don’t feel better? Don’t like cursing? Don’t like the loud music? Then stop. Wait. Yep.

Now, try it again. Do it until you just feel stupid doing it any longer. If you’re like me, you’ll start to laugh. If not? Do it again. And this time, scream it like you mean it.

Works every time.

But, wait, there’s more…..

Some ruminating thoughts aren’t always angry and need this kind of violent…dispatch. Some are heartbreaking and sad. Some, you don’t necessarily want to get rid of. Some just suck… but you just can’t stop “the loop”.

I don’t have to explain the loop. If you know, you know.

For those, there’s this song…

Now wait, don’t skip ahead and think, “I know this song. It gets stuck in my head worse than anything ever!”

For some reason, it doesn’t get stuck in my head but I may be lucky that way. What it does do for the people I’ve experimented on in a non-creepy way–don’t bother asking, you don’t want to know about the creepy experiments–is amazing. They should prescribe it along with Well-Butrin.

Again, for those who know, you know…

This you’ll either love me for or…well, it works for me.

Now, hear me out! Listen to this all the way through. If you’re thinking of anything else other than who this Centerfold chick is…listen again. Then, come talk to me. I got way more up my sleeve.

Enjoy, my fellow-ruminators.

–Mo @ NTZ