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I’m typically determined to outlive my problems and never die. However, with how people drive, I daresay that’s how I’m gonna go. Folk really be forgetting that they have a death machine in their charge. They also can’t seem to wait for pedestrians to get across the crosswalk when it’s OUR turn! I have almost been hit twice this week alone. My murder building, where a woman was stabbed to death a month ago, is safer because at least that was the first stabbing I’d heard of since I moved into here five years ago. The amount of times a car has almost whacked me just outside my building is insane.
I’m going to have tried so hard to survive life and find consistent happiness and it’s all going to be for nothing because I’ll get crushed by Greg and his car because he just HAS to turn left even if it kills someone. I was speed walking to class since I left late and almost sprinted across the crosswalk on my turn but had to backstep because this guy wouldn’t stop and made the left turn despite my being there. I had to do a similar thing with a smart car awhile ago. I had to do a little dance to get out of the way of a smart car! My brother in christ, you are so low to the ground and your windshield is right there and you still almost hit me? Because you also had to make a left turn of death? Fuck me mate, I just want to go to gymnastics. I don’t want to call up my loved ones from the afterlife to explain that I fucking died getting squished by a stupid smart car six feet from my building on the way to jazz class. That’s humiliating! I’d die again in the afterlife of embarrassment. I swear there has been almost a car crash a day lately here on my island. And sure, it’s a big island, but bruh, what are we doing? Downtown alone, people drive like maniacs. There’s this old lady who comes to my drugstore a lot and she hadn’t shown up in a good long while. When she finally did again, her face was horribly bruised and she told me that she had been hit by a car ON THE SIDEWALK! Miraculously, she lived. But nowhere is safe, man. And so much of it is due to a lack of patience. I really have a beef with impatient people who make their impatience everybody else’s problem. I have ADHD. Impatience is a part of that, but guess what, I spent years practicing my patience. I forced myself to calm down or plan ahead so I wouldn’t panic or stress out or do something stupid that could affect me or others. It takes practice, but I am much better than I was years ago. I have my strategies because ultimately it is up to me to sort that out. Evidently, none of these people give a crap to do that. They would rather be the reason someone dies, than take a moment to breathe and calm down. I have no sympathy for these people. They are actively putting lives in danger because of their refusal to change their ways. I don’t want to die, but I especially don’t want to die by some stupid selfish asshole who shouldn’t have a driver’s license. I don’t want to constantly be thinking, “what if I get hit with a full backpack of groceries because I can’t jump up easily to roll on the hood?” “What if my legs super break and I can’t dance anymore?” “What if my headphones that I can never afford to buy again get destroyed?” “What if I just die?” I’m so paranoid to leave my house because I simply don’t trust people. I’m also paranoid at home too for the same reason. The point is, leaving the house is really hard because I’m always stressed something bad will happen at home when I’m not there or something bad will happen to me and I’ll never return. Having people seemingly committed to murdering me just outside my murder building doesn’t help. I just wish empathy and decency and humanity was more common. It’s so tiring to be scared all the time and what’s even more annoying is that my fears aren’t even unreasonable. I’ve seen shit and I’ve heard shit and I’ve dodged cars and shit. I have real reasons why I’m spooked all the time and I just wish that I would stop getting more reasons.
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I usually have some youtube video on in the background when I write my blogs, just for some ambiance. Sometimes I use soundscapes or music but I often go for a video since it’s a little more stimulating in a way. The slight chaos keeps me awake and in a less serious mood. The music and thunderstorms are for hardcore things like writing novels. Anyway, this is a common thing for people to do, have something on in the background while doing other things. This includes movies. I personally can’t have a movie on in the background since, no matter how many times I’ve seen it, I get hyper focused on that and nothing else. Other people can though and they do. This is fine. There is nothing wrong with having a movie or a show going on for that sweet, sweet avoidance of silence.
However, a really cute, fun thing that movie companies/studios/what have you are doing is taking the background-ness into account. They have started crafting movies to be ideal as second screens. The first screen is your phone or laptop. That is what you are mainly focused on. So what these movie executives are doing is making plots so simple that you can look up at any moment from your phone and know exactly what’s going on in the film. This way you keep paying for your Netflix subscription, to have shit in the background while you do homework or scroll through social media apps. These fucking people are coddling to the easily distracted with tiny attention spans rather than those who actually appreciate good film making and storytelling. Thus those of us who care to watch something good, are left with garbage. There has been a lot of coddling like this these days and I don’t want to sound like a boomer going “back in my day”, but we are rapidly getting stupider. The newest generations are disappointments because everyone is baby-ing them and coddling them and contributing to their inability to use any brain power. From kid’s shows to movies geared towards us adults, everything is getting dumbed down for the dumbest of us. Darwinism is good sometimes I think. I’m all for taking care of those who need extra help. Hell, I’m one of those people. The line is drawn at coddling though. The beautiful thing with books and movies and shows and music is that they get you thinking. There are messages and lessons and visions buried in those forms that you discover as you indulge. They get your brain juices flowing as you invest your time in these stories. Stories that stay relevant and good and true even after decades. People still rave about Avatar: The Last Airbender for a reason. They will rave about Arcane for ages to come undoubtedly. Hunger Games will always be important. The Lord of the Rings, both books and films are godly and worshipped. If we sacrifice quality stories for simpleton rubbish then we will only doom ourselves. It’s a short term solution to cater to the dumbest of us. Continuing to create meaningful entertainment will help us all in the long run. We need to un-dumb people. We need to challenge them and get them engaged in something well written. We need to open discussions about the impact of good stories because so often they reflect on the current state of the world in some way or at least hold up a mirror to humanity. People can learn and grow and broaden their minds. We are going backwards right now but we can go forwards again. Stop making garbage and start making…whatever the opposite of that is. Please, for all our sakes. There are so many Star Wars shows right now, many of which are…very Disney but Andor is such a treasure that I want to run through a wall whilst weeping. It’s such a good show and it’s such a disappointment that it’s kinda hard to come by something that good. There will always be dummies but that doesn’t mean we have to bend the world in their favor. Like, yes, obviously it’s sometimes nice to watch something that doesn’t require brain power. That said, we shouldn’t have to hunt for things that do. When I have Youtube videos on in the background while writing, I tend to rewatch them right after I’m done so I actually know what’s going on. I’ve rewound shows and movies plenty of times if I end up getting distracted by my phone, or I pause whatever I’m watching. I could try to train my brain to multitask to the max and do a thousand things at once while not fully processing any of them but that’s how we get the idiot generation. Media literacy is important. Analyzing a story is important. Fully letting a video sink in to understand it is important. Too many people don’t do any of that. They skim and passively observe and halfassedly pay attention and learn nothing. It’s not just about reading books, it’s about what you read. You may be a movie fiend but what movies are you watching? What do you take away at the end? Some things are well done and others are not and they just rot your brain. Which, again, is fine every now and again. A healthy dose of brain rot is all well and good. Like fast food or desserts. We need to fill our minds with better though overall. Right now it’s just fast food. We need our veggies and fruits and grains and proteins. We need a balanced brain diet but executives are feeding us poison. It’s time to take a stand and demand for better, look for better, make for better. If we keep consuming dirt, we’ll forget what real food tastes like and that will be a sad day because we deserve to have good quality in life. The world is ending so at least give us solid entertainment to even things out a little. One of my friends found a book whilst we were perusing Indigo. It was a dungeons and dragons cookbook for alcoholic beverages. The thing was full of drinks that one might find in the DnD world and we simply couldn’t leave it behind.
When we were getting hair cuts back to back in this cute little alternative place we love going to, we went through the book. We wanted to make some of these beverages at some point but we needed to make a proper list first. So over the three ish hours we were there, I wrote down the page numbers of drinks that intrigued us and eventually I properly marked each of them with a post it note. When the Saturday came that we wanted to make our fun little drinks, we decided on three different ones and went out to get the things for them. This was a longer process than anticipated. Despite having a lot of the ingredients ourselves already, we still spent a couple hours finding the right alcohols and obscure spices and whatnot. It was fine though because we were excited all the while. When we finally got back, me and another decided to start one of the drinks. Upon actually reading through the instructions though, it would apparently take several hours because there was a lot of freezing and chilling required. So we put that one on the backburner and looked at the next. This was a hot, cozy, cinnamon-y, nutmeg-y, wintry situation. We got out all the things for the stuff and cooked the stuff and mixed the things. It took a good while but we finally had a finished product. I poured it into mugs that I thought fit a tavern vibe and handed them out. We all did a sip test and… It wasn’t good. The drink kind of sucked. It was lacking flavour and was just sad watery alcohol. I don’t know exactly what went wrong, whether it was on our side or the cookbook’s side but this didn’t turn out well. We’re gonna try again one day and fiddle around with the mixins but the fact this fun beverage expedition took three ish hours for a weak outcome was somewhat upsetting. We just wanted to make some fun drinks, man. We at least spent all the in between time making bracelets for the characters in Baldur's Gate, another DnD related thing. There really was a theme going on that day. It was another Saturday of us living things up in our own way with our sad alcohol and crafting time. Truly, it doesn’t take much to entertain us, even when we can’t seem to succeed at getting tipsy of late. Given the world is going to absolute shit, I’ve been wondering something. As I stare into the bleak oblivion of my fucked up future, I keep asking myself, is a utopia possible? Can we have that and maintain our human-ness?
I read The Giver in school back in the day. The only way the story’s society could work was because all the memories of the past, before their utopia was built, were erased. Only one person had access, the Giver, and he would utilize that knowledge to guide the people into making the right decisions. Beyond that though, their utopia had no division whatsoever, not even color. The world around them was black and white in the bubble the community was built in. Everyone had their role that was decided by the elders from the moment of birth. Babies who had any anomaly were euthanized, even one half of twins. The whole place was so incredibly controlled and it lacked creativity and imagination and beauty but it maintained peace and prosperity of sorts. There was no conflict or disasters caused by human-ravaged climate. No one was dishonest or cruel. But in order to have nothing that was bad, they had to sacrifice so much good. The elders had to monitor everything to such an insane degree that no one was really free or individualistic. And if anyone stepped out of line, they would be peacefully executed, and those who would be injecting them didn’t even realize that was a bad thing. So many dystopias and similar genres of story raise this question. Tomorrowland, Arcane season two, The Giver, Divergent (at least the first book which is the only one I read). They show many versions of this perfect life and all sorts of sacrifices it would take to get there. The most extreme I’ve seen in these stories is taking away everyone’s humanity entirely and making them nothing more than empty beings. Begs the question, are we fucked? Personally, yes, I think we are. We can’t have nice things as a race because there are simply too many assholes who are committed to their assholery. All the more tragic is the fact the worst of us are also the most powerful. I’ve said it before and I will say it countless times again, no one gets to such a high position in life without climbing over and crushing anyone they can to rise up. Humans are weird creatures, we are so incredibly aspiring, so determined to build and create. But that aspiration goes both ways. As much as some will put their whole soul into making things better for us, others will do the same to fuck shit up to the max. That’s why America is the way it is. That’s why Canada will soon follow as will all the other countries that are turning to facism. The leaders of these places want to repeat the tomfoolery of the second world war and the peasants below them want so desperately to prevent that. What can the peasants do though? How can the villains with all the cards be stopped? How do we rebuild after we inevitably face our nuclear apocalypse? History is repeating itself before our eyes. The twenties are coming back from a pandemic to a world war to a depression. It wasn’t that long ago since last time, but people aren’t listening to those who remember. America is doing what Germany did barely a lifetime ago. The dictator, the censorship, the desired cull of minorities like trans folk. We are repeating things, but we have so much more to destroy with, under our belts. Technology is at its most advanced, weaponry its most chaotic, and humans are angrier than ever. Each generation before us had a thing. A war, a crisis, a disaster. And then there’s my generation and we have it all. We have every bad thing there ever was coming to a head. Our race and our planet are at their most vulnerable and stupid. All I can do is bitterly laugh. I never held much hope with people. I know I’m biased, I don’t even find things on the internet that much, I just worked in customer service for too long and have been betrayed by those I kept close to me one too many times. I know in my soul that there are good people who can make an impact, but the rest of me doesn’t believe it. And ultimately, I probably won’t until I see it with my own eyes. When the tariffs no longer fuck over the populations of two countries and leave us broke from the rapid inflation of cost and people freezing to death in their homes because electricity is no longer going to them. When trans people can get passports and leave at their own will and impeached felons no longer sit in the White House. When the new Prime Minister doesn’t end up being a conservative fucker who just ruins everything. When I no longer feel stupid dreaming of a future for myself, I’ll believe it. I was fantasizing with a friend about what could create a utopia without taking all of our human-ness away and we came to a conclusion. We need to build a time machine and we need a team of people who will go through. Every five years or so, after monitoring the entire population and finding all the evil people in that batch, the time-enforcers will go to the past and kill all those people. So basically, there will be a period of searching for the worst of us, a cleanse, and then a new reset of sorts without the tragedies those villains caused. Those who go back in time to perform as executioners will have to sacrifice the prospect of a normal life or family or stability, but some people might actually be okay with that. The real problem is: where do we draw the line? Some folk are easy, politicians, CEO’s, serial killers, abusers. But after that? We would have to be handing out a death penalty to all the ones we want to erase, so who deserves that? I suppose there could be an elected council and I suppose the threat of being killed upon birth for sucking as a person might deter many from actually sucking. But we also need to build a functioning time machine and hyper-monitor everyone on the planet so there’s that too. This is why I’m not optimistic. I’ve been collectively punished enough to know that some people just don’t care about others and the rest of us suffer for it. As time goes on, my brain really does fill up with more and more violent fantasies because things are just so incredibly bleak and I am so incredibly powerless and all I want to do is punch someone. Someone who’s causing this. I want to fistfight Trump and Bezos and Musk and Putin. I won’t win but I don’t care because it’s all only possible in my head anyway. I really don’t want to be in the city though when the world finally falls apart and the bombs start dropping and the buildings start collapsing. I don’t look forward to that. I’ve always feared cities because I always fear some sort of disaster and now I have a whole slew of those to look forward to. Yippee. I’ll keep on living or whatever because no one can tell me if the afterlife is any better and honestly, with my luck, if I go there prematurely, I’ll probably be punished for that and it’ll be shit. The hell you know is better than the one you don't, I think. I’ll keep having my little slices of happy when I can and try to find peace in my brain. But I’m not going to waste too much time on expecting a bright future, or any future for that matter. I’m going to try not to get wrapped up in the dreams of thirty, flirty, and thriving because that’s four years from now and I don’t reckon we’ll make it that long. But in the meantime, I’ll make do, as I’ve always done. |
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