The Donna Redskins' star quarterback, Derick Castillo, turned himself in Thursday for his alleged involvement in the hazing of an unknown number of underclassmen. According to Donna police reports, a group of seniors took a freshman football player into the school's locker room showers, where he was then allegedly sexually assaulted. The seniors are accused of holding the boy on the ground and slapping his genitals. The probable-cause affidavits for Castillo and Magallanes indicate they tried to pull down the victim's shorts and put their latex-gloved fingers into his anus.

Three words. What.the.hell. I remember seniors pranking freshmen in high school. They'd dump kids in trash cans. They'd give someone a swirly. At the very worst, someone would get paddled. But this version of hazing borders on homoerotic sadism. Fucking stuffing your fingers in someone's asshole isn't "hazing", that's getting them ready to plunge yourself balls-deep into their colon. Slapping someone in the nuts is a load of BS, too. I don't care WHO you are, you slap me in the nuts and I'm liable to show up at your house in the middle of the night with a baseball bat to beat the shit out of you in your sleep. What's even worse is that these kids probably planned this. They probably said, "Alright, dude, once you guys get him in the shower, turn him over so that I can finger him. I'm just aching to stuff my digits in another guy's ass."

Honestly, I'm wondering who else looked at him, slapped him on the back, and said, "Good idea, man!" If school hazings cross the line into S&M territory, I wonder what's next? Snuff? Bestiality?
"Hey, Joey, drag that new kid into the stables, we've got a piebald stallion that's just aching to blow his load." "Huh huh!" *slaps Derick on the back* "Great idea, dude!"

Here's a tip, Senior Footballers of Donna High School of Donna, Texas. The next time you get lonely, stuff your fingers up your own ass and have a go at yourself. All you'll need is a bottle of lotion and a box of Kleenex. Your local freshman population will thank you for it, and you won't look like such a fucking moron in the end... no pun intended.

I would say I'm amazed by their grasp of the painfully obvious, but I'm not. I write on here for me. I don't do it to please people. Additionally, I don't write on here very often. When I do, it's regarding something that I felt like writing just for the hell of it. If you don't want to be exposed to someone talking about whatever they want that just might happen to coincide with past or present events in their life, then DON'T FUCKING READ THE THINGS.

It's that simple.

Alcoholism disgusts me.

I'm not talking about casual drinking, hell, I'm not even talking about binge drinking (even though it's dangerous). I'm talking about the idiots who can't get even in the morning without a glass or bottle of something or other, those who drink day after day after day with no end in sight...that strikes me as pathetic. I understand the desire to party. I've fed and nursed that desire for several years. But I've never had the desire to do it to excess, nor have I ever felt like I NEED chemicals in my body in order to function. My father did. He was an incorrigible drunk, and the second that people saw me pick up a drink, they freaked out. "OH MY GOD DON'T DO THAT YOU'LL BECOME AN ALCOHOLIC!!!!11" I just looked at them and shook my head, usually. Just because my father wanted to be a total waste of life and drink himself into a horizontal position every day doesn't mean that I do. Of course, alcoholism is hereditary.

I read my books in science class, thank you. I got an A in health class. But the desire, the drive, to get utterly obliterated just isn't there.

Sure, I've overdone it before. I've ended up on my bathroom floor with my sink clogged with vomit, overflowing, with my mom yelling at me. That sucked. I remember this girl that I had a huge crush on who drove me home from a party telling me that I spat in her car and she didn't find it until the next morning. That sucked. I learned a lesson from each of these incidents.

And I'm glad that I can never talk about "that one time when I got a vodka enema for shits and giggles (no pun intended)" That's just bizarre. And how you could willingly do that to a loved one, I'll never understand. Way to be an enabler, Mrs. Tammy Jean Warner. I'm sure your husband thanks you, what with being dead and all.

To properly explain the scenario, I should describe the surroundings. The street that our apartment building is situated on is a four-laned road with a central turn lane. People usually park on the curb, leaving approximately 1 ½ lanes open for traffic. Essentially, it’s one lane. Of course, city drivers have to be moronic arseholes and pass whenever they can, so they end up using the breaks between parked cars to try and pass traffic that’s in the other lane. So here I am, and I’m walking down the sidewalk headed to our apartment. I hear horns blaring, and see cars slamming on their brakes, while one lone white Jeep Cherokee stutters through the traffic, speeding and jolting back and forth, dodging parked cars all the while. I’m looking at this vehicle coming towards me and thinking, “Holy shit, they’re gonna have an accident/jump the curb and hit me. So I warily stop and eye this moron in the Cherokee as they come barreling up towards the traffic signal, ready to jump at the slightest vehicular lurch. It's like a Mexican standoff between man and SUV, except without all the Sergio Leone-style tension.

I finally realized what they were doing…apparently someone in the lane next to them had cut them off or just pissed them off, and they were swerving at their (tiny) car, trying to hit them. In the rain. I guess I failed to see the logic in their little intimidation tactic, and apparently so did they. After turning back to continue plodding on in my little rain-filled world, I hear a screeching of tires, and look back toward the traffic signal. Cars are stopped, a couple are askew, and I see the white Cherokee hauling ass northward like they were headed to an all-you-can-eat special at a whorehouse. Apparently the Jeep-tard was so busy trying to play Death Race 2000 that they forgot to notice that there were some cars parked in their current lane, and they had to swerve and dive back into the innermost lane to avoid an accident and retain whatever dignity they had left while everyone else performed vehicular acrobatics that would make Steve McQueen shit his pants. I just turned back facing the downpour, adjusted my umbrella, chuckled, and went back to the safety of the apartment. For a city that's not exactly built for walking, there's plenty of encouragement to do so.

Then, the morning’s proceedings smacked back into my brain. I woke up, felt like looking at porn, filled out for a SexKey along with a 3-day trial for $39.97 past the trial period, and went through the first transaction. Declined. My brain yelled “WTF” and I tried it again. Second time was a charm, and I had my hot porno action. I cancelled the trial and went on checking stuff out. I didn’t really think about the possibility of the bank calling me on a failed internet transaction. So here I am, shower running in the background, face half-shaven, butt-ass naked as the day I was born aside from some ape-like body hair. I took the phone. “Hello?” “Hi, this is ---- from --- --- Fraud Protection, and I wanted to, um, make sure that you made a transaction with your card this morning over the Internet?” Hot teen sex. Internal cumshots. “Yes ma’am.” We went through the entire certification thing. In my mind, I remembered the cute black lesbians. “So…we just, um, wanted to make sure that you DID actually make this transaction for $39.97?” Light bondage. Gangbangs.

I looked up at Diva, who knew what I had paid for on my card that morning, and she was grinning like a Cheshire cat. “Um, well, it wasn’t actually supposed to make the transaction. You see, there was a trial, and I cancelled it.” “Right. Well, then…” “I’ll keep an eye on my account, and if the transaction does happen, then I’ll give you guys a call.” “Thanks for the call, ----. Have a nice evening.”

These are the same two people that got hooked on speed, lost their kid to CPS, ran up debts on his dad’s credit card, generally fucked up the “second chance” that they always wanted, lied to my parents and I about being clean, and stole money from them. Granted, it was only twenty bucks, but if I was supposedly getting clean, you lent me twenty dollars to get gasoline for a lawnmower, I took off to go get it, was gone for SIX HOURS, and then called you from some remote highway in the middle of nowhere minus the twenty bucks, wouldn’t you be mad at me? I think you would.

Provided that you understand where I’m coming from on this, then you understand my hesitancy to have ANYTHING to do with them. He popped up during my visit to Texas, and I did my best to keep them at arm’s length. Likewise, my parents dealt with their shit when they stayed with them. When he left for Arizona/New Mexico to go get straight or whatever it was he was supposed to do, she spent time with her kid and got a job. She was supposedly not going to get back with him. He popped up driving a brand new truck (no idea how he paid for it) and throwing out some random line of BS about going to college in Dallas, as if it was going to bandage up the fact that their post-marriage drug-induced haze destroyed everything around them, and they willingly did it all.

To them:
If you didn’t want to be tied down, you didn’t have to get married. If you didn’t want to bear the responsibility of parenthood, you didn’t have to have a kid (like you should have learned with the last kids you guys had). I’m not going to sit around and praise you for coming back and being a part of your daughter’s life, because you had the option to do that in the first place. I’m not going to trust what you say about finally getting your shit together and getting clean, because I’ve seen that song-and-dance routine before. And I’m not going to apologize for my sentiments towards you, because I think they’re nothing short of fair and well-fucking deserved.
People lose their children every day to car accidents, shootings, suicide, and disease. You practically threw yours away for some drug that a dumbass loser burnout cooked in their goddamn bathtub in some filthy trailer. Your baby girl’s not going to know any different once she grows up, but that doesn’t make what you did right. So don’t act like my anger and disgust is something random. My dad threw away his life with me and my mom for his own addiction to alcohol. And apparently I wasn’t the first one he had done this to. I have a half-sister out there somewhere that I’ll never meet. Chances are that she harbors the same disdain towards her “father” that I do. And he deserves every bit of it. Yeah, he was abused by his father as a kid, but that doesn’t mean that he had to carry on the tradition by beating/victimizing women and drinking himself into paralysis.
I know plenty of people who have had fucked-up stuff happen to them in their lifetime, and they’ve dealt with it and moved on to be great people with great families. You don’t get rewarded for dwelling on your past and blaming others for your own mistakes. You get rewarded for making something out of what little you have.

One thing we can take from experiences such as this is how fragile our lives really are. These people’s downfalls range from divorce and drug/alcohol addiction to something as simple as an urge to be a true nonconformist.

For some odd reason, this reminds me of my first trip to Los Angeles via Greyhound bus. We snaked from Dallas down through the southern part of New Mexico and Arizona to end up in Calexico. From there, we headed north through El Cajon to San Diego. After a short layover there, we headed further north to Los Angeles. On the way from San Diego to Los Angeles, I found a note being passed to me from a young girl a couple of seats over from me. A smattering of acne on her cherubic face told me that she couldn’t be more than 15-16 years old. I opened the note to read “I hope you don’t mind, but I wanted to talk to someone to pass some of the time, and you look like one of the youngest people on here.” I smiled at this gesture and wrote back. “No, I don’t mind at all. I’m Jake. What’s your name and where are you from?”

From there, we carried on a conversation on a piece of college-ruled notebook paper. Much more interesting than passing notes in class. Turns out she was leaving from the household of an abusive mother in Tucson to live with an aunt in Oceanside. I backed up my end of the deal and told her where I was from and why I was headed to Los Angeles, and we just nonchalantly shot back and forth like that for about an hour and a half. It was an intriguing experience within which a pair of complete strangers sort of connected, even if it was only on a sheet of paper.

As a culture, we should make more of an effort to connect with each other. After living in the city for a couple of years, I’ve come to appreciate the friendliness and hospitality of the country, even if the people aren’t that bright sometimes. And it’s not something that’s solely inherent to that area, it’s just a common trait of people in that culture. Country people learn to connect with others, because it’s all there is to do sometimes. A sense of solidarity is formed from actually knowing those around you, and that sense of solidarity is a great thing. The city can be cold and unwelcoming, but if you just make the effort to break the mold and be the slightest bit warmer and friendlier to the people around you, it will eventually catch on.

Normally, when a couple decides to split, there's a bit of sadness, heartache, and so forth...but I honestly can't imagine there being much of either in this situation. Over time, she secluded herself from family, made no effort to be an active part of the family (even when everyone else tried), and could have given a shit less when my grandfather fell ill and died, and is doing the same now that my grandmother's in the same situation. Not only did she not take time to visit, she's also made other plans for the holidays. While my uncle and my parents sit in the nursing home with my grandmother on Christmas, she'll be spending time with her kids in Dallas. How considerate.

I'm taking it upon myself to rant and rave about the situation, because I've experienced my uncle's grief firsthand. When you've worked with a man for six years, you kinda get to know everything about his personal life. When you've worked with a male family member for six years, you also kinda get to know everything that you could have lived without knowing. I was subjected to endless tirades regarding his faltering sex life, his anger towards her wanting to police his beer-drinking while she smoked an ungodly amount of cigarettes, and not to mention how disdainfully she treated his daughter, while he treated her kids like they were his own. It disgusted me how rude and inconsiderate she could be, and I felt sincerely sorry for my cousin until she finally told me not to, because after a while she honestly felt better that her stepmother ignored her. Mainly because it meant that she didn't have to put up with the crap, I'm assuming.

The crowning moment for me, however, was when my poor, undersexed, ignored uncle informed me that she had tried to make a bet with him. Fifty bucks, she said, that I wouldn't go to college.

My fucking jaw dropped. I was furious. I did everything I could to keep from lashing out at him and keying/urinating in her new car. It's bad enough that she looks down on my uncle, looks down on his daughter, and then acts like she's the victim. But to add ME to the roster? Fuck that shit, Bubba. I had never done a thing to her, never said an unkind word about her despite all the rude crap that she flung at my family members, and she decided to go ahead and get high-and-mighty on me while she was at it. I wanted to kick down her office door and ask her just who the fuck she thought she was by acting that way. By treating my family members and I like we were her worst enemies. I just don't understand how someone can grow to be so spiteful.

That wasn't the worst part, though. The worst part...the icing on the cake....was that my uncle took up for her. He made excuses for her. While she sat on her ass at home, unemployed, for around five-six years and ignored my grandfather withering away from cancer (except for the day that they went to go ask him to will them a piece of land, she was all peaches and cream), treated my uncle like he wasn't worth his salt after he went out six days a week and busted his ass to pay the bills, and then decided to go ahead and look down her nose at everyone else (since she didn't have anything better to do), he made excuses for her.
"She's tired."
"She doesn't feel well."
When she finally got a job....
"She's been busting her rear at the store."
"She's been really busy lately."

Funny thing was, we were all tired. We had days where we didn't feel well. We went out and made a living, just like everyone else. And we didn't have anyone to make up excuses for us. It's not that we didn't have the capacity to talk someone into being the messenger/errand boy, it's just that we had too much respect for one another to do something that asinine and inconsiderate.

The one place that he didn't make excuses for her, though, was the bedroom. He was sexually frustrated, and she didn't put out for him. I suggest you read the last part of that sentence over again. She didn't put out for him, and they were fucking MARRIED. That's one of the things that confuses me most about marriage. These dudes meet these women that are all hot and heavy at first, and it seems like as soon as they slip a ring on their fingers and maybe plop out a screamer or two, the legs are closed and that pussy is welded shut. What's the deal with that? I'll never understand it, and I don't think most other men will either. I've always believed that if you're married to a man, the only time that you should withhold sex from him (within reason, mind you), is once a month, when you suddenly crave chocolate and get really emotional for a week.

His drinking.
After a long work week, he, my two Honduran buddies, and I would usually have a nice barbecue on Friday. We'd all pitch in for a couple of cases of beer and some steaks or carne asada, kick back, listen to music, grill food, and just shoot the shit and have a good time. After a while, that got cut off because he had to run in and answer to her. Eventually, I felt like knocking on the door and asking if he could come out to play just to make a point.

So, essentially, I'm happy for him. Her, she can do whatever she wants. I'm not going to make the effort to sympathize, because she couldn't be bothered to sympathize with anyone else. I'm just really glad that he won't have to ask for her permission to enjoy life anymore. And that he'll find someone who will jump his bones on a regular basis so that he won't be so stressed...but that was sort of a given. *chuckles*

Started work for a new temp agency, and it went really well. I worked my ass off for about five hours for JAMDAT Mobile, just moving stuff and so forth. My foot had hurt a bit after a long walk a couple of days before, but I just shrugged it off, eager to do something after stagnating and dredging an unemployment check here and there. Busted ass, got done, went out to dinner with the woman, and then went home and sacked out. Woke up the next day and my foot was fucking killing me. Couldn't walk right without hobbling, sharp pain...it was fucked. So we started the obligatory freaking out about money and so on, and just gave it some time. I called in to the temp agency and told them the situation, and thank the gods that they were sympathetic and gave me some slack. So now, it's almost as good as new and I'll probably call and check in with them tomorrow....although I want to hang around the place a bit until my new phone comes. I took advantage of an offer from Verizon and got a better phone for practically nothing, so that rocks.

Aside from that, my creativity's been fucking dead. I've drawn some stuff, done a bit with photoshop, wrote a little here and there...nothing really fired me up and got me going with it. I'm kinda bummed about it. I figure that when I start going to school again, that might help.

I've never been so disappointed. In the citizens of the country, in...well...everything. I need to take a break.

Yeah, I know I'm a little late. I don't have cable (it's a conscious choice, trust me) so I got a hold of this little gem via internet hype.

Jon Stewart, easily one of the most honest and prolific minds in television today, was featured on Crossfire, and honestly, he tore the fucking place up. Despite the fact that he's a comedian by default, he's a bright guy who has balls. And that's a rarity, especially when contrasted by Carlson and Begala's seemingly neutered and sterile stances on politics. Initially, the guys took time to express the fact that he IS a comedian, which they possibly thought would render some of his opinions as being nothing more than the ramblings of a funny-man who was supposedly scripted to run against the grain. Likewise, I'm quite sure that most people tuned in to see Stewart being funny, but thankfully that wasn't on the agends. He knew what he was up against, knew what he had a chance to do, and took it. And that's incredibly admirable. All Democrat-sympathetic ass-kissing aside, he took a big chance with this one and succeeded. It doesn't take a Nobel Prize winning genius to see that.

The platform that Stewart rode, managing to crash through Carlson's easily-dismissable facade (a fucking BOWTIE, for christ's sakes) was that of authentic media coverage in regards to the election year and with respect to the candidates, an issue that has been given much more light as of lately with the recent fumbles of CBS and Fox News stations within the last few months. It's an opportune time to be a dissenter of modern media structure and process, and Stewart snatched this opportunity and fucking ran with it like a fat kid to an ice cream truck.

And of course, in the beginning people laughed at some of his points, thinking that he was cracking jokes, which I found to be a shame. That's what happens when you're burdened with the comedian label, though. Surprisingly, they managed to take notice of the vitriolic attacks that he lined straight at C & B's credibility, direct to their faces on their own show, and realized that he wasn't fucking around any more. Carlson came to the same stage of enlightenment, and then tried to launch an attack on his reputation as a comedian, dismissing the common knowledge that a) We're all entitled to our own opinions, whether you're a clown or a priest; and b) Free speech still exists, regardless of whether you like what the opposition is saying or not.

After that weak attack failed miserably, Carlson tried to put him down by questioning the interview with Kerry, and subsequently mocking his standing as a journalist who wasn't fulfilling his responsibility, which Stewart smartly met with lines to the effect of "The show that leads into me is puppets making prank calls!" and ending it all by finally stating the painfully obvious....Carlson's a dick.

The main reason I support his attack is that he's aiming for something that's attainable and necessary, and overall....truthful. Their show is, as he said, theater, plain and simple. It's a show that is meant to look like honest discourse between candidates, Capitol Hill influentials, and such, and it's essentially a coordinated clusterfuck that is made to look progressive and gritty (at least as progressive and gritty as network television will allow, hint hint) and is all ground up and shat out by the media machine as something credible, when in all honesty (and mind you, I've never seen a single episode of The Daily Show), Stewart's gig is easily one of the most level playing fields concerning politics. They dislike equally. They fire off shots at Bush then turn around and reload, aiming for Kerry. Stewart's personal inclinations to Kerry aside, chances are it's even more reliable than anything pawned off on the audiences by Fox or CNN.

Even the presidential debates themselves can be seen as an orgy of urinating on the true annals of democracy itself, as the candidates are asked relatively tame questions by a single person, as opposed to having questions raised by reporters or just the everyday Joe and Jane, and then responding to those, face-to-face. What's so wrong with everyone's political agenda that it all has to be orchestrated in such a manner? Alas, such is the world of politics.

"All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players" - Shakespeare, "As You Like It"

It's a shame when the day comes that we have to question the authenticity of those who hand-feed the general public our perception of daily events, news, and the like. When our reliance on those sources becomes so ingrained with ourselves that we begin to take their on version of the truth as our personal belief, we lose our independence. When we stop thinking for ourselves and only shy along the party lines or restrict ourselves to a certain group, a certain mindset, others will take advantage of that and use such circumstances for their own personal gain.

Even those of us who claim to "think outside the box" and shun the cultural standards for alternative ways of thinking and living are quickly falling into a categorized way of life, as demonstrated by the recent popularity of Stewart, Michael Moore, and their ilk. In light of the fact that it seems as if they have the best interests of the public in mind, as most of them do since they live under the same constraints that govern us all, they are still part of the grand scheme, even if they are on the fringe. Thankfully, they still understand the importance of allowing one to think for themselves, and they embrace the ideology of the free-thinking individual.

Overall, Stewart's display of bravado and his call for honesty while faced with those who take such things for granted in exchange for network ratings and popularity is a breath of fresh air in a stagnant and claustrophobic political race in which the media skulks around the outskirts, like vultures hovering over a cull, waiting for some nugget to latch onto and devour for their own benefit. Stewart should definitely not be overlooked or dismissed as a mere occurrence of a person who is characteristically set against the grain and can't keep their mouth shut, because he speaks for an entire gang of disillusioned and generally disgusted Americans who are tired of all the flash, all the bullshit, all the controversy.

All we need is truth and honesty. Is that so much to ask for?

I think I need to have "Do Not Resuscitate" tattooed on my collarbone for future reference.

In other news, I miss the country, I miss good barbecue, I miss friends and family, but I don't fucking miss Canton. While I was there, I took my buddy Sebastian to the local Wal-Mart so that he could get a birthday card and a gift for his daughter in Honduras. She's celebrating her quinceanera, her 15th birthday, which is a major milestone for most Hispanic cultures. Likewise, it was nice to get to hang out with him for a bit.

So we were parading through there, and all of a sudden we heard blubbering and clapping and cheering and laughter. I turned my attention to the source of all the hullabaloo, and noticed a) some fat fuck hick (in the worst-looking cowboy hat and the most overtly homosexual-looking western shirt I've ever seen) on his knee with a ring, undoubtedly bought there at Wal-Mart, and b) some fat trailer-trash looking chick with poofy eighties hair and horrible teeth blubbering "I do" as she battled her various chins to hide her crying. I couldn't believe it. I was dumbfounded.

I've seen some downright idiotic crap in my time, but a marriage proposal in the middle of fucking WAL-MART? Could you possibly get any more white trash than that? If they have their reception there, I'm going to personally walk in there and shoot up the place, throw a bit of chlorine in the gene pool and save these people from years of ridicule as being "The Wal-Mart couple" and inbreeding.

That's when I knew it was time to come back to L.A. As much as I bitch about the place, at least the people don't give a fuck enough about each other to do something as stupid as proposing to someone in the middle of a grocery store.

Five bucks says they go to McDonald's/Taco Bell/KFC for the wedding dinner.

Hell, if they do that, I'll foot the bill.

Yeah. So I'm headed back to Texas for about a week. My mom and step-granddad found it highly opportune that since I don't have a job and that my grandmother just had surgery, that I should come down and surprise her. Sure. Fine. I don't mind brightening my grandma's day. But my mom has been "stressed" for the past two weeks and was using that as an excuse to act like an ass. So my stepdad, me, and everyone else has had to deal with her.

For a while, she seemed to be so "stressed" that she acted as if my grandmother's grip on life was so tenuous that -get this- if I didn't call her, she would drop dead right there on the spot. She growled and spat at me when I didn't call every day (I was out looking for a fucking job, thank you), used my girlfriend as a veritable answering machine, which didn't make her happy, and then made everything seem all hunky-dory when they hatched the master plan to get me back there for a while.

I mean, my stepdad even called me to apologize for her behavior, which a) he shouldn't even feel guilty enough to have to do, and b) she should be the one apologizing. I love my stepdad to death. He's a great guy and he's loads of fun. Plus he's good to my mom and my family. Extremely polite, extremely tolerant, and even he sounded as if he was on the verge of ditching her ass just to save his own sanity.

So, as you can tell, I'll be off for a bit. Might write an update, might not. Either way, I'll be back in the city on Sunday, so yay for me and stuff.

I was called in to the office for my boss to basically reassure me in my perception of how much I suck by throwing out various Tony Robbins-ish self-help cliches like "You've got a lot of potential, and I feel like it's being wasted here." Right. So I'll just go waste my potential flipping hamburgers for a while, because god forbid that I waste my potential here. I felt like I had just been apprehended for public urination. "You can do it anywhere you want, as long as it's not here!"

So, they gave me a check, I thanked her, and walked out for the last time at 5:30, tossing my time card aside. I could have said goodbye to everyone, but I didn't want to stay there any longer than I had to. I sort of feel bad now for not having said something, but I highly doubt I'll be missed there, anyways.

So, I get home. I'm pissed off, in a funk, whatever, and my desktop promptly eats itself. The primary HD was fucked. So I spent all night last night trying to figure out what was wrong, then most of today installing an old 15 gig HD, formatting it, reinstalling XP, downloading SP1, and then uipdating and reinstalling/reconfiguring shit. I figure I'll have it all done by tomorrow afternoon, since I don't have a job to waste my potential at now.

Oh well, c'est la vie, c'est merde. I'll manage.

I'm sitting at work yesterday, and this girl comes up saying that she has an odd question. I've had odd questions before, so I obliged to help her. She proceeds to inform me that there was a man in our store the day before who complimented a friend of hers on a t-shirt that he was wearing, and she wanted to give him information on where to get one. Out of curiosity, I asked what kind of shirt it was. She asked me if I had seen the posters around LA that bore a picture of Mickey Mouse, with GREED written under it. My inner cynic scoffed and spat on the floor. I resisted the urge to launch into a criticism against these wanna-be social commentators, and simply said, "No, I haven't. What is it, some sort of subversive ad campaign?" She replied, "Well, kind of. It's more of a social commentary thing."

All sorts of witty lines burst into my brain like an explosion. Instead, I held back, and figured that I'd save my self-aggrandizing bullshit ideas and opinions for my site.
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That's one thing that bugs the living shit out of me. People who work as hard as they can to make it publicly known that they're going against the grain, that they're doing their damnedest to fight against "the man" and working their little asses off to take down him and his collective gang of corporate goons. It reminds me of the people who hang out outside the Federal Building in Westwood and wave their signs, pooh-poohing the current administration and all their faults. If anything, their protests are just a direct effort by the protestor to be acknowledged as a dissenter and to fit in with a group that follows a certain mindset. Not only that, but their efforts are none short of useless. All that the shirt seems to accomplish is maybe a sideward glance and a general response of "ah, cute." from Joe Normal.

Active protesting and flag-waving is, in all honesty, a wasteful activity not too far removed from masturbation. A fervor of activity followed by a less-than fulfilling conclusion, and nothing more. The signs and shirts that these people fling about and shove in everyone's face are mostly ignored, and when recognized, are seen as a nuisance. Nothing more than a cockrach skittering across the kitchen floor at 2 a.m. The message that they're trying to oh-so-subtly convey is gibberish to the common man. Regardless of how clever your little art-shit may look, it lacks any sort of viable and informative explanation, making it a cryptic symbol awash in a sea of stagnant (yet surprisingly hip and common-fare) consumerist society criticism.

Unsurprisingly, the only people who tend to notice these little hints of rebellion are the ones of similar mindset, pompous art-fags and those who agree that globalization is shit and that the media has too much of an influence on our daily lives, why are people so dumb, fast food is bad mmkay, ad nauseaum.

These little things with which they decorate themselves form a pastiche of anti-society cliches, the same things that compose their personalities and their ideologies. While working so hard to distance themselves from brands and memes, they become a brand, a symbol of rebellion. Their effort to become an antithesis turns them into the thing they're fighting against.

Likewise, this assimilation of ideas and such only makes them more susceptible to being the first to blame for any sort of subversive activity, be it loitering, trespassing, vandalism...they'll be the first to be targeted, because based on appearance (which, obviously, that sort of profiling works), they're the most likely to perform those sorts of actions in a useless, spastic death rattle of a protest against society's ills and trappings.

Provided that the people in question possess such a thing, common sense would tell you that if you're actively trying to effect change under circumstances that are less than accommodating, you want to blend in as much as possible. You'd want to be the least likely candidate to stand up and say something when the defining moment comes. Whenever someone of the ilk that I previously described hops up and starts shooting their mouth off about being oppressed, it comes as less than a surprise to everyone, because after a while, that sort of behavior is expected from them.

It takes a degree of observation and an understanding of opportune timing, not just hopping up and screaming every time you're afraid that your rights are being violated. Because that sort of knee-jerk reaction might get you nothing more than a scoff, a guffaw, or a truncheon to the face and a couple of nights in the pokey.

My incessant ranting ends here.