terrible ladders

idle hands are the devil's plaything, and free time is certainly my number one enemy. That's not true, I am my number one enemy, but at least I am also my enemy's sidekick. Sidewalk. Whaaaatever.

It's closing in on 2 in the morning and I am hopelessly lost in wikipedia. Looking back thru my tabs on the browser there, I see that I started at Volkswagen Beetle and flew through to great depression, Timothy Leary, Charles Manson, the Weathermen, the Grateful Dead, project MK-ULTRA, I am not sure what started me with Volkswagon exactly BUT -- I was watching "curb your enthusiasm" (yes, I actually rented a video) and was looking up about the cast of that show, for the beginning.

As I get older I realize how stupid I am. I mean, I am not a stupid person, well not overall I don't think so - but there's just so much about the world I live in that I am terribly uninformed about. I look back with some disdain to my childhood, not that it wasn't happy but that it was just overly materialistic. I thank my parents for being very kind and loving and spoiling me bloody rotten, but at the same time I wish there were more times when they'd have shoved a book under my nose rather than let me batten down in front of the television. I can't dare to consider how many hours of my young life have been wasted away watching bullshit like "Family Ties" or "Growing Pains."

Ah, but such was the 1980s, and such is our culture, and so was the life of a suburban white jewish boy born to relatively conservative parents (well, they weren't hippies, that's for sure!) And my schooling, loathe of it though I was, not for the reasons that I am now. My public school curriculum was so much filler bullshit, I mean it was nice to learn about electrons and dangling participles and gerunds and such, but short of the mathematics (also pretty weak) we were not taught so much to THINK. In fact, the only time that was evident to me was when I had an American History class (about the only history we got, honestly) and my 9th grade teacher Mr. O'Brien freaked out one day and yelled at us clueless sheep how spoonfed we all were.

It's hard to lash out at public school, because you get what you pay for, and really I was such a sheltered shut-in that it was good enough to keep me occupied in the hours when i wasn't at home glued to the Nintendo. College was an entirely different experience, natch, but it was valhalla by comparison (I was an art student) - all you had to do was draw lots of naked chicks, drink beer and rock out. In consideration of it all, it worked out pretty well - I may be fuckinuts but i have a roof over my head, and steady-ish work, and most people I seem to get along with (no one's handed my ass to me yet, well not lately).

But.. it's not.. enough. I get older, and I settle into my career and relationship, and then. then what? Work 5 days, then it's the weekend. take in a movie, or go out and sample the local flavor, or just get fucked up and dream away to a different reality.. or something. That's nice when it's novel, but is that what I must strive for? "Just keep working, save up money, so you can buy bigger things and nicer wallpaper, a faster car, bigger boobs for your wife" Uhmm.. and.. "Oh yeah, have some kids, and they can go through the next version of the reality which you've helped provide them" Well, screw that. that is definitely the biological plan, and I can't fault it for producing at least my own presence at this point to arirve at such a conclusion (and heretofore entire life leading up to now, of course) - but I'll be damned if I'd ever want someone to follow precisely in my footsteps, through the same system that spat me out. Selfishly, moreover, I don't care.. or is that unselfishly? If I did have any kids, they'd likely grow up kinda "normal" and never understand me anyway, cheerleading squad and preppy clothing and.. well,they'd probably know a lot more about wine and cheese than I do. God, they're boring the shit out of me already. I bet even the video games they would like would be mainstream and cliche.

Well, I get ahead of myself a bit, i guess. No, one thing is for sure, if I ever did have any kids, they would receive a hell of a bizarre educaton, that's for damn sure. Anyone who reads this blog with any degree of regularity can get a sense of the madness inside of me and the fact that I have a hard time shutting up about it, only to eat, poop or pass out, you think if you were my KID growing up around it that you'd have ANY KIND OF CHANCE OF NORMALCY!! "yeah but your wife won't let you scramble them too much..." Ha fat chance.. she'd be so exhausted of allthe parties involved and make for the exit door at any opportunity, believe you me.

Kids and wives, never ever hear me talk about such things, but hey I am just another person, the next phase of one's adult life has to pass through everyone's head sometime or other. It's so funny,when you are younger, you can't wait to get to that point "yeah I just want to be like everybody else, with my wife, 2 kids, dog, fireplace, SUV" Ohh boy, it sounds like a bonafide nightmare to me at this point. Of course any chick (or guy who's been there) who reads this thinks "ohhh, he'll move on, some girl will tame him.." I dunno. I think my circuit might be broken already. It's happened in the past, I have already gone far enough away from my programming. In some ways, I believe.

Anyway, back to the point that was on the tip of my mind earlier - there's so much more in the world that I am wising up to now, the veil of knowledge slowly lifts. It just makes me more twisted though, rather than merely "enlightened" and certainly not peaceful. I question my morals, my plans.. I want to escape this pattern which I have become super-locked into but long enough ago I realized I had to mess it up from within, rather than just toss it aside and start from scratch. It confounds me, as I reflect on the changes in my life and philosophy in the past years since I have moved out here and the things I have endured, become. The characters I have met, some who I have just pondered. And the more I dwell on it, the more frustrated I get "why does everyone so easily want to do the same shit, over and over and over?"

I guess it's not really that hard to understand. Not for me either.