Inspiration.

Not my best work...

There are times when I run out of good ideas. Periods when nothing I can think of is up to snuff. Everything seems like half-baked drivel that isn't going anywhere. Certainly not towards that convergence of excellence. When enough good concepts come together naturally and make an incredible leap towards cogitation. The beauty of a carefully considered thought is what keeps me going. Or rather, the hunger for a return of that beauty. The key is not to give up. Not to pack it in until a new idea comes fluttering into your consciousness. Quality has its own agenda and time table. I run out of ideas every single day, and every time it's just as scary. I fear that I won't be able to return to my previous peak. I threat that I have used up the last good idea that will ever come to me. Worst of all that I've done so while cracking wise at some pointless seminar or meeting. Does this activity deserve my best? Good ideas should be, no must be executed. Convincing yourself that "I will get around to it when I have the right assets and can do it justice." is a bad habit. One I have engaged in on far too many an occasion. Over-analyzing and dissecting every minute little detail before setting about creating will get you nowhere fast. Those ideas and concepts do not stay around in your mind as an insurance plan, a resource you can pull out when times are tough. It eventually dawns on me that these perfect ideas I have in my head will never be as flawlessly performed in reality. You're bound to fail the first time you do anything. However, a good idea carried out poorly still trumps a brilliant idea never realized. What triggers me to create I do not know. But a certain person's ephemeral smile seems to be doing the trick lately. What is your source of inspiration?

Bring forth the comfy chair!

When this economic crisis hit the first thing that went through my mind was: "Well, that's going to come out of my pocket." And surprise surprise, it is! Did anyone actually have any doubt that our rich overlords would be paying for their fuck-ups with our money? No sane person should feel even the slightest tinge of astonishment. On the other hand it might come as some shock that there are people out there that would gladly use your carcass to heat their house. Just toy around with that thought for a moment. Inside of your head. Chew on it and taste the pure amorality of this concept. Does it scare you? Well it should. There are such people - and they are the ones in charge. They don't care about you. They don't give a shit about you. And they would without hesitation use your body as kindling. I'll freely admit that I have little compassion for most people. I do however possess these funny things called morals, ethics and a sense of shame. Niggling little thoughts that thankfully make me take a step back now and again. Mental barriers that block my immediate instinct to steal and savage whenever possible. Such barriers are not set in stone however. Greed cancels out shame. Absolute affluence and power warp your perception of reality to such an extent that any identification with another individual becomes impossible. Make no mistake though: the ones in control are not whimsically aloof or unaware of the public's situation. They don't want us to eat cake, they want us to eat shit. An international malevolent plot is not what's upholding this status quo. Not in any direct way. There is no vast clandestine society of rich socialites. Communicating with each other by whispering through secretive channels. The Illuminati, the New World Order and Lizardmen are not running the show. If you believe this you're a certifiable idiot. Nevertheless there is a conspiracy of convenience and common interest at play. A parasite will latch on to its symbiote the same way every single time. It is in the organisms nature. No intricately laid, agreed upon scheme is required. We are a resource, a commodity that can be utilized. We have earned nothing in their eyes. We exist only to serve them. We are alive by their good graces. We should rise up and slay them. We won't, there's something shiny on television.

Illusions of Purpose and Choice.

I have no idea where I'm headed in life. I have ambitions, sure, but very little skill to make these feverish visions of mine into reality. I'm not a demonic director, driven by my delusions of grandeur. Nor am I motivated by the simple joys of dominating other people. Letting them cower in submission as I madly stab at the canvas, laughing hoarsely and flinging my monocle at my assistant. All the while the critics will sing my praises. Women will want to sleep with me. Men will want to be me and some men will want to be in me. Monkeys will gaze at my grandness and wish they too had been blessed with a higher rank on the evolutionary scale. Not that I've given this much thought or anything. My point being, no one seems to have any damn idea what they are doing anymore. Didn't people used to have a higher purpose in life? Some sort of end goal they were striding towards? A glistening, bright future they pinned their hopes on? It just seems like everyone is adrift on the open sea these days. No point of reference, no horizon, no hope in their heart. Just being tossed about by wave after wave. Mercilessly at the whim of forces they cannot quite grasp. The forces of pointlessness. You don't have any more freedoms today than your great grandparents had. In fact, you might very well have fewer. That you can choose from fifteen different types of fussili pasta, twenty-three variations of toothpaste and four sorts of oranges (I counted all of these at one of those huge mega-stores) means absolutely nothing. These alternatives are all superficial, they only give you the illusion of choice. What real difference would it have made in my life if I had bought apples instead of oranges? Absolutely fuck all. You can in fact compare apples to oranges, believe it or not. It's just fruit. Individualism clearly has merits. The idea of self-determination without compulsion is one any non-cretin must cherish. It is not without its flaws though. Most people are ignorant. A very large portion of them are also dumb. Couple this with democratic governance and you'll see that some rather interesting patterns will begin to emerge. If everyone agrees to live in a community but then only look out for their own self-interests things will go awry. Of course, this is all very entertaining to a sick individual such as myself but it's not very productive. Pretty soon you'll have a government whose only job is to balance the fucking budget and keep the shit at shoe level. And people will think that's just awesome! 'Cause things are going so well now that we are finally free. Free from commitment of any kind, that is. To be free is not just to be without hardship. We have come to expect much from society, while contributing little. We carry a sense of entitlement so grossly out of proportion to our actual importance it's staggering. If you died tomorrow what would the world be like? Sure your mother would cry a little (maybe not as much as you'd expect or like) and that's pretty much it. She has to get on with her life, get on with the shopping. Forwards is the direction that indicates purpose. Don't ya know? This entire movement towards hyper-individualism has been touted as the solution to all of our personal problems. If you only concentrate on yourself and look no further than your own feelings everything will be alright. Well, people have been doing this for over 50 years now. Are we any more happy today? Hardly. Everyone seems confused and bewildered. We have become isolated, lonely and afraid. No matter how secure and centered we are. No matter how stoic in our outlook. No matter how free we are. We all want to belong, to something. I do not really believe in destiny. It always seems to lead you down the same path towards some sort of spooky space-god. Wanting to believe that a semi-benevolent dictator is behind the scenes of this macabre little puppet show we call life is a frightening thought. But if the only destiny we have is that which we make for ourselves, what exactly is it that we have made? Pointless consumerism, selfishness as a sacrament, meaningless sexual encounters and reality-TV? If that's all we can come up with I say: Bring back manifest destiny and tell it to stay away from the indigenous people if possible. Was anything better "in the good old days"? Almost definietly not. Maybe...

Random musings from a random mind.

On language: The person who coined the phrase "A picture is worth a thousand words." was clearly not familiar with minimalist photography. I've seen some pictures that could be summed up with a single sentence. Or a hand gesture. If cash is king, does that mean that weed is the jester of the court? And what then is credit? Not to mention what ass is in this little period piece. I demand to know where all forms of payment stand in the social hierarchy of feudal despotism. "Free speech zones" is such an oxymoron that I think you could actually stop time if you stand exactly half way between two of these areas and say something controversial. Either that or the very fabric of space will rip open like a bed sheet and cause the end of the universe. That's powerful stupid. That someone can be "legally blind" would seem to indicate that there are forms of blindness that are illegal. What would be the punishment for being illegally blind? A blind person probably fares pretty well in prison. It's not like a blindey (a word for blind people I just made up) is going to get depressed by the view, or the lack of freedom to roam. What are the authorities going to do? Sew their ears shut? On violence: If a woman ever kicks me in the balls I'm going to punch her in the cunt at the first chance I get. I'll swear to whatever imaginary character you want on that. I can't even picture myself hitting a woman in any other situation (pun intended in every possible way). It's not alright to strike nads, unless some sort of attempt at rape is involved. And even then there are nuances and levels. Like in the movie Robocop when he shoots that rapist in the dick. That shit ain't cool. OK? It's excessive penis punishment. There's an entire gray-scale when it comes to dick violence. You can't just go around blowing blasting exploding off penises at every sign of trouble. When in doubt, aim for the face. That's what I always say. Think of the guy's parents. I suspect they would much rather have a closed casket service and know that their son's genitalia is at the very least still attached to his body. It's comforting. "Well thank God they shot him in the fucking face, huh?" - they'll be saying. On blogs: Most bloggers write as if they're trying to break their computers, and my tiny little brain. Random clusters of misspelled words describing their mind-numbingly boring activities. A mash of garbled words and meaning assault my senses. They should at minimum have the decency to punctuate properly. This will allow me to more easily discern when the first sentence is over. That way I can stop reading at the earliest possible moment, turn off my computer, go outside and weep a little for a language lost. On love: We all want to be loved, but we do not all get to be. The amount of love in the world is not equal to the number of people. Unfortunately some of us will have to do without at times. Think of it as a rolling blackout of love. All the more happy you will be when the light finally returns to your life, sooner or later. Even the most evil and vile dictator, who has worked very hard at being feared, would much rather be loved. He just doesn't know know how, since he's a sociopath. Yet the yearning remains. There's nothing abnormal or unusual or unnatural with the need to be loved. Just with some of the ways we go about trying to attain it. Beating someone to death with a strap-on is not acceptable, whatever the motivation behind it. Love is if anything irrational. It can't be quantified with reason or logic. We should not even try. To do so would be to diminish it. To make it into something less than it deserves to be. Maybe some find it alluring to try to decide what love ought to be in their lives and when it is to appear. To me, it just seems preposterous. You're the master of your own fate, not of the very essence of your being.

Back to you in the studio.

Dear television humanoids, please stop showing me weather reports all the time. For the love of all that is holy please stop! Neither I nor anyone else living in the 21st century has any use for them. Also, I have no idea what those little  arrows and lines on the map really mean. Is that the direction the weather is moving in? Isn't weather all around us all the time? Sort of like the Unitarian definition of God?

Weather used to play a huge part in the lives of everyday people. It dictated what you could do, and when you could do it. With little chance of escaping it. Man was subject to patterns of nature he couldn't quite understand. Over time we have tried to develop new ways of understanding weather systems and their causes. Doppler radar and incredibly complex computer models have given us small advances in our knowledge of these phenomena. But a modern person has no use for this information.

What the hell does any of this mean?

We live in houses, drive cars, wear proper clothing and work in climate controlled office buildings. A normal person does not spend hours a day outside exposed to the elements. That only happens if something has gone awry. Besides, chances are they won't remember what the weather man said this morning anyway. They were too busy trying to wash the vomits stains out of their dress socks. Big promotion coming up!

Unless it's a huge hurricane of shit heading my way it won't affect my life in any real way. And I think such an event would warrant a small segment of its own. Somewhere between the feel-good story of a kitten being rescued from a well and the sports results. I don't need to know the possible weather four days from now. For most of us simply looking out the window before deciding for or against wearing a jacket should suffice.

What's the weather going to be like tomorrow? More or less like yesterday. The earth won't suddenly start spinning backwards on its own axis. It's not going to start raining upwards. Hot won't be cold. And November is not going to be a pleasantly sunny month. Meteorology is mostly just guesswork in front of a green screen. Suit up and let's roll.