Let's Talk About Rape

uprooted tree trunk with bits of dirt clinging to its' roots and rootlets. 

     The woman approaches the stage. Her cheeks are painted red and her eyes are glowing with something other-worldly. I hold my breath. I know this is going to hit me right in the gut. Give it to me, sister. I am ready.

     She warms up to her subject. The re-telling of her life gets more and more sordid and convoluted. The dam breaks and the lights shatter. "I was the one who decided to get into that van with those men," she said. "No one forced me to do that. I was responsible for my rape that night."

     Already I can feel myself collapsing inwardly. This I was not expecting. I was not ready. No one should have to be that brave. That strong. That needy. 

     I stare at the other members of the audience. I am the Other. Everyone else is nodding in approval. Some are clapping. I want to vomit. A guy passes me a piece of cake. Stuff the emotions downward. Something else to focus on. I lift up the sugary fakeness with a plastic fork. I don't enjoy the taste of it at all.

     Nine more minutes. People are smiling. Laughing. How could they? Let them who have the ears hear. I groan inwardly. Ain't nuthin' going to fix this. I focus on my breathing. On the walk I took with my dog and her doggie friend today in the woods. A purple trillium was blooming and the mayapples were busting out all over. 

     Seven minutes. A friend leaves. He is wiser than I am. I stay to witness the debacle. Why do I do this to myself? 

     A woman walks over to me and gives me her phone number. I glance at the name on the paper. She seems to think that I ought to remember her. "I'm working now," she says. "Odd hours. Call me." I stuff the paper into the pocket of my hoodie. "Sure." I glance at the name she has written down. Sheila. At her face. Never seen this woman before in my life. I will have to ask someone later. I am face-blind. My prosopagnopia seems to bother others a lot more than it bothers me. I've gotten used to it. It hasn't gotten any better but it hasn't gotten any worse either. 

     Three more minutes left in the performance. I know full well that there are people who are capable of manufacturing rape incidents out of their imaginations for their own twisted satisfaction or monetary gain. I have seen the results of such machinations up close. I despise people who manufacture their own victim-hoods. They are scum. They make a mockery of the human beings who are  real victims. The woman up on the stage is not making it up. What kind of society allows victims to claim responsibility for the actions of their predators?

     She spends her last minute talking about her triumphs. But it is too late. I am fried. Is that someone crying? I cannot tell in the profound darkness. The woman exits the stage. The applause is thunderous. I cannot join in. Broken, I sing my way home.

The Journeyman Writer of Blog

I received my Google check the other day for the advertising on my blogs, and it got me to thinking that someday I may have to start thinking of myself as a business. Theoretically you have to make over $400 a year on your various schemes .. um .. I mean .. business ventures, and there is a good chance that this year I could do that. It would be a first, and that probably just made everyone who knows I have been blogging for ten years run for the exit out of here. Yes, it takes a very special person to get rich off of blogging and you aren’t reading one of them.

What’s probably worse, is that the “I am a writer, and blogging is a side gig,” crowd is about to get their balloons burst too. For me to pass that whopping $400 mark this year I have to add in my book sales revenue too. It’s been a banner month on that front as I have sold the second most amount of books as I have in any given month. That number would be 3, and it is eclipsed only by the month I sold 7, but then again 5 of those were to myself. You probably are wondering why I can be this honest about these things and it is because lying about it doesn’t do me any good.

Back to the theory I throw out there a lot and why I do so. I am a blogger who writes a lot, and it is a great hobby all things considered, because a lot of hobbies end up costing you money. All things totaled, even if you include the amount of money I paid for my website, the graphic design software that I use to keep it all in order, a few small upgrades o certain things et al, I have made enough money to pay for all of that. Now I am making gravy baby! Ok I am making peanuts, but again my hobby is free from this point on and more over I will probably make enough money along the way to buy more upgrades to my operation, maybe even a new tablet, as long as it is a cheap one.

Yeah forgive me for taking you on a scatter path through my scattered mind. Of all the things that my blogging, web design, and social media engineering has afforded me, you can throw in the friendship, the ability to help others, and even slather in a bit of laughs here and there. The best laughs come at my own expense. What I am really very proud of is the fact that other people seem to like my writing enough that they ask me to write for their blogs. Of course they could just be desperate, but that doesn’t mean I have to tell myself that. It’s just a hobby after all so taking it too seriously would make it a job. YUCK!

If you like this crap, you are the type of person I need. Come see the other crap I write over at TheWhacko.Com or don't, see if I care!

What I Earn Through Me and Others

It’s Tuesday morning, and like I do every Tuesday morning, I gather up all of the trash, and package it up for the garbage men to take it sometime after I go to work. Over the last few months this was quite the miserable task, freezing cold, fingers numb, icicle hanging off my nose, but today is beautiful out. The air is warm, there is a cool breeze flowing in from the west, and yes I am enjoying taking the garbage out. I earned this, and as I didn’t bitch about the snow, and I thoroughly enjoyed the great workouts shoveling it, I have now earned this beautiful weather in which I will take walks and enjoy wearing less clothing.

I’m sure people get really sick of my attitude. That Jeremy just brags about his health, talks about politics like he knows something, rambles on about history, and acts like he is the greatest blogger ever. I earn all that too, every day. I write, I go to the gym, I stay up on current events, and I read a lot of history. I keep a positive attitude because I have to. Deep down inside I am the most negative, miserable human being on the face of the earth. I was a miserable drunk, blacked out all the time, furious at the world and starting fights with everyone to get even with everyone for a miserable childhood. Boo Freaking Hoo. You are what your parents make you and if you choose to stay that way then BLAME YOU.

To be honest with you all, which is what this particular blog of mine is all about, I had to learn to turn my misery outward. No that doesn’t mean that I share my misery and transpose it on others, it means that I enjoy the misery of others especially if they bring it on themselves. Does it mean that I wish misery on others? Nope I wish everyone could be as happy as I am, but the fact of the matter is that most people won’t be more often than they can’t be, and I get a chuckle out of it simply because I am grateful that I am not that person anymore.

I just dealt with snow banks that were taller than myself the entire winter, and I did it with a SHOVEL not a snow blower. I was grateful for all of the exercise I got, and how healthy it made me feel. I was elated that I could actually do it and do it very good at that. I was grateful to all the people living down south who thought they were giving me a hard time, knowing that right about now as all my flowers are popping up, full of all that water that has been leaking steadily into the ground, they will be crying and complaining about droughts and heat. I am living a gorgeous day. I don’t care if it rains, the temperature goes through the roof, or falls into the cellar, and nobody can take that away from me, other than me.

We Don't Have a God Problem

Let’s share a broken record moment, just for the sake of those that haven’t read my past work, but I have said for years that whether you like the Bible or not, 2000 years ago it was the greatest survival manual ever written. There are a lot of things in the Bible that were written in the context of “rules handed down by a vengeful God” that when executed properly would extend your life. Kosher eating laws for example when viewed today are really nothing more than common sense based on the times. Eating a pig was a 50/50 proposition, if it wasn’t cooked properly, and by the standards of the time it wasn’t really possible. Milk and Meat mixed together created a deadly proposition, when you considered how the bacteria interacted, again 2000 years ago. Human sacrifice was EVERYWHERE, and it was monotheism that basically ended that.

Of course it is a 2000 year old book regardless of whether God had his scribes write it down or not, there were humans involved, and we are amazingly flawed creatures. It’s in the bible trust me. I am a HUGE fan of religious history. I have sat through seminars, does some schooling, read all the major religious writings. I’ve read the bible several times, the Qur’an a couple of times, the book of Mormon a couple of times, and the Hadith once. The Hadith was when I realized that I didn’t have to analyze everything; some things just are what they are. Every one of the religious texts (aside from Dianetics, L Ron Hubbard was a cut rate science fiction writer, no more no less) has some value, but of course some really bad ideas by today’s standards. I know, I can get into a biblical slap fight with the best of them.

2 Thessalonians 3:10 "For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat." That is my favorite quote out of the entire Bible. It sums up the Christian work ethic that I like to think I have but more over it is another one of those life skills that progressives try to beat out of people. It also is important to know that one for when a progressive starts quoting all the places in the bible where we are supposed to feed and clothe the fat and lazy. That is where it rests in my mind and that is probably the furthest I will ever really use the bible to justify my behaviors.

The real problem in society is the way others use the religious works to justify their behavior. Some find reason to kill, some find reason to be intolerant, and others find reason to enslave. I find reason to remember that there is only one King, and that is God. You don’t have to call her God to get the point, but you have to accept that you are NOT the most powerful thing in the world. Again to the progressive mind set, where they refuse to admit that God placed an angel with a flaming sword in front of the entrance to Eden, to keep human kind OUT. Anyone that promises you a one way trip to Eden (Utopia) as long as they get to be in charge, I assure you is probably representative of an angel that fell from Heaven and is sitting down below waiting for your loyalty.

My Name Is Jeremy And I Am What I Am

It took me a long time to admit that I was an alcoholic. The theory behind it was pretty sound. I drank too much, I made an asshole out of myself, burned a few bridges, passed out, woke up and started the whole sick cycle carousel all over again. This isn't anything strange if you have seen it and you aren't so codependent that you could justify it. No the “long time” aspect of the disease in general was due to the fact that I never had really finished myself off properly, and had to keep destroying my life, to finally get to where I needed to be.

Unfortunately where I need to be was 19 years old, living in a strange city and starting a new job that was beneath me or anyone else that wasn't at rock bottom. The hopelessness had to sink in and then I had to accept that I needed to fix me for nobody other than me. That sounds easy enough to most people, but there is where the problem of alcoholism lies, because we tend to not be most people, so the solutions to our problems as simple as they would appear to someone else is pretty damn difficult to us.

When you finally do get in tune with whatever form of self improvement you are working on, then you have to deal with your social inadequacies, or just add them to the list of excuses that you use to stay damaged. In my case I had to come to grips with the fact that everyone has feelings and emotions and just because I was an alcoholic didn't mean I cornered the market on them. I also had to realize that the way I dealt with feelings and emotions was completely and utterly self destructive. This made for a much greater set of problems that it took me many years to come to grips with. I liked to believe that I was the last person in line, while at the same time understanding that I thought I was the center of the universe.

This is where the humility came into it all for me. That “power greater than myself” whether I chose to call it God or anything else, wasn't just something to pull out of your bag of tricks when you needed someone or something to blame for why I was so screwed up. I was so screwed up because I used my free will to do things that were stupid. Pretty simple when you think about it, but to someone who considers themselves the center of the universe and placed no value on anything greater than them, it was a complicated issue, that required the humility to accept that I ain't all that.

This was where I finally had the chance to make something out of myself. Actually it was my first and perhaps last opportunity to make anything out of myself aside from a falling down, stinking, filthy drunk. In theory I was already pretty good at that, and again I hadn't even made it to a legal drinking age yet. Beyond the obvious my biggest issue was that there was never going to be enough alcohol to fix what I wanted to fix inside myself, and I was never going to stop trying to get there anyway. This was where I had to turn to God, because on the off chance that there isn't a God (which to me really isn't up for a debate) I did in the end realize that God helped me to stop drinking, and start on a path to a better life.

How could I come to this conclusion, in all of the haze that was the first few years of freedom from alcohol? The answer is pretty simple. God was the only entity that I asked for help, and actually did help me. In that aspect I don’t have to know that there is a God, or there isn't a God. The faith that I was able to be a better person, and grow both mentally and spiritually has very little to do with all of the “life” crap that has happened between now and then. I can have a bad day or a good day. I can wake up angry, sad, happy, confused, disheartened, furious, joyous or one of over a million ways, and that is only the beginning of the new day. It rarely ever ends the same way it started and I would have it no other way. Of course I wouldn't know any other way at this point, and for that I truly thank God.