August 31, 2008

My Fucking Depression

Chapter 36



i havent been genuinely happy for quite some time now. and by "genuinely happy" i mean being happy internally - outside of any "happy experiences" such as going to DisneyLand or getting with a girl or watching one of your favorite bands...but then i had to ask myself the question. i mean, it's indirectly built into the name of my blog after all. what is happiness? genuine happiness. is it relative? is not being in pain? is it only being i love? if is it the realization that you are in fact loved by someone at all? is it drunken blissful stupor? is it knowing & believing that things will be okay? maybe by having more faith in that there will be an end that justifies the means? faith? religion? will god bring me happiness? is it having a peace of mind?



what if i never get the chance to ever be truly happy again? what if i forget what true happiness even is? ... when do the professionals draw the line between deciding if someone is medically depressed or rather is just extraordinarily pessimisitc, apathetic, angry, and bitter? when does an unhappy person even decide that they even need a professional's psychiatric evaluation? after the first court order? after the first suicide attempt?



when does a sad person even become suicidal? what gives a person the right to decide that they are soo far beyond gone that the repercussions of suicide (like hell or leaving a family in grief, for example) even become a viable option?



this world is tough, i know. my life has been easy in all of the important ways. but sometimes sad. more times happy. some times sad. the spill canvas give me solace in their song self-conclusion where the indy rocker sings "we all flirt with the tiniest notion of self-conclusion in just one simplified motion / see the trick is that you're never supposed to act on it/ no matter how unbearable this misery gets".



since this, and many other songs written by pro-life punk bands have had such an impact on my life, i know that i will keep on with this fucking grind, despite feeling like im in such a funk all the time. death is a scary thing i think about probably too much. "what if i died tonight? car crash. propane explosion. lysteria tainted meat. strangled by my own headphones while i sleep in my bed. what would become of the stuff i left behind? how would i be remembered? how would my mom survive? who else would my death have an effect on? i'm pretty sure even Cosmo has forgotten about Oliver after all.



the sun is hotter now than it was 10 and 20 years ago. that protective layer of ozone is getting thinner. the cancer rates are getting higher. just the other day my uncle's girlfriend was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. cancer. god what a horrible thing. i enjoy living even if i'm sad. if anything, i enjoy being here to try and make others happy. i like it when people are happy. that is when i am happiest! but so many good people are dying and continue to die at young ages. i was outside a lot last weekend and got some hella bad sunburn and could just feel the cancer burning into my skin.



alternatively we grow old. some are good, more are bad, but there are people that keep on living. people that have been through a real depression. and they carry on. my grandma is one of the good one's. she fights and struggles through in a world in which she has lost soo much: a grand daughter, husbands, sisters and brothers. it gives me strength to see if i can make it that long, but at the same time i stop and think about how difficult it has been for her and how difficult it will continue to be for a lot of people in similar shoes as me given the state of this effed up world.



i cant think of anything else to say but gah. but i will live for today.

August 6, 2008

Chapter 19: The Value of a Life

Death is a tragic thing. It's all around us - there's just no escaping it. The way we go can sometimes be controlled, whether we smoke or drink ourselves into an irrecoverable state, or we shorten our lives drastically more in order to escape the troubles in life that we might otherwise find to be too hard to cope with. So we live, we love, we die. Sometimes we skip the middle one. But this here and now is about death. Not so much about how or why some people have to die, but rather about the taking of lives.



Recently my neighbor's cat has gone missing. It was an adorable peachy kitten with a pink nose and blue eyes. His name was Oliver and he loved to aggravate Cosmo by coming realll close, pawing (not scratching) then taking back off to the hedge where my dog couldn't reach him. My dog would kind of paw back and bark, but never anything more.



I have an optimistic hope that my new little friend found himself a home with a nice family that was looking for a cat just like Oliver. But it sickens me when I open up the morning paper and read about how kids are facing charges for microwaving a cat to death.



I've been wanting to write about this for months (likely even before it was translated into my 19th chapter of blogs) but the recent accounts of 2 dogs being found in a west Edmonton lake I guess, had finally done it for me. They said the dogs were too decomposed to determine cause of death, yet there is suspicion as to whether gunshots were heard the night the dogs went missing.




Beyond recognition. Beyond recognition? Beyond recognition.



Can you imagine? Someone you love being treated in such a way so that the next time they come around, they are beyond recognition?



Personally, I wouldn't know what I would do to the person that ever hurt my Cosmo. Once at the local store, I practically went postal at a guy for upsetting my dog when he was tied up outside.



So if it's not a pet that dies, it's another human. I suppose I could talk about how we also have the power to kill other lifeforms than human beings including cows, pigs, fish, moose, bears, trees, orchids, ants, wasps etc. By exerting our Power to Kill beyond our own need to survive through eating, we are showing how primitive & ruthless our species truly is and how society celebrates those who can display that much power over its defeated counterpart.



But where to draw the line, hey?




That is sure an amazing 29 pound salmon that I have hung there over the fireplace, but I wonder what god thinks of me for robbing little nemo of a family, or at the very least, a really good healthy member of a thriving fish species?


Screw it! If I didn't kill it, someone else would have!!





Murder? Fish murder. K this IS a joke of a blog. Waste of time.



Yet recently there was a man sentenced to 22 years in prison with no chance of parole after being convicted of a triple homicide (no reference). This, in comparison to a 29 month sentence after a conviction for the lesser charge of manslaughter after an attack on a gay kid in the states. When drunk drivers can be sentenced in terms of months for robbing a family from a son or daughter or brother or sister, there is cause to worry about how much value we really put on life.


But I suppose we have the amazing Canadian Justice System to decide that. Where noone ever falls through the cracks, and the rightfully convicted serve their debts and suffer a loss of freedom, and of course, have to live with what ever they did for the rest of their life, with only god to pray to for redemption.


So I suppose you can only ask yourself this simple question about respecting all forms of life:


What would Oprah Do? WWOD. But if you are a fan of 24 and not Oprah, you might ask yourself What Would Jack Bauer Do? But we all know that the answer to that would be KILL! KILL! KILL!



Who else can we look to for guidance? Our church? Our inner-selves? Our parents? Our girlfriend? Politicians maybe! I dunno. Please tell me. Is it god that really allows 70,000 dead Chinese to be erradicated from the earth in a devastating earthquake? Who can I blame for all of the misgivings of this world?
What gives me the right to live?



What gives guys like Robert Pickton or Vince Li the right to live? The second guy was pleading for death after all! They are drains on society, and in this fine country called Canada we will be injecting millions of dollars into the courts to decide that they should never set foot on free land again. Instead, it is our responsibility of us as Canadians to pay to feed & clothe these disgraces to the human race for the rest of their lives. That's a little bit more expensive than a 5 cent bullet. Up the taxes. In America, Dubya approved the killing of a soldier who was a serial murderer/racist. What power.
But for myself? For now I think I will keep to killing the ants with that white powdery stuff. Maybe it is justified after all, if I happen to injest enough through breathing it in and develop cancer in 30 or 60 years.
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080106/animal_abuse_080106?s_name=&no_ads=


http://www.outinasheville.com/outloud/?p=283

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0708/12129.html

August 1, 2008

Sex and Violence

Sure I may be unoriginal by just using song titles as blog titles. Maybe that even borders on copyright infringement. But let's just say for the sake of everyone that I have never even heard of the Exploited, let alone this song.

The City of Edmonton has recently discontinued allowing bars from selling cheap alcoholic beverages. The intention being that the higher prices will deter obnoxious and belligerent party-to-hard-ers from pouring as much of that liquid courage down their gullet. By having higher drink prices, there will be a lot less crime in the city. What Bull. The kids out there who already have it rough enough by having the stress of paying rent, passing school, and affording food are now being denied the opportunity to have a few hours of escape from a very demanding society.

Mayor Pinhead Mandel has this thing called the Curb the Violence campaign and feels that this is one of the key ways in stopping violence on Edmonton streets. Isn't most of the most serious violence coming from the police anyways? For every 3 Taser Deaths, I hear of one gang beating resulting in death. Maybe we should be taking the cops (and ridiculously overly priced police helicopter) off of the streets (and out of the skies).

Regardless of cheap drinks, psychotic angry youths out there will continue to cause a raucous. Yet still, our every day social drinkers that enjoyed dollar pints @ Filthy's or 50 cent hi-balls @ Squires are the ones that suffer. I mean, reallllly suffer. Without the same availabilty of affordable liquid courage, there will be less people hooking up and getting laid. And unless you are a complete idiot when it comes to hooking up, there shouldn't really be too much worry about getting any *ahem* undesirable results.

Lastly. For those of us who do drink and get loud, belligerent, and get into a fight ("(Alcohol) will help you pick a fight with someone twice your size" according to Brad), who cares! What harm has there been over the years with a couple of guys stepping outside and laying into eachother for a minute or two. If anything, that is a large part of how us males enjoy releasing our aggression. Isn't that a better way than taking it out on her? Or maybe taking it out on someone else by getting into a crash while on the roadways (in your truck, of course)? Bar fights resulting from excessive alcohol consumption have been around since the days of the Wild Wild West. I wouldn't be surprised if Edmonton was home to one of the original saloons where the very first bar brawls happened!


So keep on drinking, Edmonton. Fight and Screw. Let it all out. It is the long weekend after all.