Spicy Gamer Vibes and the Banality of Karen – Level 5 : Lazy Content Recyclers are as Chill as Fans of Emulation (and bank robbers)

There doesn’t seem to be a way to criticize people for “recycling” content.

YouTube channels just trying to exploit the algorithm……video game sequels that change hardly anything……news articles that practically steal from somebody else……tracing somebody else’s art…..releasing your own archive of content and branding it as something new and special…it’s kind of gross, right?

But people rarely resist the chance to plant those lazy seeds and watch them grow. What keeps them from doing it?

Why not compare it to the feelings you get when emulating video games? Let’s just use the most benevolent version of piracy as an example. Running a Nintendo 64 game on your computer that you can barely even buy anymore!

When you get that shit up and running, it feels kind of magical. Getting something for nothing. Accessing it quick and easy. Doing it with nobody even knowing you are!

It’s stealthy, it’s peaceful, it’s chill. What’s also chill is not using as much effort as you once did to make something awesome happen.

But not totally chill, eh? It’s spicy, too. It’s still kind of off. But it isn’t. Oh yeah, that’s the feeling that makes you human.

It makes you a lot like a shoplifter. That serene mindfuck of not having to try too hard. When the world wants so much more out of you. And you use just the right amount of effort at the right time to take it.

I’m sure bank robbers get the same butterflies in their stomach.

That feeling that everyone doesn’t really disagree with you when you take something by force.

And all those white collar criminals as well likely feel the same.

I would rather we all deal with the need to steal by only stealing unplayable software,

and that we’d rather reuse our own creative material just enough to help make its mark.

Only then will we be as chill

as we think we definitely have been.

Only when you fall out of love

with that warm and wonderful feeling

of lightly crossing boundaries,

will you be the opposite of grand larceny.

The purity behind the contemptible is the only thing we need to keep in check.

Spicy Gamer Vibes and the Banality of Karen – Level 4 : Major Adult Freakouts are like Showing Off Before Losing in a Collectible Card Game

There doesn’t seem to be any way to actually criticize the most insufferable public behavior committed by adults. Nor a way to try and prevent the most difficult situations in the workplace, which lead to somebody getting fired.

Perhaps most unfortunately, plenty of people throw their lives away in an abject fit of violence. Though maybe on some level, the willingness to make strangers totally uncomfortable by insulting them is actually a much vaster problem.

For those of you feeling the most hopeless, why not try this metaphor on for size?

Hearthstone is a game in which players take turns making actions with their cards until one of them wins.

Naturally, when one player is about to win against the other, sometimes they will pretend to pining over what to do, when they actually have just enough spells or minions in hand to “have lethal” and win the game. It’s quite the big-hearted thing to do.

What’s more interesting, though, is what players do when they’re about to lose. Sometimes, it’s near completely clear that they don’t stand a chance.

Rather than merely hitting the Concede button, these players will show off the plays they were meaning to do, summon the minions they were going to, or destroy at least one of the bastards on the other side of the board.

To dissect such a whim or urge would be difficult, but it reminds you of adults at their most dangerous or troublesome, doesn’t it?

When you’ve lost nearly everything. When you look pathetic. When you don’t even have a high probability of even staying alive much longer.

Not being sure if you’re causing panic or pity, or excitement or apathy. Not even knowing what the fuck you’re doing, but you’re doing something.

All you want to do in those situations is come off as some something more than wretched.

Something resembling a winner.

Something slightly scary.

Something that understands how to dream big, even if your dreams have all been smashed.

Like somebody about to quit a job trashing the entire place….knowing they’ll only rebuild without your presence.

Other people will call it a freakout.

While to you, it’s more like putting on a show.

Something closer to theatrics that come from the heart.

A cousin of good storytelling.

A thing like deep self-expression.

A voice reaching unto the heavens, saying “I tried my best to win at being human”.

Resisting the urge to do something besides simply give up is a very hard to do, even when you’ve lost.

But in those moments, nothing feels sick or twisted or inappropriate, and that’s the most hazardous state to be in.

It’s what we can’t put into words. Except maybe me, perhaps.

It’s no wonder we use these types of games as an outlet.

Perhaps many non-gamers would benefit from knowing the strange kinds of catharsis inherent in such competition.

And perhaps many gamers could even out their emotions more effectively through their emotionally stimulating hobby.

I would love to see our inner Karens sealed up tight.

Will we ever say good night?

As soon as we understand that that everyone is unfortunately, the underdog.

Spicy Gamer Vibes and the Banality of Karen – Level 3 : Calling a Loved One a Burden is as Nifty as Managing Curses in Dungeons

It doesn’t seem possible to criticize people for abusive language or abusive behavior anymore. It’s almost like we, as a species, have managed to hit a wall. It comes from a place far too sincere to try and nullify, doesn’t it?

In the Roguelike genre of video games, making it to the end of a game without dying is usually a major pain the ass. One reason being how random the obstacles and enemies are, the risky shit you do for a small chance at victory.

In the game Undermine, certain you can end up with curses on your character, for the sake of opening doors, acquiring strength, or obtaining items that can totally save your ass.

Most of them involve you or your items becoming weaker, or certain things causing you to take damage, lose resources, or fight more enemies.

The weirdest of these curses is random teleportation upon taking damage. An inconvenience easy to explain, in a game with swarms of bad guys everywhere, fire and lightning traps, as well as dark pits.

Spelunky does it too in another way. Infinite bombs for fighting and for digging through ground, but at a certain time interval, you move involuntarily, and can teleport into a wall can kill you right away.

Pretty damn weird, right?

One of the greatest sources of joy in these games is overcoming the ridiculous handicaps you acquire during a single hour-or-so run. In your desperate attempts to combine all your knowledge of the game’s mechanics for successful survival through randomly generated levels, few things are more delicious than making things even crazier as a means of securing your very first victory after dozens of failures.

So why exactly do people get such good vibes from saying things they know sound absolutely wicked? Or rather, why does the person complaining about being called a burden, or crying their eyes out for being called a nuisance, or being driven to suicide for being called a curse of all things, seem like such a whiny little piece of garbage to the one committing poison to their tongue?

Why exactly does not wanting to be verbally beaten by someone you love seem so petty? Where do these monstrous actions get their fucking clarity from? Why are they so invincible that popular culture seems to make binding this need to be unpleasant with others an impossible task?

It’s all about the overcoming of chaos, and the positive energy that comes with it. To the abuser, the victim is an agent of chaos, even if they seem fairly helpless.

And every time the victim complains about being treated like an animal just for wanting to be free from trauma and pain, the abuser thinks back, and tries to remember exactly what distances them from the stereotypes in their head.

It’s in navigating the unpredictable bullshit. Living with someone, taking care of someone, loving someone, is like being forced to teleport around a room at times and distances you can’t predict.

No matter how calm or well behaved they claim to be, they feel like bullshit machines.

Even the worst among us think deeply about where interacting with someone is going to take us. You get to ready hit the fire, to fall in the muck, get bounced back by the swipe of a rat, and dodge them over and over, by tilting your body so slightly, readying your magic, swinging your sword before you’re even involuntarily moved across the chasm where the goblin waits to strike.

People call someone a curse when their ability to navigate their own life is being insulted. And people know it can cascade into worse things to even attempt so. To face the consequences of saying terrible things feels very spicy indeed. I don’t fucking blame your for feeling perfectly innocent. I don’t blame you for feeling nifty as fuck when the vitriol comes out.

But here’s a solution. Don’t be so enchanted by the highs of the risks you take and the moves you make.

Biting your tongue is as difficult as downplaying how many times you had to build yourself up just to endure the presence of other people.

Saying only nice things to someone is neither easy nor healthy.

But you can always start a new run when your bizarre strategies fall apart spectacularly enough to make you feel like the epitome of enraged innocence.

Spicy Gamer Vibes and the Banality of Karen – Level 2 : Corporate Madmen Grab the Useless Eleventh Coin in Mario Kart (Proposal to Humanity)

Do you know about my favorite tactical aspect of the Mario Kart series? One of things that sucked me back in after 10 years or so?

It’s the coins. You can grab coins on the road, lose coins when being hit, and take coins from other people.

The more coins you get, the faster your character gets.  It’s extremely obvious you should get as many coins as possible.

Choosing to go out of your way to acquire coins, rather than simply moving as quickly as you can, is a very satisfying element of the game. It makes your heart glow, really, making that kind of sacrifice, subjecting yourself to that awkwardness, just for a fragment of a chance at victory.

And even choosing not to do it can be satisfying.  Giving them up for an item box or hitting a boost. Figuring out when to go for coins adds value to the very act.

One of the less obvious aspects of coin acquisition is the ability to take more than you can hold.  If you have 10 coins, the eleventh does absolutely nothing.  Neither does the twelfth or thirteenth.

But it does prevent other people from getting that coin.  It eliminates so many winding possibilities on the road of fate.

I didn’t even realize I could do that after dozens of hours of playing Mario Kart 7 online!  I mean, if your inventory is full, going out of your way to get a coin is worth quite a bit less, since it has no function. But knowing someone else can’t get that coin is so fucking satisfying.  In a way, even more so than if you could use it. Big fucking hearted moment.

While the mechanics of driving in kart racers may be simple, for the most part, kart racers offer deep gratification many games barely provide, by allowing for tough choices in the very act of moving your funky little vehicle.

When you’re taking more than you need, more than you can use, hindering someone else’s progress, through small efforts, like the coin that’s right next to where you were going to drive, it feels kind of dark, kind of bright, kind of interesting, kind of glorious.

Shit, it’s exactly the type of thing that makes storytelling satisfying, that makes characters controversial, that makes the quest for victory itself so very spicy.

I don’t blame anyone for getting off on it. I don’t think anyone is an idiot for smiling like an idiot for those types of sweet little brilliance.

I’m tired of people making fun of greed.  I’m very tired of stereotypes about the ultra-rich.  I’m super tired of people acting like political corruption is done by humans in some other emotional universe. 

It’s never been like that, at least not recently.  We all guzzle the same popular culture.

You know your instincts about billionaires being fundamentally different types of people are wrong. You know this and you feel it every time a political cartoon fails to make the slightest dent in human behavior.

Not to downplay anyone’s temperance against greed, but I think the worst abusers of their own money are just kind of what happens….when ordinary people play hard at being human as much as others do, but with many more options available in their fate.

Being a bit nefarious with cash, credit, or capital feels like making a drift in the road more angular and risky and elegant than that of other people. Driving outside the lines you always thought you shouldn’t feels amazing.  Money is like a Power Mushroom that negates the grip of terrain.

Having the ability to bend the will of other people feels amazing. Sensing them aching to take from you feels exhilarating. 

When you become a rich bastard, the world becomes your race track. No matter how many people accuse you of treating the world like a toy box….you still feel like a go-karter in a wacky race. You’re still underdog-like. You’re totally still a contender and not the master of the game.

Everyone tells you you don’t give a shit about anything, but then you remember how seriously you take your own actions. How much you watch out for others’. How you align everything together in the little moves you make on the quest for even further speed and grace while driving down the road of a stellar human experience.

That deep and down-to-earth feeling in which you regard yourself positively, despite your pettiness, is exactly how you feel when playing multiplayer games. Giving yourself a bit more validation than you should reasonably require from a game, or money feels deliciously adult and well-developed.

People should be free to enjoy being so egregious when having fun. It’s right to want to do wild and bizarre things to reach the head of the pack.  It’s right to scramble for first place with all sorts of items. It’s right to be happy and determined and relieved and all sorts of things when playing games. Who could possibly blame you for experiencing those emotions?

“Who could possibly blame me?” is like a golden snitch that needs to be caught. Excuse me, it’s like a blue shell that nobody can stop.

It makes me want to laugh and cry seeing human beings spill over all the time. Over and over and over, a person’s determination rises. They then think about what a bad person is really made of, in response to their own conscience, and then, that feeling of holding a blue shell takes over.

“Who could possibly blame me for throwing this? For recouping my advantage, for bringing down the privileged, for improving my odds at making my life more bearable?”

You can’t write off insufferable human behavior as a matter of being upset or toxic.

It’s about the way you feel like a fucking rainbow road when you really really really win at being human.

People taking more than they need have the vibe of Wario and Peach at the same time. It’s as crude as it is dignified, and crudely dignified is all anyone ever seems to really want to be or capable of.

So keep it in the fucking game, okay?

Take that clear-headed, analytical, mischievous, innocent, competitive, peaceful feeling which causes cars to crash and bind it the fuck down.

Do not create a safe and peaceful place for your heart. The calamity and vigor of Toad’s Turnpike is where to go when overwhelmed with desire.

Go forth and walk restrained by the greatness of games, to help you actually make the boring, obvious, nigh pacifistic choices that powerful people have trouble making.

As you may already.


Spicy Gamer Vibes and the Banality of Karen – Level 1 : Supermarket Menaces Loathe the Fleeing Option in RPGs

You ever get shitty luck while playing an RPG? How about an open world game?

High level enemies come out of nowhere. Your ass clenches a little.  You dread losing progress.

And yet, sometimes, you choose to fight instead of run. 

It feels rather spicy, doesn’t it? Like nobody told you this is what video games could or should ever be.

Your heart grows big and you feel clear-headed. You take the plunge, nobody can stop you.  If they should, then let them try.

To simply flee and escape an opportunity to prove your with would be boring and miserable, eh?

If you were to actually describe this situation to a “Karen” who just so happened to interested in this sort of thing, they’d probably understand exactly what you were talking about.

The cooperation-corrupting baddies at the supermarket feel the way you do…. when the polygonal cop cars come chasing after you.   They feel how you feel when the lizard with a knife and lantern mocks you.  They feel how you feel when you spend 20,000 gold on a power up that could get cancelled out as soon as you take damage.

They know what it means to totally have the option of running away.  They know that it doesn’t feel particularly mature or civilized to stay.  They get what it means to taste the pain of risking your own ass for a good reason.

They know they are being insufferable.  But when surrounded by people who are relieved to see you act weak around them, it becomes hard to not want to show off your social strengths.

They feel their eyes opening up when they act far out of line, like a gamer psyched up on the last boss.  They get spice running through their hearts.

You call them an asshole, but in their head, they’ve got that boisterous innocence of a gamer running out of resources, but eager to risk everything on their own confidence and competence.

How hard is it to talk down a supermarket menace?  As hard as telling someone they should just escape every time their HP is low, or their party members are drunk on status effects, or they’re running out of precious potions for casting spells.

That they should never rise to the little exotic, enticing, engaging challenges of interacting with humans in public.

But perhaps you can do that. Could you actually be the one to do that?

Can you actually resist that magnetic pull, that dark but hopeful feeling, that you will totally fucking pull through, despite the disapproval of everybody, possibly even yourself?   Can you “escape” that very badass determination that seems to be made of the good feelings that power-ups give you?

Understanding how universal it is might be the only way. 

Your heart at your peak is not entirely unique.

That is how we can all escape.

Will we get lucky enough to flee human behavior?

Spicy Gamer Vibes and the Banality of Karen – Level 0 : Lonely Teenagers Admire Glitch Creatures on Game Boy

Do you know about Missingno.? It’s a “glitch Pokemon”. A creature that exists entirely by accident.

It’s a topic of much fascination and intrigue. Many even have affection for this garbled mess of pixels and data.

When I was younger, and my social life was about as dull as it possibly gets, I found solace in viewing myself as something like Missingno, the missing number, the mysterious zero in a world of typical creatures.  Like my existence was part of the foundation of other people’s happiness.  Like I was the missing one, despite being there.

It was whatever my lack of social skills was, it was definitely both not my fault, and part of some grand truth. Something about me, and people like me, was the fuel by which smiling faces could actually get to exist.  It was the groundwork, the engine, of egregious cheerfulness committed by jerks.

I’m sure you’ve met people like this. Or maybe you were like that when younger.  And those people confound you with some kind of joyful arrogance and unmitigated angst.

But try looking at it this way. No matter how aggravating somebody’s vibe is, at the very least, they’d appreciate something like a glitch creature if you talked in detail about what they are and where they come from.

Everyone’s heart glows in a spicy fashion when they hear about the right type of inspiring outcast.  It makes you feel the opposite of egregious.

That relaxing and spicy energy is exactly why it’s so hard to talk somebody out of being enchanted by transcendent-feeling blame for any other person or group. 

It’s like trying to tell somebody to not be fascinated by interesting flaws within a video game. Like telling them to freeze up and feel nothing when learning about the most objectively fascinating trivia within a game’s development.

But maybe you can do it. Can you be the one to do it? 

Could you actually shut the power off inside you when it feels like you’ve uncovered the freaky and unnoticed qualities of other human beings?

When the fascination of seeing a new Pokemon seems to combine with frustration about other people’s actions?

Could you switch your inner strength out with a more peaceful kind of monster, in the battles of social interaction?

You can become what the world is missing, no? 

Someday, somewhere, our hearts will all FRZ over and we’ll be happy it happened. Or at least, it’s possible somewhere in our code.

It only takes an unexplored exploit.  I propose comparing the nasty vibes you absolutely can’t stand, which you definitely have….to the clear-headed, steady-hearted, victory-prone purity you taste when winning and appreciating games.

Because to be prone to victory is to actually create new problems, to exploit others, and to even be a little bit ugly-feeling on purpose.

It’s to be very spicy indeed. Ah, you taste it, don’t you? That special feeling everyone doubts you have, but you know you have.

That’s what needs to remain captured and tamed, no matter how much good it does for you and others. I’ve laid out the win condition as well I can.

Spend energy keeping your very spiciest self in the game, rather on the battlefield of human interaction and the world might just be saved, or level up, or get past the loading screen.  Choose your metaphor.

I believe this is something we’re already doing as gamers. I just want to inject it with some fucking vitamins.

This is Spicy Gamer Vibes and the Banality of Karen.

The Heart’s Three Infamous Positive Energy Directives #13 – A Job Quit Evening Diary – (Charity Evacuation/Skateboard Solicitor/Train Paralysis/Buffet Patrol/Leftover McFlurry) [Five Fingers on the Heart of the Formerly Inexplicable]

A long time ago, somebody told me that if you want somebody to care about what you have to say, tell them a story.

So follow along.

Get inside my head.

Yesterday, I left a job involving making calls for charities. I only lasted a few days.

I put utter tons of heart into just surviving that long.

The technical stuff with the cards and numbers.

The things you had to make sure to read at the right time.

The way to scan the intentions of the people in the office.

Just doing that requires 300% of me. So how was I supposed to level up from there, to coerce people consistently, with any charity with any name, to strike at just the right moment, to keep people from hanging up, day in and day out?

It really kind of worked for a while. I’m smart enough that I could mimic how people do it, at least in its least challenging form.

It’s just not in me to infuse coercion into what I do. I can react to others’ insanely strong emotional energy and adjust to it, counter it, bend it to my advantage.

But I can’t convert it into something else entirely. You’ll rarely see me pull anyone back from anything entirely once they’re convinced.

I guess I’m not a swindler.

Even when I can tell exactly what the hell is going in other people’s hearts.

Juggling the technical and emotional, while innovating how you do it, is up to other people not me.

That’s something I can only bear.

But I’m not giving up on my goal.

Not at all.

Let me try and market to you, entice you, convince you,

that I might be the most emotionally aware person you’ll ever meet.

Embrace that possibility.

You ever have trouble putting your finger on how annoying and aggravating somebody is, including you?

On how admirable and badass somebody is, including you?

How strange and confounding somebody’s actions are, including you?

Yeah, you do, hundreds of times a week.

You become speechless. You lose the words. You basically scream inside.

There’s just nothing you can do but try.

Even if that person is you.

There’s just something, really cool, really dumb, really sweet, really gross, about people, all people, with the exception of babies, maybe, and it makes you want to tear the universe apart, not even in anger, just to relieve the desire to achieve that articulation.

In this post I’m not gonna tell you how to put your finger on what you haven’t put your finger on.

The other posts have done that.

I’m just gonna name five situations that happened in quick succession.

They’re gonna give you that weird feeling you can’t describe. That positive feeling. That warm feeling. That obnoxious feeling. That shrewd feeling.

That which you can’t fucking put your finger on.

That which popular culture has failed to put its finger on.

That stuff you know other people have in them,

that makes them big hearted and big brained, and very hard to turn around.

That feeling that makes you feel really fucking human.

I’m going to try and inspire something that doesn’t come naturally….envy.

I want you to read these five little diaries and envy my ability

to understand the vibe of what was going on.

I want you to take that envy, if you feel it, and go back and read all the other posts about

“The Heart’s Three Infamous Positive Energy Directives.”

When I say my eyes feel extraordinarily clear, there’s far less doubt in me than anyone.

When I say I can describe human intensity well, I absolutely mean it far more than anyone.

When I say I’m worth listening to, I don’t feel cheeky or rude. Not at all. Not at all.

Take a look at these five situations.

And be honest, can you put your fingers on it?

Can you really describe it in just a few sentences?

Can you not resort to curse words?

Can you do what I claim to do?

Surpass me if you wish.

I know you want to, because you’re human.

Grown up people witness weird and frustrating and inspiring scenarios and absolutely wish to try and codify them.

You wish to invoke your inner strength by having a grip on thing.

You wish to un-fuck situations that are really and totally fucked.

You really do wish for that.

What makes me unique compared to most people is that I don’t grin with aggravated amusement

at people being hard to deal with.

Or rather, that I don’t blame anyone for lacking a way to get around

how frustrating everyone else is, how being human is.

Everyone tries a lot, way more than all popular culture says.

It’s like the theory of relativity.

Matter and energy.

Everyone puts way more brain and heart into trying to un-fuck the world

than people claim.

And I think deep down, you agree with that. You can feel it in your jaws, and how they almost clench.

When somebody is insufferable, there’s something fundamentally off in the very act of calling them insufferable.

The part of you that watches good movies and tries to get inside the heart of every hero, villain, innocent, and renegade

totally disagrees with the part of you that bemoans the will to change who YOU see as aggravating people, irritating cultures,and unfixable social systems.

If you want things to change, you need to get inside other people’s hearts. You need to feel how big they feel. And how they’re actually kind of justified.

People are problem solvers.

People fight the innocuous.

People reach towards discomfort.

People follow that radiance.

And you know it. They feel like you, somehow just different, and you know it.

They put a lot more work into being a person than the world can say, and you know it.

They get validated for those types of utterly exhausting and soul-hurting efforts you couldn’t even criticize and you know that.

That stuff is bound to the parts of you that nobody can fight, at least not more than indirectly.

But I’m gonna do the impossible: try and fight it directly.

Touch the untouchable, and change it just enough so that everything works out.

Five fingers on the heart of everything you love but can’t explain, everything you hate but can’t criticize, everything that stirs you unwillingly.

This is just one touch. If you wish to feel how I do, for more than an instant, you’re going to have to read the other posts about “The Heart’s Three Infamous Positive Energy Directives.”

It’s up to you whether or not this appeal makes sense.

Now, five rich points, may they tantalize you.

Now, let the sampling begin. This is the gaudy entrance.

As well as a modest finale.

Unless I feel like doing some more, of course.

Keep going, stranger.

1.

Remember how I told you about the guy running the place? There was a point at which he was teaching me those “rebuttals” that are meant to keep someone from hanging up, to sort of benevolently trick them into not hanging up, into giving less money, into succumbing to your will.

This guy, he could see the frustration in my face. The apprehension on my mouth. How he knew it might not work, and how I was likely to come back saying “the techniques were wrong.”

But I told him “no matter how I perform, I’ll trust your advice was right.”

I could see him hesitate a bit. He really didn’t expect that.

With the difficulties I was having keeping up with the harder to market charities and all sorts of other stuff,

he didn’t expect me to actually believe in his own confidence. To do my best at making it work and not complain.

I really did make the exact changes he wanted, and it didn’t work, and I still didn’t hate him at all.

I did my best to defy the instincts that told me to lower my voice rather than raise it, for one.

I was losing power fast, motivation fast, composure fast.

But I could see it coming, and was ready to abandon ship,

without taking solace in his supposed incompetence.

Sure, maybe his advice could have been a lot more thorough.

But I don’t doubt the positive feedback people get from

complex human emotional effort.

That’s one thing nobody can demean.

Do you want to know more about what’s meant by that?

Well, you’re just going to have to read the season’s other posts.

I’ll summarize: the power to overcome and properly use the will of other people

is the true source of security in controversial actions.

2.

I was on the mildly populated train platform waiting to home.

When a teenager on a small skateboard came by me for a bit.

It felt like nothing to me, he was just pausing. But he started to turn for a bit.

I was taking out my Gatorade from my backpack, I felt vulnerable.

Before I could even decide what the hell was happening, he utters “not worth it” and takes off…

skateboard to stairs.

Now, this is the point at which most people would ponder for days about what had transpired.

Of course, I can’t know either, but it’s clear to me.

I didn’t detect any malice or aggression coming from him.

He was probably doing some kind of community charity thing.

Like an event involving gathering based upon the local heritage, maybe?

Something relatively morally sound.

But what got me livid was the way he acted like he wasn’t approaching me, then approached me.

It’s almost always easy to tell when somebody is about to try and talk to you.

You just feel it.

But this guy, this easy going, gentle seeming dude, had some kind of well rehearsed scheme about how to get around the expectations of body language,

with that fucking skateboard

and that really pissed me off.

Could you not call that annoying? The epitome of irritating? Even moreso if he was doing it for a good cause like a community event.

And the way he said “not worth it” and took off.

Holy fuck, why would you do that?

Just to confirm you had the balls to make somebody uncomfortable?

Just to validate that you were going to take a risk?

Just for the sake of trying to put me down for seeming too disheveled to take part in some benevolent scheme?

Overall, though….I wasn’t really that pissed.

I could see from his perspective, he had a strong and steady heart.

Just like everybody else.

I could see, he was having a fit of awesomeness, to him at least.

I was glad I had something to make such a shitty little encounter less debilitating.

If you wish to know what I mean,

well, you’re just going to have to read the season’s other posts.

I’ll summarize: the most obnoxious things ever done

are the most daring and bold of all.

3.
A few moments later, I was on the train. It shook for a bit not long after.

I was pushed forward. I hadn’t seen much of anything yet on the train.

A woman with a handsome sort of gaze glared at me, involuntarily, of course.

For a moment it really looked like I was gonna walk right through her.

I could tell she could tell I seemed aggressive, for a short moment.

Or maybe it was a familiar face. Who can really say?

Naturally, though, after the skateboard guy, I found the encounter to be comparatively pleasant and healing.

There was the dread of a possible confrontation.

There was the promise of a possible amicable exchange.

But, sort of staring, only, at each other, anticipating, perhaps, the other to do anything,

it gave me the types of vibes that remind me of better times,

or rather, the times you hope for,

where things get awkward before they get comfortable.

Perhaps it can be read as a rather gendered sort of thing,

with certain desires and biases making things more bizarre than they would be otherwise.

I tried to convey with body language I was not approaching anyone and I really was accidentally pushed forward a bit.

I kind of tried to freeze flexibly, like a good New Yorker.

Was it to try to be cool, or a good person? I guess you can’t really say.

But you can say when that stuff is definitely causing a kind of social friction.

The type of thing that an extrovert absolutely aches for like it’s some kind of healthy dessert.

The wishing for a quiet misadventure to turn into something more fun to wield.

I am proud to try and not make people uncomfortable, even when I am outgoing.

But, of course, if you aren’t passionate about that discomfort-creating power, it can be hard to win in this world.

And if you’re not, you still may wind up that way, which is where ideological types get their passion for doing weird things.f.

Those hours of aching to change the irritating stranger.

Personally, I view not trying too hard to call people out for their more innocuous forms of frustrating demeanor…to also be a virtue.

That is where introverts may cause even more calamity than their inverted foes, who really know how to turn strange situations in their favor.

If you wish to really know what’s meant by that,

well, you’re just going to have to read the season’s other posts.

I’ll summarize: When strange and awkward humans prioritize winning against their aggressors over being nothing like them,

things don’t progress that much.

4.

I went to Sheepshead Bay, the actual bay, to get some fresh air.

After getting past the quarter mile of nonstop smokers, I got to the water.

I decided to go to the buffet and drown my pathos in unusual flavors, since eating huge amounts of food doesn’t do that much for me. (I do appreciate not having the heart of a binge eater though).

I got fried squid, garlic bread, a tiny piece of cake, and a bunch of other things in those categories.

I ate too much. I tried not to.

I, embarrassingly, heaved and hacked a little in the bathroom.

Fortunately, I kept the vast majority of the briny meat, the cheesy crisps, and the humble sweets on my overstuffed plate.

I had read a few signs about food waste before eating. That was another reason I tried to eat as much as I could. I wasn’t sure if they would charge me for waste, or get irate if I asked for a to go bag.

I loafed around for a bit, even after paying. I wanted to linger.

I had a good reason.

The employees felt like a confident squadron, each with their own territory, a place to guard.

I was not in any condition for objecting when told to leave.

They didn’t push me out. Naturally, they rather asked if I wanted dessert.

Of course, who buys dessert after already paying?

I had been told the place was closing soon before I ate, and I think I was a few minutes away from time, and I had guessed they wanted to clear me out in case I really was that eager to park my ass there.

Or, you know, ask for dessert, at a shitty time.

I can tell when people are hovering toward the brink of confrontation.

Work, real work, sans certain very specialized tasks, or those whose level of authority puts them amazingly beyond those burdens,

absolutely requires that brinksmanship.

It’s something I’ve recently learned to get better at handling.

But I’m not really good at shaping it.

You know, I really care about that whole vibe.

People near the brink. People given a task. People having to dive into the brouhaha of a stranger’s belligerence.

They’re kind of the polar opposite of “Karen”, those self-made sentinels in storefronts.

But in a way “Karen” isn’t entirely different.

It’s all about being the person who is a step ahead of aggravating situations.

And people really do come together to try and foster that sort of ability

in those they must ally with, or wish to have to have on their side.

To really get how that’s done, to not get carried away by that,

well, you’re just going to have to read the season’s other posts.

I’ll summarize: You need to be a benevolent trap to catches human trouble in its most steady and composed forms.

5.

I waited a really long time for the bus. I had to resist going in the Roll-N-Roaster.

Because they have really nice bathrooms.

I had to whiz pretty bad.

So I got off early….or maybe I got off a stop earlier than I thought it was.

Either way, I was right by the McDonald’s on Nostrand Avenue.

It used to be really comfortable there, but now it’s kind of barren.

Almost like it was built with the old cafeteria style setup as its purpose.

Like the roof overhead never wanted to look like a café.

I’ve only eaten at McD’s about 4 times since 2005.

I quit them even before I slimmed down to a humbly average figure….from a fairly chubby figure.

Every time, it just tastes really……fake. Like food flavored food.

Way too jacked up with salt and fat for its own sake.

I figured I would try the ice cream as my bathroom ticket.

It couldn’t be that much worse than the stuff I got at Carvel a while back.

That got me nauseous, but it definitely wasn’t nasty as a McD’s bun, with its texture vaguely like cloth rather than grain.

I even lost my taste for Burger King, which sucks, since one popped up in Bolla Market near my house.

Food flavored food.

The McFlurry has M&M’s in it. It’s overkill, but it’s nice.

The ice cream had too much sugar, as expected.

But my bladder was empty.

I ate it in the relatively rainy weather.

It was a soothing, creamy, chilling to eat, despite my discontent with the parameters of the food itself.

I couldn’t eat it the way I eat Edy’s or Breyer’s with almonds or graham crackers in it, on my walk home.

But I was proud to enjoy the snack.

I was really tired when I got home.

And not entirely proud of myself.

I thought at the charity place, what if I had toughed it out at the worst level, when they sent me downstairs, to be guided along/whipped into shape by someone else?

I didn’t know what was in store, but I felt my everything kind of splitting apart.

I didn’t have the slightest urge to give people comeuppance.

I said something like “I’m doing my absolute best but I don’t think I can keep up with this kind of work”.

And just before I handed in the letter I had wrote respectfully declaring abdication,

to that respectful shape-whipper,

rather than the supervisor it was meant for,

she respectfully said

good luck

and stuff like that

on your way out.

I didn’t need to make the situation less shocking for her in the slightest.

It was certainly not embarrassing.

Just terrible in other ways.

Considering the unlikelihood of success at any level when it comes to getting people to donate to a cause you just heard about,

I really think it’s probably not left to people like me.

Who have to put far more work than most in juggling the will of humans.

I continue the struggle to find something that I enjoy, tolerate, excel at, and endure, for the sake of me.

To try and fit into the world more properly.

I went to bed too soon, my bladder hurt a bit in the morning.

And I was upset to see the McFlurry on the kitchen table.

I knew it would be ice cream soup by then.

But when I drank it, it felt more like a milkshake.

The melted M&M’s actually made something like a balanced flavor.

Like it really did taste kind of like pistachio,

like the creamy light green look actually was appropriate.

So I put it back in the freezer to make it colder.

It’s funny how when you make mistakes, things can improve.

But it’s also important to know that everybody has a passion for that.

Both by jumping headfirst into a job I wasn’t meant to last in, as well as by leaving gracefully,

I had changed the flavor of my life for a while.

……

I am proud of something I think is hard for people to achieve,

which I really do think I have at this point.

To really have a lot of self-control even when your heart is telling you

that you’re an insightful, capable rainbow blaster of a human,

really savoring how good the things you do are.

I know how to fight for that taste without becoming ravenous,

nor slapping the cone out of the hands of others trying to taste

their radiance.

When the ice cream stayed in the fridge, it became something like sorbet, but not fruity or anything.

I was not a fan of the texture. I was hoping it would revert to ice cream or remain like a milkshake.

But I still enjoying that it had become something else.

Most people put a lot of heart into appreciating even that which once was glorious becoming more modest.

Most people have a steady quality.

A reserved quality.

A composed quality.

A genuinely nice quality.

When you can detect that quality in them, and approve of that quality in them, is when they strangely become much more susceptible to being

hated by you, for the actions they take, for whom they seem to choose to be.

When you can sense they have that something that makes them actually pretty mature,

that’s when you feel that warm storm cloud of enlightened disgust for other people.

It’s my goal to try and keep that from causing hurricanes.

Don’t you get it by now?

That swirling angst, rich with confounding levels of flavor,

makes the world quite like a hurricane,

even when you don’t release the rain.

You become a flurry of emotional heat,

bound to make some trouble somewhere.

You’d love to see other people’s umbrellas break

inside the flurry of your heart.

But you don’t feel like a monster made of ice cream, do you?

You feel like a poorly handled, mashed up, but well preserved, fresh-tasting pile of food.

Very shaken up, but still delicious.

And you think you’re the one who can recognize apparently pleasant but truly trashy taste.

You really think you’re on the money….with that absolutely maddeningly thin line between great pal who knows how to chill, and vile freak who knows how to destroy.

You’re utterly hypnotized by how much work you put into

coming up with a way to see who’s just cool and who’s just a scumbag.

That’s the foundation of you.

People follow that deliciously earthy feeling in what they do,

that reminds them of pulling out leftovers.

Everyone is telling you you’re an asshole, you’re scum, you’re a creep.

Trying to fulfill your human desires creatively.

You feel like a person just trying to eat dinner with a little bit of spice.

Your actions and your stances are zesty as fuck.

And if somebody can’t breathe in your spice, then they’re just losers, right?

They’re just acting like kids who want mild food,

and you’re doing what it takes to make life interesting.

I wish you could see, this is how it is for pretty much everyone.

That sense of being so weirdly practical and mellow and accommodating,

when your human will is intolerably spicy.

If they call it trash, you fight back with the gumption of a novel’s protagonist.

And you feel there is no counter for you.

But do you want to know how to counter your very self?

Do you want to know the best way to bear how much other people feel

like spices secretly poured into your chill milkshake of a self?

To counter, control, and defeat that vibe in you as well as others,

well, you’re just going to have to read the season’s other posts.

And remember how positive energy based and utterly bright

a person feels when others accuse them of wretched, reckless darkness.

The world is plenty charitable and kind.

It just needs a different method of stirring.

To make the world as cool and smooth as can be,

you must appeal to the parts of people that really are.

You must overcome the reliance on insults

and replace it with an empathy for the hotness inside a ribcage

to finally grasp the brutal joy within one’s heart

before things get miserable in public.

That is your assignment, stranger.

Drink the hot sauce and sweat it out.

For the dream of social settings becoming as chill as they are

in books for toddlers.

EDIT: Have you seen Tatami Galaxy? It didn’t inspire this post, but it reminds me totally of how I sound here. And that’s encouraging as fuck. If you could make an anime like that all about retail workers figuring out exactly how to diffuse Karen-like behavior in other people and themselves, that would probably save the world.

The Heart’s Three Infamous Positive Energy Directives #12 – Arresting The Russian Blank Paper Guy Is Far From Insanity, and That’s The Unexplained Phenomenon (International Bonus Track)

Hey, did you read the previous post? Pretty good, right?

I’ve never felt so proud about how well I’ve described my past.

About the chance I could really hold the wrist of someone about to do something beautifully extreme,

and maybe they’d finally stop in place.

But you want to know something else?

I read some things that made me feel quite on the mark.

Like maybe I’m the one firing an arrow into the very heart of everyone.

Did you watch the video I’m referring to?

Go ahead, it’s the one where the guy gets arrested after holding a blank sheet of paper somewhere in Russia….apparently it’s “Novosibirsk”.

And this whole thing is about the war in Ukraine, of course.

Anyway, the comments had me aching to get all of this out there.

Surely you’ve seen people saying things like this in response.

“Paper guy is a hero.

“Officer is a dick.

“Paper guy is a genius.

“Russian government is insane.

“Paper guy is standing up for something.

“Putin’s lackeys are pathetic.

“Paper guy is my reason for being.

“Ukraine is a victim of manchild narcissism.

“It’s just like the jokes about Soviet Russia, how embarrassing they’ve gone back to those days.”

I agree with those statements, pretty much.

I offer no objections to that kind of courage against unprovoked violence.

It gives me the same plasma in my chest as you.

I see that kind of inspiration as both reasonable and necessary for anything to get better.

There were some other statements I was sad to see, however.

“Paper guy knew what he was doing.”

“Officer gave him a warning.”

“Paper guy was being an asshole.”

“Russia isn’t doing anything you don’t see in other counties, even America.”

“Ukraine isn’t gonna benefit from his actions.”

And those lines do aggravate me.

They make me feel the same craving for justice as you.

But, if you’ve read these past 11 posts, you’d know that it doesn’t cause me to lose my cool.

I know when a person is hypnotized by a bold feeling of positive energy.

Like they’re the one fighting the more ugly and un-advanced version of nice-feeling vibes.

I will not confront the people in the wrong here, they aren’t worth it.

They aren’t my target. They’re not whom I need to read this.

I need the most well-intentioned and civilized and intelligently progressive human beings alive to totally read this.

If you want something vaguely resembling world peace,

you must see why the, uh, blank-paper-guy arrester

feels like a blank paper guy himself.

And by and large, kind of is one.

And when I look at the internet, I see, that overall,

people have trouble wrapping their heads around that facet of the antagonist in that situation.

Getting into the heads of the wrong side of history is still not being done enough.

It needs to be done to neutralize them.

I lift a quote from Reddit.

“‘There’s that moment when your intellectual self overrides your primitive self to do a thing.

You usually feel it the first jumping off the high dive or dropping into a half pipe for the first time.

That’s definitely in his face as he goes over the edge the moment he says, “I’m continuing.'”

I was already planning on writing about the blank paper guy in terms of “the heart’s three infamous positive energy directives”

and then, without warning, I get a shot of validation into these veins.

Because I know that very moment, in which a person feels as though

they’ve risen above what it means to be a typical human being,

and their hearts quiver with what feels like ultimate insight

into how to overcome the inexplicably despicable quality of other human beings,

as well as one’s own susceptibility to that kind of defilement,

and feeling this, you, despite, all

act, act, act, act, act, act,

rather than not act.

That’s what I’ve been trying to put my finger on this whole fucking time.

The paper guy-punisher, the war-enabling officer,
do you think he didn’t feel something similar?

Do you think his brain didn’t light up the same way as his victim?
He’s a less courageous man, to be sure, a less passionate man, of course,
but you think he didn’t get a similar surge inside his body?

You really think what he did was actually some kind of pathetic insanity?

You really want to call it complete and absolute absurdity?

I think deep down, you just fail to find the words

to express your frustration so big

that it could be viewed from outer space.

But I have not failed at that.

Experience this with me.

Here’s your tragic fallacy, here’s your way out of inter-human misery.

The sensation you feel when witnessing the blank paper man

do what he did
is still just a byproduct of the friction of three things moving around in your heart,


which all people share,


and perceive themselves as the much better version of, in general.

The FIRST is the ability to boldly fix problems by introducing other potentially unhelpful actions. (like the way the message-less paper tries to utilize a flaw within the nature of rules and laws)

The SECOND of these is the restrained quality of your actions feeling like the antidote to exploitation by others’ human will. (like the way the blank paper makes no real statements of its own and is really quite not assertive in and of itself)

The THIRD is the inspiring quality of other people finding peace in many kinds of extreme discomfort. (as in how he was being openly confronted with the possibility of being arrested and did it anyway, knowing what suffering could have awaited)

These things converge into something truly magnificent, human action at its most dizzyingly strong.

Moments of power and grace with no comparison.

But if that’s the case…..

if that really is so…

(now feel the rain fall)

why would it be crazy to fight that person?

Would it really be so dumb, so arrogant, so pathetic, to stop such a moment in its tracks?

Wouldn’t it the opposite of insane?

Regardless of the morality, regardless of the terrible implications, regardless of how nauseatingly indignant that act of brutality makes you and me feel upon seeing it,

would it really be absurd?

No, no….it’s far from it.

It’s not absurd in the slightest to arrest “paper guy”.

No matter how much it makes me sick to see modern governments do that to people, calling it absurd is an absolutely pathetic thing to say.

It’s got to be among the most down-to-earth, clear-headed, steady-hearted things that a human being could possibly do.

Who even knows how much the officer cared about the war, or the government, or his president, or any international struggles?

Who even knows whether or not arresting such a protestor actually induced any shame or joy not within him?

The fact remains, you can be absolutely sure, to that officer,

it felt like…..

it had to be…..

(the rain keeps pouring)

about as normal and reasonable a thing that any adult could or would ever do.

Even if it is exactly the type of thing that makes being human with other humans so often so wretched.

You have to put the right kind of collar around the emotion of “I am being very strong and very reasonable as well” if you wish for these things not to happen.

How often do you become similar to the well-mannered officer,
sending off an innocuous person to who knows where?

How often can you feel your heart seeming to take a certain shape,

before doing something you know is not quite nice?

While every cell in your body tells you “I’m destroying a really nasty person?”

How many millions of times in your life
have you tried to unashamedly get the best of someone who was acting like
they were doing nothing wrong?

And by and large, may not have been?

How many times do you do get involved with that, do you see that and fail to get the words to describe that?

It could be family, it could be work, it could be shopping, it could be anything you perceive as something involving opposing the intentions of another sentient being.

In those times, you go ahead and become

the one who does something

you know seems kind of crazy

and pretty hard to defend

and really kind of freaky

as your heart does bend

and tell yourself, without any words,

as you feel huge,

“hot damn, this other person thinks they’re solving an issue by becoming one, which is kind of cool, but they’re still kind of a piece of garbage.”

and

“wow, this person is doing something that’s really kind of passive and restrained, which is kind of admirable, but they’re still utter trash.”

and

“my fucking goodness, this person’s really getting out of the old comfort zone, which is astounding, but they’re still in general, an asshole.”

You overload in a sense of fighting nasty human energy that thinks it’s great human energy.

And that high guides you so hardcore that it has no antidote.

And it’s not like you don’t try to fix this.

It’s not like you haven’t held yourself back at the brink before.

I am not implying that in the slightest.

You just never find the words to make it consistent.

And nobody has, not once.

Maybe until now, at least.

………….

I would say this world does need blank paper people to do weird things and fight injustice.

But we need even more badly

is the power to prevent people

from being utterly secure with that part of their hearts that tells them

“I am totally winning against someone, with the power of good vibes”.

That’s how wars start to begin with in a world

where bread and water are mostly easy to acquire.

Where good movies actually move us but we end up doing things quite unlike a friendly protagonist.

We do that by following

that very unprimitive feeling.

The only way

for us to unfuck this situation

is us to agree to stop yourself

when you feel you’ve risen far beyond the ordinary limits of good human energy,

and have to push against someone’s strong-willed plotting,

to make your own little life contain anything resembling value.

When you feel so very ultimately more like a person,

than any other person, it may be time to just let the tides roll out.

rather than making endless cascades of aggravation.

Contributing to the cycle of mystical feeling disgust for someone else,

that feels as natural and endearing as the will to go to the bathroom.

At the very least, you can use this stratagem to not lose your balance completely when someone becomes intolerable. To fight the tiny wars involved with two humans being two humans, causing the least harm indeed.

As an American, I believe that can actually happen.

I believe we are ripe for taking a concept like “The Heart’s Three Infamous Positive Energy Directives” and using it to UNFUCK the average wretched human encounter.

Not that most encounters are wretched.

I wish I could scream out,

“It’s time to stop telling stories

and start living the fantasy

of extreme control over oneself.

BECAUSE YOU ACHE TO TASTE IT MORE THAN ANYONE!”

The Heart’s Three Infamous Positive Energy Directives #11 – “Let’s Talk it Over” Proposals are a Person at Their Most Undespicably Hurtful (Prom Night for Situational Fury)

It was a long time ago. I sent a message to someone, saying that we should

meet up and talk things over to figure out how we feel about each other.

Despite the messaging system being there.

It was a very complicated scenario, perhaps one that even a writer of stories would envy in its depth and scope.

I’ve spent over a decade musing about what I should have done, or what I might have done, or even,

all the scenarios that could have taken place even if I could insert my present self into the me of the past.

Perhaps you can infer, it didn’t work out well for me.

It cascaded into….a lot of rough things.

And inspiration to find the words to criticize myself.

The most interesting part though, is that I was not berated for it, by this person.

I was even called “not creepy” in a way that was truly lacking in sarcasm or bitterness.

This person admitted to lacking the words.

It made sense for them to lack the words, considering my vibe.

I was, maybe, simply, all that couldn’t be criticized.

All that there has never been a way to deconstruct calmly.

I mean, slowly muddling through, making the most delicate of proposals and apologies through the messenger,

over a very long period of time,

might have, maybe, actually worked to my benefit.

If I had a bigger heart.

But I’d rather just try and explain what kind of person I was being.

The type of person whom this person had helped awaken of course,

the very one who supercharged a feeling of “good vibes” into my personality

that hadn’t been there previously, not since before, of all things, kindergarten.

Someone who made me feel eager and happy to be human, with others, for once,

like I barely had from ages 5 to 19.

By asking to meet up and settle things, or suggesting it, even,

I was being very big hearted.

Acting on friction.

Making a gambit for the sake of something

which can definitely be called, “for human dignity”.

“The heart” of a person gets bigger and bigger,

craving not only a positive outcome for its owner,

but to feel as though one’s choices had….

just the kind of problematic vibe…..that generally leads to greater happiness.

It craves not only to prevent a situation from not progressing….

but to respect its owner’s ability to navigate anything, both respectfully and calmly.

It craves not only the rush of experiencing new sensations of pleasure and self-worth,

but a sense that you are bearing the intensity of those sensations quite admirably.

Ah, the three positive energy directives, so infamous they have failed to even be named….until now.

If I could go back in time, I’d hand myself that diagram.

If I could tell anyone anything, it would be that diagram.

If I am proud of anything, it would be that diagram.

I’d validate myself and become

unbefuddled by everything I was feeling.

And got to see more closely what was going on

inside the heart of someone who had let me come, in many ways, quite close.

Their already ongoing struggle was a similar scenario. One which might be called filled with intentions both ambiguous and very clear.

They spent time with me with a purpose to mend pain, the destination of that effort being not too well strategized, or so I gather.

If I and the other had read this diagram,

I think things would have been a lot more pleasant.

Or maybe, there’d be a world where things fell into a place

as people seek love

a lot more gently and softly.

You know what I’d like to go? Get up on stage on a therapy talk show

and explain exactly why therapy WOULDN’T have prevented things from playing out a certain regrettable way.

People fly with wings of determination toward a goal. And it’s not like they’re not in control at all, not fixing things at all, not being brave at all.

That’s where the speed of human will gets really quick- from knowing there is a good vibe coming from you at your most controversial.

It doesn’t make you a bad person to feel yourself smashing through fate, getting around possibilities, making massive changes in plans, and mustering up strength of will and desire without any precedent in your life.

It makes you kind of angelic, I suppose. You grow wings, and really start to feel PURE.

But that same feeling is felt even by the most frustrating and upsetting people you’ll see on something like Dr. Phil. By people defending themselves in a manner you find “cringey”. And especially by otherwise sane adults having a terrible moment with the authorities.

Like, I said, I’m not saying this to be sappy. It’s not a bizarre conclusion to say that most people are filled with love, and do a lot of other things that make other people think they couldn’t be.

And that people, for the most part, despite what you think of them, have the energy of that in their most outrageous actions.

People, despite everything, spend hours at the movies, with a very “love” like feeling in their chest, rooting for the main characters, enjoying subversive characters, and wondering how to weave human decency out of bizarre scenarios.

Do you know what I’m sick of? People being surprised by how much love people can feel who seem to be completely fucking obnoxious.

Karen and the affection for her dog she shows after the conflict in the supermarket. How charming, right?

Makes your cheeks clench. Might bring you halfway to tears, even.

How a person driven by conflict could have so much potential for good vibes.

We do wish to be around others who have what we see as real fucking positive energy,

but can also bear the dangerous, delirious, dynamic, draining, defeating positive energy we all possess.

Our hearts ache to touch that and be that.

Perhaps that it what is known as “love”.

To want to hold and enhance that positive energy even if the means by doing it feels reckless and messy as can be.

This is my answer for those who speak of and cry for “nuance” and “empathy” and “respecting everybody”.

I simply acknowledge that other full grown human beings

can sense that they know

that fixing things involves the art of breaking things,

that passiveness is only potentially despicable,

and that discomfort must be put into play for anyone to truly feel justifiably relaxed,

and that THIS is the best description of what a mature adult is referring to when their heart feels utterly powerful.

And that at the heart of extremely unpleasant confrontations,

is usually someone

sensing they’ve got

those incredibly,

fascinatingly,

heavens-slicingly not vile feelings within them.

And that we must all see THAT to navigate each other as competently as we wish.

And I know you wish for that harder than you hate anyone.

I know that you at your absolute most despicable usually only comes forth after feeling your jaw stretch as you fantasize about things WORKING OUT.

You feel as though you only hurt people on purpose when you’ve crossed a certain horizon, at which your will to do things peacefully has NO place in the universe.

But that is the point to bind yourself with threads.

That is the point to defy your instinct. I’m not talking about primal instincts, or social instincts, or some kind of transcendent metaphysical instinct.

Every day, billions of people consider not confronting someone else, and do it anyway.

And they do it because they have a hidden instinct that tells them, the things they are doing are positive, are purposeful, are absolutely lovely.

This instinct tells you that you haven’t betrayed the awesome part of yourself.

Is that not the best way to summarize this whole thing?

You have a vision in your mind of a darkly nauseating person doing incredibly miserable things. And you feel almost like you’ve shaped yourself on defying that person for almost your entire life.

That moment when you feel like you’ve distanced yourself from that person does NOT make you ignorant. It’s proof you’re not a cartoon villain. It’s proof you like solving problems, being peaceful, and defying your comforts, and growing beyond the person you used to be.

And for the most part, you do a lot more nice than terrible things for people, right?

You’re just the strong and tough version of an innocent child, right?

Yeah, that’s how I felt. When making my case to the person who gave me the kind of joy that turned my world upside down.

It took a very, very long time….to feel as though I could strand up straight again, in that lovely inverted world.

Hey, stranger, you want to make the world go upside down in just the same way?

You can flip something more than twice!

All it takes is this. Sense the beauty in the will to make conflict.

And hold its and hands and dance with it to keep it from trashing the venue.

Make it feel like it’s finally getting the affection it deserves.

Conflict doesn’t make you trashy. Overall, it’s borderline virtuous.

But it needs to be pacified in a new way.

I know for a fact that is the way out of this mess of a time.

I don’t care who makes it happen, but if it does, this is the means by which.

Get a suave grip on the you that feels like it couldn’t possibly deserve to be held back.

The Heart’s Three Infamous Positive Energy Directives #10- Declaring Himself the Successor of Jeopardy! Was a Good Vibe-Induced Fiasco

We look upon outrageous nefariousness under the guise of glory.

Pretentious, pompous politicians.

Creators of crooked contests.

Dastardly, deadly descendants.

That guy from Jeopardy who was supposed to, like…..take over the show after other people fought to inherit the televisual crown by guest hosting for a bit.

People declaring themselves the winner, pretty much, wherever.

It makes me mad. It makes me upset. It stimulates disapproval, to be sure.

But when I look at everything clearly,

it’s almost like they were never, ever told to do the opposite.

The positive feelings in your heart.

The way you have to make problems to solve them, the way others know that and are ready to use that.

Enacting deceit, you merely do what others are also ready to do.

The way you’re actually quite passive in your efforts, and how others are also ready to use their own sloth to put a stop to your desires.

Enforcing a lie, you feel strangely relaxed and elegantly defensive.

Bending and twisting the more expected type of human behavior,

you feel positively deliciously daring.

And after all…the world is a game, and others could have stopped you if they really had the power to.

Oh you forgone, how I wish…I could hold you tight and tell you

that you giving into that wonderful energy is exactly what humanity doesn’t need.

We need that wonderful energy, but we needn’t be given raw happiness from it.

If you do want the world to be a happier place, then work on pausing yourself despite that very justified resolve

to surpass the conniving will of all others you meet.

Although I still do want me or, someday, somebody, to be the victor and hold that trophy over their head that says

“this someone helped make fairness, bizarrely enough, less of a fantasy”.

There is no such thing as real fairness.

I just want you to get less wonderful chemical rushes

from enforcing the fairness you find imperfect.

That Jeopardy guy, do you think he felt all that dark and sneaky?

Do you think he was overflowing with hatred for his rivals?

Do you think he was entirely aggravated by the prospect of not being Trebek’s beloved successor?

Do you think he was a comic book villain?

I doubt that.

I’m sure that, to him, it was kind of a calm and steady move.

He underestimated the shock and dismay to come from his very nation of fans.

But to him, it wasn’t villainous, it wasn’t bitter, it wasn’t immature.

It was things falling into place, like in Plinko!

A sword falling into the hands of someone closest to the throne.

Why not prolong things with a grandiose show before things settle down?

Why not follow the good vibes on your way to winning fucking hardcore?

Of course, if he could redo it, he’d have brought himself down to the level of “candidate” legitimately, and fought as hard as he could to win some other day.

But it’s hard to deter someone who’s earned their unfair advantage.

Someone feeling really fucking adult.

Someone’s heart screaming with a sense of balance.

He was both host and player.

As you, at your best, feel like the fighter in the arena and the master of ceremonies.

You become the most untameable freak that needs a friendly wrangling.

You are good vibes uncaged,

causing more good than harm, but the bringer of the most harm

….which has no deterrent.