I don't really understand why people like bars. I find it impossible to really "meet" someone at a bar, and I don't just mean picking up girls. Beyond getting someone's name and shaking their hand, how much can you really learn about someone in that atmosphere? It's impossibly frustrating to communicate at all given the general cacophony of loud music and other drunk people yelling. It's hard enough when you're sober, and that fuzzy, sounds-blend-together muffler you get when you're drunk doesn't help at all.

I haven't been to bars much, but I've never had a meaningful conversation at one. When I used to go to the bars with Vicki, we'd basically make "the rounds," run into some people you either shared a dorm with, shared a class with, or possibly seen once or twice, exchange vague pleasantries and move on. Then we'd dance for awhile, and then repeat for about three hours, maybe seeing a new face, maybe seeing a new bar, but that was the core of the experience.

Now dancing is mostly fine and good, but I can't imagine how this whole bar mating ritual plays out. I've had the benefit of being attached since I've been old enough to go to a bar, but I can't imagine it could be comfortable for either sex. Again, I've always had the benefit of being able to go home and make love to / have wild drunk sex with the girl that I was (as Dane Cook so eloquently put it) banging my cock into all night (i.e. dancing, i.e. grinding, i.e. humping). For most people, it seems it's just a crapshoot. I don't believe that anyone at a bar meets someone and "feels a connection" beyond animal lust. I wonder what the percentage of bar hook-ups that lead to anything significant is.

There's more I wanted to say, but I've run out of steam. Probably not to be continued.

Conviction

"I'm not about to argue it with anybody, because we won't get anywhere."

Ryan said this in response to my last post, vis- a-vis religion. And you know, he's right. As depressing and even defeatist as it sounds, the changing of a person's mind is a rare and special thing. Well, it's rare when it really matters. You might change your mind about some band you thought sucked, or some food you thought you didn't like, but how often do we change our minds on the things that really matter?

To further reference Ryan's comment, I guess I do write to find common ground with others. But I also write with the somewhat delusional idea that I might change someone's mind. The more I think about it, the more I realize that's a pretty arrogant for me to assume that some random blog will really shake someone's beliefs. Perhaps it's even a little spiteful of me to want others to question their faith. Of course, even if that post did make an impact, I think most people would shift into rationalization mode. It's not like I have any real credibility, so any dissenting opinion I might present can simply be dismissed as the rantings of some internet nobody. Besides, who really wants to abandon comfort for uncertainty? It's an uphill battle, to say the least.

Our resistance to change is a double-edged sword. There's certainly something to be said for conviction, but of course it's also a potentially dangerous thing. It seems that only some sort of trauma can really shake a person's beliefs, and even if something would/should threaten your ideals, some people seem to warp that trauma around their beliefs. The classic example: someone gets into a car accident, loses their legs or something, and says "Thank God I'm still alive." I don't want to pull this discussion back toward religion, but it's the most obvious example. I'm sure some people caught in the tsunami last year thanked God that they survived. Fuck everyone else, I guess.

Imagine you and 9 other people are hanging off the side of a building, unable to hoist youselves up and starting to slip. A man stands over you, and watches silently as the 9 others fall to their deaths, then helps you up. Do you thank him for saving you? Or do you condemn him for his negligence? The answer seems obvious, yet no one gets on God's case for letting people die. I would imagine that negligence of that sort is a sin, but I guess God gets a free pass, 'cause well, He's God. It's good to be the king.

Gotta Have Faith?

I used to view devoutly religious people with some degree of contempt. I still do, depending on the person, but now it's mixed with a kind of twisted admiration. Have you ever really thought about the nature of death? Suppose it's not all puffy clouds and flowers nor is it fire and pain and brimstone. Suppose you just cease to exist. What the fuck do you make of that? It is literally unfathomable... our sense of self is all we really know. You can't imagine what it would be like to not exist. I'm not sure which is more disturbing: the idea of hovering in some sort of conscious limbo, unable to sense anything or communicate with anything, or simply not existing, which I can't even describe. Both thoughts are utterly terrifying.

That's why I envy the devout. I envy those who can look at death and have no fear or doubt... or at least can pretend not to. Yet at the same time, it makes me angry. It makes me angry because I've rejected organized religion for a number of reasons, yet whenever my mind delves into thoughts I'd rather avoid, I find more doubt. Despite all the hate and prejudice that religion has birthed, I think about converting just so I can escape that fear.

Yet at the same time, I know that will never happen. I've been a skeptic since I was in church school in 6th grade. I'll never be sure until I see the Man himself with my own two eyes. That's the fucked up thing about faith. Those who have can never explain why they have it in certain terms. It just is what it is. I guess God forgot to CC some us when he sent out that out memo. You know, I'm not stupid. I try to be a good person, and you better believe if I felt some sort of divine touch, I'd roll with it. So I either feel sad that I was passed over (pun mostly intentional), or I feel angry because if there is no such "divine touch" then everyone who believes is just a fucking coward taking an easy way out of facing their fears and answering the only questions that really matter. It feels to me like 2,000 years of brainwashing so that we all don't just mope around all the damn time wondering "Why are we here?"

So I wonder, does God fear death? If we are here because God created us, does God wonder why He's here? Pointless philosophical questions aside, where does that leave the rest of us? We want to know why we're here, and I honestly don't believe we'll ever know the answer to that question, in a scientific sense. I guess the best we'll get is a subjective answer. If that's the case, then, painfully trite as this may sound, the question isn't "What does this life mean?" the question is: "What does this life mean to you?"

I was feeling depressed and irrelevant, so I decided to write. Wouldn't you know it, I log into Blogger and sitting there as an unused draft is basically the exact same emo shit I'm thinking this exact moment. Maybe it won't be as theraputic to just post what I'd already written some 8 months ago, but then again there's no reason to write the same damn thing twice.

I'm betting the reason I didn't post this in the first place is because it is, as I mentioned, whiny emo shit. But right now I'm feeling that everything is completely irrelevant. No, I don't mean I'm becoming a nihilist. Stay with me here -- if everything is irrelevant, then my rather pointless existence isn't pointless... it's just normal.

So here you go, some "brand new" content that's only 8 months old. Just goes to show you truly how little things change:

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I should probably just tell you to stop reading this blog, since I am clearly incapable of updating it in any sort of timely fashion. It's a slippery slope sort of thing: I put off updating again and again, justifying it with some excuse or another, until it's been so long that I think "well, no one is reading anyway." I suppose that I could continue to write "for myself," but that's not how I roll. I do it for you, you see! Don't you understand!?

Just kidding, I'm really a selfish prick. I write because I desperately seek your approval, dear reader. I write because I don't write because I want to talk, I write because I want someone to listen. I write because I want to feel like I'm doing something relevant, something that someone aside from me cares about. Potential Epiphany: Is it because I suck at talking in real life -- that I have no "real" voice -- that I ramble endlessly whenever my fingers touch the keys? Bah, who needs therapy!

Truth be told, I thought I was done with therapy through writing. I thought I finished that in my angst-drenched high-school years with all of my bad poetry. I told Vicki as much. See, I've written Vicki two poems in our time together. One of them was merely okay, a little derivite but it worked -- the other, though, I am actually quite proud of. She's been rather disappointed with my unwillingness to write more for her. I've tried to convince her that's it's no laziness, but the simple fact is that I just don't write happy poems. I've written clever poems on occasion, tongue-in-cheek pieces from time to time, but the only joyful poems I've ever written have been for her. I'm sure that I could write a happy poem if I really tried, but I honestly just don't write poems anymore. I would write something but it would probably be lame and hackneyed and I just don't do that -- I'm my own harshest critic.

In any case, it seems that whatever creative spark I had is gone, or at least dormant. She is sad because she feels that she doesn't inspire me, but she doesn't understand what inspiration is to me. Pain inspires me. Suffering inspires me. These are things that I want to change, and when I write about them I feel that I am doing something to make that change. Self-therapy. When I am happy, what good is self-therapy?

"But Mike," you say, "you're writing now. Are you unhappy?" Truth be told, I don't even know. Either I am, or I am in a severe state of denial. I have things I could and perhaps should be sad about. I failed out of school, debts have piled up, and I still live with my parents (I feel the need to mention that I do essentially give them "rent," so I'm not 100% freeloader). But these things don't make me sad.

I think that I am a simple person. Maybe too simple for the world at large. I just want to do what makes me happy. I don't want to work overtime. I don't want to sit in a boring classroom to get a diploma so I can prove to you how smart I am. I don't want to spend even five minutes making a bed that I'm just going to sleep in again. I don't want to worry. I want to sleep in when I'm tired, and stay up late when I'm not. I want to write blog posts when I should be working. I do (or don't do) these things because they make me happy.

Am I just selfish and lazy? Maybe. I don't dream of being rich and famous. I just want a modest life where I can be happy. I think that the truth may be that I am simply resigned. There was a time I wanted to make a difference in this fucked up world of ours, but I've grown to believe that is not a possibility.