Stomach Full of Acid

The older I get, the more I hate being in crowds or being forced to participate in things I have no value for. If I do, it has more to do with the politics of personal relationships; buying silence and placating. Social contracts also hold no value for me so outside of saying 'excuse me' after a burp or fart, we've got nothing to talk about.
Birthday parties beyond your childhood years? Ok, but do I have to be invited? Do I have to speak and pretend I want to be there?
It's not that I think I'm better than anyone, it's just that I hate that nagging feeling of having to dredge up light talk with a fake smile over beers about absolutely nothing. It is actually physically taxing for me to HAVE to talk to strangers when I'd rather be lying on my bed staring at the walls or watching TV.
Am I an asshole? Maybe, but I am me. I wish some people would just stop trying to change me.

Nobody knows What it's Like to be The Bad Man...

Thirty-two people died last week, tragically and senselessly.
When you read newspaper articles or watch TV news coverage of stories like the Virginia Tech killings, all you get hit with is the shock of the deaths, how it happened, who was to blame, and of course to hate the one who is to blame.
It seemed that besides selling papers and getting high ratings, the media has taken on the role of being the caretaker of our thoughts; simplifying facts and throwing analysis out of the window in order to "make sense of it all" for us poor, dumb unwashed masses who must have our fears held in check and be made to feel more secure when life becomes unpredictable.
After all, this is what "we" sheep look for when we look to leaders, right?
My point is, Seung-hui Cho murdered people who most likely did nothing to him. But instead of real psychoanalysts waiting until the smoke cleared to offer up a real profile as to who Cho really was and why he did what he did, we get criminal profilers spot diagnosing during a sound bite and the journalists, like parrots, just mimic them.
In every article I've read or news story I saw it was the same: the use of the word, "loner". Cho was described as quiet and an outcast and of course with those descriptions the names, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold follow because that's how the two killers were described during the Columbine media blitz.
I remember how Harris and Klebold were described as outcasts who wore lots of black and that they were geeks and suddenly, they snapped and decided to get back at "everyone else".
I remembered back then thinking that geeks all across the U.S. would probably get the support needed from teachers, principals, and school counselors by making sure that kids who didn't fit in would not be picked on or alienated.
That those who were alienated would be watched, encouraged to talk about the shit they are putting up with or at least school officials would try to help create a culture in the school where the social circles would agree to not cross each other's lines.
Of course, that's not the tone or the talk I heard back then.
The Columbine story had too much color, gore, angst, and opportunistic pundits wanting to make themselves look good by interpreting the killings as a result of two social misfits who were not made to be forced into fitting in with the mainstream of the student body. I heard, "They weren't part of the crowd; so this is what happens", "And let that be a lesson to anyone of you out there listening to weird music, wearing black, or writing weird stories. If you are not part of the crowd, then you have to be watched or you're going to wind up killing someone".
The bottom line is Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold, and Seung-hui Cho obviously suffered from a serious break in their respective psyches. In other words, they lost all touch with reality and killed people. They had real psychological problems that could not be traced easily as so many 'experts' would have us think. So these pundits scape goat stuff like the fact that these guys didn't hang out with other people or in Seung-hui Cho's case, wrote 'disturbing' plays in order to explain to us that this is why Cho killed people and that his writing was a sign of his insanity.
I found the focus of Cho's plays as an example of his insanity disturbing.
I downloaded and read the plays. And although the plays were not very good in the sense that they made no sense, they could have passed as germane in some off-off-off-Broadway avant garde theatre back in the seventies.
The reason why the focus on Cho's plays bothered me was that the message was if you write violent material, you must be crazy. Shit what's gonna happen to the next Stephen King? I guess if some kid wearing black and sitting in the back of his English class writing out a scene in chapter four were a priest gets beheaded by a possessed teenager, you can best expect that kid to get the red badge of Psycho that will haunt him forever.
It can happen and I'm sure it already has.
I am not writing this to explain away the lives that Seung-hui Cho took on Monday, nor do I want people to think I am romanticizing him, if anything I'm more concerned for my younger sisters and brothers who sit alone in the cafeterias, writing stories about chicks with machine-gun legs and just wishing the asshole in the football jersey would fuck off.
All loners are not all crazy; some of grow up, have children (finally got laid), and become the asshole in the suit and tie.

Another Reason Why I Hate the Universal Order of Life and Death

Like the rest of my friends and family, I am reeling after the death of Aunt Alma.
My wife's closest friend, so close that she calls her 'cousin' had an aunt who passed away in her sleep yesterday or possibly the night before.
She was 87 and had bone cancer among other illnesses.
My wife's cousin has been a daycare provider for both of our girls since we moved to New York. She has cared for our oldest daughter from when she was two to when she started pre-school. She took on our youngest, Assata when she was newly born.
Alma will be missed. She was sweet, but she scared me the way all my elders did (and still do) in my youth when it came to her giving me orders. Because she was so close to my youngest, Assata, I remember Alma sitting in her chair in the living room almost as if making a point to wait for me when I came to pick Assata up to tell me that I needed to have her dressed in snow pants. "Don't you let my baby get sick." She said, just like the way my great-grandma used to get on my mother's case about the way I was dressed when I was little. I was my great-grandma's favorite. They were close, Assata and Alma. She gave Assata cookies; something I would have told anyone else NOT to do. But was I gonna buck-up to Alma? Fuck no.

Due to the rabid gentrification of Harlem, our cousin has not only lost an aunt, but has lost an apartment and a place of business.
To make a long story short, in order for Alma to get her medical benefits, and get rent control, she had to be the sole lease holder. No one else can be on the lease. If she would pass away, then all those living with her, children, grandchildren, or siblings, will have to move out. And in the particular building where she lived, the owners are such pigs, that they come knocking on the doors of a recently-decease household before the body is even cold, requesting copies of leases and of course, to announce that the nest needs to be emptied ASAP. There are no options offered for the surviving family members to take over these lease regardless of proof that they can continue to pay the rent even if the rent will be increased to its current market value. No, no option to buy either. Just get out.
Now do we see how people wind up homeless so easily?

I did not want to politicize my posting of a dear friend's grief, but my tendency to do so gives weight to the fact that the personal is the political no matter how you cut it.