Oh I'm sorry I didn't see you there...

So these blogs are either working because I have a lot less to bitch about or things have been going very well. So it should come as no surprise that i don't update here as much as before. the last time I intended to right a thrilling piece on affirmations and how irritating they are to the general public i kinda lost myself a bit but I think I found a direction. I also wanna take a moment to respond indirectly to an issue that bothers me.

The issue bothering me is for my good friend Samantha. She was recently sucker punched by someone she knew when she asked them for some feedback on an audition. Rather than get constructive criticism on her pieces she got a basic character assassination. He basically told her without going into to much detail that she reeked of desperation and that no one he knew would ever want to work with her.

Now I am not usually the type to get up and arms over something so trivial and that can be easily gotten over by Samantha she is after all a strong woman who knows what she wants and goes after it which is more than I can say for most people. But because I am feeling that battery acid taste in my mouth when I think about it I have to say something. I won't name the offender but what I will say in defense of my friend is that the man who said this steaming bowl of shit is somewhat talented in his field of musical theatre but he is no more than that.

I have worked with the individual in question and count that experience as the absolute worst piece of shit show I was ever duped into doing.I didn't even audition for it. i did it as a favor to a friend and it turned out to suck more ass than a felching convention. I have also worked with Samantha before and to make a long story short i knew this woman would be a powerhouse and make me look awesome when i auditioned with her. That show was also one I didn't have much interest in doing and it turned out to be one of the shows I am most proud of. so fuck this man, for thinking he had any opinion worth knowing. and shame (just a little) on Samantha for holding such a slug fucker in any regard other than someone who isn't suited to be in an audience much less direct anything.

Now...

On to my thoughts about the affirmation. People seem to think that if they repeat these daily life lessons that they will either come true or help realize something about themselves that is already true. In reality I have no problem with this. the girl who is fat and looks at herself in the mirror everyday and forces herself to say that she is beautiful when she really believes she isn't, she is undeserving of my ire because she is beautiful she just needs to convince herself of it. The person who strives to make the best out of every day they can and tells themselves everything will be great today, in spite of how much it isn't, they too don't deserve to be cursed at by me.

I will tell you who I will curse at. And it seems to be the same type of person I always yell at...

Its the ones who feel the need to tell me their words of inspiration.

First off you fuckers who spread this tasteless margarine bullshit of feelgood crap because you liked the way it sounded, and god knows where it originated, most likely some fucking greeting card, can go suck on  dead rotten animal uterus. Then you write it on your social media page of choice as if you were the fucking Dali lama. And its always something about telling your loved ones how you feel before your dead or living for today because tomorrow may not be here. And to that I say, you people are fucking depressing. You are so consumed with death that you feel the need to guilt me into making sure I tell everyone I know, how I feel in case I'm dead the next day.

How about writing something that really helps someone. How about saying something that doesn't sound like the last fucking get well card or the thing you saw on a power point presentation at your last fucking sensitivity training. How about helping individuals with their issues instead of quoting a poster at me that had a fucking picture of a fucking kitten in a fucking wine glass that was oh so god damned cute you just had to have it on your cubicle wall to distract you from the fact that truly your life sucks and no amount of bullshit cheesy catchphrases will take the place of taking an action to changing that sad fucking fact.

Maybe instead of telling yourself to live for the moment you actually fucking do it. Realize that living in the moment is all you can do because if it were possible to live at a different time then time wouldn't fucking exist. All that exists is now and if it takes you telling yourself that every morning then you should still be writing with crayons, using the safety scissors and be able to tell me the difference in taste between Elmer's and the store brand pastes.

I have no respect for anything that doesn't affect change. And your words of "wisdom" mean nothing if you don't see that doing it and living it and leading by example are better ways to affect change rather than writing down something and putting it out there for people to ignore. Because its the same shit over and over again. And without originality or the proper audience you wasting your breath.



To be honest this topic came up when a facebook friend who shall remain nameless posted one of these bland quotes to live by and I just couldn't get it out of my head at how trivial it was. it made the person, in my eyes,  look stupid and everyone who clicked the word "like" seemed like a mindless zombie. But maybe I'm the asshole. Maybe I am the one needs a healthy dose of feelgood propaganda. But that's all it is...

Propaganda.

No quote or affirmation is going to be true for absolutely everyone. The world is to diverse for that. And I guess what bothers me is that in this world that is so beautiful in the complexity and simplicity paradox that makes up our lives, to try and boil everything down to a few simple truths is just limiting your way of thinking. You are imposing rules that are just as harmful as parents teaching their children to hate. It's insulting that anyone would think that a generalized statement works for the whole world and everyone in it.

So in summation, find your own truths. live them. and don't be so fucking arrogant as to think that your lessons work for anyone but you. The simple truth is that you can't solve anything by throwing words at it. You have to know it and you have to live it as truth. regardless of what anyone thinks.

The great thinkers and speakers of our times, when quoted, are inspirational but I guarantee when they said it they knew that no one would truly learn those lessons from them. They would learn it on their own, from their own experience. Not because they read it in a fucking book somewhere.

With deep and abiding affection,
Gabriel

The best of me...

I woke up in a cold fucking sweat at 4 am this morning. A dream had awoken me and in a daze I took it for its literal meaning. the dream haunted me throughout the rest of my day. even though I knew it was a fictional occurrence, something about it wouldn't let me go.

So let me give you an accurate depiction of said dream.

I awoke in a two bedroom apartment that is unfamiliar to me. I am alone in my room and two things are known to me. One I am running late for work and two the love of life Kate is in the other bedroom with another man fucking, and I am supposed to be alright with this. Which of course I am not. I go to take a shower but for some reason the shower has become a storage area for miscellaneous objects. I begin to fling shit out of the shower and across the room swearing and screaming profusely. Kate and anonymous guy she is fucking stop to see what is wrong. It is then Kate tries to assure me nothing has changed while the naked douchebag tries to do the same. I am seething on the brink of homicide...

when I wake up. I am in my apartment. One bedroom. Kate is lying next to me. She assures me through her sleepiness that everything is fine. I am still the only one for her and that nothing has changed...

nothing has changed.

All day this feeling of sick depression was eating away at me. Then as I sat at my cubicle in my job two things hit me. One I have become remarkably good at hiding my emotions to get through work, and two was a reminder of something my mother once said to me. "Gabriel, no one lives in your head but you so it stands to reason that everyone in your dream is you."

I then realized that Kate had nothing to do with my feelings. I wasn't angry because some fictional version of her slept with another person. I was angry because that is what I had done more or less to my ex wife.

I am not a bad guy. I am not a cheater. That isn't me. And no matter how justified I felt in my actions and no matter how happy I am that I ended up where I am today, it still eats away at me that somehow I could manage to cause so much chaos and discontent through my actions.

Believe me when I say that I am not sorry about where I ended up at. I like my life right now. It's not perfect but I have everything I need. But I caused a lot of pain to certain people that I never meant to cause and for that...

I am sorry.

I can only promise to do better.

I know that I am not angry and spouting off about some injustice or stupidity in the world...I just felt it was important that I say something.

because in reality...everything has changed. Because I can be better.

With deep and abiding affection,
Gabriel

oh so many things...

So I have been gone for awhile and have a few things to talk about. I just don't know where the fuck to begin. I have felt the icy grip of this blog wrap around me a few times and better things, inevitably, stop me from my appointed rounds. So where should I begin?

I will begin with the lighter stuff.

My dear friend Samantha, whom many of you know has guest blogged for me before told me a story of her knew soap company. It would seem that a potential customer wrote an email stating that they would not purchase her products but wanted to be given the knowledge of how to make them free of charge. Being the lovely woman that Sami is she told them they could get the knowledge of how to make soap from any library though she was well within her rights to tell this woman to go fuck herself with a loaded rifle.

Why is it that fucking idiots inevitably crawl out of the woodwork that they were hiding in, amongst there own filth and lunacy, to attempt to get shit for free. Its fucking ridiculous. You don't send emails to coca cola asking for their secret recipe because you don't wanna buy their expensive ass soda do you? Fuck no. They should be well within their rights to send you back a package that when opened, sprays you with cat feces from a small catapult shaped like a middle finger. Which if it could've been engineered I would have sent on Sami's behalf.

Now a little heavier topic.

As many of you are aware I have recently been fired from my job at an in home care company that took care of adults with autism. A job I held for years and turned my intestines into black goo with how much I hated being there. I have never written about them on this forum before because I don't shit on things that keep me housed and fed. Even if they don't do it very well. But they don't anymore. I will not name names I will not say the name of the company but its time I got some shit off my chest and was done with it.

Lets start at the end. I was fired because I administered a maneuver in defense of myself against an autistic adult who was slapping at me and made the move to bite me. The maneuver was deemed excessive force even though no harm came to the client and no marks were left. I have come to terms with what has happened but there are a few underlying currents that I wanna yell about.

The company taught us a form of self defense which they called CPI (crisis prevention and intervention) this was a training designed for us to work with those participants who were having behaviors in a reasonable fashion and how to physically interfere with them harming themselves or others safely. Which is good...If it wasn't the absolute worst fucking piece of horse smegma training ever to be conceived by mankind.

The class was given every year with mandatory attendance. It was a point of pride with the company that no one has ever gotten out of the class by demonstrating that they still knew all of the information.

So we set up a fucking system where the employees are encouraged to forget what the fuck we are talking about over the course of a year. A training I remind you that is designed to FUCKING KEEP PEOPLE SAFE!

Now I don't give a shit how stupid you are. If you can't figure out that the tools to keep people safe should be drilled into their heads every fucking day they go to work you shouldn't be allowed to be in charge of those people. No one who takes martial arts or shoots a firearm or protects other people professionally, practices the skills and tenants of that necessary knowledge YEARLY! You fucking illiterate douchebags! That is a daily test people should be drilled, they should be practicing, they should be taught what to do every second of every situation and they should be taught to improvise for every situation possible accounting for atmosphere, bystanders, terrain and mental acuity of the opponent as well as a whole host of other things.

But no the scroteless monkeys of bureaucracy whittled down a defensive training course to 6 hours every year. using a host of reasoning tools that can't even be executed. Tell me how am I supposed to divine what is bothering my client when he is fucking non verbal? Some would say passdowns and observation is the answer to that question, but there are several times I went into work and was told everything had been hunky dory that day and then an hour later I am in an all out brawl with an angry client.

And just because one maneuver works on a group of people doesn't mean its going to work every time. they teach you that if a client grabs your hair in the front you are to drop down low and push the knuckles of the offending hand into your skull to loosen the hand and then pull back when their grip is sufficiently loosened. Well what if that doesn't work? Because that only works if they have the base of the hair follicles, not the end of your hair for those with longer hair. There is no answer in there text about that.

For the longest time if you were being bitten the answer to that was to reach your finger under the biters nose and rub the septum back and forth to irritate them into letting go. Who the fuck thinks of such an intricate maneuver when you're being fucking bitten! Then they changed it to feed the bite. Shove more of your extremity into there mouth in order to open their jaw. Well what if they are biting soft skin like a woman's breast or they bite just an inch of skin on my arm? No answer to that either? How about a maneuver to prevent the bite?

How about that fuckers? How about you giving me the fucking tools I needed to defend myself without having to take physical damage? How about preparing your fucking people with a system that works and evolves instead of leaving me high and dry for a month and a half with no job and no prospects for social service jobs ever again in my life because I made a fucking mistake in a situation that you fucks never prepared me for?

You heartless gasbags. You cuntless inhuman shitfucking assholes. And don't fucking deign to tell me you are sorry it had to go this way. That you were doing your job. That you had to be "honest". And don't you ever tell me you miss me being at that job. There were options. There were things that could have been done to prevent me from making the mistake in the first place. There were actions that could have been taken to prevent me from losing my job after the incident and there were certainly thing you could have done in order to prevent me from being denied unemployment benefits.

Fuck you! I hope the next several people who get hurt or fired come to me for guidance because I would certainly tell them the best course of action would be to bring your whole simpering piece of shit organization down. Until then keep burying your heads in the sand and pretending you give a shit about your clients when all you are really concerned with is how your fucking gonna maintain your online farm during office hours while I sit here worried about how I'm gonna make it through the next billing cycle.

Eat shit and die!

With deep and abiding affection,
Gabriel

P.S.  If your answer on how to prevent the bite was to clear out of the situation or back off as it were. What if I am backed into a corner? What if there are others around that could easily be struck by the angry participant? Every answer you give to my questions only spawns more questions. And eventually your limited ass training will run out of answers and the person defending themselves will be either hurt tremendously or be fired. Thank you for playing "Your Life Isn't Worth Shit." Sponsored by a bunch of spineless office bound fuckheads.

Feeeeeelings...

Now before I begin let me say that this rant was inspired by true stories but it is not aimed at anyone in particular. This is my feeling in general that was only brought to light by recent events.

Question: When is it OK to blame the victim? If your feelings are hurt, when do you claim responsibility for how you feel, without blaming someone else? I have had my feelings hurt dozens of hundreds of times. Eventually there comes a time to forgive. Eventually there comes a time to be an adult, take the high road, and have a conversation. Sometimes it's immediate. Sometimes it takes a while. And in a few cases the crime is too heinous to ever be forgiven.

If I insult, offend, of hurt your feelings and I am truly remorseful; if I apologize a hundred times, you have a choice...forgive me or don't. If you don't, there is nothing I can do but let you process and wait until you do. In which case those bad feelings are yours and yours alone. You can blame me for causing them but not for the continuation.

If you choose to forgive me and still feel bad, once again I cannot be blamed for your feelings. And if you tell me its OK when it isn't then you are lying to me, and those feelings and the cause of them belong to you and you alone. You have created a situation that I cannot help you end. Once you have let me atone for my sin you cannot lay it upon my head again.

At root peoples feelings get hurt because something insecure or unvalidated gets ruffled. You can take control of that and rise above it. I'm not saying that if you are being bullied by someone, that you are to blame. I am strictly speaking about those who are truly remorseful of their actions. There is a difference between those who abuse maliciously and intentionally; and two friends fucking with each other, and having it go too far.

A wise comedian once said: "In a war there are only two ways to keep from being shot. Either disarm your opponent or build yourself a bullet-proof shield". If you try to disarm the world to keep from getting your feelings hurt you will fail. So it's better to work on your bullet-proof shield.

Mind you this is all logical thinking which is unavailable when hurt feelings cloud your judgement. You will scapegoat people who may not deserve it. You will conveniently forget any possible involvement on your part to cause the argument. But regardless you must remember...

No, you know what? Fuck that!

Grow up!

I am not gonna sit here and pretend that being overemotional is an excuse for not thinking. Shut your mouth and take responsibility. If I call you out on being the bucket of cunt sputum you are acting like and you get offended, I will apologize. But maybe you should stop acting like a bucket of cunt sputum.

If I say you have a fat ass (whether you do or don't) just to razz you and you get hurt; and I apologize; and you say its OK; when it obviously isn't, then my feeling like shit is all the repayment for the insult you are ever gonna get. You have no right to perpetuate my misery to make yourself feel better. At least not more than once. After that you are just being vindictive. And I have no fucking use for you.

Fuck off until you learn to grow up and deal with other people, you fucking cumrag!

With deep and abiding affection,
Gabriel

P.S. For those who think this post is pointed at them...In the words of Denis Leary..."Life sucks, get a fucking helmet."

Resolved

Well new years day has come and gone and we are almost to February. So tell me, what arbitrary promise have you made to yourself and how soon did you break it? Every year their is this shadow industry that tells you you are a bad person the way you are and you must make promises to be a better person. Not only that but you should do it on the new year as a grand fucking sweeping gesture toward change.

The resolution is a pervading part of the human psyche, the start of a new fucking life. We as a culture are obsessed with words like new, fresh, and improved. We all want what is better. The problem is we don't know what the fuck "better" means.

Penn Jillette once said, "Arbitrary promises prove that we can make and live by our own rules without the need for a higher power. They prove that we alone control ourselves through our choices and our will." Which is great. But some whiny cocksacks make these promises then break them and and then feel guilty as if they have broken some personal eleventh commandment. As if they were a failure for breaking a promise they made to themself. The reality is that you don't have to hold yourself to any self made promise you don't want to. Notice there that I said "self made promise" if you make promises that matter to other people and break them you are still a dishonorable twat.

The only real resolution we should be making is to do whatever it is we can to be happier and more fulfilled than we were the year before. Unfortunately that doesn't make the fucktarded fitness industry any money. They still want that first 3 months revenue you will spend in order to not be such a fat ass. Which you will then go and break because pizza and chocolate and fatty shit in general is fucking delicious.

But even the simple concept of being happier and more fulfilled is too elaborate a promise.

Hate your job? Would a new job make you happier? Then please feel free to wade into the quagmire that is today's job search. In an instant your promise to be happier is incinerated.

Hate that your love life or marriage is in shambles? Do I really need to go into the reasons why changing your love life sucks? Most of dating seems to be blind luck. And divorce really is a giant roller coaster of fun isn't it? Who doesn't enjoy the abject pain of separating your belongings and finding a new places to live? Also, the eventual filing of papers and court dates are a blast of fresh ass. Divorce is a costly fuckass system that I am sure most would agree that it should be harder to get married and easier to get divorced. So once again your dream of happiness and fulfillment is a fucking nightmare.

So what to do then?

If you are looking for some grand arbitrary sweeping gesture or proclamation to change you forever then keep dreaming fucko! Because that isn't how it works. Resolutions are a promise. A promise you make every day and in every moment. Until it occurs without you prompting yourself to do it. Change is gradual and slow and hard work. Recognizing in each moment what needs changing and then making the change.We need to stop thinking that a promise we make at the beginning of a calendar year is all it takes to change. We need to stop being obsessed with better.

As soon as we become simply aware of ourselves and others and how to treat one another and ourselves in every moment with dignity and respect and love...we will instantly achieve better. Stop living in fairy tales. Live in this world, make the effort and you will get everything you want.

Don't be afraid to work and suffer and you will find that you won't have to work or suffer.

With deep and abiding affection,
Gabriel