See No Hear

For those that wonder the root of the human spirit. Its humble cause is heard early in life.

For those who wonder at our complaint, and the root of our stubborness,
listen carefully to the first sound a newborn babe makes.

Those who imagine the ideal person as obedient are fools.
That first birth cry is forever stuck in our throats.
And only silences on the dark day we die.

As long as life lasts, we are defiant.
We will scream and we will kick.
Against all odds should they dare.
And against ourselves should they not.

Disbelief

What happens when you give a pack of idiots rights and the ability to vote?
I'm deadly serious. What in the flying fuck did you think would happen?

Do you think people would vote for intelligent, well-balanced individuals? That they'd select the best and brightest to lead them?

Don't be absurd. When you have fucking idiots voting in droves, you get fucking idiots in power. Fucking idiots fear people who think. They fear technology. They fear moderation. They fear everything. So they vote for people who fear people who think. Who fear technology. Who fear moderation.

The only difference between our culture and tyranny is the matter of choice.

Under a despot, we don't have the choice to vote.
In democracy, we choose not to vote.

If you want to know the root of all this "elitist" bullshit, it's staring you in the face. The so-called "elite" is an educated working class goddamn tired of slack-jawed root vegetables who flunked out of elementary, having just as much, if not more, control over a country's direction as someone who's actually tried to contribute something to society besides bigotry, rhetoric, and belt-fed infants.

Jesus. And the worst part is that the small, fearful minds will always outnumber the number of cooler heads. So no matter what route is taken, it doesn't take a crystal ball to know we're fucked. Period.

Rant over.

Hypnagogic anti-hero

It was in these lazy dog-days of summer that Phil felt the most alive. Something about the molten golden glow of the mid-summer sun made his dreams especially vivid. Given that his life was never anything to be excited about, Phil reveled in his subtle but active imagination.

In essence, Phil lead two lives as two different people. In the waking world, he was a dull and dreary young man who had no direction in life, no motivation, and nothing to show for his lack of effort.

In the sleeping world, Phil was a demi-god. A shaper of ways, and a being singularly capable of terrific wonders.

He recalled from one dream, being able to float as a lily might on water. The sensation was the same, the air lapping at his shoulders like the water might at the local pool. He spent hours paddling lazily through the air, as though it was an amber-coloured ocean laid out beneath the sun.

That morning he had awoken with a headache, and after taking a copious amount of painkillers, he attended his daily life. In a way, it was almost as dreamlike as sleep. Everything went by so slowly. Attempts at socializing often collapsed. Phil had a habit of staring blankly, unresponsive to even the most raucous attempts. At some points, he would already be asleep, though his eyes would be open. In his own mind, he imagined himself as a human being, and everyone else as aliens. Though they talked and moved convincingly enough, he knew they were fakes, and underneath their pale flesh, they were really horrible pock-marked monsters with gaping jaws, sharp teeth, and an endless hunger for absent-minded idiots.

In sleep, everything seemed more... harmonious. Phil could walk about, and hold conversations, and sometimes even form relationships with the inhabitants of his subconscious. He never asked anyone their names, but it seemed that he didn't need to. Everyone knew everyone else, and there wasn't any of the paranoia or drama so prevalent in the waking world.
There were times when things would just pull together and be so intimate that Phil would forget that the whole thing was just a thing in his head, not really real... but not necessarily fake either.

It was all a very pleasant duality until one day - as sad and unexpected plot twists often happen - Phil was at work and the unthinkable happened. Amidst harmlessly mopping a floor, Phil suffered a one-in-a-million brain aneurism that left him drooling helpless on the very floor he just finished cleaning to a mirror sheen, catapulted into a seemingly irrecoverable coma.

For nearly a month, Phil lay on a hospital bed. The doctors were confounded. He was indeed dreaming, his brain showed steadily increasing activity, and yet, he did not wake. Days, and then weeks passed, and still Phil lay, his lids closed, eyes fluttering rapidly beneath. He was visited regularly by his parents, who worried incessantly, although perhaps also vainly. He was also visited by old friends, classmates, and ex-girlfriends. Phil had never really had a real-world relationship that amounted to anything more than innocent hand-holding. But even so, despite his dumb demeanor, Phil was missed in the waking world, and it was to a great sigh of relief that he woke up one morning, even as the first leaves of fall began to drop from the trees.

Though his eyes were open, he wasn't the same. Though he never said much before, he said even less now. He moved as though he were a puppet lacking strings, his eyes always gazing flatly at an invisible horizon no-one could see.

One day, he simply started to speak, as though to no one in particular. Though it was perhaps madness in his words, nobody dared to stop him, as even the ramblings were preferable to the eerie silence of one who is alive in function only.

"I can remember... her arms around me. We were somewhere dark, and then somewhere light. The air was sweet, with a hint of ocean, and the ground itself was alive in loamy glory."

Had the technology been available to get into Phil's head, a casual viewer would've seen a fleeting vision of alien shorelines. Unknown, yet not unwelcoming. Grassy knolls rolled away beneath deep sapphire skies, lone clouds painted by the invisible brush of a perfectionist unseen, and yet constantly at work. And yet even as a view watched, the blue skies slowly faded to black. A dark tide swooping in like a midnight breeze to swallow up... two flickering lights travelling along the quickly disintegrating shoreline. They didn't know each other, but that hardly mattered. The last thing Phil felt before the sea-air melted to the interior of a sterile hospital room was the feeling of two living arms holding him firmly from behind, a soft breath heaving into the back of his shirt.

He thought he could even feel the cool dampness of tears soaking through, but even as his eyes righted themselves, he knew it was all just a dream.

I've always wanted a pony

The first steps are always the hardest.

Would you take the first step, knowing the journey you were about to embark on has a high chance of ending in disappointment and failure? Would you be the one to take that awful first stride into that twisted loop?

I would. Although perhaps not today.
It's a dangerous game, trying to prove oneself wrong.
In all times but this time, it's finally not a game.