President of Earth

Temper

So I’m reading my timeline, and I see this one:

@down_to_stars 

Is there a word for that feeling in your chest after someone you love says something awful to you?

That tweet got me thinking about the feeling I get in my chest when I say something awful to someone who loves me. 

I’ve had that feeling. No bueno. 

Far too often I’ve allowed my impatience to sharpen my tongue and dull my manners. 

You can never have your words back. 

Rambling About My Bliss

Did I mention I’m quite certain we all get dumber as we age? Not the point, but I was thinking it so I typed it. And now I’m already starting to disagree with it. Anyway.  

Also, having proofread the following, I am disgusted by my run on sentences and rampant errors but whatever suck it I’m high.

I really felt like talking with you about flying. It’s something I used to love to do, and I miss it. 

I started flying in my dreams when I was very young. Have you ever dreamed of flying? I don’t mean falling, that’s a whole other thing. I mean actually flying, and in control. Even just a little bit in control, that’s about all I ever get in my dreams these days. But even a little bit is pretty fucking good. So? Have you? 

Right after I graduated high school - a total waste of time, but that’s another story - I made my first skydive. It was awesome, yet it still wasn’t quite enough. Having the instructor be the one running shit wan’t really my style, I wanted to do my own thing in the air, not let somebody else tell me what to do. 

I took a course and after a while I was able to do whatever I willed from exit to opening altitude. You leave the plane and it’s like falling on a giant soft mattress. You can move any direction, with your body in just about any position, just by feeling what part of your body the wind is on. Then your friends join you and everybody plays their favorite sport in the air. Some people dance together, most people can’t make it to 50 jumps without getting kissed in freefall (pretty startling to a new jumper, all focused on the preplanned details of the dive sequence, all of the sudden the experienced hottie jumper chick plants one on your mouth out of nowhere at 100 miles an hour.) I love air races, they’re always wild, mind numbing speeds and angles. Really advanced jumpers play with weighted tennis balls called “skyballs” (do with that as you will) throwing them back and forth like fuzzy lead missiles. The big new fascination is squirrel suits, or birdman suits, like in the movies. They can keep pace with small parachutes. These guys are the ones just now cracking the code of surfing the air.  We neglect the atmosphere, but it is here, man, and it is BIG. Oceans are cool, right? Giant, right? Look at how much SKY we have. 

I’m generally perceived as quite random, which in my book makes me predictable. People always think my head is in the clouds. Truth be told, my head only wishes it were.  I haven’t gone for a jump in over a year now, probably won’t in the winter, cold takes a lot of the fun out of it.  I do have the winter to plan some jumping, I suppose.  Hopefully by next Spring I’ll have won a healthy sum in the lottery and I’ll be able to afford it.  

Seriously, I just go on, and on, and fucking on, are you really still reading this? Okay, moving on then. When I started skydiving 18 years ago base jumping was still considered the “lunatic fringe” by the mainstream and responsible skydivers.  I knew I’d fit in immediately. These people are like a whole new kind of people, you can’t imagine the creativity and planning it takes to execute a successful ground to ground parachute ride. They showed me a whole bunch of good ways to not die.  Take it from me, you can never know too many ways to not die. In general, I mean, not just in skydiving. We jumped off of bridges, a dam, electrical towers, radio and tv towers, and my friends jumped a great many more things than I could dream of (until next March, that’s when I’m  hoping to buy that lottery ticket that would fund a round-the-world travelling lifestyle of jumping and exploring and snowboarding and motorcycles and helicopters but until then money’s a bit tighter than that so no) and we did it safely. Mostly. 

I write this evening after spending a day stringing racquets at the California state doubles racquetball tournament. watching people play their game.  Bunch of really nice people. Saw some real talent. I guess it reminded me of what it was like to be out there playing at a high level.  so,since I rarely actually buy a lottery ticket, maybe I’ll set a few bucks aside over the Winter so that I can make a few jumps come Spring. 

A well written piece should open, engage, and close with impact. This Text Post has done none of that. Have a beer, toke one up, and make one of your dreams something you’re working for. 

By the way your mom says hi and quit hiding your magazines under the mattress, they get wrinkled.  She smoothed out my wrinkles. A few times. Your mom. Don’t picture it. But it was rad. 

LGBT

Violence

Intimidation

Superiority

Do we really have any time for this crap?  In this world, with these problems?

Most of us know (or are) somebody who has been (or are) weaker than the people hiding behind popular opinion, using their “normal” status as a weapon.  Most of us also know that the people who bully the “weak” are actually weak in character, short on perspective, and secretly scared of themselves. 

Before you try to humiliate or condescend to another person, think for a moment.

The person you are hating on has a family, just like you.  Good or evil, they have a family.  That person thinks differently than you about some things, but probably less things than you know.  They like to eat, sleep, and be part of their world.  Just like you.

That person has more in common with you than you are willing to admit. 

There is no strength in forcing the weak to bow to you.  

Want to prove you are tough?

Try standing up for someone who is getting bullied. 

That. 

That proves what a great person you are. 

The wake up call

9/11/01

My roommate called me and told me to wake up, turn on the news. Some kind of attack involving jet airplanes. 

I’ll never forget the first few images i saw.  I couldn’t believe it at first, this had to be some grand hoax.  My sister lived in Manhattan, was she alright? 

Why would these people do this? So many people dead. 

Even as I asked why, I knew the answer to my question. 

People had been convinced that they needed to belong to one group or another, and the groups were angry at the other groups for being different, and the anger made people feel weak, and the weak feeling made people lash out in anger.  And some people fostered the anger and aggression and convinced people killing other people was a good idea.  

Killing other people isn’t a good idea.

Peace isn’t easy, it is very, very difficult. It is hard to accept someone who eats different food, sings different songs, speaks different words. People who dress differently, who don’t look like people you know. 

But if you could see those same people just a little differently, if you could get just a little perspective from inside that group, peace gets a little easier. 

Everybody wants to eat.

Everybody wants to be free.

Everybody wants to love, and to be loved. 

Everybody wants to protect their children and their families. 

Everybody wants to have a little hope.

When you get right down to it, we are more similar than we are different.

Choose peaceful leaders. 

Find ways to accept people who are different. 

BACK AT IT

After totally ignoring this thing for months, I’m finally going to put a little effort into it, just to see what it is all about.  

I played with MySpace back in the day, then moved to facebook, since I’m not a band or a pornstar, and now I do most of my “networking” on twitter, where I try to sneak in a little bit of my global agenda in between jokes and flirting with women whom I really hope are actually women.

I’m just your everyday, run-of-the-mill freak.  I have a family, but my wife and I have been separated for most of the last 3 years.  Turns out she and I don’t live together well.  She is a beautiful, brilliant, hard working woman, and I’ll love her forever.  We just don’t get along.  

I joined a few friends in starting a company last year, and we’re making it, but we’re struggling for every bit of business.  

I have a world full of problems, ironically the thing I am best at is solving other people’s problems. Try me. We’re all here, so if I can share some perspective or insight that makes your world better, rad.

Anyway, yeah, I’m here, haven’t really decided what to do with it, but we’ll figure it out.  

Peace.