Chinese SPace Station in Latin America

Woke up this afternoon to open the New York Times and read some news that is both surprising, terrifying -- but also, perhaps, a bit expected:

The Chinamen, it turns out, have built a secret Space Station down in Argentina. The Times explains to us that, one day, "like in the world of 2049", it could possibly become a military base. 

How did this happen? Doesn't anyone realize that Latin America is literally the "backyard" of the United States? (Or perhaps you could say we are its backyard...).

No. I don't think anyone does realize, and as I read my way through the long article published this morning, all I could think was that, none of this would have happened, if only the Americans had done what was supposed to happen a long time ago, and end the fucking War on Drugs. But because they could not do that, this is what we have to deal with now. The article itself, 3 quarters of the way into it, confirmed that this really was the primary cause. Note the following:

While President Barack Obama was widely hailed in the region [Latin America] for restoring relations with Cuba in late 2014, Washington’s agenda never ceased being dominated by two issues that have long generated resentment in Latin America: the war on drugs and illegal immigration.

 In other words, we have been completely blind to Latin America, as I have always written we have been, and the only reason we are blind to it, is exactly the same reason we should be concerned: They are our neighbors on the American continent! And now there is a damn potential Chinese military base on our continent, and its all because the Drug War. Because, instead of help Latin America, we just kept waging a literal war on it -- a literal fucking war --- and they are broke because of this war, and do you know how easy it is to buy broke people and broke nations? Very easy.

The entire article reads more like a guide on how to wine, dine, and make poor people feel important (which is what the Chinamen did) than anything else. One is only as strong as ones weakest link. South America, thanks almost entirely to the war on drugs at this point, is a clearly identifiable weak link for our continent. Now the Chinese have a military base on it.

It said the Pentagon was "taken aback" or "shocked" or something like that. My only question is ...how? If even I, 5-6 years ago, was able to see that Latin America was a vulnerable region, thanks to endless abuse, how did not the Pentagon? Does that make any sense? A 22 year old pothead was able to see it and the Pentagon no? Latin America has so much potential as both friend, lover, and neighbor, for the USA. Now, how can we know where their allegiances might lie come the future? Perhaps all of Latin America will be turned into nothing more than a Chinese military center...this will merely be the first base of many to come...we will be dealing with a land invasion coming up thru Mexico...and it won't be Mexicans....it'll be Chinese... .

This part also didn't sound too good, from a US point of view:

The contacts have paved the way for China to start selling military equipment in Latin America, which had long regarded the United States defense industry as the gold standard, said Mr. Ellis, the War College scholar.

Venezuela has spent hundreds of millions on Chinese arms and matériel in recent years. Bolivia has bought tens of millions of dollars’ worth of Chinese aircraft. Argentina and Peru have signed smaller deals.

Mr. Ellis said the Chinese had also probably pursued cooperation relationships with Latin American nations, with an eye toward any possible confrontation with the United States.

This doesn't sound like its going to be a very good time.

Seems the War on Drugs has now officially destroyed something else. Thank you war on drugs!

What is so great about New York City?

My young sister is absolutely obsessed with New York City. She seems to believe that it's the best and most exciting city on the face of the earth. To her, people in New York are living the dream. They remind her of the film stars she watched, when she was growing up, in shows like Gossip Girl and Sex and the City. When she looks at New York , she sees a world of fashion designers, chic nightclubs, expensive bars, and success. She sees an open and happy lifestyle. A progressive place. The one and only place to go to.

I do not blame her for her image of New York City. After all, it's mostly true. It's one of the richest and most successful cities on earth, just like my sister believes.

And yet, I suppose I cannot help but find it fascinating (and very strange) how much my sisters current image of New York City, differs so mightily from the image I had of it, when I was her age, and a young guy, instead of a girl. For the thing I find most curious of all about my sisters love for New York is that, indeed, I think it all connects completely with the fact that she's my sister. A girl.

When I think back to conversations that I had with my group of friends as a young guy about New York, when we were all only 17-20 years old, it's very comical to me that the image we had of the city, as young men, was so radically different (and worse) than what my sister sees. For most of us guys--- the way I remember it---the idea of New York city went something like this: It is a really hard place to live, and you have to be unbelievably tough to live there, always ready for a brawl. If not that, then you have to be rich, which of course we did not believe we would be. Instead of seeing New York as the home of fashion designers and coco Chanel, we saw it as the home of gangsters like the Teflon Don John Gotti, and as having hard hit areas like Harlem and the Bronx, that went far beyond what we used to call “the little Bronx”, here jn our own home city, with a mere 120,000 residents. If we thought our own city was a pain in the ass, and filled with gang issues and drug wars, we did not even want to begin imagining what the hell happened in New York. It was another level of problems, and of course, we weren't the only ones who felt this way: A television show like the Sopranos, which was very popular when I was younger, uniquely examines just how much happier a mob guy can be, when he's in “quiet” New Jersey, instead of New York. Every time tony soprano met with the New York bosses in the show, it was always a potentially life threatening event. He was mortified. They were bigger and scarier sharks who swam in a much deeper sea. Better to be in jersey. For everybody.

Well, as I say, as young men, that was our idea of the city. It simply wasn't seen as aomewhere you would want to go, unles you had plans to be a particualely vicious shark. But beyond that idea, there was also another one that I find even stranger: Though we interpreted the New York lower class as being one in which we surely never wanted to swim, because of how tough we imagined such boys were, we also never wanted to move there because, well, there was also something really feminine about the city to us. That's right: the city of the vicious sharks, of the Teflon Don and the strange subways, the city that practically birthed gangsta rap, was also really feminine. It wasn't the place you would want to go to pursue your absurd dreams of being a masculine American  boy.

New York City was at once this vicious place with the most vicious sharks, whilst also being this place that represented the literal antithesis of what masculinity was really supposed to be. How is it possible, one cannot help but ask.

When I think of distant places my childhood friends used to mention as where they'd dig living, it seems literally almost all the places were out in the woods, or the country, and keep in mind that many of these guys had never even lived in a country setting, yet it was what they dreamed of, when they did dream. The country was where it was thought that a man was free to be a man, whatever that was supposed to mean. He could be dirty and wear no shirt and just a pair of ripped jeans there. He could have a woman who didn't want a $4500 Chanel purse and high heels. He could catch fish and maybe even buy a gun and hunt something , to get “free food”. . This was the dream. The country was seen as a place of riches. New York , dreadful poverty.

It was yet another strange area where the idea of New York again got confusing: A New Yorker -- any New Yorker --- was rich, but he was also poor. He had no real personal space. Is that not the definition of being poor? A house with noting in it in the middle of no where in Tennesse, looks like a mansion, to a poor New Yorker.

I remember how my cousins used to speak constsntly of the pot farms they would one day have in Colorado or Oregon, my friends used to dream of hiking the Appalachian mountains or drilling for oil in Alaska, many used to discuss a state like Texas and how they wanted to move there to shoot guns and “live easy”. And, quite literally, out of probably all the young men I can ever remember talking to back then,  maybe all of one or two ever mentioned New York City. Oddly enough, those two were both rich boys. Beyond them, literally no one wanted to go there. It wasn't even about the money. It was merely that something seemed wrong about the entire scene out that way. It didn't feel inclusive. Even I, as a writer, never felt that New York City would make for an interesting subject. I thought my own city was trash, as I say, and its garbage stink had caused me to spend half my childhood inside fantasy stories.

Of course, it's very strange to think that none of my boys back then felt that New York City was inclusive, considering New York prides itself -- so we are told---on being this ultra inclusive, ultra liberal and progressive paradise. So what the hell is going on? How can the most inclusive place  somehow seem like this to so many people? Specifically young men?

Yet another Essay on the USA (it goes on and on)

If America has so many problems -- why then does it also have such a grandiose and fun myth attached to it?

The reaction is always the same, when people first start to find out about the 'real America'. They can't believe what they are hearing. People die of lack of medical care in America? Child poverty rates are sky high? Teenage pregnancy is rampant? Many of the cities are dangerous and no one wants to live in them? There are more guns than people? The prison population is the worlds highest -- far beyond any other countries? The South is enraged for a Civil War that happened well over a 100 years ago? An entire political party, the one currently sitting in the Presidential office, actually hates California -- the same California I, as a foreigner, dream of seeing, and living in? The races aren't actually all getting along? But mostly live in their own neighborhoods, angrily separated?

What on Earth are you talking about? says the foreigner. This can't be true! This is not the America I Have heard about. The AMerica i know is a land of myth, opportunity, a land of plenty! All the races tehre get along and laugh with one another! People live in pretty little houses and no one goes hungry. Everyone goes to Disney Land.

Where are all these sad tales coming from?  How could a land with this grandiose myth attached to it also be a land with all these rather frightening problems? the foreigner wonders.

For many years, I sat in wonder also, and couldn't quite understand how this myth could be attached to my country -- or even how I myself could believe in it --- whilst still living right in the heart, of so many of America's problems. I always had a pretty passionate love for the American mythos myself. I loved reading about cowboys, Indians, and the Wild West. The stories of how New York City, Baltimore, Philadelphia and other such cities in the northeast came to rise, in the 18 and 1900s, gave my boyhood self some of the wildest thrills imaginable. America was a great story for me--and it still is. I, for example, always appreciated Europe when i was younger -- but I still thought America was inherently safer, better, more interesting, and more forwards than Europe. When I first came to discover that this was the furthest thing from the truth, I was very shocked.

I did not know, for example, that free medical care was even a possibility that could exist anywhere in the world, until I was almost 24 years old. It was unfathomable to my younger self that someone could go to college for free. In my world, only the richest and most arrogant cousin I had went, and he paid nearly $400,000 for the privilege. This was the only world I knew until I began to meet my first European friends, by way of the Internet. Everything quickly changed from there.

I began to read a different interpretation of America that day -- but it wasn’t necessarily one that shocked me too much. Mostly because my life in America had always been a bit strange, and depressing. I grew up in an area that was basically sitting right on the borderlands of  “the Bronx” -- and it was clear to me that a lot was wrong. But I thought, essentially, that a lot was wrong all over the world, and that this was the best we could do. Then, I came to see all of this truth, about how America only enjoys an illusion of being grandiose, even if she actually is not so nice.

Still, of course, many people wonder and always ask: “There must be something special about America, for it to have this powerful myth. ALl this stuff about the prison, the teen pregnancy, the chil dpoverty rates, the dangerous cities, $400,000 for a Bachelor’s degree, the War on Drugs … all of this stuff can’t be as severe as some journalists tell us …. cause everyone still thinks America is just grand…. so it’s a lie, right? Why do al lthese immigrants come to America, if its such a shit? It don’t make sense!”

These people ask a good and imoprtant question, and its the same one i asked, for a long time. I asked it pretty much constantly, up until the time when  I started to really read some deeper history, and almost overnight, I began to feel I understood precisely why this myth exists, right alongside all of these truly major problems. I came to understand why people are so passionate about America, even if America is so troubled.

The explanation is very simple: The United States is, and always has been, what i now call a "high voltage" country, and the reason --the only reason -- that it is high voltage is because it's brand new. It's that simple. America is still the New World and the New World is high voltage (i.e. dangerous, bizarre, & tantalizing); therefore, it is perhaps uniquely allowed to have all these weird, sad and downright pathetic problems --- whilst still being an awesome, cool, and really exciting place.

From the Old World perspective, specifically the European one, America is perhaps a bit like a pornographic film: One watches and feels a bit badly for the actors forced to participate in this gross and primitive spectacle -- and yet, one also cannot help but feel that invigorating sense of excitement and arousal. Humanity is being presented at its most raw and vulnerable.

The grandiose myth stems from the primitive arousal of fresh virgin land that also is strangely savage and experienced -- which is what America is. The USA is a dangerous and sexy boy that shoots guns, kills people, doesn’t waste time reading, lays waste to the "weak", and is always on edge. It might get you killed; it also might show you the best time, and sex, of your life. It’s an adrenaline junkies wet dream come to life. Even the places in the USA that are supposedly quiet -- like Wyoming, for examlpe---always have just another high voltage myth attached to them, as well.

"Who lives in Wyoming?"

"People with big fuckin' guns, dawg."

In fact, an important fact to remember is that, America is not merely a high voltage country -- but also a high voltage continent. In the old US folk songs, the term 'sea to shining sea' is used, and often people think of this as territory stretching from the NY east coast, over to California on the west. The truth about the American mythos and this high voltage thing, in reality, however, is that it really stretches throughout all of the Americas. I.e. It goes from Canada all the way down to a country like Atgentina. The Central and South American countries don't receive as much adulation --- its true -- but, ultimately, even they are still a part of the grand myth. And, in fact, examning the Central & South American countries, and their often intense and very dangerous problems (i.e. Mexicans often decapitating one another in border towns over drugs) will also help people curious about the USA and her problems, to understand them far more. The weird tragedy of the USA allowing so many people to starve and die for lack of medical care, its obsession with imprisoning its own citizens, its love of the gun, and some states still asking to hang people legally in 2018  all makes much more sense, once you examine the continent as a whole, instead of just the country.

What I offer unto my reader is not a condemnation of America, so much as a justification of why America is who she is. She is young. She is big. She is wild. The continent cannot be blamed. It is still yet to be entirely tamed. We, the real American people, which is a term that, in fact, encompasses all of us, from Canada all the way to Argentina, cannot be held completely accountable for our wild actions here. This is not densely populated Europe. It is a different land.

Yet again, it is so often the case that Americns are expected to “already be at” the same level as the liberal Europeans have now so fortunately been able to reach.

Imagine, for example, if someone told you that what happens in Germany or France has simply never effected Spain or England at all. It would sound preposterous, and no one would believe it. Everyone knows that all of Europe is connected, and that these are neighbor countries. When Germany had a big problem, so too did all the other countries. Yet, when you take this same peak at the American continent, you see -- just like the myth -- that all of the neighboring countries -- many of which are plagued by dictators, revolutions, and civil wars--  get oddly disconnected from the USA's story. They are all explained away, for example, as being "absolutely nothing like" the USA.

Mexico, we are told, is hell on earth -- but USA is absolute heaven.  Nevermind the fact that, when one compiles a list of the cities considered the most dangerous in the world, that list features cities primarily from both the USA, Mexico, and further below. On this list I have here, Los Cabos, Mexico rates as the worlds most dangerous city. Saint Louis, Missouri comes in spot #13. There are 50 cities total o nthe list. Not a single one of them is from Europe.   Yet the continued obsession of trying to connect the USA with Europe, instead of her true sister countries, goes on and on.

The truth, of course, is that things just don't work like this. Two countries so close together, shared by land, are inevitably connected. They are, as i write, like brothers and sisters, and they have the same parentage. What effects one undoubtedly effects the other.

I will say it again, and stress it: The USA has significantly more in common, in my opinion, as an American living in an American city, with the very troubled Mexico, than it has ever had with Europe.

The two countries, after all, are both a part of what people used to understand was the New World, as previously mentioned, and again, this fact about being the New World is the entire picture. If this country was not "new", I'm persuaded next to no one would care about it at all.I’m also persuaded that it wouldn’t have so many problems.  (Keep in mind, for example, that if america wasn't new, she wouldn't have the same two languages spoken throughout the entire continent, which would change her in gigantic ways. The Europeans all have different languages, but now maintain an accord of peace and good will, that took literally centuries to achieve).

The American continent, in many ways, is like an old aging celebrity: We all know she's getting older and much stranger now than ever before-- yet we still can't help but remember the original excitement she once brought not merely those of us living inside her, but literally the entire world. Many things have been discovered and been invented since the year 1492, when Colombus discovered the American continent, but nothing has ever quite been on the scale of discovery that this continent was. The human race, for example, has learned an awful lot about space and planets and how big the universe is, in the years since we found this continent, but as great as those discoveries were, they were also a bit dull, for the commoner. The planets, for almost all of us, all just sit inside movies and textbooks. They might as well not be real. We cannot participate with them. We cannot visit them.

America, you see, was that last great all inclusive bomb of a discovery that literally anyone was able to jump into. And that's why it's still so exciting, at times. That's why it's still so cool, and attractive, and fashionable, even if it is insane and inhumane, too.

What I find so curious about people who argue against something like a UBI is the way these people don't seem to realize what a comedic farce the economy has already become in so many ways. For example, in the working classes, its basically been a standard complaint for years that people who make millions for doing things like being movie stars, singers, and footballers are "sort of ridiculous".

 Essentially, when we take the long range historical view of how a human ought to earn their living, the idea that people started tossing a football back and forth in the 20th century, and making millions, seems preposterous. There is still a lingering memory of how inherently odd this is, when you really think about it. It seems strange on some level, to everyone. Because we have a type of collective memory of times like the 1700s--when such a thing simply could have never happened.... 

When people made money back then, they either robbed it or they actually worked for it, by helping to build, run, and maintain society. There was no other known way that existed to make money for all of time. Artists and entertainers didn't even really operate within the real economy in the deep past. They instead lived off of wealthy patrons. I.e. DaVinci "ate off the plates" of a rich family like the Medicis, who helped set up real cogs of society, by creating banks, and Shakespeare ate off the plates of the royals, etc. Shakespeares plays were not inserted into the economy, transported via wagon, and placed on shelves to be resold at shops. They just sort of existed, created inside this little slice of time which people in the 1500s had, to devote to leisure, during an otherwise very tumultous period of still being in the middle of building an enormous civilization. 

Of course, this ability to make money as an "entertainer" who, quite literally, does nothing to help society run, happened directly due to 20th century automation and tech advancement (i.e. all those boys playing pro football, singing, and dancing are actually no longer necessary to use at the factory or to run the cities etc). If automation had never happened at all (as people who argue against UBI are so fond of screaming at us) then such leisurely positions simply would not exist within this civilization. Literally everyone would have to play a vital role here that could never go unfilled. 

In our own age of course, where automation has become even more present, we now have added another absurdity to the mix, which are the endless no name clowns who make money doing silly things on YouTube (or also the person who sets up a website and jsut gets paid off an income stream from ad revenue). Automation has now created a truly enormous class of people who are sitting on the sidelines of this civilization, never at all helping to pull any of its levers, solely entertaining the people who do. (Not to mention all the retired people, often greedy, who don't seem to realize that, in the real hard workin' past, such a concept never existed). 

Again, all of these methods of making money look inherently ridiculous, since they contribute literally nothing to society itself actually running --- and yet nobody seems to notice it or comment on it. In other words, at some point along the way, our definition of what it means to be contributing to society, took on a dangerous new twist. People now no longer differentiate between someone who actually contributes to the civilization running itself (i.e. someone who fixes train tracks, cooks food, or helps build bridges), and all of these people who are essentially just sitting around, making this 'funny money'.

These entertainment oriented "workers" get the luxury of being seen as "contributing" solely because they make money, and nothing more. In a very real sense, they're almost like leeches (just like someone could claim a welfare recipient is) but again, since they make money, they are not seen that way. Some of the YouTube culture is arguably the best example of what i mean by how absurd this is becoming. Back in the day, with TV, there was at least a sense of refinement to the entertainment. A sense that one was not inherently wasting ones time by watching, say, I Love Lucy. Now it has completely devolved into absurdity. Many types of videos on YouTube that people actually earn bread by making are time wasting videos and they're self aware of this, too.

The reason this is important to stress, for me, is because the entire argument around why UBI should never happen only ever goes back to one thing: People simply must do something to contribute to society, in order to be considered worthy of having money. The idea that having an entire class of people, like we have now, who are always dangerously close to having no money at all , never seems to strike any of these imbeciles as a terrible (or, of course, potentially threatening) thing. Yet the pros of a UBI so clearly outweigh the cons of our current situation. The current situation is laughably pathetic. We have entire cities that have essentially been eroded by poverty and thus turned into lunatic areas of crime. But the connection between crime and poverty is somehow still not being made. The connection between danger and having all these people so close to having no money at all, is never made.

It is literally as though our culture simply cannot accept the fact that its become so intelligent and advanced, that not everyone is necessary anymore, to keep the cogs of the civ running. For example, all the people who make the argument that welfare recipients are leeches, and should be contributing, never seem to also wonder, jsut what could those welfare recipients get done for us anyways? In what area are we "missing" them? WHat isn't getting done, that urgently must get done, thanks to these welfare people? The answer, of course, is basically nothing. There is literally nothing that anyone is missing that these people could be doing, because there's almost nothing to do anymore, in a very real way. Society has largely been built. The roads are done. The bridges done. So much is done. Yet, in our current state, we don't even really reflect on this either. We are still so obsessed with the fact tht eveyone must be doing something, that we don't realize how much very hard work has already been completed, and now needs not be done again. 

Words not allowed on Reddit

The argument that the white man is solely responsible for the mess that we currently find sub-saharan Africa in is basically accepted far and wide. The white man , we are told,is the only reason Africa is not modernized. If only the white man had never rudely interfered with Africa, or stepped foot on it, all would be well.

Therefore the idea seems to be, in many liberal mindsets, that no one should have ever taken an interest in SS africa, even dating back to ----what?--- the 1400s or something.

While I obviously find the story of it all very tragic, I also don't really understand what people think was an alternative. Were EUropeans wrong to build boats? Were they wrong to sail and explore? Should Europeans have simply stayed home and never developed any technology? I don't get it. What exactly do people think would have happened in the 1600s or some century like that -- aside from war?

Do people believe that the EUropeans could have built the boats, landed in Africa, and everyone start singing kumbayah immediately, holding hands? Doesn't that sound a bit preposterous or am i just evil? I just don't understand what people find so shocking about this period of history. It basically reads as gruesomely as any other period; the only difference is that now its two different races against each other, and the effects are still highly visible in our own age. But that doesn't make it any more shocking. The history of our world is gruesome. Why would the history of Africa, especially Europeans discovering Africa, be any different?

Do liberals realize, for example, that the entire model of democratic government has been pulled from Greece and rome, two pretty ferocious cultures?

I feel like liberals have a very satisfying idea of the future, but they have unfortunately tried to also apply their utopian future ideals to a gruesome past, and it makes them look like morons. You can't change the past -- and there's not really any reason to express such outrage over it, either. This image of the African tribes as some totally peaceful entity that the evil white man just swept down upon and corrupted is ridiculous. It'd be like if aliens attacked us tomorrow, and hundreds of years from now, we tried to act like the human race had been entirely peaceful and pacifist-- until the aliens arrived. What a load of BS.

In terms of North Africans, Muslims tried to invade spots in Italy and Spain again and again. Sometimes they won, but they also lost. The Europeans developed a successful defense to hold them out. Are we to say that They are assholes for playing good defense? Ridiculous. No one says anything about how Muslims continously tried to invade Europe centuries ago, because they lost. Somehow EUropeans are even painted as evil for this! "How dare you defend your own country in the 1300s against Muslims..." Huh? But isn't the sad thing about Africa all because they couldn't figure out a way to defend their own lands? How is that the Europeans problem? Again, were Euros supposed to arrive and just start kickin' it like good amigos? Get real. This is why liberals are painted as childish morons and no one will listen to their ideas for the future -- which is far more important than the past. They look at the past and just whine like brats. Instead of picking out the positive stuff that happened between these two very different cultures interacting in these dark past times, the lib goes bakc and purposely picks out every single thing that went horribly wrong. What an asshole.

Still, I'm open to hearing what people think the alternative could have been. To me, it pretty much seems like everyone is still pissed off that Europeans invented boats that got them to Africa. It's as though everyone just wishes the boats had never been built. Which is beyond stupid.

Dirty dumb Uncle Vic

I hate my Uncle Vic today. I hated him yesterday. I hated him 5 years before that. I'll hate him tomorrow.

Why?

Well, after years of intensely hating Uncle Vic, the conclusion I finally came to is that my hatred of him, all has to do with social class.

Uncle Vic is from the worst social class on Earth.

Which social class is it? It's not the upper class. It's not really the middle. It's certainly not the lower, considering he paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for his son (who isn't nearly as obnoxious as he is) to go to a prestigious university.

No, the social class that Uncle Vic is from is what I call the "desperately aspiring to seem middle" class.

It might be hard to explain to some people, of course, because most people would consider a guy like Uncle Vic, who had all that money to drop on his kids college ed, to be middle. I don't consider him middle, however, for a few reasons. First of all, Uncle Vic himself isn't educated. I don't even think he can really read. Yes, he has a lot of money, but it hasn't changed who he was for the first 25-30 years of his life. If Uncle Vic was really middle class, he'd be able to discuss things with me, like books, or films that people in magazines review. He'd perhaps have interests like fishing, or bike riding, or maybe he'd even know the plot to Star Wars. 

Uncle Vic doesn't know any of that shit. He might as well be the Indian guy at the Deli down the road. Every single cultural reference goes over this dude's head. He has, it is very clear, never read so much as a single book. He has never, he swears, 'had any time at all', to watch a movie. He does not like fishing, he has never gone camping, and he certainly doesn't know the Star Wars plots. He doesn't know much of anything, as I say. There is nothing to talk about when Uncle Vic comes around, except the most mundane topics in life, like death, taxes, and Donald Trump, etc.

Again, if he were really middle class, Uncle Vic would at least have interests, but instead he's just a lower class guy, who happened to come into some money, but the money only seems to have made him worse, instead of better. Uncle Vic might have been OK, i sometimes think, if he hadn't of had the son, for instance.  But the son plus the money turned him into a righteous piece of shit of a human being. Uncle Vic is not content with the money he made during his life. Instead, everything for him is all about what that son will go on to do. In other words, will he go on to make my name a real middle class name, or not? Will he carry some sort of legacy of me, into some far superior neighborhood?

Uncle Vic didn't win a few gambling games, like most lower class folks will do, and start to wear a smile and consider himself lucky. He just wants more, more, more.

It is this trait of Uncle Vic that is the worst of them all. It is this one that has made me decide that he is, in the first place, a traitor to his own class, and also, undoubtedly, a self-hater.  He lives vicariously through a son who hates him just like I do.

I write the story of UNcle Vic, in fact, as a type of warning message. If you recognize traits of yourself being written here, please stop it, whoever/wherever you are. Uncle Vic is like a cancer and a plague on my entire family and my entire life... if you think you're anything like him...stop now...kill yourself... do anything... JUST DON'T BE HIM!

Some people might tell me now, of course, that Uncle Vic really is lower class and that this is how all lower class guys act. They might tell me that, by hating so badly on Vic, I'm really hating the Lower class. I don't fall for this shit tho. Again, I don't consider Vic lower class for obvious reasons.

 Lower class guys, for example, strangely enough, can often discuss a fairly wide range of topics. They can also be pretty funny. After all, they're lower class, and the deciding philosophy down there is that one ought to live for the moment. Lower class people tend to like music that makes you feel very alive, they like to tell dirty jokes, they're exciting, they're very salt of the Earth, and they're not usually too judgmental. I should know since all my best buddies came from this class.

Lower class guys are happier even when they're in f'n prison than Vic is in his fancy little suburban house worth 400 grand! Believe me!

Sure, if you get on the bad side of a 'LC' guy, they might rob you, maybe they'll even kill you, cause they don't fear prison too much -- but if you're their buddy, it's shocking how wonderful of a companion a totally uneducated lower class guy can be. Doesn't matter what age he is. I have other uncles, for example, who are not even close to insufferable as Uncle Vic. They can discuss fishing for 7 hours without tiring and its amazing. They can talk about funny shit like wrestlers and boxers, they can share a few Budweisers with you, they can 'shoot the shit' and laugh.

They've never read a book either -- but they're good guys. They get joy out of life, poor and mean as it has always been to them. They don't take life too seriously. They aren't too concerned with how far or not far their asshole sons will go or not go. They understand how to take it easy. Because they've often fucked up, they can accept a fuck up.

This isn't the case with Uncle Vic. I don't care what nayone says about him. He's an oboxious asshole from the worst social class on Earth. Honestly, of all the social classes, even the billionaire one, I find Uncle Vics to be the worst of them all. I really mean that. Uncle Vic is more insufferable than a billionaire. At least billionaires like Bill Gates, after all, actually do things for the world. Plus they create cool computers for me to play with. Can't say this about Uncle Vic. He hates computers. They're, to him, 'a colossal waste of time'. Uncle Vic thinks that one of the greatest inventions in the history of humankind is a waste of time.

Social class is really interesting to me, you see, because even with all the animosity between the classes, I've always felt that people from all social classes can have more to offer than most will believe. For example, most of my lower class pals, would often get very rude and downright refuse to hang out with anyone they even suspected of being upper-middle or above. But I always thought this was foolish for a few reasons, the biggest one of them being that an upper-middle friend can be, first of all, a great help, and scond of all, they tend to be so secure in their life, that they won't judge you too hard.

 In other words, an upper class sort of person, can actually be very easy to pass time with, becasue life is sort of a joke to them -- in just the same way that life becomes a bit of a joke, to someone very poor, as well. "After you've lost everything, there's not much else left to really lose." There's a strange place people who really have lost time and time again often manage to find. Some peple might find it hard to beliee, but theres a strange contentment in poverty or misfortune. "It can't get any worse." sort of thing. Everyone in small town America, i think, has some type of really unfortunate person in their midst like this. It's that wisened old war veteran who lost both his legs in war, but still finds a way to smile on the coldest winter morning, and wish you a good day.

In terms of art, for exampe, I've always said that the best artists tend to either come from the upper class or the lower. It's almost kind of rare to see a proper middle class artist, because those people tend to be obsessed with maintaining a 'status quo'. The upper class can affor the privilege of ignoring it; the lower just doesn't give a shit. See what I mean?

The thing that sucks about poor Uncle Vic, of course, is that he killed off all his lower class charisma, gaiety, and humor--  but never managed to really gain any of the cool points of what makes so many real "money folks" (or, again, middle folks) intriguing.

Sucks to be UNcle Vic, thats for damn sure.

Pot complaints on the Fourth of July

I smoked a lot of pot when I was a kid. Like, a truly great deal of it. I remember the day I began vividly, and joyously.

I was 14 or 15 years old, i think, and headed into my sophomore year of high school. It was August and the carnival had just come to town. Around here, especially back then, we always got excited for the carnival, cause everyone would be milling all around our little seaside town. And, the week before the carnival had come, the news had broke that my friend Joey, a year younger than me, had tried pot for the first time. Me and my buddy Frank were pretty aggravated about it. It was like we felt someone had 'beaten us' to this cultural passage. We knew we had to try pot. Of course, there was one problem: Thanks to Uncle Sam, it was illegal. Where were we going to get it?

Well, the fact that the carnival was going on helped a great deal. Tons of people we knew were around, and we figured most of them smoked and knew where to get pot. We asked a number of them for help. Eventually we found someone. The first bag of pot I ever went to buy, of course, I was 'beat'. As in, robbed for 10 bucks. Frank had his own 10 bucks however. We tried again the next night. We got enough pot to smoke for the two of us. We got high for the first time and...history was made.

I then proceeded to smoke pot, often with Frank, for the next 5-6 years, from age 15 until around the time I turned 21.

I have told the story of my quitting pot numerous times, both in journal entries like this and in reality. But what basically happened was that I began to believe, around 21, that pot was causing me to have an emotional breakdown and to 'fail at life'. Being 21 obviously wasn't like being 16. I started to feel ashamed about my pot smoking habit in a way I never did as a kid. I also -- this is very important -- started to become really frightened about it, in a way i had never been before.

The reason why should be obvious: Unlike when i was a kid, smoking pot illegally as an adult was a real pain in the ass. As a kid, I was able to wander around town, and sneak off into the woods, usually on foot, to smoke my bones in peace. Since I was on foot or on a bicycle so often as a kid, even at 17-19, it was like cops didn't exist. As an adult, it didn't work like this. When the weekend came, people at 21 wanted to go out and socialize in the city, at some club, at a restauruant etc. Pot, since it was illegal, was hard to have in these situations. You always felt paranoid, and you also always heard countless stories about your fellow "potheads" being caught, charged with a crime,sent off to jail, and then  having it on their record forever. 

Remember: I'm talking about the years 2010-2011 here. The first two states to legalize pot were Colorado and Washington. That happened in 2012. In "my day" (just a few years earlier)p pot was still desperately illegal. I have numerous memories of being in some friend or others car and being chased by cops, when we went to go pick up a half ounce or a quarter, etc. I don't think i ever really learned my lesson: Even though I haven't smoked pot in nearly 8 years now, the fact that i was ever chased by cops for it still sounds all pretty pathetic.

At any rate, long story short, like i said, when I was 21 years old, i made the decision, rather dramatically, that i had to quit pot "before it was too late". I had been smoking for so many years by that point, and had so many close calls with John Law, that i figured it was only a matter of time until I would be caught, too. I didn't want to be caught. So I threw a big fit, cut contact with tons of good friends i had who i knew would never quit, and then chucked an entire ounce of pot down into a toilet. The next morning, I threw all my bongs and bowls into a big garbage bag, and tossed it in a dumpster.

At the time, I told everyone I would never smoke pot again. I was 21 and wigging out...i knew i really didn't want to even go near pot, cause if i did, i would definitely smoke it again, and start listening to Slightly Stoopid again, and not want to quit. So I made outrageous statements declaring my quit would be "forever" and blocking good friends from calling me. John Law had come and set up camp in my head. I was scared, often awake late at night, envisioning myself in chains, caught red handed with 2 ounces of dank.

 After about 2 years though, when it was 2013ish, i started to lighten up, and fonder memories of pot came back to me. I was 'out of thr hole', aftr all, it was amazing to me that i had really quit and never returned,  and now I felt cozy being able to talk about it again. I was also, i remember vividly, very surprised when i woke up to read the news, that it had been made legal in those 2 states. After all, as I said, deep down I always knew that pot itself had never made me unhappy. It was the absurd and childish legal situation around pot that had led to my paranoia, and my depression over my 'use' of the drug. I wasn't allowed to talk about pot, as if it were wine. I wasn't allowed to indulge in it at Christmas when my family was around, like i could wine. Once I was an adult, i can't stress enough, that all weighed heavy on my poor soul. I felt it was some sort of 'sin". I also never really liked how difficult it coudl sometimes be to score a bag of pot. Yet again, as a kid, the social aspect of scoring pot was fun. By 21, it was getting old. I just wanted to be able to go alone to the gas station and grab a bag, like i could a six pack of beers.

Alas, in the year 2013, I can remember having a conversation with one old buddy about pot, and i remember telling him that it probably wouldn't be long until I was smoking myself again. He asked me why, and I promptly explained to him that it was because it seemed as though the pathetic and childish obsession with keeping pot illegal, was finally coming to a close. "I'm committed," i explained, "to not smoking illegal pot. Once its legal tho, I dont see why not. I always hated illegal pot and it felt dirty to me...annoying...but next summer, who knows, it could be legal. I'll smoke then."

In 2013, it admittedly seemed like a long shot that pot would be legal by the summer of 2014. But it did seem like a real possibility that the summer of 2015 would finally be a cool and relaxing summer of legal pot. I was beginning to fantasize about finally being able to take the walk of a full grown man to the gas station, to buy weed with no worries.

Fast forward now. It is the summer of 2018 and, not only is pot still not legal in this ridiculous state I'm in, but it seems as though it will also be illegal next summer, and the summer after that too.

ANd I guess i just find something really pathetic about that. I don't know. Like i say, I just wish i could walk down to the gas station, without having to know 100 people, and buy a bag of fucking pot. Especially on a nice summer day like this, it being the Fourth of July and all. Alas, I live in a nation of children ...they've got many weird superstitions....and so I cannot enjoy a simple legal toke. Well then, i won't enjoy one at all. I'll just sit here angry instead.

Many thoughts on bodybuilding

Today I thought I would do some talking about the cultural obsession many men in the "developed world" have nowadays, with obtaining a muscular physique.

To begin, I think I might as well just cut straight to the chase: While I certainly -- like everyone else -- do find the muscular look aesthetically appealing, I also can't help but feel that there's something particularly sad about it. Beyond that, I also think there is something a bit...how could I put it.... regressive about it. And let's not forget that other word, too, which rhymes with regressive. You know that one? Obsessive.

Indeed, if I had, say, 10 male friends on the day I turned 20, it now seems that 8 out of those 10 guys, has fallen complete victim to the bodybuilding "trend" (or whatever the hell it is).

For the most part, I try to keep my negative comments around these guys to a bare minimum. Not because I'm afraid they're going to knock my lights out -- the guys I know who went on to become obsessive bodybuilders were often actually the most polite -- but rather because a lot of these guys just seem to sorta hurt easy. Say one wrong thing and they're all sorts of tragically depressed, insulted, blahblah blah. And then of course, there is always that awful fact about how, the moment you might voice your opinion on bodybuilding, the bodybuilder in question will immediately shout out some reply to you, listing all the ways in which he knows you most certainly live an "unhealthy disgusting life".

What is better, the strongman asks, being buff and healthy, or being weak and unhealthy?

Now I will admit that a lot of the points the strongmen among us make about health are certainly true. I, for one, have always had an abysmal diet, thanks to being poor mostly, and I wouldn't be surprised if it kills me early. This is probably one reason I never bother to really question the bodybuilders I know too often. Believe me: I let them do their thing. 

 But lets also be honest for a moment: Being a strongman and a bodybuilder isn't really about health. There are plenty of people who are immaculately healthy, who eat healthy etc, who are not bodybuilders and muscle freaks.  Which brings us to the conclusion that, in truth, bodybuilding is about something much different. Mostly, I would imagine, ego and a sense of security and protection. It must be assuring, after all, to know that you look "Scary" and "massive" to everyone. (As well as attractive, we are told, to the womenfolk and gays....).

It's no coincidence that the vast majority of bodybuilders seem to come from either the tortured lower classes or what I call the "I'm so embarrassed to not be a tough street guy" middle classes. 

Men who are obsessed with muscles seem to come from depressed areas of our culture, almost as a rule. And before you get started on famous and rich men with muscles, please remember: Famous rich movie stars will do whatever it takes to get the love of the lower and middle classes. In other words, whatever we are doing, they'll start doing. There is a constant give and take with things like Hollywood and magazines. Its not just "them" eternally influencing "us". So don't blame Hollywood for the muscle obsession. The truth is that a great deal of it all initially came from the places most things come from: regular neighborhoods. 

Some people,at this point, will get in my face and tell me there's simply no reason to rip on bodybuilding, because --as my cousin Dominic says --- "it's better than playing videos games or smoking crack and what else am I going to do anyways?" 

I think its this idea, however,  that a man has nothing else he can possibly do besides lift weights in his free time, that has always bothered me most. This is the most poisonous idea of them all to me.

The idea that there is nothing better to do for a young boy or a man to do, in the 21st century world, other than lift weights, is absurd.  It especially bothers me because, coincidentally in our capitalist society, bodybuilding isn't just a way to pass free time --- it also seems to be a way to spend tons of hard earned money. 

All the guys I know, including my own young brother Federico, who bodybuild, all seem to spend literally outrageous sums of money on the activity. They eat more food than would ever otherwise be necessary, they buy all the protein shakes, they pay for expensive gym memberships, the list of things to buy never seems to end. I remmeber one afternoon, for example, when I followed my friend James around some store that just seemed to sell nothing but 'whey protein'.  I must have watched him easily spend 200$. I have no idea what he spent it on to this day. It was kind of shocking to watch, however, because this is the same kid can't seem to wait to give you 30 minute speeches, about how broke he always is.

Could the fact that he seems to regularly spend hundreds of dollars on whey protein have something to do with it?

My friend James, of course, is probably the biggest 'victim', in my mind, of the bodybuilding craze tha "8 out of my 10 male friends" have now fallen into.

A long time ago, James used to come over and talk about interesting things for hours at a time. He spoke of history, he dreamed of maybe writing a book about Ancient Rome (which he used to study), he sometimes showed an interest in computer languages, et cetera. Then one day when he was 23, his long time girlfriend split with him, and ...bodybuilding. At first, I actively applauded James and his decision to bodybuidl. He had always been a bit overweight, and it was cool to see how lively and energetic he became, as he lost the weight and got strong. I was truly proud of him. It was fascinating to watch the change. He tried to convince me that I also had to bodybuild. I tried once, got bored, and found myself reading Scientific American in the back of the gym. But I always kept trying to encourage James to keep going with it. I would tell him not to let anyone make him feel bad about bodybuilding! The break up had been pretty gruesome; I was glad to see my old buddy happy again.

At some certain point,however, James didn't just become insufferable---he became downright pointless to communicate with anymore. This is because the only thing that James ever talks about now is bodybuilding, lifting weights, and getting stronger. This, of course, is assuming that James talks at all, because he really doesn't seem to be interested in talking much these days. After all, the way James sees it, what kind of fool would waste time conversing, when he could be spending that time productively at the gym, pumping iron, or running on a treadmill, etc?

I haven't talked with James about anything interesting in literally years now, and, unfortunately, no one else has either. His bodybuilding does not seem to have earned him a single new friend (unless they're other bodybuilders) and it also hasn't earned him all the beautiful women that the gym magazines seem to promise. So far as i can see, his life is just as it always was, except now he doesn't bother having conversations, because conversations are pointless, and all he does is bodybuild, and spend money on bodybuilding. When I last visited James, I saw that he had no working computer in his room anymore.  It shocked me, because James often worked with computers. In high school, I watched him build one.

 "I just sort of find computers pointless now..." he told me, "Like, what the heck would I do with it?"

Again, there's something extremely weird and regressive about this -- especially when the thought occurs to me that, what happened with James and others, seems to be happening to millions and millions of other men. There's something, i dare say, arguably even a bit "Luddite" about the bodybuilding movement. It's almost as if some subconscious part of the modern male psyche has realized that technology has, for example, helped women and given rise to feminism...so they want to throw it out ...so they can get back to the good old days of when the strongman ruled the roost.....

Here's one thing I Find interesting, for example: In the exact same manner that the weight lifting culture shames a skinny nerd, they also actually shame technology itself, just like James did, unless the tech suits them. Tech, within this culture, is not seen as making society stronger. It's seen as making us weaker and "Dependent". So they don't dig it. Who needs a computer? Who even needs a TV? Get rid of all of it. Except the mobile phone. DOn't get rid of that, bro...you need to use it to take photos of your thigh muscles.

The bodybuilder will use tech to take 25 selfies a day of his muscles, he will use it to get himself new whey protein products,he wil use it to access dating apps -- but beyond that, of what use is tech? It's for nerds and faggots is very much the prevailing philosophy.

James doesn't just find conversations pointless now. He finds computers a bit pointless too. He finds art a bit pointless (unless he's got death metal in his headphones as he pumps iron). Everything besides weightlifting is pointless.

With my young brother ,my cousin Dominic and the countless other guys I knew years ago, the story is also exactly the same as James. Once upon a long ago, they had wide and varied personalities. Now, those personalities have been replaced, as if someone got a mask and burned it onto their faces. They are now just "bodybuilding guys". It's all they talk about. ALl the time. Every time you see them. If they don't talk about it, then they'll probably talk about how bad life was for them, before they started it.

As you can imagine, this is another part of the narrative --- the one that says "I used to be a real piece of shit, before I found bodybuilding!"--- that I find incredibly unsettling and strange. Generally speaking, its not good to completely despise any one version of your self that may have existed in the past. THis is because, even if that self is in the past, that's still a major bit of self-rejection. In the bodybuilding culture, of course, this type of narrative doesn't just seem to be prevalent -- it seems to almost be required.

After all, if one does not actively develop a distaste for ones self as they were before bodybuilding, then whose to say they won't fall out of the habit of going to the gym, and become that hated thing all over again? Essentially, the bodybuilder lives in constant fear of what he once was, before his triumphant work out regimen began. He looks at old pictures of himself and seems to feel he's lookig at some type of primitive, subhuman lifeform. As if he was inferior prior to becoming a bodybuilder. My friend James clearly thinks this, which is why he now rejects having a computer in his room, and why he finds a 2 hour convo about the future of space travel boring, whereas he used to find it fascinating. James has now come to see all of that as the mark of the "loser" he used to be.

Now another thing I find truly interesting about the pro-bodybuilding argument is that many people will tell you that this culture "isn't really a choice, but a biological need." I.e. Yes, it might be true that bodybuilding is a bit of a waste of time, but in the end, this is literally what we are forced to do as human beings. We are descended from apes and humanity is about Survival of the fittest, like Darwin said, and so that's what we are doing here at the gym....we are becoming the fittest, so that we can survive. 

Bodybuilding is using Charles Darwin as an excuse to support their ridiculously time consuming work out regimen. Unfortunately, they don't seem to understand that Darwin's "Survival of the fittest" theory has next to nothing to do with pure muscle mass and how well you can do in a street fight. If Darwins theory about the 'fittest' had to do with muscles, the gorillas would be the dominant species on Earth right now. The gorillas seem to have lost pretty badly. Humans won. Why? Because humans used their brains to trick and kill species that were much stronger than them. That brain has now built a computer that my friend James doesn't want in his room, however, because....bodybuilding. See where I'm going with this?

The real thing thats pointless, you know what it is?

It is bodybuilding.