Heavily edited - in other words, completely erased.
The entry served its purpose and although I don't feel better by any stretch, at least I got it out of my system. I should turn this into a post about fighting negative thoughts. Hell, why not?
Even the most optimistic of us have our bad days. Nobody is exempt from having something bother someone to the point where that individual goes through a mini-depression. The thing is, nobody talks about it. Its not good, or its not proper, or its not polite. For me thats unacceptable because a) you may be denying yourself a glimpse into your reality that would benefit you, and b) so many people out there suffer and feel alone in their own little universe, and feel alone needlessly!
The truth is that we're not alone when we feel down. Its a part of human nature - its part of our design. In a morbid kind of way, I think that we all have to experience the highest highs and lowest lows because otherwise you'd be cheating yourself of the full range of human experience. Its easy to be philosophical when things don't go your way, but tell me this is not true! R.E.M. wrote an entire album about the joys, mysteries and difficulties of the human experience. Its called "Automatic For The People" and the album just had its 15th anniversary; Stereogum released an entire retooling of an album, track by track, with a different band assigned to each track. Its free to download, but I'd also encourage to get the original if you don't have it - its as essential an album as I could imagine. Michael Stipe is right when he says everybody hurts sometimes, and that even the bad stuff in life is necessary to validate our experiences.
(e:jay) and I have always used a bit of a trick when we see bad things happen to good people. "It could always be worse." While this is certainly true, that does not mean that your current issues aren't real and important. Granted, this requires a serious amount of perspective, which some people lack and will never have. Those people will learn the hard way but you, you my friends, you are different; most of the people reading this understand that fashion means fuck all in comparison to medical problems, as an example. Still though, having perspective is extremely difficult for somebody deep in depression.
The question for me is, how do you help people with seriously negative dispositions fight through their problems? For the love of God Owen Wilson, an actor who by all accounts seems to have a charmed life, wanted to exit stage left. This is somebody I feel for to a great degree, and I think a lot of people do, because he seems like a relatively responsible Hollywood type whose suicide attempt came as a huge shock. Everybody wants to know what is bothering him. My question is, how can we help people like that to help themselves? There are no easy answers but I bet people around Owen Wilson wished he would have talked about it.
I think the nastification of our politics would actually be a great topic for a book. And I'm not talking about assigning blame for who made it nasty - the fact that we've sunk that low is very telling.
Oh yeah, and the chickenhawk meme....hahaha, that should have starred in "Die Hard" instead of Bruce Willis.
oh, you don't have to save them. I read idiots on both sides (why is something as complex as politics so Manichean?) and vomit a little. I mean, at least people like Maureen Dowd are as entertaining to read as they are irrelevant.
hm... though maybe you are onto something. Perhaps you should write a book "#%*&ing idiots are in your party: a survey of gutter skanks and the comments the leave on political blogs"
Taxes pay for Glenn Beck's lifestyle? Probably more likely it is the big moolah he's pulling in every month. It's pretty clear Bob Cote thinks because he lives off of other people, everyone else does too. Funny letter. I love reading this stuff.
(e:james) - absolutely. I'll save up some choice right wing silliness for you to read... there is plenty out there. It makes me fear for the country when I see people who consider themselves engaged display this sort of thing.
It sounds just like all the people on the right who leave comments on left wing web sites.
Though, I don't recall anyone asking Clinton of Guiliani "How do we beat the Goomba?"
I also love "whore;s like you and rush and hannity". Never mind the neo-cons that are actually in government but let's complain about some douche bags with air time.