Resisting urge to make corny Timberlake reference...

There are few things in this world more alluring than a sexy back.  This is by no means news.  Its as vogue today as it ever was to go backless.  Runways and red carpets the globe over are glutted with them every fashion week and/or awards show.  With every dress sewn, the plunge gets deeper and deeper.  To me, it's fantastic.  Going backless is the most seductive thing a lady can do (and still be worthy of the name).  Backless is better than the deep V, micro-mini, and see-through.  If I want to see your cleavage, upper thigh, or nipples; then please, let's wait till we get home for the night.  A backless gown (black or deep indigo are best) is class - stupid, crazy, sipping-a-vodka-highball-in-the-grand-ballroom-of-the-Waldorf-Astoria class.  So, leave the whore clothes at home (unless you're a whore) and take up the new, old hotness.  Go backless, go now.

Here lies... Opinion.

 I want to know.  Please somebody tell me.  When, oh when!, did Opinion die?  There was a point when people - all the  Colors of the world - could express and defend an opinion; debate, even.  There was a sweet, shining moment there when I know that it was possible, but the more that I think about it the more that I can't remember exactly when that point was.  There is a void in Modern Consciousness, an almost unknowable absence.  That is Opinion, the emptiness.

Here is an experiment.  Go forth, Young People, go forth and dislike something.  Not just in your mind - don't hold back now! - express dislike about a subject.  (Disclaimer: It is highly recommended that you try to engineer the conversation so that the expression of dislike comes up more or less naturally.)     Go and do it, now.  What is the response?  Really watch the face.  The sighing release of breath, the muscles tugging at one (and only one) corner of the mouth, the fractional eye roll.  And now, the mouth opens.  They are going to speak.  The "u" sound begins behind the teeth and.... "You are just hating."

Boom.  The bomb.  The ultimate Weapon of Mass Reduction.

Your opinion (though I admit we might actually be talking about sentiments here) is now dead - its body still warm and quaking in its death throes, covered in the smoldering remains of the conversation.  It happens that quick.  It took you months, if not years, to form that opinion.  To nurture it from just a minor feeling or gut-reaction into a living and breathing, full-fledged, card-carrying Opinion.  All gone.  Reduced, utterly, to nothing.

You feel wrong, a little.  ("Am I hating?")  You shouldn't.  You were not standing beneath the monkey bars playing the dozens.  You were having a real live adult conversation.  A back and forth, a tête-à-tête; an ordained-by-Heaven exercise in Language, no less.  Christ-in-his-manger, that is what it is made for!  If there were no Opinion, there would be no Conversation, and no need for Language.  Chimpan-effing-zees have no Language and they seem to communicate fine.  That's because animals don't debate.  They point.  They grunt.  And if they don't agree, they puff up, bare teeth, screech and go at it.  Rodeo-style; real Wild West shit.

WMRs are dangerous.  They are destroying Language, all Language.  Forget slang, foreign loan-words, and contractions.  (There is nothing wrong with Language - English or otherwise - evolving; that's why you don't speak like Ye Olde Bill Shakespeare.)  It is the loss of debate, the rightful exchange of Opinion - point and counter-point - that is the Mind Killer.

So, if you got a nigga in your face that looks like the Bathing Ape monkey with golds telling you "Ahh, man, you just hating," then it is your sovereign duty to drag old boy outside of your place of business, school, or home and give him a good old-fashioned booting.  Numbered streets-style.  Then, wiping your Timberland (or Nike boots if you are in the Nueva Jork area) prints off of his way over-priced and way under-fashioned Christian Audigier hoody, explain to that negrah that you do not appreciate his use of the Idiot's Argument and to, next time, properly defend his stance with actual words and superior reasoning.  If your friends are using WMRs, maybe they should not be your friends any more.  It's the only way they'll learn.  And if you are using them, then I highly recommend that you not say them in conversation with me unless you crave my Vans waffle-print all over your backside.  You will catch a Cleveland Shuffle.

I have an opinion.  I will speak it.

Cha-Cha now, y'all.

Jack that fool!

Fatal Attraction

I saw Eastern Promises today. I argued with my Almost Lover (her term, not mine) today. I did the first so as not to think about the second. Kinda worked, kinda didn't. As I walked out of the theatre, all I could think of was that line in the movie Crash when Don Cheadle is talking about the human crave of touch. We all just want something. Something. It's usually love, or sex, or both. Affection. Touch. Contact. We want it, we need it.
Eastern Promises is a pretty standard gangster movie, except that it's a David Cronenberg flick so it's not that standard at all. But in the end, there's a lot of angst and gruesome death. And the closing shot is a great homage to The Godfather. I can't tell if it was the director's intention or just the frame of mind I went into it with, but I came out of it thinking here's a meditation on life in general. It begins and ends with a Russian prostitute, promised a life of wealth and comfortable living in the west only to sell herself into sexual slavery. In his mafia initiation scene, Viggo's character says, "I've been dead since I was 15" - the year he started his life of crime. Those things made me think.
We've been dead since we were born. In that instant, the clock began ticking, ticking, ticking. And (like the Russian girl) we all just want something before that clock stops. Love. Sex. Affection. Touch. Contact. And the end result is never as good as the promise of it. I don't really know what it is that I want. Oh, I want all those things, but I really don't know which one I want the most. I'm not getting any younger (tick, tick, tick) and I feel like I should be figuring this out, but I know I'm young and this is my time to fail. I know an average life doesn't appeal to me. But who am I to call anyone's life average? The nigga that goes to work at the steel mill day in and out for 30 years, gets married at 18 and has a couple of kids before the age of 25... how is that average or less than if it makes him happy? I don't really want kids and marriage is very unappealing to me. But I want human affection, sometimes.
My Almost Lover (it kills me that I call her that lol because I hate it when she says it about me, but it serves its purpose) is a great girl. A great woman. We've seen each other for like 8 months or something, and I couldn't commit. Still can't. I know how silly it is, but I just can't force myself to go there. So now that's over. I expected it from the day she told me she loved me. I'm surprised she held out this long. I knew that there were certain things I couldn't do, and those were the very things she wanted. I never slept with or dated anyone else during that time, but I just couldn't let it become "official." I hate that fucking terminology. "We're official, now." When people tell me that I want to tear out their eyes, lol. But yeah. I was boyfriend in all but name, and I guess that wasn't enough. My bad, baby.
It's all overcompensation. I'm overcompensating for my last girlfriend. I let myself be pushed into situations that I didn't want to go into and ended up biting me in the ass later... hard. So, now, I won't let anyone push me ever again. Even the smallest misgiving and I'm not doing it. So how the hell will I ever do anything lol? When was the last time you were 100% sure about anything? I do see the holes in the logic.
Tomorrow is not promised. I know that. But how do you force yourself to do something that your body, thoughts, mind, experience won't let you do. Do I know that she's a catch? Hell yeah. I feel like she needs someone better. But who's better for her than me?
But it's not all about her. I'm just confused in general about life. I don't know what I want. And I'm a little too self-aware (and self-conscious) to just let myself do shit without beating it to death from every angle you can think about something.
And all that's without even bringing other women into the equation. I don't really have feelings for them, but they're there and that's hard to ignore when you're 24 and single.
Just about everybody's been where I've been, but it doesn't make it any easier. I'm just trying to get a grasp on things. I really want to. But I feel like certain things need to be figured out before I jump into situations. I don't half-step on relationships. I go hard. So I want to know it's what I really want before I commit to someone. I would think that's a respectable thing to do, but emotions don't really care what's right or wrong, do they? I've been told by her that I give sunday school answers to most questions. Well, I have ideals. I try hard to live by them and stick to them. Even when it is next to impossible for me. If she thinks I'm not ate up about certain things, she's wrong. If she thinks she was the only one in mental turmoil over the past few months, she's wrong. Sorry I can't do what you want. But it's not simple rejection, it's not that cut and dry to me and I won't let it be cast in that light.
If I let her slip away, then I'll deal with it. I hope I get another chance, but for real I feel like I'm too young to worry about lifelong whatevers. I'm gonna miss the time spent together, but I miss a lot of things in this life. See when I talk like this people think I don't care. I just know I've seen worse and that, in the end, I will keep it moving. Roll with it, y'know. You take the bad feelings and you don't let them stop you. But like I said, I want something. I hope I get it before the ticking stops.

Why is it that the most difficult thing about life is death? The acceptance of it, the knowledge of it, the gaping impact it leaves on you. Really, it's the most simple part. Nothing hard about it really. It just stops. All those complicated biological functions, those multi-faceted systems of the human body that we all learned about in high school... they all just fucking stop. Like turning out a lightswitch. I might not be able to explain what keeps the bulb burning bright, but when it's off, I know it's off. Everything we do in life is colored by death. It's our constant companion. We know that one day somebody will flick our switch and it's off into the unknown. So we think, build, create, fuck, do, drink, smoke, whatever just to make our lives worth the living. We grasp for the small scrap of immortality that we can get - memory - and we run with it. Who will remember me when I'm gone? That's the constant question, the one that lurks at the back of our minds. What will I have done that mattered? Painted something beautiful? Wrote a passage that touched someone? Designed a building that will last for generations to come? Raised a child who loves me?
My grandfather's dying. Slowly. Watching that - a strong man who held me in his arms when I was a child - is, at best, trying. It's, at worst, shit. No poetry or flowery language to it. It sucks. He's helpless now, but still he's strong. They said he wouldn't last 48 hours, he's lived for 3 and a half weeks since the stroke hit him. The first day I went to see him, as I was leaving, a song came on my ipod. The hook of the song is "one day you're here, the next you're gone." That just happened to be the next song in the playlist. That's God. Or coincidence. Or whatever you want it to be. But it hit me. One day he was Grandad, same as he'd always been, the next he was just the shell of that man, holding on with all his strength. There's a lesson to be learned from the strength it takes to do that, direct quote from my father today when we were at the hospital. The strength it takes to hold on this long. I always knew Grandad had that strength. And there is a lesson to be learned from that.
Things could be worse. At least, whether he can hear me or not, I've had the chance to tell him the things I never took the time to. That I love him more than my life, that I will take care of this family for him, that I will do anything and everything to make him proud. I stuck with school for him. I graduated from high school and college for him. Just for him. Whenever I've come to the fork in the road I've always taken the right way, not the easy one, for him. And now he's going. He finished his job, I guess. Raised some good kids, raised some good grandkids. He's off now to join his wife and son, mother and father, brothers and sisters. How can I selfishly hold him back from that reunion, that homecoming? I wouldn't be the grandson he raised if I did.
So I go to work and I don't sulk. I don't complain. I don't do anything different from anything else. It hurts, yes. But I've grown a lot in 12 months and I know life doesn't happen to me, it just happens. Sometimes good, sometimes bad, and sometimes - like in this situation - it just is. Don't really know what to say or do or think, but I know I'm good. I'll accept it, grow from it, learn from it, like I did with Grandma. Or I won't and I'll go nuts, lol, either way. But, in the end, I'll miss you.