Not that anyone really gives a shit what I think but I just say what I want anyway, eh? On the shootings today…I flipped off a quick and (what I thought was) humorous status update on Facebook today soon after it starting hitting the news. The fact is that we live in a strange society where violence is not ever funny…until it is…but in this case it’s likely too soon for humor so I sincerely apologize for the hip shot today.

Violence and guns in the US is a complicated, emotional laden subject that will take many years to be figured out, if ever, as it teeters between a personally perceived right, god given and inalienable and the equally important need to protect the innocent and those unable to protect themselves. A dead person is a dead person in my book—always a waste and a tragedy—but I certainly see the higher emotional impact that the death of children have on people so any kind of discussion might be counterproductive right now.

Suffice to say that we live in a relatively young society—which could be characterized as being it’s teen years—that has not yet gotten control of its impulse control and has yet to decide if short or long term needs are the priority…if, in fact, we can even define what a priority is…

…so, without a god to beg for existential relief for the parents and loved ones of those affected today, I will instead say this…I don’t know you but I am you, we are all you and together we share our humanity and our love…we can only hope for you, as we hope for ourselves, that you have peace in your time.

It’s curious
we know so little
about so much
and so much
about so little
and think
ourselves better
than 99.999%
of the species
we cohabitate with
on this planet
…yet our ultimate
goal, our objective
in life, living, being
breathing, seeing
having, holding…
existing…is complete self-
awareness…the ability
to reduce our own
influence on
ourselves, to remove
subjectivity and
just be…something
by the way
that all those other
Earth inhabitants
have had since
the beginning, so,
it’s safe to say
their curiosity
about us
exists as long
as it takes
to know
if they should
feed
flee
fight, or,
fuck
us.

Humans fear the unknown, it is a protection mechanism that has allowed us to become the apex predator—the top of the food chain—by forcing us to predict dangerous conditions and create strategies for the avoidance, mitigation or elimination of that danger. Fear has also been the consistently single reason for why we, individually, do not reach our potential, for why we become emotionally damaged and, ultimately, for why we refuse to be allowed to love…and be loved.

Fear does not discriminate between what we perceive of the world and what we perceive of ourselves. If we see or feel something that is unknown, something never before encountered, then our first reaction is to fear it and try to predict it’s danger level. By doing so, we automatically make it dangerous (whatever it is; a thought, a feeling, something we see or hear) and define it that way forever. By it being dangerous, we are constantly required to fear it and the longer we fear something the more we resent having that fear. Eventually we become angry at the sheer weight of that resentment, in some cases so angry we attempt to rid ourselves of that fear, once and for all (technically that’s called suicide).

We will continue to fear until we confront whatever it was and honestly look to see if, indeed, it is still unknown to us. In virtually all cases, the thing we originally feared (whether it was a feeling or something out in the world) was when we had so much less information, when our ability to think was far more constrained. When we look at that fear today—when we know that we can look, that we can redefine it—we are able to supply the information required that removes the danger we’ve forever thought it represented. Once it’s danger is gone, the fear we had evaporates and whatever it was that it was stopping us from doing—talking to the opposite sex, starting our own business, liking the way we look—suddenly and almost magically we are able to do. Easily and without thought.

Know this; you are allowed, in fact you are required, to honestly examine your fears and you will see that what you once thought was so unexplainably dangerous has now become…just something…to be understood and dealt with, forever releasing you from its power.

Believe. Go. Do.

~TrevorZen

Now this I find odd…Democrats and other progressive liberals are usually (to a man/woman) all gung-ho for unions and union jobs which, if you think about it, is almost completely the opposite of what they should be for. When someone says YES to unions, they are saying NO to full employment for everyone. Think about it.

If you have union jobs they are typically at about a 20-40% premium and more expensive (higher hourly pay plus benefits, health care, pensions, etc.) which means that if a company has X amount of dollars that they can pay their workers and if they allow their workers to unionize, they will have to have 20-40% less workers. It is basic economic principles that states that if you have two items and one costs more than the other (all else being equal), fewer people are available to buy the more expensive one.

If you have 2 groups of workers, the same in all ways except one group demands union wages & benefits, the business will necessarily pick the non-union group because they might get 15 workers versus 10 or 12 union guys for the same cost. They will be efficiently using their capital…WHICH IS THEIR JOB…toward the benefit of the stakeholders (without whom no one has a job).

Now you may say “those cold hearted business fuckers don’t give a shit” and you may be right but they deal with reality which, it seems to me, Democrats and progressive liberals have a hard time accepting. More non-right to work states means fewer workers overall means high unemployment means more people getting entitlements and social safety-net benefits.

When someone says “Yaayyy unions!!” I hear “Fuck my neighbors, I got mine!”

Let me ask some very simple questions because the answers, the ones I have at least, have me entirely confused. Now I’m not looking for partisan support or am I trying to promote a philosophy, I’m just really flummoxed as to what all of this means.

1. About global warming, or climate change or whatever you call it (or don’t dependent on your world view)…why does everyone, anyone really, have such a solid belief in these predictions when the very same government and institutional entities cannot accurately tell us if it’s going to rain next weekend?

2. And about those predictions…so very ominous and accurate sounding…“they” say are based entirely on CO2 levels created by humans when there is direct evidence that in the years 800 to about 1200 AD, there was a warming period where northern hemisphere temps rose a couple of degrees (enough to reduce arctic ice to less than it is today and allow Vikings to travel much farther than was possible before) and we know that there was legible human caused CO2.

3. Why do people espouse a belief that government, through social programs paid for by taxes, can effectively solve the huge income disparity and poverty problems we have in this country when every single piece of objective evidence has shown, time and time again, that the government has never been successful with any national program it has undertaken. Not a single government program has ever accomplished it’s design goals using an original budget based on an original timeframe. Not one…yet this next one (or the next or the next…) will be successful?

4. Why do so many people believe that it’s extremely important to know how much the other guy makes? Do they really believe that their and everyone else’s compensation is based on some finite global money pie that if Joe Schmoe makes a few dollars more than them—i.e. gets a bigger piece of the pie—they are somehow being shortchanged?

5. Why do people look at their watches the very instant you tell them the time? Don’t they believe you? Also, why do people reach out to hold the handle of the door you are already holding open for them? Do they not trust you to keep it open?

So, yeah, these things are what I think about…woo woo, hello exciting big city life…

Me: Hey Mr. Agitator, how’s tricks?

Mr. Agitator: Hey Trev, going great, been protesting Wall Street all week and am getting ready to go sit-in at the local Whole Foods to protest obscene corporate profiteering. You?

Me: Oh, hey, doing good. Putting my 60-65 hours a week in, maintaining my bourgeois lifestyle, keeping the country afloat by stimulating the local economy by purchasing goods and services…you know, the usual. I heard that you were working, how’s that going?

MA: Yeah, sad eh? I was squatting over in a LES tenement but a group of artists took the place over and with all that art talk and creativity going on, I couldn’t hear myself think so I found a place in Brooklyn where I share with friends, we all chip in…very comrade like.

Me: So you’re working at a food cart, how’s that?

MA: I get $10 an hour under the table because, you know, fuck the government, who needs to pay taxes, right?

Me: But MA, you’re a socialist, where else is the government going to get the money to redistribute? For welfare and food stamps? For the thousands of social programs meant to help the poor?

MA: Fuck them, man. I can barely afford the place I live and feed myself. Let those sorry sons of bitches get out and work on a food cart…it’s shitty work and hard so why should I share with them? They have all those government programs to leach off, they should leave me the fuck alone.

Me: Um, MA, how are they going to…um, you know what, never mind…send me a text the next time your on the news for disrupting some business, cool?

MA: You got it Trev, fuck the man!

This is the geek form of karma, you may or may not understand the deep and foundational effect these events had on me and, for that, I am sorry but I will tell you anyway…and yes, I know you did not ask me to.

A few weeks ago I needed a new phone so I did what every diehard technology freak does, I went review shopping on the web. I looked at hundreds of reviews about dozens of phones until I settled on 2 different models; the Nokia 820 (ATT) and the HTC 8X (Verizon) which are both the new Windows 8 phones. On the day that I needed to actually buy one (purely arbitrary internal pressure, of course, no one “needs” to buy a gadget), though, only the Nokia was on sale so off I trundled to my local ATT store. Needless to say I joyfully and wistfully plunked down the plastic for the new phone, full retail mind you, none of that subsidized crap for me, and a month to month contract as well so that when the next shiny noisy gadget caught my eye, I would have nothing in the way of joyfully plunking down the plastic again.

Now one of the selling points, for me, was that both phones had wireless charging built in as I find it a hassle to plug the damn thing in constantly (yeah, I know, first world problem, cry me a river, blah, blah). With wireless charging, you just set the phone down on a little slab of plastic and, viola! Juice be flowing an shit. The store didn’t have the wireless charger so I ordered one online later that day.

So I’m at home and reveling in my little slice of technology heaven (imagine me on the floor like a small dog, relentlessly throwing a ball in the air with my mouth and catching it, yelping with pleasure) when I notice that the documentation that came with the phone mentions (in very small lettering) that in order for it to charge wirelessly, I would need to purchase, at extra cost, a new back cover for the phone. It was not “out of the box” able to charge wirelessly.

What the fuck! Unfair, unfair, unfair! I yelled silently, Rip-off I said aloud…so off I went in search of a new back cover but, because the phone was so new, no store stocked the specific covers yet. I couldn’t even find them online so I pouted to myself that I would just have to wait and hopefully, they would be available before the wireless charger arrived. I have to say, as well, that I was disappointed in Nokia for setting false expectations. In a word, I sulked.

Fast forward a week and in typical NYC bachelor fashion I was out on the town attempting to drink my fair share of all available alcohol—citywide of course, even the boroughs—when, at some point in the revelry, my marvelous little slice of technology seemed to have jumped ship. I have mental flashes of myself dashing around madly in some LES bar at 4:30 AM shouting “My phone, I’ve lost my phone!!” Looking under tables, between patrons legs (dangerous to say the least) and utterly making a fool of myself. Not that I hadn’t already made a fool of myself but, in this case, I was attempting the epic performance for which many would judge me for years to come.

Suffice it to say that come Sunday afternoon when reality poked it’s annoying nose into my business and regretfully (yeah, I bet, there was a smile on those lips) informed me that A) I had indeed lost my most favoritist thing in the world, B) yes, that thing on the end of my neck was a head and yes it was vibrating with a high frequency pain seldom observed on this planet, and, C) no, that was not my couch nor my living room I was lying on or in. With swift apologies and the gathering of my scattered clothes I made me way out and back to BK and my own humble little abode.

I was shattered. I had lost my shiny thing, my seriously cool new phone and, well, I won’t go into the deep depression, the mooning, the tears…the utter devastation I felt and will say only that I grieved…deeply and loudly. Until of course I got around to buying another phone, which is what I immediately did so the grief, while deep and meaningful, was short lived and, in fact, was all of about 3 hours’ worth.

I went for the HTC model this time and this time from Verizon which, any geek will tell you, is the preeminent wireless carrier simply because of the technology they use as their base carrier signal. I will not regale you with hours of debate over CDMA versus GSM and how basically GSM and EDGE sucks balls and CDMA and LTE are the bomb…no, I won’t do that because most of you really couldn’t give a shit. I’m smart like that.

Again I was that little yip-yip dog on the floor throwing the ball in the air over and over, happy as ever…each and every time, and I was almost completely over my deep sense of loss over the Nokia. Then karma, that rapturous, delightfully surprising little bugger poked her head around the corner and told me that the postman just delivered my Nokia wireless charger and that I should probably get that puppy from the mailbox, which I did immediately.

Ripping open the box like it was Christmas morning I scrambled around plugging things in and setting the plastic pad on the counter and finally, with the trepidation that only a true geek could muster, I set the HTC 8X down and waited….and…and…YES, charging!! Without having to pay $75 for another back cover, without having to do anything but the simple act of putting the phone down on the counter.

Geek karma, meet geek heaven.

It was an interesting
idea, a little scary, a
little, I don’t know…
intimidating unnerving
unknown, she asked
me to go to the Russian
Baths…a beautiful girl
(who didn’t know she
was) laughing eyes and
sudden smiles, I had
really just met her…a
date…actually the day
before, the night before
…no wait…it was a week
before and then the
night before so it was
a third date where I was
going to be semi-naked
in front of her-people-
strangers-women-men
…damn it was hot and
it was strange but she
wasn’t, I saw myself from
the corners of my eyes,
saw myself seeing me, she
was comforting nice
normal like it was every
day, it was not everyday
but, so what, it was hot
and cold and hot and
cold and once we went
to the roof—benches and
padding—a cold November
sky sat above us, we
were warm with the city
around us…the noise
of my thinking too loud
in my own ears we went
down to really hot and
really cold and hot
and cold again and then
we were done on the
street looking back,
looking forward and the
idea and her and the day
were, in fact, interesting
because she was there
and suddenly I was too.

It’s important to remember that we live in the observable world—that magnificent place that our senses interact with—such as a child’s voice, the smell of rain, the feel of fingertips across bare skin, the bittersweet taste of orange peel.  These are all external events—completely outside our bodies—and we react to them through our responses…both created immediately (as they are received) as well as those learned reactions from the past which we simply repeat.

Nothing in the that wonderful and terrifying place has the power to make us react in a manner that we do not first agree to . Nothing.

Traffic cannot make us frustrated and unhappy. Our boyfriend or girlfriend cannot make us mad and angry. An amazing sunset cannot make us happy and content. A first kiss cannot make us excited and optimistic. Only we can, ourselves.

We decide. We make us.

Believe. Go. Do.

~TrevorZen

A softness falls…a gentle
rain of tears, of fears of
times we lost and have
forgotten…we are the
last of what came before
and we come up short
again and again. Our
generation, our always
on, always disappointed
seeming, singing, losing
winning can’t be bothered
can’t be pushed, can’t be
convinced generation is
less somehow, is more
somehow.

We lie to the television
thinking no one cares
we lie to ourselves
thinking no one’s there
we lie because the truth
is too dull to sell soap
we lie in the nightly dreams
that we call hope

We lie because it’s all
we know how to do

We know that we can
reverse this can rehearse
this, can stop this insanity
this calamity but what
what, what do we do while
waiting for someone else
to move first. We click
through our lives like so
many adverts so many
promises un-kept we click
click past the graveyard
our generation’s whistle
our lost weekend gluten
free, organic and somehow
dead.

We lie to the television
thinking no one cares
we lie to ourselves
thinking no one’s there
we lie because the truth
is too dull to sell soap
we lie in the nightly dreams
that we call hope

We lie because it’s what
we do best