With Love, From Grumpy McGrumpGrump

Today’s essay was originally going to be about a subject near and dear to my heart but, for whatever reason, I don’t feel like writing about how hard rock and heavy metal could heal the world right now. (No, it’s not as preposterous a thesis as it sounds, except that it is. Only, it isn’t.) Currently, I find myself mired in the miserable funk of an exhausting depression for which no one cause can be either blamed or cited, and that has transported my consciousness to an ethereal plane of nihilistic hopelessness. Ok, so maybe it’s not quite as dramatic as all that, but whatever you think of my prose, the end result is the same: I’m in a bad mood.

I suspect exhaustion, more than anything else, is most responsible for my current unenviable state of mind. My days begin indescribably early and are filled from morning piss to nightly collapse with an incessant barrage of Stuff To Do – and it never stops. Each day repeats the cycle anew like some ghastly Ouroboros of infinite obligation, and with each revolution, the serpent consumes just a bit more of my soul. I’ve described my mornings before, so I’ll just summarize them here. I wake up and get dressed, then wake Trey and get him dressed, then I drive Brittany to work. Afterwards, Trey and I go have breakfast before I drop him off at day care and then drive onward to my office. There, I spend the next nine hours toiling away in the metaphorical salt mines of the modern workaday world before I can finally leave the soul-crushing mundanity behind and head out to retrieve my family and bring them back home.

However, lest you be misled and suspect that my day ends when I return home and turn the key in my front door, understand that my work is only just beginning. We come in and I immediately switch on the computer to begin my assault upon the keyboard as I hammer into existence one of these little essays. I type it up, publish it, and then it’s time to eat. We cook dinner, we have family time, and Trey becomes my shadow. I mean this in the most literal of all the metaphorical senses: he becomes my tied-at-the-hip, inseparable and wholly indivisible, little Trey-sized shadow. And, while I wouldn’t have it any other way, his insistence that he always be at my side only adds to my list of Stuff To Do.

If I want to sit and relax for a bit, I have to callously endure the plaintive sobs and sniffles coming from his room as he repeats the same phrase with an indefatigable and heart-wrenching tenacity, “Where’s my Daddy Kwis go? Come in Tay’s woom, Kwis! Come pway wit Tay in da Tay’s woom, my Daddy Kwis!”

I, of course, cannot truly capture the pitiful desperation in his quivering voice as he repeats the lines over and over like a mournful mantra in some arcane summoning ritual designed to invoke the ancient spirit of Daddy Guilt. It works, too. I can’t stand to hear him beg for my attention, so I rarely let him cry for very long. I’ll go into his room and we’ll play with his cars and trains and helicopters. I’m transformed into a three-year-old boy, playing make-believe alongside him, watching plastic and die-cast metal come to life before my eyes. It’s great fun and I treasure every minute we have together, but it’s not rest. It’s not relaxation. It’s not downtime.

That has to wait until later, after Trey has gone to bed and after I’ve spent even more time at the keyboard, willing even more words into existence for another project I’ve been working on. Eventually, when the prose stops flowing or my eyelids start sagging too low to make out the letters on the monitor, I’ll stumble over to my chair and finally start to unwind from the day’s activities. I might read a book, maybe watch some TV or play a bit of a video game for a few minutes, but I don’t ever last very long. The blissful release of sleep lures me to my bed with its Siren’s promise of rest and relaxation. I’m usually out before my head hits the pillow.

Apart from that, my mood is constantly deflated by the usual suspects of other people. Or, to be more descriptive: other, stupid people. Stupid people are everywhere, in every occupation and at every level. They surround me almost every waking moment of my life, and I find myself beset on all sides by the inequities of the moronic and the tyranny of the tiny minded. Everywhere I look, I see little people trying to pass off mundane knowledge as acquired intellect, and generally succeeding. This is because stupidity is contagious and self-replicating, and so it spreads from host to host quite easily, hopping between moronic minds like a mind-flaying Illithid hungry for its next meal. (Yeah, get that reference. I dare ya!)

Because human beings are social creatures, we like to cluster ourselves in groups of like-minded people (or, as is the case here in the deep south, like-skinned people), where the great virus of stupidity takes hold and gestates, spreading its ugly influence throughout the populace. We surround ourselves with people who talk like us, think like us, and who believe in the same things we do. It’s the herd mentality that drives us into communities and fosters the victim-based beliefs of most middle-class Americans. We must find people like ourselves, then join together as a team to rage against some other group. Democrat versus Republican, Liberal versus Conservative, Christian versus Non-Christian, White versus Black, East Coast versus West Coast, CONTROL versus KAOS, Hogan versus Klink, Munster versus Addams, and on and on and on…

But this isn’t news, and it isn’t new. Philosophers have been discussing this sad sort of behavior since time immemorial, and I’ve no epiphanies to share with you on the subject. All I can say is that, if I am forced to endure the inane ramblings of pseudo-intellectual free market capitalist zealots who fancy themselves great, liberated thinkers for any length of time, I start looking for heavy weaponry. It’s not that these sorts of people are stupid, per se (although they are); it’s that they just can’t see past their own short-sighted ignorance to understand anything beyond their own highly limited sphere of experience.

It’s like the ultra-conservative, overweight Christian who blames his girth on genetics while condemning homosexuality as a sinful lifestyle choice. While he’s probably right about the “heavy gene”, (as there’s a genetic marker for just about everything), he won’t accept the probability that there might also be a “gay gene”. It’s the proverbial wanting to have his cake and eat it, too. He wants to reap the benefit of having a genetic causality behind his weight that excuses his inability to put down the fork, while continuing to hold fast to his outmoded religious belief which insists that an interior decorator with a sense of style and a penis is of the Devil. It’s cognitive dissonance at its best, which is the hallmark of stupidity.

These same sorts of people tend to travel in packs, pooling their collected worldviews together like a hivemind of hideous, non-thinking automatons. They’re your MBA losers with their neophytic, jargon-filled bibblebabble and your middle management schmucks with their motivational posters and powerpoint presentations. They’re the audience of the talking heads on the teevee, their brains eagerly absorbing whatever putrid and nonsensical bile their celebrity leaders are telling them, like a perverse mass of obedient little sponges. Their thoughts and opinions are dictated by who they’re listening to at the moment, or who’s book they’ve just started reading. They speak excitedly about things they don’t understand beyond what limited knowledge they’ve been exposed to, yet they think their ideas are novel and absolute and brilliant. These sorts of people are, to put it bluntly, as children playing with toy guns. They don’t understand that their anemic understanding of the world doesn’t arm them with real bullets when it comes down to an intellectual gunfight. Not even when you show them the bright orange tip on the end.

So that’s my life: endless obligations combined with near-constant exposure to intolerable stupidity. It takes a toll. Sadly, I know that I’m not special or unique in this regard. There are a lot of people out there – some that read this very blog – who are themselves entangled in a similar situation. We take turns plugging our fingers into the leaking dike holding back the Tsunami Of Stupid that threatens to wash over the world and drown us all, but it comes at a steep price. Like the little Dutch boy before us, we each must stand alone against the cold and the night, hoping against hope that help will come in the morning. It never has. It never does. It never will…

Want some books? 'Course ya do!

NOTE:  I know times are hard and yeah, I need to make a living too, but if you want to read any of my books but can't afford to buy them right now, hit me up.

I'll take care of it.

Humor | Nonfiction
Available now from the following retailers

Have you ever lived through an experience that was so humiliating that you wanted to die, but when you tell it to all your friends, they can't stop laughing?

Have you ever made a decision that seemed like a good idea at the time, but you're still living with the hilarious consequences years later?

If so, then grab a snack, get comfortable, and prepare to have all of your own poor life choices seem just a little bit more bearable.

You're welcome.

Short Stories
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The nine stories of rage and sadness collected here range from the most intimate of human experiences to the wildest realms of magic and fantasy. The first story is a violent gut-punch to the soul, and the rest of them just hit harder from there.

Those who tough it out will find a book filled with as much hope as despair, a constant contradiction pulling you from one extreme to another.

Life might knock us down, over and over, and will the beat the ever-loving snot out of us from the time we're old enough to give it attitude until the day we finally let it win and stop getting up.

Always get back up.

Gaming | Nonfiction
Available now from the following retailers

This isn't just a book. It's a portal to other worlds where there be magic and dragons and hilarious pirates. Okay, not really. But this book is about those portals, except they're called video games.

The Life Bytes series of books take a deep dive into one man's personal journey through childhood into kinda/sorta being a responsible, competent adult as told through the magical lens of whatever video games he was playing at the time.

Part One starts way back in 1975 and meanders down various digital pathways until, oh, around about 1993 or so.

If you're feeling nostalgic for the early days of gaming or if you just want to understand why the gamer in your life loves this hobby so much, take a seat in your favorite comfy chair and crack this bad boy open.

I'll try to not be boring.

Horror
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What you are about to read is not a story. There is no beginning, middle, or end.

What follows is nothing more than a series of journal entries involving shadow people, sleep paralysis, and crippling fear. It’s not pretty, it doesn’t follow story logic, and nothing works out well in the end.

You've been warned.