Yes. It seems I've spent more time being very, very angry in the last week than I've spent sleeping. I don't think I'm as far as having an actual anger 'problem', or as bad as needing to see a therapist in order to channel or quell the anger. I think part of the problem was a truly amazing string of things that just bugged the fucking piss out of me. May hasn't exactly been the best month so far - although I can point to several things that have been really nice, even inspiring. But I've discovered an ironically beautiful marriage of stubborn decisiveness and a quick-to-turn-foul temper that makes me really lay into people as soon as I see even the slightest reason to do so. Last night a certain thing happened that kept me tossing and turning in bed until sometime around 4am, all the while cataloging each of my many character flaws, or alternately telling myself I had every right to be mad and to have called someone out on their insane bullshit and that I really am a good person. This is not a good place to be in; on normal nights where I couldn't sleep I would stay up writing or thinking about an art project - but late night self-torture has got to be the most pathetic way to waste time. I get a very odd kind of depressed. The weirdest, most randomly inconsequential thing can snap me completely out of it.
I haven't had a lot of money to spare lately and have had no shortage of things to spend money on, and so I've been intermittently thinking about how America is sort of based on opportunism, and sort of carried by bold entrepreneurs. I'm hoping that I'm correct in saying that, more often than not, people strive to come up with a good idea to make money off of, or design something people need, and then sell it to them. But on the fringe is this zone where the commodity is unpleasant at best. Seriously, some people make money off of things that seem to be all kinds of bonkers. An ex-girlfriend of mine had a system where men would pay money to watch videos of her feet. In a way, that's brilliant right? I mean, yeah, not a service that the mainstream really needs but, a market existed and thus someone was wise enough to take advantage. Then I read this, about some "professional spammers" who got caught after they sent loads of messages that would re-direct myspace users to gambling or porn sites, and somehow this would turn them a profit. Really? So, wait, you make money by pissing people off? Really. Umm, good job. Maybe even the kind of job where eventually a bunch of young justice-seekers will pummel you in a men's room and then not steal your wallet, but instead choose to completely cover you in their urine.
That feeling of guilty depression I'd recently experienced (which had been sort of taking a nap somewhere inside my right ear) craned it's neck up, blinking it's eyes...
...then the next thing I read was this, about a sports memorabilia dealer (I mean fuck, isn't there enough sleaze in the term 'sports memorabilia dealer' ?) that's recently penned some God-awful tell-all book about how O.J. Simpson fessed up to him, one night when the two of them were all partied out, that he really did commit a double murder, and that somehow there was something that O.J. did to puff his hands up so they wouldn't fit in the black gloves. [I have to laugh every time I think of that video that was relentlessly played on the news of O.J. standing there with his arms outstretched in an uncomfortable sort of way - Johnny Cochran standing next to him also looking kind of confused - and how O.J.'s face seemed to say "why the hell would anyone put things like this on their hands oh my god what the hell are these things that fit partially over the better part of either of my hands this is southern california you idiots my hands are really not cold at all". Remember?] Anyway, the sweaty man who sells over-priced autographed footballs is in trouble with the IRS and has painstakingly spent the last 13-odd years writing this 232 page book about how he actually helped O.J. escape a guilty verdict in the trial. With that much time having passed, releasing this kind of book is sort of akin to punching capitalism in the groin while it wasn't looking. Thievery in a way. But people will buy it, and the guy will make a load of money from it.
and suddenly, I'm not such a bad guy !
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