you can be as mean as you'd like to your self. we jam those words together so that 'yourself' is less possessive sounding than it actually is. "where's my self? has anyone seen my self? i hate myself!" we don't really know how to describe other people's selfs ...or selves. "they are by themselves." if a self was an actual squatty little caricature of you, and it tagged along with you wherever you went, it might be easier for people to describe them. and it would be easier to understand the irrational hate people have for their selfs. "Where did those guys go?" "oh, they went off by their selves." and then you would see those guys over in a stand of trees sitting around with these squatty, furrow-browed representations of themselves. they would be with their selves." how stupid does 'themselves' sound? it's real backwoodsy. "do those cans belong to you?" "no those are them cans." but them selves is somehow acceptable? complete rubbish. no one cares about the selves. people are brutal to them. when someone tries to kill their self (themself ...terrible), there is never a trial. if you harm another person - you cut into their body, or shoot them, or attempt to gas them out or poison them - there will be a trial. but your self has a body, and when you do those same things to it, there is never a trail. "your honor, the defendant knowingly fed their self several handfuls of pills. knowing full well it couldn't survive something like that. isn't that true, mr. butler?" "well ...yeah, but it was my self. i can do what i want with it." and then you pan over to this poor, chubby little self with a bandage around its head and real sad eyes. "ladies and gentlemen of the jury, just have a look at this sweet, innocent self. does it deserve to be attacked so viciously? the prosecution wishes to convict this citizen of attempted murder, of an adorable little self." and prisons would be even more packed if you could be punished for being mean to yourself.

some people never look for any meaning in life. they have no interest in finding out where the machinery is, or how is works, or if any of this has any point at all. and that is probably the way to do it. the people who are full of angst and confusion don't seem to really have the greatest lives. i hope the person who coined the phrase "ignorance is bliss" was in fact an ignorant person. "greg, how can you just carry on happily with your life while such terrible things happen daily? don't you wonder if there's someone or some thing responsible for this? are we just test specimens in a cage being observed? or is this all just a big accident, and we're the result of bacteria that learned how to grow up and put on shoes?" "ignorance is bliss, dude." and then greg cannonballs into a pool with his sunglasses on. he just gets it. when people travel the world, and experiment with drugs, and meditate, and fast, and thirst for some sort of knowledge - the best they can hope for is to come back from that as calm and relaxed as greg. and that's sad to put in all that work just to come back with no answers. someone who lives in a remote place and has a simple life might be kind of a romantic notion, but that might just work for that specific person. "that's what we all need in life. a simple life of laying in hammocks and working as little as possible near a beach." and then you get there and find that hammocks, after too much time, warp your posture and dig into your skin. and bugs are no fun. and when you barely work, you can't travel or ever really leave the island. and you get less and less greg every day. searching for answers to life seems pretty much like a politician who ran for president and lost . they put in a lot of time and effort, and at the end of it - just like the majority of us - they are not the president. the only difference is that we got there with virtually no work.

the gun debate gets very tiring in the united states. it's one of the very few things referred to as a debate. there's an immigration issue. how do you feel about same sex marriage? and the abortion debate. two debates - guns and abortion. and if abortions were constantly the main weapon used to shoot up schools, that debate would probably end a lot faster than the gun debate. it makes no sense to try to appeal to either side. people from other countries can't fathom how guns in the US are still legal and so abundant. people who are really into the constitution can't fathom that anyone would ever want to alter that in any way. you hear the same appeals over and over, "but they had muskets back then. it was a different time." it makes no impact. it was still in the constitution. the only thing both sides seem to agree upon is that the people who do these terrible things with guns tend to give gun owners a bad reputation. and that's true. if you look at the photos from most of the mass shooting perpetrators, they all look maniacal. and then everyone wonders, "how did that lunatic get a gun?" indeed. most gun owners are very careful with their guns. they keep them unloaded in a locked case, and they drive out to the middle of nowhere to shoot them at pieces of paper. if that's what you love, and if that hobby is what you're willing to fight to your last breath for - no one should stop you. you are the most boring piece of biological material that has ever been assembled. "honey, i'm home. guess how many times i hit the paper today..." "i want a divorce." it's not televised. that's a good indicator of how boring it is. they have shows dedicated to people eating a lot of food, and yet no one would ever watch someone shoot paper targets on tv. so, if that person wants a thousand guns, let them have them.

drug addicts are victims. we feel bad that someone with a problem ends up in prison for it. we punish drug dealers because they contribute to the demise of these poor drug users. so, if we are going to punish the providers - why not do that with guns? if you leave a handgun in your sock drawer, and then that gun is taken and someone is murdered with it, then you go to jail. you are an idiot, and you're not fit to own a weapon. "but they stole the gun from me?!" you bought it for protection against such things. you can't use that argument. if you get your gun stolen from a sock drawer or under your pillow, you should go to jail. you are a moron and unfit for society.owning brass knuckles is a felony. why? they were invented after the constitution was written. if you'd like to legally own some, make sure they fire a bullet and register them as a gun. then keep them locked up somewhere. and if we think crazy people are legally purchasing guns, why not change the questions you need to answer to own a gun? if you are indeed not the same as a crazy gun maniac who shoots up schools, you wouldn't mind answering a few more questions before making a purchase, right? it will insure that you are never associated with someone so off-balanced and creepy. it doesn't change the constitution or your ability to own as many guns as your hoardy personage requires. it just changes the questionnaire that determines whether or not someone is mentally stable enough to own a contraption that shoots metal through another person's body. certainly we can take a moment and answer a few extra questions. If it said things like, "do you believe in ethnic cleansing?" or "did she wrong ya?" or had maybe an essay section that started with "describe the ultimate need for guns (feel free to assume we are under attack from aliens)" - it seems like we might be able to weed out a few lunatics and perhaps not have to have schools be a terrifying war zone.

imagine you were god and you had created the universe. but imagine that no organisms were supposed to do any more than eat other organisms and poop and nap. have you ever baked something, and you added the wrong ingredient, and the oven filled up with what was supposed to be cake? no? well, perhaps you've seen it in a movie from when you were younger? can we move on in spite of your lack of baking history? what i'm getting at is that the universe could have been a recipe. the stars and galaxies are moving away from us ...accelerating away from us like stage hands pulling back the curtain, and i can't help but feel that the abject darkness that will one day fill the skies - an endless darkness with not a single star cluster to be seen - all light swallowed up by dark energy, leaving us to look at the sun and moon, and maybe venus - was possibly what was intended to be seen. maybe the recipe was meant for us to not see anything of the universe. to have no clue how it works. and instead, because we've seen into a lot of it, we're able to rearrange atoms and turn them into entirely new things. if that was not what was intended, imagine how terrifying that would be to look down on. "well, so far so good. the ones without claws or fangs are staying in this thing. you guys, pay up. everyone thought they would die off immediately. oh ...well, this is weird. they're making tools. and they're examining their dead ones to see how they're made. well, that's unsettling. now they're mining minerals and other elements from the soil ...and ....oh crap - they're turning them into lasers and bombs! they're growing replacement ears on rats! what the hell is this?! they were supposed to just stab the furry ones with pointy sticks. oh, i see. i added too many brain cells. why do i always do this? how do i turn this thing off? this is too horrific to watch." but if there is no god, it's kind of sad that no one gets to see all this stuff we've figured out.