I'm just a regular guy who sees the soul-crushingly mundane and yearns for something more. I'm tried of the rampant materialism, the pestilence and deceit, the emptiness that permeates modern society, this bourgeoisie quagmire.

You see it everywhere...people living out an empty existence: selling the minutes and hours that add up to their lives at work, and buying material riches as consolation prizes. They are always waiting: waiting in line, waiting in traffic, waiting to eat, waiting for the bus. They bow instinctively to any authority that presents itself: employers, the media, God, the State. They live in a herd: a herd of scared animals that will turn on anyone it doesn't recognize as it's own. You must comply with the herd, or endure their spit and scorn.

Am I the only one who sees all this and feels a stab of...what? I don't know whether I want to help these people, or if I hate them for being so submissive, so mindless. Maybe I've watched Fight Club too many times.

I often look around and realize just how messed up the world is. Countless miles of concrete have replaced fields and forests. Roads intended to connect us with the rest of the world only lead to more roads, and now there is nothing left to see. Our artificial lights glow coldly and outshine the stars. In cities choked with pollution, skyscrapers stand as great urban gravestones for a world that no longer exists.

Sometimes I feel the past and the future pressing so hard on either side that there's no room for the present at all. I want to feel alive, instead of merely existing. I want to take the pursuit of meaning and joy in my life upon my own shoulders, instead of pushing my instincts and desires into cages: for there is no cage large enough to accommodate the human soul in all its flights, all its heights and depths.

I often seek places free of white noise where I can contemplate and think for myself, rather than react to store-bought stimuli. Inevitably I am often alone, so most people would mistake me as a lonely person, but this is not loneliness, rather a gentle solitude. I feel most alive when I'm doing something creative. Writing stories, reading, taking a photograph, playing guitar...if I could, I'd spend every waking moment doing these things. Even though mine are stories that few people read and songs that few people hear, the satisfaction I feel far outshines a paycheck from some corporation.

We can't buy back the time we lose, so it is up to all of us to take back the freedom in our lives.

I fell asleep in the chair in the living room tonight, mid-stitch in my crochet. I wouldn't go so far as to call it a narcoleptic episode, but I wasn't entirely aware of tilting the chair back and falling under. The is the first time I have ever done this. Ann let me stay in the chair, dimming the lights and turning off the television on her way out. At some point, she headed off to bed. I assume she tried to wake me up, and I preferred to stay there in a state of suspended animation instead of getting under the blankets.

I wonder what the atmosphere was in that room for the few hours where I slept in the half-lighted room, cats scampering around and traffic passing by out on the street. I wonder this because I am now awake three hours later, and I cannot understand what happened to me that I somehow turned into my father and fell into a doze right in the middle of everything that was happening in the house.

My body must have finally shut down after three weeks of being run into the ground.

I have not been taking care of myself the way that I should this month. I've been wasting time playing video games and staring off into space at inopportune moments. Meals are something the be pushed through only because I know I should eat something. I haven't been to the gym in god knows how long. I've been losing concentration at work, and that's been consistently biting me the ass with angry phone conversations and mistakes I would never have made. Current events and political goings-on have become a confusing background drone to all of this, barely registering in my conscious.

I'm waiting to wake up from this episode. I'm sure that some time I'm going to get up in the morning and I'm going to snap back into place. It will be like this month never happened, and I can just pluck up whatever is around me and off I will go. That could even be tomorrow morning, with the events of tonight becoming some kind of transformation, and then I will be okay.

But I'm not holding my breath for this to happen.

I think I'll go to bed.

The Dow was down 7% yesterday and up 5% today.

This is why I don't fear a stock market crash

From http://home.comcast.net/~chtongyu/omit.html#pyramid13

"Imagine if you woke up tomorrow and all the money in the world had disappeared.  All stocks, all bonds, all the numbers in a banker's computer.  The end of the world?  Will you die? Will investors be jumping out of windows?  No.  Your house is still there (or at least the house you say is yours). Supermarkets still have food.  Electric companies can still produce electricity.  The world would only end if people stopped going to work... 

Knowledge is still there, labor is still there.  Real products can STILL be produced.  So what does happen if everyone suddenly dumped their stock and all life savings went to zero?  Probably not much if people kept their cool."

From http://www.infoshop.org/rants/yu1.html

"Capitalists are fleeing your country in their private jets. Investors have pulled out all their money. Foreign banks run by capitalists suddenly decide they are no longer willing to make any loans to your "rogue" nation. The former dictator has packed up all his suitcases full of gold, jewels, and cash from your national treasury, and is now nowhere to be found.

Now what?

Economic collapse? Mass unemployment? Depression and starvation? No, of course not.

Wealth is not to be found in currency, in the so-called "precious" metals, in paintings by long-dead painters. None of those are needed to survive. Wealth is found in food, in warmth, in health care, and in the things necessary to produce them. All the land is still yours. All the labor is still yours. Even factory equipment remains, despite the flight of "capital" - that is, the loss of things that represent wealth, but are not wealth themselves. In fact, very little has been lost and virtually all of the productive capacity of your nation remains. All that has changed is the accounting...

Real capital - the people, natural resources, and equipment needed to produce real goods - cannot be packed up in a bag when the capitalist skips town. They will require a lot of labor if they truly want to escape with real capital. What remains when the capitalists are gone are merely the people who are doing the work, and the means to do it."

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