God Bless Us Everyone

I remember when I was 5 and my mother and I were walking out of a fast food restaurant and she dropped her Coke on the ground.

Sadness enveloped me.

I remember how excited my mom had been to get this food.

It was rare for us to go to a restaurant.

In fact I can only recall one other time.

I knew she couldn't afford another Coke and I knew the meal wouldn't be as good without it.

I don't think I knew that I knew all this at the time.

I just knew that I felt overwhelming sadness as I stared at the syrup racing toward it's unknown destination, filling crack and crevice as it went.

It seemed to have some place to go and at the age of five I already knew that life was hard.



Someone, taking that in might say that my mother had a weight problem and didn't need fast food and a Coke.

They would have a point.

My mother eventually lost her legs due to her weight issues.

Perhaps this judgmental, hypothetical person would have said that God was knocking the Coke from her hand in an attempt to save her life...

They might say that she should spend that money on buying her son clothes that fit him or put it in a savings account to "better her station" in life, but looking back, I'm not sure my mother could have bettered herself.

I think perhaps she was born on a low rung of society and didn't have the equipment to climb out.

Perhaps it was her destiny to suffer.



This belief terrifies me.



Where is The American Dream in that nightmare?

How does a loving god fit into a world that just isn't fair?

"We hold these beliefs to be self-evident that all men are created equal...."

I want this to be true so badly.

I pray to a god I want to believe in that indeed all PEOPLE are created equal and that I may have eyes to see and ears to hear this epiphany.

But I watch people...and I listen...

And where I live there seem to be a lot of people who have fallen in and can't climb out.

I ask my son about an obese woman we see walking with sandals and no socks.

She is crying.

"What should she do?" I ask him.

He wants to answer. He thinks hard.

"I don't know." he says.

"What should she do?" I ask my daughter.

"Help her!" she screams at me.

"How?"

"She needs socks." she says.

Looking around for a shop, I do not see one.

Quickly I take my own dirty socks from my feet and put my shoes back on.

"Hey" I say lightheartedly as I get out of the warmth of my car "put these on will yah? You're making me cold just lookin at yah."

She seems distant, but she takes the socks and begins putting them on her swollen red feet.

As she goes to put her sandals back on I realize I haven't thought this through.

Her shoes are flip-flops and you can't put them on over socks.

I actually feel upset that I have to give her one of my favorite pairs of shoes.

And I am even more annoyed at myself for feeling this way.

She never says a word and she doesn't stop crying.

She never even looks at me.

As I drive away, I lecture my kids about how you have to be careful when dealing with the mentally ill, I chastise myself for not feeding her.

I didn't even think about it.

With my feet wet and cold I asked my children "What can that woman do better?"

My son said "Perhaps she is already trying her hardest."

As we drive past an old man we constantly see having heated conversations with himself, my son says "We have been learning about schizophrenia in school. It's like your mind is broken and won't function properly."

There is silence the rest of the way home, but the kids are not looking at their iPhones.

They are looking at the people.

They are seeing the struggle.

As we carry our groceries into our warm house my son says "It's not their fault, but it's not our fault either."

"I know" I say. It is all I can get out, because my voice is cracking.

"What can we do?" my daughter asks.

"I don't know." I say "But we'll figure something out."

My Life in Thrill Kill Kult or Why Rednecks Kill

The newlywed thrill-kill couple is completely fascinating to me.

So many questions...

First off they said that they had tried to kill others, but kept failing.

Why didn't any of those people go to police?

And how can you fail?

Killing people has got to be pretty easy to do, right?

They said "We just wanted to kill someone together."

Awwww. So sweet.

Isn't marriage about slowly and gradually killing each other?

Isn't that enough?

How does neither "person" say "Wow. That's fucked up. We would go to jail forEVER if we get caught."?

And they killed him IN THEIR CAR?!

OMG. I've seen The Sopranos and Breaking Bad.

Cleaning up dead bodies and blood is next to impossible.

Surely they had to know this would just completely fuck their vehicle.

They drove immediately to Walmart to buy cleaning supplies.

TO FUCKING WALMART!!!

REDNECK CAPITAL OF THE WORLD!!!!

So that dead dude was out there bleeding all over their car while they are shopping at WALMART!?

Do we need a new website...DeadPeopleOfWalmart.com?

And then, after driving around for a while looking for a place to hide the body, they fucking just dumped the body behind a garage in plain site?!

AND WENT TO A STRIP CLUB!!!!

BECAUSE IT WAS HER BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!!!!

I seriously need something more than CAPS and !!!!! to describe my shock....

Not so much at the evil...evil I am used to...

But just the amazing levels of stupidity.

I went to school for psychology because human beings fascinate me.

I have read more than 100 books on serial killers along with 1000's of interviews.

Recently someone asked me what I learned from all of that.

I said "I learned that Serial Killers for the most part are just ignorant rednecks who have some stupid thought and instead of going 'Woah, that's fucked up' like you and I do, they say 'Boy that looks like fun.' and then go out and try to do it."

People always bring up the exceptions..Bundy...Dahmer...Manson (NOT a serial killer by the way).

But generally speaking serial killers, or as is the case here, FAILED serial killers are mostly ignorant rednecks and this couple must be the most ignorant of them all.

I find it refreshing that no one in the media is implying the the victim deserved what happened to him, because he was cheating on his wife with a woman he was paying to have sex with him.

Because no one deserves that.

Well....almost no one.

Overcoming The Game

There is an ever expanding set of rules that have proliferated modern culture.

These rules assure the practitioner that if they practice these rules they will have the people they are attracted to following them around like puppy dogs.

In my experience these principles absolutely work and should be ignored at all costs.

As I am a heterosexual male, this article will be written from my personal experience.

It is important to note that women have completely different rules.

These rules are similar and mainly consist of what Neil Strauss calls "cat string technique", in other words, always be in charge and make sure they want you more than you want them.

In practice this was very simple and did have some value as it is healthy to prove to one's self that they can control their impulses.

For example, when approaching a female in a group I would not speak to her.

I speak to everyone in the group except her.

I develop rapport and make the others like me.

This is showing status and increasing the chances that the girl you like will engage you.

When she does engage you, you would playfully refute her with something like "Wow. Are you always this needy?" then go back to addressing the group.

Most beautiful women are used to men falling all over themselves to talk to them, so when you show you have no interest in her, this should pique her interest, throw her off HER game and start her pursuit.

Have you ever heard a woman say "He isn't someone I would normally be attracted to. I don't understand it."?

She is more than likely falling for these basic manipulations.

Once we engage in conversation I will use some basic NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) techniques to break through the kino barrier.

What is the kino barrier?

It is the invisible barrier that lies between a man and a woman he has just met that is commonly said to be the longest distance in the universe.

Women touch each other constantly and our culture deems it okay for women to initiate physical contact with men.

Men live inside bubbles.

They do not touch each other and they certainly don't touch women, or else they may be considered creepy.

Add to this that men are almost always afraid of the women they are attracted to.

A man can conquer the world and be successful in business, yet still fear women.

A man can travel all the way across the earth with little problem, but the 6 inches it takes for a man to move in for the first kiss will terrify even the most successful men.

A PUA (pickup artist) breaks the kino barrier early and often.

A master level player breaks it at just the right times.

She smiles. I touch her elbow.

I say "Get out" and push her in the shoulder while she is laughing.

I show her a variety of different silly handshakes with funny names that cause her to laugh while we are touching.

She learns quickly to link my touch to good feelings.

Very quickly we are playful together,

Now kissing is not so far away.

And then just when things are going well I walk away and practice the pattern on a different group.

Complete control has been established.

She is used to dodging advances until exhaustion, but now she is left wanting more.

A true PUA wins at every stage of The Game.

He is always dangling the string.

Later on the woman will find you and say something like "Hey!! You left me!!"

David DeAngelo would have you say something like "OK. Well you've got two minutes. Entertain me." (BIG SMILE)

This game can carry on for as long as you want it to.

But when you stop the game, the chances are great that the girl will get bored and leave.

She is not into you.

She is into The Game.

She is trying to decode it...to break it...and she is usually unaware that her attraction is based around this challenge.

In my personal practice with these techniques my success rate was astounding.

I actually could not believe the effect.

It became a problem.

A PUA never hides who he is.

When I had a party there was never a choice of which girl to invite.

You invite them all.

To hide what one is, is not the mark of a man who is weak.

I would hold parties and walk into a room and see five women who I had slept with that month all in the same room, talking to each other.

It was fascinating to see their different reactions after information had been exchanged.

One would pull me into a room and say "You really get around, you naughty boy." and try to initiate sex as a claim to territory and show the other females who was dominant.

Another would leave and drift away, unable or unwilling to deal with the reality of the situation.

Yet another would come up to me and say "So I was talking to Mary and she says you met her the same way you met me."

And a conversation would ensue in which I confidently and lovingly reminded her that I was seeing lots of people, not just Mary, and would continue to do so.

I always expected them to tell me that this was NOT okay.

That almost never happened.

Instead they just tried harder to win.

Gifts, insisting to pay for outings, going to the next level in the bedroom, ultimatums, jealousy traps...

All techniques used against the PUA to reign him in.

None of them will ever work.

A true PUA must be zen and accept that people will maneuver around him with manipulation.

He must be the center of his universe.

The calm in the eye of the storm.

Nothing could seem to convince these women that I would never be exclusive with them.

My words were not taken literally.

They were translated into "If you try really hard, you will be the one I choose."

I realized very quickly that these women were not "in love" with me, but rather they were wrestling with some ideal of acceptance and I had become the movie screen to project a lifetime's worth of inadequacies onto.

I am sure it will delight many readers when I say that I felt dehumanized.

I want to take this time to point out that I was NEVER dishonest with the women I dated.

I always told them from contact that I was not interested in a relationship.

I reiterated this regularly and and lovingly when needed.

They were always free to walk away at any given time and I reminded them of this often.

Very few did.

I was raised exclusively by my grandmother and have always had a deep and abiding respect for women.

I truly do believe they are the superior sex.

As a result I had always played "the nice guy" and was the big brother shoulder you would cry on for most of my twenties.

I detested players and still do mostly, but as a result of my experiment I did learn that many PUAs are ethical men who love and respect women, but most are driven by some sort of inadequacy and a desire to find themselves.

Here is the truth that women do not want to hear...

You created this.

The Game was created because men are afraid and clueless.

They are this way because for hundreds of years most women made the choice to choose dominant, powerful men over men with character.

"Good guys" were tired of being left at home as the women they treated so well went out with the assholes who treated them like shit.

The "nice guys" became tired of wiping away the tears of girls who clearly were attracted to jerks.

So they became jerks.

If a woman reading this can honestly say that she doesn't pick assholes on a regular basis then you are not part of the problem.

But The Game exists solely because men are scared, confused and lonely.

It is a sad situation all around.

But isn't this article about "Overcoming The Game"?

Well yeah...

So in 6 months I slept with more women than I had the rest of my life combined.

I could pick up my phone at any time of the day and see texts from 10 or more girls all wanting to know if they could take me out.

I did not have to fake being cool and waiting 4 minutes to respond.

I simply was overwhelmed and could not keep up.

Men continued to call and email to ask me if I could help them meet women or win back ex-girlfriend's.

One woman asked me if I would be willing to teach other men techniques and be paid for it.

She wanted to be my manager.

I could approach strange women in pretty much any situation and walk away with contact info that would often lead to sex.

Out of hundreds of approaches over 200 women were kind enough to give me contact info.

From those 200, 78 turned into dates (yes I kept stats).

Of those 78 dates I kissed 49 women.

Of those 49 I slept with 34.

Of those 34 I was bored with every one of them.

What did this all mean?

What did I learn from all of this?

One day my friend texted me and said "I just want someone to come over here and cook dinner for my son and I."

"You have no idea how good that sounds to me." I said.

And then I realized that I would have traded sex with 34 women for cooking a meal for one woman who I loved.

It was then that I accepted that I do not like to walk away when I am enjoying talking to a woman.

I want to stay and talk and if that makes me needy and I get "friendzoned" then so be it.

I don't want to be anything but the silly fuck that I am.

I don't want to be "always in control".

I am goofy and romantic.

I tear up at old movies and I never really bought the notion that I should somehow feel grateful just because some girl "let's me" fuck her.

I honestly would rather just play my guitar than to have sex with some girl who I'm not in love with.

And if that makes me weird than I am okay with that.

I want a girl who likes me for me and likes all the little, silly, quirky things about me.

And I don't want to have to think about waiting 4 minutes to text someone back so they know I'm not needy.

I want someone who knows I am excited about them and has self-esteem enough to handle that.

And The Game actually pulls us further away from all that.

But I am glad I played.

I learned a lot about myself and learned that it is better to be alone than to invest your energy in wasted places.

So I am retired.

And I am single.

And I am much happier focusing on music and writing than I was manipulating women into liking me.

And I like me.

No manipulation required.

Holidays, Hospitals and Things Left Unsaid

These holidays always turn me melancholy.

I drink more...and laugh more...

And for some reason it's okay to love more.

No one looks at me sideways.

I drive and listen to orchestral Christmas music.

And I tear up very easily.

When I roll through poor neighborhoods I imagine the children and their parents and how the holidays highlight the disparity between the haves and the have-nots.

My heart aches and I want to save every last one of them.

One year I was drunk and explaining this to my friend.

I told her how I wanted to anonymously give them all what they needed for Christmas.

On Christmas morning all the children would look up at their parents and feel so loved and taken care of.

And the parents would wonder what happened and their faith in miracles would be renewed.

My friend was laughing hysterically and said "You know what you are describing, don't you?"

I looked at her quizzically and she said "You want to be Santa Clause." and she fell over laughing.

I had never thought of it that way, but yeah, sure.

But of course, it is obvious I am just trying to heal some wound in myself right?

That I am trying to save that little Mykl who wondered why Santa didn't bring him presents when I tried so hard to be good...

But I can't save the world.

And children go hungry.

And little ones fall through the cracks and I cannot catch them...

And Santa skips a lot of houses in the hood...

And people tell their kids that it is because they were bad, because that is easier than admitting the truth...

And I don't even come close to knowing how to mend these tiny broken hearts...

So I drive to the hospital to visit my mother and she has once again nearly died and once again I am limbo between wanting to love her the way I imagine a son is supposed to love his mother...

And wanting to be angry at her for what she did to me and what she let others do to me.

But it is too late for all that...

The time for "Why didn't you protect me?!" has passed...

We are all too old for that now...

And she doesn't know anyway.

No one knows anything...

But there are other people there...other family members who I never see.

Simple people...who I used to hate for their simplicity...

And I am starting to appreciate now for their simplicity...

And I don't know what to say to these people...

And I feel that they hate me..but I realize that is just me projecting...

So I accept that I have nothing to say to them so I talk to them about simple things...

And I keep my opinions to myself...not because I am fake, but because I know they wouldn't understand and I don't want to hurt them...

And we talk about football...and we talk about food...and we talk about things I don't care about at all...

And it's not so bad...

The things I imagine define me I had to leave at the door.

They don't know I am a feminist...

They don't know I am a gay rights supporter...

They don't know I am a singer in a rock band...

I might as well tell them I am a space alien...

They talk about Jesus and they talk about  9/11...

They talk about Peyton Fucking Manning!!

And then one of them ask me if I like Linkin Park...

Which would have been enough to make me throw a punch a few years ago, but I realize it is not meant to be offensive...

It is their way of trying to understand me..and to connect with me...

So I say "Well...they certainly are very successful. My band could learn a lot about marketing from them."

Because I appreciate this effort and want to reciprocate...

And then my uncle says "You probably don't remember planting potatoes with me when you were a little kid."

"I was four." I say.

"Yeah!!" he is excited "And I enjoyed digging those holes with you so much that I knew right then that I wanted to have a boy of my own and that's why I asked you to marry me." and he looks at my aunt.

They smile at each other and their eyes twinkle and I think about their kids and try to remember them.

I remember that they have four...all adults now.

"It's because of you that I have this amazing life." he says.

"It was at night I say...I always thought I imagined that."

Everyone is smiling...

And somehow...for a moment...everything makes sense.

Christopher Walken

If I were Christopher Walken and I was feeling down...

I would go to the mall...

And visit a shoe store...

And try on some boots...

And I would just keep my head down and keep messing around with them...

Tying and retying them...

Until an assistant came over and asked me if I liked the boots...

Then I would look up and say...

"Well...as a matter of fact...you might say...these boots are MADE for Walken"

I'm pretty sure that would pull me out of my funk.

ArtCorp

I think I will start a company that paints the work of famous artists on the sides of bombs...

So the U.S. Military can get a little culture...

While they slay innocent men, women and children...

In countries we have no business in...

So maybe they will eventually develop a conscience...

And also so I can use the phrase...

ArtCorp: We put the ART in ARTILLERY!!

1997

Do people still blog?

Is this 1997?

I AM wearing my flannel...but only because I am cold.

As I doubt anyone will ever see this I will just spill it out.

Honestly I am not going to take my pen and paper to the coffee shop probably ever again.

Although I do romanticize such things...

I sit there and write and imagine that some beautiful girl will be reading one of my favorite books and we will start talking and finish each other's sentences and both of us know that we will think about each other the entire rest of the day.

An alliance will be formed that will never be broken...

I fast forward through us living together...

I get nervous about all the problems I imagine we will have...

I picture tears and holding and healing and then I realize...

That I have had that fantasy as long as I can remember and I live in Indiana, where the people seem to be trapped in some neanderthal mindset and prefer Gangham Style to Kasabian and wouldn't know cool if I tattooed it on my dick and slapped them in the face with it.

But, it's always been like that...

Life is high-school part 2...

Some would say "Dude, it's just you. You're the freak."

I know...I accepted that long ago and have no desire to conform.

Not because I am some punk-rock rebel.

I have no energy for that.

Just because I have dabbled...

I have seen how the other 99.9% live and I don't think they have a pulse.

I choose to be alive and alone...

My records are my friends...

How fucking cliche and pretentious is that?

And seriously, I am fucking blogging...

So clearly I want acceptance.

Self-awareness...what a curse.

I spend most of my time in solitude.

If I am not working on music I am working on promoting it on the internet.

It is a barren existence of creating content for various social websites and then waiting on other people to do their jobs...

Coma Dolls has a web-development team.

A fucking WEB DEVELOPMENT TEAM!!!

When I was a kid learning how to play and write songs I couldn't imagine saying something like that.

How fucking rock n roll is that?

But it is reality.

Without business people no one would ever hear the music we create...

And we made a conscious decision that we want people to hear us.

We would have a publicist, but right now we can't afford one.

So I am the band's publicist which means I spend about 6 hours per day promoting our shit and creating content so people will follow us.

And not even musical content...

No one really has the attention span for music anymore...

It has to be this 24 hour light show with music occasionally sprinkled in.

Example...

http://comadolls.tumblr.com/

Pretty lights to gain followers then "Oh yeah, btw PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE listen to our music."

But you can't seem needy or else no one wants it.

Music is such a tiny part of the media spectrum these days...

And being an idealist..wishing for the days of record players and blacklight Led Zeppelin marijuana induced listening parties will get us nowhere.

So I keep asking myself...

"How do you make people love YOUR music the way YOU love music?"

And so far I don't have an answer...

So I keep clicking...and hoping it will come...