How to Save Your Life

Nobody ever really tells us this one. There is no pamphlet for it and no instruction manual. Some of us spend our whole lives trying to save other people, some of us see it as our calling, some of us make it our profession; our religion. And we become good at it, more or less, to the detriment of our own welfare. We learn how to save the lives of others, but every time we do we lose a little bit of ourselves in the process. Every time we acquiesce to the needs of another do we somehow lose a bit of ourselves, or do we gain something back from the act of giving?

Some people do, and some people don’t. But at some point, most people reach a point in their life where they look at their energy meter and see that it is on “E”, and that does not stand for “enough”. Sometimes you are just done; you have had enough, you are through, ready to throw in the towel. There are times when you feel like life has won, and you just want to give up. You fall to your knees and look up at the night sky, wondering why this is, this life, this everything so goddamned hard? All you want is peace, quiet, all you want is to pick the road less traveled, the silent path… But you cannot really, you have to keep on living… or do you?

At times like this, some of us, our thoughts turn to darker places. When we are sick of playing The Game of Life, there really is only one winning move, and that is not to play. Our consciousness begins to dwell on suicide, and some part of your brain, the part responsible for self-preservation, searches desperately for a lifeline, some single thread of light to shine through the opaque depression that covers you and everything you think and do. Because really, none of us wants to die; it is a conclusion we come to like question on a multiple choice test where we just want to pick “none of the above”. It’s like a wrong turn that leads to a dead end. Suicide is a 6-sided Rubix cube that has 8 colors. This is where our pedagogues and politicians have failed us; they have taught us everything; how to save and conserve every life but our own. What do you do when the person threatening your very existence is yourself? How do you do it, how do you save your own life?

First of all, you cannot save anyone else before you save yourself, and the first step is to never, ever give up on yourself. You may give up on everything else in your life, but never, ever give up on yourself. You may lose faith in every institution, every politician, every religion, everyone around you, but you cannot go on if you lose faith in yourself. You can’t ever escape yourself, so never let yourself down. No matter how much you drink, or how many drugs you do, you’ll still be there in the morning, unless you do so much that you find the cure for Living. But we are trying to avoid that, remember? So I say again, never give up on yourself. Some of you may not understand what I mean by this. Well, there is something of worth in all of us, something worth keeping alive, one little spark of light worth keeping alive. Most people have more than one spark, we have great big blazing fires of potential that are gradually buried beneath an inveterate deluge of shit over the course of months or years. Even the most stalwart of personalities can only take such a life for so long. Even if you are mostly useless, there has got to be something good about you. Maybe you’re dumb as a brick and have the personality of one, but you are good looking. Or you are devastatingly intelligent but also devastatingly hideous. That’s something. Find whatever that is about yourself and hang onto it, and make that spark grow, because I guarantee you somewhere, someone in the world needs that talent. Someone needs you and that ability you have. You just cannot give up on yourself before you find that spark and make it grow. And when you appreciate yourself, and your spark, others will see it to, and they will appreciate what you are and what you have become because you have recognized your own sense of self worth.

Through Hell and High Water, do not give up on yourself; bang your head against the wall, punch it till your knuckles bleed, but don’t you dare give up. That is how you stay alive. Some people say the only way they know they are alive is through pain, so they cut themselves; that isn’t pain. Pain is going through a whole MA program only to discover that you cannot get you license in counseling because of the wording of your Masters Degree. That’s more pain than any Emo cutter will ever know.

Real pain is loving someone knowing full well that they won’t love you back, but honestly and truly in your heart wanting what is best for them. That is pain. I don’t make it sound appetizing, this living thing, do I? Most of the time it is not. There is one reason, one thing that makes living worth it; perseverance. Proving people wrong, beating the odds and coming out on top anyway. Like Kanye said, “giving up is way harder than trying”. Become stronger from every defeat. Double your resolve every time someone tells you no. Do it again and again, harder, faster, better, stronger, until you can’t tell what’s your blood and what’s your sweat anymore. That’s the only way to get ahead in life, risking it to get what you want.

Life can be cruel, life can revel in the abject destruction of everything you have, and laugh at you while you try to pick up the pieces. Life can take your mother from you suddenly at the age of 23 with no warning whatsoever, and leave you with no reason to go on with your meager reality. But what can you do? Give up on the people who are counting on you? It may be easy to, they don’t know what pain you are going through, but can you give up on yourself? Can you give up on all of the promises and dreams you have had since you were a child? Don’t you think you owe it to yourself to make the best of your life, no matter how hard life fights you along the way? Fight back. You may not win the first time, or the 5^th time, or the 60^th time, but never let life beat you. If you take that approach, no man or woman will ever be able to sway you either. If you are constantly at war with the fates for your destiny, what does it matter what some guy or girl says about you? You do your best and leave the rest up to fate to decide.

Finally, not everyone in the world will be against you. Sometimes, you will be lucky enough to find an ally, a friend who believes in you despite the fact that you don’t. Hold onto these people as if your life depends on it, because it does. If you want to survive the low points in life, you have to have good friends. They cannot save you though; just like you cannot save them. But they can be the tools you need to help you save yourself, and that’s good enough. If you have yourself, and you really care enough about yourself, what you went through to get where you are now, and what your family did to put you where you are, you have part of what you need to save a life. If you have friends to look after you and pick you up and dust you off when you get knocked down, then you are damned near invincible. But the most important part is the belief that no matter how many times your face hits the floor, you can get to your feet and keep swinging. Life isn’t like boxing, it isn’t about how many times the wind gets knocked out

5 AM

It's really the Nothing Hour. No one is awake who wants to be awake. Nothing good happens at 5 AM. No happy surprises happen at 5 AM. 5 AM is the point in insomnia where you are ready to strike yourself with a mallet in order to be unconscious. 5 am is the last bit of sleep before most people have to get up. No one is on Facebook, no one is on Myspace, no one is on LJ. It's so bad that even teenagers have torn themselves from the internet and head off to bed. Everyone but me. I'm here. I'm here, awake, taking care of emergencies, because like I said, no one who is awake now is particularly doing well. Not just me, there are maybe, I'd guess 10% of the population getting the world ready for the rest of you, taking care of things no one else in their right mind would do. 5 AM is when I update Exit Eleven the most. 5 am is when i usually send out my emails, so my sleep deprived brain is usually saying things that shouldn't really be said, but I am too tired to know better. No one likes 5 am, even those who like the sunrise, because the sun usually doesn’t officially come up till around 6. Trust me, I know. In fact, I'll go check right now, hold on...

Actually, it's a cloudy morning, so it looks like there will be no sunrise for anyone. It's actually... 6:12 am now, but I conceived of writing this at 5 am. The mind works slower at this time of day, if you can call it that. It truly is an ungodly hour 5 am, I don't know why they call midnight the witching hour. If I was going to do any evil, guess when I would do it. Who is ready to deal with anything at 5 AM? I guess there are good things that can happen at 5 am but one would have to work really, really hard at it. And I can't think of anything right now... why? Because its 6:15 AM, who can think at such an hour?

You know you heard me on the Radio

I don't know if you guys know, but I do a lot of different things. I write, I'm a screenwriter, I act, oh, and I'm on the radio. The show is called NONPRODUCTIVE and it is aired live Thursdays from 8-10pm on http://www.hearnewbrunswick.com every week. If you miss it, don't worry, you can listen to the whole show on http://www.non-productive.com through their podcasting system. I'm not the Host, I'm really just one of the crew, the hosts are Frank, Sam Little and Lindsey, but I'm there, and we are all funny, so you should check it out. We do sketch comedy, talk, satire and variety. How can you pass that up?

John

Confessions of a Crazy Ex-Boyfriend

My name is John, and I’m a crazy ex boyfriend

(Hi John)

Now it was not easy for me to come to this realization, but events over the last year have made me see that a lot of my actions in the past have definitely been of the "crazy ex-boyfriend" variety. As sobering as this revelation has been, I have taken solace in two things; One, I am in no way the craziest ex-boyfriend out there, not by a longshot. I have heard some incredible insanity lately, from many different sources, and my conclusion is that as a crazy ex boyfriend, I was really pretty tame. And two, I am very confident that my craziness is in remission. I have consulted everyone from Buddhist scholars to Psychotherapists, and I am certain that I have learned from both my own mistakes and the psychoticism I have seen in others. My purpose in writing this article (and if it gets a good response I’ll write more) is to give women (and men for that matter) fair warning when their boyfriend is crazy, is going crazy, or will be crazy when they break up with them. I also am making myself available to give advice and answer questions about whether your significant other is batshit crazy. I suppose I should give you my credentials as a crazy ex boyfriend

One of the main behaviors of a crazy ex boyfriend is a escalating pattern of crazy behavior. That pattern usually escalates because of one thing and one thing only; attention. Crazy guys hate to be ignored, and they cannot stand the idea of their ex girlfriend “getting over them”. For one reason or another, guys like I used to be seem sweet and kind and generous when we get into a relationship, and we get used to the attention we receive from our girlfriends. But that can’t last forever. At some point we will become unsatisfied at one thing or another, and arguments will occur. In the case of my last ex, I was ambivalent about whether I wanted to date her or not, so she went out and got another boyfriend. That was rough, but it was not what sent me off the deep end. She then had the absolute gall to get over me! That’s what sent me into crazy ex mode. I started doing anything I could to get her attention. I did all sorts of romantic things like bring her flowers and send her cards, things I never did when we were actually dating. But she still didn’t come back to me. The more she insisted on not breaking up with her bf, the more desperate I became. Eventually I started fights just to make sure that she still had feelings for me, even if they were negative ones. Now mind you, I never did any of this on purpose; it was just what my crazy mind thought of at the time. I’ve heard of guys doing much worse, and better. My last ditch effort was putting a personal ad in her local newspaper declaring that I still loved her and wanted her back. That s the Light side of crazy. I’ve heard of guys threatening to burn their ex’s stuff, accusing their ex’s of cheating on them during their relationship, telling their ex’s that they never loved them, and just flat out looking for anyway to hurt them in order to elicit a response.

The worst thing you can do to a crazy ex is to ignore them. They always want you to be thinking about them, either good or bad. They want you to think that they will never get over him. They want to believe that they were the best thing to ever happen to you, and every piece 0f evidence that refutes that just feeds into the crazy. If you happen to be reading this and see yourself in it, trust me, you are not the best thing to happen to anyone. There are just too many people in the world for that to be true. Even if it is true up to that point, it is quite likely that some guy will come along who will be better, and most decidedly saner than you, so get over yourself. I had to, and that’s when I took one step towards being in remission. If you have any comments, you know how to leave them, but if you have any questions or need advice about a crazy ex-boyfriend, email me at exit.eleven@gmail.com. Remember, it takes one to know one.

Stupid or Racist?

These are some comments about a Forum post I saw on Adult Swim.com about the Boondocks cartoon show a while back. Now I know you should never get too upset over anything you read on a forum, but every now and then you see something that really burns your biscuits. This is what happened on my particular day...

OK. So I never really listen to the people who don't like Boondocks, because they are usually not Black, and therefore do not get it. Which is not to say that white people do not get it, because these forums are full of white people, and full of people who love Boondocks. What I hate is people who can't discern the purpose of what different characters in a show mean. For instance, on all in the family, Archie Bunker was a racist, but there were a lot of other characters on the show who disagreed with his stance on things. But a stupid person could look at the show and say since he was racist, the show is racist.

Now I personally don't feel that Huey is racist, because I agree with a lot of the things he says. Huey is just full of opinions, as am I. What people who are stupid don't see, is that Huey’s views often make it hard for him to enjoy the nice things in life. Maybe it isn't the stupid people's fault, Caesar hasn't been on the show. He is a good foil for Huey, and does his best to get Huey to Lighten up. People who think that Boondocks is against white people do not know anything about Black culture. The overwhelming theme of Boondocks on television has been that Black people are our own worst enemy, not white people. But stupid people would only see what their stupid, racist minds will allow them to see. I am at the point where I don't think I could be friends with someone who doesn't get Boondocks, because that means that they are not intelligent enough to understand what is going on, and I generally dislike stupid people, unless they are hot girls, but that's my own personal hypocrisy at fault there.

Basically, if you get Boondocks and disagree with a certain character's point of view, I can talk to you. For every opinion that is expressed on that show, you can find a dissenting one. In fact, Riley never agrees with Huey, and teases him mercilessly for his conspiracy theories. So saying that the show is one way or another is quite possibly the stupidest thing one can say. Though racism and stupidity often go hand in hand, because you have to be an idiot on at least some level to be racist, I believe that this particular topic was started by someone who is less racist than just a complete idiot.

White People Be All Like Dis

Comedians have gotten a lot of mileage out of the whole white people do things this way, black people do things this way bit, and for the most part it ever gets old because we all believe it ton be true. I am a personal believer that perception equals reality, and what it is that we see and feel to be true about each other is only as true as we believe it to be. So stereotypes are only as true as they are believed to be, and as true as they are reinforced by their respective members.

I say all that to say black people and white people do things differently than Black people. Especially German people. Germans seem to be the Whitest of White people, the most ethnically Caucasian of the Europeans, the fount from which all honkiness flows. I thought it was just a coincidence that the person I knew who was most devoid of any brown sensibility was German, but then… then came Dirk Nowitzki. One person is a coincidence, two is a trend.

In basketball there is a practice called “popping your jersey”. It’s a simple little taunt done after making an especially important shot where the player takes the edges of his jersey across his chest, usually the part that has his team name or his teams home town on it, and “pops” it out from his chest. Easy right? Well, it is for the 90% African American NBA. but poor German Dirk couldn’t get it quite right. In his first game back after a major injury, he made a game winning shot with 9 seconds left to go. The opposing team (the Utah Jazz) took a time out and the arena exploded as the Dallas Mavericks were home for this game. Dirk had put his team ahead with a three pointer in transition, and to celebrate, he attempted to pop his jersey. Instead of doing what I described above however, he pulled the bottom of his jersey out of his shorts and yanked it down, as if he were trying to stretch out a too-short shirt. It was almost an “awww” moment because you knew what he was trying to do, but in his zeal and his German-ness, he got it completely wrong. He looked like an old woman having a hot flash trying to cool herself off.

It was then that I realized that no matter what, our actions were destined to provide fodder for race comedians for generations to come. As long as group A does what appears to be action B, and Group C does what appears to be action D, then stereotypes will continue to flourish. Does that them true, or does it just make the perception of said stereotypes true? I think the answer is the latter. We can fight it, try not to reinforce our stereotypes, but the fact of the matter is, everyone will subconsciously act the way they are “supposed” to act at least once in their lifetime, and chances are that one time will be in front of 1 million people of other races who will look at you and say “see, they’re all the same”. Just like I looked at Dirk and said “man, he is really, really white.” But there is nothing wrong with that. The problems come from ignorance and hatred of our differences, not from the differences themselves. Finding humor in our differences is not such a bad thing, it is better than, say, lynching each other for them, or say, doing things like not dating Black Guys because you are not Black. That is the wrong way to approach differences.

So yeah, the White/Black/Asian/Spanish people do things differently plot line maybe overplayed in comedy, but it’s still funny. And let us hope it stays funny, so that it does not become something darker and altogether more sinister.

Love: Weakness or Detriment?

People say love is a many splendor thing. I say it's a many splintered thing, as in the pieces of sharp wood that where stuck under the fingers of prisoners of war in Vietnam. Or as in the pieces of fiberglass or plastic that accidentally slip into your skin and are impossible to get out without digging into your skin with a sharp pair of tweezers. Love can be compared to not just splendor or splinters, but thorns, like the thorn bushes you trip and stumble into in the woods, causing you a million stabbing points of intense pain. Really, no one ever wants to be in love, which is why you "fall" in love, just like you "fall" into a trap. You can also think of love as something you step in or on, like a pile of shit, or an old rusty 12 in. screw that goes straight through your foot and shoots out of the top like a budding seed breaking the surface of the Earth.

My point is that being in love is detrimental and a handicap to anyone because of the intense pain associated with it. Anyone in love is at a disadvantage in life, especially if they are in a relationship. In any relationship, the person who is most in love is in the weakest position in any relationship of their life. The person who is less in love has all of the power, and they can command and control the other person because they do not need them to be happy or complete. They can toy with, fiddle with, manipulate and complicate the life of the person who loves them for no other person than they can. Anyone who happens to be in love is at a disadvantage; they are in fact, mentally handicapped. The only time a relationship is equally developmentally disabled is when both parties are equally in love which is why relationships like that are disgusting to see. Basically you are seeing two weak and disabled people engaging and enabling each others weakness. People who have had frontal lobotomies are in better control of their faculties than those who are allegedly “in love”.

In fact, these people are kind of like the retarded. And two people in love are like two retards in love; you stare at them, and in a way you're happy for them because they found each other, but in another way you're laughing because they're still just two retards tarding around together. It’s sweet but kind of fucked up as well. That's exactly how I feel about couples in love. And if you feel that as an insensitive statement, don't; that was actually way more insulting to the developmentally disabled because of me comparing them to normal people in love than anything else. I actually apologize to DD folks for comparing them to idiots in love.

In essence, Love is a fruitless endeavor, an intense weakness in character and judgment, and should be avoided at all costs. The more in love you are with a person, the more they own you, and the more of your soul they can manipulate and toy around with. Why do you think that when you break up with or are broken up with, you feel like you’ve lost a bit of yourself? It is your soul that’s gone, stolen by that evil force of malevolence called love. My research has concluded that you should never love someone more than they love you and least of all, more than you love yourself. That’s the easiest way to keep control of your soul, and never feel that emptiness that love can leave you with. The best way to live is to get people to love you, much like cult leaders do, because then you can get so much power over people that you can get people to kill themselves. Follow this advice, please; unless, you know, piercing yourself with rusty screws is what you’re into, and then have at it.