Looking Up an Ex on Facebook

I wonder what __________ is up to lately?

Stupid Facebook search, how are you going to show me all the __________s in the world except the one I know?

How is Bing able to find her profile and you can't? It's fucking BING, for chrissake...

Wow. She looks happy. Why aren't I that happy?

Should I friend her? I shouldn't friend her. Should I?

I'm gonna friend her.

Oh, that's right. I sent her a request two years ago.

Guess that's a "no," then.

I think I'll cancel the request. Can you do that?

Yeah. Just have to remember not to try again in two years.

Damn, she looks like she's really doing well. What's her relationship status?

I shouldn't look for it.

Fuck, where is it?

I guess she hasn't listed it. Probably a smart move.

I'm a dick. I was a dick. But I'm better now.

Am I? Probably not.

Don't re-send a friend request. Don't re-send a friend request. Don't re-send a friend request.

Fuck, why did I do this?

She looks really good. Really, really good.



I gotta stop this. This isn't healthy.

Can I look at her photos? I can.

I shouldn't.

Yep, she looks really good in every one of these photos.

Who's that guy? Fuck that guy. Is he tagged? No.

Probably for the best. Fucking dick. I hate that guy.

Don't re-send a friend request.



What was wrong with me? Is it still wrong with me?

I really hate that guy. Whoever he is.

Another guy? What the fu—

Oh, these are a couple of years old. She could be single by now, right?

Right?

I should try to friend her again.

No, I shouldn't.

Shit, I suck. I'm an idiot.

Don't re-send a friend request. Don't do it. Don't you fucking dare do it.

I'm gonna do it.

No, I'm not.

Ugh.

I already looked at all these photos.

I'm gonna read her status updates. All of them.

This is insane. I hate myself so much right now.

Bitch. You know what I should do? I should look for people that look like her on Redtube, that's what I should do.

Don't cry, dammit. Don't you fucking dare.

There's no way to search for "someone who looks like __________" on Redtube. Nor is there a way to search for "anything to stop me from feeling regret."

Maybe if I Google it.

Wow, that's a lot of useless "How To"s. I don't have the time to read this sappy crap.

I think I'll go buy a bottle of whiskey and watch Batman cartoons until I pass out.

Best idea of the night, right there.

Xavi, Xavi, why have you forsaken me?

Why is there such a thing as that?
Have I considered it? Certainly. Who hasn't?
It's hard to live life without considering the alternative.
But to do it? To make a plan and carry it out,
How could you? I miss you.
It's triggered by anything from
Chinese food to TV shows
I knew you loved, and I loved too,
Loved you, in that way brothers do
And brothers we could have been,
Were, in a way. There was closeness,
But not enough. Not enough for me
To know what tortured you,
Which in turn now tortures me.
How could you?
The cursor blinks at me,
Waiting, waiting, waiting...
Are you waiting?
We needed you here.
Still do. Always will.
The world is heavier without your spirit.

Have you ever been the only sane man in the asylum
on the wrong side of the bars.
That's what it's like living in this world.
I wanna see a child kill a grown man, see 'im grow up
To a lone man. Put on a slow jam and slow dance
To the romance of boy meets world
Like boy, he's whirled
Around the globe enough times to know that nobody tries
And everybody lies when they sayin' they be prayin' for ya.
Maybe once but twice is too much effort's what I'm sayin'
No bluff. Go to the trouble if you wanna know what's up,
Or it'll find you first and leave you dying of thirst
from no love.
God is there no God, no God is there hope of
Is there hope of
hope of
hope of
There is no
What?
There is no hope of
Everything that you've ever been promised
The world welcomes no one to its gate
And that's honest.
Kill the old to make room for the new
The new who?
The new you, and please kill me, too
Better dead than indebted to tradition
Incessant counter-intuition
Counter to the founders, numbers,
They're just bouncers keeping us in malnutrition
In the streets livin' like men speak,
From one breath to the next, one birth to the death
One hearse to the next, bleak minutes missin'
Kissin' vultures on the beak, beggin' for a little nibble
Snackin' till there's only bones left
Only bones left.
Gotta eat and pay the rent and all the rest
And only bones left.
Only bones left.
Don't you know they own your time and all the rest?
And only bones left.

I'm smart but I'm not smart enough.

Not smart enough for what?

For the task ahead of me.

And what task is that?

Why, the same task facing every human being alive today.  Keeping the human species going as long as possible, at least another couple thousand years, if we can.

Why do you say that?

Despite the fact that the Cold War died down quite some time ago, the big thing that made us afraid the whole time is still there.  There are enough bombs to wipe us all off the face of the earth.  And we have to make sure that doesn't happen.

And how are you going to make sure that doesn't happen?

I don't know.  Like I said, I'm not smart enough.  I just hope that, collectively, we are.

...

The secret is culture.  Culture, and intellect, are unique among evolutionary traits.  Sharp teeth, thick skin, camouflage, all of these things serve a specific evolutionary purpose.  But our brains?  Our intellect?  They have managed to get us ahead in the food chain terms of things, but the evolutionary purpose of intellect and society is much harder to get your head around than that for something like claws, or eyes.

...

The idea is that culture, like anything else life engages in, is an evolutionary mechanism.  Societal constructs of things like attractiveness help favorable traits to persist, and the most favorable evolutionary trait in a human, any human, is the mind more than the body.  When a culture loses sight of this, it loses evolutionary ground and falls within a few generations behind those who recognize the value of creativity and abstract thought enough to find it sexy.

...

I want to be sexy, is what I'm saying.

Everyone on American television is so thin and sexy and in shape, but statistics say that Americans aren't. How many of us watch TV living vicariously through our favorite TV characters? We sit in dark rooms with flickering screens watching the two dimensional exploits of our better selves through the lens of bullshit glamor and sensationalist fiction and tolerate our pathetic, satiated lives because we have these amazing, sexy, heroic lives to watch and imagine they were our own. If any conspiracy ever was, there was one to dilute the value of our culture with so much drivel and loquacious verbal vomit that our minds would be reduced to overflowing sewers in a torrential downpour of horrendous intellectual waste, with no capacity left to realize how fucked we're getting.

State of the Union, 2012.

But it's terrible because it's a death of the individual creativity that is at stake, the atrophy of the imagination.  Terms like "Culture War" or the "Death of our Culture" only bear relevance to me insomuch as "American Culture" can come to be something respected in future history, known for its reason and open-minded democracy more than its superstitious hatred and cognitively dissonant derision for the poor, more for its love of civil rights and personal liberties than its tendency for faith-derived bickering.  What a waste of time.  What a waste of people.  Don't we realize how important the history is that we're creating?

I refuse to believe that my anxiety and my depression
Are a result of not having enough pills in my diet.
I reject the notion that we are a civilized society
That can kill remotely from half a world away
But won't give healthcare to its own people.
I despise hypocrites declaring Christ the king of this nation
Who balk at charity, forgiveness, fairness, love.
I want to live in a world where faith
Is simply what you believe,
Not what you use to justify your hate.
I am not depressed because of a chemical imbalance.
We are depressed because we share the weighty burden
Of a whole world of bullshit on our shoulders,
Have been indoctrinated into a malignant system
Of self-interested falsehood,
Idolatrous worship of efficiency,
The overvaluing of money

And undervaluing of value.

We are depressed because they taught us the rules

And broke them as we watched.

We all are guilty

Who built up beneath ourselves

Foundations only of forebear's opinion.

I refuse to believe we are anything less than children of God

Or anything more than the most recent emergence from protoplasmic goop,

That being an animal and possessing humanity are mutually exclusive.

I reject that right and wrong are mandated from on high,

I reject that religion holds a monopoly on morality.

God or no God, we are spirited and spiritual beings.

I do not feel anxiety because something is wrong with me.

I feel anxiety because something is wrong with everything else.

The problem (and at the same time the cool thing) with the Occupy Wall Street movement was that it was partially inspired by and modeled after the ultra-democratic ironically intellectual swilling chaos that is the hacktivist collective.
Now a lack of a strong centered power structure for an anonymous web organization of vigilantes and moral crusaders is fascinating, but for a real, legitimate MOVEMENT there is actual leadership required. And, well, we slacktivists don't really want to step up to that degree and risk going to jail or getting shot or firebombed or something that always happens to real activist leaders. Or, like, hunger strikes and stuff. Who would want to have to handle that?
And that lack of a driving center is what will topple the movement—all you guys need is a party. They told you to get jobs, so take theirs (in DC). That's the way.