leave the replacement refs alone

the nfl is currently using replacement refs because the "legit" refs that usually officiate their games are in a labor dispute. there's not much talk or guesstimating on how long this could last. all that's known for sure is that as the official start of the regular season approaches, the nfl will be using the replacement refs for all games during week one.

and this might be a bummer to some people. a lot of fans, analysts, and the like have some harsh things to say about the replacement refs. sure, they are the watered down version as far as refs go. but i think it's a little much to give them a lot of grief for it. they are the dudes that are there and if they weren't there, there'd be no games at all.

and i get it. they make bad calls. they miss things. they could screw your team out of an important game. but let's not pretend that you had any love or warm feelings towards the refs that they're replacing. remember those guys? just last year? you bitched about them endlessly too. they also screwed your team last season. remember?

reffing is a tough job. i don't even know why anyone does it. the second you turn that mic on, you're gonna be boo'd by thousands. that's gotta suck. and it's not like they're not trying. in most cases, they probably are giving it their best. aaaaaand they're doing it for less pay than those other guys and they know that. you don't like the replacement refs? i'd be surprised if they liked you much either.

i wouldn't be surprised if before this whole thing ends one of them decides to turn a mic on and say something like, "offsides, 5 yard penalty, and ya'll can go fuck yourselves."  i wish they would. i'd show up with a poster that says, "TEAM REF," after that.

if you're bitching about replacement refs in nfl games, then i'm left to assume that your life is totally awesome. cuz if that's all you got to bitch about in a world gone berserk, congratulations. you're a winner at life. since you're a winner, shut the fuck up and stop whining. no one likes a whiny winner. the rest of us losers will key your car or throw eggs at your children.

or maybe you are a loser who has no perspective on things. maybe you also bitch about who gets booted off of big brother or whatever other awful reality/talent tv contest you watch on a weekly basis. to you i say, go to google, then go to news. now read from top to bottom. pay attention. give it a good hour or so of your time. if you come out of that still bitching about replacement refs in nfl games then not only do you suck at life, but you suck harder at it than those lowly replacement refs who just fucked your beloved football team out of the playoffs this year.

an obituary for a dead skunk

i didn't know you well skunk. in fact, i didn't know you at all. by the time i was introduced to you, you were already dead. your body was laying there completely still on the side of a road not far from where i live. i was just taking a stroll when i came across you. three kids on scooters stood there over your body. i'm guessing they didn't know you before your unfortunate demise either.

i feel bad for you skunk. i don't know anything about you specifically. what i do know is that most people hated you. well, not you personally... but hated your kind. you're kinda seen as a nuisance. i guess it has something to do with your smelly defense system. but hey, you're just a small beast in a big jungle, what do people expect from you? you gotta get by somehow. but there you were.... as good as gone and i'm sure in most people's minds it's all for the better.

imagine that... your death being seen as an improvement on things. that's gotta be a fucking bummer. you were just a skunk doing skunk things. i'm sure you probably had a mrs. skunk at home and a few adorable skunk juniors running around. i hope they get by without you. i hope their hearts don't turn cold. i hope they're strong enough to cope with an environment where they're seen as troublesome and better off dead.

anyways, i'm sure your memory will live on. i know for me personally, i'll give you a thought every so often when i find myself crossing a street when i see a skunk. there's a lot of them walking around this area. i already didn't wanna cross their paths before i knew of your untimely demise. now i can just imagine. the streets might begin to flow with the distinct odor of skunk vengeance. and i suppose we'd have it coming. your kind didn't want this war with us. but i'm sure you'll all be goddamned if we think you're just gonna let us slide.

an emo post: i miss you

i hate being emo. and i really don't wanna write a blog post dripping in emo-ness. but i can't help it. i have some pretty serious feelings i've been dealing with and i just keep repressing them. and i can't hold it back any longer. i have to get it out there. i have to know that i did my part to try and share my emo moment with the internet.... no matter how much i pride myself on not being a very emo kinda guy.

i miss you. i messed up and i realize that now. it took me some time to realize it. i'm not good at admitting i'm the bad guy and that i did the wrong thing. but i've had some time to think about it now... and i realize that i'm totally guilty of doing some things that pushed you away and made it impossible for you to stay with me. i don't know what i was thinking. how could i ever expect you, in your situation, to stay with me after what i did to you?

and i'm tired of listening to all my friends with their fake words of comfort, having to hear phrases like:

"it's not a big deal josh. you'll get over it with enough time."
"it wasn't working for you anyways. you're better off."
"almost every guy did what you did. don't feel so bad."

and thanks friends, that's real nice of you to try and make me feel good in my time of sadness. i do appreciate it. but you don't understand what it's like to be me. i have to wake up everyday and look myself in the mirror and wonder why did i do this? why did i screw this up so bad? it gets to a point where i just want to go back in time and undo this.

i try to remain optimistic. i think maybe with enough time, you'll come back to me. we could be together again. i'll be better this time around. i'll make this shit work. i promise. just please, give me another chance. come back home. i'm lost and incomplete without you. i miss you beard.

don't be an asshole

this past sunday i made a joke about people going crazy and shooting other people and wondering why it doesn't happen more often. a few days later this shooting outside of the empire state building in new york city happens. and that sucked. cuz i'm not rooting for this sorta thing. when i jokingly say, 'i wonder why more people aren't getting shot,' i don't want anyone to actually go out and do it.

the joke is more me acknowledging that people can tend to suck. the world is full of assholes. and although i'm not thrilled with the concept of sharing an existence with a world populated with douchebags, i don't root for their demise either. shooting someone cuz they suck at life just makes you a bigger asshole than they are.

if you wanna stop the assholes, becoming one yourself isn't gonna fix anything. really, the only fix to stop the assholes is to not be one yourself. doing something to retaliate against them is sinking down to their level. it suddenly makes you no better then they are. not only did you not stop the assholes, you switched teams and helped strengthen their cause.

because the world is full of assholes, i know the shootings will never really stop. there'll always be another shooting. and there's probably a lot more shootings than we're aware of. most shootings don't make the 10 o'clock news. people shooting people is a sickening byproduct of the suck side of humanity.

if you really wanna fight against assholes, just don't be one. it's that simple. if someone near you is being an asshole, be the better person and walk away. we'll never free ourselves of all the assholes of the world. but maybe that's the point. maybe we need assholes in our lives to remind us how awesome everyone who isn't an asshole is.

stop being so nice

if you can't be nice, don't be fake nice. it goes against the whole principle of what 'nice' really is. if you can't find it in yourself to be sincerely nice about something, then just keep it honest and react naturally. if you don't like something, then don't like it. not liking stuff doesn't make you an asshole. it makes you a human being. everyone finds themselves not liking lots of things on a more than regular basis. so just stop with the bullshit and react in a way that is honest and true to yourself.

you're better off being rude than faking niceness. the rudeness would be more sincere and heartfelt. faking niceness with someone is pretty much the same thing as lying to them. you're being dishonest with yourself and with whoever you're dealing with. and in return, someone you're dealing with may be pissing you off and they'll never know cuz you keep pulling the 'fake nice' routine. if you're dealing with an asshole, believe me with everything you got on this one, the best thing you can do is let them know how much of an asshole they're being. a lot of assholes aren't very self aware. help them out. that'd be the really nice thing to do.

and stop asking people how they are if you really don't care how they are. i've started making it my mission to make people regret ever asking me this question. it's polite but it's bullshit. but hey, since you're asking, let me fill you in on how i'm really doing. this may take a while. but hey, you'll never ask me again and you shouldn't have asked me in the first place. lesson learned.

i don't know why people feel this need to pretend to be nice. i can see right through it and so can everyone else. give it a rest. do us all a favor and be a real person. no one's nice all the time. no one's nice when they're angry. if you're angry, be fucking angry. that's the natural thing to do. don't shame yourself into denying your own right to be anything but nice. there's all sorts of other emotions in the human spectrum. get to know them. cuz i'm pretty sure all insincere attempts at being nice kill a little part of the soul every time.

and hey, if you're sincerely being nice, right on! nice people rule!

fake names

we give fake names to some of the employees. we outsource, so a lot of the names sound very authentic to the country where they live. to make them sound more "american," they're assigned fake names. they're now a customer service army of tom's, harry's, and jane's. 

this feels racist. i enter their real name in a database. and then in a field next to that, i enter their "pseudonym." that's the term we throw around when referring to their fake names. they're not being given fake names, they're being given "pseudonyms." and i guess this is cuz outsourcing pisses customers off or cuz some customers don't like having to speak to foreigners. so we try and pull a quick one on them at the sake of the employee they'll have to deal with to get their customer service issue resolved.

my mom gave me my name. i'm fucking josh. there's no way i'd wanna ever be called anything else. that's who i am. and anyone who doesn't like it can fuck off. that's sincerely how i feel. i can't imagine what it's like to lie about your own name... all so you don't piss off some douchebag customer who thinks he's too good to speak to someone with any accent but his own.

giving people fake names is racist. and it's only being done so we don't piss off racist people. it's meta-racism. and if a company is so concerned with not pissing off the racist part of their customer base, why outsource in the first place? 

outsourcing saves a lot of money. i'm sure executives high five over the numbers in board room meetings behind closed doors. if outsourcing is such a great fix, then own that shit. don't steamroll over the culture of others just so you don't have to deal with the bad press. 

i feel awful every time i process a new "pseudonym" at work. there's one more person who's just trying to make ends meet. for eight hours a day they have to pretend to be someone they're not. all so we can keep our customers with racist tendencies satisfied.

gratitude

"in the radiance of the setting sun,
men either sing and give thanks
or clamor and bewail
the approach of old age."

that's not mine. i didn't write that. i read it in this book i have lying around called, 'kung fu meditations.' (a book my friend chet lent to me when i was 14... and i still have it. i'm grateful chet's not a library with overdue fees. i should look into giving him his book back. it's really good.)

i read this last night. i've read it before. i read through this book a lot. it's not a long book... about 40 pages of aphorisms and koans. and every time i read through it, a different part seems to stick out, almost as if to address issues i'm experiencing in life right now.

i have not been singing and giving thanks in the radiance of the setting sun as of late. i'm extremely guilty of clamoring and bewailing the approach of old age. and it's one of those things where i don't realize how guilty i am of this until i read these four lines right here and it comes out and smacks me.

i know shit ain't perfect and life's not a fairy tale and fucked up shit happens all the time. but it won't do me any good to focus on all the ugly shit that's going on. if i can still sing and if i can still give thanks, then why not  try that approach instead?

at the end of the day, i have a lot to be grateful for. i'm alive. that's the most obvious. death sucks but it happens all the time. just yesterday i came home to find out that someone in the house next door to me was strangled to death. now that seems awful and it is... however, it's a fresh and extreme reminder that life's a crazy thing... and it's uncertain when exactly any of us will cease to exist. for this reason, we should be grateful to just simply exist.... to be able to open our eyes and experience the world and breathe the air. life's either a miracle or a scientific long shot, either way, enjoy the program while you can. there's only so much of it.

then there's the people i love... friends and family. and there's so many of them. seriously... i have love for so many people. if you're reading this, you're probably one of them. i'm not vain enough to think that anyone beyond people who really give a shit about josh are reading this. so thanks! you fucking rule! i don't know what you did but you did something. there's a lot of  people who at first glance i'll say, "they never did nothing for me," but with deeper inspection i realize i'm wrong. even the oddest of acquaintances have left positive impressions in my life.

i have the essentials covered. i have a job, an apartment, clothes on my back, food. i'm never starving. i have my health. i exercise. i have a pretty eventful social life. i don't have a lot of enemies. i'm not too far in debt (if all goes well, i'll be fully out of debt by this time next year for the first time since i was 18).

i have my hearing. i can hear music. i can move to it and be moved by it. i get such fucking joy and passion out of listening to music. i can't put it into words... but there are moments when the right song comes on at the right moment and it's almost powerful enough to cause me to explode inside. it's the closest thing i know to magic and religion. i fucking love music. and if at the end of the day i can always play a song to sing or dance along to, that's fucking glorious.

i have so many people to interact with. i live alone but i'm far from lonely. i'm always chatting or texting or emailing, or facebooking, etc etc... there's always some form of communication going on. i've done an excellent job of surrounding myself with an eclectic mix of people. all i know is interesting people... not a one of them are bland or boring. everyone has a quirk, everyone has a tick, everyone is unique.

when i look back, i see tons of good times and good people. i have so many great memories... too many to be numbered. life has been and remains pretty awesome. when i put things into perspective, i feel spoiled. i'm sorta rich in other ways besides financially. there's so much in my life that brings me joy. it's absolutely amazing to sit here and write about it and reflect upon it all. it's almost overwhelming. how do i ever find myself clamoring and bewailing the approach of old age in the first place?