Weekend pep talk

Sometimes things are kind of shitty all of a sudden, you know? Like, remember that episode of the real world that was set in Chicago when the girl that fucked Big Head Todd (the rocker, not just a guy named todd with a big head) was just sitting there and the gay dude came by and pinched her hip and suddenly she went into this shame spiral because she thought that implied that she was fat and she threw a vase and locked herself in a room? Remember that?

No? Really? It was in 2001. Well, it aired in 02, I guess, so you must have been like, what, 9? You have to remember that. It ruined her whole day, and then she had to deal with her fucked up body image and her subsequent casting down into the “fucked up roommate with an eating disorder” stigma right there on television. It was a bummer. For her. For the producers of the show, well, they were high fiving the shit out of each other. Nothing so wonderful as another person’s misery, right? Of course not. Here’s why:

We’ve all got it all figured out. We all know how to diet and raise kids and live life to the fullest and be careful and take chances and all that shit. When someone goes crazy or freaks out or fails it’s just a little bit of reassurance that we’re doing the right thing by not doing whatever that person did that fucked up.

This is true in music, for sure. Watch motherfuckers shit talk fall out boy or the alkaline trio or gaslight anthem and say it’s all bullshit and it’s lame. Then when their album underperforms, these critics say things like “see, knew that shit was no good,” which completely ignores that those bands are still more successful than your dumb dildo friend who washes cars and only listens to Tragedy (nothing against them) and still knew what was good to a greater degree than he knew what was bad. You follow? Good.

When your friends date people and break up, that’s always secretly great. When an aquaintence’s business fails, yay. When the gay guy pinches the chick with the big nose and the cock addiction, uh…wait. No, those people that were high fiving that move were just soulless human traffickers profiting off of insecure teenagers. That’s not the same thing at all. Let’s slow down, eh?

The point is, at some point in your life everything is gonna go to shit, and it may be because some dudes crash some planes into some buildings and your wife dies or it may be because someone touches your hair. And it’s all devastating. Life can really suck the dick off a dog, but there’s always something out there that’ll be coming along that will make up for it, right? Your kid’s gonna grow up, your best buddy is gonna come over with a beer. That one guard that’s been raping you is gonna get cancer. You’re gonna stop having those phantom limb pains after the surgery. You can always duck into the bathroom and fix your hairdo.

Just sayin. Sometimes things all go to shit for seemingly minute reasons. And the world isn’t always cool and sympathetic. Usually, in fact, they’re quite the opposite. But as a great man once said, everybody gets shit on in life. Everyone. The measure of greatness is not what someone can avoid, but how someone deals with what gets heaped on em.
Okay, it was me. I said it. BUT, I’m paraphrasing Daryl Jennifer. So yeah. Credit to him and almighty Jah. I and I survive, y’all.

Big party this weekend and then next week it’s off to the east coast! Get stoked turds.