“I’m On The Persuit Of Happiness And I Know Everything That Shine Ain’t Always Gonna Be Gold” (this post has nothing to do with Kid Cudi)

The other day me and my cousin were talking about many things and among them came up happiness and how to be happy or some other dumb crap like that. A couple days later he linked me to this article from menshealth.com. It made me think about a lot of things. Like I didn’t realize he reads Men’s Health. He smokes a pound of marijuana a week, I’m pretty sure health is the furthest thing from his mind. That’s actually not true. He’s quitting marijuana, much like most weed smokers it’s for what seems like the 100^th time, and he’s very involved in his health. He was in the army for awhile, where he got in the best shape of his life. And then bootcamp ended and he was sent to his base where apparently they drank and partied a lot. If you look at the USA’s army budget it says they spend six billion dollars on Amenities which has an asterisk by it and if you scroll to the bottom of the page it says “*by Amenities we mean alcohol.”

The article, which I better have linked to, basically says that according to studies done by June Gruber, psychology professor at Yale University (you have to put the Ph. D part too) does anyone care if she has a Ph. D (she went to who knows how many years of school no doubt paying well into the six figure all for the purpose of being able to say she has a Ph. D) fine, I’ll give her some due respect. So this bitch with the Ph. D – calm down people, bitch was used solely for the joke of it, I’m sure she’s a good person – says that in order to be happy you can’t try to be happy, because that just gets in the way.

In her study she had one group of people read a newspaper article about the advantages of happiness and then watch an uplifting movie and another group read a newspaper article with no mention of happiness in it and then watch the same uplifting movie. And apparently the people who didn’t read about happiness were happier after the movie. It should be mentioned that the movie was Miracle On Ice and one group was made up of Americans and the other were members of the former Soviet Union (that’s not true at all) the article never said it wasn’t the case, so it could be true.

Wow, June Gruber is pretty cute. Later I mention Megan Fox. Replace her with June Gruber and I'd be a lot more thrilled.

No offense Miss, or perhaps Misses, Gruber, but your years of college, and Ph. D, and being a professor at Yale are useless (except in terms of being successful in life) because I could have told you this without your control group experiment. Throughout life I remember hearing about how places like Seattle and surprising Yale University have high rates of suicide, and often time people say it’s because they’re dreary, rainy places, but also it’s because those are places with people of high IQs. And to simplify the reasoning smart people want to do good in life and realize they can do good and strive to be great and possibly too great and when they aren’t doing as good as they think they should be they get depressed and that leads to suicide. I’ve known this for years now. The reason dumb people are so happy is because they don’t think about doing better in life. I don’t necessarily think it’s that they don’t want to do better in life, I mostly think it’s that they don’t realize they’re doing so shitty in life, or at least if they do realize it somehow they find a way to not think about it, probably by watching shows like Two And A Half Men, or getting drunk with their buddies all the time, or attending church (wow, cheap shot).

June, I think we’re on a first name basis now, later goes on to say that people shouldn’t try to be happy. Instead they should “shift [their] focus to activities that are meaningful or pleasurable to [them].” But while doing it they shouldn’t be doing it as a means to happiness, but rather because…um…well frankly I don’t really know what the fuck anybody would be doing it for. I mean she says if you go to a bar don’t go with the expectations of being happy but instead think of it as getting some relaxation, or just talking with some friends. But aren’t those things that make people happy? And if you’re doing them not to be happy but knowing that not trying to be happy is how to be happy isn’t that actually trying to be happy? I mean after reading this the only way to really not try to be happy is to somehow ingrain this notion subconsciously in your head and then erase your memory of the passed hour hoping that somehow it reminds deep inside you and your mind puts it to work, but there’s only like a 20% chance of that happening.

I do think lowering expectations can be a good thing. When me and Nathan used to go clubbing or to bars he would always be excited and hoping he’d meet a sweet, charming, slutty girl he could take home and bang, those weren’t his exact words, and time and time again he would be disappointed because apparently chicks aren’t as slutty as the incredibly hot, confident, suave guy I talk to about girls with would lead me to believe. It’s like there’s something about him girls find attractive. I would kill to be incredibly hot, confident and suave – the sad part is there is actually very little I would give to be all that.

So eventually I told Nathan that he’s gotta stop wanting it so much, and needs to be happier for the smaller victories. And guess what, it didn’t work at all, he was still pretty devastated every night. The reason being that you can’t really change the way you think, at least not quickly. He can say all he wants to do is have a nice conversation with a girl and then go do it and he’ll still be disappointed because he really wants more. And I can say I won’t be happy unless I get my dick sucked by Megan Fox and then go out have a nice conversation with a girl, not even get her number, and be ecstatically happy after the night, although the next day I’ll be miserable because I’m a negative person and always find the downsides in life, like how for reasons unknown my “won’t be happy unless” situation was having Megan Fox suck me off when in reality I don’t like Megan Fox all that much, and sure I wouldn’t turn down the blow job, but I wouldn’t be too thrilled about it.

Will I Die Young Or Shall I Die Old?

I was reading some article on yahoo and it was by Dr. Maoshing Ni, I think he was Black (you see that’s supposed to be funny because both the name doesn’t sound like the typical name for a Black person and also Black people don’t generally become doctors, but it’s not funny, in fact it could be considered racist) yes, yes, whatever, anyway Dr. Mao, because that’s apparently what they call him, oh, and surprise-surprise he’s an Asian man, you don’t see many Asian doctors these days – please get the hint of sarcasm – but anyway Dr. Mao listed eight things that he says age us most. And I wanted to go through this list and tell you how they apply to me, because I know you must care so much. And also I’ll try to make it interesting by assuming that I’ll live to a hundred and as I go through the list I’ll guess how much each one of these things that age you will take off my life and then I will predict how old I’ll live to.

1. Poor diet – When I got home from school yesterday I had a bag of popcorn and a bag of Pork rinds for lunch. I do not typically eat healthy. You see God has blessed me with a great metabolism, so I could eat nothing but fried pig and drink nothing but french fry grease for an entire year and not gain a pound. Trust me, I did it for three years while I was poor in the 70s (that makes no sense). I put salt and sugar on everything. I even put sugar on my salt and salt on my sugar and then wrap it in bacon and then deep fry it and then cover it in chocolate syrup and then feed it to my cats. What, you didn’t think I would actually it that myself did you? I don’t enjoy chocolate syrup. I have an extremely poor diet. This is going to take 15 years off my life. I know that sounds like a lot but we still have seven categories to go and I think I’ll add some years in those.

2. Lack of exercise – I exercise everyday baby (don’t say baby, the readers really don’t enjoy it). I exercise in the morning, I exercise in the afternoon, and I exercise right before I go to bed, and of course by now you’ve figured out that by exercise I mean masturbate. But that is sort of a form of exercising. But I should probably start exercising other parts of my body someday. I can imagine by the time I’m 40 I’ll have the body of an 80 year old, but the right forearm of a 25 year old arm wrestling champion, and my penis will be withered away from overused, but tragically it won’t be from sex because I will still not have had sex by the time I’m 40. This will take 2 years away from my life.

3. Stress and worry – I’ve gotten much better at not stressing out and worrying. Unfortunately for me that previous sentence was a lie. I stress out over lots and lots of things, all of which don’t really mean that much. I’ve had test’s that were worth half the grade in the class and I barely sweat over it, even if I haven’t studied. But if a send a text to a girl and she doesn’t respond within thirty seconds I start pulling my hair out and overanalyzing every single mistake I’ve ever made with a girl witch takes days, nay, years, because I’ve made a lot of mistakes, hell I’ve made mistakes when it was theoretically impossible to make mistakes which I guess is why it was still in theory form and not just impossible. Stress and worry will take off 23 years of my life. Whatever, that’s 23 less years I’ll have to spend worrying about chicks hating me.

4. Exhaustion – I always feel exhausted but I never even do anything. I can’t imagine how exhausted I’ll feel when I actually start doing crap. I guess the best thing to do would be to never start doing crap. But assuming I’ll someday start doing crap (and hopefully by that time you’ll stop referring to it as crap) I’ll predict this will take 6 years off my life.

5. Unhappiness – Uh oh. I’m happy sometimes, maybe? Sure I could be happier, but I choose to let others be happy (because as everyone knows there can only be a certain amount of happiness on the Earth at one time) it seems like that way. I mean if there’s only one ice cream cone and me and Shell Bell both want it but only one of us can have it whoever gets it will be happy and whoever doesn’t get it won’t be happy (your point being?) I want a damn ice cream cone! Unhappiness will take 18 years off my life.

6. Lack of love – How dare you mock me you vile list. The damn list already brought up stress and worry and also unhappiness and now it brings up lack of love. Doesn’t the list realize that lack of love is the reason I stress and worry and also am unhappy? (You do realize this list wasn’t tailor made for you?) As always I realize nothing. This is a hard one to evaluate, so I’m going to wait until the end to come up with the total of years it could take off my life.

7. Toxic overload – I don’t even know what Dr. Mao means by this. But I’m going to go ahead and assume it will take 3 years off my life.

8. Blockages and congestion of the transportation highways within our bodies – Again, I’m not exactly sure how to evaluate this one. But for some reason, and please don’t ask why, every time I read the sentence it makes me think about anal sex. There might be something deeply wrong with me. Oh, and I don’t just mean anal sex, I mean gay anal sex (okay, there is seriously something wrong with you). This will take 5 years off my life.

Now let’s do the math.

Minus 15 years for poor diet, 2 years for lack of exercise, 23 years for stress and worry, 6 years for exhaustion, 18 years for unhappiness, 3 years for toxic overload and 5 years for anal sex… I mean blockage of my bodily highways and such. So minus all those silly numbers from a hundred and that gives us… 28!!! Holy crap, I’m only going to live to 28! (You didn’t add in the love, or lack thereof, factor) oh yes.

Well it all depends on if I end up with the person I want to. If I don’t than that only adds to my stress and unhappiness and I’m going to assume it will take 29 years away from my life. Which of course means I will have died while I was still a little sperm in my father’s weed addled body. But if I do end up with the person I want that will take away from my stress, and definitely away from my unhappiness and I could see myself living into my 80s, all of this assuming I end up with my Applecheese.

This Could Come Off As Creepy I suppose

An hour seems like a suitable amount of time to lie in bed thinking myself into depression before I decide to get up, flip the calendar to October, stare at hundreds of King Penguins on Antarctica, and then sit down in front of my computer screen to write down this miserable opening line that I very much enjoy.

There is this girl in one of my community college classes that I am very much obsessed with. Not in the way that I would like to have sex with her, or go out with her, or anything like that, but in a way that I will come to describe. She is a Russian girl and she has a very pretty Russian name that I will not write to spare her identity, but not really. Really I will not write it because I do not know how to spell it. But on further examination I have decided that even if I did know how to spell it, which I could easily find out, I would still not write it. But enough about her name, it is of no importance at all. She is very attractive. I would not hesitate one moment to say the prettiest girl in all of my classes this term, but you should know that my History class is so very, very ugly, the guys more so than the girls. But enough about her attractiveness, it is not what matters. If she were a heifer I’d still be just as obsessed. But why am I obsessed? I will get to the point. (When?) now. I am thoroughly convinced that she is the most enjoyable person in the entire world.

I’m not a believer of spirituality and energy and the like, I’m not a huge disbeliever, I’m like one of those annoying people who say they don’t believe we can ever know if God really exists, only instead of God insert spirituality and energy for me, but I am almost certain that this most enjoyable Russian girl has happiness energy rays exuding from her every pore. From the first second I saw her during her introductory presentation, which we all had to do, I pepped up. I don’t know what it was. She wasn’t terribly interesting. She’s even deeply religious, which usually annoys the hell out of me but with her I didn’t mind. She just had this extreme likability. When I got to talk to her for a bit a few days later my insane theory was only further backed up. I spent the whole time poking and prodding, trying to find something, anything, a chink in the armor that would tell me she wasn’t as happy and enjoyable as she appeared to be. But I found nothing. And it wasn’t annoying at all. I hate people. I should hate this person. She’s so happy and enjoyable. Shouldn’t that annoy the fuck out of me? It doesn’t. In fact it’s impossible for me to be angry or upset when around her or thinking about her. It’s like she has an invisible bubble around her that perverts any negativity within a twenty foot radius. She’s always smiling and laughing. Even when I brought up the Holocaust she was still smiling and laughing, which should have been creepy but it was still nothing but enjoyable.

I want to be her (now that’s creepy).

Writing, the religion of fools.

When I write, which is conveniently what I am doing right now, I don’t feel so sad. I will be honest in saying that there are still a few occasional times when even writing can not pull me out of a depressed slump. But when I am writing – and I mean really writing, like typing letters that form words that somehow, and I have no idea how, but somehow by the grace of the Gods turn into sentences and paragraphs, and not the writing I usually do where I type a word out (usually short and misspelled) and then stare at the screen for five minutes before I decide to masturbate to internet porn for two and a half hours lying to myself that afterwards I’ll somehow be inspired to write – I am usually having the happiest point of my, albeit pathetic, day. I don’t know how, but somehow writing distracts me from all those things that I usually think about throughout the day and bring me down (such as death and dying, loneliness, being a loser, Dane Cook’s humor and the people who like him, and how the human race is most assuredly screwed). Writing keeps me happy the way hanging out with my friends does. The way playing sports does. The way it makes me happy when a cute girl smiles at me; even though she’s really smiling at the more attractive guy behind me, but I’ll never figure it out. I love writing. If I could I would marry writing. But I guess we’ll tackle that legal debacle after we get gay marriage legalized.

I admit that I am not a good writer. In fact I will argue to exhaustion that I am a pretty terrible writer. Me grammar is far from appropriate. My Spelling is atroocius (you’ve used that joke more than once). I apparently use the same jokes often. I write using some weird second personality in parentheses that I’ve never really explain (explanation is futile). And worst of all my writing is pointless and lacks much needed passion. Without passion how can I ever expect to be as good as Austen, or Hemmingway, or Tolstoy, or Dr. Seuss – to quote Homer Simpson, “It was so sad the way they hopped on Pop.”

Well the fact of the matter, assuming there is a matter, is that I don’t ever plan to be as good as the aforementioned authors, or anywhere near that good. It would be nice if I lived in a self delusion that I was a great writer, or that I might one day become a great writer, but I don’t. I’ve pretty much abandoned the idea that I’ll ever be a good writer, or that I’ll ever write something meaningful. However, perhaps out of stupidity, my motivation for writing is not to be good at it, or to become famous, or to try and makes lots and lots of money that I could use to purchase high-end prostitutes (I don’t know why you made that so specific). My motivation for writing is that I thoroughly enjoy it because while writing it takes my mind to some special place I didn’t know existed. It takes my mind off all that crap that bogs me down and keeps me from enjoying this beautiful fucking life. This beautiful life that, although enjoys to shit on me, has gifted me with the ability to write. Granted it’s not the ability to write well, but I say balderdash! I don’t need to write to make money. I don’t need to write to make a difference in this world (although it’d be nice). I don’t need to write to get famous. I don’t need to write so people will know my thoughts (well now the question arises of why you’re even bothering to post this here then?) and that’s a good question that will go unanswered. I need to write because it consistently makes me happy. And I haven’t been able to find too many things in this life that consistently make me happy.

People say religion makes them happy. Well writing makes me happy so I guess it’s my religion. And I am the God of this religion, which makes this a pretty lame and pathetic religion.