Friday, April 27, 2007

let's freak out about everything

i remember when i used to write poetry. i am not great, good, or even ok. i am a hack. but it was a form that i could express myself. i used to share it with people. then people said my poems were sexist and not inclusive. i was talking about myself, why would it not be talking about a male?!@ it was not meant to be universal it was about me: my life, my troubles, love, etc! so i wrote genderless poetry that said nothing. i stopped writing poetry. plus my muse broke my heart and after the initial poems in red there was nothing more to say.

now, i am reading about people getting upset and even arrested for writing violent literature. i understand there was a very sad and upsetting series of events at Viginia Tech. There is a lot of sadness stemming from that event. but we are the knee jerk society. let us freak out about everything.

violent writing is bad
playing violent video games is bad
watching violent movies is bad
listening to violent music is bad
shooting and owning guns is bad
being alive is bad

am i desensitized?

i do all of the above. i felt a sadness. i have committed no murders. no felonies. i a pretty normal person. i love, i feel compassion. i do not freak out about everything.

i have lived in the bad neighborhoods. i had to move once the owner of the house was killed. i never told my mom where i lived because she would have been upset and given me money to live elsewhere. it was not bad and i had no problems there. i was nice and the people i lived with were fun too.

i think we are sensitive in another way. we have become the tooth that has enjoyed too many sweets and now cannot stand drinking anything too hot or too cold or too acidic. all we can drink is room temperature water. we are not desensitized. we care too damn much about nothing. there are no degrees it is all on or all off. let us fire our Imus's because he is white and male not because he actually did something wrong. hell plenty of people have said similar things and are still popular: al sharpton, ann coulter, rush limbaugh, me?

if someone says something to be there is usually a rebuke and i move on. if there is a pattern then their is a significant retribution. only when it becomes abuse do i seek something more. one incident is not the end of the world. but let us burn them anyway.

keep writing the mindless violence. i will watch it. i need to turn off my mind to the real crap out there because that affects me. not the mindless violence or rants that seem to be all that are cared about. what is the real problem? find that and fix it.