Doom.

I hate the public, and I am not exaggerating. A trip to the mall is my idea of masochism, and the necessary weekly trip to the grocery store is like getting a weekly root canal. Every time I am forced to endure the mob It feels like I am slowly dying as I am forced to watch the decay of the human race.

There is a great number of stupid people, and I am convinced that number is growing exponentially. They are everywhere, and chances are you know a great many, probably at work. If at this point you are thinking, "Wait, I don't think people are stupid." Well, my friend, more than likely you are one of them.

It isn't so much that people are stupid, but it is the sick sense of pride and the diligence with which people keep themselves at such a low intellectual standard. The current and coming generation are a travesty in human terms. While in many ways they have shucked the husks of outdated bigotry and prejudice, they have made up for it with txt speak, and reality tv. There is a belief imprinted in them that if they simply pretend to be enough of a rock star, or celebrity, they will somehow magically become one, so why would they need to actually know anything?

The proof is in the pudding, and the pudding is any place 12-26 year olds congregate. Try to have a conversation with one of these robots. You will hear "like" more times than you would at the reading of a book full of similes. If you attempt this try task, make it up to yourself by asking one of them to spell simile and watch as their brain slowly begins to melt.

We are doomed. Doomed I tell you.

Sometimes things fall apart

Sometimes things fall apart. This is a truth in both the social and physical realms. It just happens that you notice the physical quite quickly, where the social can take years before the changes finally set in.

I've had friends that I thought were lifers. Brothers who would always be by my side when I needed them, or when they needed me to help pick up the pieces of their broken hearts and dreams. The fact of the matter is that I have been there to help pick up the pieces of others' hearts and dreams, yet somehow always ended up standing alone when my chips were down. Such is the plight of the Givers.

Ah, the Givers. The ones with the advice. The ones who drop their plans and put themselves in the most uncomfortable, insane, and dangerous situations because their friends believed that it was a good idea to go to a city three hours away with someone they just met because they could get some good......stuff, only to wind up stranded in a Waffle House parking lot at 2 in the morning, the ones who suffer the blows of the pissed off drunk their friends wouldn't stop mouthing off too, or whose girl they insisted on making out with. The Givers are the ones who always pick up the phone, no matter how late it is, how tired they are, or how little money they have.

Then at some point the phone calls stop, and you have been used up right to where the breaking point is near. Then you find yourself placed on a shelf, or maybe in a nice curio cabinet in a back room that no one uses, until one day someone feels like pulling you out for nostalgia's sake. You just don't fit the decor anymore.

I've been there. I've done that. It isn't fun. So it's funny that I somehow find myself grieving for the loss of certain people in my life who in all actuality never did much but make me uncomfortable, irate, incensed, and tired. I suppose it has something to do with getting older, as so many things seem to at this point in my life. I think it's possible that I am beginning to miss the anxiety that comes from wondering what ludicrous turn of events my day will take, what surprise is in store for me every weekend. It is a ridiculous thing to miss, I'll admit. But I think it bothers me more that missing it means I'm growing up, something all of us insisted would never happen. Growing up meant we would get boring.

But there are different kinds of boring, and we givers get boring in a very different way. We get boring in the way that landmarks and antiques do. That is to say, not boring at all. We are affected by the world around us, and all of the insanity it contains. The lurid, inexplicable, and sublime happenings that are life give us a mark here, or a scratch there, embedding in us character and history in a way that the instigators will never attain. Setting us apart from the banal and one dimensional actors in the play of the world. The truth is that we outgrow those that take from us, and they know it. It just takes some of us a little time to realize it as well.

One of the most ridiculous things about living is that we romanticize and trick ourselves into believing that the most awkward and painful years of our lives are the best we will ever have because we were young. Many of us spend the rest of our lives looking backward, attempting to suspend our minds and actions in some juvenile state, avoiding growth. I can't imagine what a terrible thing it would be to wake up at forty, or even twenty-eight as I am now, being the same person I was when I was seventeen, because I know what it is like to wake up and see others in such a state.