the Jerk's Digest

never before has there been such a collection of blunt and conscience aching straightforwardness

[thejerksdigest]

Dr. Pain

I want to make an appointment.

My sheets are brand new, i dont want blood in them just yet. 

Can it heal me? even if it’s for a minute? can pain in my hand distract the one in my heart?

Sick and tired of not feeling anything at all, i reach to you. 

To the cold hard surface to graze me with brutality. 

To have my right digits numb from blunt force memory. 

And my left to rub the pain into my flesh and keep the wounds open.

Last time i passed out. Can we do that again?

Can it overwhelm me like anything else? rush of blood to the head?

i’ll behave, i’ll go down like im supposed to. 

I’ll make it last and get my money´s worth. 

slowly crawl cheek to cheek to the kitchen’s tile.

how much do i owe you?

[thejerksdigest]

my friend begged me not to rape somebody

Last month, a woman I respect and admire, who dated me for a while and that remained friends with me for the better part of 5 years asked me not to have sex with a drunken colleague as we were leaving this girl’s house after a night of drinks and board games. 

The fact that I never entertained the possibility because of my principles regarding consent, which among other things consider volition voided in drunken people, was something that I considered a settled matter. 

But, as it turns out, a smart and educated woman I had not only dated but remained friends with thought the issue was still up for debate and therefore texted me as we were leaving and the drunk girl insinuated I prolonged my stay. 

“Please don’t do it, she is too drunk”

That’s what she wrote via WhatsApp while she walked down the stairs and I stayed behind momentarily convincing our mutual acquaintance, loudly and in a public space, to go in her apartment alone and sleep off her drunken stupor. 

I have never, in 30 years, been the subject of any sexual harassment accusation or complaint of any sort, but that night I learned it doesn’t really matter: everyone is a potential rapist, even if you’ve known them for years and trusted them with your own integrity. 

I am well aware most abuse comes from within our inner circles, but I was shocked to discover that in a situation where cool heads prevailed, eventually even our drunken pal realized her insinuations were out of place, I was still the probable suspect of a crime that never happened. 

Why? because I was there, a man, with the power of sobriety to wield upon someone unable to walk straight, let alone make a decision.

Nothing in the past I shared with this woman, who by the way is well aware of the imbalance of power in society, the importance of speaking out and the ever changing role of females all around the world, amounted to a modicum of trust regarding my decency as a human being. 

What then is the expectation?

I support the plight of women and have done so well before the age of #MeToo, constantly reminding myself the best way to help is sometimes to refrain from what may seem like opportunistic rhetoric. 

However, I ask myself and others: If no one is safe from suspicion, how do we manage to assert and defend our reputation having done nothing wrong?

[thejerksdigest]

A bullshit argument for you

Telling someone they can drift from the common stream in a family setting until they get their own money and pay for the roof over their heads is a deeply rooted mistake that has delivered generation after generation of people that equate financial independence with freedom of thought. 

As soon as that idea is burned into your head by a disgruntled mother or father there is no escape. You will strive, and possibly become very successful, to earn your own living so you can have an opinion. The problem is paying for your own shit does not mean anything you have to say is worth the time to say it, just as being in need of financial support does not disqualify you from a dissident and informed point of view.  

If the only goal behind phrases like “my house, my rules” or “because I put a roof over your head” was to establish the facts of parenting and family economics, there would not be a problem. But those and other similar statements are so often used to establish dominance in an argument of clear subordination (no smart child can fathom the thought of replacing their parents despite the fact that they do not agree with them) that their effect is maximized and thus rendered even more detrimental. 

[thejerksdigest]

The day the cut my balls I became a man

Unless you have something to show for the harsh decisions of life, you are nothing but a talker. Talkers are fine for a while, but they eventually show everyone how useless their nature really is and how void their words, with no actions attached, turn out to be. Today I had my balls cut off my a medical professional to leave once and for all  what is known as “the talkers camp” and start my slow ascent in the world of doers. 

Simple enough, the point I strive towards making here is the fact that personal responsibility, what makes a man a man and a woman a woman, needs be built in executed decisions. Theory gets you there, (It would be a major lack of character not to acknowledge that I have stepped on the shoulders of giants before me to make this and other informed decisions), but theory is not enough. 

I had my balls disconnected from the rest of my body because simply talking about not wanting kids falls short of making that the reality. The fact that I consider making new life a moral aberration, and the unnecessary creation of more suffering, needed to be met with a firm action. The terms I outline here are not hyperbolic or misplaced. This is one of my core understandings, and just like any religious person honors the teachings of their dogma, I must honor my principles to do right by my ideas.  

I became a man because I made a statement not through words but through actions. I have to answer to no one but myself (my toughest judge) and I am pleased to inform that the verdict is overwhelmingly positive. 

I became I man because I went against the tide of norms and impositions to stand up for the responsible thing to do. 

I became a man because I spared a world of suffering, anguish and ailments to someone I was probably bound to love eternally (and yes, this is a worst case scenario and that alone should be enough to make anyone reconsider bringing life into being).

I became a man because I did what was right, not what was common, usual, or expected.  

[thejerksdigest]

Hard To Love A Man: Magnolia Electric Co.

"Hard To Love A Man" (by Jason Molina)

It was hard to love a man like you Goodbye was half the words you knew While you was waiting for me not to call I sent my love  In a life built out of only goodbye Is there even room for you to try While you was waiting for me not to call I sent my love  It was hard to love a man like you Goodbye is just what you do In a life built out of only goodbye is there even room for you  While you was waiting for me not to call I sent my love 

[thejerksdigest]

like coming out of prison. Frank Lucas style

[thejerksdigest]

She's Got You

Fuck Patsy Cline. 

“the cheaper the wine the deeper the introspection” 

i read that on a bathroom wall 

along with “whiskey blossoms when you feed it tears”

and some bullshit like that

you come back, often, to the starting line

and no matter how much time has passed 

it manages to feel the same, like the 90s music that refuses to show signs of aging

smile if you ever get there, remember it was no easy trail 

you earned it, probably, so act like it 

make sure you write things down before you forget it 

i did

i used the bathroom wall 

[thejerksdigest]

that Jesus guy took me a while, but I nailed him and his dad soon enough

[thejerksdigest]

Infinite Dave

This will, more likely than not, become a collection of Infinite Jest quotes for the next month or so. 

“Legs which not even orange Keds with purple-glitter-encrusted laces could make unserious”

[thejerksdigest]

coming home

Classic mistake right? you were thinking Thanksgiving is the perfect occasion to use your last days off and go smell the freshly baked brownies on the house where you spent half your life when you were young. 

You’ll take the time, go the miles, even bake until chocolate fills up your nostrils but, somehow, you’ll forget the most important fact of all: you wont enjoy it. 

You are coming home hoping to give artificial life to memories that are long gone with people who are exactly the same,  which is more an obstacle an less a way to ease into the past. Arguments and yelling will ensue right after greetings are handed out like drinks at a party. That stands out though, everyone drinks more and more openly. 

The things that bother them about you and those which bothered you about them are all still there, just waiting to be dusted when you pull out the oven tray that always holds the turkey. 

You are the same too, and no amount of histrionics and fake smiles can overpower the fact that through the years you were all so different it is a marvel that you ever gave the appearance of getting along.You dont hate them and they probably dont hate you either, it’s just that there is no understanding and what little there was before you left for college is probably long gone. 

Do not act surprised. You knew this could happen, that the odds were high and stacked against a peaceful time. They are your family, they made you the emotional fuck up that you are. How do you think they pulled that off? it wasn’t witchcraft, although you seldom guessed it. It was leading by example. 

[thejerksdigest]

why would you?

Why would start an argument you know you cannot win? It almost goes against nature to put yourself in a position of weakness, even if its logical and argumentative weakness and your life is not really at stake. 

Why not treat the mind just as we would the body when it comes to such affairs? Do we not care enough about learning and improving that we go about just spitting out shit with no regard for useful feedback? Does the ability to measure up one’s opponents is biologically restricted to telling who would beat us up in fight but not in rational discussion?

I have no patience at all for petty arguments of how little or how much you imagine things to matter. I do not wish to go into how flawed your notions really are, not because mine are better or more valid, but because it is time and words just going down the drain with no lasting effect in your worldview. If you are hellbent on not changing your mind and your actions when new, probably better, evidence comes along then you, my darling, are a waste of time.

To top it all off I cannot really tell you this because it would be too much to understand, because i’d have to hold you hand through every sentence and you’d still wouldn’t get half of it. Let’s face it, you are not as bright as I need you to be to get this. It is pointless to try and explain something on your level of mental complexity to someone on a different level.

That just leaves us with a fucking lifetime of misunderstandings and  dead end fights that evolve into emotional meltdowns for which, more often than not, I will have to apologize. 

Unbelievable 

[thejerksdigest]

been there, done that, got the t-shirt

[thejerksdigest]

the holidays are here

Having just imbibed 1750 milliliters of the worst apple cider made above the equator I am declaring the holiday season open. It used to be that smooth Noche Buena beer until some other company bought it and changed the recipe to turn it into dark foamy piss. 

The race is on for how many of the drinking binges ahead of us can be blamed on the holiday spirit, but by mid november, meaning next week, everyone will be the wiser and the overall  mood of society will once again hide our drunken shortcomings.  Enjoy the Christmas weeks. 

[thejerksdigest]

thoughts on the Halloween costume Yale conundrum

After reading this piece on the Atlantic and familiarizing myself with the topic, as best as one can do from lengthy internet reporting, I cannot help but weep for the future generations. 

This episode, in which students feel desecrated because a teacher questioned the need for censorship from within Yale’s administrative body,  adds to the growing number of cases that take place in universities, which should be the quintessential location for debate given that they are “adult forming” enterprises. 

It is ever more common to hear or read about a college board, formed either by faculty or students, selecting which comedians are politically correct enough for the community or a group of youngsters asking for trigger warnings on classical literature even to the point of refusing to read something they might find offensive. 

This cannot go on. Colleges and universities are meant to prepare people for real time, life changing controversies and problem solving. Teaching them to seek shelter in pretending to be deaf to what challenges their values is the fastest way to root out into the world and entire generation of intransigent, indefensible and feeble morons. 

No one in their right, liberal and democratic mind would ask or defend intolerance and exclusion as means to move forward with adult life. But the fact that people have been figuring this out and dealing with it themselves, even often facing damaging consequences, is prove enough that it can be done. Talk, discuss, debate and let your arguments be heard for the best ideas to arise from a rich and nutritive discussion, dont just shout out your position and expect the world  to accept the premises as indisputable laws of science. Society is build on many layers of agreements and manageable dissonance, you are helping fuck all if you think your views deserve  more recognition because they are neutral, meager in depth and voted by an assembly of PC mindless soldiers. 

Do yourself and everyone around you a favor and try reading or watching something you are in complete disagreement with. Be uncomfortable for 30 minutes and you will soon find, provided you are actually getting a formal academic education while at school, that your feelings of discomfort can lead you to build a comprehensive set of sentences of why things that are wrong are that way. 

Use those sentences to debate, provided that they are teaching you how to do that as well, and accept basic notions of logic and ethics to decide if your argument is flawed, if it is correct or if it can be nourished by the other side’s position. 

In other words, grow the fuck up.

[thejerksdigest]

The injunction to ‘look on the bright side’ should be greeted with a large dose of both scepticism and cynicism. To insist that the bright side is always the right side is to put ideology before the evidence. Every cloud, to change metaphors, may have a silver lining, but it may very often be the cloud rather than the lining on which one should focus if one is to avoid being drenched by self-deception. Cheery optimists have a much less realistic view of themselves than do those who are depressed.

David Benatar, Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence

[thejerksdigest]

Our friends say it's darkest before the sun rises We're pretty sure they're all wrong

The Mountain Goats

[thejerksdigest]

the green inferno

I’ve dabble into movie reviews in the past, so here are a few bullets on Eli Roth’s The Green Inferno.

The setup is a bunch of students that think activism consists of social media attention to causes they know very little of. The prestige turns out to be their violent descent into the heart of human savagery where such causes exist but have little to no salvation.

Half way through the film, as the so called activists read they are trending on Twitter after streaming their protest against Amazonian deforestation, you cant help but think “these kids  really deserve to get it”. Just then, like a demonic answer to you prayers, the start dying one by one. From the R.R Martinesque departures that you never expected to the long awaited scenes of violent humanity, the students get what’s coming to the them, in the words of Roth himself : punishment for their bullshit. 

The amazonian tribe that runs into them starts eating the bunch but thankfully, after a rather fake looking sacrificial rite, they cook and spice their death meat. After all they are not savages. Except for when they munch on the guy, while he’s still alive, who shoved marijuana down one of his friends corpse in order to get the natives high when they cooked the body. Yes, that sentence is a precise description with no hyperbole. 

One of the girls, imprisoned, after having watched his friends murder and chopped into bit size pieces, has the high handedness to say she is vegan when offered meat by the tribesmen. Eli Roth just nails the obnoxiousness again and again.  

The movie is a rather cheap tribute to Cannibal Holocaust, the 70s italian flick that had to be re-staged in court to prove it was not an actual snuff film. Maybe it is the fastest way to a gore cult classic, but what it is not, it’s time well spent.