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As you know, I exist to enlighten you heathens from the bullshit that lies amid the fucked-up swill that is the New Age and self-help movement. (Doesn’t the phrase “New Age” make you want to throw up a little? I can barely type it without losing my breakfast into my laptop. Ditto “self-help.” Fuck that.) My modus operandi is a little like decorating a golden brick with lotus flowers and then smashing your brains out with it. Whatever works, that’s my motto, even if it requires reconstructive brain surgery afterward. Whatever. It’s your brain, not mine. You asked for enlightenment, right?

Today’s topic: your thoughts create your reality. Change your thoughts, change your life!

If there wasn’t some truth to this, why would you be reading a bitch like me?

But here’s the problem: far more often than creating something empowering from this concept, people use it to punish themselves.  They say, “Oh, well, this shitty dumbass thing happened to me, so I must have created it.  I am a bad person for creating this bad thing in my life!”  Or they say, “I had a desire to slip an overdose of laxatives into that arrogant prick’s morning coffee today, so I must not be a loving person. Oh no! I must control my thoughts!”   Or, “I’m feeling shitty, and I had all these bad thoughts about myself, so I need to clench my butt cheeks and think only happy-Oprah* thoughts!”

Notice a thread here?  Control.   It’s all about control, people.

Yes, your thoughts do have an effect on you and on your life. But you can’t control them. You can’t control your emotions, either. Most of the time we can’t even control our bodies. I know how my body reacts when a spandex-clad** aging crooner starts singing “Feelings.”  Can’t control it.  And it isn’t pretty. (That sound you’re hearing now?  Ever hear a cat about to throw up?  ulp.ulp.ulp.ulp.  You hear it and you know what’s coming and there’s no way in hell to stop it.  Splat!  It’s a little like that, times about a thousand.)

Here’s an experiment to show you that you can’t control your thoughts.  Ready?  Okay:  do not think about red monkeys.  Do. Not. Think about red monkeys.

You can’t think about anything BUT red monkeys right now, can you?  There’s fucking red monkeys ALL OVER THE PLACE.  See?  And trying to NOT think about something only makes that thing more present.  Go play this with someone else and have some fun.

Do you know why you like The Bitch? Because I don’t try to control my thoughts. They are the same thoughts that you have and don’t admit to having—and you laugh because you’re seeing that they’re not so bad after all. (Though hopefully you’re not thinking about spandex men singing “Feelings”. Then you’d really be kind of fucked up and I’m not sure I want to know you.)

This isn’t to say that we’re helpless peons at the unholy mercy of our fucked-up thoughts and feelings. Of course there is choice and free will and all that.

But you want to know a secret?  Lean in a little closer.

If someone tells you to control yourself – or your thoughts – they are trying to control you.

Oh fuck, I don’t mean the Vulcan Mind Meld or anything.  No one is trying to turn you into a fucking robot.  But asking you, expecting you, to change your thoughts is a subtle form of control.

It’s brainwashing, people. Wipe you clean, ma’am?  If you can get people to try to do something impossible, like controlling the uncontrollable, of course they’ll come back time and again asking for more help and advice. Side of fries with that brainwash?  And you give them your power, willingly, because you feel like a failure.  You buy into the idea that you need to put away a part of yourself in order to feel accepted.  You try and you try and you try, failing every time (because you’re trying to do the impossible), and every time wondering what more you could have done.  You give away more and more of your own power every time you do this.

The bitch does not want your power. I totally deserve your worship, but only because I’m helping you become enlightened. No one deserves your power.  No one except you.  I help you find your own inner Bitch, and for that I of course have your undying endless gratitude.  Also you can send money.

Back to the whole “you create your own reality” thing. Does the Bitch disagree with that concept? Of course not. Look at the reality I’m creating for you right here. No spandex, for one thing.  Freedom of thought and expression.  Feel how good it is to call me a bitch?  Go on, say it.  You know you want to.  And then say “fuck.”  Right out loud.  And then say, “I am perfect.”  (Because you know I am.)(And more importantly, I know I am.)

But even though my words say something else, the Bitch isn’t about ego. The Bitch is about honesty, about calling things for what they are, and about having fun at the same time. That’s my reality.

What’s yours?

*That’s the thin Oprah, obviously.

**Yet another type of control.  And while a nice pair of Spanx cures a lot of ills, nothing can make “Feelings” palatable.

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So for my first meme, I call it a success: no one guessed successfully, although you certainly tried hard. I find it amusing that most of you thought that my past involved either jail or anti-depressants. But let’s just say that while every single answer has a basis in reality, none of them are true.

I received a plea from Matthew asking to be tagged on this. So I therefore tag Matthew. Go and have a look at his site; it’s satisfyingly bizarre.

Anybody else? It’s not too late.

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OMFG.

That was my response upon learning the Bitch had been tagged.  For a meme.  You think the Bitch is above such things?  You would be absolutely correct. Not at all.  The Bitch is a Joiner.  Plays Well With Others.  In fact, if you want YOUR BLOG to be included in a list of links here at New Age Bitch, and I wholeheartedly (or is that coldheartedly…?) recommend that you leave your info in a comment and the Bitch will see to it that your site appears on the list.

We’re exclusive here, but not that exclusive.  Meaning, if you’re here and you’ve read this far it’s presumed that you’ve already transcended at least a minimal level of awareness and appreciation.

Who is it that had the amazing gall to tag New Age Bitch for a meme?  Blogger Dad.  Read his answers here.  And then proceed at your own risk.  Except we’re going to play this a little differently (you knew that was going to happen, didn’t you?).  You’ll have to pick out the correct answers yourself.

Where Were You Ten Years Ago?

a.  In jail.

b.  Driving a mini van to soccer.

c.  Somewhere in India, on an ashram.

d.  Seriously considering Prozac.

What’s on Your To Do List Today?

a.  Piss people off, kick an old lady in the shins, and jaywalk.

b.  Swallow my tongue.

c.  Experience Inbox Zero for at least 2.7 minutes.

d.  Levitate.

What If You Were A Billionaire?

a.  What makes you think I’m not?

b.  What if we all just got along?  Let’s start with a nice big group hug, okay?

c.  I would mail everyone I know a check for a dollar.

d.  I would buy all the cans of creamed corn in existence and store them in my basement.

Five Places You Have Lived?

a.  Jail.  See question #1.

b.  In my head.

c.  California.  See a, and b.

d.  Define “lived”.

f.  Earth?

Three Bad Habits?

a.  None.  The Bitch has no bad habits.

b.  None.  What are YOU looking at??!

c.  None.  Sex addictions don’t count, right?

d.  None.  Fuck you!

Snacks You Like?

a.  Salty-crunchy.

b.  Sweet.

c.  Dairy-creamy-sweet.

d.  Wait, are we talking about food here?

Who Will You Tag?

a.  That’s for me to know and you to find out.

b.  That’s a little like picking favorites, isn’t it?  Either that or creating punishments.  Fuck that.  The Bitch doesn’t do either.  Tell you what.  If you want to do this meme, do it.  Send me an email and I’ll be sure to mention you and link to your post somewhere prominent.   Deal?  Because I just don’t want to deal with the crying and the disappointment.

The end.

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Last night I attended a free talk by some healer-person shilling for her new book.  She presented herself as having developed this “revolutionary” new healing method, and after droning uncomfortably on about it for an hour (note to public speakers:  connecting with your audience is actually important! please take note!), she opened up the floor for questions.

Q:  O guru healer-person in whom I am blindly and unthinkingly placing all my trust and faith, how can we mere ignorant mortals apply this revolutionary new amazing healing method in our own lives please oh please?

A:  That’s going to be in my second book.*

Q:  Oh, but healer-guru, we are here now and you talked about empowering ourselves, and we really really want to know what we can do to apply this revolutionary new amazing healing method in our own lives please oh please?

A:  Chapter 8 in my book [glancing over at the table stacked ceiling-high with copies of said book] has some exercises that I stole from Osho.  You can do those.  Basically, shake and scream for awhile and then you can go to a place of inner stillness.

Q:  WTF?

Q:  Okay, guru-person, we are getting restless now.  You made a promise.  You were going to tell us how to heal ourselves.  How, o how, can we do that?

A:  Meditate.

Q:  That’s it?   Meditate?

A:  Yup.

[This is where they stormed the stage and bore the guru-person off on a rail while they shouted something about stabbing her in the chakras.  It got sort of ugly.]

Meditation. It’s billed as a panacea, something that will cure every ill and imbalance.  You.Must.Meditate.

But … what is meditation, exactly?

Most people view meditation as a sort of struggle.  Calming the monkey mind.  Cultivating stillness, inside and out, so as to eradicate every thought.  KILL THE THOUGHTS!!  BANISH THOUGHTS FROM YOUR MIND!  MAKE YOUR MIND EMPTY!!

Fuck that.  That’s almost impossible.  And trying to do it sets you up for all sorts of judgments (I am having thoughts!  I FAIL meditation!  I am a baaaaad person!), resentments (FUCK meditation!), and disconnects you from what you’re trying to accomplish, which is self-awareness.

Let me say that again:  meditation is simply a way to gain self-awareness.  It’s not supposed to be anything other than that.

By observing yourself without judgment, you learn about the patterns of response and reaction that habitually come up for you.

So what is meditation?  Observation.  Nothing more, and nothing less.  It’s a keen observation of yourself on every level—physical, emotional, and intellectual—and completely without judgment.

And it can be done anywhere, under any condition.  There are no “rules” to meditation.  You don’t need to sit on a special bench or cushion.  You don’t need incense.  You don’t need a fucking temple bell to tell you when to start and stop.  You can do those things if it helps, but there are no requirements.  None.  You can meditate at any time and in any place and in any manner by which you are willing to objectively observe yourself.

Now we’ll open the floor up for questions.

Q:  Sex?  During sex?

A:  Whoa, slow down there!  Well, yes.  ONLY if you can do it so that you can objectively observe yourself while you are otherwise, uh, engaged.  But dude.  If the idea excites you so much that it’s your first question out of the starting gate, there’s probably something in the experience for you.  So go for it.  I’m not sure I’d want to be your partner, but whatever.

Q:  What about breathing?  I heard that meditation is about breathing.

A:  Of course.  Breathing is important.  (Forget to breathe for long enough and you’ll be dead, which makes the whole meditation thing kind of pointless.  Way to get out of meditating!)  The way you breathe not only says a lot about you but it also affects how you move energy through your body.  And since the ultimate way of experiencing anything is through the physicality that is your body, your experiences are going to be affected by your breath.  So when meditating, one of the things you will be observing is, naturally, your breath.

Q:  But … HOW should I meditate?  Can I read about it?  Tell me all the answers, guru-person!

A:  Number one, I’m not your guru, so stop it.  I’m your bitch.  Number two, yes, you can read all about meditation all over the place, but DON’T GET CAUGHT UP IN THE FUCKING RULES.  Reading about something like meditation naturally opens you up for asking stupid questions like, “Am I doing this right?”

• Meditation shouldn’t hurt.

If you’re not comfortable, don’t do it.  Stop and get comfortable.  Try to get comfortable enough that you can move beyond thinking about how comfortable you are, but there’s no reason to try to get past the pain or to breathe into the pain because hello, the pain shouldn’t be there.

• Give yourself time.

Think about meditation as a gift you are giving yourself.  It’s the one time when you can access some inner stillness.  But be patient; the stillness doesn’t happen overnight, and it can take time to get to that point especially if you continue to fight with yourself.  But just having a quiet half-hour to yourself can be an enormous gift.  Allowing yourself the freedom to let that time develop as it will, not caring if, for instance, you use it to plan the next day’s menu or to write an important email in your head, is part of that gift.  Judging yourself for failing that day’s meditation just lets you feel shitty about yourself in yet one more way.  Who needs that?

• Meditation will change your life.

Seriously.  If you let it, anyway.  Stuff will come up, so be prepared.  No one said this was going to be easy.  Stuff will come up, and you’ll look at it.  The end.  No need for judgments.  And if you start judging yourself for moving back into old patterns and crappy-feeling emotions, oh well.  Clear the slate and start over next day.

But if you make it a regular part of your life, you’ll see change.  (Hell, you’ll change even without meditating, but that’s up for discussion another day.)  You’ll get to know yourself.  You’ll move on down your spiritual path, whatever that is and wherever that takes you.  It’s totally fucking work but it’s totally fucking worth it.  So do it.

And?  The Bitch meditates daily.  And we all know you want to be more like the Bitch.

*No lie.  WTF??  After all this build-up about “personal empowerment” and “revolutionary healing method that’s going to heal the earth and change the world” you’re saying you havent even yet GOTTEN TO THAT PART?  You suck.

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Oprah totally screwed me over once.  Damn her.

It was the Gratitude Journal.  Are you familiar with this concept?  Let me tell you how it works.  Every day, before you go to bed, you write down in a special little book all the stuff you are grateful for that day.  You write and write and write every day, filling page after page with all the stuff that happens to you each and every day that you are grateful for.  If you do this, the idea is that you’ll be concentrating on all the “good” stuff in your life. Your friend Mr. Law of Attraction says that as ye sow, so shall ye reap (which loosely translated means “you get what you put out”), so if you are squinching your eyes tight shut and repeating “I am grateful for my shitty life I am grateful for my shitty life I am grateful for my shitty life” then guess what?  You get exactly what you ask for.  Yes!  More shitty life for you!

When you finally gather the strength to admit to yourself that you’re not really all that happy about some of the elements of your shitty life, and you’re not particularly grateful for your shitty life (in fact you might even be a little pissed off about it), then all you really have left is to feel guilt for not feeling grateful for your shitty life.  Not only are you forced to admit to yourself that you indeed have a shitty life, but you now get to feel guilty about not feeling gratitude for your own shit.

Double whammy.

Thanks, Oprah.  Here’s a double dish of my shitty life* for you.

The Bitch made it through two pages of her own personal Gratitude Journal, pages which still reek of denial and hypocrisy even today, years and years later.  Two pages before she gave it up.

Gratitude.  It’s great in concept, but it really sucks when it’s used as something to create even more guilt.  Like you need more guilt.

The thing is, we get sucked into feeling like we should be grateful for the stuff in our lives, even the stuff we’re sort of on the fence about.  Maybe it’s not outright shitty, but it smells a little.  We trick ourselves into thinking that if only we felt grateful enough for it, this ambivalence would magically clear itself up and we could feel good about this maybe-shitty-maybe-not stuff in our lives.

“But Bitch,” I can hear you whining in the background, a persistent little drone of uncertainty, “I really DO feel grateful for a lot of the stuff in my life, really I do!  Maybe not all of it, but some!  Can’t I be grateful for that?  Don’t I get Jebus Points for all my good stuff that I really feel good about?”

Sure you do.

But how do you know the difference between the truly good stuff and all that other stuff that you’ve been training yourself to feel good about?

How do you tell the difference? Especially when you’ve taught yourself to feel guilty when you doubt your own inner voice?

Yo.  I told you before that The Bitch has access to the Eternal Book of Everything, so here’s a little wee page from that book, just for you:

If it feels good, it is good.

See?  Simple.

The trick (and there’s always a trick, isn’t there?) is knowing what is “good.”

Here’s what good is not:

1.  Good is not what your mother told you it was.

2.  Good is not what you read in a book.

3.  Good is not what your friend told you.

4.  Good is not what the Dead Ghost of Baby Jebus rose up from the foot of your bed one night and told you.

5.  Good is what you yourself know it to be.  What you examine inside and out, what you doubt all the ways you know how, what you take a good hard look at any way you can just inside yourself and consulting no one else, not even The Bitch, and come out the other side still feeling really good about.

That is good.

And you are, each of you, capable of knowing what good is, and what to be grateful for, and what not to be.  Each of you knows this if you only stop asking around, asking Oprah and asking your next-door neighbor who you suspect may be getting Oxycontin in the mail and asking your dentist with the slightly oniony breath and smooth firm fingers and asking your spouse lying there making an impression on the pillow next to you and asking your kids your dog your brother your shaman your Eckhart Tolle your Twitter your reflection in the mirror asking anybody except you. Because you are the only one who knows what good is and what to be grateful for.

So fucking trust yourself.

The end.

P.S. When and if you are truly sure that there is something in your life that is good and you feel truly good about feeling grateful for that thing, go ahead and write it down if you still feel like you need to.  Frankly, though, after getting to that point of knowing what’s good, you’ve already done all the “work” and a silly little Gratitude Journal isn’t going to make it any better than you’ve already made it all by yourself.

You didn’t need Oprah after all.

*The Bitch does not have a shitty life.  Not any more.  Matter of perspective.  The Bitch has created every inch and centimeter of her life and it’s very, very good except when dealing with a technical crisis, in which case The Bitch allows a slight tinge of whine to come into her voice before consulting her cat.

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“Sorry.”

I hate that word.

It’s a beautiful word, when said in sincerity, but frankly the meaning has become fucked up.  No one means what they say.  It’s rote, routine.  Meaningless.

I no longer accept it.  I am done, finished, finito, kaput.  C’est tout.

Instead, you can just say what you mean:  “Fuck you, bitch!  I totally meant to pull out in front of you in traffic today because YOU SUCK!  And I’m just generally pissed off!  For no apparent reason!  And apologizing seems to placate you!  And saying it makes me socially acceptable instead of being seen as the fucktard asshat I really am!”

There.  Doesn’t that feel better?  Say what you mean.  It’s all there anyway, why hide it?

You know what REALLY pisses me off?  Parents who forcibly make their kids apologize.  “Johnny, tell Aunt Mimi you’re sorry for scuffing her floor with your shoe!”

Johnny’s not sorry because Johnny had no idea he did anything wrong.  Even if he had asked Aunt Mimi why she is so fat he was doing nothing more than being a kid.   A curious kid.  A kid who wasn’t issued a copy of the Holier-than-Thou Manual of Grownup Social Mores and is clueless about having done something wrong.  And even if he did something that he knows is wrong, like, say, breaking one of Aunt Mimi’s 12,000 Precious Moments figurines, why humiliate the kid?

True Story?

Try to imagine The Bitch at age 4.  Tiny Bitch.  Like most really really smart kids, Tiny Bitch is a little socially retarded.  Not a lot of friends at age 4.

So Tiny Bitch is out front in the driveway washing her tricycle, the green one that was a step up from the tiny red one.  Its almost time for a two-wheeler with training wheels, but not quite.  All Tiny Bitch has is her tricycle, and she’s fucking proud of it.  Mom and Dad wash their car, so why not wash that tricycle?  The garden hose is handy for that sort of thing.

Here comes Prissy, the 3-year old baby next door.  Tiny Bitch knows Prissy is a bit of a weenie and a baby, so she doesn’t usually do more than ignore her.  But Prissy is interested in the tricycle-washing process.  It’s fascinating, really, this idea of washing one’s tricycle.

So Prissy comes back over pushing her own tricycle.

Tiny Bitch has warmed up a bit to Prissy by this point and is feeling magnanimous.  Handling a garden hose in the warm sunshine can have that effect.  Tiny Bitch is feeling so magnanimous, in fact, that she wants to help Prissy wash her tricycle.  Tiny Bitch and Prissy, they’re bonding now.  Over tricycles.  And a garden hose.  It’s really quite a beautiful thing, this thing they’ve got going.

Prissy isn’t very good with the hose.  She accidentally sprays Tiny Bitch a tiny, wee bit.  Tiny Bitch thinks this is funny.  After all, she’s the one who makes real pies out of dirt and mud sometimes; why wouldn’t playing with water out there in the warm sunshine also be fun?

Tiny Bitch takes the hose.

She sprays Prissy with it, a lot.  Tiny Bitch is laughing because she knows Prissy knows how much fun this is.  It’s warm outside and they have bonded in the sunshine.  With the tricycles.  And the hose.

Prissy’s laughter stops.  Her face gets red and twisted.  She looks funny.  She runs away.

Tiny Bitch finishes washing her tricycle, alone.  She wonders where Prissy went.

Mom comes out, her lips pressed in a white line.  She grabs Tiny Bitch by the arm, just above the elbow.  It almost hurts.  She makes Tiny Bitch walk up to the door of Prissy’s house, the house next door.  Tiny Bitch has never been to that door and she is feeling scared, a little.  The door opens.  An angry lady stands there, waiting for something.  Mom tells Tiny Bitch to say some words and she says them.  Robot.  A scared robot.

Then Tiny Bitch has to put her tricycle away, and the hose.  She knows she will never be washing her tricycle again.  But what happened?  They were having fun.

And yeah, The Bitch has gotten over it, thanks for asking.

“Sorry?”  Nine times out of ten, maybe more, it means shit.

Someone dies?  We say “sorry.”  As if that could possibly convey the enormous amount of grief and pain people feel at such times.  And hell, maybe we’re not actually sorry, maybe the guy was an asshole and there’s this sense of relief (mixed with shock, dismay, and a distorted reminder of one’s own mortality) that he’s not going to be telling his stupid blonde jokes in the office anymore, but we can’t say that.  It isn’t “done.”

We also say sorry for running out of potato chips.  Or for stepping on someone’s foot accidentally.  Or for running over their cat.  See any problem with this meaningless one-size-fits-all word?

I do.  And I’m over it.

Say what you mean and mean what you say.  Simple.  And don’t fucking apologize to me unless you mean it.

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Well, this is a bitch-slap in the face.  This personality test is clearly fucked.  Turns out it thinks I am a fucking Hippie.  There’s no way.  Sociopath, maybe.  Smartass, for sure.  Bitch-slap?  But of course.  But … Hippie?  Here:

[I]t stands to reason that you, as well, are terribly gentle and humble, almost to the point of revulsion. Your carefree attitude of peace and harmony is probably very, very sickening to realists or cynics or anyone who isn’t a hippie, to tell the truth. In short, your personality is defective because you are overly emotional, extroverted, gentle, and humble–thus making you an annoying hippie.

Fuck.  “Gentle”?  Blowing my cover here.  But surely an online personality quiz is far more meaningful than self-knowledge.  I can base my whole life path on online quizzes.

Now take the fucking test and report back.

*Yes, I do mean literally.  What else would I mean?

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Vigilante vegetarians fucking crack me up.

They’re all, “I don’t eat anything with eyelashes!” and then they force-feed us pictures of sad Bambi-eyed creatures destined for the slaughterhouse.  These people claim they believe in non-violence, yet have you seen how violently they thrust those dangerous pamphlets at you?  Dude!  Those things are dangerous!  A corner could put somebody’s eye out.  Or cause a paper cut.  Non-violence MY ASS.

Another thing.  Vegetarians, veg-what are they called?  Oh.  Vegans (whatEVERR).  Those people.  The ones who patronizingly refuse to eat the food “God”* clearly put here for us to dominate and exploit?  They seem to be missing the larger point.

Everything is alive.

That means that salad you’re so condescendingly consuming, thinking you’re doing a Good Deed for Mother Gaia by only eating non-animal things, is alive.  Alive and has a consciousness.  Are you okay with that?  Can you live with yourself?  You’re okay with killing the potential grandchildren of heads of lettuce?  Ew!  You eat HEADS??!  EWWWW!

There are two options:

1.  Become a breatharian.

Come on, it’s fucking real.  You could live on air and light if you were enlightened enough.  Not yet ready to give up Krispy Kremes?  Read on.

2.  Do what the Bitch does.

Don’t give a fuck.

Everything is alive and everything has a consciousness.  So what?  For centuries people killed stuff and ate it.  They were grateful.  They acknowledged that they were taking a life, taking the energy of what they ate.  They knew they were taking the energy of whatever they consumed into their bodies.  Or they killed stuff and ate it and weren’t grateful.  It didn’t make a difference. Everything is alive and everything is energy.  Energy is energy is energy.

Sue, you’ll probably FEEL a whole lot better if you eat real food, acknowledge its aliveness, and hold that in gratitude.  Animals do.  We don’t see them on their knees praying, but who decided what gratitude looks like?  Being present is one of the highest forms of gratitude there is.

And if you want to stalk your neighborhood with a crossbow so you can bag your neighbor’s cat (or better yet that yapping little ankle-biter dog-in-a-handbag-thing next door), so be it.  I’ll look the other way.  As long as you’re grateful.

The important thing is to be at peace with your hypocrisy.  The Bitch is.

Oh, I know what you’re thinking.  You’re thinking about extrapolating this and talking about war and shit.  For the record, war sucks.  It ruins lives, kills people needlessly, and just, well, sucks.  In the larger scheme though it’s no big deal.  We live, we die, sometimes peacefully, sometimes horribly, but we always die.  And then we get to do it again.  That’s a sort-of comforting thought for those who believe it, but if you’re into thinking this is an existentialist one-shot deal, One Life to Live and then BANG you’re dead and cold and decomposing, well, then life sort of sucks for you.  It also sucks if you think it’s all angels and fucking harps and virgins all day, because dude.  BORING.  One virgin, you’ve fucked them all, basically.  Who wants that all day long, every day, into eternity?  It’s WAY more fun thinking life is a fucking GAME and we’re here to PLAY and shit.

So taking that further, animals and bugs don’t really much care when you kill them either.  Sure, what bug LIKES getting squished, but if you’re tapped into Bug Central you pretty much know you’re part of the oneness of everything and eventually it all sorts out again.  No big deal.  Again, that’s in the Big Picture, and though meanwhile Bambi’s there looking at you and your shotgun with liquid, imploring eyes, thinking about how much it’s going to fucking HURT when you shoot him and Thumper, you can ignore that.  Bambi does that to fuck with you.  Can you live with the memory of his accusing eyes burned into your retinas?

Then go ahead and shoot.

P.S. The Bitch is a vegetarian.

*we are all “God”, so this is moot, but whatever.

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Fuck.  You think you know me but you don’t.  How could you?  I’ve been a total cock tease.  But you don’t know me at all.  So here’s another piece:

Although I’m far from routine and I love change and creation, there’s a certain beauty in efficiency.  I read a LOT of blogs.  And I’ve established a useful routine to quickly get a glimpse at what I’m looking at whenever I check out a blog I haven’t seen before (by the way, leave me a link to yours and I’ll be sure to stop by; the more interesting your comment is, the faster I’ll beat a path to you and whatever it is you offer):

1.  Theme.

Is it navigable?  Is it predictable? (please give me something that sets you apart!)  Do I like the colors or are they, frankly, boring?  What can I tell about you from the header?  (for instance, are you a dime-a-dozen stab-me-in-the-eye-because-you’re-boring-as-hell-when-you-talk-about-that-cute-thing-your-kid-said mommyblogger? I can spot you and your custom header a mile away.  If that’s not you, carry on.)  Is your site cluttered up with every badge and ad known to the universe?

I know you’re proud of your blog, but look at it from the eye of someone who doesn’t care about you.  Like me.

Oh, and if you are still using Blogger, you’re an amateur.  I won’t even mention MySpace (without suppressing my gag reflex).

2.  Writing Quality

Fuck, people, this goes without saying, but…spell-check your fucking posts! And learn something about grammar!  Not sure where to put your commas, if at all?  Not sure what a run-on sentence is and if you commit them?  Don’t know what a sentence looks like that you end a preposition with?  Then LOOK IT UP, PEOPLE!  Before you put yourself out there be sure you are delivering a quality product.

[eye roll]

Which leads me to the writing itself.  You can have lovely spelling and dainty little-finger-lifted grammar, but boring is boring is boring.  Is boring.  Seriously.  You would not BELIEVE the huge number of fucking abhorrent eye-bleeds of blogs that clutter up the wasteland that is teh innernets*.  Don’t be that.  Learn to write a sentence, a paragraph, that’s compelling.  One that makes people want to read the next one, and the next.

You can practice here.  And you can read this.  Don’t like those?  There are only a zillion other examples of really good writing out there.  Find some and study them.  Take bits and make them your own.  And practice.  Pretend you don’t know your story and are stumbling onto it for the first time.  Write for the person who doesn’t know you.  Or care.  Like me.

Make me care.

Oh, and for those who snivel, “I’m only writing for myself so it doesn’t matter!”, YOU LIE!!  If you were only writing for yourself then you’d be writing in some spiral-bound blank doodle book with pictures of uber-cute puppies cavorting all over the cover, making little circles over your lower-case i’s and stashing the whole thing under your bed so Mom won’t find out you that went to 3rd base already.  If you were only writing for yourself you wouldn’t be writing a fucking PUBLIC BLOG.  So stop lying to yourself.

3.  About Me

I love breaking rules, especially my own, but you need something somewhere that tells people Who.You.Are.  You need people to care.  But don’t do the whole TMI thing, please.  (Unless that’s your “thing.”  But only make it your “thing” if you’re really really sure you can pull it off.  Otherwise, steer clear of TMI.)

Think about who you are.  You’d think this’d be obvious, but there are tens of thousands of bloggers out there inflicting themselves on the world who have no fucking clue who they are.  And that’s okay in a cute bumbling self-explorative way, but … it gets old.  So allow for change, check in with yourself once in awhile, and show who you are becoming.

Write it down.  I totally go right for the About Me page every single time.  I want to know who I’m dealing with.  I read about the top three posts (unless they’re fucking novels, in which case I scroll down for the punch line and get out before the Tentacle of Blog Boredom slithers through the screen of my Macbook and pulls me in.  No way do I want to get sucked into somebody’s annals of banality), have a look at the blogroll to see who else they read, and then go right for About Me.  So make yours entertaining.  Make me want to comment.

4.  Comments

Everybody knows its a sad sad blog post when the only comment is from Aunt Martha or BFF Jen/Jess/Heather.  Don’t be that.  A hallmark of a good blog is the quality of the comments.  Good bloggers foster a sense of community, or at least enough snark in their responses to make you want to check back and see what they said to yours. Good bloggers also write about stuff that’s interesting enough to generate interesting comments.  So make it easy.  I’l be judging you.

But what about you, Bitch?

Yeah.  What about me.

1.  Where do you live?

In a city of glass, where the homeless root through that day’s recycling.  And there’s wifi.  And sushi.

2.  What’s your real name?

Fuckmenow.  My porn name is Fifi LaBouche.

3.  Were you kidding about your shoe size?

Not at all.

4.  What makes you so special?

I’m little.  Yellow.  Different.

5.  Really?

Of course not.  I’m an anorexic Amazon.  But like I said before, I am like no one you know, and I am like everyone you know.  I just say it out loud.

*irony is in this year.

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Much of what’s included in the vast umbrella of woo-woo loosely called the New Age movement is actually a thinly-veiled attempt at making people feel crappy about themselves.  And it’s pissing me off.  Let’s talk about one now, shall we?

The Old Soul

“Oh, you’re such an old soul!”  or “He knows SO much, he HAS to be an old soul!”

kajsfkfkef,.llkkkkk  (that was the sound of me retching with contempt)

You’ve heard this before.  Old = Better.  Old = Wise.

Strictly and reincarnationally speaking, an “old” soul is someone who’s been around the reincarnational block a few dozen times, with multiple lifetimes to show for it.  But age doesn’t correlate with wisdom, at least not in a linear fashion.  Sure, most chronologically older people, in order to survive that long, have acquired at least some basic common sense skills, but there ARE 60-year old retards out there.  Old people come in all shapes, size, and IQ levels, just as anyone does.

Ergo, old souls = same fucking thing.  NOT necessarily better.  They just have more experience.  Sure, they COULD know better about certain life experiences, having done them before, but all of us are stuck in this same earth-plane funhouse illusion-factory where nothing makes sense and we’re not given any fucking rules or even a map so we have to make up our own.  Every time.

So yeah, I’m [hypothetically] an old soul, but I’m [hypothetically] just as fucked up as you are.

But the thing is, we’re ALL of us pieces of the Same.Thing.  The same universal energy source that is All That Is.  Not only that, but we’re not even pieces!  We just have conveniently fooled ourselves into thinking we’re separate from anything else around us because we’re in these bodies wearing skin that separates us from one another in our minds, but REALLY we are EXACTLY the same as the gum on the soles of our shoes.

So not only is there no separation between any of us but there is no difference, really in soul age.  Old soul, young soul, fuck that.  Time doesn’t exist except in our limited human perception so there’s really no such thing as Old-anything.  ALL souls are equally wise, ALL souls have equal access to the universal energy source that is All That Is, and ALL souls have equal access to whatever rules there are down here, the rules of being human.

There’s no better.

There are just different ways of perceiving.

And just because you can’t truly grasp anybody else’s way of perceiving things, and they can’t truly grasp yours, does not make theirs better.  Or yours.  Just … different.

(Except for me, of course, because I’ve got everything figured out.  But you knew that already.)

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