Tis the season once again. Snow crunches underfoot, slippery sidewalks promise back trouble, holes in shoes are just now realized. How can I forget? Marking the one year anniversary (I think, maybe two actually) of beating Metal Gear Solid Two, I find myself still hesitantly misanthropic. Maybe slightly less hesitant than last year. Alas, any change must be embraced. However, I’d like to take this year’s Christmas reflection out of the realm of Arterial Spray volume one (which I may post later simply for the sake of a point of reference) and into the plane of the metaphysical. About a fifteen minutes ago I finished a nice lengthy entry concerning my thoughts on behaviorism, purpose, and motivation. It’s been a few years since I first left sitidiary and it’s evident that I forgot how fucking god damned buggy this site is (in all fairness it’s probably my campus network). Anyway, as soon as submitted it, a new page loaded to inform me that I had no entries. Out of frustration I grabbed a travel log from a few weeks ago and threw it on there to make it look like I hadn’t been entirely unproductive. Now I type this in MS Word before I copy and paste. But I digress. My contention is simply that it should not be a source of shame and subsequent awkwardness to lack motivation or awareness of one’s purpose in life. Furthermore I believe that nobody is motivated to do anything beyond societal pressures. This of course, does not have to be conventional society, but moreover, one’s environment, physical, social, spiritual, emotional, scatological, the works. This notion comes from the school of thought based in behavioralism that tells us that we are not snowflakes. People are not unique and special; people are products of their environment. It is true that if one can control the environment of another person, one controls what the other perceives and in turn controls the other person. This is not to argue the case of a conspiracy that uses mass media and the selective electronic trafficking of information to keep you in a sustained state of scared apathy, no, that’s another meeting. I am merely suggesting that not one person belongs to himself. We do not make ourselves and therefore cannot possibly understand ourselves without first entirely understanding our environment. It can be reasonably asserted that the most one can hope for is a simple or partial understanding of his own nature. This is why, as Dr. Johnson predicts, that the only works that endure are those that make general statements about human nature. This gives us a common point of departure that adds clarity to the whole mess. Getting back to the point I can only assume that human doubt and uncertainty are perfectly natural and anyone who claims to know unequivocally what his purpose is must be either lying to me or to himself. Nobody can know these things. As I explored in my first draft of this entry that is now lost in RAM somewhere, there are many unanswerable abstract questions behind this discourse that are simply fruitless to pursue. What I do know is that nobody can entirely know one’s self so at best one can only have a good idea of one’s purpose and at best an honest man is only partially motivated. Honest as I am with myself I find that my life lacks direction. I feel I have a reasonable understanding of what makes me me and rather unsettlingly conclude that I am without purpose. Yet if such a thing as providence exists then it is without question that no one can know their karma. Without getting into the idea of God and a divine plan I accept that I am ignorant of any over-arching structure and my place in it (if I have one) and therefore remain ignorant of what I’m “supposed to be doing” provided that there is anyone who indeed supposes. So who does the supposing? Who sets the precedent? Do I have the right to govern myself or should I consider everything that’s made me? Who has the right to expect anything of me? I certainly have expectation of myself in place to promote self preservation and growth to stave off boredom when merely maintaining stasis becomes dull. Yet as for my future, the horizon is cloudy.

If you have any regular day to day contact with me and are unfortunate enough to be privy to some of the details of my existence, you probably know that last Saturday for me held a Modest Mouse concert. All in all I thought the show was excellent and many of the experiences surrounding it seem slightly noteworthy insofar as writing about them is something to stave off the boredom. Saturday dawned dim and shitty, lots of clouds and clusterfucks of snow and hail here and there. A friend from work invited me to take a trip to Grand Rapids with some other friends to visit an anime convention with the main objective being the acquisition of some good hentai for a later viewing party. Always up for some classic tenticoo wape, I acquiesced and took the rear spot in the caravan. Awkward moment 1. When we were determining drivers and passengers I seemed to be the odd man out as the ass to seat ratio was not sufficient to justify my vehicle. Being the newest member of the anime club without any strong established bonds of comradery and unable to leave my car behind in favor of riding with someone else, for from GR I would simply venture south to Detroit, I stood alone on the side designated for "people with cars" with no prospective passengers surrounding me. Fuckers. Awkward moment 2. Since not only Ferris, but the town of Big Rapids seems to have really bad attitude when it comes to snow removal, road conditions could hardly be described as favorable for the ensuing voyage. All four cars made it onto the freeway without incident but about twenty or so miles in, I was faced with a rather unsettling moral quandary. The order broke down like this: Red car (one of the two that knows where we're going), green car (no idea where the fuck we're going), my silver car (take a guess), and white car (other car that knows where we're going). Coming over a rise, the green car in front of me puts on a turn signal and takes a dive to the side of the road. Dun dun dun. Red car didn't notice. Do I stop and help out my fellow anime club-mate while delaying myself and putting the two cars in the group that have no idea where this alleged anime convention is nearly irreparably behind the primary navigational force? Or do I leave him in the hopes that white car will take note and be able to guide him better than I could. Well fuck this shit, I don't feel like getting snow on my pant cuffs. I left green car and took his spot in line, directly behind the shapely rear bumper of red car. It later transpired that white car did stop (as neither of them appeared in my rear view mirror for quite some time) and they both eventually caught up. I really don't want to know how fast they were going to catch up to red car and I who were doing about 80 through slush and Blizzardy treachery (not my choice of speed but again, I don't know where the fuck I'm going). We eventually made it to G-Rap as it is called by the indigenous G-Rapians safe and sound with all limbs and internal organs intact and functioning at optimal capacity. A number of turns brought us to a street on which we parked and from which we walked to aforementioned anime convention. To my surprise, aforementioned anime convention turned out to be more of a house with anime shit in it. Walls were lined with DVD’s, manga, wall scrolls, and action figures. Not wholly disappointing, the store had an item for sale that I had been seeking for some time. The issue was that said item was volume 3 of an anime set that’s apparently long been out of print and was priced such that I could scarcely justify the expenses to the funds that would need to sustain me through the near future’s concert festivities. So, leaving Lain vol. 3 on the shelf I perused the shop while my compatriots skimed manga and wrote down various titles for later download. Three wall scrolls, two action figures, a stack of manga, two sets of cat ears, and three pounds of pocky later, our group tromped out onto the icy sidewalk and trudged into the westward wind, our destination: Yesterdog. Rosy cheeks and translucent breath, we piled into the GR hotdog venue and found a large circular graffiti-laden table in the back. If hot dog venue tables had signs akin to those found in elevators that indicated capacity, this one would surely inform us that we were on the verge of the table equivalent of a cable snap and a plummet to certain doom. Warm butt cheeks overlapped as we all scrunched together and gathered round a mound of hot dogs laden with a wide array of toppings, (not all of them identifiable), and some rather dubious chili. The chili, I remarked as an ice breaker, was reminiscent of certain residue from the internet big nasty Two Girls One Cup. This remark was prompted much gagging, signaling an epic ice breaker failure and surprisingly sparked a series of scat-related side conversations that briefly touched on the BME pain Olympics. After the inevitable question was asked and answered concerning the nature of said Olympics, all big nasty discussion ceased and were replaced by the cry of a fellow anime clubber wrought from joy at the revelation that the breasts of his new action figure were indeed removable. Fucking Japanese. When the conversation hit a lull, with a cheerful heart and a smile on my face, I waved my new friends goodbye and set off for Detroit so that I would be able to make the concert on time. For about two hours the journey passed unremarkably to the sound track of Clutch, Nine Inch Nails, KMFDM, and some other shit I can’t remember. It wasn’t until I could see the looming urbanization of the motor city on the horizon that events became slightly noteworthy, slightly. If you have had the distinct displeasure of riding in a car driven by yours truly for any amount of time, you are most likely aware of my profound lack of navigational skills and a general sense of direction. Ask me to get to any location in Liberty or Vice City and I can do it in record time without the map, but ask me mapqest my way out of a wet paper bag and I’m afraid that I can do naught but disappoint. In my own defense thought, in certain parts of Detroit the veins on the side of my cock would prove a better road map than the shit mapquest gave me. After coming closer than what is generally considered comfortable to a spinning Cadillac directly in front of me (the poor fellow made the mistake of articulating his deliberation over the choice to exit or not to exit through his steering wheel and found himself unforgiven by the Motor City slush) and worming my way through Grosse Pointe, discovering a number of roads that mapquest was unaware lay in my path, as well as dismissing the existence of a number of streets that I fervently believe the internet cartographer simply made up to fuck with its patrons, I reached my Grandmother’s house where it was arranged that I would stop by for dinner before the show, and sleep afterwards. What awaited me was (aside from the hugs and salutations of my grandparents) a box of what is unequivocally the finest pizza on the face of God’s green (or grayish brown in this case) earth. My Grandparents have the good fortune of living quite close to Buddy’s Pizza, what can only be described as the finest pizza chain on God’s… yeah, you get the idea. After five ham and pineapple rectangles of this ambrosia, I was full and slightly behind schedule; so after a hurried good bye I was on the road again. I had foolishly made the mistake of neglecting to calculate the time that would be wasted navigating mapquest’s pitfalls (and constantly cross-referencing my penis) into my time of departure and managed to find my seat about forty minutes after the show started, just catching the tail end of the opening band’s (whose name eludes me) set. Thankful for some time before the headliner, I found the men’s bathroom, which oddly enough is located an entire floor below the corresponding female restroom, and further adding to the general strangeness, can only be reached after groping through a large unlit room. I then recalled that a few years ago I saw the White Stripes in the same concert hall and in searching for the bathroom, the large room was then unlit as well. I pondered this as I left, drying my hands on my pants (public restroom paper towels are the tools of Satan) and concluded that I’m obviously not in the temple of the Freeplumbers/electricians. I took my seat and passed about a half hour watching drunken people dance about and drug possessors get removed, until the house lights went off and the band took the stage. Brock mumbled his gratitude that we braved the shitty weather to see his band and with an “ok, song time” the show was underway. They opened with one of their older tunes that I can’t remember (I think it was off Lonesome Crowded West) and then did Black Cadillacs, Fire it Up, Dashboad, and most everything of note off Good News, and We Were Dead. They even dipped into Breakthrough and added a new intro and ending to Tiny Cities. After a three song encore and some comment by Brock about using the Temple’s fancy chandeliers to escape after the show, the band left the stage for good and the house lights signaled the post-event stampede to the parking lot. Learning from past mistakes and surpassing even my own expectations of my navigational skills, I made it back to my Grandmother’s and back to Big Rapids without incident and without once having to undo my pants. With a plastic bag full of goodies from Grandma and a souvenir tee shirt smelling of tobacco and marijuana smoke, I headed back to my dorm for a shower and some quality time with my lit. homework.