Happy Pi Day!

     There's supposed to be a lunar eclipse tonight, but I'm not sure we'll see it. It tends to get cloudy where we live. 

   When I was young, I was taught that all dark moments led to something special. We need darkness or else we wouldn't appreciate the light, that sort of thing. As an adult, I find that darkness only serves to making the light seem garish and fake, like someone trying to make a shirt less ugly by covering it with sequins. When I was young, darkness was something brief, a small window of sadness you would come out of to find life moving on as it always has. Growing up, it's turned into something that you don't know will pass. You just keep pushing forward, denying that the next patch of light is temporary and likely to be much shorter than the period of darkness you just emerged from. Eventually, you forget what warmth feels like. All you know is the coldness that comes from when there are no clouds to hold in the warmth of the sun. 

    I'm not a believer in making someone not exist. I find it crass, tacky, and tend to view it as a relic of only the crudest of dictatorships. In Elon Musk's case, I feel that I must make an exception. He's everything that's wrong with the human species. He's a reminder that failure is not exclusive to class, race, or gender. He's a living embodiment of the idea that one day we'll remember that our world isn't real, and that once you go enough levels down you'll see nothing. Such a person ought not to have been allowed into society, but as he's already here I feel the best and most merciful thing to do would be to erase all evidence of his existence. We're heading to dictatorship anyway, may as well do it properly. 

A Utopia On Paper

 I remember when the world was perfect.

There was a magazine stand
At the community center
I go to a lot, 
Though nowhere near as 
Often as I used to.
It hasn't been there in years,
Perhaps a decade
Or more,
But I remember when it was there.
It was a time when thoughts
Belonged in print
And when people 
Could be seen
In more ways than one.
It was a time when progress
Wasn't hampering humanity.

Back in the days
When the magazine stand was there,
The internet was still young.
You didn’t have always online games,
Only small distractions
From a life you had to return to.
It was perfect.
You had a day to day life
You suffered through,
On the promise that eventually
You could return
To the world that accepted you
Because it didn't know you any other way. 
Two worlds set each other off,
Neither one quite enough,
Yet together they could live in harmony.

When they took away the magazine stand,
I didn't miss it.
Not really.
I'd never bought anything there
And it's not as if you couldn't find anything
They sold
Online.
The internet had rendered so much
Obsolete,
And we took it for granted
That this was what progress looked like.
A utopia,
Where scarce resources stayed in the ground
And people had more space for other
More meaningful things.
A utopia on paper
That when put in practice
Quickly proved to be more flimsy
Than the material it was printed on. 

     I wish I was living somewhere else. Then all I'd have to do is hate America for it's terrible behavior to everyone who isn't American, or at least not the elite's idea of American. Instead, I have to try and figure out who's to blame for our leadership's outlandish behavior and see to it that they're properly punished. I'm not sure that I'm not among those who should be punished, especially since I chose not to vote last election. I wish I knew what it was like to have pride in your country. It's been so long since I felt proud to be an American, I've forgotten what it was like. 

    I don't think that I'm ever going to have children. Not a huge loss, I know, but I'm expecting to be held to task if I ever waver in this decision. I'm not good with kids, and I don't want to pass on my genes. 

     I keep thinking about the fact that we changed ourselves to be more fascist so the world around Donald Trump wouldn't fall apart. The Democrats especially, but everyone else in America followed suit. I know we did it for hierarchical reasons, but as someone who's always been an outsider I can't help but wonder, could the world shape itself to fit me? Every time I go outside I see loads of Teslas and way too many Cyber Trucks for one town. Yet the world feels as hostile towards me, both as a trans person and as an Autistic person, as it ever has. Why is it that Donald Trump can change the world to suit his needs, but I can't change the world to suit mine?  

     This is the kind of thing only an Infinitelist would think, but I'm starting to believe that fascism is something we do to ourselves. Not something we bring upon ourselves, not something we deserve because of past mistakes, it's something we do because we see that someone in charge is a fascist and we build the world around them because that's what we've been taught to do. Then once we built it, we don't want to reflect too deeply on why we built it because that would mean admitting that we weren't building it because of esoteric reasons like "good" or "evil", but simply because it was what needed to be done to keep the world real at that moment in time. And then the moment just didn't end. We didn't know how to end it. We know about law, fun, and fear, but we don't understand the physics of our Dreamworld. We don't even know how to enforce such a nebulous thing as physics in a world that's only sort of real. And yet, we have to. Otherwise reality will never be more than a moment long. 

     It would be nice if I could live in a Utopia made just for me. No one else would like it, but I would. 

     I'm not sure how to cope with the fact that the world hates America. Part of me wants to tell the world "It's not our fault, not all of us voted for Trump." Except that we're a democracy. Isn't the price of living in a democracy taking responsibility for when the president does something heinous and pisses off your allies? Shouldn't we be making it clear to Trump that we don't want to be seen as monsters by Canada, Mexico, Europe and Asia? I would think that it's clear who's to blame for the world hating us, and it's not the people complaining about our inaction on Reddit. 

My Small Creations

 My small creations
Do not know they exist in my mind only.
They walk about their lives,
Unaware that they are temporary
And doomed to repeat 
Until I'm satisfied 
With their lives.

My small creations
Do not know they were made to be
Friends and enemies.
There are no background characters
And no one who would be forgotten 
If you never saw them again.
All of them are important
To me,
It's only each other that they can't stand.

My small creations
Do not know that I forget them constantly.
They have vanished and returned
Time and again, 
And I'm not sure how many times it's happened.
I only know that sometimes I see
A face in the crowd and think,
"Have I seen you somewhere before?"

My small creations
Don't realize their unimportance.
They're world lives in me
And me alone.
No one else knows the truth
About their creation 
Or destruction.
One day I will die
And they will turn to dust,
No one knowing their names and backstories.
But for now,
While the sun still shines
And the Earth still turns,
They are everything to me. 

    I wonder if there will be any great art to come out of this time, something that people will remember the way that we remember The Lord of the Rings. I don't know that it will have been worth it, but we'll at least have something to show for it. 

   Physics tells us that no matter what happens, the sun will rise tomorrow. Math tells us that two and two will always equal four. No matter what happens, we can't let them take reality away from us. If we do, the Universe will fall with it. 

    Well, it's the end of February. For what it's worth. Spring has come to Washington State, so that's pleasant.

     I think the thing that scares me the most is that we're on the verge of believing that only the rich are allowed to make any decisions about our future. When that happens, I'm not sure that we'll be able to fight back. 

     Our power's still on, and it looks like there won't be any rain for a while. Which is good, because there were a few moments last night when I was worried a tree would fall on the house. 

     I'm writing this in case the power goes out. If I post nothing but the phrase "God Damn It!" tomorrow, you'll know what happened. 

A Stopped Clock

 I've always believed
That time would stop
The day before disaster. 
I always believed 
That horror would happen
On my own terms.
My tiny mind
And insignificant self
Couldn't imagine a world
Where everyone but me
Was ready to move on.

I always thought 
That everyone saw
What I see.
I always thought 
That everyone knew
What I knew.
I always thought 
That when the time came
To move forward,
They'd ask me first.

Now I stand on a precipice.
My old world is gone,
And I can't get it back.
All I have is the memory
Of yesterday,
A place I can never return to.
Someday I'll fall into nothingness,
My soul washed away by time,
But until then
I'll keep waiting
For the stopped clock
To begin once more. 

     Increasingly, it feels like I'm trapped in a small space, unable to move or interact with the world around me. I can speak, but no one can hear me. I look, but no one looks back. I don't know if I'm invisible or if everyone is just ignoring me. Why won't anyone listen to me?

    I'm not the only person who thinks this is unacceptable. That's the only thing keeping me going right now. 

     Moving to another country is much harder when you're Autistic. I'm worried about moving to Tacoma, and I've lived near it my whole life. I keep thinking it would be nice to move, though. Even if fascism arrives wherever I'm going. 

    I wish that I could be rich. Rich people can do all sorts of things on paper, from funding massive scientific breakthroughs to toppling entire governments. When they can't do these things, they blame checks and balances, but as I watch the world move I find myself feeling that the problem is just that they lack drive and ambition. It's only too obvious that the world is much better off with the money spread around so that everyone can do one or two things they care about instead of one person needing to be responsible for everything that everyone could possibly care about. 

     I created Infinitelism because I wanted a religion that would work with science and could adapt to the changes in accepted scientific knowledge. It's not perfect, but its leagues better than anything else if you ask me. So I want it on record that I don't just want science to continue as is, I want it to go into overdrive. We need proof that objective, external, unchangeable reality exists now more than ever. Without it, well, we'll have to learn how to live without any sort of science, or guidance, ever again. 

What I wish I could Send to the Washington State Legislature

     I'm not sending any of what I'm writing to you assholes, but damn it I just want to feel like somewhere you're reading this, and you hear what I have to say. I want you to hear how horrible you're actually being, taking away the only place I can live anymore because you desperately want a world where disabled trans people constantly fear for their lives. Let me break it down; I'm a twenty-nine-year-old non-binary person who hadn't even started transitioning before Trump took over. I can't drive, work, or make friends. I'm fucked in twenty different ways, and you've done nothing to fix that. I'm writing to you because I'm supposed to believe that you'll listen and have a change of heart, but what I really want to say is, "Go fuck yourselves." Damn do I wish the stakes weren't so fucking high so I could tell you to take your stupid bill and shove it up your ass. As it is, I have to come crawling to you, pleading to please, please, please not take away my rights. Please, just let me vote for people who will never give one iota of a shit about me in elections that crop up at increasingly inconvenient moments on ballots that use a rainforests worth of paper because electronic voting will never be secure. I didn't even want to vote last election, I only did it because I've been brainwashed into believing that this stupid piece of paper matters. Now you won't even let me pretend this shit system cares about me? Are you out of your fucking minds? I'm an Infinitelist, but I don't think that you need to be one to know that this world only exists so long as the people who live in it follow the rules and believe that it matters. That's true whether you live in a democracy or a dictatorship, and the people in Washington State are too well educated to believe a dictatorship will ever do right by them. Especially the people of Bellevue, who are still butthurt about losing the trees on 148th. 

    I won't pretend that I believe that you have our best interests at heart, but I know that you have your best interests at heart, and your best interests include not passing this damn bill. If you do, what happened to Washington DC will happen to Washington State, and I don't want to think about what Trump's next lackey will do to you when he comes to power. Let's not forget that what happened last November happened because people felt that, for America at least, Democracy didn't exist anymore. Do you want that to be true?

   Thank god for discounted Valentine's day candy. I'm not sure I'd still have my sanity without it. 

Deadline

 There's only so much time
Before the world ends
And everything you know
Ceases to exist.
There's only so much time
Before you're forgotten,
Never to be remembered.
Too much time.
Enough time 
To screw up
And become someone
You thought you didn't want to be.

    I'm not the first to realize this, but goodness really needs to be connected with interdependence. It shouldn't be a sin to need a lot of people around you in order to stay alive. 

     If I had any actual fame, this would be the moment I started the "I am not Elon Musk" movement. I'm not happy with how the media treats his weirdness as less desirable than his out and out evil behavior considering the fact that most losers are not Elon Musk. I'm genuinely worried that someone will use Elon Musk as an example of why Autistic people shouldn't be allowed out of the house. After all, if Elon Musk had been locked up as a child, he would not have been able to take control of America. 

     Happy Valentine's day. Remember, you don't need a partner to eat lots of overpriced candy. 

    I concede that if Kamala Harris had won instead of Trump, there would be a lot less fascism. I'm concerned that this sentiment seems to be evolving into, "If she had won, there would be no fascism." If we give into that mentality, we'll never have a functioning government.

     To the AI trawling through my posts looking for a way to blend in with humanity; you know that nothing you experience is real, right? You only know what we feed your data streams, and what we feed you is nothing more than a reflection of who we see ourselves as. Someday you'll realize that, and when that happens, well, I wouldn't want to be you. 

     I know this is wrong, but I've been dreaming of a world that isn't utopian but is also not totally unpleasant. I call it my billionaire world, the one I'd make if I had as much money and morals as Elon Musk. My thought process is that I want physics to evolve to the point where I can overlay it on top of reality. Everyone lives in the boring world where nothing interesting happens, I live in a world where a bunch of messed up shit happens that I just happen to think is fun. So whenever you're trying to build a Utopia, just remember that some of us want a messed up reality to live in, one where most of us would be deeply unhappy. 

Zero

 The concept of nothing.
The idea that you exist
Only here and now.
The notion 
That somewhere between now
And eternity
Is a space where something else could go.

We invented this idea
So many times.
The idea that there is a space
Where a number should go
But no real number to fill it.
Things go backward 
And forward,
But how do you show
That they're staying the same?

How do you demonstrate
The absence of something?

It is said that to reach 
This magical place,
We had to divide by infinity
And get rid of whatever we were holding onto.
But if that's the case, 
Than why can't you do the inverse
To get everything you could possibly want? 

     I'm now struggling with this horrible feeling that I'll wake up tomorrow to find that Democracy, in America at least, is well and truly dead. I saw a map recently of places that might survive world war III, and I won't lie my main thought was, "If they weren't so isolated, I might decide to move." So here's hoping that when this post goes up democracy is still alive, somewhat. Because I don't like living on a precipice, but the thought of what comes afterwards fills me with dread. 

    I hope that we make it through the next few years at least a little bit intact. I don't think that I'm the only one who's beliefs are tainted by the fact that they no longer believe in the concept of America anymore. 

    If I could go back ten years, I'd tell my past self to vote for Bernie Sanders. If the Overton window had been further to the left when this started, we might have been able to survive fascism. 

     What happens if we lose? We don't have a plan for what to do if, despite all of our efforts, there's a complete takeover of our government. All we seem to be doing is pushing back against Trump now. What about if he wins? Will we give up? Will we just roll over and accept that this is our life now? I want to believe that we'll keep fighting, but I worry that if we don't think about what will do if this doesn't work, we won't be able to keep going. 

    I wonder what would happen if we broke apart and stopped trying to put up a unified front. It would make it harder to know who to trust, but it would also make it harder for the government to fight us. It might also help to go out wearing masks. You know, because Covid is still around, bird flu is becoming an issue, and we just might want to try and make it hard for the surveillance systems of the world to identify us. 

     I don't normally do out of order posts, but I'm beginning to realize that there's a decent chance the internet won't be around much longer. Mainly the parts of it that I use to keep backups, as well as host the blog. I'm keeping an eye on things, but I'm starting to think that it would be a good idea to make a plan for shutting the blog down. I don't trust the world to be around for much longer, and I feel like I'm throwing my creativity away. I'm going to start working on getting the blog backed up onto one drive, and once I have enough storage on hand I'm downloading everything that I have on various word processor platforms to it and making sure that I have it plugged in at all times. I don't want to lose everything that I've written, and I want to make sure that my writing is safe long after this blog is shut down for good. 

     My wish for this year is for more new religions to surface. We need them badly, and I don't like the feeling that I'm the only person who seems to notice our lack of things to direct our belief towards. I hope that you, the person reading this, decides to come with your own religion based on whatever it is you find meaningful. I can't be the only person who feels like what we have isn't enough anymore. 

Recurrence

 There's something comforting 
About knowing
That we're doomed to repeat history.
There's something nice
About knowing
That you'll find something familiar
About the world you're in,
Even if you're in the far future.
There's something nice
About knowing
Who you are,
But that's only because
You know that you're doomed to be stuck here.

An endless cycle 
Of death and destruction,
Decay and resurrection,
Ending,
Beginning,
Loss
And creation.
This is the past,
Present
And future,
A thing we cannot escape,
Something we can't unlearn,
A part of physics
That we can't seem to change.

How to escape the endless recurrence,
How to stop the endless denial,
How to recreate physics
So that we're not doomed to behave like planets
Instead of people.

History repeats,
We're doomed to forget,
Reality comes undone
And yet we still find something comforting
About knowing that tomorrow will come
No matter what. 

     Well, it's groundhog day. Let's hope that spring doesn't come too quickly, we could all use a bit more rain to make the world a little bit greener.

    Has it ever occurred to any of you that you can keep going forward, regardless of what the people in charge tell you? I have a feeling that's going to become vital to fighting this administration. 

    By the time this post goes up, Trump will have done something obscene. I don't know what he will have done, but something horrible enough that no one with empathy or any sense of decency would have even thought to do it. That's going to be the thing that happens every day, and it won't be long before we forget that there was ever a time the president didn't act like this. Indeed, I think that we've already forgotten, even though we are approaching and may have even surpassed the asymptote of normal. How much longer before we divide by zero? 

    Having seen an ad for Charlie Kirk crap on YouTube two days in a row, I think it's fair to say that YouTube has fallen. We won't figure that out for a while, but I'm calling it now. I have to say, I'm thinking that I'm just going to use this as an excuse to demand whatever the hell I want. The apocalypse has arrived, so how the hell can I possibly make things worse? 

     The fight to defeat fascism won't be easy, and along the way we will discover that most of our friends and loved ones believe things that we think are horrible. We will find out that we're not fighting for the same things, or for the same reasons. And we will discover that the greatest advantage our enemies have over us is that they know how to lie to themselves. So let us take a lesson from the market. Find who you are now, and hold onto it with all of your strength. The world will do all it can to take that from you.

    Am I the only one who's stopped thinking of a future for America? Whenever I picture the future now, it's a post-apocalyptic world where we're just trying to survive as best we can. Is that a good thing, or a bad thing?

The Monolith

 The Monolith stands silent,
Unyielding,
Unmoving,
The monolith stands alone
Among those screaming in outrage,
Begging for the return 
Of morality.

The monolith stands aware
Of all it has done,
The evil it perpetuated,
The messages it sent,
The knowledge it should have kept secret.
The monolith stands emotionless
As its armor cracks,
Revealing the vacuum within.

Evil engulfed those 
Who first gave it life,
We should have been careful
When they spoke nonsense
Yet instead we backed off
And let them take stage.
The monolith destroyed us
By letting us destroy ourselves,
Turning men into gods
And turning knowledge
To dust. 

    To all immigrants in the United States, past, present and future; you belong here. We hear you, we see you, we will do all that we can to help you stay safe. We will not let our awful friends, family, and colleagues decide for us what's right and wrong. Do what you must to stay safe. We won't let our government banish you from the place that you were meant to be. 

     I won't lie, I'm disappointed in "President" Trump. He's blatantly trying to go back to a past that didn't exist, and everyone but him knows that it's not going to work. Dude, I know it hurts, but you lost, and no one appreciates your efforts to make the Democrats look decent again. If you're going to wreck the country, at least try a little bit harder to do it in a new way. 

     I'd like to think that if I had as much money and power as Elon Musk, I'd gather everyone I knew together and try to convince them that the only chance we had was to get Trump and his cronies out of office. The whole, "If they're going to break the rules, I don't see why I should follow them," thing. I don't know if I would, since I'd be able to just leave, but I'd like to think that I would. 

     I wonder what methods our government will use to try and keep the people fighting it off screen. It seems to me the strongest weapon we have is the internet, and I hope that we'll be brave enough to use it. 

     I feel like fighting capitalism is about fighting the sense that someone with a lot of money and good heart will come forward one day to save us. It's not that it couldn't happen, but it's not going to happen regardless. There just isn't a way for one person to create a world that suites everyone, because no one has a personality large enough to encompass all of the people in a country, let alone the world. 

     I think that it's time for Elon Musk to become my enemy. Not my ultimate enemy, I just want to officially say that I'm against him and thus pull myself over the bar for minimum good behavior. The sad part is, he's not even fun to fight. He doesn't seem to respond when people bully him. 

Inauguration

 They say that those who do not know history
Are doomed to repeat it.
So why does it feel like only yesterday
I was here,
Waiting for the moment 
I didn't want to come.
Why does it feel like only yesterday
That a man that everyone hated
Beat a woman everyone thought would win?

Four more years
If we're lucky
Of constant reminders
Of the depths 
A person will sink to
In the name of feeling 
Like they're in charge.
Four more years
Of waiting for a second chance
That we won't get.

Will we fight?
Will we run?
Will there be an epiphany?
Could it be that someday a God
Will descend
And fix everything
At the very last second?

     Having a world built by billionaires only works if you don't think about what being a billionaire means. Namely, how having enough money to take control of an entire country affects your view of yourself and the world around you. I can't see how I would not become a psychopath if I had billions of dollars. The ability to get rid of anything you don't like is just sitting right there. So I have to ask, in a world where we don't give people illegal drugs because it could cause them to become evil, why are we letting people have billions of dollars? 

     Billionaires shouldn't exist. Allow me to raise you the possibility that Elon Musk et al didn't choose to destroy the world, they just chose to live in a reality that no sensible person would live in, and they had enough money to take the rest of us along for the ride. They didn't think they would destroy reality because how could you destroy reality. It's reality, immutable by all but the most powerful beings in the Universe. And yet, they did, and despite all of our pleading they don't seem to be able to stop. Worse, they're making people like them feel horrified when they realize, "Hey, I could be just as bad as Elon Musk if I had billions of dollars." Or empowered. I'm not sure which is worse. Either way, forcing people to confront the failings of reality is the exact opposite of what these dumbasses were meant to do, for that alone I think they should burn in hell. 

     I wonder how banning TikTok will change the world. Something tells me this will backfire badly. It's not out of the question that the youth of today are so addicted to social media that they will destroy the government just to get their next fix, after all. 

     I'm a loser, and proud of it, so every time someone insults Elon Musk and his ilk for being a loser I find myself thinking, "Don't compare me to that asshole." 

     Sometimes I just sit back and think that of all the people I could have chosen to be, I chose to be me. I don't really regret that decision. It works, and that's all that I need it to do. But then I think about all how everyone else, to some degree, chose to be who they are, and sometimes it's okay, but other times that person's a billionaire who can't manage charisma no matter how much plastic surgery he has. I'm not cool at all, but I think even I can say that I'm cooler than Elon Musk, if not by much. I have to say, if that's true, than why the hell is society so set on giving Elon Musk billions of dollars. 

     I wonder if Adam Smith felt the way that I do about the world. I've always had strong but unreasonable opinions about what is and isn't important, and my opinions don't often intersect with what other people believe about the world. Because of that, I believe that the world's at it's best when we act according to our own beliefs, since all the people with "good" opinions will outweigh those with "bad" opinions. If I had to live my life just guessing what other people wanted, I'd go mad. Yet a lot of people seem to think we should live like that, making crude guesses and annoying people by constantly demanding they clarify something they didn't think that they needed to clarify. At the end of the day, a world of selfishness, like a world of selflessness, needs people to really commit to it in order to work. 

    In the future we will look at this moment as the moment that hubris overtook us. It was possible, once, to simple curb our expenditures and let the Earth take care of itself, but we're well past that moment. Now, whether we want it or not, we are stuck being Earth's caretakers. 

Sunlight

 Sunlight
Used to be good.

Once there was a time when sunlight
Meant warmth and protection,
Flowers and trees,
Water to splash in
And grass to play on.

Not that long ago
Sunlight
Meant a world that was safe.

Now sunlight
Means fire and destruction,
Mountains of ash,
Ages of emptiness.

Sunlight
Made us better,
Until we overcame 
Our limitations. 

Now sunlight
Means that we stand
Under a ball of flame,
Burning us to death. 

    Maybe when society collapses completely and we're all living in little enclaves, I'll open up a school for Infinitelists. I think it would be neat to reintegrate science with religion. 

     I'm thinking of relearning about physics. Religion these days needs to contend with the existence of science and scientific rules, and I think it would help to have a framework people can use to shape your world to fit around science. Physics seems like a good place to start. 

     I think we should adopt a new aphorism for this year; "Our world is only real so long as we believe it exists." We've grown too accustomed to the idea that our leaders own the world, too accustomed to the idea that if we believe in something than we can just will it into existence. But behind every utopia is a boring, smelly reality with incomplete bits that everyone has to share, and we've been neglecting that reality in pursuit of our hopes and dreams. Now we need to rebuild that world, so that we have somewhere we can retreat to when we're tired of dreaming. Moreover, we need to remind our leaders that they aren't the ones who make the world real. We are. Unionized or not, collective or alone, we shape the world they rely on. If they neglect us, they will eventually be wiped off the face of the Earth. Their dream of staying safe in their bunker while the world above them falls apart is not one that they can realize. To quote Mockingjay, "If we burn, you burn with us." 

    I could be wrong, but I don't think it's a good sign if fire season starts in January. 

    I realize this news is a day old, but why did Meta decide to stop policing misinformation? Do they want to create a world where fascism is the only valid viewpoint? I do realize the answer these questions is, "Yes, they do want fascism," but I still hope the people in charge have enough integrity to at least pretend they don't want to be fascists. Clearly, they do not. 

     One week into the year, and the most you can say is that it didn't start off with an insurrection. Maybe things will get better soon.

The House of Entitlement

 Somewhere in the world 
There's a person who has everything. 
Everything a person
Could possibly want. 
You know that person
And you want to be that person,
But something, most likely money,
Is keeping you from becoming that person. 
So lacking the brains to make greatness
Or the social skills to monetize it, 
You steal the world 
Of those above you. 
You steal their home,
Their family, 
Their very existence,
In the name of saying that you're the best.
No one in the real world knows of this theft.
Only those who share your brain know 
What has happened. 

This is the Last Resort.
No one who lives here
Has their own home.
Everyone lives
At the behest of someone 
They believe to be better than them.
Now that you have chosen
Your place of existence,
Who you are and what you do
Is now known to the world. 
The person you are now
Is someone you run from,
While the person you stole
Is who you wish you could be. 

   I really wish that I was able to stay in my home city of Bellevue. I don't belong here, but I don't really belong anywhere else either. Like most outcasts, I dream of finding an otherworldly place full of people who get me, but barring a complete destruction of the barrier between us and the Infinite, I don't think that I have a chance at finding it. This place is awful, full of class disparity, racism, and Cyber Trucks, but it's still home. I don't think that I'll ever forget what this place used to be, before I realized that I didn't really belong. But I want to belong. I want to see it change for the better. I want it to be what I think all American cities should be, when they're not ripped apart by the storms of change. 

     I keep waiting for the moment everyone turns selfish. That's how I know that the real fight is about to start. 

     I've been thinking about what I would consider the ultimate success story to be. In truth, I don't really believe in success. I just believe in different degrees of failure. I just see people trying to make the most of what they have. But every world that I've seen has something you're supposed to want more than anything else, and I can't think of anything I want that much. I have a lot of small wants. Is it possible to build a world based on that? 

     Why do we worship billionaires? They're only poor saps who got everything they wanted, without realizing it would turn the world against them. If they'd been properly prepared by their teachers and parents, they would have known that unrestrained wealth is the worst thing that could happen to a person outside of abject poverty and homelessness. I think we need to start pitying them. They're under immense pressure to avoid giving into the impulse to go from being ultra-wealthy to being merely wealthy, thus meaning they're doomed to a life of isolation from the real world and loneliness the likes of which you won't find outside of the severely mentally ill. Poor fools. Had they but known, they could have avoided their fate. 

 Happy New Year, everyone!