Anger Hurts

Anger comes by way of trigger thoughts. For example, you might think to yourself "I work hard and I expect to be treated right, when I go through that door" on your way in from work to home. And then, as you walk in, lets say, the kid is crying and the spouse is going to sail the little one over to you because he/she/it (she-wolves actually make great wet nurses to bush republicans) will have the similiar set of thoughts like " I took care of the child all day . A good mom/dad/wolf plays with her/his/its child and should be happy to take over for me ". Seneca kicks in with the frustration thing as one set of parental expectations meet another. Both parents expect the other to cover for them.

This is contrived. Nobody ever gets really angry when little ones are there to play with. The exercise of finding things to get really angry about is left to the reader. But the subject experience of stress is what loads the trigger thought. I don't get angry much, but I know someone that does get angry - almost every day now and its getting old.

When I was young, I remember getting really angry. It was in the form of a rhyme that went "hey, t-- are you gay?". Only my name was "t--". I didn't like that. The tallest one (whose name was bobby) was sitting on hodaka wombat dirtbike. Maybe my trigger thought was "You don't have a right to call me something I'm not". And at age 8 I didn't yet learn not to try to beat up a biker gang.

So, I jumped up over his handlebars and hit him in the face. For those of you who've never had the honor of trying to take out a lead dirtbiker in a gang, the experience that follows next goes something like this: the lights go out all over town. I woke up and my sorta-kinda girlfriend Donna is standing there wiping the blood off me and then I black out again. Make it home somehow. Concussion. If you can believe it the person ended up being my friend but only after he apologized. I didn't +make+ him apologize. Everyone thought it was cool that I tried to take them on. Thats the way things go sometimes. And thats anger for guys. 101.

When I hit the biker, I was in West Palm. Thats West, fall-from-grace , Palm Beach. When we lived on the island, my next door neighbor, and friend had every reason to be angry every day. I think it was something about his brother in law and more money than I could count at the time. He taught me about money. And although everyone knew he was furious at being completely ripped off, a cold kind of fury that you live with for years - he taught me how to keep my cool. And he taught me about thinking ahead. Anger 102. We played pool together and basically had as good a time as a four year old and an 80 year old can have. Which is lots.

When you're little your memories are discrete. You remember big things, and I can remember playing pool with Roger Sperry like he was my uncle. The political family next door, who shall remain nameless, kennedy .. their daughter Lisa liked throwing parties and listening to acid rock. I can still see the purple glow from her window and the hendrix (I think) playing. It was on the east side of our estate, her window overlooked the tree there. You can see things like the money you found there, and set out on the top of a garden wall. The glow of the window. The gardens inside Mr. Sperry's home. Bills sorted ascending, in your little wallet - highest to lowest. And then you can all at once look around and its Chateu d'Orleans near Sandpiper Condominiums , and you can see the railroad track in the back of the bike. You can see the paint chipped off the bike, black. green. a bit of blue. Repainted. You remember details. Even if there is a black spot just after. Colors are like that I guess, too.

But when someone just whirls a chain around their head and lands it on your back, hard, until you can almost feel your spine hit and the impact going up and down your back. Maybe your legs buckle under the pain of the blow - and you involuntarily bite down so no one can hear the scream. Its not a chic place like subspace. It stop everything and tense against the next hit-space. Its a whole lot of no fun. You remember everything. I don't like pain, at least like that.

... I have always wanted a great big family. I can think of nothing more cool than to have a great big home where all the little ones can come visit one day, where grandchildren can play with their cousins and everyone can meet at the breakfast table for coffee.

Once when I lived in palm beach, a dolphin was stranded on the beach and we all lifted him up and put him out to sea. Finally a helicopter came when he came back again. My uncles helped. I think I was four, but I helped. I remember the dolphins gray skin. I remember drinking virgin pina colada (my favorite, that, and the shirley temple) somewhere while the men picked the dolphin up again in the distance.

We live here in this cyber world where nature is relegated to a distant second place. Blogs, neat little needles, SecondLife, the swiss army pocketknife of human interaction. Television. Booze/chemicals/whatever. Bars. Places to go eat and not cook for yourself with really nifty stuff nailed to the wall (assume voice of Marge Simpson: "Ooh an alligator wearing sunglasses - now I've seen everything "). And who could ever forget - the amber alert - that ticker running across the bottom of a screen somewhere intruding on your life. Oh yeah and the iPod. Don't forget that little tool. Wasn't that the thing that was picked up off a desk, before a student attacked his teacher in FilthyDelphia? The perfect for turning yourself a hood ornament in downtown Atlanta.

Our ancestors drank alot, I am sure. More than us, but weaker stuff. Maybe fermented beer and milk all mixed up or something, out in a field. We like to think of them as brave. They were. And medicated. Just not vodka. It was a continual wariness of nature that now doesn't exist. We get our food from the store. Unlike nature, which works its way completely into your DNA - think "viral marketing" - the synthetic world leaves gaps. Actually big ones. We delude ourselves into thinking play places are going to take the place of trips into the forest or up into the mountains. We are constantly well fed and air conditioned. We have the most perfect images of nature. The most perfect images of hurricanes, satellite view. Seven days warning. My alcohol resistance comes from somewhere, but when I go surfing , I don't care where it goes because it doesn't matter. I would trade it all for tasty waves. But I'm the exception I know. And all I have now is triathlon anyway which is a poor substitute. Too mechanical.

Ever wonder why is it that when we head back to nature we go Extreme. Extreme sports. Extreme surfing. Extreme pre-paid calling cards. Extreme energy drinks. Extreme dialing. Extreme this. Extreme that. And instead of the weak beer, we've got vodka. Not just left out a bit too long because there's no refrigeration except for what you drop in the well - but fermented by machines in Russia or Poland - air freighted and delivered ice cold to the brain cell. Picture "Terminator 2" morphing into protein microtubules and like silver ice flowing up and throw the axon and then turning into some clean shaven cop .. walking straight towards you. Then running..

I always feel like the kid from the opening scene of "Garden State" when I drink. Which is why I don't drink. The airplane scene, the first few moments. But then again I count that as part of the synthetic world as well.

So theres this - modern myspace-blog-sl synthesis that allows us to sort of half-live and re-live any drama we like while physically we locate our meatspace somewhere out in the sterile environment of exurbia. Its a power to construct relationships that don't really exist - that drives the fascination of it all. We have always been socially curious as much as we have been violent. Like that scene from 2001 A space odyssey, looking around for new tools. Even if we're in a figurative desert wasteland/ amidst skeletal remains (borrowing from the image of the film) and not doing anything worthwhile. Its our weapons drive. And likewise we can coin new terms to describe the things we find. But don't think you've got it made because you hatched from the egg of a cold fire. Your mom is still a burnout. Drama is still drama. Its all fake. There never existed any relationship to begin with. And there never will exist any relationship through cyberspace. Ever. Because people are biological. Viral marketing never beats pure honest to god viral infection. One of my best friends completely ruined his life finding this out. Hes now really old and really paranoid and completely useless. I plan to give him a job one day if I can get him a visa. >:) . Note I didn't say anything about exploring anger, suffering, fear, joy - and of the range of who you are and what you can be - I just said that you're never going to coin and finalize a relationship out there in cyberspace. It is not going to happen. Period.

So back to anger. After all, this post is dragging on and its making me kind of angry. There is no pattern interruption in the environment above. You might think you've got pattern interrupts in place, but good luck - a synthetic environment with all the elements of cross media and net are going to make an end run around your emotions every time. Just check your iphone for the latest. Small family, big. Modern life, country life. Pattern interruption doesn't exist in 2001 - and you don't get the benefit of self medicating either. Just before the anger hits - we don't need to cover what happens when that moment arises - you can almost sense this is true when you have that odd little feeling that the matrix has you. Follow the white rabbit, neo.

Anger for we males takes a new level beyond pattern interruption, which is why the males of our species can deal it out so effectively. The suffering is there to go around. We are perfectly willing to cause large amounts of damage to each other. Welcome to Fight club. The first rule of fight club is that you don't talk about fight club. <-- note punctuation mark ending sentence

Women (theory here from a male of the species) express their anger in perhaps enjoyment of the sort of happy pecking party that comes with a weak female or male being pecked to death in the barnyard. I know they think its funny when people are embarassed or insulted. Theres a lot of word play, it seems to be more in your head. Men are much more likely to square off against the alpha male physically and if they lose, take consequence. Women seem to feel so sorry for the loser. Maybe thats why so many reality TV shows just keep featuring the loser - what is it like, 10 losers, to every one winner or soemthing. Oh, and women, at least here in theory - seem to enjoy the idea that they didn't really hurt anyone despite the fact that the aggression is all there. Fear kept in check. Thank god we have Japanese women to keep the score straight - a beautifully wierd, strange and surprisingly brutal people who do things in groups. My friend thinks its seafood that does it. But the best wife in the world, as the joke goes, is japanese only because we know just out of the corner of our eye she'll fuck like a bunny if we can just handle the kimono. I dont know maybe its taking baths with your neighbors. Whatever the case, the Japanese are who they are because they have extremely aggressive and wonderfully compact society and family units. They fascinate me. I digress.

Anyone can lose the alpha male, any pack or tribe. Usually at the cost of anger. Its usually a full-on strike that ends up with a fatality, in the natural world. And Its natural to have the alpha male challenged and killed. Stalin, for example, was the first soviet premier that lived to old age - before things got so civilized. He used to beat on the table with his shoe, to get attention. Whats interesting, and not many people know - is that if the omega male dies - not sure, but I think if he is killed in anger- the tribe or pack scatters. revenge is a dish best served cold . how else would the omega male deliver it? how else can the submissive females model their work? no one really knows at this point the why of it, at least i am not entirely certain that this social dynamic is fully explored

I think the japanese may have figured out the way to channel anger into something useful although tentacle sex still makes me wonder. And that is assertive negotiation. I believe if we negotiate with conviction, and focus, we can short circuit alot of anger. Banter between two parents is a conduit for that sort of thing. For example, you can call your husband a used up piece of jet trash if he doesnt watch the kids, and that you'll let him survive only if he does it for an hour. You should be able to say that without gettin' in his grill. You'd better be ready for the countermandatory ho! you owe me from last fathers day! pay up. And if you think you can bend the rules, think again. The japanese are surprisingly brutal - they seem polite but in fact they are really something else when it comes to what happens if you cross the line. Think: that zen master hitting people with a stick for thinking incorrectly.

The dog pack tears apart the dog that signals play bite then delivers kill bite. Or isolates him. No bitches for mr. bad puppy. DNA kill-off. Alot of what we do is dog psychology. Especially management. But politics especially, these days, since corruption is so rampant. Anger brings them to survive unhappily in marriages and jobs.

What would the trigger thought have been, to invade Iraq? How about "satan you have no power over me. you tried to kill my father, you won't get my oil company friends". A drunk is a drunk , attacking innocent countries in the nemesis of our president's father doesn't win anyone over to the idea that a superpower can be moral. It leaves us as the society of the spectacle - and whatever we establish within the order of our social and political circles, - whether we have a right to anger is always debatable. The only thing that matters is not that the anger is legitimate and right, but that the human suffering behind it must be acknowledged and explored.

I have no problem with pain. Suffering, thats another topic. A girl I know is going through all of her clothes and trying to find each and every one that was knitted by child labor and throwing them all away. Personally I think its wierd. But ultimately, anger is choice. A samurai doesn't lose his cool. Only god will save you if you cross a samurai. See training video below to configure your anger.. 'let your anger be like a monkey hiding in a pinata'