Sometimes more is less.
Sometimes when you show a lot, no one sees anything.
Sometimes when you don’t show much, you are showing more.
When someone has to try to pay attention to you to see what you are all about, then you have their attention.
What if all he can see are your eyes?
What will he see in them?
Whatever it is, you will know for sure he has seen them.
This is an extremely rare, serious post, from Jane Vodka.
While fantasy is fine, it shouldn’t replace reality. On the surface, escapism is a wonderful thing. In fact, for many of us, it is really the only thing.
And that’s a bad thing.
In our modern society, is has become too easy to completely isolate ourselves socially while scratching the needs of the social itch with faux interactions.
Doing so allows us to “morph” into something that is not a natural state for us as human beings. We begin to live in a fantasy world that ignores the reality around us.
For some of us, this leads to being a “homebody” and we become sedentary. Gaining weight, losing muscle… essential finding a way to live vicariously through our electronics.
For some, this is video games. If you don’t really believe it can be a problem, start searching the internet to see what people say. Don’t just look to see what they say about it, look to see what they say they want:
“I want to stay home and play video games and watch TV all day”- Gamespot forums
“My son is a 20 year old addict” -On-Line Gamers Anonymous
For some it is binge watching television shows:
Now you might be thinking to yourself, “I don’t have those problems” or “those are personal choices, people can do what they want, it doesn’t affect me.” Well, you’re wrong. It can affect you. It has already started to affect a lot of people. It is fundamentally changing our society.
Did you get a chance to read the Time Magazine article, Porn and the Threat to Virility?
Basically, young men who grew up on internet porn are now claiming that they just aren’t aroused by real women.
Ha. Silly. Right? Right? That story is going nowhere.
Right…
A few thoughts from an article on Tech Insider titled ‘Herbivore men’ could be the reason nobody’s having sex in Japan’
“Only 1.001 million babies were born in Japan in 2014 — a record low — and 1.269 million people died.”
and
“…17.9 percent (of men) reported little or no interest in having sex — or even an extreme dislike of it…”
From Japanese Times News article titled “In sexless Japan, almost half of single young men and women are virgins: survey”
“A survey of Japanese people aged 18 to 34 found that almost 70 percent of unmarried men and 60 percent of unmarried women are not in a relationship.”
and
“Moreover, many of them have never got close and cuddly. Around 42 percent of the men and 44.2 percent of the women admitted they were virgins.”
Thoughts on the cause of this vary, but most echo this:
If you can’t put together what I am saying her for yourself, you haven’t considered the problem fully enough. If you don’t understand what the problem is, or how it can affect you, you haven’t considered the problem fully enough.
I may sound hypocritical, as I sit here and type this up, hoping to someday make money off of the things that I write, the entertainment that I write; the Romance, the smut, the porn. Whatever you want to call it.
But I don’t think that I am. I think fantasy has always had a place in human survival. I think fantasy is one of the things that separate us from the animals. It gives us hopes and desires. It makes us aspire. We use it to better ourselves.
Until we replace reality with it.
Consider this a public service announcement from Jane Vodka: Make sure you live your life. Don’t piss it away on fake fantasies. Use fantasy to augment your life, to improve you life, to make your life bearable. Don’t use it to distract you from being alive.
Now I’ma go drink this one off so I don’t have to think about it anymore.
You might remember I have mentioned that I have a friend who does this artwork and let’s me use it here.
This piece totally caught my eye. Mostly because of what it was named- Purple Smirk.
My friend argued this wasn’t a good image and wasn’t done and didn’t really want me to use it, because they didn’t even really like it, but I refused to be denied!
Actually, I am mostly in agreement about the image. It’s a little off. A little odd.
But then, so would be a Purple Smirk.
Damn.
I like the idea of a Purple Smirk. I want a Purple Smirk. I would bet I end up writing a story called Purple Smirk. Hell, I might even come up with a way to work that idea into a story.
Wait. Got it! Okay… Purple means Royalty, it means flowery, melodramatic prose… So. I need a character who is a princess-like person who graces through the world in..
Naw. Screw it. A Purple Smirk is the one you get from a hooker who knows you want her but don’t have the balls to ask how much.
I need a Purple Smirk. Off to the mirror to practice!
Is there really such a thing as a Walk of Shame?
You betcha!
But here’s the thing… it’s only a walk of shame because you let others make you feel that way.
Seriously.
They are just horribly fucking jealous because you got laid hard last night and they didn’t. So they try to shame you.
This should be the fucking Cock Strut Home, where you proudly walk bow-legged home leering at everyone who didn’t get none last night, mutherfuckers.
Fuck them.
You had yours, and it was fucking good! Be proud!
Walk of shame, my ass!
Oh, wait… No. That’s a different kind of walk home…
Actually…. Fuck.
That kind of stands on its own.
…and that’s all I got to say about that…
All of my life, I have “felt” certain moments go by.
Some of them, I feel, are the turning of a page, as though my life were a book and something is being continued on.
Some of the moments are like a new chapter. Sometimes this feels like the end of a chapter, with a sadness, or a relief, that this part of the story has finally ended.
Some of the moments are unique and special. You suddenly notice them, after you are already in the middle of them, and the world seems to come alive, in full Technicolor™ all around you.
And then there are the ones that seem to happen the most often.
I call them The Gut Punch.
They are insidious. Waiting until just that right moment when you are feeling relaxed. Perhaps even comfortable with yourself. When you are around people and, for once, not feeling self-conscious. When you don’t have a care in the world, and everything is good. That’s when the universe will Gut Punch you.
It will always be an ironic thing.
If you are speaking in front of an AA group, you’ll discover the donuts you bought are rum balls.
If you are showing off your new, non-slip shoes, your feet will stick to the floor and you’ll fall and break something.
If you are telling the world you are in love with someone, that someone will walk in the door, drunk and high, with three hookers on their arms.
The Gut Punch.
All I can tell you, is that when you have that quiet, contended, nothing-is-wrong moment, you need to watch your ass.
Some of us really don’t like the cutesy stuff so much.
Especially on the news and the Internet. It’s too much. Overdone, sickly sweet. It creates an artificial bubble of nice in an ugly world, creating a dichotomy so artificially strong that sometimes it literally makes some of us physically sick.
But not always.
Always is the problem.
Sometimes a little cutesy stuff is good. It can distract us for a moment from the terribly ugly, give us a second to take a breath before we have to dive back into the shitty stuff.
Because the problem with the shitty stuff is exactly the same. Especially on the news and the Internet. It’s too much. Overdone, disgustingly distasteful. An artificial bubble of hatred and over-zealousness in a pretty world, creating a blight that feeds upon itself and grows and infects everyone, at least a little bit, with its displeasure, anger, and resentment.
So sometimes, we need a little cutesy stuff to kill a little shitty stuff.
But it’s a losing battle. Cutesy stuff doesn’t always win when applied as a salve, but shitty stuff, when thrown into a pile of cutesy, ruins it all, every time.
So next time you are trying to decide whether to be naughty or nice, take a moment to decide. Feed the beast, or dangle a feather in front of it to distract it.
It seems so romantic, so perfect.
It’s a daydream we all aspire to, whether we are young and wish it would happen or old and wish it would have happened to us.
Some of us, I guess, look back on it with fond memories.
But is it really that great?
I mean, yeah the highs are freaking high, but the lows are bottom of Hell’s Grand Canyon low.
So many turbulent emotions we don’t (didn’t) (still don’t) understand. Getting so upset at the smallest perceived slight, when there wasn’t one to start with. Arguing over things we both see the same way but say differently.
Jeez! I don’t want that ever again!
All I want is the fairy tales, the anticipations, the afterglows.
The highs.
Yup.
The highs.
So. I have claimed Mr. Vodka as my own, and I am his.
-Jane
Sometimes I have to wonder if dreaming is really good for you or not.
I don’t mean night-time sleep dreams, but rather daydreams and aspirations and hopes and wishes.
My whole life I have listened to the poets, the writers, the artists, the teachers say to use your imagination, to follow your heart, to reach for the impossible goal….
But isn’t that just setting 99% of us up for failure?
It seems like when you are young and try to do things, everyone tells you that you can’t, you’re too young. Then you get older and they tell you to act more mature, be responsible. Then you get even older and people won’t hire you, won’t take a chance on you. And then you are too old. Maybe you don’t give a shit what they say anymore, but you feel like shit anyway, so … shit.
Meanwhile, you have the dreams of the things you want to do, but they seem to beat you down constantly, instead of giving you hope that you will make it someday.
Don’t beleive me that they beat you down? Go back and look through old photos. How does that make you feel? Do you get happy looking at all of the pictures of your young beautiful friends and yourself? Or does it make you the epitome of melancholy?
Be honest.
You know why? Because you’re not looking back and thinking “Wow! We had such great dreams, and they all came true!”
Nope.
Kind of the opposite.
So I have to wonder. Would 99% be better off if we would have been brought up to beleive that we would be happy if we would just do our jobs right the first time, spend time with our family and friends whenever possible, sing Christmas Carols, and try to enjoy life as we work our way through it?
Oh, wait. That sounds exactly like the things people used to try to teach their kids. I remember my grandmother saying stuff like that.
Maybe I should have listened to her.
I mean, I know she didn’t much like the crappy part time job she had. (She worked at JC Penny’s in retail.) But really she did it for the extra pocket money and to meet people. She liked both of those a lot. I know she didn’t like doing laundry, or dishes, or cleaning house. But she loved playing tag around the sheets on the clothesline, the whole world was happy when she was cooking, and teasing kids with a feather duster or that monster vacuum cleaner while she cleaned was nearly something she lived for.
What were her dreams and hopes?
I don’t know. She never told me. She never cried over not reaching them. She never wasted time sitting on the porch and thinking about them.
She spent her time doing her job right the first time and then enjoying the shit out of everything she could.
When I look back, that’s kind of what I wish I would have done. Instead of spending years wasting my life dreaming about what I wanted to do, I could have been enjoying the shit out of what I had.
Now it seems, all I know how to do is wish I had something I don’t.
That’s kind of what they taught me.
How do I stop wishing I hadn’t wasted my life and just enjoy what I do have now?
No one ever taught me that.
But Vodka helps! I always enjoy the right now with Vodka.
Kind of.
