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This isn't really about books - it's more about records probably - but not really about either of those. 

It's the working title I had used - and I can't really think of a better one just now... 

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Fuck Books 

Did you ever buy a book? Probably not - but, for the fuck of it - let's assume you did...

Did you ever buy a book because you saw it on the other end of the store - while you were waiting at the cash register - and the only reason you walked over was because it at first glimpse
had that same ugly colour (orange in my case) as one of your favourite books - although you quickly realised it's not the same book (more words - no silver skull on the cover) but you figured, 
'well, I am in a book store - looking to buy books - why not walk over there?' 

Obviously I didn't have that happen to me many times - fool me once, maybe? - but anyway, having that happen once is a precious enough experience. Seeing that I like buying books, I guess I had statistics in my favour.
So I walked over and picked it up - alas, it wasn't the art-house porn novel it appeared to be from farther away... I procured it anyways.

Months later I found a colleague, let's call her 'a woman at work', was reading the same book - and was ostensibly unimpressed by it. I didn't give a fuck about finding out why or how that was. 
I had stopped giving a fuck about that person some time ago... There wasn't anything surprising about that ordeal - it takes one to know one - they say - I am not sure if that applies only to crooks and liars, 
or if it's universally applicable.

 

Do you have to be a genius to apply that term to say Einstein, Michael Scofield, Leonardo da Vinci or Rodney Mullen? And how does it stack up when discussing cynical basterds and smug biches?
I leave you to ponder that one over... As for me? Dunt kare either ways!
But I'd put all my money on the 'counterintuitive' in the book's subtitle...

Whilst Wikipedia may have you believe otherwise; Soulwax never released an album called "Most of the Remixes" - official sources such as the physical record say so... 
I don't know if that's because they lack the funding to display the title in its full length - or because, whatever...

Maybe Mr. Manson should given a bit more of a fuck about avoiding misconceptions or less of a fuck about his publisher's opinions on the matter. I maintain that if you have a 8-word book title, 
you can afford more than an 8 word subtitle - but maybe it's just them taking the piss because it's unlikely there's more than 1 person that would bother to give a fuck about that... Just sayin'...
Mr. Complainy-Pants here would have favoured something like "a counter approach that probably makes you feel less miserable and unfulfilled than all the stuff that's telling you it's going to make you feel better.
Also it doesn't have a dozen or so steps for you to follow and/or rest on, but it has more chapters than words in the title. So there's that."

I wouldn't say the book was not as life-changing as the affore-mentioned LP (to me, personally - can't speak for you) - but I'd argue it was a more life-affirming experience than most records I own.
It's a book I mean - the worst that can happen is you learn to read. 

Yes, yes, there's lots of worse things that can happen - you can take a book and fight over it with half the planet Earth - you can do that for centuries - but probably the reason you do that is because you are some
variation of a cunt (greedy, self-righteous, power-hungry... you know the type...) and not because you read a book and learnt anything from it... 
And yes, you can use a book to bash someone's head in - you should use a brick instead - most of them are more effective than your garden-variety store-bought book. 
Not speaking from experience, mind you...  Call it an educated guess... Also, bludgeoning someone's face probably gets you in more trouble than you're already in - it's usually not an advisable exit strat.
Not judging - just stating the obvious.

So, yeah, I read that book a couple of years back - and I don't remember much of it - a few anecdotes, used to convey a point - but for the most part I just absorbed what it to offer.
Like the one where Picasso (or some other painter dude) made a doodle on a napkin - and the person who saw it, and wanted to purchase it said;
'it only took you like 2 minutes - that can't be worth as much money as you ask for' - when in reality a lifetime went into those simple strokes and made it priceless... 

I mean you go on YouTube these days (or any other day - it's been like that for years... it's thereby the standard...) and you are expected to think 'this video took so many hours to edit and "get right" and therefore
must be praised and liked and commented on and its 'creator' subbed to - because in addition to doing his daily grind of churning about a handful 10-15 minute bits, they went the extra-mile and actually put effort in it.

I say this now - and probably not for the first nor last time - everything I write has a lifetime put into it. Does that make me or my work better? If you say so, it does... But remember it's you who said that... 
All I say is there's work and there's working - you can do a job, you can get a job done - and everyone looking at it will have a different viewpoint on the matter.
So I am not going to argue that either way - I can only be wrong - and I shan't waste my time on that... I don't want to waste your time any less than I want to waste mine. 
I don't know or care how busy you are - or not - but I am aware of a certain lack of time in this life to go off on that tangent.
What I can say is that I enjoy this more than what most people do for fun - most of the office work I did I actually enjoyed. I never liked getting out of bed in the morning, I never liked having to go to bed at night.
But usually, once I got out from under the duvet and stepped into their office I positively enjoyed - fuck you if you think I was lucky (or heaven forbid priviledged) to have that... 
No, serious, you can put a Capital F in front of the OFF if you think that I was in any way better off than you are... That's just the excuse you tell yourself - by default... and I can't blame you for that - it's in 
your nature, it's how you were designed to be, or just what you are led to believe - it's something you need to figure out for yourself. 

As a kid I was good a math, and I grew bored with it. I am interested in people - even though I may dislike many of them. I never thought I could change the world, but most of my work involved solving problems, 
and/or helping people I work with do their job better or easier. 

My work was the complete opposite of social work (multinational corporations include such words on their publicity... I never figured out just who they want to fool...). It was about as uncreative as it can be;
numbers and tables and an occasional flake of feelings... And yet, most people I worked with appreciated that I was really passionate about our work together - whether they liked my approach or not.

Often you go a store, even a supermarket, to buy stuff & things - not saying you're getting all hyped about a plastic bag of carrots or a refill bag of liquid soap - but there's something comforting about knowing 
what you can cook with veggies, or that you can wash your hands also the next couple of days. There's also a good chance that at least one of the clerks takes the time out of their day to express facially just how
ungrateful they are to work there. To have a job, and afford rent and stuff. And how much they actually hate it their - and the fact that you dare to bother them with your enquiries is just beyond words...

Maybe I don't go to shops often enough - but it's rare when I would walk out in a better mood than I came in... Some places are worse than others, but as a rule of thumb, it works for me.

The Pip, by way of paraphrasing Lloyd Dobler, talks about deciding to be in a good mood - like it's simple decision. And I used to think 'what a load a...'.

Looking around - like in a public place with people - it appears many people make an effort to not be in a good mood. Because reasons I guess?

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Observation and reflection did not agree for me on this - for a long time... a very long time... like 10 years plus type of long time.... and then it hit me:

Say, you've worked at the corner store for 6 months - that's probably a long enough tenure for you to figure out what's what and if it's for you. It's not.
5-6 days a week you wake up with 'I hate my job, I hate my life, everything sucks' - remaining days your brain's too scrambled to form anything resembling a coherent thought - but the sensation is the same.
Unless you fuck up on the job somehow, chances are you're still working there 2 years later and beyond. And every week you'll suffer the same misery. And it's everybody else's fault. The customers are assholes.
Your co-workers are fucking idiots and your boss, well, you can write a whole book of all the things you'd do to them and their loved ones - if only you had the chance.
I really hope you figure that out quick - or just off yourself - because I really, really don't care for people that get paid to make me miserable when all I want is buy my milk and cereals. That's the one thing
I truly love about self-checkouts in supermarkets. Also, don't off yourself - get your shit together. There's bound to be at least 1 job you can think of for which you're both qualified and more into than your current one.

Not saying you can't choose to rot away in this manner... there's nothing wrong with self-pity and all that - it does have it's place, maybe- but to make it a living? C'mon... 
If you're in that spot, I can totally see why you're unable or at least unwilling to be in a good mood.

You clearly have bigger problems...  

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There's this line - probably some old person in the Far East came up with it - about the correlation of attitude and situation - if you can't change one, change the other... 

Not saying it's easy to come up with such wise words - but it's fairly straight forward to understand them. 

Not saying it's easy to put that theory into practice - but it's a cake walk to push them aside and bitch and moan about all aspects of your sorry little existence.  You fucking lazy cunt-bitch.

And hey, that's what it boils down to. Being miserable is as convenient as it's draining. 

It's kinda like taking to the streets and protest for something than actually coming up with a plan to solve it. It's much simpler to talk about a problem than working it out. 
It's kinda why you need meetings and conferences at work instead of working it out. 
Personal tip: I did have some good (but also not so good) results with this strategy:
"I cannot join you for this 1 hour because I rather fix the issue than talking about it with people that do not really (need to) understand or care about the details  - and I will give you a suggestion on how to avoid
it next time - once it's solved. #RCA - And, yes, I do consider that a much better use of my time - ask my boss if you 'only want to discuss it' - I do care for his opinion, not yours. Thank you." 
The actual situation, the people involved and the words used can make that approach more difficult - but on the whole I prefer that as a lifestyle choice. 

Of course there are many things that need to be discussed - most problems affect multiple parties - and for a mutually beneficial solution everyone holding a stake should be involved - hooray for democracy.
Then again - there is a difference between discussing a problem and talking about it. If your friend has relationship issues, cries for hours, asks for advice to either hear what they want to hear or just to reject it 
because 'you just don't get it, do you?' they're wasting your time and expect some favourable emotions or favours in return. Those people are called assholes. And I don't care if you think they're your friends. 
Far be it from me to tell you how to spent your time and energy. Everyone loves a good tearjerker - but they're way better on celluloid than IRL.

It baffles the fuck out of me how much unawareness about all these -isms there still is out there... I mean Geezus - with the flood of information online today it's kinda hard to filter - but - that stuff has been 
around decades before I was born... Like 20 years before they (my parents) made me, this Martin guy had a dream - he got shot before they (still my parents) finished school. 
60 years later what's changed? You're called a racist for saying 'black lives don't matter one iota more than yellow, green or white ones' - it's the norm to have some form of BLM, LGBTQ or other sequences of letters
on your social media profiles.  I mean fuck me - how much more clueless do we have to become as a species before everyone is aware? 

Politicians cut budgets that benefit society (healthcrap, edufuckingcation, social stuff) all the time - and still they get your votes. For the record - they never got mine. Ever. Except that one time where I wanted
to demonstrate to myself that dropping the envelope on said day would not have any noticeable impact on life as I know it - I passed with flying colours.

And why do they cut it? Because they need to achieve their goals and you don't want to pay any more taxes than you already do - so go figure... 

And why don't you want to pay more taxes or do something out of your own initiative to right such wrongs? 

Because you can't be fucking arsed that's why. 

I could never be arse myself - and I never denied that - and the only time I went to a protest march was during the post-911 US attacks on some country or other. 

And why did I participate in that march? Because it could be out of business school - I could drink & smoke and shout profanities with my classmates for a day and that was the righteous thing to do. 
I did not for one second believe that my 'efforts' would bear any fruit. 

Here's what I thought - during a quick smoking break just now:
It should be relatively easy to formulate something like
"We call for change in Law Enforcement globally - to detect racist & sexist (and similar) tendencies in their officers - a practice that's been used in 'normal management training by companies for years and years' to stop abuse" 
and get like 500 million people signing it. 

I'd imagine that would at least rattle some cages. 

Then I checked the about section of changedotorg - they claim to have over 200 million users - combined over 13 years of existence. I am fairly sure that number is much closer to 200 mil than 500 mil.

But yeah, if half of the western world is on the streets there's not enough people at home to do that.

So why don't I do that? I mean basically did all the groundwork already? 

Yeah - because as a white guy I really have that option... as someone who was born and fed nothing other than white priviledges I really have the right to speak up on these things?

That's how the internet works in 2020. Fuck off!

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Thank you for having made that decision for me... 

Ah, who are we kidding - I made my decision to write - and pursue individual projects on my own time. 

You can have this idea from me - because - like it says on my home section - use what I write and do something with it - I am not setting out to change the world - I much rather keep tabs on how you do, and drop some nuggets
here and there... 

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I have another one for you - "hey politician - for next year you adjust the education budget upwards based on the expected increase in pupils and add 10-20% extra for good measure - if you don't we're not going to vote for you.
And yes - we are okay if you take that money from businesses and their rich owners - because they're the ones that benefit most from an educated workforce. And no, you don't need to cut school funding by 50% if it's a weaker year".

You are going to say "it's not that easy" - and I am going to say "oh, it's not? How so?" and you'll spent the rest of the day trying to come up with excuses - and I will walk away sad and lonely and utterly clueless as to what you
wanted to say... and we will never speak of it again because I would never allow you to waste another day of mine."

You can watch Super Size Me or read Fast Food Nation and what you will find is that every single person who is eating such food regularly, and possibly has a consumer lifestyle to go with it, is directly responsible
for those companies to do what they do - with their workers, their product and the environment - you basically leave them no choice other than to exploit and find new ways to make more money - because your talking and your walking are 
out of sync.
You may not say you consciously condone their actions - but you silently green light it. 

Am I any different? Yeah, right - that's why I spent $500.- when I built my desktop gaming pc last year. I mean I spent that on the processor... I wanted to upgrade from my $3000.- laptop...
Why did do that? Because I could. I was actively looking at the highest-end segment so I would not have to upgrade 2-3 years later. Unless I had to because by then modern games would be so broken that I could only run a game with 5 fps.
Unlikely to happen any time soon. It was an investment - just like the $200 keyboard I use to write in notepad. 
I do not know what kind of life you lead where you work and put money aside for several years to buy something like that - and find it 'too expensive'. 

Yes, there are many people who could never afford that - not in their whole family tree - but probably frame rates & visual quality in video games is not exactly a pressing matter for them. 
So please go and take your white priviledge bollox elsewhere.