Ramble On: Winter 2024-2025 Edition

 Round 2: Fight! 

Playlist Link: Ramble On Winter 2024-2025 

1. The concept of a guardian angel not wanting to do their job.
2. By all means, eat his heart, but don’t expect to gain any courage from doing so. 
3. Loyalty is my biggest kink (and honesty is a close second).
4. Why is it always “ _ _ 7” when it comes to heroes — James Bond, 007. Master Chief, 117. Who is going to be 227? 337? At what point do fictional militaries start looking like they’re putting faith in angel numbers? 
5. Quickest to rise is the first to fall…and those who fall the hardest rise the furthest. 
6. Bite me. 
7. Everything I write is open to (mis)interpretation. 
8. Polish pearls on your nose. 
9. Appalooooooooooooosa 
10. I’m over video games that make you wait around to fly through space forever, just to land on a planet of desolation and dust. Nothing else about these games is realistic, so why aren’t we making more interesting planets. Show me a planet made entirely of Bismuth. Or diamond. Or literally anything other than dirt. It doesn’t even have to actually exist in our world. At this point, show me an entire planet made of jello for all I care (the physics that would be involved with that one…). But please. No more wastelands. (And the giant sprawling Viking style woodlands and forest scapes, aren’t much better — we get it, you guys can make blades of grass now.)
11. Your ratios are off and I don’t give a damn about your “statistics”. 
12. Highly reactive….volatile…but only when subjected to the proper catalysts. 
13. In the tone of a late night informercial: “I, too, was having a hard time reading the first page of Google results and deciding what was what for myself — now with AI, I don’t have to. It gives me my opinions for me!” 
14. Sometimes you have to stop looking so hard for the thing you want in order to find it. 
15. I will burn myself into your brain and you will savor the way your thoughts smell. 
16. If you combine microwave technology with guns and grapes….could you produce a plasma gun? (Queue hearing a cartoonish popping sound in my head.) Also, do wine grapes have more or less potential for this than table grapes? I don’t know enough to connect all of the dots here. 
17. Meal prepping freaks me out because no one should be eating cooked chicken after four days time….please don’t prep for an entire week…maybe for a day or two, but please please please not for an entire week. 
18. “The trouble always is,” he explained to Vesper, “not how to get enough caviar, but how to get enough toast with it.” — James Bond, Chapter 8 (Pink Lights and Champagne), Casino Royal, Ian Fleming 
19. Las Vegas is the cesspool of America. #ew 
20. Hannibal Lecter is the perfect opposite to Will Graham’s “true empathy” — because maybe when you’re that empathetic, everyday would already feel like you’re being eaten alive by others. 
21. Speak plainly or forever hold your peace. 
22. Why doesn’t Sweeney Todd touch on the fact that, back then, barbers had so much more medical experience and responsibility than they’re allowed today? Somehow I feel like that should play a major part in the story. Or in the legend. 
23. Life has a way of throwing the question of whether you want to be a good person, or whether to just be good to yourself, a little too often these days. 
24. You wish. 
25. Beauty product sales representatives are all too often the human equivalent of pop-up ads. Just because it “goes to 11,” doesn’t mean it absolutely has to. 
26. Don’t fuck with the cook. 
27. “Let Them Theory” is complete and total bullshit. Your willingness to be not only self-centered as hell, but silent and complaisant as well, fucking disgusts me. And I’m terrified for how this will be exacerbated in the future. Let them rape you. Let them poison you. Let them hit you. Let them steal from you. Let them lie to you. Let them take from you. Let them own everything. Let them. Just let them. Lie down and take it like a good little bitch. Ignore how it affects you. Ignore how severed your relationships are. Ignore what it does to society. Don’t help your friends. Don’t help your family. Don’t stand up for yourself. Don’t try to change things. Just settle. Just let them. Just be a doormat. Just let them. YOU HAVE A VOICE FOR A REASON. USE IT. YOU MIGHT SAVE A LIFE. This “theory” (if you can even accurately describe it as that) is toxic as fuck, if not downright dangerous. It’s your job to be a part of your community. It’s your job to help encourage your kids to do better. Stop being a lazy fuck. Stop buying into the “trendy” bullshit. It’s all just another method of control. Do not subject yourself to this mindset. Our communities are damn near gone already, this is only further trying to eradicate them completely. Fight for your family. Fight for your kids. Fight for your friends. Fight for your neighbors. Fight for a future where we aren’t all brainwashed zombies. SPEAK UP. ASK FOR HELP WHEN YOU NEED IT. See your shortcomings and do something about them instead of just saying it’s someone else’s fault. Work on yourself. Help others work on themselves. Stop accepting the horrible state of things. Ask about preventative measures. Try to see a pattern so we can better help everyone in the future. We all need to be able to better communicate with everyone and anyone around us. Your voice is not the only one that matters. It takes a village. THIS IS ALL OF OUR RESPONSIBILITY. YOU DON’T GET TO CHECK OUT.  (P.S. Mel Robbins isn’t even a psychologist, psychoanalyst, therapist, or any other form of mental health professional. She went to law school and is mostly known for being a criminal defense attorney for violent felons and a “motivational speaker” — despite her TV show being cancelled due to low ratings. QUESTION your sources, people. Research the authors before you fully buy into their bullshit — because this woman has basically no standing to be coaching people on mental health. THERE IS NO LEGITIMATE, VALID SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH SPECIFICALLY DONE TO PROVE THIS AS A THEORY OR EVEN TO PROVE IT WORKS AT ALL. SHE IS NOT QUALIFIED TO BE DOING THIS. IT IS NOT VALID. IT HAS NOT BEEN PROVEN AS A THEORY. IT HAS NOT BEEN PROPERLY TESTED. In case everyone has forgotten, a “theory” must be “a well-established explanation of how the world works BASED ON A LARGE BODY OF EVIDENCE THAT HAS BEEN REPEATEDLY TESTED AND CONFIRMED THROUGH OBSERVATION AND EXPERIMENTATION”. Show me the specific scientific research paper that proves this shit and I’ll be more than happy to shut the fuck up about it, but until then, TikTok trends and Mel Robbins can eat my fucking shorts.) 
28. Happy New Year! Hope you enjoy watching the fireworks as we send cameras over the world’s largest skyscrapers (as if this isn’t an international dick measuring competition). 
29. Carnage. 
30. Lean into the perceived chaos because sometimes inventing, starting, creating, and discovering takes someone being a little outside of the parameters of what a cocaine-addicted man deemed “psychologically sound” in the late 1800s.
31. “You know, that little droid is going to cause me a lot of trouble.” Luke Skywalker, Star Wars: A New Hope 
32. Girl, you’re too hot to look that sad. 
33. Avoidance isn’t the only way to “break generational curses”, however, it would likely be the easiest route to take. 
34. There’s something incredibly intimate about watching a movie on your phone screen with headphones…holding a film in your hands that’s playing for only you to watch on a small piece of glass is sort of magical. 
35. Aspire. Perspire. Work for that desire. 
36. You don’t know me because you never bothered to ask me anything personal. I know you because you never shut up about yourself. 
37. Meditating for hours at a time. 
38. Erin Brockovich. 
39. I like that the Geico Gecko likes jam/fruit preserves. It’s adorable when he has a bit of jelly at the corner of his mouth. (Your advertising tactics are working, Geico.)
40. When is the last time you enjoyed something just for the sake of enjoyment? Not because it was stylish, or a status symbol, or because someone or something told you to like it — but because you genuinely smiled when you found it…when is the last time that happened to you? 
41. Scire. Tacere. 
42. And now, an invitation to contemplate exactly why it is that the queen always has the most moves available to her during a game of chess. Silly rabbit. 
43. Fasting, meditation, and solitude are underrated. 
44. “…I’m a real boy and you’re just an amoeba…” — what kind of fucked up Pinocchio bullshit…. #ataleasoldastime 
45. Dammit. 
46. Janet. 
47. Some days it’s even enough for me — I hope it is for you too. 
48. “O Captain! My Captain!” - Walt Whitman 
49. Texting may be especially difficult if you’re unable to read things “in the voice of another person”.
50. I know, I know, how dare I have thoughts. My bad. 
51. PSA: Stop drinking your calories. 
52. 1,000% recommend being big spoon — bonus points if it surprises the dude and he’s a little giddy about it. 
53. Edna Mode’s origin story. Pretty please with a cherry on top. 
54. Inspiration > Influence 
55. I miss tent camping. Hiking to secluded places that can’t be reached by anything but foot…sleeping under the stars even though you’re freezing…the smell of campfires. The stillness. The quiet. Maybe I’ll go alone and become part of a family of bears for a while. I could deal with salmon and growling for a few weeks, might even fucking welcome it. #bigpuppy 
56. I don’t give a shit if you’re the loudest person in the room or about your bullshit Harvard business mentality. 
57. Thank you, George Lucas, for giving us diamonds in the rough whenever possible.  
58. Symmetry lies where you can give and take in a free flowing exchange of equal measures. 
59. I don’t know who needs to hear this, but it’s not okay for the people around you to be encouraging you to change your biological chemistry/take pills/take hormones/etc. just so they can continue abusing you and never even work on themselves. Coping skills are meant for day-to-day situations that are out of your hands — not so you can continue trying to live in an abusive situation that keeps repeating itself. There is a difference. You are not alone. And you do not have to live like this. 
60. Credit where credit is due. 
61. I’ve developed the habit of telling people “hey you, yeah you, yeah fuck you, you guy” in my head, but in Chris D’Elia’s voice, and… it helps.
62. Esthetics and cooking have a lot in common considering a big part of both consists of tenderizing meat with acids and heat. #yaychemistry 
63. The amount of times I want to scream “Honey, you have legs, use them” during movie fight scenes where people are way too shittily “pinned down” is unfathomable. 
64. Dancing like Al Pacino all the way down the street. 
65. Unpopular opinion: I don’t think all student loans should be forgiven. However, if that money was used to pursue a career in the “back of house” medical field, the loans should definitely be forgiven. I’m tired of dealing with medical professionals who are only in it for the money.  And the people actually willing to do good work and help others shouldn’t be worried about financial burdens. Let’s make doctors actual doctors again, instead of them being legal drug dealers. 
66. Follow through. Follow through. Follow through. I’ll say it again for the people in the back — follow through. 
67. People are very much capable of change, but unfortunately, it’s all too often for the worse.  
68. “It’s mercy, compassion, and forgiveness I lack. Not rationality.” — The Bride/Beatrix, Kill Bill vol. 1 
69. I am the echo of words you’ve never said. I am your last thought before bed. 
70. “Men will no longer commute, they will communicate.” — Arthur C. Clarke 
71. I wonder if we’ve successfully drugged the shit out of the collective unconscious yet. 
72. Divorce is healthy. 
73. “Prepare for the worst and hope the best” assumes that the crisis may already be here. 
74. “Can you define _____ for me please.” /“Please define _____ for me.” = some of the greatest arguments ever made. Buzz words aren’t your friend. Pay attention to when definitions get changed. Pay attention to what their original intent was. Check the history. Etymology. Double check. And check again. Just like with most weapons, they start innocent enough. (Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will hurt for generations.) We do not govern through war, we govern through written law. The pen is mightier than the sword — do not ignore it. 

Here’s to the stories in between. The ones they don’t show on tv because they’re distasteful, psychotic, unpalatable, or simply true. 

Here’s to the moments that violently shove us into burning hot celestial molds in order to better shape us. 

Here’s to biblically accurate angels (because they scare the ever-loving shit out of me). 

And here’s to my cousin for reminding me that I also just lost “the game”. 

Parting is such sweet sorrow, 

xoxo