Just some things you can do that just might have a positive, albeit minor, impact on the world:

If you are at the light and it turns green, you might notice that the person across from you wants to make a left turn. If you also wish to make such a turn, why don’t you use your blinker to signal such a desire so that you and the individual across from you might both utilize the opportunity to each make a left turn? Otherwise, it might seem as though you used the consideration of the other person who used their blinker to also make a left turn while not reciprocating and thus causing the other to miss out on the opportunity to turn.

If you are in a drive thru, you must surely know that your order will cost money. Why not have your wallet, purse, or whatever holds your money out and ready to be accessed? Also, while we are discussing drive thrus, why not use them only if you already know what you want? This is not to save the time of those working; this is to save the time of the person behind you who has been waiting for five minutes to order a 16 oz cup of coffee because you insist on ordering ‘that drink that my friend got the other day that was yummy and most likely sold at Starbucks’ and figuring it out by asking the most ridiculous questions such as ‘well, what’s the difference between a mocha frappucino and a pumpkin cream cheese muffin?’. Honestly, I just hope you die.

If you have a coupon that has expired, I understand that this makes you sad. Instead of begging for the worker to accept it… could you just not instead? If you’re too broke to buy a drink at full price, you should probably refrain from ordering the same drink for a dollar less than full price.

If you want to go to a college campus and shout at the students and faculty there to show your love for God, could you stop bringing your kids? And… could you stop bringing your signs that say ‘homo sex is a biohazard’? What if, instead of yelling at people, you brought coffee of something and just had a nice conversation with some of the students. That would make my life easier as it stresses me out watching that crazy shit happen and it would also, just maybe, better sell your point that you are attempting to show Christ’s love.

If you insist on wearing shirts that are exceptionally revealing or that have messages such as ‘I <3 my titties’, would you please stop looking so offended when people look in the general area of your chest? If I did everything I could to make something the focal point of everyone’s attention, it wouldn’t make sense for me to get upset when people notice, right?

If you have an infant who prefers to add their own soundtrack to whichever film the child happens to be watching with you, would it be possible for you to get a babysitter or to wait until the movie comes out on DVD? I know this might seem rude, but I personally find it rude that I choose not to breed ( or I can’t find anyone to breed with.. eh ) and yet I still have to suffer the annoyances of having a child. In fact, here’s the newly proposed rule: If I have to suffer the annoyances of dealing with your child, I am thus allowed to influence your child in other ways. I will take your child out for a fun-filled evening of sugary treats and I will give your child three attack kittens as pets. They are not suited for the house and yet you will be forced to keep them out of guilt. They will attack you and you will bleed out and die. Bitches.

If someone says something that happens to be true, could you try to refrain from attempting to negate the claim on the grounds that you don’t like the truth as it is? I would really appreciate this.

If someone asks you ‘what’s wrong?’ and you say ‘nothing’ while sobbing so hard that you are almost breathless, I would love it if you do one of three things:

1. stop crying. You said there was nothing wrong. So shut up.
2. tell the questioner the problem so that you might join forces to fix the situation.
3. Die.

So there I was, hanging out at the local Starbucks in Panama City. My uncle wanted some coffee and I knew that I could deliver such goods, so we went in to get a couple pounds of the good stuff ( verona and komodo ), a drink for myself, and two birthday cake pops. The uncle waited outside, which was for the best as I found out afterwards. It would have been embarrassing to have him see me in such a fit of rage. I walk in the store to find a line to the door. Patiently, I get in line. As I’m waiting in line to place my order, I start to look around the store. It seems I’m always concerned with where the bottle neck is in any Starbucks situation, even when I’m on vacation. As I watched, this is what I saw:

Cafe only store. Three partners on the floor. Line to the door. One partner was ringing people up with a speed rivaling that of a dead person who was also stuck in cement. ( that’s really slow ). The second partner was the bar partner, and he seemed to be moving at a pace that was only considered movement when compared to the front till partner. But then, there was the third. This guy was, no joke, doing prep work. Now, when I say that prep work was going on, I don’t mean that they were out of whipped cream and so he was hurriedly making one to use. I’m talking about intense prep work; the kid was making 16 whips while the line to order was well over 5 minutes itself.

Well, I get to the front and start to place my order.

“I would like these two pounds of coffee, one as my markout, ground on 7,” I say as I place my two pounds of coffee on the counter. “and I would also like one grande whole milk caramel macchiato and two cake pops ( birthday, of course ).”

The girl looks at me and says “well, we only have frozen birthday cake pops” to which I reply with “..why?”

“Well, we’ve been selling a lot of them and so I took them out to thaw but they’re still not ready.”

….

well. you’re a store in Panama City and it’s Summer time. Seems to me like you ought to not freeze your fuckin cake pops. But that’s ok. I told her that it was fine, that I would take two anyway.

I then watched this girl walk to the grinder and begin to grind my coffee. Line still to the door behind me, bar partner still swamped, and third guy still doing prep work. She opts to leave the till to start grinding two pounds of coffee. It’s at this point that partner number 3, we’ll call him douchebag ( if you had seen him, you’d understand ), became a hero and decided to walk over and started to take over the grinding for the lady partner. She then came back to mark the cup for my beverage and finally took my money. I turn around, notice that the line behind me is not really a line, it is more of a hectic collection of challenged individuals running around like they’re in their underwear at home ( unless I’m the only one who does this… in which case they were simply not conducting themselves as well as they should have been ) and so I do my best to walk around the lady directly behind me. Her child, running in wide circles around her mother while the mom just stands there staring off into the distance as if silently praying that her child would fall over and die, runs square into my leg.. my strong, muscular man leg of justice. I look down at the girl, who stumbles backwards as if running into a brick wall… a muscular man brick wall of justice. I look back up at the mom, back down at the girl, and bluntly state “I’m sorry; I’m sorry your mom wasn’t holding your hand like she should have been”.

I grab my coffee off the counter, as it has now been ground, and walk to the center of the shop to wait for my drink. A casual glance back and I see that the lady with the daughter, as well as the younger girl behind her, are still staring at me as if my comment had physically cut her to the core and left her insides strewn out on the ground for all to see. And, were I to think it would have been a social benefit, I would have done just that. But… I give her the very mature look of ‘yeah? fuck with me, PLEASE!’ but she opts to look back down at the ground. This is good, I see now retrospectively, because I actually will hit a mother in public if I feel that she’s failing to raise her child in any sort of decent way. ( I’m not saying this is a good thing, I’m just blogging about me, faults and all )

I look around, notice that the entire set of people that had been in line before me were all still waiting for their drinks, said out loud, ‘fuck it’ and walked outside, forgoing any possibility of having the drink I purchased moments before. I was just so mad.

Well, that’s my story about Starbucks. I wasn’t too impressed with my experience, and I really think that society, globally speaking, is far beyond hope. yyyaayyyy for vacation.

“My ship don’t crash. If she crashes, you crashed her.”

 When I think about the world in which I live in I can’t help but to think that we are set up for failure. Unattainable expectations for life that arise from mistaken world views cause us to seek the only thing that we know: Being miserable. We call it something different though, we call it comfort with consistency, not realizing that such clinging to things that cannot last only grant the end result of such suffering. Like a religious zealot believing all evidence for and against go to support his belief, we in society do the same thing by believing happiness is found in the past no matter the outcome. Things in themselves have no value, there is nothing to discover within the outside world. As Dogen’s Chinese friend said “Nothing in the universe is hidden.” and such is surely the case. Nothing in the universe is hidden as the universe itself arises from within the mind and so it seems that we choose. We choose everything, how to see the world, how to feel in response, and anything else that exists does so simply because we choose for it to exist as such.

Happiness is found nowhere other than within, called forth in times that we feel are deserving and yet it seems that we don’t understand that such ideas as ‘deserve’ live within our own minds just as everything else.

Growing up within a relatively conservative Christian house, I wanted to be a preacher. Well, to be fair, I wanted to be a youth minister for the longest time, but, as I got older, I wanted to further explore theology on a level that would not be well matched with students in middle and high school. It seemed that the only future I had was one in the ministry, and so it now seems funny that it’s that same desire to learn and grow as an individual that pushed me, bit by bit, towards a complete rejection of ‘the faith’. Hm… Kind of pisses me off that I can’t be a preacher though, my life seemed so much more secure when I had a definite plan.

Oh well, I guess the secular equivalent will suit me just fine.

You know, a broken token functions the same
Insofar as it serves a purpose altogether
Unrelated to initial teleological foundation
And yet the relation, value to inherent functionality,
While seen as a necessary correlation by most,
Just makes me wish that you’d see the world the,
Way that I see it; cause dear if you’re the moon,
Then the world in it’s entirety must surely be,
The finger pointing like a token referencing,
A memory that seems to already be fading.

Sometimes it seems that the best things in life are free only if you’re talking monetarily, right? I mean… everything has a cost. Seems it’s the only thing Emerson got right when he said in Ethics, “For everything you have missed, you have gained something else; and for everything you gain, you lose something.” He didn’t really discuss ethics, but he seems to have stumbled upon something worthwhile only if he did so by mentioning opportunity cost. But yeah.. everything has a cost it seems, everything has a value that you give it.

Nothing’s free. Not even the things you’ve said before, thrown back towards you in an attempt to spare what’s left of you. Even such things have costs it seems. Eh. That’s life I guess. Life is one big opportunity cost, and I can’t seem how to make a worthwhile trade that makes everyone happy. Seems that’s not quite possible? Maybe not.

So our memories fade almost as soon as they’re made,
And yet the outline, soon to be devoid of any meat,
Left like an exoskeleton, just the imprint left in my mind,
Haunts my consciousness to the same degree,
Every day, even if I can no longer remember exactly,
What it is I’m even mourning.

Dear potential girl I might date:

If the content of this letter excludes you, then I guess this letter isn’t addressed to you and so you can consider yourself an onlooker that is neither welcomed nor restricted to reading this letter.

I appreciate your acceptance of me, just as I am.

Thank you for dealing with me being miserable for days on end and not attempting to reason with me, because you know that reason only works for me when it’s something that deals with external relation.

Thank you for understanding that I’m a rather insecure person, even though I’ll end up doing shit that, independent of ethical misconduct, would, were the situation reversed, make me ridiculously jealous and question the validity of myself and the relationship.

Thank you for knowing that I think you’re amazing, and so if I don’t constantly tell you you don’t question it. It’s much appreciated.

I appreciate you not listening to me when I’m upset and for accepting a heartfelt apology afterwards about the things I said, which are always going to be cutting and untrue.

I’m glad you don’t have goals that involve copious amounts of money and I’m also glad you don’t truly desire someone who’s only concerned with being happy. Thanks for seeing that being right, when used effectively, can be the only true way to be happy.

Thanks for accepting my inability to fake interest in something you bring up that I really couldn’t care less about while simultaneously pretending to truly care about the random shit I rant about all day long.

I really am grateful that you don’t want to have children as you understand that I’d fuck up any children’s growth more than any other parent imaginable.

The fact that you’re ok with a lack of value for emotion is awesome, I’m thankful that you’ll be completely ok with granting zero validity to emotionally geared arguments.

I really am glad, by the way, that you think it’s cute the way I’ll never see the best in a situation as I’m too busy seeing the worst in it. Lucky me.

I can’t really even take care of myself. Thanks for being there for both yourself and for me as I’m pretty much incapable of taking care of someone, whether financially, emotionally, physically, or any other. Thanks for being the stereotypical man in this relationship.

And if you still feel like this letter hasn’t excluded you in some way, best get yourself checked out by someone who specializes in insanity. Because there’s no need to venture here.

Love always,

Tayler Moosa

*oh yeah… any religious affiliation? I’m not saying I’m gonna laugh all the time. But most of the time.

The steps we take are steps with no conclusion in mind. They just.. they continue onwards, and I’m not entirely sure how I feel about it. Life becomes the journey and completely disregards the destination. I hate trips.

It seems the only thing I like is the only thing that doesn’t matter.

Awesome.

So here I am, in the Bahamas. For the last week or so, as I would tell people about the vacation I was going on, everyone kept telling me that I should be EXCITED and that it would so much FUN! And I get the idea, I get that the majority of people in the same situation would be currently out enjoying the scenery and enjoying the beach and everything else as well.

But last night, drinking copious amounts of vodka and a little bit of sprite, I spent the first evening of my vacation doing exactly what I wanted to do. I texted some friends of mine that I was already missing, I drank considerable amounts of alcohol by myself, and I wrote a blog about friendship and life. That’s my ideal time, more or less. Sure, I have a great view of the beach while I write, but I had to trade my friends being around me for it.

I’m not saying that I’m miserable at the moment. I just can’t help but miss home as soon as I get anywhere. People go on vacation to get away from everything they know, I define my life and self by that exact set of things being left behind.

So this is my first morning of my vacation. My head’s a little fuzzy, I got 10+ hours of sleep, I’m once again looking out towards the beach while typing, and I’m already excited to get back to school, work, and the people who make my life worth anything at all. It seems that today and tomorrow will be spent just chillin and tuesday through thursday will be spent at the casino. The plus to such down time is that I’ll have plenty of time to blog, write for school, read for myself, and other things that I’ll enjoy. Eh. I’ll try to stop sounding so depressed now. Future posts will be HAPPY!