I visited the blog of someone I used to e-mail and communicate with, someone who had similar interests in conspiracy lore and mythology. I used to be linked to his site, but after an on-and-off series of arguments in my Comments section, I decided to cease communications. I still have it linked to my blog, because this person goes to great lengths to dig up obscure info and tasty morsels of arcane trivia. I check out his blog every once in a while, leaving no comments. I just got sick of arguing with someone over who is more esoteric and argumentative.
Then I had the stalker, which I chalk up to "cyber karma", cosmic retribution for my online fight-picking over the years. But he hasn't come around since I put up that picture of him on my old blog URL.
Since I've been contemplating my own narcissism and the narcissism of others lately, I have come to conclude that both my stalker and this one blog person are narcissists. Is this a case of misery loving company? No, I don't think so. It has to do with recognizing in myself the tendency to rob others of their N-supply, because I am so aware of how others do it to me.
I went to the old blog this morning, and someone added a comment, under the 'anonymous' banner, asking when I was going to update the blog. Is it possible that I had some readers who weren't on my e-mail list, who didn't know what happened to me when I up and disappeared? Or is it the stalker, trying to get me to redirect him to this blog?
I must admit, I deliberately lured the stalker to the old blog, so that I could at least have him answering me on my terms. I didn't intend to leave the spot, but I just got tired of reading the same old shit from him. I thought that we were going to have exciting back-and-forth battles on my blog, but all he wanted to do was the Web equivalent of "I'm rubber and you're glue"...
Visiting the blog of the former cyber-buddy, I detected the same logic at work: he received some hate e-mail, posted it with a line-for-line refutation, then posted the e-mailer's address in the Comments section so that his small cadre of readers could make snide remarks.
It's something that I would do, which is why it makes me sick to think that I used to get off on it.
Hell, who am I kidding? I still do get off on it. Who knows how long it will be until someone comes around, looking to stir it up with me? I wouldn't be surprised to find an anonymous remark in the Comments section for this post, trying to get my blood boiling.
But, I'm making an effort, I think, to restrain myself. And part of it stems from realizing that going through all of the trouble to combat someone online is really pathetic. It doesn't take much to get someone's goat online-- all one has to do is attack the False Persona, and the curator of said Persona will feel that their sense of self (their source of N-supply) has been infringed upon, and they will respond by trying to make themselves look good, as opposed to making valid points of argument.
It's ego gratification, not debate.
Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back really resonated with me, I guess...
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For those who don't like hip-hop, skip this. However, I think you should read it.
50 Cent's new album The Massacre is a butter platter. I thought it was going to be a bit soft, because L.A. rap radio station Power 106 did a sneak peek a few weeks back and it sounded like 50 was going the L.L. Cool J route: buffed rapper spittin' love rhymes and all that...
Naw, dog...
The Massacre is a straight-up gangsta masterpiece, and 50 proves that he is the Man of the Current Hour. The beats are stellar, the rhymes are witty and catchy (50 is one of the few rappers who actually sounds good when he's singing a hook), and a few of the songs raise the bar lyrically.
Case in point: "A Baltimore Love Thing", produced by Q Beats (whom we will no doubt hear more from in the future), a song where 50 raps from the point-of-view of heroin... you know, the drug?
I've never done H, but I like songs about it, from Lou Reed to Kurt Cobain. But this is the first time I've ever heard a song like this. To quote the lyrics doesn't do it justice, because the magic of rap is that the music, beat, vocal delivery and lyrics all conspire at the same time to create an atmosphere, as opposed to delivering a song with a melody, rhythm and structure. In this sense, rap is not music as we know it-- it has a more cinematic function, perhaps hallucinogenic. It forces you to visualize the action, much like old-time radio dramas.
It demands that you use your imagination, even if the language sometimes leaves nothing to it.
I think that's why skits between songs are so prevalent in hip-hop-- they function on the same level as the rap songs themselves, recreating a mood instead of singing you a song.
As for the drug angle, it may seem like an exploitaive angle for 50 to take, what with his public admission to not being a drug-user... I have a hard time believing it, but then again 50 used to slang crack, and what's the second rule of drug-dealing? Don't get high on your own supply...
(By the way, the first rule is: Never underestimate the other guy's greed.)
Still, whether 50 has ridden the White Horse or not, his lyrics in "Love Thing" equate a love relationship between a man and a woman to drug addiction. It's very convincing, very chilling, and it elevates his raps to another level of awareness.
When we first met, I thought you never doubt me
Now you tryin' to leave me, you never live without me
Girl I'm missing you, come and see me soon
Tie your arm up, put that lighter under that spoon
[Chorus: repeat 2X]
We got a love thing
Girl you tried to leave me but you need me
Can you see you're addicted to me?
We got a love thing
I can take ya higher girl
Fuckin' with me, you can be all you can be
How many women out there have been with a guy who was like that? How many men have been through that with a woman?
I raise my hand. Right now I'm withdrawing from Eve, and it occurred to me, as I listened to "A Baltimore Love Thing" last night, that she is my drug, my heroin. I was clean for a while, not even thinking about her. Then I fell off the wagon, and binged for a few months... and now I'm back on my own, fiending, waiting for a fix, anxious to get back to where I was with her...
After that first night she fall in love, then chase the feelin
I hung out with Marvin when he wrote Sexual Healing
Kurt Cobain, we were good friends, Ozzy Osbourne too
I be with rock stars, see you lucky I'm fuckin' with you
I chilled with Frankie Lymon and Jimi Hendrix crew
See this is new to you, but to me this aint new
I live the lavish life
Listen if the mood is right
Me you and ya sister can do the do tonight
I never steer you wrong, if you hyper I make you calm
I'll be your incentive and your reason to make you move on
Let's make a date, promise you'll come to see me
Even if it means you have to sell ya mama's TV
I love you, love me back
No one said lovin' me be easy
Love is a drug; that is to say, it causes a chemical reaction whose source is the brain... therefore, it is a natural drug, like adrenaline... but it's still a drug, and when we fall in love, we are merely reacting to a combination of chemicals in our brains.
Our hearts have nothing to do with the love high-- it's just a blood pump, and our brain is the nerve center that regulates that pump. Our hearts are empty symbols to express our emotions, but really-- we are all chemical drug addicts.
If there is someone in your life who makes you feel bad when you are not around them, someone whom you feel you need to depend upon, as a crutch maybe... then you are addicted to them, and you need to go cold turkey.
It's easier said than done. I keep trying to get her out of my mind but I end up calling her, leaving stupid voice mails that sound like I'm trying to pretend like I don't want her so badly. Does she care? I don't know-- I think she has her own drug issues to deal with... real drug issues, not metaphorical ones.
I think I am more addicted to women than anything else. I can leave a joint alone and not feel edgy, but whenever I start getting some, it's hard as a motherfucker on me when she leaves me... and believe me, they always leave me.
And if they still want me in their life, they don't want to give me the ultimate love fix-- sex. Sex is to love as crack is to cocaine-- it's a harder, more intense version of its source. Sex is purely chemical, and it's no wonder that there are so many people online, looking for quick sex fixes because it makes them feel good.
I'm not saying I'm a sex addict. I'm just saying that, when a man gets it regularly and then it gets taken away, he goes through a panic, and he finds himself willing to do almost anything to get it again.
I'm in that rough spot, where I think I'll fuck anything that moves. But I've been here before, and I know I just need to tough it out, weather the storm. When Jeanie and I broke up in 2000, I kept my notebook next to me to remind me of how badly she treated me, just so I wouldn't be tempted to go back and beg her to fuck me.
Maybe I need to start re-reading my blog entries from the end of last year, to remind me of how far I strayed from my goal of achieving closure with Eve.
Thanks, 50, for making that song. It got me thinking about my desires, and it shed some light on something I've been pondering for a long time.
That's what a good rap track can do, if you let it.
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