Season 2 of Lost isn't even close to as good as Season 1.

Hahah. I have just highlighted and deleted many words that no one will ever read. I was starting to go on about why I haven't blogged in awhile and there were really good reasons and I was trying not to be all cute and self-depricating, when I realized that I'm cutest and mostest self-depricating when I'm trying not to be. It was freakin' adorable, let me tell you. But it's gone now.

After a number of years that I have been alive, I still don't get why people are so sure of themselves. I think it was freshman psychology where the good Dr. L informed us that if this particular study (or group of studies) is to be believed, people who are depressed (and therefore self-BASHING) are usually more accurate than people who aren't. When we're not depressed, we think happy thoughts about the Me. It's called self-serving bias.

Two things that I'm told often:
"Adam, you think too hard."
"Adam, you're too hard on yourself."
"Adam, that was amazing."

Three. Three things.

But about the first two: It used to be so much fun to learn a hard lesson about myself and feel like I'd just expanded "as a person." But to the first two . . . I usually says to Mabel I says:

"No, you don't think enough. This is why people are killing each other. Sort of. Indirectly. No, wait, let me think for a second, I can say that better . . . "

and . . . "No I'm not." I'm sure the occasional self-flagellation is a fix in some ways, but the problem is that it's usually not incorrect. I really do think other people are not nearly hard enough on themselves and that other people don't think enough. I guess if my life were an exemplary model to others I could take my message to the streets.

But my revelation for the night is about why, possibly, I think this way: My childhood ideas about existence and hell are so harsh: You have to be right or you're going to hell. If you're wrong you could die right now and you're f-----. This leaves very little room for error. Heck, it's all over the world. This or that sect is convinced that they've got the only truth and everyone else is going to hell (whatever "hell" may be for them . . ) and the problem is, EVERY SINGLE deluded asshole who says this also simultaneously possesses an intricate, interminable grain of truth somewhere deep within that mess of fear and misinformation. I'll be honest: I think I'm a fundamentalist at heart. There's so little room for error in my world. I'm no different from the closed-minded yokels that I constantly say are dragging our nation down to the depths of fascism. I always want what I know to be right and if I'm constantly adjusting what I think is right, I have no solid base and the possibility that there is some discernable truth out there becomes more and more remote. (Okay, so everyone feels this way, probably. Lay off; it's my party and I'll cry if I wanna.) There's so little room for being wrong when your worldview was shaped by altar calls and youth rallies with no Ecclesiastes or Song of Solomon or a little Sex, Drugs, Rock and/or Roll--maybe even a little MSNBC to balance it out.

Which once again leads me to the conclusion I've been stuck on for an annoyingly long time (like 6 years, give or take a an existential duke): The only thing that rings true is that the good, the pure, the whatever . . seems to lie in living inside the fear--making the pain and agony of uncertainty your home--somehow. Living the contradictions. I know there are poets and philosophers up the wazoo that have hinted or outright said something like that, but it still makes the possibility living in the real world seem about as far away as Pluto, the self-doubting planet.

So I doubt myself partially because I think everyone should and partially because I was weaned as such.

Anybody feel me on this?

Oh, and this looks interesting too. I think it's going to be a "look at how scary the Christians are--they're all just like Tom Delay and Dick Cheney and this is how they get started" kind of a thing at times, but at other times it looks like it could be really compelling.

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Oh, and back on the news thing: I think news is INCREDIBLY important. Or "what's going on" or whatever it should be called. Because what's going on is we're part of a system that makes people sad and/or dead. I don't mean just America. And the answers are never, ever, ever simple. Taking someone else's word for it because it's easier is where all the crap begins. Politics aren't optional . . . blah blah blah, all of that stuff that we already know but don't act like we do. So maybe it wasn't the most entertaining blog topic, but there are NOT a million other websites out there that do what I was trying to do.

Not that I'm going to be doing News constantly anymore but I just had to get that off my chest.

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Poker is the best game known to man.