On Saturday night, the 8th of May, I stayed over at the belly dancer’s house, like I typically do on every other weekend or so. We had our drinks, had our fun, shot the shit, played music, and did the stuff that most couples do.

Around midnight, I was delirious because I had slept like shit the night before. I had gone to bed around midnight on Friday night/Saturday morning and was woke up by one of my cat’s puking. I swear the sound of them “going to the club” could wake the dead. By the time that I got done dealing with puke and a miserable cat, I was too wired to go back to sleep and so I ended up staying awake for the entire rest of my Saturday. By that night I was beyond exhausted. Shortly after midnight I was out.

Around 3:30 in the morning, I hear a smoke detector going off. In my sleep deprived state, I initially thought it was part of a dream that I was having. Then I smelled smoke. It smelled like someone had extinguished a candle, but the odor was much stronger.

It was about that time that I heard my belly dancer talking to her kids. Apparently I wasn’t dreaming and the fucking smoke detector was going off. I slowly woke up and listened to her and her kids. The kids were up, which wasn’t too far of a stretch since they are mostly night owls, and I could hear that they were telling her that they hadn’t been lighting candles or doing anything else. In fact, the smoke detector had woke them up as well.

Shit.

This wasn’t a false alarm or a drill. This was the real deal. I could still smell smoke and I jumped out of bed and immediately put my pants, shirt, and socks on. I grabbed my shoes and jacket and started out of the bedroom.

My belly dancer’s daughter was in her room and I told her it was time to go and checked to make sure that everyone else was out of there. My belly dancer’s son had the dog in his arms and he was following his mom out the front door. I corralled the daughter and her boyfriend out the door and joined them on the porch. Everyone had been accounted for other than the cat.

My belly dancer was on the phone with 911 and was telling them what the situation was. About that time the smoke detector stopped doing its thing. Her son had said that he had walked around the house’s perimeter and he couldn’t see smoke or any flames. My belly dancer relayed that information to the dispatcher. This whole time I was silent and sat down and put my jacket and shoes on.

My belly dancer hung up with 911 and said that the fire department was on the way. While we were standing there, waiting, I decided to do a little investigation of my own. I wanted to see if I could find her cat (yeah right, good luck with that) and also there were a couple of rooms in the basement that hadn’t been cleared.

One thing that my belly dancer told me while I was putting my shoes on was that she had her furnace cleaned out the day before and hadn’t turned it on since the cleaning. She also mentioned that she had woke up a few minutes before the detector went off, because it was cold, and that she had turned the furnace on.

I told her that the furnace was probably burning something off from the cleaning and that that was probably the source of the smell and the smoke. I decided that was going to be part of my investigation, so back into the house I went.

The smoke smell had dissipated a lot by then. I cleared all the rooms in the upstairs first, and then went downstairs. No cat to be seen or found, which I didn’t really think I would find him. He knows his own house and bolt holes better than I do. I got to the furnace and the smoke smell was there, pretty strong. There was no visible smoke and no flames or fire.

I moved on to the other rooms to find the walls, doors, everything I touched to be ice cold. If there was a fire in there, it wasn’t close to any doors, but I wasn’t going to open them. I’ve seen Backdraft too many times. Besides, I’m no firefighter.

About the time I went back upstairs the firetruck pulled up. The crew wasn’t running lights and sirens, thank God. No need to wake the neighborhood up for no reason if that was the case.

They came in, checked the smoke detectors to make sure they weren’t malfunctioning, had their own IR camera to check the walls, ceilings, and floors for any unusual heat, and also had their own portable smoke detector to double check things.

About 20 minutes later they gave us the “all clear” and said that there was no fires going on in the house and that we could go back inside. The belly dancer told them about the furnace and they said that it was most likely the culprit and that she needed to have the HVAC people take a look at it sooner than later and make sure that everything was working okay on it. With that, they left and we went back to bed.

Now when I say we went back to bed, I could have gone back to sleep almost immediately because I was still exhausted from the prior nights lack of sleep. It was now 4:30 in the morning. Not my belly dancer though, she was wired. She wanted to talk about the last hour of events apparently.

Normally I would have told her, “Let’s talk about this later in the morning,” but I could see she needed to say whatever it was that was on her mind, and get it off her chest, so to speak.

“Every time I’m with you, I learn something new about you,” she said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Tonight, during all of this chaos, you were unshakeable. You were the calm inside the storm. You didn’t panic or freak out, or anything. If anything, you calmed me down just with your presence and your matter-of-fact attitude when it came to putting on your shoes and jacket. You didn’t seem stressed out about it at all.”

“That’s because panicking during a crisis doesn’t help anything and if anything, it makes it worse,” I told her.

“I know, but I’ve never seen you ‘under pressure,’ you know? You just seemed like, ‘I’ve got this.'”

I just shrugged and smirked at her. “Hey, it’s me.”

She was looking at me differently than usual this whole time. Her eyes were shining and I could tell that she was aroused. I could see something else there as well. Respect.

You want to know someone’s real character? See how they act and behave under pressure or during a crisis. You’ll see what they are made of. All of the bullshit, bravado, and whatever “macho façade” that they have going on will either be proven correct, or you’ll know just how full of shit they really are.

So on tonight’s “Let ‘Em Burn,” a comment was made about “Slipping Into Darkness.” To which I said something along the lines of, “Sounds like a song from Saints and Sinners,” which if you don’t know, has a song called “Slipping Into Darkness.” Google it, check it out, I’m not doing it for you.

Apparently it goes much darker than me having a 90’s flashback to a metal song that I thoroughly enjoyed back then and to this day.

I don’t know if her friend died or not, but from the comment, I take it that this person died. But hell, maybe he got sent to an asylum or something.

Here’s the point if it’s about death though:

Fuck Death.

We all die. Sooner than we think we will. Always. We all think that our loved one’s, and us by proxy, are going to live forever. We aren’t. We all die. And sooner than we would like to think we will.

My Mom died in late 2018 before she turned 67. I have friends who died back in their 20’s and 30’s. An acquaintance of mine just lost her 23, almost 24 year old niece, to a drunk driver. The guy jumped the curb, hit the niece, killing her almost instantly, and almost killing the niece’s baby daughter. He then proceeded to drive off, only to be caught a short time later by law enforcement. My Dad just told me a couple of days ago that he needs me to take him to the hospital so they can “whittle on his prostate.” Those are his words. At 72 years old, nothing is a minor procedure anymore.

Fuck Death.

You can’t outrun it. You can’t outlive it. “On a long enough timeline, our probability of survival goes down to zero.” Guess what movie I’m quoting.

Fuck Death.

Live your life in the way that you choose. Live it fully and fearlessly. Live it to the hilt. Eat all of the good food. Drink all of the good drinks, and even some of the bad ones. Do all the shit that you want to do. Your survival isn’t guaranteed. In fact, it’s guaranteed that you won’t survive.

Fuck Death and all of the myopic bullshit and virtue signaling. “Quality women and men,” don’t exist. There’s just men and women, that’s it. Either she’s a “hell yeah!” or a “Fuck no.” That’s it. Anything in between is bullshit and is a no as far as I’m concerned.

Enjoy your life and do what you want. Drink to your friends, lovers, and family who have died. I know I would want you to if it was me. Don’t mourn me. Don’t cry for me. Don’t lament my passing. Drink to me and to life and for Christ’s sake, get to living.

I’m saying this now because tomorrow isn’t guaranteed and I don’t know if I’ll be around to write it.

Drink, eat, and fuck for life. Fuck Death. Drink, eat, fuck and live in spite of death. Do all the shit you wanted to do and don’t put it off. Tomorrow never comes and yesterday will never come back.

Do what you want because tomorrow isn’t guaranteed and nobody is watching and nobody gives a fuck anyways.

When I was younger I always though power meant having control over others.

To control their behavior, decisions, thoughts, wants, needs and time.

The older I got the more I understood power is the complete opposite.

Power is the lack of control others have over your behavior, decisions, thoughts, wants, needs and time.

Power is the control over one’s emotions not to lash out or the need to defend your position, explain or excuse one’s self or rationalize your behavior towards others. 

Power is doing.

Power doesn’t need to be stated as a possession. It shows itself when needed.

Guys love the Tywin Lannister quote “Any man who says I am the king is no true king” which was used to put a child in his place. Yet they use it to show they’re king because Th3y d0n’t cAll th3ms3lv3s K!ng. Completely missing the point of what the character was trying to say in that moment.

Power does not need to speak.

That is power.

Power just is.

And as stated above power is how much control one has over themselves.

Can you make peace with the past?

Can you accept what you lost will never come back?

And can you accept that who you once were is no longer who you are?

In bodybuilding and in fitness as a whole there is a phenomenon that’s called “fat kid syndrome” and it describes a person who used to be the fat kid and experienced the hardship that comes with it. Be it ridicule, rejection, shaming and outright bullying, but now has gone through the journey of losing all the weight and sculpted themselves into a peak example of human aesthetics. 

Yet they cannot lose the image of that chubby little fat kid who nobody wanted to play with or be around other than to ridicule them.

They still have no power of themselves.

And it reminds me of people who win the lottery.

Many of you might know the statistics that a majority (I can’t remember the percentage) of lottery winners are broke within 5 years.

Objectively they might be rich, but mentally they are still poor.

An urge to spend, because who knows when the money will be gone? Ironically that way of thinking being the reason why it will be gone.

But with it comes certain behavior as well.

Note I have never been “poor”. I grew up in a financial middle class home where I had every toy that I ever wanted. Which developed into problems on their own which I maybe go into later.

I do however know a couple of previous fat and or poor kids who, even though out lift and out finance me, still haven’t caught up mentally.

In it based on that experience which I know write this piece. 

With certain circumstances come certain behaviors.

When you’ve never been anyone, you want to be someone. But how can you be someone when no-one acknowledges you?

For that there’s validation.

In my humble opinion a need for validation is a sign of powerlessness.

A NEED for everyone to know you have money, have sex, have stuff and everything else they’ve achieved.

But what is all of that worth if you can’t enjoy it for yourself?

This need for validation can take form of destructive habits of calling people out and comparing yourself to them in a way that makes you look infinitely better.

Be like me it worked for me.

But if you’re better, why feel the need to call it out?

Stir Up Water To Catch Fish is one of those laws of power which is meant as a shield instead of a sword and not as a tool to apply. Some will rattle your cage just to see how you react and with your reaction enlarge their point.

Power isn’t winning over other. Power is not needing to win over others, because you’ve already won for yourself.

This is why they used to say: “We can’t tell you what to think, only how to” in MRP (Married Red Pill).

All of this Red Pill, learning game, getting attractive and getting your shit in order is about YOU.

Rian Stone always asks: How much money is enough?

And barely anyone can give an answer.

Can I give an answer?

I can give a rough estimate and if I were a millionaire you’d barely see me podcast solo again.

You most certainly would never know if I had it.

This is why Delicious Tacos comes across as powerful to me.

The man has his books, his own little farm, a passive income and is jacked and what does he do?

Plays an incel on Twitter while guru’s make fun of him by calling him poor and falling for his play.

Meanwhile he enjoys the peace and the beauty of nature, company of his cat, bird watching and the occasional big titted Asian who also agrees to promote his books with scantily clad photo’s of herself.

Chest RuleZeroDad Rockwell comes across as powerful to me.

He’s been a mod on Married Red Pill for years where he archived his field reports on dragging himself through hell to now being a highly successful lawyer while leading his family without even one photo of his car or need to look for validation. Yet you will be dragged to the carpet when you try to fuck with him. His work speaks for him, not his possessions.

Rob comes across as powerful to me.

He’s 5,4 ft, bald, bearded, tatted up having 3 girls in rotation working as a truck driver not having any debt as of recently. 

He doesn’t want for anything but his Bud Light, cigars, hanging out with friends and his chicks.

He is content.

He is the alpha buddha, although a very grouchy one every now and then. 

This is not to fluff my friend, though a bit, but it to get across a point.

They HAVE what THEY want.

They answered uncle Iroh’s question to Zuko:

“Is it your own destiny or a destiny someone else has tried to force on you?”

Do you want 6-figs brah or did you read that on twitter?

Do you want to be ripped and have the abs or did you see a photo of a guy with models and did it made you think you need to look like that?

Do you want the bad bitches or are those the girls you see on insta and would you be happy just to have someone be into you?

Most of you will fail and the red pill isn’t for you.

Red pill Trademark is, but not the red pill.

You’re the grand example of men being raised as defective girls as why marketing works so well.

A quick feel good hit of dopamine before you go back to your miserable life wishing and wanting for what some Guru can give you.