Category: Uncategorized

Marriage

Rob Says8 Comments
couple engagement hands human
It’s a nice thought.

Let’s talk about marriage…

Before I get into the “meat of the matter,” let me start off with a couple of things:

I’m not against marriage as a whole.

I have been married and I was the one who initiated the divorce when it was time for that to happen.

My ex-wife did not take me to the cleaners in the divorce. If anything, I came out of it in a pretty good position. I wasn’t set back financially for decades because of the divorce.

We did not have children.

Now that I’ve put those things out there, let us continue…

I’ve seen a lot of guys, especially young guys, on Twitter in the recent past talking about wanting to get married. All I can think when I see their talks, yearnings, and longings, is:

Why? Why would you WANT to get married?

Why would you want to get married in today’s day and age? Do you not understand that when you get a state sanctioned license to get married, you are not only married to the person that you wanted to get married to, but you are also now married to the State? Ask me how I know.

You may be the “bread winner.” You may be the “head of the household.” You may be the “man in charge.” You may be the “patriarch.” You may be whatever you think you are, until you are not.

In today’s world of no-fault divorce, either party can end the marriage for any reason, or for no reason whatsoever. When that happens, you are done. I don’t care that you think you are the bread winner, the man, the patriarch, or whatever you think you are. You are none of those things if and when she decides to end the marriage.

Enter the State.

The true Patriarch of the household in the West is also the One True God, and that is the State. We as a society have deemed this so. Which also means that the State is the one that we have allowed to use force to enforce agreements, contracts, and disputes. You either file or she files for divorce, the State now gets involved. Especially if you have children. Even if you don’t get married, but you have children together, and one or both of you decide to split up, the State gets involved on behalf of your children.

Any religion that is a part of the West bends the knee to the State. If a particular denomination of a particular flavor of faith tries to intervene in a legal proceeding, which a divorce is, that church, ward, denomination, etc. can lose their tax exempt status because it was the State that granted them that status to begin with. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. No religion, at least in the West, is going to jeapordize that. So religion isn’t going to “save your marriage.”

Many years ago, there was a stigma for having children out of wedlock. The children were referred to as “bastards.” That stigma is all but gone in today’s modern world. Marriage used to mean that a man had some type of authority, at least in his own home. Today men have no authority, only responsibility. Again, I ask:

Why would you want to get married?

If women are the gatekeepers to sex and men are the gatekeepers to commitment, why do you (I’m assuming that you are a man reading this) want to rush into commitment and potentially ruin yourselves financially, emotionally, mentally, etc. when you can have everything that a marriage offers, without having to actually get married? Why do you want to give up the only real authority and agency that you have?

You want to live together? You can do that without getting married. You want to offer insurance and other types of benefits to her? You can do that now without getting married. You want to have children? You can do that without getting married. The only thing that you can’t have without a marriage is a divorce.

The only “positive” that I can think of that you can only get from being married is certain tax breaks. Even those don’t add up to a lot. Not in the long run at least.

When I got married, the marriage license cost me $50.00 We had a simple ceremony in my house where we only invited close family and friends. I don’t remember what I paid for the justice of the peace to come out and preside over the ceremony, but it wasn’t more than a hundred bucks at the most.

When I filed for divorce, that filing alone cost me almost $400.00 Getting married is cheap and easy, getting divorce takes time and is expensive.

Like I said at the very beginning of this article, I’m not against the institution of marriage itself, but I am against it in its current incarnation.

You want to “make marriage great again?” You need to start at the State level and with the laws. If men are expected to be the providers of food, a house, safety, and security, what are the women supposed to bring to the table? Let’s make whatever that is legally enforceable.

I was 37 years old when I got married. I have no regrets about my marriage and I certainly have no regrets about my divorce. I was also in no hurry to get married. Young men, especially one’s in their twenties need to slow down and take your time to figure out who you are and what you want out of life before considering getting married, especially in today’s day and age. The risks are too high in many cases and the cost usually isn’t worth the price that you could end up paying.

You want to have an LTR? Fine, do that. You want to live together? Okay, maybe not your best option, but go for it. But get married? I would have to say don’t do it. Not unless you don’t have a problem with getting into bed with the State.

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3 Days To The Village By The Lake

Rob SaysLeave a comment

white house near sea and mountains

3 days and counting.

I’m looking forward to seeing my Brothers, Vince and TJ. I’m looking foward to the meet up that we are having on Saturday the 26th when we will be meeting some fellow Men and having some food, some drinks, and maybe even a couple of cigars with these guys. It’s going to be a good time.

In other news, I was serious when I said that I was going to limit my activity and my time on Twitter and I meant it. It’s been nice being off of Twitter. I have more time to pursue other projects and my stress levels and my blood pressure has dropped quite a bit.

It’s a good thing I’ve taken time away from Twitter, learning my new MIDI controller so that I can start creating music has been a challenge to say the least. The device itself isn’t too hard to figure out, it’s 8 pads, 8 knobs, a joystick, and 25 keys of a keyboard with other assorted buttons that do different things. Pressing keys, turning knobs, and tapping pads isn’t too difficult.

The difficult part is getting the DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) that I use to interface and recognize the MIDI controller. I was hoping for something that would be a “drag and drop” type of interface where I could just throw “kits” and samples into the DAW and then assign them to the MIDI controller, and then I could just start to play and record.

That’s not what has happened so far. So far, I need to tell the DAW about each and every button, pad, and knob. Thank god I don’t need to do much of that for the keys. That part seems to be fairly straight forward. It’s been a challeng to say the least, and it has taken a lot of time to get things sorted out and working. I still haven’t got it all figured out at the time that I’m writing this. One thing I know though is, once I have everything sorted out and set, I’m saving the profiles so that I can use them without issue.

I’ve also been recording some “B-Roll” video footage to use in upcoming videos. I broke down and bought a decent stand for my phone so now I can set the phone up and use it to record different scenes and footage and not worry that it is going to fall or shake or any other sort of nonsense. Stay tuned to my YouTube channel for future videos to see some of this new and somewhat interesting video footage.

I also broke down and bought a couple of video games. One of them is called “Among Us” and is something that you play online. I’ve played it enough so far to understand the general movement and mechanics of it, now I’m excited to play with some other guys from the ‘Sphere and see where it goes.

It’ll be a good way to get some additional video footage for future projects at least.

I also bought an Atari 2600 “package” that has 100 video games on it. Some of them are the actual arcade versions from back in the day, and many others are from the Atari 2600 console days. I’ve been playing Asteroids from the old console days. Talk about absolutely shitty graphics compared to games today, but man, were they fun and simple to play. No weird button combos to do special moves, no extra controllers or levers to push or manipulate to execute different actions. It’s literally up, down, left, right, and shoot.

Those are the games that I played the most when I was young and it’s what I remember the most fondly even though I had the original Nintendo, the Atari Jaguar, the Playstation, the Playstation 2, and the Wii. Not that I didn’t enjoy the games that I had on each of those particular consoles, but it was the old Atari 2600 that I played the most and had the most games for.

I’m still wondering what the State of Utah is going to do over the next few days because we have had a spike in ‘Rona cases. Apparently we have had more cases in the last few days than we did when the bug first hit Utah and peaked out in July. I know most of these new cases are because the schools are back in session, both the elementary levels as well as the college levels, and that’s where the spike in cases are coming from.

It’ll be interesting to see if Utah is going to shut the schools down again and make the “kids” do everything remotely, or if they are going to suck it up and keep going. I’m hoping for the latter. What we don’t need is another “lockdown,” though. The mandatory mask mandate is still in effect, and is supposed to go on until the end of the year from what I’ve heard, and that’s bad enough.

A lot of other people are getting sick of it as well from what I’ve been seeing and many of them are not wearing masks when they are going about their day. When I think about it and remind myself, I tell those people “thanks for not wearing a mask,” and I mean it sincerely.

I’m sure I could get a lot of grief for this view, but I don’t care. Life goes on and I want to get on with my life, and not under this “new normal” bullshit that a lot of people are calling it.

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Digital Dark Gods and Babylon

Rob SaysLeave a comment
download
Babylon A.D.

Just got back today to the city of sin.
They say the apple and the snake is how it all began…

And now I’m back, in Babylon…

Those are lyrics from the song, “Back in Babylon” from the band, Babylon A.D. Check them out sometime if and when you get a chance, you won’t regret it.

I was going to write this post over a year ago, but other projects, people, things, situations, and life itself got in the way. Lots and Lots of distractions and things to do.

Today is September 14th as I am writing this. This post will be published on Wednesday the 16th, that’s when you, Gentle Reader, will be seeing it for the first time. Thursday September 17th will mark the second year anniversary of my Mother’s death.

Two years already. Two years.

In some ways, it feels almost like she died yesterday. In some ways it feels like she died a long, long time ago. I can still see her face in my mind’s eye without having to look at pictures and I can still hear her voice if I so call on it.

If and when the day comes that I can no longer recall her voice, I have a couple of voice mails that she left me several months before she died. I can always listen to those if and when I want to. Right now, almost two years later, I’m still good not listening to them.

I haven’t been to her grave in almost two years either. I was there the day we put her in the ground, but I haven’t been back. Part of me thinks I’m avoiding it. But why? All that is there is a headstone and grass. Underneath that is her casket and inside is her body. Her “soul” isn’t there. Her “essence” isn’t there. If I want to “feel her presence” so to speak, all I need to do is go and visit my Dad. Bits and pieces of what she did in life are still in that house. There are some toiletries and whatnot that she purchased that are still there. Hell, some of her personal belongings are still there. None of that stuff is at her grave.

So I don’t go. And honestly, I don’t know if I ever will go except for when my Dad dies. His plot was purchased years and years ago, and it resides right next to hers. That may be the next time that I see her grave. And after that? Like the wind, I’ll be gone. Gone from Utah. Gone from the life that I have known and into a new life somewhere else. Somewhere warmer than here. I’m tired of the snow and I’m tired of the cold. A warmer climate where I can ride my motorcycle year round would be ideal. But not so hot that I’m cooking at night. Probably Texas.

I’m not running from my life and I know that wherever I go, there I am. You can’t run from yourself. Wherever you run to, you’ll still have to deal with you because there you are. I knew a few guys when I was much younger who ran from things in their home and their lives, and yet they could never run far enough or fast enough from themselves. Nowhere was good enough because there they were. Some of them kept running and are still running to this day as far as I know.

That’s not me. I’m not running from anything. I’m good with my life and my life choices. I’m good with staying here in Utah for the time being, I’m in no hurry to leave. At the same time, once my Dad dies, there’s nothing keeping me here. I’m not close to any of my extended family. I can always transfer my job from here to wherever I want to go for the most part, and if I can’t transfer, I can always find another job.

As far as women are concerned, if I have someone serious in my life at that time, she’ll either come along for the ride, or she won’t. If she does, great! If not, that’s too bad, but I’ll find another one, or several other ones, wherever I end up.

Let’s move along.

I mentioned that I’m taking up music again. I’m excited for this. I’m excited that I’ll be creating things that I haven’t created in a long time. I’m nervous at the same time. I don’t know how to explain it, but there it is. I’m nervous too. I’m sure it’s my inner perfectionist yapping about being perfect and being able to just “master this shit” right off the bat. That’s not how it works though. Just like writing or making videos, or standing in front of an audience, I don’t think you ever truly “master” it. You might become so good at it and so comfortable with it that other people will call you a “master,” but in your own head, it’s never quite there. You’re always striving to achieve more and to “do better” than the last article, the last video, or the last performance that you gave.

Since I’m taking up music again, something has got to give. I don’t have enough time in the day to do everything that I’m doing. So what is going to get the axe?

Not dating. I like women too much. Not motorcycle riding. I like that too much too, plus it’s therapeutic in ways that non-motorcycle people will never know. Not shooting guns. Got to keep my skills up for the upcoming apocalypse. Not doing my videos or liveststreams. Those are too much fun too. I still need to work and I need to eat and sleep. I’m barely getting enough sleep as it is, so I’m not giving up more of that. And I’m definitely not giving up writing. It’s another creative outlet for me to focus and channel some of my energy to. This blog isn’t done until I say it is done, and I’m not done here by a long shot. I’m going to keep it “non-fiction” as it were, and I’ll focus my fictional creativity over at Punchriot. You should go there and subscribe if you want to see my fiction as well as many other amazing writers. The only thing that I hope when it comes to my fiction is that I don’t disappoint my editor, Nick August, and that I don’t disappoint the people who read my work.

So I’m not going to give up all those things. What am I going to give up then?

Twitter.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ll still keep my account active and up, but I’m going to limit my presence there. Twitter has become too much of a waste of time for me. A couple of interactions recently showed me this. I’ll still be there to use that platform to promote this blog, my YouTube channel, my audio channel, and I’ll still be there to interact with people in my DM’s, but other than that, I’m going to limit my time and interactions there severely. I want to have time to focus on my music and video creations. I don’t need to be spending my time on Twitter arguing with idiots.

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