08/10/2009 What the World is Like Today
Watching the news and with the experiences I have been having at work I am bewildered. The more I look and see how people are behaving these days it makes me want to stand up and say “what the fuck is wrong with these people”.
For instance, I heard about a guy who is a Buddhist monk in California who was admitted to the hospital emergency room for multiple snake bites to his arms. Ok, if he was out on a pilgrimage in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and while climbing on a cliff to get to his Temple he wondered into a den of snakes that would be acceptable. However, the reason given by the man according to the Times Record News was that he was in his Temple when this Copperhead snake shows up at the front door so in true Buddhist fashion the monk picks up the snake and walks it around the Temple three times while blessing the creature. Now being a Buddhist myself, I can fully appreciate this story but there is one major flaw. Buddhists may revere life because all creatures have a soul but I have never known anyone but an idiot who would pick up a poisonous snake and let it repeatedly bite him in order to bless it. What the fuck man?
Another thing that is a little closer to home has to do with work. The economy is lagging. This everybody knows. So why is everyone saying things are getting so much better. They’re not. My company is in that phase that I like to call the layoff cycle. This is where they want to get rid of some people in order to cut costs so they shut down the entire plant that I work in until they can justify laying of a few workers. After the layoff however, we are back logged for orders so we have to bring in temporary workers to replace the workers that was just laid off. And now we are stuck pulling mandatory overtime while waiting for them to get more temps to come to work while they are not going to replace the workers they have fired or that have quit. In other words, the end is near for the place where I work. At least that is how I see it anyway.
So, what is there in life that makes it worth living. For me, it is my wife and family. There is also rock and roll, heavy metal, and thrash metal. In the immortal words of Rob Halford, “Metal keeps you young”. The thing is he is right. I have yet to find anything that comes close to a metal concert that makes you feel so alive when everything else is going to shit. So when I start feeling the weight of the world starting to settle on my shoulders, I think back and remember what it was like to head banging to a Testament song or even a Destruction tune comes to mind. Also about how I felt after the show when I could meet the members of the band and talk to them. Metal is a very personal thing and when or if you ever get to go to a concert, hang around after the show and I can almost guarantee that you will leave 150% happier than when you arrived. Most metal artists are some of the best people you have ever met while some are still a little young and have a little growing up left to do but all in all metal heads all over the world is nothing less than one big family.So go out there and support your brothers and sisters of metal and they will give back everything that they have just to please you, me, and everyone else. And the world will not seem so bad if only for just a few short hours.
For instance, I heard about a guy who is a Buddhist monk in California who was admitted to the hospital emergency room for multiple snake bites to his arms. Ok, if he was out on a pilgrimage in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and while climbing on a cliff to get to his Temple he wondered into a den of snakes that would be acceptable. However, the reason given by the man according to the Times Record News was that he was in his Temple when this Copperhead snake shows up at the front door so in true Buddhist fashion the monk picks up the snake and walks it around the Temple three times while blessing the creature. Now being a Buddhist myself, I can fully appreciate this story but there is one major flaw. Buddhists may revere life because all creatures have a soul but I have never known anyone but an idiot who would pick up a poisonous snake and let it repeatedly bite him in order to bless it. What the fuck man?
Another thing that is a little closer to home has to do with work. The economy is lagging. This everybody knows. So why is everyone saying things are getting so much better. They’re not. My company is in that phase that I like to call the layoff cycle. This is where they want to get rid of some people in order to cut costs so they shut down the entire plant that I work in until they can justify laying of a few workers. After the layoff however, we are back logged for orders so we have to bring in temporary workers to replace the workers that was just laid off. And now we are stuck pulling mandatory overtime while waiting for them to get more temps to come to work while they are not going to replace the workers they have fired or that have quit. In other words, the end is near for the place where I work. At least that is how I see it anyway.
So, what is there in life that makes it worth living. For me, it is my wife and family. There is also rock and roll, heavy metal, and thrash metal. In the immortal words of Rob Halford, “Metal keeps you young”. The thing is he is right. I have yet to find anything that comes close to a metal concert that makes you feel so alive when everything else is going to shit. So when I start feeling the weight of the world starting to settle on my shoulders, I think back and remember what it was like to head banging to a Testament song or even a Destruction tune comes to mind. Also about how I felt after the show when I could meet the members of the band and talk to them. Metal is a very personal thing and when or if you ever get to go to a concert, hang around after the show and I can almost guarantee that you will leave 150% happier than when you arrived. Most metal artists are some of the best people you have ever met while some are still a little young and have a little growing up left to do but all in all metal heads all over the world is nothing less than one big family.So go out there and support your brothers and sisters of metal and they will give back everything that they have just to please you, me, and everyone else. And the world will not seem so bad if only for just a few short hours.
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