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You know how I feel about memes, but I’m still masticating on the post ideas you gave me so I stole this one from Avitable. Stole at least one of his answers, too. Or did I? That’s for you to figure out.

9 Layers: a meme to peel away the layers of you.

Layer One:
Name: New Age Bitch, or just Bitch. You choose.
Birth date: 12:20 pm.
Birthplace: Mom says it was vaginal, but my memories of it are hazy.
Current Location: On your screen. Staring at you. Right now.
Eye color: Depends on the light.
Hair Color: Upstairs or downstairs? Be specific.
Height: Let me stand by the door at 7-11 and then you tell me.
Righty or Lefty: The Bitch is ALWAYS right.
Zodiac sign: Guess.

Layer Two:
Your Heritage: One part shameless whore, two parts bitch, one part deliciously mysterious.
The shoes you wore today: Fuck-me pumps, obviously.
Your weakness: I have a weakness?
Your fears: Being out of control.
Your perfect pizza: Is that a euphemism?
Goal you’d like to achieve: The Bitch has done it ALL.

Layer Three:
Your most overused phrase on AIM: Who uses that anymore?
Your first waking thoughts: Fuck.
Your best physical feature: Tits. Told you that already.
Your most missed memory: Could you repeat the question?

Layer Four:
Pepsi or Coke: Ew. Neither.
McDonalds or Burger King: Ew. Neither. (Who eats that crap anyway?)
Single or group dates: We talking gang-bang here? Not for me.
Adidas or Nike: New Balance.
Lipton Ice Tea or Nestea: More crap. Great. No wonder you suck.
Chocolate or vanilla: Darrrrrk chocolate.
Cappuccino or coffee: Tall skim double-shot latte. Duh.

Layer Five:
Smoke: Only when I’m on fire.
Cuss: Fuck no!
Sing: Every day.
Take a shower everyday: It goes with the singing.
Do you think you’ve been in love: I’m in love all the time.
Want to go to college: Again? What for?
Liked high school: Are you serious?
Want to get married: Again? What for?
Believe in yourself: Only when I click my red shoes together three times.
Get motion sickness: Only when riding that mechanical bull.
Think you’re attractive: I’m fucking gorgeous!
Think you’re a health freak: No, but you would.
Get along with your parents: Yes, after I buried their bodies in the backyard.
Like thunderstorms: I love them.
Play an instrument: Several.

Layer Six: In the past month….
Drank alcohol: Yep.
Smoked: Haven’t been on fire in the past month, so no.
Done drugs: Only the type I can inject directly into my eyeballs.
Made out: “Made out”? Who wrote these questions?
Gone on a date: Fuck.
Gone to the mall: Haven’t been on fire in the past month, so no.
Eaten an entire box of Oreos: Don’t they come in a bag these days?
Eaten sushi: Yes.
Been on stage: Naked or clothed? Be specific here.
Been dumped: Never.
Gone skating: Uhhh. No.
Made homemade cookies: Picture that, will you? I mean seriously.
Gone skinny dipping: It’s fucking December. Brr.
Dyed your hair: Upstairs or down?

Stolen anything: Layer Seven: Have you ever….
Played a game that required removal of clothing: Several. I’m especially good at Strip Trivial Pursuit.
Been trashed or extremely intoxicated: Define “extremely.”
Been caught “doing something”: Doing…what?
Been called a tease: I always follow through.
Gotten beat up: Are you serious?
Shoplifted: Once, and I was wracked with guilt for years afterward. Still have nightmares.
Changed who you were to fit in: Are you serious?

Layer Eight:
Age you hope to be married: Dead. That would do it.
Names of children: Tremor, Scream, and Haggis.
Describe your dream wedding: Oh, fuck.
How do you want to die: In bed.
Where do you want to go to college: We covered this already.
What do you want to be when you grow up: Me. Which is what YOU want to be too, let’s face it.
What country would you most like to visit: Iceland.

Layer Nine:
Number of drugs taken illegally: At one time?
Number of people I could trust with my life: Stupid question. Who puts that kind of responsibility on someone else?
Number of CDs that I own: Who owns CDs anymore? Never heard of bittorrent?
Number of piercings: Only 6.
Number of tattoos: Only 2.
Number of times my name has appeared in the newspaper: Several.
Number of scars on my body: Who counts scars?
Number of things in my past I regret: Zero. Zilch. Nada. None.

Wanna do this meme? Fine. Go for it. Link to me, bitches.

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Well well, so another calendar page blew off the wall and it’s December again. Do you care? Except for all the stress you feel when it’s December? Too bad you can’t enjoy it, but no, you’re too busy waiting in line at Wal-Mart, or trampling poor scrawny temp workers who just wanted to make some extra Xmas dough to save up and buy that set of matching NASCAR towels they’ve been coveting all year, or tick tick tick clicking away making Cyber Monday deals and sending your credit card balances spiraling upwards. Fun, eh?

So whatever. Christmas. let’s put the Christ back in Christmas, shall we? Or better yet, let’s not and say we did. Because frankly, that’s another good idea that’s been twisted way out of recognition. But again, whatever.

No, I want to talk about me.

Looks like my last post was a bit of a bust. What, put off by the talk of masturbation? See, it’s something everyone does but won’t admit to and doesn’t want to talk about. Whatever. There were comments but I saved them from your tender ears. Eyes. Whatever. Because it’s slightly creepy when there’s someone who really DOES want to talk about masturbation. In detail. So…no. But hey, no skin off my nose because The Bitch didn’t actually write that post. If you look carefully you can see that the magic codes usually embedded that hypnotize you and make you think I’m a genius and sleep like a baby the night after reading my posts were missing. See? Yeah, those. So whatever.

I mentioned before that The Bitch has been busy and that doesn’t seem to be going away any time soon. It’s not that I don’t love you, because I don’t, at least not THAT way, but some of us have a life. Maybe even you. Most assuredly YOU, anyway. But you can all look forward to more Bitchposts in the future. That could be an empty promise but you’ll either have to keep coming back repeatedly or subscribe to be sure, won’t you?

Oh, and I’m taking requests. Because I’m out of original ideas and may as well use yours. So put them in the comments.

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Chances are you see this every day:

I made that one up. So what. But guess what it is?  If you know me, you’ve probably already guessed.  Masturbation.  Using, of course, my amazing, new, tried-and-true technique! (Only available if you visit my alter-ego porn site and subscribe for $119.95 a month. I guarantee it’ll help you more than seeing your shrink. Because, guys, it WON’T make you shrink.)

Politics, like a lot of life, is filled with this shit.  I will not lower your taxes!  Through me you’ll have jobs! Security! Wealth! A winning side! A scapegoat! You’re the “best country in the world”! I’ll tell you anything you want!

Why do you fall for this, time and time again? Obviously, because you know it’s true.  I have something you don’t have that you absolutely NEED. The Bitch is self-assured, relaxed, all-wise, all-knowing, all-powerful, and I can give you all you ever need. Just suck up to me.

Wait … not *that* way. (Your mind is totally in the gutter. Get it OUT of there and listen up.)

Remember a short while ago we talked about what you really want?  You still don’t know what you want if any of this appealed to you in the slightest.  Because I just told you what you do want, what you’re missing, and how to fill that huge hole in your soul that I just told you you have.  And a part of you still believed me.

So what’s the problem here? What am I venting about?

We are raised to be good, upstanding members of society.  Put in other terms: we’re raised to be disconnected from our Self and each other. We’re expected to be unquestioning, to be totally believing of others’ bullshit, and to be bowled over by peer pressure.  If we have to make a tough decision - like in the photo - chances are we whine, “what should I dooo?” Not what we WANT, but what we should do. If you’re really fucked up, which means you’re “normal”, you’ll be translating “should” into “want” in everything you do so as not to appear like the indoctrinated mush of putty that you are.  What you want is exactly what you’re told that you should want. No need to listen to that silent inner voice; it’s already muzzled.

All this sales shit is geared towards that gnawing emptiness you believe is you. It supports it and creates it.  No matter how “enlightened” someone is, if they’re trying to get you to improve, there’s some of that crap there.

If you pick up a New Age magazine, what you’ll see is more of the same: advertisements, solutions to your problems, products, more happy-sounding thoughts and shit to fill that empty hole that is your soul.  But it will only connect you to Who You Are if you stop believing you’re that pile of mush.

I’ll tell you what the Bitch likes: being treated like I’m already enlightened. Because I am. Yes, I still have pain, angst, anger (like that doesn’t show), and a hell of a lot of estrogen. And balls. My idea of enlightenment includes that. And you’re enlightened too. Even without the masturbation (or with, because dude—whatever blows your skirt up).

Oh yes, and I go for the penguins.  Not the bus.

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The Bitch has been busy.

Not only that, but The Bitch is just effing tired. Heh, I said ‘effing’ when I go ahead and say ‘fuck’ in the title. That’s irony. Either that, or The Bitch is just freaking tired. Too tired to type proper profanity.

So what’s new with you?

You know what? I should probably care about SEO optimization and all that shit but I don’t. I’m just downloading what’s in my head here. We don’t even spellcheck.

So when I start talking about my real topic, you won’t be surprised, will you?  So here we go:

Last week there was an election. Remember that? And a whole bunch of people were like crazy happy, because in one day, ONE FREAKING DAY PEOPLE, the world changed. Colors were brighter. People smiled at one another. People hugged each other (except for the gays in California, who are still not allowed legal hugging) and remembered what it was like to hope.

Hope.

Hope is a fucking transient thing, people.

[I should mention here that while a whole bunch of people were chill about the electionary outcome, a whole bunch more were pretty pissed off. It usually goes like that.]

[But fuck them since I know who I voted for anyway.]

Hope. What’s up with that, anyway? One day we’re all boo-hoo-the-world-sucks, and the next it’s like dude!-look-at-all-the-colors!-shiny! You know? And what’s happened since then? Seriously. I want to know. What’s happened?

The sun still comes up, right? And it still goes down? And you’re still paying off your mortgage (or not) and working at your job (or not), and things are pretty much the same as they were the day before the election. Right? Still drinking the same coffee? Still have two-legs-two-arms-two-eyes-a-brain (or not)?

I’ll tell you what’s different.

Hope.

You thought things would change, and so your perception of things changed. That’s all. Your perception. Remember this, will you? Because next time you’re all boo-hoo about something, remember it’s not the THING that needs to change for you to feel better about it, but YOUR PERCEPTION OF THAT THING. That’s all. An attitude adjustment. Change your brain, change your life (without the extra helping of judgment that there is something WRONG with your brain, okay?). That’s all it takes. Looking at things differently.

What, not convinced?

Fine.

An example, then.

Two people. Person A sells or gives away all his shit. All of it. Every last bit. He doesn’t make a ton of money from the selling, and he’s careful to give his shit to people who might love it the way he did. He’s left with what fits in his car. People ask, “WTF?” and he says, “OMG, I can’t believe what’s happening to me. I feel so fucking powerless. I had to sell all my shit and now I don’t know what the fuck I’m going to do. THIS SUCKS.”

Person B sells or gives away all his shit. All of it. Every last bit. He doesn’t make a ton of money from the selling, and he’s careful to give his shit to people who might love it the way he did. He’s left with what fits in his car. People ask, “WTF?” and he says, “DUDE! I feel so free! This is totally awesome, like, I am CONNECTED with the universe! You should try it.”

Okay, maybe this one is too obvious. But who is, um, happier? Who has hope? Who seems more open to the possibilities that life might just be sort of okay after all, even when things sort of suck?

Now, I’m not asking you to go all Pollyanna here, but seriously: who do you want to be, Person A (the realist), or Person B (obviously on hallucinogenics)?

See? It’s all in how you look at it.

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So The Bitch was talking to one of her minions Fellow Brilliant Blog-Type Persons recently, and this Blog-Type Person* is sort of brilliant and totally let the phrase “Stop Global Whining” slip out all unintentionally and of course The Bitch was naturally intrigued.  It’s an awesome phrase and any time The Bitch can steal someone else’s idea give credit where credit is due, she’s all up in that.

So let’s talking about whining, shall we?

Ugh, already I’m feeling that little edge of disgust, the one you get when you’re talking to somebody with LOTS of extra drool in their mouth, when you feel like if you only watched long enough, a big wet glob of that drool would ooze its way out of their mouth while they talk and you’d watch it plop wetly and silently right onto their collar, where it would slowly sink in, leaving a wet snail-trail slime spot of shiny mouth-ooze.  And you Can’t.Look.Away.  You are mesmerized by that mouthful of slobbery wetness.  And you’re totally disgusted at the same time, not only at what you’re watching, but at yourself for watching it.

That’s what fucking whining does to me.

And people whine All The Fucking Time.

Hello!  Whiners!  Instead of TALKING about it, why don’t you DO something about it?  Or just do SOMETHING period!

But no.  It’s far easier to just complain about stuff than it is to own it.  Owning your shit takes guts.  Owning your shit takes the courage to LOOK at your shit to begin with.  And who wants to do that?  No, it’s far easier just to sit on that couch holding the remote in one hand and your dick in the other, picking your nose with your other [and magically manifested] hand, yelling at whoever’s in the kitchen to HURRY IT UP FOR CRYING OUT LOUD THE SHOW’S ABOUT TO START GODDAMMIT, than it is to put your dick away and put down the fucking remote, get up, and walk into the goddamn kitchen yourself.

But the Wal-Mart generation has bred a bunch of illbred inbreeds who find it far easier to complain about the smell of everybody else’s shit than to notice that they’re sitting in a pile of their own.

The other day was Blog Action Day.  More than 12,000 bloggers wrote about poverty.  Many of them solicited donations for the Global Fund, Feeding America, Donors Choose, Project Peanut Butter, and others (how can you not give money to support the development of peanut butter?).  Others banded together and made microloans to people in need of a helping hand all over the world through Kiva.

And while on the one hand you can make the case that each of those 12,000+ bloggers was whining about poverty, the idea was to make the whining count for something.  So much mass whining all on the same day has an effect.  If you read blogs, and you read on Blog A about Blog Action Day and on Blog B something else about Blog Action Day and on Blog C something yet again about Blog Action Day, then either:

a) You unsubscribe from blogs A, B, and C because who wants to hear about poverty? Especially when it’s not mine! Bring on the LOLcats!

or

b) You fucking Get The Point, and like everyone else you are affected by what you read and decide to get up off that couch and go Do Something, like maybe donate that jar of pennies or something, or maybe make a microloan of your own (they’re an excellent return and change people’s lives, one sad shitty life at a time.  What’s better than that?).

But that’s about the only example of Whining For Good that The Bitch knows about.  All other forms of whining are shit and need to be eradicated from the planet.  Immediately.  Before they do more harm.  In fact, The Bitch can make a case for the theory that global whining is the CAUSE of global warming.  All that fucking hot air.

So next time you hear some fuckwit droning on about the gum-snapping woman in the airplane seat next to him, or about the guy in front of him at the supermarket who had ELEVEN items in a 10-and-under lane, do something.  Because all that whining is seriously using up all our air. Tell him to either quit his bleating and shut the fuck up or stop breathing up all our air.

It’s us or them, people.  Global whining is a serious matter.

*Fellow Brilliant Blog-Type person is Christa who wrote some funny shit about the time she rear-ended a dwarf (oh get your fucking mind out of the gutter! Not THAT kind of rear-ended!) and also some serious shit about, well, go see for yourself.  You need to.

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[Click to embiggen.]

Is this fucking awesome, or what?  Tag cloud made courtesy of Wordle.*

*You do know what this is, right?  The Bitch painstakingly typed in ALL of the words ever uttered here at New Age Bitch, fed them laboriously into a computer the size of a refrigerator, and eight point seven hours later, this was the result.  This is what The Bitch talks about.

Now go play with this and make sentences out of it.  Go on.  I know you want to.

Oh, fuck.  I’ll start.  Here:

Post saying, “Fuck life! Talk fucking!”  Thought: deep, hidden.  Look!  Just someone stop!  Stupid…

There.  Now go play, will you?  Life is too short to fucking take it seriously.   Get your kicks where you can.

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I read a Twitter lament recently from someone lambasting the bazillions of homeowners who got in over their heads with loans they couldn’t possibly repay, and it got me to thinking about what made those homeowners sign away their first-born with blood on a dotted line made of precariously leaning towers of sub-prime greed.

1.  They were sorta greedy.

Everyone wants the American Dream.  You know what I mean:  the 4 bedroom 2.5 bath 3-car-garage behemoth in the suburbs, where nobody walks and you drive through two miles of identical rows of identical houses to a big fresh new-smelling mall where everyone gathers to eat by themselves in the drive-thru lane of Burger King, or if it’s a special night they wait 90 minutes for a table at Applebee’s or Olive Garden and eat the same thing thousands of people are eating all over the country at the same fucking time. 

Yeah. That dream.

That’s the dream that has sold 5 million iPhones.  That’s the dream that skyrocketed Wal-Mart to its place among the walking undead of capitalism. That’s the empty dream that millions of people have been chasing for years.

2.  They were sorta stupid.

They didn’t do their homework.  They thought, as many did, that the bubble would never burst, that the markets would continue to go up forever, that a real estate investment is a sure thing and not the crap shoot that it really is. Tons of people have bought into this mindset, so if it’s you, you’re not alone. But do you know how many people willingly put themselves into hock for $300K, $400K, or more based on the emotionalism of “But honey, it has a three-car garage and a jacuzzi!”*

3.  They believed the loan officer.

We believe doctors, lawyers, and anybody sitting on the other side of a desk from us.  Why?  Because they display their diploma on the wall behind us! 

This gives them the ability to know what is right for us?? Hardly. But we fucking do it all the time. Somehow that white coat, that desk, that diploma, renders us incapable of making a decision on our own and gives the person wearing that white coat or brandishing that diploma the Ultimate Authority to Decide Our Lives.

So fucking stop it. Stop giving away your power. Stop thinking that other people know more about you or your life than you do. Because the Bitch is fucking tired of it.

You do this, you know you do. You’re a nice person, right? So you’re concerned about what people think of you, right?

ZINNNNG!

That’s giving away your power. The SECOND you second-guess yourself about something because of what someone else might think or say or do, your power goes right out the window. You might as well sign over the papers to it right now. Go ahead. Sign ‘em over.

“But, Bitch!” I can hear you whining right now, “Those people, they’re Experts! They went to school and stuff! I don’t know ’bout birthin’ no babies!”

Yeah, and I’m sure you heard at some point that a third of doctors and lawyers graduated in the bottom third of their class, right? What makes you think these people know any more than you do, especially when it comes to YOUR FUCKING LIFE?

“But, Bitch!” You’re still whining. “I’m just being respectful! These people went to school and they studied and they, like, KNOW stuff!”

Shut up. Shut. Up.

Do you hear yourself?

Do you hear that sucking sound?

That’s the sound of YOUR power being sucked right out from inside you, YOUR power that you’re willingly giving away to anybody else, ANYBODY but you.

Why?

Because you’re fucking afraid to own your own power.

True.

You’re afraid. We’re taught to fear the power we all are born with, the power we all own. We are taught to just give it away to anybody who seems more educated, smarter, or more powerful than we are. We are not taught to own what we came here with.

The thing is, YOU are the person who knows what’s best for you. Sure, a loan officer, a doctor, a lawyer is going to have some specialized knowledge that comes from schooling and experience that maybe you don’t have.

But you still have the ability to know what is right for you. You just don’t believe that you do. It’s easier to give it away and trust someone else, and to hand over your life and your future to someone else. It’s easier to do that than it is to own what you came here with.

Trouble is, if you decide to own your power, then you also own the consequences of the choices you make when you own your power. You can’t blame anyone else anymore. Are you willing to do that? Are you willing to look to yourself not only for your power but also for whatever happens when you make (gasp!) a mistake?

If you can do THAT, then you automatically have a toehold over everyone else in the universe. You make choices, you make choices that feel shitty and so feel like mistakes, and you learn. Ba dum bum. That’s life. But it feels a helluva lot better than giving away your power and feeling fucking helpless.

Take back your power. Take back your life. It’s YOUR life, after all.

*Okay, that was a rhetorical question, but if you demand an answer, it’s this: A FUCKING LOT OF THEM! ALMOST EVERYONE YOU KNOW! There, was that specific enough?

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So I may have mentioned before that I read other people’s blogs.  Guilty.  The Bitch reads blogs all fucking day, sacrificing her precious eyeballs for you people.  Fucking ungrateful.  And the Bitch is like an Internet Sponge, soaking up all the crap awesomeness that’s floating around out there.  And lately I’ve been running across some really awesome stuff, at least when measured by the Bitch-O-Meter.  Take this one.  This guy Tim starts off talking about words, and then look what happened!  First he totally pisses me off by telling me to “mind my language” (as if!) and then he gets all wise and shit and starts saying stuff that makes sense.  So go read it.

Fuck, I don’t mean now. Finish THIS post first, and THEN click. *Eyeroll*

Anyway.  I got to the end of Tim’s post where he’s talking about phrases to use instead of the garbage some of us usually fill our heads with, and when I came to “I want…”, fucking lightbulbs were exploding ALL OVER.  Seriously!  You know that mythical “aha!” moment we’re supposed to have when we think of something brilliant?  Well, picture that times like a thousand, because The Bitch is THAT brilliant.  Brilliant times a thousand.  And that’s like a hundredth of the actual lightbulbs.

I want.

Say that a couple of times, will you?

I want.

How does that feel?  Kind of weird, right?

See, the thing is, we’re all sort of fucked up when to comes to “I want.”  Lots of us, when we’re kids or something, are told in one way or another that saying “I want” is a bad thing.  Selfish, maybe.  We should think of others, not ourselves.  Think of those poor starving kids in China while you choke down those cold congealed peas!  And next time eat everything on your plate!

So “I want” has judgments.

And then we put “I want” away.  We don’t know what we want, because we’ve hidden it away in a dark closet somewhere.

Or, we go crazy with “I want.”  We run up enormous credit bills filled with “I want,” each trying to make a dent in the emptiness we feel inside.  We fill bigger and bigger houses with boatloads of crap destined to take over our landfills, and still it’s not enough.  We still feel that emptiness, even when surrounded by everything we thought we wanted.

The trouble is, we still don’t know what we want.  We’re running after something, sure, but we haven’t gotten to the heart of it.  “I want” is still hidden.  It’s underneath that pile of crap, hidden below a stack of credit card statements.

Oh, we talk about what we want all the time.  “I want world peace!” we chirp, or “I want a warm house in a safe neighborhood where I can raise my family!”  We talk about wanting stuff, but it’s the stuff that it’s okay to say we want.  These things are socially acceptable, so we are conditioned to want them.  A 4 bedroom 2.5 bath house in the suburbs, 1.7 kids, an iPhone and a Prius.  That’s what we want.  And while we’re at it, we want good government, adequate and available health care, world peace, an end to climate change, our health, and maybe some more Doritos.

We want what everyone else wants because it’s okay to want that.

But we still don’t know what WE want.

What do you want?

Feel that?  You had to take a deep breath, didn’t you?  You know why?

Because you don’t know what you want.

Most of us don’t know what we REALLY want.  Knowing what you want takes WORK.  You have to dig deep.  You think about what you want and then you go deeper:  WHY do you want that?  And digging deeper takes guts.  It takes courage.  It takes the strength to really look at yourself and answer questions with honesty.  And most of us aren’t all that willing to do that.  It’s hard.  It brings stuff up.  It feels icky.  And it reveals answers that may not fit within the image of ourselves we thought we had.  It reveals a person we didn’t know we were.

Is that what you want?

Do you want to find out who you really are?

Then start asking yourself, What do I want? And start listening to the answers.

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Sigh.

You know that voice?  The one in your head?  The voice in your head that tells you stuff?  You know the one I mean.  You’ve been listening to that little fucker for years now, and I am here to tell you that it is EATING ALL YOUR BRAIN CELLS.

This is the voice I mean.  Tell me this isn’t familiar to you.  ONE of these is in your head, almost guaranteed.

1.  You’re so fat.  Look at you, you’re hideous in these clothes!  Ugh, everyone can see how you look, you’re just huge!  Nothing hides it, you are so fat.  Fat and lumpy and ugly.  Fat, fat, fat.

2.  You’re a failure.  Nothing you do ever goes right.  Everything you do is wrong.  You can never do anything.  You never finish anything.  You might as well not even bother trying anymore, because you’ll just fail again.

3.  God you’re ugly.  Ugly as hell.  Look at you.  No one will ever love you like that.  You are ug-LEE, dude.  Ugly.

4.  No one fucking likes you.  They’re just pretending.  People can’t stand you.  They whisper behind your back; they’re always talking about you.  See how they turn around when you come in the room?  They can’t stand you.

5.  Why do you even exist?  You can’t do anything right, you’re fat, you’re ugly, no one even likes you.  Useless.  What’s the point?  You’re better off dead.

Yo, people, I’m like fucking depressed after typing that shit.  You know how that gets to you?  I mean, somewhere inside you know it isn’t true, but then you hear that voice, the voice that sounds like YOU, and you go, “Well, maybe…” and then you open up all kinds of trouble right there.  You start believing what you’re hearing, and you tell yourself that the stupid fucking voice in your head is more real than what you feel way deep down inside.

Mind fuck.

It’s a form of karma.  Karma with the self.  You create this situation that ends up limiting your own choices, because you become so paralyzed in the trance of that voice that’s you and not-you at the same time, and then all of a sudden you’re the deer in the headlights.  Stopped cold.  Staring blindly into the lights of the oncoming car that’s rushing toward you, about to crush your skull and return you to the Source of All That Is.

Except you weren’t quite ready to be dead yet, so you just ACT as if you were dead.  Because you’re now a fucking ZOMBIE and you can’t think for yourself because you’re now in the grip of that stupid fucking voice.  The voice that’s only real because you’ve tricked yourself into believing it is.

Well, fucking stop it, will you?

Except it’s not that easy, is it?  You’ve come to rely on that voice.  You’re used to it.  You think it’s real, more real than that OTHER voice way down deep inside, the one that should be fucking shouting but instead just emits a pathetic little peep of doubt from time to time.

So you have to train yourself to stop listening.  It’s not easy, people, I won’t lie to you.  But this is what you can do.  You’re going to trick yourself again, see?  Just  like you did a long long time ago when this little fucker started talking to you and you started believing it.  But that was a long time ago and you’re a different person now.  You’re older and you’re wiser and you’re better equipped to choose the soundtrack that plays in your head.

Okay, from now on, every time you hear anything negative in your head, the very beginning of that narrative you know so well, just shout out a big “No!”

“NO!”

That’s all it takes.

Because you are choosing now which voice you will believe.

You are choosing now, and you can do this.  Just start with “no.”  Saying “no” will open up a new door, one that you closed a long time ago.  The door is still there and it’s been there all this time but you weren’t using it.  So you know where to go once you get the door open.  Just open the door with a “no,” and things will start to change.  It takes time.  You have to do this over and over.  But once you get the door open with your “no,” you can start a new narrative, one filled with things you like.

1.  You have everything you need inside you, and you always did.

2.  You are an amazing person.

3.  There is a glow of energy around you, and people notice it.

[One caveat here.  You know the fortune cookie joke, the one where at the end of reading any fortune you add the words "in bed"?  Be sure you are not adding Evil Fortune Cookie Crap to the end of your new sentences.  Do NOT, for instance, do this:  "You have everything you need inside you, and you always did but you're such a fuck-up that you failed to see this all this time and you suck!  You FAIL!"]

See?  Don’t do that last bit.

Need extra help?  Cover your ears with your hands, and start just singing something nonsensical.  ANYTHING to get your mind off that old voice and the crap it tells you.  (Just don’t make it “Feelings” unless you want The Bitch to start stabbing herself repeatedly in the eye with the business end of a USB cord.)

How long does this take?  Depends.  It took you awhile to get to this point, so undoing your own mind-fuck takes some time.  But you should start noticing changes.  And seriously, this is your chance to give yourself a gift that’s anything you want.  Anyone you want to be, that you know deep down you really are, that’s what you want this new-old voice to be telling you.  That’s the voice that never left you, that was always there, but you forgot about it.  Pay attention to it.  Open that door again and let it out to play.

You won’t regret it.

Like the Bitch? Dude. Of course you do. Then go ahead and subscribe to my RSS feed!

(Fuck, Bitch, where have you been?)

Well, have you looked here?  That’s right, people, The Bitch does guest posts.  Call me if you want things shaken up over at your place.  Have a quick look at my blog standards first, just in case.

Okay, moving on here.  We need to talk about something that’s been cluttering up the internets for far too long, taking up space that could be useful.  You know what I’m talking about:  self-deprecating humor.

The next time you laugh at, say, Amalah the Mommyblogger, ask yourself, “What the fuck am I laughing at?  How is this shit funny?”  Oh, sure, we laugh at people poking fun at themselves.  And here’s why:  Better them than me.

Sure, it’s easy to laugh at someone falling all over their ass or imagining that they were going to fall all over their ass and wondering what other people are thinking about them or would think if they actually did fall all over their ass, and then writing about it in a charmingly self-deprecatory way.  That’s fucking funny, we think.  Because it’s 1.) Not us, and 2.) Laughing at the stupid shit we do has become socially acceptable, and socially expected.

So when did it become passe to talk about ourselves in a positive way?  To say things like, “Hey look, I am fucking-A awesome!”  People who do that are thought of as assholes, even if they’re sort of right.  (Or they’re worshiped, the way you worship The Bitch, but that’s WHY you love me.  Because I am so different.  Plus I’m totally hot.)

I’m tired of this fakery shit, though.  Sure, people are capitalizing on their feelings of inner inadequacy by processing them in a highly public manner, and The Bitch is all about going public with inner shit, but this stuff feeds on itself and creates more.  One person writing about the time they fell down a hill because their fucking heel broke but they had a glass of wine so people thought they were drunk off their ass and never believed the story about the breaking heel and OMG they are soooo embarrassed by this and can never never never show their face in public again (never mind all the hundreds of Flickr sets devoted to said blogger and blogger’s drunkblogging and drunkblogging blogfriends)* just creates this giant sucking VACUUM that other people rush in to fill.  But people, you cannot possibly fill the void of someone else’s feeling of inadequacy by writing about your own.  Just because this shit is popular does not mean it’s even remotely useful except as a global communal catharsis tool.  And rushing in to fill that fucking vacuum only makes the holes in yourself appear bigger.

Instead, I want people to write about the great stuff they do.  Everybody has successes; when did they become something to hide?  Hey, you made toast this morning?  WAY TO GO!  YOU ARE AWESOME!  At least, if it was superior toast.  None of this bread-no-warmer-than-if-I-stuck-the-slice-under-my-arm shit.  I want REAL toast.  Toast-colored toast.  THAT is something to be proud of.

And let’s take this a step further:  don’t limit your anti-trash talk about yourself to what you put on the internet.  Is it a crime to say “I am wonderful!” and actually mean it?  I mean, who among you is truly NOT wonderful?  Why can’t you just SAY IT, for fuck’s sake?

And sure, lots of us have this fucked-up inner voice inside us telling us how shitty we are.  But that stuff is NOT TRUE, so you have my permission to stop listening to it, RIGHT NOW.  In fact, every time you hear that voice, I want you to tell it to go fuck itself, that YOU are in charge, and that YOU MAKE AWESOME TOAST.

~~~~~

From the this-would-be-fucked-up-if-it-wasn’t-so-funny department, The Bitch received a death threat in response to her post about vigilante vegetarians.  So if you laughed at that post, I have to assume you’re included in the threat.  Watch out for people wielding fur coats and tomato stakes.

*This is a TOTALLY hypothetical blogstory, but if it wasn’t TOTALLY hypothetical you could probably read about something very similar to it here.

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