The Jackuul Blog

Let me dispel any myth of the human condition and the ability for man to adapt and survive, past all the evolution of our species, past all the social revolutions, past all of all the science and get down to the very bare bone explanation of what life is. I am not explaining the purpose, nor am I explaining where you go when you die - nor am I explaining the poor or the rich. I am explaining life to those of us who don’t yet realize we’re cursed (or perhaps like me they do) and cursed to play the game called “Screwed by Life”. You start out, a young child, full of hope, wonder, amazed by the simplest things like cardboard boxes, blankets, rattles, and of course silly putty. That is all well and good. Perhaps you grew up around happy people (like grandparents who hate their own kids - and take their revenge on them by pampering the hell out of their grandkids), perhaps not. No matter what you start out as, many of you will have experienced the first way of getting screwed by life.

The broken promise: “Why sure, you can have that”. Yeah, that’s a rich one usually told by your mother or father about some stupid worthless toy you like - but they know you will hate ten minutes after you get it. Fine, that is a minor screw. So you come home, and shriek in horror as you find your cardboard box empire has been cut into neat little squares, tied, and ready to be shipped to the recycling place you often go to with wonderment to see cans crushed. As your bleary eyes behold the total destruction of your empire that once had green army men stationed everywhere, and your favorite teddy as the second in command being tossed in the toy bin you experience the first horrid emotions that the game of life introduces you to at the age of five: Hate, anger, embitterment, betrayal, and loathing. Of course that might seem like a lot for a five year old, but I guarantee they all manifest themselves consciously or not. Well, at lest they did for me. You got Screwed.

You were screwed once before already - having been forced to move over a thousand miles away from your favorite grandparents, having your blanket taken away because it was childish, being lied to about going to Disneyland, and of course being stuck with a teenage sitter who sits on the cell phone all day… but the loss of the Cardboard Box Fort you spent three weeks decorating with your favorite crayons (ruining them - but thinking it was worth it) fixing up, cutting, taping, and otherwise making it a second home… that is the final straw in your real innocence. Once you reach the epiphany that you… you got totally screwed… you realize that your life will reflect this pattern for the next eighteen years.

Of course you forget it after you are taken to get ice cream in an act of desperation to shut you the fuck up about it - after being backhanded probably - you forget about that major incident, and begin to like everything again… bugs, critters, the secret box you have under your bed in defiance… then when you’re seven and in the first grade you get hellish teachers. You’re sitting in class, minding your own goddamn business because you loath the other morons about you and then… all of a sudden, you are flicked by a rubber band. In defiance you turn around and say “That wasn’t nice”. No, you’re not screwed yet by life… not until the haughty bitch of a teacher comes over and sees you have a rubber band hidden in your crayons… and doesn’t believe your story of getting whacked. So while those morons get to go play you get to stay in class with a full bladder doing math. Not screwed yet. Then, the little asshat scratches your chair with his scissors and blames you… so you see the principal… not screwed yet… then - in front of you and some of the students - the teacher tells your own mother that she thinks you’re mentally retarded. BINGO. B… I… N… G… O… YOU GOT SCREWED!

Although the psychologist evaluates you and finds that you are in fact much further ahead of the other students since you can grasp the concept of time, space, multiplication and division, along with being able to comprehend complex sentences and do word associations that beat the standard for a six-seven year old you get held back. SCREWED FURTHER… DIG IT IN… DIG THE KNIFE IN AND TWIST! TWIST AND SHOUT! So, while you’re year gets to go on ahead, you get stuck with another vulture and have to redo the grade over again with the same stupid moronic aged children who cant stop eating paste while you sit and daydream about how fun it would be to be with the older kids and not have to retake the bullcrap over again. You thus realize life sucks… not in the “oh man, like, totally life, like, sucks man” way… but the “My whole life is going to be one disappointment after another - isn’t it” way.

This phase passes, you reach the third grade, taller and bigger but meeker and with a destroyed self esteem that leads to you consistently being picked on for being held back a year and knowing more than anyone else your grade level - unable to have fun, unable to relate, unable to share interest - you are the playground recluse. You know the kid, you’ve seen one in every grade - you may have been one - the one everyone says is weird, evil, or strange. The one who likes to talk to teachers and not other students because they can’t understand the words used. The one who looks like a goody-two-shoes ass because he can answer every question and understand every concept. In reality he’s just trying to find salvation from the idiots he is around.

Finally the grade school days end, you find yourself going to a junior high, yay… the rat race hath begun! 7 classes in 8 hours, with lunch and such. Over crowded, over packed, under funded bliss of being shuffled around like a little mouse in a maze… so much stuff to do and so little time that when you get home each day you have that sudden realization that the work you are doing is absolutely worthless. Each day you plod through it, becoming adept at avoiding the Mexican bullies who get through by blackmailing teachers that they wouldn’t shoot them if they passed and making it to the little lunch stand for your ten dollar slice of pizza and three dollar drink being served cold and hot - in that order… Not screwed yet though. You get screwed that first time you realize that everyone still hates you - the first time you go up to the board and answer a question on it mathematically becomes your last as you turn around to the blank infuriated rage filled stares from the students who think of you as their enemy for possessing what evolution granted you with - a brain. From then on out your math grade goes from A’s to C’s until the end of the whole public education system.

Here comes a big screwed point - you’re told you will be getting a computer… oh good god you have wanted one since you were in front of an Apple II when you were six… but when it comes time you find out all the money was spent on the times you stayed with the babysitter. SCREWED. You might be confused as to why - let me explain. The year is 1997, the age is 12. At this time if you got a computer you would become a god by the age of 15, and participated in the massive net boom just a few years later and would have had a job in high school that would have paid awesomely. Instead in 1999 you get a 1984 IBM XT. Happy 14th - you got a computer older than you.

You persevere, learning as much as you can with DOS while Windows 98 gives way to ME, and then to XP - missing the boat because the next computer you get is a 386 - until your grandmother smuggles you 300 bucks and gets you a super socket seven and an AMD K6 II 500, along with a 15 gig hard drive. You never inform your parents what you did to that old 386 case. Soon after you get your ass kicked out of a catholic school in 8th grade because you drew pictures of the computer, held an intellectual “what if you had a time machine” conversation - and had an idiotic crush on a girl who hated you. Computer drawings = BOMB!!! ZOMG!!!! UNIBOMBER IN TRAINING! Hypothetical conversation about killing Stalin, Mao, and Hitler becomes “HE HAS A HIT LIST OF KIDS ZOMG!!!!!”. You get your ass booted out. SCREWED. Then you realize there is no God. DOUBLE SCREW. Then you hear the school you were in had asbestos. TRIPLE SCREW! HOW COULD IT GET WORSE!? You find out the one who said you had a student hit list was the idiot who you bought a 25 dollar present for the previous week -> Almost the ultimate screw…

Well that passes and you get to go to Utah. Insta Screwed. Next you go to their highschool, and every time you want to go on a date - you cant because you aren’t Mormon Screwed by life X10. You get a death thread in your locker for not being Mormon. Screwed. You take a class that counts to a college credit - and find out it actually doesn’t for you because, although you are the right age, you are not the right grade level. SCREW FROM THE PAST! Finally, you find a sweet car someone is getting rid of for 300 dollars… and cant get it because your Christmas money was (as it had been for ten years now) borrowed forever. Screwed.

Do we get the point yet? Yes. Close the deal now? Sure.

You move 2,000 miles, you start college, you get to the second semester with A’s - and you are forced to move again, wasting 800 dollars of tuition and 300 in books. Screwed. Then you cant get a job because you move to the poorest state in the union. Screwed. You get screwed there so many times you want to walk in front of a train, but human self preservation and “hope” says “things will get better”. Screwed. Because next you move to a shithole state and have a shithole job with a shithole employer that has you working with all kinds of mind numbing chemicals without the safety gear - and tells you to hide it when insurance comes to look around. By the end of your duration there you have made 3,000 dollars while working 50 hours a week (or more) because they screwed with your overtime numbers. Screwed screwed screwed, and screwed. By this time you just about give up on life - and when you only get to spend about 1/3 of that money for things you wanted to spend it on, while donating the rest to “borrowing” you realize how screwed you are. Mega Screwed.

Now, at 22… the future is full of getting screwed. Can’t afford a bed because money is borrowed by family? Screwed Cant afford college because of it? Screwed. Forced to vent on the internet because you cant afford a therapist or a gun to shoot yourself and end the misery of human life as you have no money or health insurance? Really goddamn screwed.

Finding out that you’ll be the only one not attending a huge family reunion because of where you are? More than screwed.

I think I rank pretty well up there with getting screwed with. Sure, other people will point out the poor, victims of natural disasters, people who get rare sicknesses, people with layoffs, all kinds of things like that - and honestly I appreciate that but am too screwed to help. Every time I see Santa jingle that bell I look for change… then look back at the family that just borrowed it and hang my head in shame as I pass Santa without even a penny to donate. Screwed Santa, and myself. When it comes to people who want to dominate the world - I am more screwed than Saddam Hussein was. I win the all time screwed award for someone who wants to dominate earth as its sole dictator and enforce a policy to diminish the screwing that occurs everywhere (both meanings… we need less children anyways) because, unlike the others who have been killed trying to gain power… I haven’t even a single minion, or my own bed. I can’t even finance my own mini-doomsday weapon, hell, I can’t finance anything but getting dog food for the dog (and soon to probably be myself).

Am I Screwed? You Betcha’.