Slam the Goddamn Ball Bearing Factories With Freeform Destruction

I drink too much. This is public knowledge and I'm not ashamed to admit it. Alcohol and I have had quite the love/hate going on for quite some time. Occasionally (more often than not), his little friend, cigarette, finds it's way into my nightly pleasure-seeking routine....often bringing a pain killer as it's dance partner. Alcohol put me in the hospital my freshman year in college. I can't say it's a pleasant sight waking up from a whiskey-induced coma to see your mother and father standing over your hospital bed in a white room, when the last thing you remember is a hazy recollection of laughing with your friends in a green-leaf canopy park on a sweaty late-Summer night. None too eloquent...to say the least.

I won't go into the myriad of other "less than satisfactory" situations that were facilitated by alcohol in my time here. Let's just say that the devil dresses in liquid from time to time.

It's not just alcohol though. I have a whole host of demons who sit at my front door waiting to greet me as I step outside to meet the day. They're like a reliable old friend, tempting me and lulling me into gentle submission even though I know they don't mean well. And they usually come dressed in something shiny or alluring, but their intentions are hollow and numb and they turn out to be as genial as Michael Vick's dogs.

In fact, I would have considerably more time in my day if I'd take a break from kicking the shit out of myself. I've developed what you might call a ceaseless routine for finding ways to make several situations I'm in disjointed and complicated. But as problematic and absurd as life is somtimes, it's usually by my own making. I'll cut my nose off to spite my own face...without hesitation. But I'm not the only one. We're all our own worst enemies. I've got all my demons in a row.

Another World War reference....

When the United States Army Air Force launched the most expansive aviation raid in the history of warfare on Schweinfurt, Germany, their main intention was to cripple the Nazi's war machine by taking out their ball-bearing factories. They knew that without ball-bearings and the steel to produce ball-bearings, the Nazi war effort would slowly grind to a halt. Every weapon of war needs inertia, thus it needs ball-bearings. The thing is, the Allied High Command knew that they would take considerable losses, becase the Allied bombers would be flying further into Nazi occupied territory than they had yet ventured. In their first month of raids, the Allies lost 80% of the bombers sent to Schweinfurt from anti-aircraft guns, the relentless flak, and the sniper-like efficiency of the Luftwaffe fighters. EIGHTY PERCENT. These were no small-squadron missions. The Allies lost hundreds of bombers and thousands of men for this "objective." One of which was my Grandfather, who on his one and only mission as a B17 pilot, was shot down over occupied France on his way back after delivering his payload. Of the nine-man crew, six of them survived, three were picked up by the French underground and escorted back to England while the other three were captured by Nazi infantry on the ground. He spent two years in a German POW camp as a result. This was before the Allies had the technology to equip their P51 Mustangs with the fuel load which would serve the bomber groups as an incredibly efficient escort fighter. In the end, 2285 Allied aircraft were sent to the bloody skies over Schweinfurt and 1/3 of them never returned to England. The Nazi production...reduced by only 20%. Your nose to spite your own face.

I've had this talk quite a bit recently with different people. We all want to be good people, and do spectacular things. We all want to cure cancer, or win the Nobel Peace Prize, or house orphans, or feed Africa, or have the best carrot cake at the bake sale, or whatever the fuck...but sometimes our intentions go south on us and we end up in the exact opposite place of what we first set out for...be it by blinding ignorance or complete disregard for ourselves and others. And sometimes we have to make decisions where it seems like there is no right answer. Where we get into moral relativism. Weighing the pros and cons is an effort in futility and at that point it usually turns into whether or not you're going to actually make a decision, not what the decision actually is. It's a dangerous dynamic to be in, but it happens quite a bit in life. I was told (actually we're all told this...we're Americans) to follow my heart when these times approach, but what if you can't trust your own heart at times?

It can be small and inane, or it can be life changing decisions. Or it can be day-to-day, menial involvement with people and surroundings and circumstances, but we all face demons. Nobody is immune. It takes tenacity to overcome these temptations or evils, if you will, especially when they're whispering sweet nothings in your ear, promising delight and gratification.

I was told that there is no perfect time to do anything. Even when life is a shitstorm, if you want to accomplish anything, you just do it. You either do it, or you don't. Life won't always give you a lenghty stretch of harmony. There's always bumps in the road. You fight through that shit and do it. You try to improve your circumstances, try to stop kicking your own teeth in, and you stand up proud if your decleated by whatever madness surrounds you. You stand up and you stab again. Sometimes effort is all we have.

As one of my all-time favorite song lyrics so precisely says, "You spend half your life trying to turn the other half around."

Life is foolish and contagious.