Inspiration via Devastation: Part 3: Chelsea (Bradley Manning)

Posted: October 4, 2013 in Anarchy Journal Constitutional
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by @anarchyroll

What a patriot Chelsea (Bradley) Manning is! What a hero of journalism! Someone who walked the walk as opposed to talking the talk. A person who has sacrificed all freedoms for what they believe in. A human being who without resorting to violence, went to war with the Military Industrial Complex. In the information/ knowledge worker age, Manning took the protests, sit ins, and whistleblowing concepts out of the 20th century, combined them, and brought them all screaming into the 21st century by innovating or at the very least popularizing hacktivism.

Chelsea changed many of my personal perceptions. I have always been pro equal rights for gays and lesbians. However, the T in LGBT has always been a source of a source of hypocrisy for me, Chelsea Manning will be my turning point on that issue. I have wanted to be a journalist and/or media writer, but after years of conglomerate media ownership/takeovers I feared there was no more journalism. Chelsea Manning restored my faith in both the existence and power of the fifth estate. I believed that Barack Obama was an advocate for changing government and voted for him with a sense of pride, feeling I was making a difference. Chelsea Manning’s prosecution as a spy under the Espionage Act showed me Obama is nothing more than the same prototypical politician in a different wrapper, with better public speaking skills.

I planned on referring to her as Bradley during this blog and most future blogs. While doing my research and brushing up on some facts, I found it impossible to do that. Chelsea’s attorney, reading her statement after the verdict was handed down, had me feeling bad for even considering such an action. Even typing Bradley Manning into search engines had me wincing, with the knowledge I had made a mistake. Chelsea has earned the right to be called whatever she wants. She has endured hell on Earth via years of solitary confinement in a military prison, all before receiving a 35 year sentence. All in the name of government transparency.

Chelsea Manning made me want to write again. I had only been writing for academic purposes. It was symbolic of how I lived me life for so long. Using negative assumptions dictate my reality. Living my life through a series of  mental movies with stressful situations and outcomes scare me from taking action in the direction of my dreams. I would be creatively inspired by movies, music, television, paintings, and drawings but the good vibes would fade almost instantly. I felt like I needed to be inspired, that the inspiration needed to last. A self fulfilling writer’s block played out amongst many other issues. I was living my life as a weak coward. Chelsea Manning helped me find my bravery, helped me find consistent desire to write.

Chelsea taught me that we can’t afford to be afraid to move in the direction of what we believe in and what we feel is right. Just because we don’t act, doesn’t mean the World stops spinning, doesn’t mean that others aren’t taking action in place of us. She is a living, modern day example of many things that I have read about in books that are half a century old at least.  She helped dissolve my fear of being lost in the shuffle. She helped me feel enthusiastic about putting my talents and abilities into practice, rather than leaving them in thought and regret. Chelsea Manning made me want to write again, Edward Snowden made me feel like I needed to be writing again


Anarchy JC #2: Inspiration via Devastation

Posted: October 3, 2013 in Anarchy Journal Constitutional
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Part One: My Life
by  @anarchyroll

I used to write poetry, a lot of poetry. That was my entre into blogging in the first place back in the MySpace days when I started posting what I would write on cocktail napkins, scrap paper, copy paper, waste paper, and in notebooks. I had been writing poetry for years, over a decade in fact. People told me it was good, but I often wonder if they meant it or if they were just worried that if they gave me their honest opinion I would slit my wrist. For a number of years they would have been right in that assumption, and no I did not listen to scene music.

I was creatively inspired by negativity, and because I was a depressed anti social at the time, I wrote a lot. I could find the darkness in anything, like any immature negative asshole can. I did a lot of writing, it made me not happy, but feel less shitty to turn the negative feelings I was constantly feeling into something constructive and productive. Back then, that was the only constructive thing I did other than work a day job. Much of what wasn’t burned the day I graduated high school can still be found at darkdawndiaries.com.

When the creative writing well ran dry for the first time since before puberty, I freaked out. Silently, likely creating tumors made of suppressed negative emotions. Even worse, I tried being creative so counterproductive I’m amazed I didn’t create the world’s highest rated sitcom. My 26th birthday brought a literal explosion of creativity, many of those are posted on the above listed website. I started a couple of short stories that day that I was never able to finish because trying to create fiction seemed like trying to speak Mandarin, in search of a metaphoric or literal Rosetta Stone.

During this time I was going to school, pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Media Communications, walking the path of Chris Farley’s character in Tommy Boy. So although I had writer’s block creatively, I was still writing for academic purposes on a weekly basis for a majority of the year. Not only was I writing but I was also receiving training in writing for news, writing for media, audio broadcasting, video production, public speaking, script writing, communication theories/styles, the history of theater, radio, film, and television. I was maturing as a person and as a writer, whether I knew it or not, whether I wanted to or not. This saved me.

I was constantly thinking about writing but not doing it because of my self fulfilling prophecy of writer’s block even though I was routinely getting high marks on lengthy, research based term papers. I saw friends and classmates actually taking action towards their career aspirations and media and achieving them. Me? I just kept riding my hamster wheel of reoccurring personal issues. My journey towards handling and solving those issues through consuming knowledge and applying lessons is being documented in my Stimulus Space Response articles.

What got my actually writing again? I reached a tipping point in many areas of my life. After my grandmother died and my job of eight years went bankrupt I dipped back into full fledged depression. Didn’t leave my bedroom for days (except food & bathroom), didn’t leave my house for weeks. I dropped out of school, stopped exercising, stopped even thinking about writing, stopped anything productive. I was lost in the woods at night, if my life was a building, it was a pile of smoldering rubble destroyed from a fire within. With much help from family and friends I went back to school, started listening to nonfiction audio books routinely, lost forty pounds, got my BA, moved into a house with a friend, started journaling, started reading amateur blogs, started talking with people in the media industry, and started posting blogs.

Why do I write and why did I start in the first place? I love writing, I really do. I’m no longer going to question if I’m also actually good at it or the people who tell me that I’m good at it. I’m going to believe in myself, my ability, my talent, and take action from there. If I am not inspired to write poetry or short stories like I once was, then it’s a good thing I have a formal education and degree of higher education in media writing. So I am going to write about the news stories that I am passionate about while trying to break new stories that are within my circle of influence to do original reporting on. I must write to stay sharp, to improve, and to build a portfolio of material.

What makes me want to keep writing, professionally, with a multi tiered content presentation style in the spirit of VICE and UPROXX? Three things; Syria, Bradley Manning, and Edward Snowden. More on those next time


Inspiration via Devastation: Part 2: Syria

Posted: October 3, 2013 in Anarchy Journal Constitutional
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by @anarchyroll

I first started paying attention to the civil war in Syria when the body count was 3,000. Back then it wasn’t yet a civil war, there was no Free Syrian Army to begin with, so it hadn’t yet splintered off into seven separate factions. I had heard that essentially the Syrian people were trying to do what the people of Egypt did during the Arab Spring of 2011. The difference in this case was, the president of Syria, Bashar al-Assad ordered his military to open fire and execute all of the protesting civilians. I noticed each day the body count went up by the hundreds, not by the dozens. I noticed when the body count exceeded that of 9/11/01.

I never stopped paying attention to Syria, anyone who frequents my Twitter account would certainly agree with me. The sheer numbers of dead, wounded, and refugees has never ceased to boggle my mind. What happened in Libya and Egypt definitely led to me focusing even more on Syria. I think, without judgment, those two had the opposite effect on most people. I understand completely the fatigue of the American public after over a full decade of seeing wars in the Middle East. Afghanistan and Iraq, each day a new bombing, another dozen or more dead, more money spent (or missing) abroad, more fear mongering at home. I empathize rather than demonize the public who just seem to not care about Syria, after all there is no oil there.

The American public’s desire to not care about Syria was only aided by the fact that the main stream media didn’t focus on the country’s civil war, despite the staggering body count, until after the sarin gas attack last month. If you get your news from the internet, then you can’t not know about Syria for at least a full year. Even the websites of NBC, CBS, FOX News, and CNN have had regular stories about the conflict, the television stations they are subsidiaries of however, did not. If you get your news from newspapers or magazines, you’ve known about Syria since maybe the beginning of this year. TIME magazine, the New York Times, and Chicago Tribune have all had front page stories on Syria that I have seen with my own eyes.

Now, in September of 2013 only the young and the ignorant don’t know about the situation in Syria. It is the lead story online, in print, and on television. Local news, national news, cable news are all leading with Syria. I am happy that the light is finally getting shined on this very bleak and black news story. The death and destruction match any conflict in recent memory. Syria’s civil war is not an indie band that  just got signed to a major label, I’m not proud that I was calling for US intervention before it was cool. But I am a supporter of US intervention.

I was not a supporter of Operation Desert Storm or it’s much less successful sequel. I was a supporter of  intervention in Kosovo. I was not a supporter of invading Afghanistan after 9/11 since it was not a country that attacked the United States. I was a supporter of the small scale, special operation, tactical assassination of Osama bin Laden which I believe should be the blueprint for all of the military presence of the United States in the Middle East for the last decade should have been. I was not a supporter of our involvement in Libya. I am a supporter of the intervention in Syria.

I wish I had a year and a half backlog of blogs and articles to show the consistency of my stance on this issue, but I don’t. I wish all of my writings on the topic would give me some credibility with anyone who reads this article, but I don’t. I haven’t been writing for anything other than academic purposes for the last two years. Syria is a major factor in changing that. I thought the United States military should have intervened over a year ago. We have after all, along with the United Nations, been arming the rebels. That is going half pregnant, either we support the rebels or we don’t. Since Obama has proven to be just as much a supporter of the Military Industrial Complex as his predecessors, then let’s put that machine to use when literally hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians are being slaughtered.

I long for the day we as a country are officially isolationist, with an eye on the military operations of other countries akin to what is happening in outer space. The money we need to pump into our schools, bridges, roads, and social safety net programs is being spent on a rubber stamped military industrial complex budget every year. I will be the first to say spend that money at home and not abroad. I’d love to have an embassy in every country and not a military base. Until that day comes, and by day I mean peaceful upheaval of basically everyone in power in national office, America is the World Police. If we are going to play World Police so we can control the price of oil, then we can play world police for thousands of innocent civilians being slaughtered every day.

What should be and what is, believe it or not aren’t always the same thing. I think it is the right thing to do to get the chemical weapons from being used against civilians, and we should do something to help all of the refugees. I’ll have much more to write on Syria, so I won’t write a novel’s worth of material in this one post. I am happy to be in a position where I both want to and can go on writing for a long period of time. It was a long trip to get to this point. I needed to reignite the fire within me that had dimmed to a searing hot coal. I needed flames, the situations involving Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden applied the gasoline after Syria stoked the ambers


Stimulus Space Response: The Beginning

Posted: October 1, 2013 in Stimulus Space Response
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by @anarchyroll

Two years and two hundred books. Well technically four years and technically between one hundred and fifty books and one hundred and eighty books. Oh, and they’ve all been audio books with one exception. But that one I later listened to the audio book version as well. My journey into the philosophical/spiritual/self help/self actualization realm of study started with a public breakdown on an elevated train in September of 2009. I like a good portion of the adult male population in America was scared of rejection. On this night however, I went all out, trying to meet and talk to any and every woman I saw whom I was attracted to. My level of self pride was at an all time high by fighting through my fear and taking action. The only thing that was bigger than my feeling of pride, was the number of times I was rejected that night.

It was a living nightmare for me that night. It only could have been worse if we were in quiet environments and more people heard the rejection, after rejection, after rejection, after rejection
..after rejection. I literally felt my will break, I felt something inside my head snap.  I remember the look on my face wide eyes, open mouth, I looked horrified, because I was. I don’t remember when exactly I started crying, whether it was on the train, during the walk back to my friend’s apartment, or in the apartment but I know I started crying. I started crying hard. I remember apologizing to my friends. I remember walking very fast if not running back to my car which was parked a couple of blocks away since we were in Chicago. I was wearing a white striped dress shirt with khaki colored baggy cargo pants, but all I could see was red, and all I felt was blackness.

My self esteem, confidence, and image had been very low for a very long time going into that night. My emotionally stability was suspect at best. My maturity and ability to respond to adversity/failure were both very much undeveloped. That night’s events was the wrecking ball being brought into the building already abandoned after a fire.  Painful to experience but necessary for something better to be built upon it. I remember getting close to my car and hearing my name in the distance. It got louder and louder until I realized whose voice it was, that of one of my friends who I was with. He calmed me down and gave me a pep talk. I remember telling him that I felt like I was destined to be alone. He told me he could help.

I vaguely remember him telling me about some books and audio recordings that helped him with the same situation I was dealing with. A few days later he dropped a usb drive off at my work with a bunch of e books, audio books, and audio recordings of live seminars. He told me before the first thing I needed to read or listen to was The Game by Neil Strauss. I was completely blown away by what I read. That book genuinely changed my life by instigating multiple paradigm shifts of how I viewed myself, how I viewed other people, and how I viewed the world at large. The changes were not fast, at the time I was a slow learner and an even slower reader. That book on social dynamics and pick up artistry is what started me on the path to not just listening to audio books on a daily basis, but much more importantly it showed me that I could enjoy the process of learning.

The Game led me to audio books, recordings, and videos on the subject of social dynamics. Those lead me to look into Eckhart Tolle and after that the flood gates were never getting closed. My thirst for knowledge reached unquenchable levels as did my fines for returning books late to my local library. My mind was getting melted and blown on a weekly basis. Terms like principles, paradigms, choice, integrity, courage, character, right action, silence, energy, universe, dynamic, actualization, present, awareness, soul, ego were either introduced or redefined to me in ways I had no perception of. My life was forever changed for the better. I would become proficient in the fields of philosophy, spirituality, personal development, and self actualization and it all started with a public breakdown, a friend reaching out to help, and a book about how to meet women.

Potato Shooter #2: Carpenter Needs More Tools

Posted: October 1, 2013 in Anarchy Journal Constitutional
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by @anarchyroll
September 4, 2013

 

What mixed martial arts fan doesn’t like Clay Guida? How can you not root for someone like that? He is far and away the most unique mixed martial artist of the last half decade. His look, his entrances, his fighting style, his lifestyle away from the cage. He doesn’t talk shit, he only fights top tier competition, he is humble, and gracious to all of his fans all of the time. Clay Guida’s nickname is “The Carpenter” and he goes to work with a hard hat and lunch pail each time he sets foot inside the UFC Octagon.  Unfortunately for him and his fans, the Carpenter has become a screwdriver in a power drill era.

 

Guida’s greatest strengths; stamina, wrestling, unique fighting stance have evolved into his liabilities. Guida has gone from the precipice of a title shot in two divisions, to the veteran gate keeper. A slot any and every independent mixed martial artist would kill for, but a spot on the UFC’s roster Guida is too young and too talented to be typecast into in 2013. However, Guida like many fighters of the generation before him has done it to himself by refusing to evolve. Moving to New Mexico to train with Greg Jackson isn’t a cure all. Dropping a weight class to have a size advantage isn’t the missing piece. Guida has consciously or unconsciously resisted evolving into a more well rounded fighter.

 

At UFC 165 this past Saturday, Guida was stopped for the first time in his career by Chad Mendes. The fight was never in question. The Carpenter has only two tools in his belt, wrestling and boxing, Mendes is better than Guida at both. Guida’s split decision win in his featherweight debut against Hatsu Hioki was the definition of uninspiring. That fight was proceeded with back to back losses to Gray Maynard and Benson Henderson that convinced Guida to drop down to featherweight. But it wasn’t Guida’s size that lost those two fights. After all, he looked like a giant when he ground and pounded his way to a unanimous decision victory over Anthony Pettis in Showtime’s UFC debut in June 2011. It is Guida’s lack of technique that has caused his career to stagnate.

 

Being a boxer/wrestler is no longer good enough for any mixed martial artist to succeed at the highest level of competition, which is the UFC. If you want to be a champion in the UFC, this side of the year 2009 you need to be proficient in three disciplines and have a size advantage at minimum. Guida’s move to featherweight was a step in the right direction. Training with Greg Jackson and his murderer’s row of fighters at that camp in New Mexico is another great step. But if Guida is going to keep fighting the same exact style as before training at Jackson’s MMA, then all he’s doing is burning money and wasting time. If like me, you watched Guida’s last two fights, you know that he hasn’t changed his style at all.

 

The infinite gas tank, the never ending head bobbing, constant movement side to side, inside to outside which make him fun to watch, has made him easy to game plan. His opponents now know that if you can stuff his takedowns and keep out of his hand swinging range, that Guida is nothing more than entertaining to watch. Guida is a great wrestler, but it’s 2013 not 2003 and the sprawl is not a new craze just making the rounds at elite camps anymore. Takedowns need to be set up with striking now, it’s only optional if you have one punch knockout power, and Guida hasn’t had a KO or TKO since 2008. Guida can be classified as a submission artist when he gets his opponents on that mat, but he has proven himself unable to consistently get people off their feet for the last two years.

 

I live a half hour from Clay Guida’s hometown, I’m a big fan of his. It breaks my heart to see him repeating the mistakes of the great boxer/wrestlers who became irrelevant by refusing to evolve before him. Tito Ortiz, Rampage Jackson, Randy Couture, Chuck Liddell, Chael Sonnen, Matt Hughes, Tyson Griffin, Rich Franklin, and Gray Maynard all refused to change with the times despite achieving great success. Each one of those men can say that father time eventually caught up to them, that they were champions, and/or fought in big money fights. But each man listed before retiring was made to be merely an attraction fighter, in no way a legit title contender, because they had been exposed as being a two tool fighter, in a three tool or more era and refused to evolve (learn a new discipline). I don’t want to see Clay Guida’s name on that list, Clay Guida can still be a legit title contender.

 

Clay Guida can still be a UFC champion! But he has to evolve, he has to learn a new discipline. Muay Thai or kickboxing would be my recommendation because the threat of kicks from a distance and knees in the clinch would open up his opponents to takedowns. Once Guida gets them down, he knows everything one needs to know. But he can’t get them down consistently anymore. He needs help, he needs to learn, he needs to evolve. His trainer is Greg Jackson, so he’s not just in good hands, but the best hands. Guida is surrounded with some of the best strikers in all of mma. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink. Clay Guida must choose to learn from the failures of those who came before him, as well as the rest of the fighters in his camp and add another dimension to his game. If not, well then he can be a fan favorite, two division gate keeper who regularly appears on FOX and pay per views for the UFC. Still not bad work for a kid from Round Lake, Illinois.

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