TheVenomPit

A lot has happened in my life since the last I was on here.  I used to find this website convenient for finding, meeting, and helping other people facing dark days as well as spouting off philosophy and other nonsense.  Now I feel the need to post again in a way more akin to journaling or a diary.  Differences between this and actual journaling being that I’m an excellent typist and, more importantly, there’s an off-chance someone can hear me and my thoughts.

An off-chance given the content and my lack of networking, but a chance.  Given the lack of real-world alternatives this seems to make sense for me.  Albeit, in a sad way if I ruminate on the subject too much.

Where I am at now, after years of not really being on here, I’m in a relationship.  Someone 10 years my senior (9 for a couple months in between our birthdays).  She has two children, one having moved out and never really gotten to know me and seemingly not wanting anything to do with her mom.  The other 8 and struggling behaviorally and socially in school.  The father not in the picture, thankfully honestly.  I am not entirely sure I could handle a relationship with these dynamics plus that.  

I am also still in Graduate school.  I find myself struggling heavily lately.  I am used to different forms of struggle and personal evolution.  Overcoming such difficulties has been a point of pride for me, even.  This feels wholly different.  I feel choked, suffocating.

I have busted my ass to come back from suicidality, so many personal problems and so much personal growth, bad performance in grade school, a complete lack of social or romantic life, a complicated and mostly absent family life, working full time school and college.  All to become a stable, highly productive employer that seems to make every employer proud and a top-of-his-class college student in undergraduate.  Not in high-paying positions or notable schools, but still real accomplishments and proof of concept.  

My college pursuits always required Graduate school.  My undergrad degree might as well be toilet paper.  I am at the most prestigious company I have worked at yet, being paid as much as I have been yet (which still isn’t a lot really), and I have sustained a work injury that has left me looking like I’ll never fully recover.

I am struggling to maintain myself or to find a new self.  One that can balance all these different roles, responsibilities, challenges.  I never expected to be dealing with a lasting physical injury, to be a father (let alone to a child not my own), to even be in a lasting relationship.  Never really imagined Graduate school when I started undergrad either, more a realization that continued education would be necessary halfway through my Bachelors.  

I feel like I am always pulled in so many different directions that I cannot possibly ever feel recovered.  In my best of weeks I am spending an inordinate amount of time to assist my fiancee while she recovers from migraine issues, giving attention to our daughter, handling our two dogs, juggling any school work or errands I have.  All while the weekdays are entirely devoted to getting our daughter to school and taking care of our dogs, book-ended by a broken polyphasic sleep schedule by necessity, and being tired and worn out from a physical job with much responsibility.

On the worst of weeks it’s the same, except I have a massive project to work on for school or I am bed-ridden most of the weekend due to my injury acting up.  

Not that my take necessarily matters here because, let’s be honest, most people have their mind made up one way or another and talking reason to impassioned people can be akin to screaming into the void.  I like to think that, for what I lack in knowledge or experience, I make up for in critical thinking skills far exceeding the average and earnestly seeking to pay deference to both sides of a topic.

The truth often lies in the middle with most subjects in life and that is a difficult thing to say as pertaining to this subject because this subject involves matters of justice and racial disparity.  Just because the whole truth lies in the middle does not mean smaller or partial truths do not lie in the extremes.  To keep my thoughts cogent and easier to digest, I suppose a numbered list is easier:

1)  Policing, as we know it, does need a reform.  Like a lot of things in life, there is not much in the way of qualifications necessary to become one.  Police too often do interact with each other and hold each other accountable like a fraternal order rather than public servants.  Which also results in them escaping accountability too often.  Policing also needs a bigger emphasis on communication and speaking to people with understanding to their emotional states.  Police need to realize how stressful it can be to be facing law troubles and that individuals are often not educated on policing processes (such as detainment versus arrest).

2) Defunding the police will simply make matters worse, if anything more funding might be necessary.  It’s rather simple here honestly.  If the argument is to defund police then you ultimately arrive at two questions.  What is the alternative to policing and how are we to get better qualified officers with less funding?  You cannot.  Martial arts techniques, counseling or deescalation techniques, higher barrier to entry to becoming a police officer, etc. all demand funds just like any other organization or business.  There is also no alternative to the police, we need police.

3) People jump to racism as a cause of police incidents, there are other racial factors that do not pertain to modern day racism.  For instance, I’ve seen people make the argument that blacks get pulled over X percent more than whites.  I get people aren’t typically trained in research, but correlation does not mean causation.  One thing people never talk about, for whatever reason, is generational poverty and it’s effect on modern society and racial disparities.  MLK, Rosa Parks, and Malcolm X were all less than a century ago.  Other genders and races outside of white males have not had equal rights or opportunity for progress for more than a few generations.  There’s a direct relation to parental socioeconomic status and the opportunities for their offspring.  So, would a plausible reason for black crime statistics involve the much higher percentage of black poverty compared to white poverty?  Poverty has a direct relation to crime.  That’s just one alternative to racism.

4) People are too ignorant of police procedures and tactics.  I’ve had to do professional restraints, people who have not had to overestimate how easy it is to restrain anyone resisting.  A lot of people critical of police, for example, do not know what the use of force continuum is, think tasers are much more highly effective than they are, can think shots to appendages are always non lethal and effective, etc.  People should not speak about subjects they are ignorant of and, with BLM and other movements, we too often have that.  Donut Operator is a great YouTuber who might be a little biased in favor of policing, but offers amazing perspective and largely unbiased reactions to police incidents that can educate laymen.

5) There is Black Lives Matter the organization and Black Lives Matter the movement.  I believe in the latter and not the former, personally.  People tend to ruin things.  Where there are people there are agendas and where there is organizations there is people benefitting and a need for funding as well.  Black Live Matter, the movement, is hugely important and necessary for raising societal awareness and combating racism (in any form).  BLM the organization has it’s own agendas and biases, including people that align with them or speak for them that I do not agree with.  Which is why I feel like any discussion about BLM should be prefaced with which we are talking about, the organization or movement.  Most of the time these discussions are not prefaced with such context.

6) Police incidents are often overblown due to modern media and basic psychology.  Modern media, especially TV networks, do what draws in ratings.  They do not care about the movement or racism, they care about the insane amount of views and clicks the topic draws.  Any time there is a police incident involving a black person the title of the headline will involve the skin color of the person and the result of the incident.  Oftentimes, incidents not involving black victims or suspects are either not covered at all or have the skin color not be the star of the headline.  The viral nature of today’s society simply amplifies all this.  People can frame anything any way they want and anybody looking for clicks knows how to sensationalize.  

When I first heard of The Block Island Sound coming to Netflix a few weeks back, the combination of the teaser and description captured my interest.  The combination promised a low budget, creature feature mystery.  Which, the film is for the most part.  

When well done, creature feature mysteries can be extremely engaging.  More-so than most movies I would say.  Sympathetic, relatable characters being terrorized by an unknown force or monstrosity.  The possibilities become endless and exciting, including whether or not the force or creature in question will be revealed by the end (and how much will be).  The Ritual is an example of a quality Netflix film that keeps the reveal hidden till the conclusion.  Season one of The Terror is an example of a show that drip feeds you information as the season progresses and focuses on the multiple struggles and horrors the characters face.  The Blair Witch, despite how the film may have aged, is a film that knows how to not reveal the creature yet keep this lack of a reveal satisfying.

Point being here that a creature feature mystery style movie or show requires an exacting and delicate balance to work well, including some critical decisions about what to reveal and when.  The Block Island Sound does everything right in terms of mystery and engagement, except the payoff is absent altogether and the mythos becomes cluttered and unclear by the end. 

The film is well-acted, keeps you guessing, keeps you engaged, and keeps you wondering.  By film’s end though, there’s indications the creature is an alien despite earlier indications that the creature is a mysterious sea creature.  This ambivalence in direction is not well-crafted as such a mystery can sometimes be.  Rather than a carefully crafted plot that leaves you unsure of what to think you are given vague, yet clearly contradicting information to go by.  You never see the creature and no character ever does enough detective work or divulges enough backstory to be an expert or know more than what the rest of the movie shows us.  By the conclusion of the film you are confused as to whether or not this is supposed to be a sea-dwelling one-of-a-kind creature, an alien conducting human studies, or some mix of both you are forced to invent your own backstory for.  As if this vagueness is not enough to leave a dissatisfying after-taste, the film concludes by showing a main character is still alive despite leading us to believe, based on everything in the movie prior, she should not be.  

Ultimately, this was a film that did everything right up until the time came to deliver.  Like a potential lover that did all the right things that could not seal the deal at the end of the night.  The conclusion is one of a movie that does not have the courage to either present a big reveal or present a sad ending.  In the face of this, the only enticement that remains for the remainder of the movie is the successful presentation of psychological suspense amidst mystery.

Thoughts linger and build,

A pile of refuse leaving a foul stench,

Causing mind to shudder and toil,

Imparting a sense of ripened rot,

And questions of unwanted beckon.

Wanting earnestly to depart,

To escape the toxicity,

For any respite is a tonic to the anxiety.

Blades become aids,

Seclusion becomes solution,

And anywhere is not here.

As the darkness pervades,

Removing vision and warmth,

Remain sane and strong,

As one day seasons change,

There’s a lot of things grating in life.  People’s pseudo-nationalistic bullshit about being proud to be American is near the top for me.

This is a country that will gladly fund the sports arenas for billionaire owners yet becomes offended by the idea of universal healthcare.  That voted in a businessman millionaire who avoids taxes to be their leader yet can’t figure out how to put up a decent female candidate (or decent, period).  That can’t grasp the difference between communism and socialism.  That is happy to put religion and Christian/Catholic values into politics and struggles with allowing freedom of choice over your own body. 

I’m not proud of my country and increasingly less so.  A country is nothing more than a faction of formalized society.  It’s a fabricated thing, invented by people.  Societies are built on and thrive upon people’s contributions, it’s the role of society to contribute to it’s people. I contribute to my society, I think society is failing to fully reciprocate.

Just saw Midsommer.  I went in unsure what to expect, having hated The Witch and found much joy in having watched Hereditary.  Additionally, the reviews are never helpful in this regard either considering the audience scores for Ari Aster movies are always bad and the critic scores are always great.  For that reason, I really feel the need to expound both my review of Midsommer and feelings on Ari Aster horror movies.

Don’t see Midsommer if you disliked The Witch.  You will hate Midsommer as much, if not more.  If you liked Hereditary then you may or may not like Midsommer, it depends on what you enjoyed about Hereditary honestly because Hereditary was a much more well-balanced movie while still having the directorial feel of both The Witch and Midsommer.

Midsommer possesses intensely poor pacing.  It is two and a half hours long and I would say that there’s maybe twenty to thirty minutes of actual horror and anything resembling entertainment.  The remaining two plus hours are purely base narrative and Ari Aster’s slow-burn and artistic style he’s become associated with.  That’s unacceptable, a slow-burn movie that is more drama than anything else should not come close to two hours, let alone two and a half.

Therein lies the second problem I have with Midsommer, which is also the chief problem I had with The Witch.  These movies are advertised as horror movies and classified as horror movies, but they are not.  They’re drama pieces with horror elements, mostly horror aesthetics.  They are so overwrought with basic story-lines that go nowhere interesting in the end and self-indulgent writing and direction.  Which is why Hereditary was legitimately good, it offered a balance not present in these other two movies with legitimately unsettling and scary, shocking scenes of horror throughout the movie.  It was entertaining as well as skillfully crafted and offering the thematic emphasis some may consider pretentious that dominates The Witch and Midsommer.

People who praise Ari Aster like he’s a horror or film legend or unparalleled artist like to pretend as if making a thematic movie with symbolism elevates the movie and makes it original and that the people who dislike it are simply the average dumb movie casual.  While I see movies as entertainment, I appreciate thoughtful movies just as much as action-packed blockbusters.  Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Good Will Hunting are two of my favorite movies ever.  These Ari Aster “horror” movies are not those though.  Good Will Hunting and Eternal Sunshine offer intriguing, well-written stories about people we can sympathize and engage with along with a basis for intellectual debate.  Likewise, Pan’s Labyrinth or even Hereditary offer amazing and shocking scenes, not just moments, of top tier horror throughout their run-times that are creative.

The Witch and Midsommer do not offer interesting characters, a worthwhile plot, or enough horror to stand out or even justify themselves as horror films.  I feel like the people who claim these movies to be horror masterpieces because they offer deeply unsettling imagery are clueless because it is not hard to find actual deeply unsettling horror if you’re an avid horror fan.  In a world of movies like The Thing, Martyrs, A Serbian Film, and Inside there’s really not much you can put out there that hasn’t been seen before in terms of being disturbing or unsettling.

Yet I’m still doing all this shit on my own, have to get a masters at least to get a decent career or even do what I want to do, and had my one attempt at claiming a new life in Florida completely subterfuge by my best friend/only friend of almost a decade, my uncle, and my landlord. To the point where I had to move back to jersey within seven months and start over from zero yet again. I was going to school to become a BCABA too before I had to move back. I had to surrender my two cats to a kill shelter and I’ll be amazed if they aren’t euthanized by now knowing the massive cat overpopulation. I’m 27 years old but I’m so tall and worked so fucking hard that the only time I don’t have knee pain is when I’m drunk off my rocker. That’s how hard I’ve worked. Except I can never afford to see a doctor about it because I’m always trying to get ahead.

I might be drunk but fuck me if it’s not the truth, but I deserve a fucking break. Like, a really fucking big one. Morally, on principle, on merit however you look at it I’m about several years overdue for at least a small one. I mean, fuck, even before my mental struggles and changing into a completely different person I scored 90th percentile on an SAT section and above average cumulatively.