All Encompassing Madness

"How does that make you feel?"

Well, how the fuck is it supposed to make me feel, doc.  I come to you for answers, not to question my motives.  Psychologists are such bullshit.  Give me the hard sciences, not someone to talk to me until I feel like crying enough to flood the Earth in some biblical, forty-days and forty-nights nonsensical way.

Fuck you, doc.  The shit happened and now it doesn't matter how I feel about it.  It doesn't fucking matter how I feel about it because I have to wake up tomorrow morning and go into work like every other damn day of my life.  I have to put food on the table at the end of the day.  I have to pay the light bill.  I have to do the same shit as everyone else.  How do I feel?  I feel like I need a mother fucking break from life.

"Norm, are you going to answer?"

"I'm figuring it out."

You condescending piece of shit.  You sit there in that chair and you ask me these simplistic answers, attempting to get me to dig deep for some answers through equally simplistic responses.  I know what you're doing, but again, it doesn't matter.

I  had damned dreams.  I had goals for my fucking life before shit hit the fan.  I wanted to make something out of my life and now I just wake up and feel like grabbing the fucking bottle.  

"It is odd, Dr. Shrellin.  I just don't know how life got to this point."

"Norm, I've told you before.  Just call me Alice.  I'm your friend, but let's talk about what choices you made to get here."

You're not a fucking friend.  A friend is someone you meet at a bar, someone you have common interests in, Alice.  I have been forced to come see you as my therapist.  Someone who I pretend isn't just as fucked up as I am.  But I know, Alice.  I know you hit that bottle like there's no tomorrow once you're done with your work day.  You've probably got escorts on speed dial, or hiding some inner lesbian cuckhold fantasy.  You probably have to smoke a thousand dollars worth of weed a week just so you don't get so pissed off you slam someone's head against a wall.

How I got here, though?  How I got here was fucking simple - I made choices.  I made the choice to drop what I wanted out of life because I played the safe bets and found excitement in the wrong places.  Well, all bets fail sooner or later.  That's how I got here.  Living with the failure of those bets, how the fuck do I deal with that, Alice?

"I'm not sure, doctor.  I mean, I kind of just floated along the river of life and now I'm waking up to where I've floated to."

Where I've floated to?  What the fuck am I even saying now?  I sound like some children's after school special.  What I've done is taken unfulfilling jobs because it is a paycheck, dated shitbags because they offered excitement in my life, and been completely unable to find a balance between those things and my goals.  That's what the fuck I've done, Alice.  And now I'm stuck being hyper-aware of my situation in life.

"So what do you plan on doing now?"

So yeah, after my wife left me for the younger, more exciting artist, that mother fucker, I went off on my boss.  Sure, maybe I even threw the phone book at the wall, conveniently placed behind his head.  Yeah, I probably caused a scene when I got up out of my chair and yelled the word fuck at the top of my lungs, which led me to the office and phone book in the first place.  Can you blame me?  I mean, really?

"I don't know, doctor."

"Well, how does all this make you feel, Norm?"

Again with this fucking question, Alice?  Can't you reword it with your fancy ass degree?  Can't you make it seem more interesting?  Can't you do something other than just fucking ask a question?

"Mad.  I feel mad."

-Dustin S. Stover

If you find my writing interesting and desire more of it then please support me by purchasing my collection of short stories on Kindle or Nook.

Surviving the Storm

One would imagine that after months, years, or even decades that we'd have gotten used to this. The bullets screaming far beyond our post and into the never ending abyss beyond us. I suppose that to an extent we have done just that.

Families no longer duck for cover. Families no longer cower in fear of when they will lose their mother or brother. Instead, they simply go about their business as usual, and yet, the bullets still whizz past into the abyss.

In a society that picks around the bloodied apples to find an untainted one, a society that admires when a building only has one hundred bullet holes in the outer walls, a society that finds it more abnormal to hear that you've went a week without losing someone you know then it would be little more than obvious to state that hardships are simply a way of life.

And yet here I am, again, carrying away another dead body from outside my front door. Carrying it around to the back, where places have been strategically designed to extract the lifeless corpses by specially appointed military personnel. You know the ones – the ones freshly recruited and sent into the city, having never seen the atrocities that have become such normal life.

I can remember a time before, though. A time in which the city hadn't been ravaged by greed, by the strongest enforcing their survival on those of us who would rather think about a way to make tomorrow a better place. Speaking such things out loud, today, would lead to a public hanging.

Still, I enjoy talking to the freshies. I enjoy hearing about their tales of life beyond the death. And this is why I carry the dead now, at dusk, with the little remaining sunlight bursting through the remnants of buildings and illuminating the dulled browns of the sand and the buildings that look as though they are apart of the ground.

“Good evening,” a freshy says with nothing but trembling nervousness in his voice.

“Another one to add to the pile here,” I push the wheelbarrow with a full grown woman, beyond skinny and frail from the lack of motivation to make it outside for food.

Of course, the government does everything it can to ship as much food to us as possible. It is there for the taking, but in order to obtain it one must dodge the metallic shards flying through the air so fast they cannot be seen. Some try it, usually the young and fast teenagers. Sometimes the elderly who have lived beyond their years and have decided their sacrifice would be worth it if only to save their children.

“So... Where... where did you get this un?” A strange accent, one I had never heard before.

“Out front of my shop. They post up down the road and wait for people to try to get into my shop for food and shoot them dead as they are walking in. I took the door off to let them get in faster, but then they stopped coming in all together – said it didn't make them feel safe to have it open like that – so I put it back up for them.”

“Strange...”

“Where you from, kid?”

“What is left of the USA.” The USA, much like here, was torn apart when both sides of the political spectrum let things get so bad they declared war on one another. Eventually there wasn't much left other than burnt down cities with two capitals on each side of the country. They simply declared it a draw, threw down their guns, and resorted to cyber warfare to sway support. They are still equal, but most of their citizens don't even have a computer any longer so it ultimately ends up being the rich arguing back and forth while every one else signs up for wars they don't understand. Just to keep food on their plate.

“Is it rough over there, too?”

“I thought it was. Until... well... I got here...”

“Yeah, things here are pretty bad. Get up closer to this wall. You're out there making yourself the perfect target.”

“Thanks....” His tone still shaky, like a glass of water in the middle of an earthquake.

“You get used to it. Say, you and your compadres want something to drink? Eat, perhaps? When was the last time you had a decent meal?” I was unlocking the back door and opening it up, holding it open so as to entice them on in. “Don't worry, I've got a deal worked out with both sides. They let me by for the most part. Can't say the same about my customers, but you'll all be safe.”

“Fuck yeah!” Another freshy jumps out of the truck, a sharp, tall girl who looked to be all of 19 years old at most. “I ain't eaten nothing good in a week.”

I prepared the two of them their meals, even threw in a couple glasses of the best wine I could muster up – admittedly, it wasn't anything of quality, but no one ever complains about wine after they've endured a week or two here.

The meal with an equally unimpressive bowl of pasta with some very bland type of white sauce. I did manage to get a shipment of Parmesan Cheese in. It adds just enough taste for it to be considered the best bowl of pasta in the city. That's what the sign on the wall says, anyway - “BEST PASTA IN THE CITY!”

“This tastes like shit compared to back home.” The female freshy piped up after devouring half her plate of food.

“Well, you're not quite home now, are you?”

“No. That's not what I meant.” She interjected quickly. “I mean, I just miss home. Fuck, man. I'm sorry.”

“It tastes better than I thought it would...” the young freshy, still timid and fearful, said.

“Look. I don't get my choice of ingredients. I do the best with what I've got. Here.” I hand them each a plate of a jello-like dessert.

“No thanks!” they both said quickly.

The sound of their truck, still parked out back, fires to life and takes off with tires squealing.

“Hey!” the female freshy says while attempting to lift from her chair. “Is that... is... that... our... truck...?” Her body falls limp, first hitting the table and then plummeting to the ground.

The male freshy's face had already landed square on top of the table.

I picked up the phone and dialed a series of numbers until the ring started. “Hello. Got a couple more.” I hung up the phone.

-Dustin S. Stover

Emotional Choices

Let me start a discussion about the justice system.

I've known, and seen, for quite some time that the justice system favors people with money - especially if the one with money is white, but there are some severe flaws in the judicial system for a number of reasons.

The first reason I will touch on is the most obvious, yet perhaps the most overlooked problem.  Humans.  We rely on humans, who are presented with facts, to act according to what they discover from a court's proceedings to rule for or against someone.

This is simple.  Human emotions, however, are extremely far from simple.  They are easily played and preyed upon - hence how Donald J. Trump became president of the United States of America. (Get as pissed as you want by this comment, but if you weren't personally biased towards him/the Republican party then you'd be shitting all over yourself like a newborn baby trying to figure out how people could have elected him, just like the rest of the world is doing).

I will use an example - I was called in for a jury summons.  The case I was summoned for was a shooting.  A young black man was accused (don't ask for his name as I won't ever remember).  Another person who was summoned, just as I was, began talking to me on a break between the attorneys interrogating those of us who were summoned and the conversation went pretty much like this - the person discussing it will me proclaiming this young black man as being guilty, absolutely without a doubt, he was guilty.  This was perplexing to me especially because there was no evidence presented.  Just a name of the accused and the crime he was being accused of.  Just that simple.

Even more than that, however, was the overly cock-sure attitude this person had.  Not only was he guilty, but the person in the room sitting at one of the tables - mind you, this is where the attorneys and the accused were sitting - was the one who got shot!  Now me being me, and always more interested in discovering what makes a person think the way they do, I continued to listen to this theory of his.

And boy, it was a baseless theory.  His entire theory was based around the young black man being on the road it took place on, and why else would he be there?  And that poor guy in the wheelchair!

Turns out that the poor guy in the wheelchair was defending the young black man as his attorney.

I have no idea how that trial played out.  I wasn't selected to follow through with it all, but the process of selecting the jurors and the interactions I had with the people there was enough to give me great insight as to how they choose people - which ones will be sympathetic to the attorneys cause.

And it goes even further than this.  I couldn't even imagine to deduce the amount of juries who have been persuaded to place someone in prison for a crime they didn't commit just so the attorney prosecuting can line their pockets, but I have no doubt that if there were a way to truly deduce the amount that it would be staggering.

That is just how it goes with human beings.  It is all just a show.  If you learn how to tap into another person's emotions you can convince them of anything - every war has been backed by emotions just the same as every homeless shelter has been built by them.  Every religion thrives because of emotions just as every decision we make is based on them.

Think about what you're going to eat for dinner tonight or tomorrow.  You run through a list of things to eat and you find yourself saying how you don't feel like making that or that food sounds good.  The very basis of what you eat is how you feel about the food - whether it is the process of making it discouraging you or the restaurant you choose being a favorite spot.

Even the political arguments we get into - if we truly looked at statistics then Democrats and Republicans would die off in favor of no parties at all, just people who truly wanted to make the country we live in better.  Instead we have Republicans relying on religion to gain support and Democrats relying on fear of the future.  Emotions and the emotions attached to what the party is saying.

Perhaps the only way to overcome the emotions when sentencing someone to 30 years in prison is to start by acknowledging how our personal biases affect us in every choice we make every day of our lives.

-Dustin S. Stover

Iron and Ink

Isolated iron is always cold.  Always.  Even on the hottest of summer days, heat radiating off the harsh metal, the sight of iron fills one's self with a cold darkness that captivates the imagination of some and fills another with desolate despair.

That was what filled his mind as he felt that painful heat through his work gloves, handling the huge iron beam thirty some odd stories above Earth's surface.

The pen always held such a warm and passionate feeling pinched between the fingers.  A universe of knowledge, passion, longing, lust, despair, and sadness she thought as she tried to push the keys on her laptop down in rhythmic fashion.

She couldn't find the words or passion or even a glimpse of that universe she longed for.

The philosopher in both of them begins to question why they are doing anything they do.  The reasonable voice knows they'll die if they don't - or at least be forced to find a new way to survive.

He takes the long drink of ice water, symbolic of the end of another torturous day of ten hours worth of heat - he had to sign on for that overtime pay.

The pay was great.  The pay is great.  The week is almost over and the pay is great - the chant repeated in his mind.

She held in her hand, between her fingertips, that old Montblanc pen she bought herself after her first big story broke.  She hadn't used it for years but believed it was the key to her next big ticket.  Of course, the doodles on her page didn't translate to her next big paycheck.

Before arriving home, he stops at a local liquor store to buy the beer that will get him drunk the fastest and for the least amount of money.  A necessity, he thinks, if he is to endure such coldness again tomorrow.

He rolls a joint before leaving the parking lot - this to prepare himself for all the commands of his wife once home.  He takes the first hit not long after he leaves the parking lot.  The first of many.

A page full of doodles lay upon the page as she brushes her teeth in an attempt to hide the smell of cigarettes.  Frantically, she sprays perfume and flushes the toilet to dispose of the butt.  A deep breathe fills the empty space and a tug to straighten her shirt sets her in motion to start dinner.

She peers down into the empty sink and realizes she forgot to lay out the meat for dinner.  Knowing it is too late to thaw now, she hits the number three on speed dial for takeout Chinese.  A distinctly American voice answers and she realizes her mistake - Chinese was four, three was the stress relief she was trying to give up.

He arrives home significantly more stoned that he wanted to be.  Trying desperately hard to hide it from his wife, he yells his hell while walking directly to the shower.

The shower loses him for far too long and his wife opens the door with hushed anxiety.  "Are you drunk or high?"

"Both," he answers while his wife shuts the door without a word more.

She springs to life when the door rings - perfect timing, she thinks as she ponders where she wants her story to go next.

He gets out of the shower and sees a notepad open upon the table, full of drawings and no words, next to a bag of Chinese food.  She is in the garage speed dialing number three.

-Dustin S. Stover

Kindle: Happiness in a Void of Darkness
Nook: Happiness in a Void of Darkness

The Explanation

I have always been terribly interested in why someone would cut themselves.  I suppose that deep down I understood it - a physical interpretation of the pain one feels inside, a frustration that needs an external release in some fashion and the pain doesn't run off into someone else's life.

I've just never been one to follow suit in that type of performance art.  My personal belief is that there must be some other type of expression that leads to far more productivity.  And, you know, not having to explain the scars to anyone else is always a bonus.

But, I suppose that in itself would be a test of sorts.  If a lover can see past the battle scars of externalizing an internal problem then doesn't that in some kind of way prove that love triumphs?

The hypocrisy, however, is hilarious.

Everyone has the problematic affairs that we are dealing with.  From the man who drinks incessantly to the woman who buys herself into ruin - or the woman who drinks incessantly and the man who buys himself into ruin.  It is all just a means to deal with the internal struggles of life's existential problems that no one wants to face up to.

And as I'm laying here, I grow increasingly tired, exhausted.  Like the life is just seeping from my veins.

I believed that if you had unlimited money then the world's problems didn't touch you, when I was young.  It was like the penguins having water just run right off their body.  A type of bullet proof vest that made it impossible for life's turmoil to trouble you, but that was just young naivety.

The rich find themselves equally as troubled as the poor, but that is also when it came to me that it isn't a class problem, it is a societal one.  A society that wrings the life out of every person placed as a cog in the working wheel can never have room for a society in which the human life has more value than the productivity of their job, and being rich still leaves no value in the individual's life - just a dollar sign sitting next to a name.

And that is why one must stand in protest.

As I'm doing now.

As my veins drip the remaining drops of my blood upon the floor, and with it my ability to be another cog in your systemic decay.

The systemic destruction of the human condition.

And this is my...
explanation...
for these...
scars...



A morbid short story by Dustin S. Stover

And You Said Life Would be Easy

There is a radical design stitched into the very presence of every human being. From birth we are molded into what others perceive and expect us to be, never fully grasping any individuality in those desires.

Then, as we age, we begin to understand the world quite beyond that in which we've been forcibly exposed to. Whether it be through television, music, the introduction of new people, books, or whatever other external sources that could influence our otherwise pristine conservation of familial and close proximity world's desires. The rebellion of such things is what begins that massive chasm of separation between the world of old and the world in which one creates for themselves.

Of course, this doesn't necessarily mean that the chasm always maintains distance. Most people end up conforming in massive ways – their rebellion of underage drinking and casual drug usage is found out to be the same coping mechanisms of their parents, the same ones that refused to acknowledge their own usage of such things at the same age. The conformity of finding a job that satisfies just enough, typically through the paychecks that come in from said job, yet leave the rest of life unfulfilled. The conformity of giving up on the things enjoyable in youth – the discovery of things outside the pristine world in which one was raised in.

Raise a glass to yourselves if you can pretend the satisfaction of such things is enough for you. Down the contents of said glass in an effort to dull the pain of pretending, go to tuck your children into bed, and proceed to post more pictures of what you made for dinner on social media in an effort to bring an encouraging vindication to your very conformed notion of what reality should be, all the meanwhile keeping that pristine barrier around your own children.

There are those of us who are philosophers, artists, believers that the value in our lives are created solely by the things we leave behind – not the value of ourselves, but the value of the things we do to make tomorrow a better place. We live and die by the sadness we're forced to face, clinging to the threads of life's fragility only because we understand that someone has to suffer the consequences of societal norms as a means to bring greater understanding to it tomorrow. We do that through our words, our paintings, our drawings, our songs, and any other means we can birth our pain and suffering into the world as a form of educational entertainment.

If love is but a mechanism to ensure a mating process, then an artist's pain is only a mechanism to ensure purity for a better tomorrow. The next time you see that painting that disturbs you, or you read a passing paragraph in a book, or you hear a song that hits an emotion you don't want to experience take it as a sign to pay more attention. The reason you feel the way you do about it isn't because the painting is ugly, those are easily ignored, it is because you don't want to face the emotion the painting is making you feel.

-Dustin S. Stover

And don't forget, if you want to support my writing then buy my collection of short stories.

Kindle: Happiness in a Void of Darkness

Nook: Happiness in a Void of Darkness

Dangerous Daisies

I tripped over daisies
on my way to work this morning.
It was this profoundly new experience,
one in which totally shocked
and stunned.

Graveled hands,
broken glasses,
and my pride shattered
upon the ground
as the audience gawked.

I tripped over bricks
in the past.
And I've tripped over ropes
because I put them in
bad locations.

Ego plays a part in those falls,
but daisies shouldn't be dangerous.
They should be frail,
weak and kind.

But this daisy
damaged me more
than the brick and rope
could dream.

Just Another Day at the Office

Susan, like always, beat me to the office.  It never seems to bother her that she beats the boss every day.  She deserves a raise.

I settle down in my chair after grabbing my cup of coffee from the break room, of course started by Susan as soon as she got in, and just enjoy the aroma.  Then, it happens, the real start of my day.

"..That's when I found out she had been cheating on me.  It was with an old coworker.  Apparently they had been... screwing.. God, just thinking about it makes me want to vomit... they had been doing it since I worked with him.  That was twelve years ago.  Twelve years of the two of them fucking... The two of them doing it behind my back... like... how did I not know?  How?  Just... I don't know how I was so stupid...."

"Before I got busted with all that coke, I mean, I was on my way up to being a big time executive.  Who gives a fuck if I was snorting coke like it was candy.  I mean, who gives a fuck?  I was fucking productive, man.  I tell you, I could work circles around every other fucking clown in that office, but no... no, I get fired.  I get fired because they found some white powder in my office.  Fuck them, man.  Fuck them in their assholes."

"I don't really know how to say it... I mean, I know he and I had an agreement.  I know we were supposed to do it together, but... I just couldn't... and I just... watched.  I didn't know what else to do.  I just watched, and cried.  I don't know what is worse, that it was the first time I saw a boy touch himself and it brought me to tears or if it seemed to make him more excited... Am I always going to cry when I see a guy touch themselves?  Do you think I'm a lesbian?"

I go into the break room for a refill on my cup of coffee, but I notice the back door is propped open by a little block of wood.  I walk to the door, open it, and find Susan taking a puff of a cigarette.

"Mind if I take a drag of that, Susie?"

"I didn't know you smoked."

"Yeah... You're right.  I guess today wouldn't be a good day to start, either."  I used my foot to put the block of wood back against the door frame before gently resting the door against it.

"My wife tells me I just make bad choices.  I mean, no fucking way, right?  It isn't my fault if I blow ten grand at the poker table. I mean, fuck, I could be on a winning streak and then, bam, wrong bet.  Shit, that's all down to luck.  It isn't a bad choice, it just means my lucky day hasn't struck yet."

"He touched me in my private parts.  That's what mommy told me to tell the police officer.  That's what I told the police officer."

"I blame it all on my mom.  She is the one who didn't teach me how hard life would be.  She let me have my favorite blankie in bed with me until I was 12!  It is her fault!  It is all her fault!"

"...I don't really know how to come to terms with it.  Every time I close my eyes, I see his hands wrapped so tightly around my wrists that my hands are going numb.  I can see outside my body, and I see my mouth screaming, but no sound is coming out.  I see his grin as he... I just..."

"Look, doc.  Are you a Doctor?  Did you earn that PhD?  Look, I don't belong here.  I don't have a problem.  It is just the fucking courts.  They ordered this shit.  If it weren't for them, I wouldn't be sitting here right now."

"I just pray every day and hope things get better, but nothing is changing.  My prayers just aren't getting answered, but maybe that just means that God's plan for me is to suffer like this.  Maybe God just wants me to suffer for all the sins I've committed in the past.  Maybe that is why he isn't answering my prayers."

"I bet you just doodle all day long in that notebook of yours.  Seeing patients day in and day out, have that little notepad out pretending to be jotting down bullshit about your patients."

As they say this, I am just doodling.  It is the fifteenth time this patient has been in here and it is the fifteenth hour he has spent accusing me of doodling in my notebook.  It is now the eighth time I've actually doodled in my notebook.

"I... I know I am so quiet.... my wife tells me all the time that I need to talk to her, just talk... but... I don't even like to order food at the fast food drive through.  She says that our sex life is boring and she wants to spice things up by wearing sexy lingerie.  I don't know how to tell her that I want to be the one wearing it...."

"Well, that ends our session.  If you see Susan at the.."

"Yeah, yeah.  I fucking know.  Susan.  Front counter.  Next appointment."

I close my notebook.

"Have a good day."

I pour out the remaining bit of coffee into the break room's sink, watch the black liquid form a small puddle near the drain, refusing to join the rest, and then twist the knob to force the water to wash the puddle away.

Just another day at the office.





Written by Dustin S. Stover

Irrationally Fearful

This is quite personal for me and, as such, I'm going to get quite personal.

I will preface this for those who do not know - I am married to a Brazilian woman.  One who has not yet received her green card, but will legally hold it in the near future.

Now, before Donald Trump was elected, she could buy a plane ticket and get special permission to fly back to Brazil to visit family and then come back here.  This, the United States of America, is where she will be living her life for the foreseeable future, as she has absolutely no plans of moving to any other country - I, on the other hand, will be working diligently to convince her to move with me to some other undetermined European country.  That is irrelevant.

My wife has not seen her daughter in over a year, a sacrifice my wife made to come here because she could make more money cleaning houses than she could working in her home country, money she could then take back with her to create a better life for her and her daughter.  We met and fell in love, got married, and now we're working towards getting her daughter here.  That, however, requires time.

A couple months ago my wife booked a plane, immigration lawyer stating that there should be very minimal problems - a few questions when she arrived back here in the States and she'd be on her way as they would have no reason to deport her.

Now, all that changed.  With Donald Trump's recent ban on immigrants from the seven Muslim majority countries, and even though my wife is not affiliated at all with those countries, our immigration lawyer has advised her to cancel her flight entirely.  This is not done for fear that she'd be confused to be a Muslim, or from the Middle East.  No, this is because now there is a stigma drawn on every single immigrant in this country.

So now you may be saying, "but Dustin, your wife worked here illegally.  She didn't pay taxes!  Shame on her!"  Maybe you're saying to yourself, "this country has too many people in it already!  She doesn't belong here, she should go back to her own country!"

Yeah, I'm not going to change your mind on that.  If those are the way you feel then next time someone offers you 20 bucks to drive them some place turn the money down, or 50 dollars to turn a wrench, 100 dollars for a sucky-sucky job - turn them all down.  Guess what, you've worked illegally, too.  We all have.

As for her being from another country, if you go back two, three, four generations then your family was from somewhere else, too.  Maybe it was a bit longer than that, but go back far enough and not even Native Americans are native to this country.  Get the fuck over it.

The point is that when you place a ban on people coming into this country, you're not preventing the bad people from coming into this country.  Sure, an ISIS operator could be sneaking in with those Syrian refugees, but statistically it isn't happening.  Those rapists you're so worried about from Mexico?  Yeah, statistically, more rapes happen by legal citizens in such a large amount that it isn't even worth bringing up foreigners as a whole as rapists by comparison.

The same logic that the gun-toting conservatives use with the whole banning guns won't get guns off the street is the exact same logic that can be applied to banning immigrants.  So long as it is easier for immigrants to make more money here than in other countries then they will be finding a means to cross that border.  So long as we continue to bomb countries in the Middle East, we will have terrorists - unless, of course, we kill every other country.

All these bans do is encourage more problems, not less.  Now those refugees who desperately need help are going to see that we're closing our doors to them, the most powerful country in the world, and they are going to grow bitter from that.  A country in which has more guns than any other country.  A country which has 11.1 MILLION people who have a concealed carry permit alone.  A country who has a police force so well equipped that it would rival the military of the countries on the ban list.  This is, by definition, irrational fear.

And because of this fear, this irrational fear, my wife now has to go even longer without seeing her daughter.  We were officially told my the immigration lawyer that it would be a bad idea for my wife to go back to Brazil to visit her family (note: the lawyer did not tell her not to go, but rather just that it will be very ill advised to go).  That is simply not a risk my wife or I am willing to take.  This is just my wife, though.  The immigrants all throughout this country are in the same position, whether they are refugees or otherwise.

Now I will ask you, if you're so willing to force someone to go a year without seeing their children, when will you go a year without seeing yours?

-Dustin Stover

Politics and the Curse of Conformity

I've been trying to get my mind on writing.  Well, that is to say, writing about something other than the political atmosphere.  Even the short stories I attempt to write in my spare time end up being about a compulsive liar who bullies his way into getting everything that he wants.

That is to say, all of my writing has been ruined with this smear of crud so thick that it is impossible to see through, and so hardened from the sheer amount compressed on the window that it can't be chipped away at, either.

So, I suppose, I'm just going to write about it.

I'm not upset at Donald Trump being elected.  I had assumed he had a relatively fair shot at it, even if I tried to avoid the thought.  I've not been a Democrat nor Republican ever in my life, but it is easy to see how voting in a Republican takes steps back away from the things that enhance human life - that is to say, science, distribution of wealth, and civil liberties.

I often times neglect just how religious over half of this country is.  I suppose that being an atheist and having to separate myself from the masses in regards to religion has that effect on me.  I understand how harshly I get judged for just that singular belief when everyone around me believes so readily in something that has absolutely no evidence.

And I suppose that is the thing about it all.  The people who voted in this bully as President of the United States of America are very readily available to believe things with no grounds of fact or evidence.  A person who says he a wholesome Christian man can get away with also saying that he grabs women by the pussy, could shoot a man in the street and get away with it, and also convince the masses that conflicts of interest won't be an issue because his sons will be running his businesses.

It is also easy to forget that the President of the United States of America is, in fact, just another fallible human being who is subject to the same mistakes and complications of everyone else's life - all while making choices that impact the entire future of a country.

The problem, of course, with Trump is not that he is human, but he has surrounded himself with people who are paid to agree with his ego.  No matter how wrong he is on a subject, someone is standing there to tell him that he is right.

I fully understand people's concerns about the future for the average American.  I fully understand that the amount of support that Donald Trump was awarded was because of his rhetoric about the average American making a living doing manufacturing jobs and the jobs that evaporated up as the country scrambles to make jobs for those people in other fields, and generally failing.

Those same people have told me that they are going to be watching Trump closely to make sure he does what he says he is going to do, but when the only evidence of his doing what he is saying he is doing is his word on the topic, well, again, it boils down to that word I've yet to mention in this post - faith.  Faith, by definition, is the believing of something without evidence.

Now we've got an entire presidential campaign that was run on faith.  The difference between this and every other presidential candidate of the past decades is that we don't know the history of the candidate in politics.  We knew how Hillary Clinton was going to run the country because she has history in politics.  Even Obama, with a relatively short stint in professional politics, displayed signs of how he would be President.  Now we have someone who has run businesses with the entire basis of his actions being guided by self interest - how to make more money for his businesses.  Faith is, of course, required to believe he will act in the interest of the masses as opposed to himself as he sits behind that big desk in the oval office.

Every President of my lifetime has done some horrible things - from Clinton's agreement to let jobs go over seas (or his getting a blow job by an intern but I fail to see how doing that with a consenting woman is any worse than forcibly grabbing a pussy), Bush's campaign to collect every piece of data on the Americans he guided, and Obama's drone strikes in the Middle East.

I find myself struggling to support any President as a whole, but all have done really great things as well for huge groups of people - Clinton's economy was the strongest I've seen it in my life time for the average person.  Bush helped with the AIDS relief in Africa.  Obama by legalizing gay marriage, finally giving those people a right that they have deserved their entire lives, but never been granted previously.

It is easy to say, "I'm a Democrat" or "I'm a Republican," but that is just the first step in being blind to the bad side of the party you follow and ignore the good of the opposing side.

When Obama was nominated as Democrat for the election in 2008 I said some things that I still stick to - the best hope was for him to do exactly as he said he was going to do in four years, then they needed to elect a neutral party for the following four years.  That didn't happen and now we are faced to deal with the consequences of that not happening.  Again, no one wins.

There is also a piece of evidence in all this that is staring everyone in the face, but overlooked quite readily.  When was the last time the Democratic or Republican party has served longer than eight years?  That in itself should be telling you that this system of election isn't working for the people.  If the Republicans were better than the Democrats, they'd win far more frequently.  If the Democrats were better than the Republicans then they'd win far more frequently.  Neither party is doing a good job, they are just doing a good thing here and there to keep their supporters firmly in place.

-Dustin S. Stover

So, This is How Stories get Made

For some of us, the darkness of night falls and we get lost.  We become terrified of the things in which we cannot see, the things we must see within ourselves, and especially the things we hear that we'd otherwise be too distracted to notice any other time.

This is what it is like when we first begin to research ourselves.  You know that fear of the doctor the very first time you get tested for sexually transmitted infections?  That's what it feels like every day you decide to introspectively look into yourself, as if what you will find out is something you never wanted to know.

I suppose, then, that is why so few people ever actually take the time in doing so.  It is far easier to go the rest of your life without that dreaded doctor's visit, but the only way to know for certain that you're not contaminating someone else is to either not have sex at all or go for the check up.

Sure, having that cotton swab shoved down your dick hole hurts the first couple times, but you probably thought that it was just going to be a matter of shooting your piss into a cup anyway.  And yeah, while you're looking back on all those slutty fun times you had you are probably sweating bullets - that one time the condom ripped, the girl's name you forgot to get because you were too drunk to care and the headache you had upon waking up to her naked body didn't invoke the kind of emotions that rendered those words upon the tongue.  Maybe she had already escaped out the door before you awake to the blade of the sun in your eyes.

Coming out of the other side to find out that you're clean, though, proves that those experiences are stories worthy of the scar from where that one girl stabbed you in the side because she thought you were kinkier than you really were, and of course you went with it all because she was climaxing a great deal more than you thought she was capable of, just like how the knife went a bit deeper than she anticipated.  Still, the scar is a permanent visual tell of a tale worth telling - at least to those worth telling it to.

Realizing that it all interlinks is the first step, of course.  It could happen at your favorite restaurant.  Maybe it is your favorite restaurant because it became your escape from the passing of a family member that particularly struck a deep and sensitive kind of pain, and it was the first experience with such things.  One minute you're tasting the delights of some oriental food, the next your sifting through the darkness of your mind to remember, oh yes, the whole reason you stepped foot into this place is because your sister passed away from a car accident.  You had no taste for Chinese food before that, but it was different, looked quiet, and was secluded away from everyone you knew who would be talking to you about it to look like the perfect place.  Without a care of the wasted money spent, you ordered a random menu item and now, years later, you've come to love the place as a kind of extra appendage that has become more functional than the originals.

It is terrifying to see those connections, though.  They can paint the ugliest of pictures.  Perhaps they paint the most beautiful, but we seldom know until we roll up our sleeves and trudge through the dark, scary, mucky swamp of why we are the way we are.  It can, for some pretty obvious reasons, lead to a craze, but to put it into perspective, how is it any crazier than spending a hundred dollars on a pair of pants simply because a law states that we need clothes in order to be decent and you've decided that spending extra money on something to cover your legs, ass and genitals makes you somehow different than a person who spends twenty on something that, inherently, does the same thing.

-Dustin S. Stover

Kindle: Happiness in a Void of Darkness
Nook:   Happiness in a Void of Darkness