Web of Fate Book I: Brookhaven

This is a sample chapter from my upcoming novel, Brookhaven, due out this fall. If you like it, feel free to share it...just give credit to JC Eggleton, of course. This will be my first novel and is being published through Abbott Press. First, a little backstory...

“It’s a terrible world we live
in… I would sooner eat my
children than raise them in a
place like this. So much senseless
death and destruction! There’s
... no purpose in it!”

Thanks to the words of a mad god, Brookhaven, Alabama, is
collapsing into a state of anarchy. Each day, more residents find
themselves with no choice but to obey the voices. As a cook
suffers the violent consequences of telling his boss to shove it, a
small man attempts to become larger than life with the help of a
hunting rifle. When a local priest is brutally slain, police officer
Marcus Dodd sets off to find a ruthless killer who leaves no trail.
As the body count rises, Officer Dodd is pushed beyond the brink
of insanity into a world of demons and lunatic gods. In his search
for justice, Dodd is unwittingly immersed in an unforgettable
battle between good and evil.
In this gripping tale, one man must confront a city gone mad
without succumbing to his own insanity. But only one is laughing
as the darkness threatens to consume them all.

And now for the sample. I hope you enjoy.


 

Chapter I: Black Dog

“Frederick Mathers.”

His tongue felt thick and unwieldy, barely able to wrap around the syllables of such a name. It had been a long time since he had heard the name, let alone spoken it aloud. It was the name of a madman.

“Frederick Mathers.”

It sounded so alien to him, but the nostalgia of speaking the name was amazing. It had been so long since his mouth had spoken much of anything without the slur of alcohol or the giggling of a diseased brain.

“Frederick Mathers.”

In the years of insanity, he had even forgotten his own name.

Lost amidst the throbbing chaos of day to day existence, Fred wandered without any understanding of what happened to him. It began with the voices. He remembered that clearer than anything before it. It seemed like they had been the beginning of his new life.

They had been discrete at first and always when he had been alone. The chittering of some alien insect he could never find. Distant laughter that he seemed to barely be able to hear. He had tried to ignore it, pretend it wasn’t happening. Then he had seen the black man.

Black wasn’t speaking of his skin color. Not really. Those people were brown. This man seemed to be a statue chiseled from black glass. He had been like a living shadow launched off the wall like a giant shark in a crappy 3-D movie Fred had seen that year. It had hurt his head to look at the man, but there was nothing he could have done to make him go away.

It was those damn eyes that always got him. They were glowing yellow and always staring. Always watching, never blinking. There were no pupils, no whites to those eyes. Just yellow Christmas lights shining from the living dark.

After that, he could hear the voices more clearly. Sometimes they just laughed and laughed, slipping into songs that both delighted and terrified him. They sang about love and loss, about funny men in top hats, about ripping their own skin off. Other times they held conversations with themselves. Sometimes they tried to hold conversations with him.

And sometimes they told him to do things.

Bad things.

The Black Man was always there, even when he wasn’t. Fred could always almost see him just outside his range of vision, standing at the edges. He never spoke. Not like the ghosts…or aliens…or elves. He had never seen where the voices in his head came from, but he had his reasons to doubt that the speakers were human.

But all of that seemed like a nightmare forty years long. There was too much to forget, but unreality had already set in. The newfound silence was smothering and he felt so lonely.

He didn’t know what the decades had done to the world, but they must have been pretty rough.

The city was abandoned.

He wandered the streets, not daring to speak. The buildings around him gave off an aura of foreboding, dark and looming over the cracked and vacant sidewalks. Shadows had grown longer and seemed to shift when he wasn’t looking. They made the back of his eyes itch. Yet there was no blessed insanity to fall back on. Not anymore.

He looked up into the sky to try to figure out what direction he was headed. He vaguely remembered being able to do that when he was younger. But that seemed to have changed too. The sun was going to go down soon and he’d lose what little precious light he had.

Maybe.

He hadn’t paid attention to sunsets in a long time, but he was pretty sure that the sky turned yellow when they happened. The sky was yellow alright, but try as he might, he couldn’t find the sun. He spun in all directions, wondering if it was hiding behind a building.

Where the hell is the sun?

In his daze, he almost missed the man sitting in the outdoor café. He was dressed in an overcoat and fedora, like a spy in a 1950’s movie. Also like a spy, he seemed to be hiding his face behind a newspaper, pretending to read…or maybe he was actually reading. No point in sensationalizing the mundane. Government spies were crazy talk and Fred had had his fair share of that! Yes sir!

He approached the figure, trying to be quiet and not to disturb his reading. You never scare spies. They could have guns hidden anywhere, ready to go off at the first sign of trouble. He hoped the guy didn’t shoot him. If the guy had a gun, Fred was screwed. He stood silent by the side of the table, waiting for the spy to notice him.

“You stink,” the man said without moving his paper.

Fred looked down at his own stained and torn clothes, his filthy bare feet. It kind of hurt his feelings, but the potential-spy was right. He had spent the past few decades shitting in trash cans after searching them for food. He didn’t stink, he outright reeked! The odor of old sweat and piss surrounded him like Charlie Brown‘s friend, Pigpen.

“Sorry about that. I’m getting better, I swear.”

The man nodded behind his newspaper, turning the page. The headline on the front page read: Travis Conrad awaiting sentence for war crimes.

“Indeed. I must apologize my rudeness, but I’ve been reading the news and it’s made me quite cynical. What’s your name, friend?” His voice was oddly musical, rising and falling like a stage performer. It was so…smooth…

Fred grinned proudly as he announced “Frederick Mathers.” It made quite a difference to say it to someone besides himself, as though cemented it in reality. Even if that someone may or may not be a spy. He held out his hand to the stranger.

He didn’t take it. Just turned the page.

“A pleasure. Have you read the news lately?”

The stupid grin faded from Fred’s cracked lips.

“I, um…I don’t think I remember how to read.”

The man laughed from behind his paper. It wasn’t the restrained laugh of a sane man, but the liberated cackle Fred always heard in his tortured dreams. Fred didn’t feel disturbed. He felt comforted, as though he had met an old friend. The manic laughter echoed down the empty streets, giving the illusion of a live studio audience filled with drug addicts.

“Why, Fred! You never truly forget how to read! It’s just like riding a bike!”

Don’t remember how to do that either…

“It’s a terrible world we live in. You seem to have missed out on the highlights, my friend, but trust your dear pal. I would sooner eat my children than raise them in a place like this. So much senseless death and destruction! There’s no purpose in it! Fat men call themselves heroes while they send strong, courageous, nameless young men to die for them and call it war. These same fat men steal from each other and call it economics. They dare to call themselves “self-made men” after plundering the riches of the poor! And the drugs! Everyone is burning their souls away with drugs to expand their minds and their empty husks wander the streets! You know a thing or two about that, I’m sure…”

He lowered his paper just enough to tip Fred a wink before quickly hiding again. There was only a flash of his face, but-

Hair. Too much hair for a spy! Too much for a man! Get out of here! He’s bad, he’s evil, he wants to hurt you! Run away! Now!

Fred stayed put. That wink had seemed to pull the heat from the air around him. Cold sweat ran down his lower back and made him shiver. He felt light headed, almost like he was high. The spy rambled on.

“Something has to give! Somebody has to show this world that what they’re doing is wrong! If nobody stands up to these monsters, they’re going to keep on stomping and biting until the entire planet is just a bunch of cosmic dust…and that’s where you come in. Fred…I want to give you the greatest gift a man can receive. I’m going to give your life a purpose. Would you like to change the world, Fred? Would you like to be something more than you are?”

Fred felt something inside dissolve and pour acid onto his guts. A voice six miles gone informed him that he had pissed himself. The shakes had gotten worse, he could barely stand. There was something here, a static charge in the air. He didn’t want to run anymore. He wanted to die, just be swallowed up by the earth. Energy was building around them, like he was watching an invisible thunderstorm build up behind that damn newspaper.

Something was about to give.

“You’re not gonna kill me, are you?” He couldn’t hide the hope that climbed into his voice. He felt so pathetic, like he were standing before Jesus Christ himself. This was no man, he was something more. He was standing in front of the most powerful thing on earth with piss running down his own leg. Tears burned lines into the grime on his face and he crumbled to his knees. All that happiness at finally being lucid again, it had all been an illusion. What would he do with his life? He had wasted the worthless thing and traded it for a life of the lost and damned.

“I want to fix this fucked-up world, but…I can’t!” Desperation had crept into Fred’s voice, a voice that was rising into a scream. “I can try to help you, but I don’t see how I can! I’m only one man and a useless one at that! If I had shoes, I probably couldn‘t even tie the laces!”

The god-thing’s body seemed to relax, but his grip on the paper didn’t. His voice dropped into an oily purr. “Fred…Fred…” he soothed, “don’t you have any faith in yourself? One man? Men have shaped this entire world! Alexander the Great changed the world by cutting a knot in half! Albert Einstein went against the norm, turned the way you see the world on its head! You’re not an ant or a dog, you‘re a man! Now act like one!”

Fred’s head was beginning to hurt. The pressure in the air was trying to crush him, but still he plodded on. Exasperated, he cried “But those men were great! They had talent! Power! Intelligence! I don’t have any of that!”

The newspaper fell away and everything inside Frederick Mathers died. His eyes bulged at the face of God. A part of him wanted to say it looked like a black dog, but that wouldn’t be right. He had seen dogs with fur as black as ink before, but dogs have lips. This god-man seemed to grin from ear to ear, dagger-like teeth bulging from its head. It looked more like an unholy hybrid of dog and great white shark.

The fedora hid the eyes, but Fred was willing to bet they were yellow.

“Talent? Power? Intelligence? Why, I have those! Let us begin…”

Feathers. The beating of a thousand wings. The world was lost in a storm of black feathers and Fred woke up.

There was no gradual slope from dreaming to consciousness. All at once, the voices came back. He could hear them all: the insects, the laughter, the screaming, the singing. It was like breaking the surface of the water and finding himself in the middle of a pool party.

His back hurt. He had been sleeping wrong on a bench in the park and was paying for it. He twisted under the newspaper he had been using for cover and looked up at the night sky. The stars seemed to swim and dance, flickering out, returning to life, then burning out again. Did they normally do that? Probably. Stars are like Jesus in that way. That was why people used to worship them as angels…wait, was that right? His mind was swimmy after his brief stint with sanity. Memory and delusion blended into one.

There was only one thing from the dream that was lingering, that flapping.

He choked on his breath as countless birds began to scream at once. The roar was unbearable and he threw his hands to his ears. He could see them now, thousands of them. They swarmed like locusts in the air above him. He saw flashes of black and navy as their feathers glinted in the dim light above him.

A light weight settled on his chest and feathers tickled the sides of his face. He looked up into a pair of yellow eyes that glittered with intelligence. It lunged forward, two quick stabs and he saw no more. The world fell apart into pain and darkness.

On Counter Culture

I would like for everyone to take a moment of silence to mourn the passing of counter culture. We hardly had time to get to know it and may never have time to truly understand it. It gave us some of the greatest art of the past century and we will enjoy the memories for the rest of our lives and will weep for the generations to come that will never experience it first hand. Most people know the counter culture as the goths and emo kids, weird and pretentious artists that can never truly say what they stand for. The most common criticism concerns them trying to be different from everyone by looking the same as each other.

Either two emo girls or two emo boys. Or maybe it's an emo boy and-
you know what, forget it. It's just one emo kid.   Source

Most people never really tried to figure out what the source of this terrible, terrible fashion statement was. They would write them off as whiny teenagers and keep walking and, most of the time, this was true. But few realize that this trend was only the latest and most pathetic incarnation of a social deus ex machina: Counter-culture. Going back the generations, we have industrial, grunge, punk, metal, disco, hippies, all the way back to beatniks in the 50's. The former generation writes off the antics of the latter as them being rebellious teenagers, just like they used to be...but they forget why they rebelled in the first place.

In our society, there is always The Norm. This is the standard for with which society maintains equilibrium. The Norm can be as mercurial about certain things, but for the most part it stays somewhat the same. The counter culture arises when young people are exposed to the sucktacular nature of our society and try to buck it off. Of course, a single rebel is worthless. They look absurd and sound like a lunatic, speaking cultural heresies. They find themselves sad and alone, on the fringe of society. It's here that they find others like them. It doesn't occur to most people that rebels aren't trying to be different from everyone, they just want to be different from you.

Most especially you.     Source

They band together and piss everyone off around them, but manage to make some of the greatest art of any modern culture. Nirvana, Marylin Manson, Ozzy Osbourne, and The Beatles (their later work) are all in the same vein of our nations circulation, which is ironic, seeing that two of them aren't even American. The counter culture isn't limited to music, of course. Francis Ford Coppola, Andy Warhol, and Stanley Kubrick have shaped the art and movie communities, which worked with the music industry to influence our culture. They were all counter cultural in their day and have since become icons of a time and world long gone.

Of course, not all of the counter culture is counter cultural. There is a vast expanse of participants who don't give a damn about a cause or a purpose. As I said, this sub-culture is responsible for the greatest art this world has seen and that can be very lucrative. Indifferent people adopt fashion styles and musical tastes in a hope to be edgy and different and it doesn't matter to the merchants of these clothes what their customers believe. The lunatic fringe becomes a commercialized product, causing the crazies to either conform or risk being lost forever. The younger generation watches the previous sell out and create the next paradigm. This is how it has always been.

But now...now the counter culture has fallen off the face of the earth and for the life of me, I can't figure out why. Every day, American bombs go off in Iraq and Afghanistan...and Somalia...and Yemen...and Pakistan. After a decade of war, literally nothing has been accomplished except alot of people have died. Society is in an unprecedented state of distress, with nationwide protests against the war, the 1%, and authoritarian legislation. The stage is set for music, film, and publications full of rage and passion, art that simultaneously decries war while calling for rebellion. Never has there been a wider gap between the ruling elite and the common man. But where the counter cultural movements have always been about sexual freedom, racial inequality, peace, and not a small helping of drugs, the hipsters are take a stand against not being pretentious. Drugs are involved, but only as long as they're ironic.

But maybe that's for the best. When the nation is a powder keg that's smoking cigars while shooting fireworks, maybe it's a good thing that nobody fans the flames of revolution.

This has just been some random thoughts by a casual observer. If you agree or disagree, that's your prerogative. These observations are casual and so I wouldn't be surprised to find them inaccurate and in the end, grossly off-topic. But they're my thoughts and it's boring to keep them to myself.

On Automation

So the other day I was in Wal Mart and I just happened to go through the self checkout line. For those of you who live under a rock (You know who you are), a self checkout is basically a scanner that has a vending machine attached only instead of giving you delicious Skittles that let you taste the rainbow, it spits out nothing but mechanical heartache and rage. I didn't think about this ahead of time. I was actually wearing pajamas and bathrobe, so I obviously wasn't thinking of anything ahead of time. If you think that's odd attire to wear in public, you are wrong.

Traditional garbs of the ancient Wal Mart tribe.

Now that you're done ogling obese mutants, let's continue. Where was I? Oh right, mechanical heartache and rage. So halfway through scanning my groceries, the computer starts flashing a warning that said I hadn't put my Pop Tarts in the bag. This might have been an error with the scale or the artificial intelligence had misjudged how much my groceries were supposed to weigh or maybe I had already eaten three of the Pop Tarts. I don't know, I'm not a computer programmer. I'm Joey. Hi.

After hearing my howls of animalistic rage, an attendant comes by to help. After searching through my bags, she shrugs and swipes a card. This overrides the problem and I get to go on my merry Pop Tart way. But I couldn't enjoy my Pop Tarts. They no longer tasted like thunderbolts and strawberries. They tasted like failure and a robot apocalypse.

Everyone has seen Terminator. If you haven't, why in God's name are you on my blog? You need to be going out and watching that movie. When you see Linda Hamilton's boobs, think of me. For those who still haven't watched the movie out of fear of Linda Hamilton's boobs (understandably), I'll do a quick recap. A robot is sent back in time to kill Linda Hamilton before she can give birth to a son who is destined to save humanity from the aforementioned robot's boss...I didn't realize how stupid that was gonna sound. What can I say, it was the 80's!

                                    Pictured: The 80's                  Source

Anyways, the Terminator's boss was a rogue AI named Skynet. Skynet, upon gaining self-awareness, had deemed it necessary to nuke the world. Why it would think this was a good idea is never really explained, but again, 80's. The concept of a rogue AI isn't anything new. Isaac Asimov even went through the trouble of analyzing the morality of human and robot interaction over 60 years ago. Frank Herbert's Dune repeatedly referenced the Machine Crusade, a terrible war where thinking machines tried to wipe out mankind. Some people write it off as technophobic and conservative, but I'd like to point a few things.

You remember that self checkout I mentioned at the start of the article? Some people see that as progress. Sure, there may be bugs right now, but they'll get that ironed out. What if they replaced all of the registers with self-checkout? That's, like, ten times more progressive! Of course, Wal Mart isn't putting these in their stores for the sake of some technological revolution. They're putting them in because there's a one-time fee and then they never have to pay them again. In science fiction, you see robots doing all the bullshit labor most people don't want to do, but it never answers one question: Where are all the people?

Robot is based off a Czech word meaning slave and that's exactly what they are: Laborers you don't have to pay. It's a perfectly logical conclusion, why pay these schlubs every week when I can pay a robot a single installation fee? In theory, it lowers the cost of production and raises efficiency. It's every employers dream! Of course, it's also every employees nightmare. Everybody's heard the Tall Tale of John Henry, they taught it in school around the time they talked about Paul Bunyan. This American myth (or true story, depending on your school's budget) details one of the first stories about the worker's struggle against automation. In a perfect corporate world, robots would do all of their work while the executives get all the profits. Of course, the robots would have to build walkways from building to building so their corporate masters would never have to walk the streets and risk an ass kicking by all the laborers they put out of work.

I can think of at least one man who's not
afraid of skyscrapers....     Source

It's pretty much undeniable that machines are more efficient than people. Robots don't show up late to work, stinking of booze and sticky with hooker saliva. They can make millions of computations in a fraction of the time it takes a human being. They are, for all intents and purposes, the perfect worker. Of course, on those rare occasions they do make mistakes.... This happens. Stanislav Petrov was faced with ass-tearing Armageddon and, in a moment that proved his scrotum was full of Batmen swimming in molten metal, he played it cool. Pure instinct told him that the United States hadn't launched missiles at Mother Russia, despite the most advanced computers in the Soviet Union telling him otherwise. If that had been a completely automated system, we'd all look like that stuff that comes off the end of a cigarette. What's that called? Oh yeah, fucking ashes.

But as an intellectual (in my humble, gold-plated opinion), I have to ask a serious question: In God's name, why are we putting up with this? Why are we standing by while we lose our jobs to C-3PO? It turns out there is an entire religion out there that embraces the idea of robots replacing humans. I don't just mean in the workforce, I mean in every walk of life. Whether that means uploading your brain into a robot or onto the internet, or maybe replacing every part of you with cybernetics. They're called Transhumanists and it's what happens when we let the nerds win. They didn't watch Blade Runner or the Matrix and root for the good guys, I'll put it that way. I'll admit, it all sounds good until you get realistic. There has never been a machine in the history of the world that didn't malfunction and when these do, it won't just make a weird clicking noise. That cyberworld you live in populated entirely by naked Scarlett Johansson's? Yeah, the Overmind just missed a zero and all the loveslaves turned into naked Danny Devito's.

This article will be continued at a later date, as I can go on for quite some time about it. When I do, it will probably be in a more somber style, but for tonight I've just been having fun.

This has just been some random thoughts by a casual observer. If you agree or disagree, that's your prerogative. These observations are casual and so I wouldn't be surprised to find them inaccurate and in the end, grossly off-topic. But they're my thoughts and it's boring to keep them to myself.

On Asberger's

World of Warcraft is a game that hardly needs an introduction, especially here on the internet. If you're reading this, you either play World of Warcraft or know someone who does. If you do not fall into either category, then go back to your homeworld and tell them an invasion will be stopped by an army of Level 85 Death Knights. They'll know what that means, even if you don't. Hint: It means your shit is about to get wrecked.

In what is certainly familiar for anyone who plays the game, a kid dubbed "Red Shirt Guy" corrected the makers of the game on their own story. For a short while, it was debated if the guy had a mental illness or maybe if he was a robot in desperate need of polishing (ladies). His voice was very atonal, as anyone can tell. Alot of viewers wrote it off to a congestion of virginity until he made his own Youtube video responding to his critics by saying that he has Asberger's Syndrome. This condition, perhaps as equally well-known to internet junkies, is a high-functioning form of autism. It has almost become a fallback position for socially awkward teens as an excuse for assholedom.

As a sufferer of this condition, I will give them that it does often cause situations that are extremely uncomfortable for all parties. The other day, I was at a friend's birthday lunch for his girlfriend and I decided to begin the festivities by talking about cannibalism. It didn't occur to me until later that this was more than a little inappropriate, especially in front of his grandmother. In case you're wondering, I was talking about the recent decision by Pepsico, Kraft Foods, and Nestle to begin using a sweetener extracted from the cloned kidneys of aborted fetuses (no matter how you write that, it will look like I made it up) and was the only person laughing at my Soylent Green jokes. It's a blunt simplification of the research conducted by Senomyx with HEK293 cells, but there is nothing in that statement that isn't true.

But back to the point. Asberger's is probably the most misunderstoof of any social disorder. The simplest way to define it is a lack of empathy, but that's like calling the ocean a bunch of water. It doesn't fully capture the scope of the disorder. Anyone who uses it as an excuse for assholery should be smacked in the head with an old two by four that shatters on impact and gives them 10,000 splinters.

Empathy is alot more than being able to know how people feel. Imagine going through life and never being able to truly relate to another human being. Even among family, you feel like the new kid at school. You never know what it truly means to feel loved or hated. It's pretty much the loneliest existence imaginable. Every day, the pain of being alone is almost physical. It drags you down like chains, threatening to pull you down into the Abyss that yawns beneath you. Despite having a wife and son, I am aware of their love but only because the rational part of me tells me so.

Growing up, you have to watch everyone carefully to study their body language because you have no concept of such a thing. In your natural state, you're standing still while everyone fidgets and smiles for reasons that you can't fathom. For a long time, I had trouble with my smile. It was a painstaking effort not to have this big Cheshire Cat smile that many found off-putting. You try and mimic the little movements that people make when they're comfortable, but until you get these right you look like a spaz. Even the smallest abnormality is noticed by those watching, if only on an unconscious level. They see the jagged flow of your movement and a tiny warning goes off in the head to tell them that something is off-putting about this guy. Without even realizing it, they begin to assume that you must be crazy or, at least, have something wrong with you. It's a prejudice most people don't even realize they have.

In my teenage years, I didn't have any friends. It wasn't because I was a nerd or a loser, it was because I was nothing. I had no sense of humor, no true personality, I had to learn those by exposure to others. I was a bottomless source of information and if anyone spoke to me, I would just recite information in an attempt to seem interesting. You're condemned to spending time with the lunatic fringe, the people who don't fit in quite right because they're anarchists or anime junkies or Bible Thumpers. It doesn't matter their faults, because at least it's another human being you can talk to. But here's the bitch of it: It doesn't make you any happier. It's almost like talking to a video game character; while they are replying you don't feel any true realness to it.

Because of your habit of watching people, you can see the desperation to be accepted painted all over their face, but you see this with a clinical detachment. That's probably the most infuriating thing to people who love you, that damn clinical detachment. Everything that happens seems like it's happening to somebody else and before long you start to wonder if you're living somebody else's story. You compulsively study everything around you, trying to fully understand it but you never do. There's no way of telling if you're stupid for not understanding or if everybody only pretends to get it. Every Aspie has a certain thing, an obsession that permeates every aspect of their lives. For some, it's writing and making lists, others exercise, still others are constantly studying music and art. But there would be nobody to share it with. If you tell a layman the stuff you learn, you risk bombarding them with volumes of information they couldn't give a pile of dingo kidneys about. If you tell an expert, they might correct you or, worse, assess your work. It doesn't matter if their findings confirm or deny your words, it's going to be goddamn uncomfortable and embarassing.

I sometimes wonder if maybe everything we do is to finally feel alive. Our emotions are like fossils sealed in the bedrock of our skulls and only that certain thing can even give us a taste of what it is to feel. When you do finally feel emotion, it's a high pressure jet that can't be savored. It crashes over you like a landslide and sweeps away all else. There is no in-between for us. We either feel nothing or we feel nothing but that one single, dominating passion. If you're sad, you're suicidal and nihilistic. If you're angry, you're ready to peel the skin off of everyone's bodies. If you're in love, you're in LOVE, which is written in great flaming letters three miles high. And if you're happy, you're cackling like a madman until your sides hurt...then, just like that, it all goes away. Your moment of humanity is gone and you're back to being nothing.

Growing up, I always wondered what I was. I didn't feel human, so I certainly couldn't be that. Being reared in a religious environment, I would often wonder if maybe I was an angel or demon trapped in a human's body. I would look at the darkness and pain that thrived deep inside and wonder if I would die should I be exorcised. This all sounds insane to anyone who doesn't know what it feels like. Everytime I opened up to people, they would either deem me a psychopath or try to offer comfort. I think the latter was the more painful. You wouldn't get a single ounce of the love they were trying to share, but your keen observation skills would let you see their discomfort and uncertainty. Even if they thought they were sincere, you would see the doubt scribbled across their faces and think they were only patronizing you. If you didn't get angry, you would only feel uncomfortable at their attempts to relate to you.

This all sounds very emo, I'm aware of that. Unfortunately, that's just how it is. If I were a teenager telling you this, I could be written off as an angsty teenager. But I'm twenty-five years old and nothing seems like it's going to change. I'm going to watch television and movies, listen to music, look at art, read fiction, althewhile being painfully aware that all the comedy and drama is simply to appeal to you so you won't feel bad when they take your money. I'm going to talk to people I see in public, knowing the whole time that neither one of us are really having an affect on the other. When I find something that truly qualifies as art, I'm going to know that this person poured this emotion out in a bout of passion and every subsequent viewing is no more than a photograph of a work of art. I'll watch the presidential debate and know that every word is recited for our benefit. No politician is going to dare speak his mind unless a poll can let him know that at least half the population wants to hear it.

I've often wondered if this is what it's like to live without a soul. Whether you believe in a soul or not doesn't matter. An essential something is missing and I don't think I'll ever be able to get that part of me. Every human being lives their lives trying to fill that void in their hearts, but there will always be the unlucky few who will never be whole. We trudge through this life until we fade away in the end, lonely and broken in some inexplicable way. Don't get me wrong, I love my wife and son. I love them with every ounce of effort I can muster. I love my friends as much as possible, but if they truly knew how little that means it would hurt their feelings. They seem to think that because they mean little to me, I must be bidding them ill will. They don't realize that by feeling any closeness at all to them, it means alot.

So the next time someone excuses their behaviour with Asberger's, please do me a favor and punch them hard in the face. They give us all a bad name and should be ashamed of themselves. But if they're incapable of actually feeling shame, it might be a bit more understandable.

This has just been some random thoughts by a casual observer. If you agree or disagree, that's your prerogative. These observations are casual and so I wouldn't be surprised to find them inaccurate and in the end, grossly off-topic. But they're my thoughts and it's boring to keep them to myself.

On Elitism

Elitism seems to be a buzzword that's thrown around alot lately. When Bush invaded Iraq, it seemed like everyone's Word of the Day calendar told them it was time to say "Quagmire". Apart from being a sex offender on Family Guy, most people uttering this word had no idea of the meaning. They just knew it had something to do with Vietnam. In the same way, we have millionaire politicians pointing at their opponents and calling them Elitist. This is pretty much the equivalent of Neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan calling each other racist.

Elitism is defined as "the belief that society should be governed by a select group of gifted and highly educated individuals". That, in itself, is not such a bad thing. You don't want an untalented shlub to be carrying around a suitcase that can bring about Armageddon. In practice, though, it is the new discrimination. In our modern society, it's a terrible thing to be racist or sexist. Everybody knows that. However, it's human nature to consider yourself better than somebody. It doesn't matter who that somebody is, as long as there's a type of person that you can look down on.

Hear me out on this. On the basis of religion, we do not live in a country of tolerance. Atheists look at Christians and think they're ignorant of the facts. Christians look at atheists and think they're ignorant of the facts. On the basis of nationality, we have a stranger animosity. Conservatives look at illegal immigrants and see them as freeloaders and parasites, while liberals see them as the tired and hungry masses, looking for a prosperous life. Neither group sees them with the dignity that is reserved for people. They both see an entire nation of people as something less than human. "We have to stop them because they're not good enough to help themselves!" cries one side. "We have to help them because they're not good enough to help themselves!" cries the other. Stuck in the middle are an entire mass of people, as diverse as any group of Americans. Here, we have an eager pilgrim looking for freedom. There, we have a drug dealer. Here, we have a father who's looking for work to keep his family fed. There, we have a mother who refuses to work and suck at the golden teat of welfare.

I tried to find a picture of a golden teat,
but they were all NSFW.

So here's a kittie screaming for bacon. Source

My point is, everybody discriminates in some fashion or another. It's only human nature. Living in the Age of Information, we have to sort and compartmentalize facts. There's simply too much to soak in at once. The details of a single individual takes that person an entire lifetime to understand...and we want their life story in two words or less? Everyone does it, but that doesn't make it right. Wow, got off topic. Where was I?

Elitism, right. In a society that is driven by, and starving for, money, it only seems logical for politicians to pander to the one's with the most. If the corporations go under, they'll take the American Machine down with them. We won't have the money to fund a military that protects us from the other side of the world. Sure, they may have no means of getting to us now, but what about the future? That's how defense works, right? My point is, even the most altruistic politician can sit Hugh Grant (not the actor who stutters too much) and try to tell him to stop helping support cancer research (by giving everyone the cancer to begin with) and he'll whip out a tax form. On paper, Monsanto does more to keep this country running than the entirety of Idaho. Does that mean they can get away with whatever they want? In theory, no, thanks to civil rights. In practice, cancer treatment makes alot of people rich.

People have asked me why I make such a big deal about what corporate America is up to. I'll go ahead and tell you. Over the summer, I called out one of my coworkers at a grocery store I worked at. It wasn't even a major one, like Wal Mart, but it was a prevalent enough name that anyone in the southern United States would know the name. This coworker, a dude, repeatedly asked about me being naked. In front of customers, he asked if I sleep naked. I'm no stranger to being hit on by gay guys, but this case was different. The guy was a schizophrenic who believed that he was a Martian vampire who had escaped persecution by hiding out in ancient Egypt.

Looked up retarded Egyptian alien vampire
on Google, this is what I get...pretty close. Source

Needless to say, I was a little upset. I reported him and after much deliberation, they politely told me that I was immature for calling sexual harassment on a coworker and told me it was my fault for dressing so damn sexy. Apparently, stopping by in the morning for my paycheck still wearing pajamas is their cup of tea. So here's where things go from stupid to retarded. I go to the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) to tell them what happened. They tell me the law gives them 90 days to look into the matter, at the end of which they'll call me. Five months go by and I presume they forgot about me...wasn't that far from the truth, actually. After 150 days, I get a letter with the company's testimony.

I'm not going to quote the whole thing for you, but I'll give you the highlights. They said I was a bad worker and that's why they turned down my request to transfer, they denied my allegation that the manager moved my workstation to the back of the store, that managers are supposed to work at the station closest to the front desk, yet I continued to work at the first station in the store...Wow. It was almost like they fed the word "discrimination" into a computer from 1989 and read off what it printed off. None of it had anything to do with anything, but the EEOC told me I had one week to get in touch with them for a rebuttal or my charges would be dismissed. For a week straight, I called them three times a day, leaving one voicemail a day. They never answered, but they did accidentally call me back at one point, say "Oops!" and hang up.

My evasive case worker. Source

So needless to say, they dropped the case. I understand that it wasn't that big of a deal, that I wasn't hurt and it was just a small business. But this is apparently becoming the norm. In a strange way, elitism is becoming the new racism/sexism. When "poor people" complain about something as small as civil rights violations and not being treated like human beings, the State and businessmen exchange a knowing shrug, say "Hush now, the wealthy are talking" and shut the door. In the past, these men did the same thing to other races and genders, but to do so now isn't tolerated.

Day by day, we're creeping towards a nation that consists of an Us and Them mentality. By pandering to the wealthy, Democrats and Republicans alike are widening the gulf between the working class and themselves. Nobody seems to understand that the Producers get their power from the Consumer. They see us as parasites, trying to gobble up what they have and always screaming for more. We see them as parasites, trying to take all that we have and screaming for more.

Is this a Consumer or a Producer? Source

The question: What if both parties are on to something? The answer: you're a dumbass if you think otherwise. The problem is that two organisms that need each other to survive aren't parasites, they're symbiotes. If they could stop seeing the common man as just a machine in a money factory, they'll see that we're human beings. If we could stop seeing them as faceless corporate overlords, we'd see that they're nothing more than we are. Stripped down of all titles and self-proclaimed adulation, people are the same. Your wealth doesn't make you better than anybody any more than your race or gender. The modern world will collapse the day that people look around them and see nothing but people.

This has just been some random thoughts by a casual observer. If you agree or disagree, that's your prerogative. These observations are casual and so I wouldn't be surprised to find them inaccurate and in the end, grossly off-topic. But they're my thoughts and it's boring to keep them to myself.

On Legislating Morality

With election season inching ever closer, the national interest in politics seems to have reached an all-time high since four years ago. It's one of the funny things about politics, most people don't even notice it's there until it comes time to dodge their one responsibility towards it. Indeed, this past election broke records when over 130 million people voted. News agencies made this into an astounding amount, claiming that a 68% voter turnout means "the people have spoken and they want Obama!" That's all well and good, except the math doesn't add up. How does 130 million equal 68% of a country with 313 million people?

I’ll go ahead and get this out of the way: I don’t like Obama. No, I’m not familiar with the Three R’s (Rich, Religious, Republican). I seem to be part of the new American average…meaning I live below the poverty line, of course. I don’t dislike Obama for any racial reasons, seeing that I’m Gypsy and that puts me right between Mexicans and Eskimos in the social hierarchy. Plus, I’m still not exactly clear what ethnicity Obama fits into. He’s kinda like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

I know, Rock, it makes me sad too. Source

No, my disdain for our commander in chief comes from my dislike of tools. There is the long-standing debate over whether or not Obama is Christian or Muslim. Despite his claims of otherwise, people still argue over it. The man is a politician that goes to a Christian church, this means he is a... politician. Everyone seems to forget the one important thing about politics: It doesn't matter who you are, it's what everyone wants that counts. In the entire world of elected officials, there are exactly five open atheists and half of those are interns. It's very likely that Obama, like most of his coworkers, doesn’t have any creed or philosophy that he actually serves. But as long as it empowers the government, he has a presidential boner. Presidential boners are much like regular boners, only they have alot more flags and fireworks and- well, here I'll just show you.

Turns out I'm not allowed to share the presidential boner, but trust me. It's pretty messed up.

I’ll use the recent controversy over birth control as an example. The government wants to include birth control in health insurance packages. That's actually not that bad of an idea. People are in an uproar about it, but not for reasons that pertain to this article. People throw around the words slut and prostitute like Ecstacy at a rave, without even thinking about what they're talking about. Birth control is kind of an essential part of life for me, seeing as I'm broke and married. Last time I checked, the Bible didn't have it in for marital sex, but hey, it's been awhile. But the source of the controversy has nothing to do with the ethics of birth control. It's that the Catholic Church is being shoehorned into this bill. For those not down with the Pope Policy, the Church isn't exactly cool with birth control. Or condoms. Or pulling out. Pretty much any time you pound the genitals and don't make a baby, you're slapping Catholic Jesus in the face.

How could you slap a face like that?    Source

Now, everyone is all in an uproar and flinging great handfuls of poo at each other in debate. These people are arguing over whether or not the Catholic Church is one big He Man Woman Hater's Club, but once again, that's not the point. We're talking about a religion that makes a very big deal about birth control and we're removing every choice they have in whether they provide sinful products to people. It's an irraional choice of sin, but who are we to decide? For perspective, mandate that Synagogues must provide bacon to all who want it and see how that flies. It's just a given: You don't force condoms on Catholics, you don't force bacon onto Jews and Muslims, and you don't force drugs out the hands of American Indians.

In all of this, we have the ancient argument rearing it's ugly head: The Legislation of Morality. It's almost become a given that it's not allowed, but nobody takes the time to ask why. What is legislating morality and how is it any different than legislating...legislation? Why are some things illegal and others legal? This debate comes up fairly often, whether it concerns gay marraige or abortion rights or gambling laws. The whole point is that we're not allowed to impose Judeo-Christian beliefs on people who don't believe, whether they be atheist, agnostic, Muslim, Buddhist, or Jedi.

England is a funny place. Source

This is a double standard, but I'm not going to get into that. I could go on for hours and still not even scratch the surface on the topic of secular animosity towards Christianity. The paradox of legislating morality is that all laws stem from morality. If one were to read the Jewish Law set down in Pentateuch, there is alot that anyone can see God wouldn't care about but seems to. There's even a passage dictating how to cut your hair (Seriously). The problem comes from a misinterpretation of what you're reading. If you look up the Hammurabi Code, you'll see that the Babylonians had a very similar legal system. In the past, it was believed that the gods or God ordained the kings and priests to lead the uneducated masses. Therefore, their legal system was also their moral system. We're just looking at these laws several millenia and thousands of miles removed.

A legal system is a society's moral system. They are one and the same. The statement that "justice is blind" has been used by several judges and lawmakers to excuse when the law harms the innocent and protects the guilty. When you hear someone say a verdict wasn't fair or right, that they were justified by the law, that person doesn't know what they're talking about. The very nature of the law is to provide fairness and rightness in a world that has a surplus crop of the opposite. Justice is, indeed, blind, but she is blind to station or power. Justice is the will of the societal gods, even when there are no gods to speak of.

Pictured: Justice Source

A nation's legal system is corrupt if it protects the wrongdoings of the rich and powerful. The point of Law, of society in general, is to provide an equalizer. The weak cannot defend themselves, it is the task of the strong to protect them. Justice protects the abused and provides retribution to the wronged. Justice is the Great Balance, the lynchpin of society. Without it, we would have anarchy and not the good kind. Anarchy is freedom, but it often reveals the dark side of freedom. With nobody to stop them, mad dogs are given free reign to hurt those who are powerless to stop them. When we live in a society where people are protesting Wall Street for fair wages and the cops are spraying them down with mace and beating them with riot batons, something is very wrong. These are the very people the police are supposed to protect. These are the people who need the law on their side more than anyone. Of course, it doesn't help that these people call the cops names and spit at them, but that's because this is what society has come to. If some asshole were heckling a soldier and said soldier pistol whipped him, this would be seen for what it is: An abuse of power.

Yes, they are mere men, but they are also part of something bigger. I'm not talking about the NYPD or the Army. They are the harbingers of justice and valor, respectively, and should act as such. When you put on the uniform, you become more than just a man, you represent an elemental force of human nature. Do not let aybody drag you down and tell you that you're anything less. A police officer who gets goaded into fights with innocent people or abuses their power, a soldier that opens fire on a crowd of civillians, these are people who either can't handle or don't deserve that responsibility.

Source

Yes, it is a heavy cross to bear, but that is why not everyone can do it. When you put the wrong people in power, you get priests that abuse innocent children, judges that send innocent men to prison, and politicians that take advantage of the System to push their own spiteful agendas.

This has just been some random thoughts by a casual observer. If you agree or disagree, that's your prerogative. These observations are casual and so I wouldn't be surprised to find them inaccurate and in the end, grossly off-topic. But they're my thoughts and it's boring to keep them to myself.

On Pride

Pride is an emotion that everyone knows about, but few understand. Understand, most of the emotional spectrum is largely mysterious but pride is one of the most complex. For literally millennia, philosophers and (more recently) psychologists have tried to figure out what to make of it. To some people, it's a vice and to others a virtue. To the majority, it's both, depending on your perspective. St. John Cassian listed it among the seven deadly sins while Aristotle heralded it as a virtue.
One subject responsible for much controversy is when it's appropriate to be proud. These same people who regularly say that "Pride cometh before a fall" are the first to say that they're proud of their children and to be an American. Race, sex, nationality, sexual orientation, beauty, strength, intelligence, wealth; any number of these can be a source of pride. But there are certain cultural stigmas that make these difficult to express. It's not uncommon to see people who are proud to be black, but nobody seems to be proud of being white. Proud to be gay, proud to be a woman, but no proud to be straight, proud to be a man. It seems like if someone said they were proud to be a white straight American man, he'd find himself tarred and feathered.
Where does this contention come from? I've heard people criticize Black History Month by asking why there isn't a white history month. While the response is generally a sarcastic "Every month is white history month", the question goes unanswered. Why do people find it so offensive to want a white history month? Is it racist to be proud of your race? If so, why does it only apply to whites? My ancestors were Romani or "Gypsies". The Gypsies...well, Gypsies are about two steps to the left from hippies. It's hard to have a slave when you live in a wagon.

The face of oppression?  Source

That being said, why would it be offensive for me to say I'm proud to be white if my ancestors were never guilty of anything worse than petty theft, petty cursing, and petty murder? A large part of it stems from the lack of general understanding of the word "pride". All too often, it's confused with vanity. Vanity is Pride's ugly stepsister who wears too much makeup. Vanity is a false pride. It's pretty much what you call bragging when you're full of crap. Now that I think about it, just about anyone who brags is full of crap.
Vanity stems from an insecurity, a fear that you are not, in fact, fucking awesome.

Pictured: Fucking awesome. Source

 That's the official definition and you can look it up. Go ahead, I'll wait. Done? Good. Like every good thing, there are a bunch of posers who have to ruin it for everybody. Take the Freedom of Speech for example. Absolutely great freedom that we all enjoy, but then you have those people who have to ruin it for everybody. Probably the biggest violators of this inherent trust are the vocal members of the atheist/Christian debate. By citing their Constitutional rights, people feel like they should be able to get away with anything. The First Amendment protects us from government censorship and Freedom of Religion. While it can be claimed that it also give Freedom from Religion, the government has no right to interfere in expressions of religion.
A proud man doesn't need to prove his pride to others. He can say he's proud of his race/religion/appearance/breed of fish and if someone asks why, he says "Because I am." You don't need to give reasons for someone else to know why you're proud. You can if you'd like, but don't ever let the reason  start with a comparison to someone else. If someone says they're proud to be an American because Sudan is an oppressive country, they're not secure in their pride. It's a display of vanity to be proud because you drag down someone else. Who would you say has reason to be proud: the muscle man laying out and getting some sun or the body builder who has to bully people smaller than him?
It's the difference between Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. Whatever you may think of them, their teachings can boil down to this: Malcolm X - "Black people are awesome because white people suck!" Martin Luther King "Black people are awesome!" Don't misunderstand me, I'm not claiming to have an opinion on the significance of either civil rights leader and it's an oversimplification, but you get my meaning. Don't ever say you're proud to be a Christian (or an atheist) because the Muslims (or Christians) do so and so, such and such, blablabla your needs. Maya Angelou said "For Africa to me... is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place." When was the last time you heard someone say something that beautiful about being white?

Simply majestic. Like poetry for the eyes.

But you have to be careful with pride. Look inside yourself and ask if this is really something to be proud of. A perfect example is gay pride. I don't have any opinion on gay people. But is that really something to define yourself with? I've been accused of being metrosexual, but am happily straight. Do I take pride in this? Not really. For most people, sex isn't far removed from assisted masturbation and I don't see anyone taking pride in their Asian midget porn. You have to find what, if anything, defines you. Are you as simple as being summed up by your sexuality? Your race, age, or gender? In the end, can you truly be proud of being anything but you?
Some people take this as proof that pride is useless. This pretty much sums up secularism. Word it how you like, but in the end secularism is the destruction of individualism. A pretty lofty accusation, I know, but hear me out. In a completely secular society, there is no distinction between race, gender, or religion. Everything that separates people is broken down and fades away. There are no white or black people, no women or men (philosophically, not genetically) or religions and nations. This is everything that composes a culture. It is the foundation for globalism, which to some is a good thing. Nothing here but us humans, isn't it great? But...who are we trying to impress? There's nobody to judge us but ourselves and, short of fascism, this system is impossible. It destroys the Archetypal concepts of Father and Mother, Heroes and Villains. With no conflict, how can we define ourselves?
To some, this sounds like I have some kind of agenda when I don't. I don't give two figs about politics or religion, but these issues interest me. I don't hate anyone, nor do I envy other people's lifestyles. I'm happy with who I am and I wouldn't have me any other way. I'm proud of being me. Why?
Because.

On Minumum Wage

Capitalism is a hot topic in this country at the moment, thanks in no small part because of it's failings. There are obvious shortcomings with a system that sees 1% of the population hoarding 42% of the nation's resources. This has resurrected the old debate between capitalism and communism, but I don't rightly see why. Communism has shown to be horrifying when compared to its wealthy cousin and no sane man should want such a thing.

It's been said, perhaps most famously by Whoopi Goldberg, that communism is a great system until you inject people in it. Though cataclysmically stupid, it's true. Just as Christianity is a peaceful religion if not for the people. However, seeing that we live in a society that is populated in no small part by human beings, pipe dreams won't be of any use to us. The same could be said of capitalism, though. On paper, it's a perfect system. In practice, it's still a perfect system...for a few people, at least.

Last year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported an average of 9% unemployment rate. Think about that for a second. Nearly a tenth of the nation was on unemployment and many were working minimum wage jobs. The fact that a minimum wage has to exist shows the inherent flaw of capitalism.

It's a slap in the face, the job's way of saying that if there was a legal way to pay any less, they would. Most people who work these jobs make less than $10k a year, meanwhile it's not uncommon to see their superiors making $50-150k a year. Such was the case at one job that I worked. There are commonly two justifications for this.

The first is that they do more work and so earn their keep. Sometimes this is the case, but more often a store manager will force his managers to shoulder his work. They, in turn, will make their underlings shoulder a portion of what they were given. In the end, the man at the top does the daily work of a secretary. Every worker notices this. If they complain, people will tell them that with his pay rate comes greater risk. If someone else screws up, he gets in trouble. I can think of several of those underlings who would gladly shoulder that kind of responsibility for even a fraction of his pay. The implication is that the responsibility makes the position so much more precarious, but as anyone who has been down-sized can attest, their own positions are far less secure.

The second response is far more insulting: Whoever said life was fair? It's the equivalent of telling your workers "Tough shit." Of course, life isn't fair. But if you tried to take a portion of that manager's salary and distribute it evenly among the workers, what's the first thing he'll say? "That's not fair!" Fairness and equality are only there for people who have it.

The obvious solution to getting out of the soul-crushing trap of minimum wage is to go to college. If you ask anyone what to do, that's their fall-back position. "Go to school and all of your dreams will come true." This past year bore witness to Occupy Wall Street, where the downtrodden workers and unemployed took to the streets in protest. Alot of people make the mistake of comparing them to the hippies of the 60's, but there's one big inaccuracy to that view: Most of these protesters are college graduates. They're not protesting work, they're protesting NOT work.

What we see in this country is a few disgustingly wealthy entrepreneurs, their less wealthy managers, and their impoverished workers. Though a few of that 9% doesn't have a job because they're lazy, the majority plain and simply can't find work. The wealthy elite look down on them with contempt and tell them to get a job and stop being lazy. But here's the coup de grace: Those people telling everyone to get jobs are the very same people who won't give them jobs in the first place!

Here we come to the source of the problem: Employers aren't employing. They say they can't afford to create new positions to hire workers without lowering their own pay. And...your point? A painter paints, a writer writes, and an employer employs. It's literally their social responsibility to provide jobs, but they instead choose to live in comfort and decadence. That sounds like a stereotype, but there is enough of a market for Glace Luxury Ice to be a business. What does this company provide? I'm not going to pretty it up with marketing semantics, it's pretty much spherical ice cubes. It is a ball of ice that costs $5 per chunk of ice!

But back on to the subject of employers not employing. I'll use Wal Mart as an example, since they're everybody's favorite punching bag. I don't have to go into detail about the imperialistic business practices of the company as it has been the subject of much debate for years. In public opinion, a gargoyle swoops down from the volcanic cliffs of Mount Walton and plants a little Wal Nut in an empty field. Lightning strikes and, come morning, a new Wal Mart has been born. I don't know if any of that is factual, but who am I to question the public? So there's a new Wal Mart in town, a single convenience store that provides everything the public needs. Everybody goes there, sucking the smaller local businesses dry of patronage. The Wal Mart hires its workers and then...stops. It has just destroyed the livelihoods of three hundred people and opened up fifty positions. You now have 250 unemployed people, thanks to one business.

But what can be done about that? Not everyone can work at Wal Mart, unless they open up a second store. But then they would be their own competition and whether or not it would pull enough business is questionable, seeing the town's recent spike in unemployment. Maybe they should have thought about that before gobbling up the town's resources.

In the end, that's exactly what people boil down to in a free market: resources. This is a widely accepted view among the business and political world, but the nature of the resource is often lost. Humanity may well be the world's only fully renewable resource, if treated properly. Modern corporate America has lost sight of one of the best lubricants for the economic machine and that's morale. The company's image is very important, not just to the consumers but to the providers. If your workers all say they hate their job, you're not doing your own. Happy employees are the best advertising a company can have.

This doesn't mean to force them to smile, this means to let them smile on their own. Anybody who has eaten at a fast food establishment can vouch for me when I say that a fake smile is very disconcerting. It's an expression often faked and rarely fallen for. How do you make your workers happy? Stop treating them as a disposable resource, for one. They have entered a social contract with you. They need money and you need workers. While you can fill their position with someone else, they can just as easily go work for someone else. With that out of the way, everyone should lower their metaphorical guns and start talking.

As it stands, whether they do a bad job or a good job doesn't matter to them. If they make you money, they won't see a single dime of it. This isn't a problem that can be solved with writeups and terminations, as any negative reinforcement will only worsen the situation. Profit sharing, employee discounts, benefits, all of these will cost you money. But as the saying goes, you need to spend money to make money. Your workers happiness goes beyond a smile, it will also net you their business. In grocery stores and restaurants alike, perks will get an employee to utilize your services. They, in turn, will recommend your services to others. If being socially responsible and kind to your fellow man doesn't get a rise out of you, think of what your paying them as advertising.

If your workers aren't buying from you, they're buying from someone else.

This has just been some random thoughts by a casual observer. If you agree or disagree, that's your prerogative. These observations are casual and so I wouldn't be surprised to find them inaccurate and in the end, grossly off-topic. But they're my thoughts and it's boring to keep them to myself.