Anger - Writers Forum

Xejon · 03-11-2008, 04:28 PM

WARNING: SOME ADULT LANGUAGE

Anger

The soul is a meaningless concept. Religious experiences can be duplicated with drugs. A human being is a brain, a lump of meat and electricity that gets so complicated that it has to invent reasons to justify its own existence. And to cope with the fact that one day it will end.

And that’s why I’m afraid of myself.

Once in Russia there was an ex-boxer who caught a man pants-down in an alleyway with his eight-year-old son. After restraining him, getting the child away, and calling the police, the ex-boxer went back to the young man in the alleyway and beat him to a red, wet death. At least, he says so. It’s possible that he turned the man into steak tartare because he was an Uzbeki, and there are just too many fucking Uzbekis taking the work of honest, vodka-swilling Russians.

Most people think that the first reason for killing the man is excusable. That same demographic thinks the second reason is worse. I think they’re equally horrible. Why? We’ll get to that later.

When I was sixteen one of my friends was with me at a concert. We had been camping in this field for a day to get a seat. As a joke, she splashed some water on me. I wheeled around and kicked her as hard as I could.

When I was twenty-two I was drunk and antagonizing a friend. She kicked me in the side of the face, breaking my glasses, and I’m not sure what restrained me from snapping her arms in half. I’d like to think it was love of some kind, whatever that is. Or maybe the witnesses.

I once knew a guy who got drunk and flew into a rage about a pack of cigarettes.

Jarrett beat his girlfriend in high school because she was talking to another guy after class.

In Salem they burned real witches.

When I see a soccer riot in South America I think about the twelve-year-old who will live the rest of his life with one lung because he was wearing a red and white scarf.

When I hear someone tell me that the coloreds are bringing down the community, all I can see are desiccated Jews tumbling into mass graves.

A human being is a brain, a lump of meat and electricity that is programmed to act in certain ways. This person who strikes me is a threat, kill her. This person from another tribe is a threat, kill him. Their skin is a different color, kill them. Protect my children: kill them kill them kill them. The brain only cares about morals and reasons when it isn’t caring about surviving or eating or fucking.

As the number of unwed men in a society rises, the rate of rape and murder skyrockets.

Some day I might not be getting my dick sucked enough and stick a pencil through the neck of the person next to me. Some sunny weekend afternoon I might get cut off on the freeway and then speed up to sideswipe the bastard off a bridge.

The man on the bus next to me might be beating his wife and kids because he didn’t get a promotion. The woman across the aisle might drown her newborn twins because her husband is fucking his secretary.

There are a hundred thousand beautiful experiences in this world, and six billion people who will slit your throat if they don’t get enough of them.

One time I told a philosophy major that I could prove the existence of physical reality, and so I punched him.

-3/11/08

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A really short piece I wrote as a part of our assignment on minimalism. Any comments, critique, etc. are welcome.

Katastrof · 03-11-2008, 05:44 PM

Hmm. Not bad, but in my read-through of this I wasn't sure whether it was an essay or a short story (as it claims to be). By essay, I mean the informal kind. IMO it reads too much like that. For example:

Quote:

Most people think that the first reason for killing the man is excusable. That same demographic thinks the second reason is worse. I think they’re equally horrible. Why? We’ll get to that later.

This sounds like the thesis:

Quote:

A human being is a brain, a lump of meat and electricity that gets so complicated that it has to invent reasons to justify its own existence.

And these sound like the examples:

Quote:

I once knew a guy who got drunk and flew into a rage about a pack of cigarettes.

Quote:

As the number of unwed men in a society rises, the rate of rape and murder skyrockets.

The part where I glimpsed the actual short story was at the end, when the MC (or author?) punches the philosophy major in the face. Write a short story of that with this theme (anger) in mind and you'll have something.

Xejon · 03-11-2008, 06:04 PM

To tell you the truth I don't know whether it is a short story or an essay. I don't know what you'd call it. I'm glad to hear you addressing the point though.

SevenWritez · 03-11-2008, 06:59 PM

I liked this a lot. You didn't beat around the bush and basically punched me in the face. I'd give a critique but I'm a bit teepsy yeh'shee so yesh I jush say thish. Anyways, nice job, again, I really liked this. (I can't construct an indepth sentence; I apologize.)

Katastrof · 03-11-2008, 07:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xejon

To tell you the truth I don't know whether it is a short story or an essay. I don't know what you'd call it. I'm glad to hear you addressing the point though.

Ya I know what you mean, it's hard to figure out where informal essays fit in. Anyways, as an in. essay, it was pretty good. You gave a lot of examples, and if you explained them a bit (not all but somewhere in those 7 examples) it would really drive the point home. And the last sentence, I think, would read better as:

One time I told a philosophy major that I could prove the existence of physical reality. He didn't believe me. I punched him.

Reilly Roark Larson · 03-15-2008, 09:21 AM

This is just an observation. You're talking about aggression stemming from the innate survival instincts we all have. I thinks its very interesting that the tone and language of the piece is so aggressive. It seems like you're, for lack of a much better word, preaching about the cruelty of societies that grow from differences while your words are a form of aggression attacking the mindsets of readers. Just my screwed up perspective.