Introspection: Epictetus was right

Get over it and get a new lamp, I mean to say.

Despite my happy-go-lucky facade, I'm generally a pretty pessimistic person. I have a pretty poor life compared to the people I know. Still, it's nice to know that I'm at least a bit more sanguine about the future than I was this time last year.

And, really, it's an insult to millions of stoic souls across the globe to say that I have a poor life. Sure, I've been unlucky in a lot of things. I'll almost certainly never be a father, to my regret. I've taken a lot of denigration and contempt from my peers all my life for reasons beyond my control. But I have enough to eat, I can afford to go to a movie or buy a used CD once in a while, and I have parents and a friend or two who love me. And I've never suffered the horror and agony of a loved one being taken from me, praise God.

I get so revolted and sick and scared for the future when I read the news. I always have, even as a kid. Violent crime against human beings and animals fills me with horror. People being beaten and stabbed and shot for nothing. Like the recent story about the Minneapolis nanny who answered an ad for a job and was shot in the back 'for fun" by some 19-year-old piece of human shit. Or the Australian woman with the toddler's body in a suitcase. We don't need to share our limited resources with people like that. They don't deserve "rehabilitation." Kill them all, these vicious monsters. Just feed them to the dogs or something. Fill dishonored and cursed and fallow land with the stinking offal of their putrid corpses.

Lord, how I hate humanity sometimes.