“Monsieur!”

He stops for a second, wondering how those voices sound so close, he knows hes on the 7th floor and he knows what typical voices far below sound like.  He takes another bite of his overly priced pizza and continues writing.  A few moments later, he hears, 

“Monsieur avec le pizza!“

Understanding that the shouting was for him he turns around to investigate.  What he sees is two young girls running out of his eyesight.  He realizes this story is short and uninteresting but he continues writing in the third person, breaking the forth wall for the fifth time.  Six people have ever shouted at him, he remembers one like it was yesterday, most likely because it was yesterday.  

He was walking the streets of paris with his new friend Neal, unaware of where they were, or where they were going for that matter, they stumbled upon many an unlucky soul.  Homelessness has risen in France in the recent months, he only knows this because an uptight, yet devastatingly attractive, chain smoking, Parisian girl who he met at a bar rather unexpectedly, explained to him in her broken english: “Ze...ze new president, uh he just - how you say?”  She turns to her friend and after a moment of discussion they turn back and say, “He puts ze money in ze garbage.  Zis is why zere are many homeless peoples.”  

Armed with this information, he wanders aimlessly through the streets of Paris, saying no to homeless person after homeless person. 

Its important to note that he feels incredibly guilty for having to say no, he would like to help them all.  He rationalizes not helping using the following: firstly he doesn’t have the money, secondly, there are some people who don’t even look homeless asking for money which leads him to suspect that they are just taking advantage of good spirited samaritans, but thirdly (and most importantly) it wasn’t twenty minutes at the train station waiting for Neal to pee when a woman came up to him asking him to sign a petition and make a small donation.  When he pulled out a 20 euro note instead of the intended 5 euro note, she moved her thumb away from the small letters saying ‘minimum 20 euro donation’  and took his money.  

He is surrounded by both homeless people and scam artists, both of which are usually praying on the innocent tourist.  He honestly believes that if people wanted to help the homeless, scam artists should stop being such dicks and get real, honest jobs, but he’d never say this out loud in fear of some illogical happening in which a bystander over hears him saying this in english, and in a bout of richeous indignation takes out one of those baseball bats with nails sticking thru it (the kind you’d use during the zombie apocalypse) and bashes him over the head with it.  When in reality if he did say something, most people in the world, (save the scam artists and their future employers) would agree with him and he might have been able to start a revolution, saving innocent tourists and homeless people alike.  

Now armed with this infallible information from a credible and reputable source (sarcasm) he walks on; saying no to various homeless people only to realize that both he and Neal have walked in a gigantic circle, and have met one of their homeless friends for a second time.  Both he and Neal recognize this immediately and try to hide their amazement and keep a calm composure when he asks in both french and english “Excuse me, can you spare some change?” 

Now stop.  Our main character now knows that either the homeless man is crazy or he simply doesn’t recognize that he’s asked them before, in either case he knows that any form of humor would be lost on him and most likely taken insult to.  Unfortunately he only knows this because he’s already made that mistake.  

He reacts as per usual but only when further provoked does he add, “Dude, you’ve already asked us, we don’t have anything.”  He turns to walk away and shrugs the situation off.  The homeless man shouts something incomprehensible to even the french ear and punches our main character in the center of the back, throwing him forward.  

So yea, that was the fifth person to have yelled at him.  

LOVE.  

-R-

Because I am still technically a teenager, I spend a lot of my time looking for things to complain about.  Dogs barking at the slightest creak of a floorboard, the street cleaner doing his job at a time that inconveniences me, but especially people who say “EX-PECIALLY” instead of how its supposed to be pronounced “ESPECIALLY!”  

I digress.  

I’ve been thinking a lot about change lately, more specifically my own change, how I am going to become the person I’d like to be.  When I’ve thought about my own change in the past, I always thought it would be like the scene in ‘BIG’ where Tom Hanks wakes up wearing clothes that were too tight for him, hitting his head, and within a few days he is acclimatized to the situation.  In this case, change happened to him, and he reacted accordingly.  But what if change isn’t something that happens to you, but instead its something you do to yourself?  

Well if that is the case, that you control your own change, why is it so difficult to do the things you know are good for you?  The short answer is “I don’t know.” but thats boring, so I’ll have an educated guess for your enjoyment.  My first instinct is to say its a battle between your frontal lobe and your hippocampus, your frontal lobe, knows that if you eat an apple instead of a McDonald’s apple pie, you will feel better for it, it also says that you should stretch instead of sitting curled up in your sweaty clothes watching Breakout Kings, into the early hours of the morning.  

Your hippocampus on the other hand is the stupid, overtanned, oversexed guy who says YOLO sincerely.  He’d fit perfectly in and episode ‘Jersey Shore,’ but we we want to be on the preferable 1970s western, ‘Kung Fu’ where David Carodine displays massive self control likened to that of a mother of three in a toy store.  It thinks that you’ll never see food again and tells you to pick up that apple pie and keep watching crappy TV shows because after all “YOLO!”  

You know I say, “Fuck you Hippocampus! I’m going to find a way to work around you, and be the person that I want to be, I’m going to live for me, not for survival.  I’m going to exercise, stretch, and eat healthy, right after one more episode of ‘Breakout Kings’

LOVE.  

So I don't think I have quite figured this whole blogging thig out yet. Yesterday I wrote this 7-8 paragraph post, it was insiteful, poignant and meaningful. (three words meaning the same thing)

I needed to go to work that night and just clicked out of my web browser, unknowing that all the content I had created would be deleted. So here's what is like you to do: imagine yourself extremely entertained, satisfied and slightly uneasy about my depth. Try and keep the thought "wow he's deep" going through your mind as long as possible.

Have you done it?

Good. Now I've succeeded in my endeavor in a)posting a blog post and b)putting you in awe of my amazing-ness.

P.s. I am writing and posting this from my phone so please ignore and accept any spelling or formatting mistakes. And if you can't do that, kids my ads. ;-)