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Its like being an rapist, a burglar. I'm waiting, sitting, sifting. First I just look. Praying for an opportunity, I look, pass over the newest posts, the freshest statements. The new ideas, the questions, the rants and the flames. There's angry people on the internet, people who are just positive that someone else is very, very wrong.

Me, I'm a step above that. I weigh opinions evenly, so long as they're written with near perfect grammar. I allow space for both sides of a debate, look for compromise, because this isn't trolling or ranting, this is the search for perfection.

So I wander, like a burglar, through each thread, casing the joint, discovering the ins and outs of their arguments, peeling meaning from their intent, and their intent from their words the way you'd peel clothes from a lover. I'm poised to strike, starving for it.

The hunger's real, the pressure for that discourse, discourse as treatment, as salvation, as competition. I'll lay down words, letter by letter, phrase by phrase, looking to tear right to the heart of things, to lay their secret meanings out to the crowd, to explain just what's been argued, and why they agreed. Where the bias is, that I see. Where the lies hide, the hypocrisy, the just understated rhythms of the words.

Because me, I'm a dive bomber, a hawk, a dragon, starving for that perfect statement, that bit of connection where I put the innards of what they've said, lain bare, right back on the table, and I tell them that they're wrong. They're wrong, and they couldn't even tell, because they're sitting in a universe of conformation bias and bile.

The hunger's there, the pressure's building. Someone, somewhere, is wrong on the internet. I just haven't decided who, yet.

You deserve bad kids.

There's a gap in social security. A giant hole, which Gen X, and Gen Y, have grown up vaguely aware of. Children have learned in school that the money is running out. They're used to the idea that though they see social security deductions on their paychecks, they'll never actually see social security. They've come to terms, and accepted, because what else is there to do?

Well, we could be mad, and we still might be. We could be furious, ranting, screaming children. We could break things, we could riot. There's really no use in that, and we've been taught, well enough, to remain civil. Because our homes are nice. Unless they're not, in which case we politely decline to notice. Our families are of course intact. Unless they're not...

And beyond being well taught, well trained, well educated little drones, the number doesn't make sense. Its ridiculous. It makes me giggle.

What's the number?

$54,232,674,000,000 Fifty Four Trillion Dollars.
We owe that. Us. Americans. Right now. The nation will produce about 14 trillion worth of goods this year, but its ok. We're de-leveraging. Paying it off. The number's falling. That's really just the first of a series of punches, lined up for us by the jokes of our parents.

Here's another number:
$109,214,000,000,000 One Hundred Nine Trillion Dollars
A hundred million millions, and that is what social security cannot cover. Yet.

The joke, then, is the idea that social security will end. That the smaller generation of children will vote against their aging parents on social security reform. That we wont shoulder the three hundred fifty thousand per Millennial.

Waste

Some days, its streaming, steaming, storming from your fingertips, a sluice like rain rushing off the shingles, into gutters, down, onto streets, right off the curb, pattering, pattering, slamming down the trunklines, roaring as they meet, a thousand synapses fire and meaning pour down toward my fingers. My feet rap staccato, nervous twitches, but those aren't the words, not related.

Even my breath comes in broken gasps, heaving. and then, suddenly, its gone. Everything, wasted.

There's power in a blank page, a potential, much the same as a brick suspended. The second time, the third, that power is tinged with dissapointment, more and more.

Moral? Save often.