Munchies are a bitch, and today I really wanted a McGriddle. The problem was that I lived 45 minutes out of town, but not to be persuaded otherwise I jumped in my car with every intention to throw caution to the wind and break every speed limit thrown at me. Time: 9:34 am. 
I topped out probably around 35 mph, but only because a particular Billy Idol song came on the radio and I was understanding the lyrics in an all new way. I hit Blackstone Ave. at 10:23am. I had 7 minutes to travel 5 blocks, I conceived this to be possible, but then I sighted an orange Cal-Trans sign.
“Expect Delays on: TODAY”. Damnit! One lane and every goddamned traffic light tried to slow me down, but nothing could delay me now, “Welcome to the Jungle” just came on the radio and I was in the mood to race. I smoked a mid-eighties Honda Accord, and absolutely raped a 57’ Chevy truck. No one was safe, nothing could stand in the way of me and my Number 7. The left hand turn lane was nearing, and throwing a backwards glance to the world I didn’t even signal. My way was clear, my pedal was at capacity, my clock, still ticking. Time: 10:30 am
Women over the age of 85 were what made me late, therefore I hate them, I hate old ladies with carts, who, ever since petitioning for women’s suffrage in 1920 have run out of meaningful things to demand. Today was apparently pedestrians right’s day and the geriatrics were taking turns walking their carts in front of my car one after the other in a sort of nonviolent resistance. Shopping carts laden with Target brand goods, filthy capitalists. I sat in the same spot idling, just staring at the edifice that housed my tabernacle, only a few yards away, I thought maybe I, like Moses, would never get to see the promised land.
I pulled up to the box that housed a voice coming as if from nowhere. The voice was menacingly cheery, it knew that it would be the cause of the dejection I was about to feel, and was taking joy in depriving me of my holy grail, it ironically belonged to a women. 
She asked me too hold on and then acted like she had left. She wanted me to know that she was in control of the conversation and was asserting it though a sort of forced silence, I could think of nothing clever to say, not knowing at that time that I was dealing with Satan. I was on the offensive, I hated that.
She drew first blood: “Welcome to McDonalds, what can I get for you today?”
“Um…a, ah…number 7 please.” I waited, my breathe held, would my dream come true?
“What kind of drink?”
“Oh shit! I mean, uh…Dr. Pepper.” I got away with it, I felt like I needed 12 other cohorts with whom to celebrate successfully pulling off the biggest heist ever! I envisioned myself eating my McGriddle with a sloppy George Clooney-esque grin on my face, driving into the sunset with Julia Roberts to my right and Brad Pitt in the back seat.
“Alright, so a 5 piece McNuggets with a Dr. Pepper, is that going to be all?” Wait, what? No! No, no, no. I could see her suppressing laughter, all her fellow workers stopped what they were doing to join in the secret hilarity.
“Um, no, I want the sausage egg and cheese McGriddle… the breakfast meal, but the Dr. Pepper part is right.” I added the last part so as to try and seem compromising. Sure, you got my order wrong, but not all of it, your only half of a fuck up.
“I’m sorry ma’am, but were not serving breakfast at this time.” I could envision her holding the mic away from her face and chortling with laughter, saying to herself, “I purposefully confused his gender”. She probably had buck teeth and a cleft palette.
“It’s only a few minutes, come on! Help a brotha out.” I was thinking there was a chance she was ethnic, especially considering the part of Fresno I was in. I knew only a few ebonics, but referring to myself as a ‘brotha’ was my ace.
“I’m sorry ma’am—er, sir, but its company policy.” She was curt, as if the joke was over and she was ready with Pepper Spray at window one if I got too feisty.
“Let me talk to your manager, maybe he has the ability to use his mind for more than just respiration.” I wasn’t going to take this shit, I called in the artillery and started thinking of bigger words to use in the argument that was sure to ensue.
“Your speaking to the manager, and she has the same mind as before.” Her tone dripped of spite.
“Oh good, same dumb bitch then?” Vocabulary fail.
“Excuse me sir?”
Let me talk to the clown! He’s in charge, he’ll give me my goddamned sandwich… whore!.” I didn’t know I was this high, things were getting too out of hand. I did what anybody with the reflexes of Jeff Gordon would do and slammed on my accelerator.
I didn’t hear what she replied back because I was already rounding turn one with my middle finger poised. I was ready to finally look into the eyes of the person who owned the voice I hated, and then tell her to fuck herself using my hand. 
I realized that this wasn’t going to be as dramatic as I had first thought because of the mini van at the next window still waiting for it’s food. Shit. I slammed on my breaks and avoided hitting the assumed asian in front of me, only to take away all menace from my emotional use of symbolism. I felt the burn of unheard laughter as I waited for access to the rest of the shopping center, I looked longingly towards the expanse of the parking lot, where democracy and liberty still existed in the form of Jack in the Box’s 24-hour breakfast deal.

Slim Shady vs. Jesus

I’m eleven years old. I’m on a cruise ship docked at some port in Mexico. I’m with my grandparents and cousins, Sean, and Cara. I don’t know why this chain of memories is significant, but for some reason their retained. Sean had the new Eminem album, either that, or he had a CD with Eminem songs on it. Either way, the song “The Way I am” served a very significant purpose. This song was memorized, analyzed and idolized by me, I knew all the words. At this point I should mention that at this time, I was extremely religious. Any one who knows me, knows the extent to which I intend this statement to serve. I played worship in my middle school youth group, I didn’t know the meaning of the word ‘masturbate’ and id have panic attacks when I thought about the rapture. My bible was riddled with highlighter, my mind centered on evangelism, my heart was constantly offered up in nightly prayers. When I heard Eminem, it was completely foreign, completely vulgar, yet encompassing fascinating. I remember that by the end of the trip, Sean and I were convinced that this CD needed to be destroyed. I still pity the man who had to clean our cabin, because the debris from this sacrifice went allover, as anyone who’s ever snapped a CD in half knows.
My point isn’t to declare my love for wigger rap, or my weakness for a good monotheistic belief system, rather, its to prove to myself and others that, at some obscure point in my life, I was completely devoted to something, even to the extent that i would exterminate anything contrary to it. As I get older, wiser and higher, I realize how rare this is. To convince the human mind of something beyond a shadow of a doubt is a rare thing. Its an attribute possessed by such historical figures as Martin Luther King Jr., Søren Kierkegaard, and even Adolf Hitler. Unfortunately, I’ve made an observation that serves to discredit this habit, and that is simply the fact that nothing can be proved beyond a shadow of a doubt to be true. Prove god exists. Prove murder is wrong. Prove I’m not in the Matrix. BITCH, YOU CAN’T. In order to declare something to be definitive is to, in essence, declare something else to be untruthful.
This can be a frustrating thought to anyone who doesn’t use their brain for more than just meaningless contrived tasks. I’m of the persuasion that to think on a higher level requires one to be unhappy. Granted, its pretentious to label one’s self a ‘higher thinker’, but anyone in agreeance knows what I’m saying. Ignorance is bliss, but only to those who know not that their ignorant, and for whom bliss is comprised of the lack of hardship. I’m not saying that dumb people are religious, or that smart people cant be, to put it simply, I’m declaring that anyone who believes in something wholeheartedly is missing something.
The Chinese culture has a legend about a man who built a boat and lived through a flood. The Muslims’ have a story about a man swallowed by a large fish. The American Indians have a story about a man whose strength found its source in something other than muscle mass. My innermost beliefs are found to be wanting and unoriginal. To believe that one knows the answers to everything is conceited. To throw off the shackles of organized religion and think for yourself is mutiny. Who can be right? Who finds truth in something fundamentally wrong? Why is it that a loving god would create a place of eternal damnation and torture? These are the questions that plague my chemically induced thoughts, these are essentially the issues that try my soul. Anything can be used as a crutch, so what’s to say that everything isn’t a crutch? Existence has been reduced to a system of justification, adaptation, and execution. Meaning has no meaning, worth is worthless. For one to rise above others is to limit the actions of a population, but a population rising above a ruling class is anarchy. To think for yourself is to defy tradition, and the defamation of tradition makes one an outcast, but cultures are different, and the prerequisites for being cast out change, so what defies right and wrong better than relativism?. Where is truth? What is truth? Can truth exist?
At the end of the day, when the clearing of ones mind is necessary to obtain slumber, all of this must be dismissed. The fact that questions of such enormity can be simply swept aside suggests that essentially a human being must do what is necessary to exist. This entire piece is hypocrisy. I must live in order to think, and I must think in order to live, but when thinking puts my existence in peril, who am I to change the train of thought? 
Man is a giant Rubix Cube, except not as color coded. When each side has been successfully organized and completed, we move on to the next puzzle. I find myself stuck, with eight out of nine squares sharing a similar pigment. In order to complete my puzzle, I must reorganize not only one square, but five other sides with a sum of forty five other squares. I’m unwilling to do this so my life remains uncompleted, but who is to say that my mere 8/54 average is bad?