The Kind-Hearted Smart Aleck

I'm not going to beat around the bush (literally or figuratively); it's been a rough end to the year. I'm still not exactly sure what happened Saturday night. Everything's still kind of a blur (and yes, I was completely sober). All I can remember is alternately feeling warm and cold, being unusually shaky, and before I knew it, experiencing heart palpitations like never before, having extreme difficulty breathing, and reaching a point where I thought I wasn't going to live much longer. An emergency vehicle arrived shortly thereafter, rushed me to a local hospital, where I got fully hydrated and settled down, to the point where I was released early the next morning. It was a struggle the next three days, though, as I found myself having trouble sleeping, feeling anxious as deja vu struck me while laying in bed, and thinking about my breathing, almost paranoid about it, much more than usual. Four days after the frightening experience, while I still feel alternately wa...

With each and every election cycle, I begin to increasingly wonder if the Republican Party will change its name to the Oligarch Party. For as pro-freedom and liberty as their rhetoric typically is, it amazes me how anti-democratic the Republican Party has become. Allow me to compare the two parties on this front: Democratic Party - Wants to overturn Citizen's United so that corporations are limited in their campaign donations - Doesn't believe corporations are people - Wants to expand voting efforts to maximize voting on election day - Believes a strong economy is build from the base up - Doesn't believe in repressing certain demographics of voters Republican Party - Wants to maintain the Citizen's United ruling so corporations aren't limited in their campaign donations like people are - Believes corporations are people - Wants to restrict voting on election day - Believes in trickle-down economics - Believes in repressing certain demographic...

David Marsters lives in Sabattus, Maine, and is a conservative candidate for a town position there. He just recently received a visit from the Secret Service after he posted an article about President Obama on Facebook, along with the words, "Shoot the n****r." After receiving the visit, Marsters said this: "[They] didn't see no pictures of Obama with bullet holes in his head. It's not a threatening statement, in my opinion, People take it out of context as a threat." He also claimed he wasn't a racist, saying, "White people are n****rs, too." As if this wasn't enough, Marsters told the Bangor Daily News  that due to Obamacare, his wife will no longer have health insurance, saying, "I'm pissed off at the system, OK. We're about to lose our benefits because of this a**hole." First off, that Obamacare myth has been debunked, so Mr. Marsters can refrain from insulting the president - or in his mind, complimenting hi...

So, I was kind of torn on what to do Friday night. My girlfriend was getting her hair done and wasn't going to be able to do anything until 11-11:30. My father had just returned to the States from Canada and was pretty tired, so if he and I were to go out, it wouldn't be for long. It had been roughly two months since I had gone to a local pub I frequented. I decided to try and please everybody, so I went with my father to a restaurant/pub to listen to a band for one set and have a drink or two. I then decided to go solo to that before-mentioned local pub, and told my girlfriend, if she wasn't too tired when she finished everything, she could meet me up there. I received an e-mail from her around 11:30 telling me she was done with everything, but was too tired to meet up that evening. Things had been going fine that night until about 1:45 am, and for the first time in my life, from that point until I woke up the next morning, I can't remember a single thing. Fortunatel...