Soul Asylum (the facebook, not the book book version)

I occasionally thank you guys and gals for sticking with me, and now is one of those times. Thank you.

I hope you understand that my point is neither to try to play on your sympathies, nor to force you to do anything other than really think about how you feel. I know that's extremely confrontational for a lot of people, but this segment of Bottle's Life is all about the not lying part. I like to think i understand me fairly well, so i'm trying to show you all of it. 

The honest truth is if you expect me to say working hard, getting along with everyone, being punctual and reliable, helping others, etc. is the secret to success, then you might want to brace for the impact of the shovel i'm going to smack you across the face with, you know, like the 2x4 in Tommy Boy. How many of the "get a job" crowd are perfectly happy with their own job and wouldn't rather be at home sitting on the couch? I'm perfectly happy with my job, and i could live completely within my means if it weren't for the fact that it's not enough to pay for my education that people told me to my face makes me too well educated to work for them. Take those words to heart, me Bottle, i'm too well educated to be allowed to work for whatever money is available. Do you not see how insane that is considering that i am long past the point of being able to teach music theory at a major University? I got nothing but praise the whole way along. I've tried to find some reason why i was terrible, why i deserved to get fired, honestly it would make the whole thing make so much more sense. Show me how i'm a moron, i will actually say thank you. I love being wrong, it means i learn something and i love that feeling. Now, if it turns out that i'm not wrong then you have to trust me that i won't hold it against you, but at the end of most real life arguments people usually say "no, Bottle's basically right." Me being wrong is the first place i look for a solution to any problem, it's always possible.

The point is that i'm trying to follow 'Merica's terribly confusing rule book, but i have to tell you, it's real work. All of which is just the prelude to tonight's topic, that video for Soul Asylum's Runaway Train.

You remember, they used photos of actual runaway kids and many of them were reunited with their families because of it. Is that good or bad? Well, statistically speaking, kids with loving stable family situations don't often run away to be intentionally homeless. Sure, some portion of those kids have legitimate psychological problems, some portion were what we might call melodramatic whiny brats, but some portion were also running away from the very real effects of violent alcoholism and drug abuse, sexual molestation, other forms of abuse, and they very much did not want to be "found." I have no percentages, my point is that it isn't one thing OR the other, it's both at the same time. That video helped some people, but hurt others. You can interpret it however you want to, but even newly teenaged Bottle was wondering how many of those kids were being sent back to the hell they thought they had finally escaped.

I like my job, i'm perfectly happy with my 16.50 an hour, but it's so far below not good enough that it's a coin flip whether or not to throw it in the dumpster and light it on fire.