Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes
LA’s #1 avant-garde personal development program. I'm Emerson Dameron. I love you, personally. Levity saves lives.
The home of Ask a Sadist, Bite-Sized Erotic Thrillers, and the First Church of the Satanic Buddha. Levity saves lives.
Regularly scheduled episodes premiere on the first Wednesday of the month on KCHUNG Los Angeles.
Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes
You're Like Me
Accept your mediocrity. Give up your dreams. Enjoy your hobbies. And free yourself to go fully off the rails.
Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes is a production of KCHUNG. Donate to KCHUNG today.
Music by Visions of the Universe. Written, performed, produced, and created by Emerson Dameron, who is solely responsible for its content.
Portions of tonight's show are self-plagiarized from Emerson's pieces on Recommend If You Like.
Follow Emerson on Instagram for more Bite-Sized Erotic Thrillers.
Embrace mediocrity, give up your dreams, enjoy your free time and then, when the angst sets in, set your life on fire. You're the most loyal friend anyone could hope for. You're sensitive and care deeply about the people you love, and that means you know their weak spots. You love and that means you know their weak spots, so hit them where it hurts. Betray your best friends and deeply insult the rest. Get new friends who challenge you, winners who deserve your company. Take a mental health day off work tomorrow and go on that drug binge you've been putting off. Not all the drugs, just that one you like a little too much. Get a prominent tattoo that's aesthetically beautiful but way, way off-brand for you. Loudly and repeatedly express a disgusting opinion you don't agree with. Who knows, you might change your mind. Perform every sexual perversity you've ever hated yourself for wanting. Anything goes, as long as you keep it in the alley behind your new favorite dive bar. Hey, I love everything about you except your hypocrisy. You're not as wholesome as you want people to believe, and we're both gonna like the new you. I need to shake things up. You need to hit bottom before you get help. So let's make a reputational suicide pact and see if we still have any idea how to have fun.
Speaker 1:K-chung is a celebration of the street-level activism, experimental theater, comedy and performance art, wildly eclectic music and edge-of-the-world weirdness of the most diverse city on Earth. We're LA's Rebel Radio family, the hub for Southern California conversation and chaos. We do a lot with a little and we need your help in the form of your hard-earned frog skins. Go to kchungradioorg. Slash, donate, give what you can and be honest. Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes is LA's number one avant-garde personal development program.
Speaker 1:I'm Emerson Dameron. I'm the producer and host of Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes, but I'm not the most interesting character in the show, because we're dedicated to exploring the most fascinating subject in the world. You Come for the discussions of power, philosophy, psychology, sex, drugs, etc. And stay for the inspiration, motivation and tools of self-inquiry that have transformed the lives of countless listeners. I don't know how many, it's a lot. It's no coincidence that this show has spawned not one, not two, but three quasi-religious movements. Find out which one is right for you. Episodes premiere on K-Chung, los Angeles, 1630 am K-Chungradioorg First Wednesdays of the month, 7 pm Pacific. The podcast is at medicated-minutescom.
Speaker 1:Levity saves lives. Levity saves lives. It's where you can get the podcast, because you really need more podcasts in your life, there aren't enough. Still catching on, still hockey stick growth in the podcast world, and I'm just honored to be part of that. I am Emerson Dameron.
Speaker 1:I am the producer, writer, director, host of Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes, the number one avant-garde personal development program in Los Angeles. But I'm not the star, because that would be you. I'm holding space and the music is by Visions of the Universe, and none of this would be possible if it weren't for the good offices of K-Chung. But this is the show about you. It would be the tools of self-inquiry to work on yourself, and that might not always be pleasant. It could even take over your life for a while. I don't know if that's necessarily a bad thing. It depends on what kind of life is being taken over. If you need to declare ontological bankruptcy and stop being yourself, which I think is a good thing to try. This is an experiment. Take a little run, spring off of your own worldview, your own experience of yourself through the lens of your own identity. I'm more than happy to fill you up entirely with the magic of Emerson Dameron's medicated minutes.
Speaker 1:We have a diverse portfolio. We have not one, not two, but three quasi-religious movements that have been spawned by the show. One of them is a lot less toxic than the other two. The First Church of the Satanic Buddha is not the worst thing you could fill your life with If you're in a period of transition. I'm certainly familiar with that, I'm just getting used to it at this point the chaos, the confusion, the scrambled sense of identity. But if you want to refurnish your psychic lodge, the First Church of the Satanic Buddha is a stylish way to do that and you can have a lot of fun. And it's got variety, you'll not get bored. There's excess, there's a little bit of self-denial and there's a a moderation, and all of that is in moderation. First Church of the Satanic Buddha. Proud sponsor of Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes.
Speaker 1:If you do exchange your belief system, friend group, sense of self, sense of place wholesale, sense of self, sense of place wholesale then make sure that you love the process. We call it doing the work, because it's not always easy, and I do certainly celebrate hard work for other people. My income has to come from somewhere and I need for people to work hard and support this show and Kei-Chung by the sweat of their brow, because I'm an ideas guy. I put other people to work. So if you support me in that, I support you in all of your hard work and the honing of your work ethic. But make sure it's not all work.
Speaker 1:Doing the work should be a glorious adventure. It should be an exuberant expression of human creativity. You're allowed to be a star. You are allowed to hang on to your ego. If you do experience ego death, you probably shouldn't brag about it. And you are encouraged to confront your demons and just kick it with them. Start a band, start a bowling league. Who says you don't have friends? Just look at all those demons. That's your crew right there. Let them in. They take their coffee black.
Speaker 1:I'm just assuming I do have a reminder. I can't stand it when people say a friendly reminder, that is one of my pet peeves. If it's friendly, you don't have to tell me that it will come across even in text. If you say that, it's kind of like a beat-up old car with a license plate that says touch of class on it. If you have to tell me that you're being friendly, you're just taking away my privilege of being annoyed with you, and that's stuff I don't like, and that's stuff I don't like. So here's a reminder from me to you, and it's not going to be excessively friendly.
Speaker 1:You are smart enough to know exactly what you're doing. We don't have a lot of dummies listening to this show. Playing dumb is not your style. Sometimes it can be interesting to see a brilliant person play dumb, but you cannot hide your intelligence it glows in the dark. You're very, very smart and you're particularly adept at storytelling, social dynamics, power status, game playing. You play to win and you're smart enough to know what you're doing and know that you're playing rough. You are screwing with people's heads. You are hurting and humiliating people for fun. You got hurt at some point and hurt people, hurt people, so that's what you're doing. It's a circle of life, a circle of hurt, and it's a power trip, and you know this because you're smart enough to know this. You're not necessarily good at being alive as a species.
Speaker 1:I'm kind of down on humanity. I feel like we're the only animal that's not doing the best that it can to be itself. We're slackers and we have way too much power, and all the other life on Earth would be far better off without us. So voluntary human extinction would be far better off without us. So voluntary human extinction, if not now, then early to mid-next week, but as long as we're here.
Speaker 1:I think just getting through the day requires a certain threshold of denial. Like we need to believe in free will, we need to think that we're making decisions and it takes some intelligence to be wrong usefully and effectively. And in your case that means you deny, compartmentalize, you shift blame, you play the victim and you convince yourself Because you are confident enough to uh, not relish the status of victimhood but definitely play the part of a high-status person temporarily knocked off balance, whom everyone is rooting for to get their balance back, because having someone with that kind of confidence is rare and it can be intoxicating to be around. But you're also smart enough to know that the shadows will grow long. Everything you say has like four different meanings, but on a long enough timeline people will figure out what you're communicating and they might not like it, what you're communicating and they might not like it. And you can bristle when people call you out.
Speaker 1:But you're smart enough to know that it's time to grow up before you find out who your real friends are. And it's not hard. You can win my trust back quite easily. I never stop liking you and you can look up on the internet how to give a sincere and meaningful apology and it'll just walk you right through it. I know you don't like formulas, but sometimes when you use the formula, your real self comes through. You gotta learn to play standards on the piano before you play jazz and if you have a nice strong personality, that's gonna come through, you don't have to worry about that. You're not gonna lose your personality or your essence. Those edges cannot be sanded off. You're too self-evidently intelligent and honest for that. You are painfully honest with other people. It is time for you to hurt your own feelings and get real about what you're doing and understand why it doesn't sit well with some folks and I'm sure you can figure out how to work through all of that and stop telling on yourself.
Speaker 1:And blow me Figuratively, not literally. Literally is for closers. And blow me Figuratively, not literally. Literally is for closers. I'm in a mood. I have been for a hot minute. It's not really about you. If you hear something that you think is about you, you're probably wrong, but if you ask me about it, I might start talking about you. I'm just salty.
Speaker 1:It's been almost exactly a year since my divorce became street legal. It was a transformational experience. I wouldn't say I don't wish it on my worst enemy, because there are certainly people in a particular echelon that I would like to see go through that, and it's readily available. More and more people are taking advantage of the power of getting divorced and I think everyone should do it, just so we're all. We've all been on that journey together. We're. We have a baseline of common experience, because it is a dramatic mind screw and I just think it changes you, not necessarily in a good way, but if it changed everyone then it wouldn't really matter because we'd all be in the same place.
Speaker 1:So if you're married, get divorced as soon as possible. If you're single, get married and then get divorced. Stay married for long enough that you're getting a real divorce, not an annulment. That's just not cool. And experience for yourself the exquisite, exhilarating, terrifying freedom. Being a true rebel, I was calling BS on marriage, the mortgage and the monogamy. It was just created to stop peasant revolts.
Speaker 1:You're Henry VIII. Do you want to live a life of quiet desperation with somebody you barely even know anymore? It's only been a couple of years or do you want to be King Henry VIII and just have the confidence and attitude to get divorced and then create an entire new religion so you can get married to your rebound crush and then behead your rebound crush. You tell me who do you? Which team do you want to be on?
Speaker 1:It's true that, unless you are royalty, divorce is really expensive. You don't have to worry about money anymore because all of yours will be gone and you can embrace the minimalist lifestyle. Do some dumpster diving, maybe become a freegan. That means you can eat anything as long as it's free. You'll lose some people you thought were your friends, but with any luck, your estranged spouse will start a smear campaign against you and try to ruin your reputation Because that will make you seem dangerous, and you will have sex with people hotter than you ever thought would be possible. And that's a lot better than getting on the dating apps, although even if you have to resort to that, it's an interesting time.
Speaker 1:A lot of fun lifestyle choices that used to be verboten or frowned upon are now entering the mainstream, like kink, bdsm, ethical, non-monogamy, non-ethical, non-monogamy, non-consensual, non-monogamy. It's all in the cards and you can hash out any damage that you took any lingering pain from your last relationship. In your new relationship, you'll feel big feelings. You'll appreciate great art. You don't have to get divorced. I'm not going to tell you what to do, but if you don't get divorced, you'll never appreciate Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or the song Monkey Wrench by the Foo Fighters in the same way that I do. So just keep that very much in mind, thank you.
Speaker 1:There are many, many things I like about you. One of the things that I like about you is that you are like me a lot more than you know, more than you realize, and certainly more than you know, more than you realize and certainly more than you care to admit. I've served as the devil on your shoulder on occasion. I would have ruined your life before if I thought that's what you needed, but you are so competent and successful and responsible. Competent and successful and responsible, and it is remunerative and you have a great life. You are loved, you are reasonably comfortable, you are well compensated and respected. We need to talk about jazzing up our relationship. Every anniversary gets a little less interesting.
Speaker 1:It's okay to be mediocre. I'm no enemy of mediocrity per se. Some people aren't built for fun. There's something to be said for giving up your dreams and enjoying your free time. The sex might be boring, but the tax breaks are great. There's the mortgage to worry about.
Speaker 1:Everyone gets a little set in their ways and gets in the groove, and there's some comfort in that, particularly if you've had times of turbulence in your life. Particularly if you've had times of turbulence in your life and you are the sort of person who can convince yourself that you're happy without drugs or good sex or fun, and if it's okay to be mediocre. And if it's okay to be mediocre, that means that it's not necessary to be great or even good, which implies that it's also okay to burn it all down and salt the earth so that nothing else may grow there. Nothing else may grow there. That's right. I think it's time that we make a reputational suicide pact and destroy our lives and much in the way that. There's always that itch that you can't quite scratch yourself. If there's a little bit of your life left, I'll destroy it. If there's a little bit of mine, you can have that privilege. Someone will take our places when we're gone. It will be the same without us. If you don't have haters, you're doing something wrong, which implies that if everyone hates you, you're never wrong. You've never made a bad move. You are perfect, nearly flawless. You're already pretty great.
Speaker 1:You are one of a kind, certainly one of my at least five to seven favorite people that I've ever known. Personally. You're the best friend anyone could possibly hope for. You treat your friends like gold. Your consideration is almost better than sex Not really, but I can say that and part of me believes it. Your friends have no idea how anyone could possibly hate you. Some of the people in your stories obviously fell out with you. You have a constellation of embittered former friends and lovers who have ghosted you and blocked you on everything, and everyone's kind of perplexed and flummoxed because you are so considerate that it's just hard to imagine. You know them a lot better than they know you. You are piercingly perceptive. You know them a lot better than they know you. You are piercingly perceptive. Very little gets past you. You are intolerant of BS and you hide things. You hide certain things from certain people. You don't hide anything from everyone and there's stuff that I've seen that I don't think anyone else has and I definitely don't think that they have. It doesn't compromise any of your sterling qualities You're caring, sensitive, perceptive, incandescently brilliant, creative, hilarious.
Speaker 1:You have an enormous heart and that's really value neutral. You can use your enormous heart for anything. Your gothic, romantic sensibilities have all sorts of potential applications and perhaps you have not found every use case. Maybe you have not yet found the killer app for your high level of sensitivity. You are sensitive in a way that only a purely selfish person can really pull off, and I don't think you've really combined those things yet. You see right into people and through them you know what they want. You've been known to help them get it, which, as we know, pretty much always ruins someone's life. You stay strong so that other people can break down, and they always break down in front of you and they summon you when they know that they're going to break down, because they know that you can witness it and hold it and handle it and they can be complete ingrates and get away with it, because that's just how kind and considerate and loyal a friend you are.
Speaker 1:But with all the information that you have, all the perceptiveness and sensitivity, you can do some serious damage, and it's time I know what kind of pleasure you're capable of. I've witnessed it. It I don't know if you have experienced the joy of stimulating yourself to climax nearly and edging yourself while you're in the process of ruining someone's life. But I think you might really enjoy it. Not your own life, that's easy. Anyone can do that. I'm thinking of someone else's Because in that moment you become the sort of person that you would fear and grudgingly respect, the sort of character that appears in your stories, that does horrible things but yet for whom you obviously harbor some esteem.
Speaker 1:You could be a hero. We could be heroes. Hurt people, hurt people. You are a hurt person. You're not hiding that well, so let's offload that. It's time for you in particular to hurt people.
Speaker 1:Obviously, you start with someone, an individual. I don't think there's anything interesting about going on social media and alienating everyone at once, passively, without really risking anything. But to lose everything puts you in a state of grace that's hard to imagine or explain. If you've never done it, just know that it's better to be the boss and that's what people want, and you can't establish your authority unless you occasionally throw someone against the wall. I don't think you're actually gonna go through with this. I don't think you're gonna change anything. I don't think that you would if you could, and I don't think you can. And what's wonderful about that is that leaves you free to imagine anything. You are safe in your current life. You're never really going to change anything.
Speaker 1:Take a moment and dream about the power you could hold if you utterly betray your best friends. Inner circle, like maybe a dozen people, you seem to have a lot of close friends compared to some folks Distributed all over the country. So let's just start with the locals. Think of the top let's say seven people and figure out how you can knife them in the back and twist it hard and be Ice Cube, knocking them out and Chris Tucker coming and laughing in their faces as they lie on the ground and hit them with the kind of betrayal that makes it impossible for them to ever trust anyone again. They'll never forget it. No one else will ever forget it. Everyone else will be kind of secretly gratified watching it happen because of the schadenfreude and because it didn't happen to them yet. It'll be a blast, uh, nothing but upside.
Speaker 1:Betray your friends and deeply insult the rest, all the acquaintances, all the other people in your dunbar number, like friends on social media, etc. Just deeply insult them. You know how to do that. I've seen you do it by accident. Quote, unquote, when you were kidding, quote unquote just do it for real. Uh, you can. You how you can put some plausible deniability in there if that makes you feel good. I know everything you say has like four different meanings and you know how plausible deniability works and if that's fun, you can put that in there, bake it into the cake.
Speaker 1:The important thing is that you insult your friends and cut them down. Insult your friends and cut them down and insult them in such a way that is going to be churning away in their hearts and brains for the rest of their lives, and then you will take out the garbage, you will clean house and you will inevitably get an entirely new circle of friends of the caliber that you deserve, friends who understand your capacity for evil. That will join you in a very interesting book club. I would imagine. A lot of forbidden how-to manuals, winners, people that deserve your time. But you know, I think the reason that you're probably giving me that look like there's just no way you're ever going to consider any of this or take it seriously is that you're exhausted and that figures you work hard, harder and harder all the time for diminishing returns, for slackening rewards, for being taken for granted, because the more you show up, the more people expect it.
Speaker 1:Things have been harder for you than you know. You had an impasse in your career. You've lost some valuable friendships. Sometimes it was maybe a little bit you, but it was almost always them. Most of them are just people that didn't grow like you did. But that's tiring. That's really stressful.
Speaker 1:You need some rest. You need some R&R. You need, I think, a full day to take off, a mental health day. Take one off from work tomorrow and get some rest and expand your consciousness. Do some of the dumb stuff that you've put off. Start with an amazing drug binge. I can help you get the good stuff. I don't know what your poison is. I will watch you. I will make sure that nothing goes wrong or that, if it does, nobody knows about it and there will be medical care if you need it.
Speaker 1:I think you're probably going to freak out and want to call 911 like 15 minutes in, but I'm probably not going to do that. I will be very good at talking you down. I have a lot of experience with that and it's going to do that. I will be very good at talking you down. I have a lot of experience with that and it's going to be fun. There will be no beginning, no end. You will lose all sense of time, perhaps permanently. It'll be like the hamster party. Do you remember that From like 2004 Vice, where they put Dash Snow and some other guy in a room and shredded a phone book and put it on the floor to absorb the results of their 48-hour binge? If you don't remember that, that explains why the joy is gone in your life. Okay, this is happening. We're doing a hamster party. We're doing it tomorrow, but I'll make it easy.
Speaker 1:You don't have to do all the drugs. That doesn't even really make sense. Some of them are dangerous to do together, but more dangerous than they are alone. Some of them kind of cancel each other out. So we're going to do um, I don't know what drug is your favorite, but you don't want to admit it's your favorite because you know that you like it a little too much, because that packs a lot of information about you. Your addictions offer valuable insight into what's going on under the hood and in your heart of hearts.
Speaker 1:I bet you're a speed freak. I'm a gambling man. I would put money on that. I know you like Adderall. I bet. If we get the good stuff, you're gonna be up for 72 hours and you're gonna enjoy the hell out of meal prep for the coming week and possibly the next few coming weeks. I think you're finally gonna finish that fanfiction that you're working on. That's what I'm thinking. I think you're finally going to finish that fan fiction that you're working on. That's what I'm thinking. I think maybe start with a little bit of that snow, see what the conditions are on the slopes and then possibly party with Tina I don't know, we'll see how it goes. I think it could result in a tattoo.
Speaker 1:It's remarkable that you've made it this far into your life without getting one. They're much less stigmatized than they used to be. They have always been artistic and rebellious, and now you have to be a little bit rebellious, looking to not be a bougie square, yeah, and a vapid, wholesome yuppie from Santa Monica. You really need a tattoo. It used to be that if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck. Now, if it doesn't look like a duck or quack like a duck, it's presumed to not be a duck. So if you don't have tattoos, nobody's going to trust that you're interesting, which might be why you're not taken as seriously as you used to be and why you're not as relevant in the creative fields. Like a full one, but with a component that's on the back of your neck so it's always visible. You can't really hide it unless you're wearing turtlenecks which I know is not really your thing, especially in the summertime and it should be a beautiful work of art, this tattoo, but also entirely off-brand for you, like 180 degrees from the sort of tattoo that you would get if you were doing you the character in your act. Maybe I'm thinking some kind of a schlock, low-budget horror theme. I think that's the way to go. I think we should see what is on Shudder TV and that should be the inspiration for your tattoo.
Speaker 1:The most dangerous thing you can do in this life is to limit yourself. There's a you you never knew and I think we're both going to like the new you. You've been afraid of your own power, of your own light, of your own ridiculous dark side. Maybe it's not that bad. Some people have mean, scary monsters, most people have silly monsters and all they're really afraid of is mockery and not being taken seriously and being silly and having fun. That's probably what's going to happen when you let the dog off the chain. We're going to find out.
Speaker 1:I think you are an open-minded person. It doesn't always seem that way. You have strong opinions. You're a creature of habit. None of your opinions or habits have been recently updated. You tend to get stuck in your own purview. You talk about stuff and have strong opinions on things with less than no information we can fix. That can get you more of a full spectrum human experience and expand what you perceive to be possible and perhaps get to the point where we can both more understand in real time, moment to moment, that reality is what we make it. We can choose what kind of experience we want to have, because we know that. We've done psychedelics in the past. I have. We've both done a lot of meditation. We know that reality is plastic. We don't act like it.
Speaker 1:It's easy to get back into the grind of thinking that what you're perceiving is all there is and is true, even if you know deep down that it's not. It can be very powerful and constraining and we need to experience some shocks to the system. Experience some shocks to the system. I think one way to do that is to just loudly and obnoxiously express disgusting opinions that we don't really believe. I do that sometimes. Maybe you can figure out which ones those are. I don't think you've ever done it. I think it's time for you to try that and who knows, you might change your mind. You might change your own mind and if you don't, you can just say you were kidding.
Speaker 1:You know how plausible deniability works. You know that you're a lot more sophisticated, certainly verbally, than the average bear and you can talk your way out of it if you get yourself in trouble and it'll be kind of exciting and fun and you'll get to say weird, taboo stuff, just to say it, like we did in the 90s. And obviously everything is about sex, except sex, which is about power, which is about sex. Oscar wilde was almost right. So there's going to be a sexual component to this and that's going to be both of us living out our darkest sexual chapters, which for me is going do. That's going to take a little bit of doing For you. I have an idea of how it might go.
Speaker 1:I know you pretty well at this point, intimately, but nothing gets me more excited than a previously unreleased sexual fantasy. And I know you got them. I know you watch porn. You don't tell me what it is or leave it up in the browser history so that I can see you're very cagey about it. I don't need to know. Can see you're very cagey about it, I don't need to know. But I need to know what you're gonna do in real life, because we gotta orchestrate it. Nobody else needs to know, but if we need to set the scene or get accessories or accoutrement, it's important to do a little bit of pre-planning in order to be able to improvise freely in the space. Nobody else needs to know. You will know, though, and you will have that special glow that happens when you know that you've really experienced some of the stuff that you thought was going to be a fantasy that you'd take to your grave, all of those dreams that you've hated yourself for.
Speaker 1:Having Sleaze is your safe space. Now, we're going to do all of this in our new go-to dive bar. I'm not going to drink alcohol. Go-to dive bar, I'm not gonna drink alcohol. That's one line I will not cross. I will drink ginger ale, thank you, but other than that, anything goes. It's dark, it's blue light, and the light from neon beer signs. It's like the little secret world that we've made together, but in real life it's the Roadhouse, it's One-Eyed Jacks, it's the Black Lodge. It's what we want it to be. Hey, I love you. You are amazing and you need to own it.
Speaker 1:I have a few minor quibbles. One of them is your hypocrisy. I think it's not even really hypocrisy, because I think at this point you are buying into it, but you need to diversify your portfolio. You need to shake it up. You need to become who you are, everything you are. You need to be a sprawling, expansive novel of the sort that you create in your mind effortlessly, out of nothing. Just as soon as you start talking, the story comes to life. You can be all of those characters in that novel that you're writing in your head, and I think the villains are going to be the more interesting ones for you, because right now you're not fooling anyone. You're not a Madonna. I know your big secret. Not a Madonna. I know your big secret.
Speaker 1:I am I. I I'm enough of a long-term strategist to know that it's in my best interest to live out loud. I ain't hiding anything. I'm fine with embarrassing myself. The world is my memory. I have no secrets from anyone. It's all out in the open and that means I don't have to do the kind of Princeton MBA level project management that you do to manage your image and it's not as tiring my life. I sleep so well that I can sleep on the floor and when I do that I don't have to worry about rolling out of bed.
Speaker 1:But I do need to have fun again. It's been a long time. I don't remember what it was like. I know that I've had fun. I've seen pictures of me having fun, but my body hasn't said yes to anything in a while. It's out of the habit.
Speaker 1:I need to learn to trust my instincts again, and I think the way to do that is to put ourselves in positions where we have to trust our instincts, because we will be in big trouble if we don't possibly subject to arrest or other bad things. It's like if you want to learn to speak Portuguese, just go into rural Brazil and make your own way. If you want to trust your own instincts, put yourself in a position where you need them to survive. That's what we're going to do. It's time for fun, it's time for mischief. It's time for a little urban exploration. Don't be deterred by a closed door. That is just an invitation with a twist, an adventure reserved for the bold.
Speaker 1:I want to see your strength and your vulnerability. I want to see what happens when you have an adventure and light up, like I used to see, when you get angry or turned on or scared, when you get goosebumps. I want to be there for all of that. And you might get in a position where you're in extremis and you hurt yourself or damage yourself. I think it'll be interesting how that happens.
Speaker 1:We, we suffer and we tell stories. That's what we're good at. I heard that from somebody in one of the meetings of the people of the screaming release that I attended, and now that I've said that, I realize I probably shouldn't have, so just forget. I mentioned it. But we suffer and we tell stories. I think there's a lot of truth to that, but we only have one life to live each. I need to shake things up and you need to hit bottom so that you can get help and get out of your rut and scare yourself and know that you're alive.
Speaker 1:Today is a good day to die. It's also a good day to take a Louisville slugger and bash someone's mailbox for no reason except that it's there and it's annoying and obnoxious and difficult, as I know that you are and I know you want to be, and I know how thrilling it's going to be when you live that dream and maybe you'll get it out of your system and maybe when you have your power back you'll want to go back to doing things the way that you used to do and taking care of people and you know, enjoying life's simple pleasures and not getting down on yourself for for not having a spectacular life, which of course you shouldn't. But you can have a spectacular life and I think, after the tedium and frustration and grief that we've been through in the last couple of years, that we've supported each other. Through that. I think we have established a remarkable amount of trust. I've shown you the strength of my presence. I'm not always strong and present, but when I am, it's on. I think we gotta do this. I don't think we'll be able to live with ourselves if we don't give it a shot.
Speaker 1:You're listening to k chung los angeles, k chung radioorg on the web, 16 30 am on the terrestrial tip in chinatown, certain parts downtown, maybe a little bit of the arts district on a good day a little bit of Echo Park, it depends. You're also listening to Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes medicated-minutescom. I am Emerson Dameron and I've been around for a minute. I've had a few spins on the big blue ball. It is possible that I have more time behind me than I have in front of me. I mean, of course, that's always a possibility.
Speaker 1:There are many fascinating and spectacular ways to die, particularly in Los Angeles. I could go at any time. All of us could. We could all go together. We've been due for a major earthquake for a long time. But even if I live to my anticipated life expectancy, even if nothing else goes wrong anticipated life expectancy, even if nothing else goes wrong it would be normal if I died, having lived less time between now and when I was born than between now and when I die. My life could be more than halfway over. I'm okay with that. Sometimes I get real tired of this.
Speaker 1:In my time on Earth I've wanted many things. That's what people do we suffer, we tell stories and we want, we believe that we need, we lust, we cling, we long to acquire some of us hoard. I'm a bit of a digital hoarder. The point is I wanted all kinds of things, many of them quite ridiculous in retrospect. At one point I wanted to be a starting forward for the Los Angeles Lakers. I wanted to be earnest hemingway, who were very much like him, perhaps without the impotence and maybe not without the um, the literary skill and the adventure and lust for life, but maybe without the ending that he experienced. Although, is he really Ernest Hemingway if he didn't blow his head off with a shotgun standing up? Is it really just writing drunk and editing sober, or is it the whole package? The point is, I was never going to be Ernest Hemingway. I also briefly wanted to be president, assuming I could win on the novelty of running as a nine-year-old. It's a cute kid who's not going to vote for me.
Speaker 1:I've never not once for as long as I can remember come anywhere close to wanting kids of my own. I have nothing against your kids. If your kids are annoying, it's probably your fault. I have two nieces I would gleefully kill for that's right. If you inconvenience either of my nieces, I'll murder you and I'll enjoy doing it, and I feel similarly about my friend's kids for the most part. But I do not want my own kids. I never have, and that's why I got a vasectomy, which was the best investment I ever made. And if you're a man who's on the fence about whether or not you want kids or you want more kids, I think you should get a vasectomy too.
Speaker 1:Some of my reasons for getting my own vasectomy are personal and my own. After going through a crushing divorce that resurfaced all kinds of neuroses and attachment wounds I thought I'd left behind in my college years attachment wounds I thought I'd left behind in my college years, I need to be selfish. For the foreseeable future I'm thinking likely forever, certainly indefinitely I need to focus on my own reparenting. For the foreseeable future, I believe that it's possible to invest in parenthood and personal growth simultaneously, but if you have kids, your kids get priority. That's how it works. Based on what I've learned about myself over the last few years, I can't promise I'll ever be ready to be the kind of dad that my kids would deserve. To replenish my supply of love for the world and for myself is a constant process. It's painting the Golden Gate Bridge and I need to soak in it myself for a while, and I'm thinking the rest of my life. I'm not making any other plans for my entire life for as long as I can remember, certainly since I was a kid, as you may have gleaned if you've been a long-time listener to the show.
Speaker 1:I have struggled with painful, debilitating anxiety and depression. Genetic cocktail would be very good looking, highly intelligent, possessed of dry wit and a certain kind of wounded romanticism that certain people can't resist. If you can find them, your life could be pretty amazing in parts and very dramatic and intense on the whole. They would also almost certainly experience the same kind of emotional turbulence that I have, along with my legendary alcohol abuse issues that it took me two full decades to get under control. They might be fine Times have changed. They could be smarter and better than me, but if I found myself in a courtroom or a mental hospital on one of my kids' 16th birthdays, I would not be able to feign surprise. I could not say I didn't see it coming. And if I want to pay for piano lessons, I'll buy them for myself. I wish I'd stuck with it. I studied piano when I was a kid. I got into drugs instead and dropped out of high school, and I really wish that I could convince that kid to just stick with the taekwondo and piano lessons instead and then do the drugs on tour later on through hundred thousand dollar bills I may get back into piano, and if I do, I will buy piano lessons for myself, not for someone who's eventually going to make a concept album about what an asshole I am.
Speaker 1:I am a grown-up. I can handle being different from other people in some significant and insignificant ways, but I prefer to give myself every advantage against being pushed around, particularly being pushed into a life I don't want. The philosopher René Girard has a theory of mimetic desire that I find very compelling, through which human existence is interpreted as largely a practice of wanting what the people around us seem to want. If we perceive that our peers or people we admire up close or at a distance want something, or if they have it and they're flaunting it, we want it too. This seems to be hardwired and there's not much we can do about it except be selective in the people whose desires we choose to model.
Speaker 1:In my age cohort, there's a massive amount of pressure to have kids. There's evolutionary pressure. Our genes want us to pass them along. They will trick us into all kinds of stupid, humiliating situations in furtherance of that objective. Having kids is the easy way to make meaning in our lives. Without them, it's up to us, and that's scary and painful and not for everyone. It requires some grit and tenacity and imagination and everybody else I know has either already had kids or it needs to happen soon. Most of my friends that I hung out with in my 20s have kids now and they have more important things to do than hang out with me at the Museum of Jurassic Technology during the day. I'm back on the dating circuit and a lot of otherwise quite desirable women in my age bracket are absolutely determined to have kids as soon as possible. Because it's now or probably never. I wish them the best. I don't want to get involved. I'm not afraid of commitment. The vasectomy is my commitment. I know that I don't want kids and I want to give myself every advantage in staying true to my own desires, no matter who tries to turn up the heat on me or whose mom does, I am standing strong and standing firm. I like having certain constraints in my life.
Speaker 1:You've been listening to Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes medicated-minutescom. I'm Emerson Dameron, the producer, director, writer, host, etc. For the show pretty much everything except the music, which on this episode was Visions of the Universe and making the show possible in the first place, which is all thanks to K-Chung, los Angeles. Kchungradioorg 1630 AM. On the terrestrial tip, la's Rebel Radio family out and about all over Los Angeles Check out events. Donate at kchungradioorg, slash donate that's very important. Support the show. Levity saves lives and money also helps.
