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
Humor and Healing in the Heart of the Heart of Los Angeles
CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR NERVOUS BREAKDOWN
(IT'S ABOUT DAMN TIME)
Your self-sabotage has better timing than a cosmic laugh track, and your emotional baggage would make Marie Kondo have an existential crisis. But stay tuned, because this episode is about to turn your personal hell into performance art.
Welcome to Los Angeles, where the sunrise is always Instagram-ready and meditation studios outnumber therapy offices because nobody can afford both. We're diving deep into the beautiful mess of being human while the city pretends it isn't having a collective nervous breakdown.
Get ready for:
- Why your stress isn't a design flaw – it's a feature of being deliciously alive
- How to turn your emotional dumpster fire into a beacon of self-discovery
- The art of laughing at yourself before the universe beats you to the punchline
- Why your dreams are trying to tell you something (and it's probably not what your shaman thinks)
This isn't another mindfulness masterclass where you'll learn to breathe your way out of existence. This is a full-contact sport with your shadow self, and spoiler alert: it fights dirty.
WARNING: Side effects may include:
- Sudden attacks of authentic self-expression
- The ability to find humor in your trauma
- Decreased effectiveness of your usual self-sabotage techniques
- Uncontrollable urges to write poetry about your pain
- A strange new comfort with being uncomfortable
Listen as we explore why your personal growth looks more like interpretive dance than a linear journey, and why that's sexier than any self-help book you'll never finish reading.
From sunrise ceremonies to midnight meltdowns, we're teaching you to embrace the cosmic comedy of trying to fix yourself while the universe keeps changing the punchline.
Stop pretending you've got your shit together. Start collecting the pieces like they're limited edition trading cards of your evolution.
Available now wherever you get your permission to be gloriously imperfect.
Remember: Growth isn't a journey. It's a series of beautiful disasters that eventually make sense – or don't. And that's the joke we're all part of.
Trust me. I'm just as fucked up as you are, and that's exactly why you should listen.
Welcome to the revolution between your breakdowns.
Got something to say to me? Slide into the DMs.
It's OUT! Sophistication Nation: Brief Interviews with Women I Pretend to Understand: https://emersondameron.hearnow.com/sophistication-nation
Sunrise Serenade Smooth, bold and just a little dangerous Just how I like my beach days.
Speaker 2:My darling, you're as dangerous as a crinkle-cut french fry. I am delicious. That exquisitely twisted adult beverage has gone to your head and I'm trying to give you a heart attack. Put that skateboard away before you hurt yourself. It's my job.
Speaker 1:Sunrise Serenade it's the only thing hotter than me you got nothing to worry about except the heat death of your ego.
Speaker 2:Miss Diva in her own mind.
Speaker 1:Here's to Sunrise Serenade, the drink that makes every moment unique, sexy, unforgettable, like me, Unforgettable is a backhanded compliment. Oh, maybe I could use some discipline.
Speaker 2:Sunrise Serenade. Can you keep a secret? Sunrise Serenade is my urine, my piss. I bottle my piss and I sell it. I've always been 100% upfront about that, because I'm not the one with the problem. Want some.
Speaker 2:Sunrise Serenade. Hey, hey you Friend Pal of mine, ace, it's okay, you're just freaking out, relax. There's one way out of this, through this, around this, whatever you want to call it, and that's to slow down. Just breathe all the way down into your belly, zoom out as much as you can. Look at this from the perch of your highest intelligence. It's just a thing. You're just getting the reaction that's supposed to help you deal with stress, because this is what was developed to deal with large predators.
Speaker 2:We don't have large predators anymore, we just have these complex, stressful situations. We get overwhelmed with the chemicals kick in that freak us out and make us think that we're gonna die and make us think that we're not able to do this. We're not up to the challenge. We're not everything that we want to think we are. We got to get out of that. You will not solve the problem in the problem space. You got to back up. You got to bring you know, let the mind percolate, go, do something else. You will not come up with a solution if you can't stop thinking about the problem. Your brain, thinking directly about the problem is not going to come up with anything creative, not anything that's going to get you out of this. It's going to get you deeper into this because that's what it thinks helps. Just calm down, relax as much as you possibly can. I'm Kate Chung K-Chung, los Angeles, 1630.
Speaker 3:AM K-Chung radioorg Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes L-A, number one event guard, personal development program, home of the first church of the Satanic Buddha, and Bite-sized erotic thrillers. Improve yourself before everybody else does. That's kinky Levity saves lives.
Speaker 2:K-Chung, los Angeles, 1630 AM. Kchungradioorg. This is Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes medicated-minutescom. I am Emerson Dameron, the producer, writer, director, host and witty, wounded romantic hero of Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes. Scratch a witty cynic and you'll get a wounded romantic. That is very true of me. And levity saves lives. Sometimes I do get stuck on the past. I try to ask myself what's funny about this. How can levity save my life retroactively and what can I learn from this? Levity save my life retroactively and what can I learn from this? How can I improve in the future as a result of these experiences and my insights as I integrate them, because I do like to take responsibility for as much of my life as I can. I don't think that everything is my fault, but it's an interesting thought experiment sometimes. What if I am responsible for everything? What if I am the architect and auteur of my own experience? How do I handle that responsibility? To what extent is that true If I behave as if it's true? What happens?
Speaker 2:You may be listening to this live on K-Chung. That happens every first Wednesday of the month at 7 o'clock Pacific. We convene to talk sex, drugs, power, psychology, philosophy, self-help, satanic Buddhism and much more. Sometimes we do a feature called Ask a Sadist. You're always in good shape with a sadist on your side and we have miniature erotic thrillers. Short, those are bite-sized erotic thrillers. They're all well under the 90-minute mark. The stylish and titillating and often ridiculous erotic thrillers from the 80s and 90s that were covered on you Must Remember this and have been having a bit of a renaissance lately. The work of Brian De Palma and Adrian Lyne, crimes of Passion, nine and a half weeks, cinematic Masterpieces those are my inspiration. You can catch those on the show, but it's really about you, the most interesting topic in the world, and you may be listening live. You may be listening asynchronously via the podcast through medicated-minutescom or wherever you consume your podcasts. We're on Spotify and Apple Music, podchaser, pocket Casts, podfriend, all the good ones. There are a few episodes on SoundCloud, but the point is this might be light from a dead star, this might be a broadcast from the past, but you are in the present, even if you don't want to be, even if you insist on living in the past or the future. The present is the only place where anything worthwhile is happening and it behooves you to bring yourself back to the present.
Speaker 2:There are some advantages of thinking into the future If you're thinking strategically and cautiously not necessarily optimistic. Enthusiasm is good and enthusiasm combined with pessimism is a killer combination. If you enthusiastically walk in knowing the worst that could happen and being prepared for it and going over every detail and listening to any weird feeling that you have that something might be off, and double checking your work, you're in good shape. So you don't necessarily have to be optimistic. Be realistic, know what you're getting into, but don't focus too much on the future because it's not promised.
Speaker 2:There's all kinds of risk in Los Angeles. There are so many glorious ways to die. It could happen at any time. The big one could hit us. There's all kinds of risk in Los Angeles. There are so many glorious ways to die. It could happen at any time. The big one could hit us. We could all go down. There could be a tsunami, tidal wave, all kinds of things could happen. Be prepared for the future, because it's a good chance that we're all going to live a little bit longer, probably at least to the end of the show.
Speaker 2:But the present is where the action is and you want to repeat to yourself the past is dead, the past is dead, the past is dead. The past is dead. The past is dead. The past is dead. The past is dead. The past is dead. The past is dead. As many times as it takes, as many times as it takes to short circuit your negative talk to yourself about what happened in the past, how you screwed it up, how you feel guilty, let it go, it's over and done with. You've probably already apologized. If you've apologized a lot, you need to apologize for that, because really you just need to apologize once. People are either going to forgive you or they're not. If it's a meaningful and sincere apology, that'll probably get through to them at some level. If they don't want to hear from you, leave them alone, regardless. Get on with your life.
Speaker 2:Getting stuck in the past will make you miss out on the opportunities and indeed the challenges and hazards of the present. It's easy to get stuck in the past when something painful happened in the relatively recent past, which could be 28 years ago, depending on how painful it was. But it's usually something like, in my experience, a breakup that happened within the last year or so. That brings me down. It's put me in dark and dangerous places. Apparently, it kind of helped kill Anthony Bourdain.
Speaker 2:It can be a not good, not safe space to be in and one can get addicted to certain kinds of suffering, mental anguish. I have a looping internal monologue that can be downright abusive. If anyone else talked to me the way that I sometimes talk to myself, I would get a restraining order and a large dog and a ring system. But it's just me and I tell myself that I'm not doing any harm if I take my anger out on myself. That's not true. I'm hurting everyone in my life by proxy. I'm hurting myself. I'm missing out on good things, interesting things, challenging things, things that need my attention, that are going on here and now.
Speaker 2:If you have the same issue with getting wrapped around the axle of stuff that's happened, I'm sure breakups are hard for everybody. I went through a divorce recently. I still have open wounds from that. I totally get it. You have to mourn those losses and that comes with grief and regret and anger. But it is possible to get addicted to that. It can be easier to stay in what's safe and familiar note the similarity to the word family there than it is, or seems to be, to get out of that and do something dangerous. But that provides the opportunity for a new experience.
Speaker 2:I would switch addictions. I would say if you're addicted to suffering and misery and self-recrimination and guilt over a breakup, try sex addiction Just for a while. It's probably not going to solve your problems. You may be unhappy. A lot of people are sex addicts and they don't seem to enjoy it that much. Find out for yourself. Don't take their word for it. Give it a shot. It'll be very different on the other side of the spectrum from your current experience. You can do it. Many dumber and uglier people have pulled it off. All you have to do is get out there and be proactive and prepare and then put yourself in the way of opportunity and get in the mix and know that it's an honor and a pleasure for anyone to spend time with you as a listener of Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes.
Speaker 2:You are one of the elite and you are always self-developing. This is LA's number one avant-garde self-development program. So that means even if you don't get the jokes, it makes you sophisticated to listen to it. You're always bettering yourself and exploring the most fascinating topic in the world, which is you, and it is helping you through inspiration and motivation of the sort that has helped countless listeners in Los Angeles and beyond. I don't know how many, hence countless. It's a lot.
Speaker 2:You are partaking of that and what I want you to do is condition yourself on a daily basis. Give this an hour a day for 90 days. Condition yourself through mantras, meditation, exercise, hit a bag, get a punching bag in your place, whatever it is that gets the lightning bolts coursing through your nervous system. Do that and condition yourself to be extremely aggressive in going after what you want in life. You need to get to know yourself to determine what you really want. Do that first. Make a list of things that you want in life. If you need to get to know yourself to determine what you really want, do that first. Make a list of things that you want, and then things that you wish that you didn't want and things that you don't want people to know that you want Things that you wouldn't want me to know that you want. Make a list of those and start to figure out what you want, not what you're supposed to want, not what other people want you to want, what you really want, what your body says. Yes, to Bring yourself into the present. You can start making a plan to get what you want, but you gotta be here to do that. Perfect attendance in the present is the goal.
Speaker 2:Guilt is a waste of time. No complaining unless it's entertaining. See how close you can get that to zero If you put the rubber band around your wrist and snap it every time you hear yourself complaining. That's a good idea. You can't change what already happened. Replaying past mistakes over and over again will take you into dark, dark territory. Your brain thinks that it's solving problems. That's what it thinks it's doing when it's ruminating, because it's very stupid and it needs some guidance from your higher intelligence so that you don't end up getting addicted to mental anguish and getting so familiar with that that it's what you know and it's scary to leave.
Speaker 2:Before that happens, start making a deal with your brain to come back here now and start getting what you want. Get serious about that and irreverent about it. Make it fun. Don't take it too soon. Take it seriously and don't take it seriously. Be all in balls to the wall, all out and all in simultaneously. See if you can pull that off. That'll show them. Get in there, get out there and bring yourself back here now to the present, because it's the only place where anything worthwhile is happening.
Speaker 2:This is Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes. This is worthwhile and this is happening right now. Stay tuned, there's good stuff in the future. There's good stuff in the past. You would listen to the old episodes at medicated-minutescom, but right now we've got bigger things to do in the present. We're going to catch the big fish. I don't know if we're going to fry it, we might just hang out and see what it has to say.
Speaker 2:If you are underwater and you're breathing easily underwater without a diving suit, you're probably having a dream. So if you see a big fish in that context, do what you do if you realize that you're dreaming, but you're still in the dream, which is to ask the dream characters if they have gifts for you, if you can remember to do that Rare and beautiful, if you have that opportunity, that flash of lucidity to be able to do that, if you see the big fish and you're deep on the ocean floor, you're probably dreaming. So ask the big fish what gifts it has for you, what wisdom it has to impart, and then pay attention, listen, sleep on it, continue. You're sleep on it, continue. You're already sleeping on it. Wake up on it. Think about it the next morning, write it down. If you don't write it down right away, you're probably going to lose it.
Speaker 2:Dream recall is very important. I have always believed that meditation is not just an acute affectation for people who live in Santa Monica and do yoga. I think it's absolutely necessary for dealing with the avalanche of information we have to deal with in the modern age. I think it's the one way to keep from losing your mind. But I think dream recall is huge in terms of figuring out your own bigger story the meaning I have to make meaning in my life I don't have kids. The meaning I have to make meaning in my life I don't have kids, so I don't have that to fall back on. And you can also make meaning in your life and have kids. You're going to have long days and be very tired, but you can do it. I've seen it done.
Speaker 2:If you want to do that, join me and pay attention to your dreams as you're having them in the present, and then write them down and see how that pans out over the course of the next day. Also, when you think about the dream, make a plan of action. Think about how am I going to apply this to my life? And think about that with all the knowledge you pick up. You don't need to read the news. If it's not news, you can use.
Speaker 2:It's important to kind of have a bigger idea of what's going on in the world and put things in context, and it can be cocktail party conversation, but you know what's really good cocktail party conversation Letting people know that you're kicking ass in the world and running laps around the competition. And the way you do that is to apply the things that you learn. That's what we're about on Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes. We're going to give you the tools of self-inquiry, exploration and experiments. We're going to give you the tools of self-inquiry, exploration and experiments. So the world will be your laboratory and you can try it and see what happens. If I had kids, that's the advice I would give them. I'm not going to have them, so I'm giving it to you. We'll see you next time. Bye, thank you, I'll see you next time.
Speaker 5:Oh, darling, let me tell you, los Angeles is a fever dream, wrapped in a piece of cauliflower flatbread sprinkled with bee pollen and served with a side of unsolicited advice. It's a place where every corner hides a guru with a didgeridoo, whispering the secrets of the universe while selling you an overpriced jade egg for your inner peace, or wherever you're meant to put it. Now picture this I'm wandering through Venice Beach. Now picture this I'm wandering through Venice Beach Well, not wandering, striding, with purpose, of course, as one does.
Speaker 5:And there he is, this bearded Adonis, draped in organic linen, sitting cross-legged on a Himalayan salt block. He beckons me with a finger that Michelangelo himself could have sculpted and he says Get this Baby. Your aura is starving, starving as if my aura's been nibbling on pita crisps and inhaling kombucha fumes instead of a hearty existential stew. I was riveted. Naturally, he tells me I need to realign my energetic vibrations. And the way he said it with such conviction, I almost felt guilty for not knowing my vibrations were misaligned to begin with. So, naturally, I handed over a small fortune for a handcrafted chakra harmonizer.
Speaker 5:Yes it's just a rock, but he called it cosmic quartz. Doesn't that just sound divine? But then, oh the twist. As I clutch my cosmic quartz and gaze deep into my starving aura, I'm struck by the most marvelous realization. Isn't the whole charade A bit of a lark? I mean really. The salt block guru, the jade eggs, the cosmic quartz, it's all one big performance, a self-help pantomime, if you will, where everyone is pretending to be both the damsel in distress and the dashing saviour. Los Angeles, darling, isn't a city, it's an installation piece about the commodification of enlightenment. And we're all extras, milling about the set in our louloulou costumes, awaiting direction Genius, no. At this point I think, helena, you're onto something. Could the very act of seeking self-improvement be the most gloriously self-defeating thing of all? Like trying to mop up a puddle with a sponge that's already sopping wet. So naturally, I decide to become a commentator on this whole absurdity, a meta-guru, if you will, the guru who knows she's a guru, which makes her better than the other gurus.
Speaker 5:Or maybe worse or perhaps just a bit more self-aware, which is really the same thing in the end. But here's the kicker love. As I sit there cradling my cosmic quartz, waxing poetic on the futility of seeking meaning, I realize I've come full circle, because isn't pointing out the absurdity of it all just another way of saying look at me, I've figured it out. And isn't that the most Los Angeles thing of all? A hall of mirrors where every reflection thinks it's the original? At any rate, I left my cosmic quartz on the salt block and walked away, head held high, vibrating with a sort of smug nihilism. But of course I still booked a soundbar for later, because one must keep one's options open, right, right. Was it deliciously ironic? Perhaps Was it simply delicious, absolutely. Did I learn any lessons? Did I experience an epiphany or a personal growth spurt, or even a nice surreptitious orgasm? Was any of this quote unquote real in the traditional sense? Honestly, I can't tell anymore. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:Historically, I have a definite, measurable pattern of attracting romantic partners German-engineered to make me miserable. They don't do that. Only I can make me miserable, but I find partners that can help facilitate that, because they are specifically selected by me subconsciously, by virtue of their ability to hit me where it hurts, to perhaps talk me off of the ledge, but also talk me off of the pedestal, bring me down to earth, bring me way, way down, where I have to dig through the dirt to deal with all of my worst qualities. I have an image in my mind of my type, not a blonde with freckles and really good at I mean someone who is my ideal partner. In that I feel like she's the yin to my yang, the masculine to my feminine. My completion meaning embodies all of the elements that I deny in myself Things that are part of me I wouldn't perceive them if they weren't part of me but things that I'm not comfortable owning myself and that will probably continue until I make the unconscious conscious. It will rule my life and I'll call it fate. So I end up with people who are very willful, people who are stubborn, won't do what I tell them, and that's, of course, my weird relationship with myself, not following through on things I promised myself, really trusting myself, pattern of self-sabotage all of these things certainly very much in effect when it comes time to hit the dating scene. Certainly very much in effect when it comes time to hit the dating scene.
Speaker 2:What do I want? My ideal relationship is someone submissive but not servile. Someone who's powerful in the world breaks down for me because I give her a place to do that. So I want to be a certain kind of person. I could have that certain kind of partnership. I should probably go about making myself that guy. That's a lifelong process. I'm always going to be getting better.
Speaker 2:What are my strengths right now? Well, I've been through the fire over the last few years. I'm able to tell my story because I'm still here. I think my personality has changed somewhat. I'm a little bit more deliberate with setting boundaries. I don't expect people to just go along with them. I expect confrontation. I'm prepared for it. I know that. I know what's right for me. I can figure it out. I know better than you do, because I'm the person who's really rooting for me, and so it really is up to me. That part, the part that takes care of the part that is definable as Emerson Dameron. That's my responsibility, so that needs to be job number one. You will always come second to that. That's new for me.
Speaker 2:I used to put people first. I used to get women who at some level, would want to be put first. That's what they would tell the feminist book club and that might be what they believe consciously, but in reality they wanted to be dominated. Some of them seemed to want to be put in the hospital. I couldn't deliver that. In the long run I got pushed around and stopped caring, started thinking outside of their relationship because it was too frustrating. She wasn't submitting. I didn't know how to make her do that. I didn't know she wanted me to make her do that Frustrating stuff.
Speaker 2:My ideal relationship would look like I mean, right now I don't want one. I don't want one. I don't want a serious one. I don't know if I'm going to want one at all. I want someone who's not going to send me back years of working on myself, somebody who facilitates my personal growth, somebody who's rooting for me, believes in me. Nasty, narrow in bed, compassionate, kind, artistic, creative, imaginative, verbal adept with language A reader would be nice, yeah, I think that's probably required and somebody who gets me a fan, somebody who digs what I do, picks up what I'm laying down, picks up my gems, knows how to find my good stuff and pushes me to lean into my edge to double down on the things that are weird and uncomfortable, because for me that's where the glory is, it's where the action is. Keeps me in the moment because the action is right here. And knows I'm always going to have this depression going on that's something I have to work with, work around that I'm probably never going to get rid of and is willing to help me out. Knows she can expect some more in return Very transparent, honest, deep. Tells me things no one else knows Previously unruly sexual fantasies or really the ball, anything along those lines Because then I know I am able to step in, step up, stand out when she needs me.
Speaker 2:Regardless, we're creatures of habit. It's just easier that way. We have patterns of belief Sometimes it can be ingrained self-sabotage or bad habits, self-destructive behaviors that make us feel good in the moment and make us feel guilty, and perhaps sick and full of starch or methamphetamines. We want to change them, but there's a resistance. It's just not as easy as we would think it would be to do what we think that we want to do, and that's because we are not intimate with our unconsciousness. We are not aware of the parts of ourselves, the characters that live inside of us, who are trying to accomplish various things, most of them sprouting from the seed of a positive intention. We don't know those people. We need to get on good terms with them and understand where they're coming from and understand the positive intention that our bad habits come from, and if we do that, we can change our bad habits. We can change our good habits too, but we may as well start with the bad habits.
Speaker 2:The past is not real. It's a story that we make up as we go, and it changes as we go along based on new information. We reshuffle our own memories all the time to create what we think is a coherent narrative that explains where we are now. But where we are now is always changing, so that story has to change. And even when we were there if we were there we only take in about 3% of what's going on. We filter our experience through what we want to believe, the aforementioned habits. Reality is a controlled hallucination, and our memories of it are even worse. That's why a bunch of relatives can't agree on what happened that day at the wedding reception on the golf course, whether there was a threesome that Susan is too drunk to remember, or if Bob was the one who got drunk and broke somebody's windshield with a putter. Everyone has their own interpretation.
Speaker 2:It's like Rashomon we're all wrong, and one important objective in life is to be wrong in new and more interesting ways, and that involves letting go of the past and letting go of the suggestion to let go of the past, because I gave you that suggestion in the past. So you don't have to do it if you don't want to. You don't have to listen to me or trust me. I don't trust you. Do it for yourself, if that's your thing. If you want to break your bad habits, first identify the pattern you want to change. It could be drinking too much, watching too much pornography. It could be walking around with the tag hanging out of the back of your t-shirt and your eyebrows all bushy and askew.
Speaker 2:It could be not paying your taxes or recurring standoffs with the ATF. Whatever your bad habit, is that you want to change. Understand the pattern of behavior and understand how it is distinct from the intention of the behavior. Perhaps you drink too much because you want courage and confidence and conviviality. You want to have fun with other people. Maybe you think that alcohol is the main route to that. Or there's a part of you inside that believes that it could be a wannabe tough person in a leather jacket and sunglasses who is, in fact, overcompensating for weakness. It could be someone who really does think that booze is the only way to have fun. Maybe it's very sweet, albeit conformist and simple-minded.
Speaker 2:Anyway, step two is to connect and communicate with the part of yourself that is responsible for this behavior, that is trying to get from here to there via means that are not working for you because they're stupid and ill-advised. No matter how contemptible or ridiculous that part of you may be, you have to get on good terms with it. You have to speak with it in its language. It's not going to meet you halfway. It's very selfish and underdeveloped because you haven't spent a lot of time with it. I blame you. This is your fault. You've got to fix it. You've got to get in there and show that part of yourself some love as you separate the pattern of behavior from the intention. Honor the positive intention that this part of yourself has. Find other roads up that mountain. Get creative, come up with new ideas or new behaviors.
Speaker 2:Brainstorm 100 ideas. Come up with the worst ideas that you can think of. Some of them will be surprisingly good. No one is smart enough to be wrong 100% of the time, as the philosopher Ken Wilber said, and sometimes the best work comes from attempts at making something awful or just allowing yourself to make something awful. Lean into your mistakes, yes, and Anything that happens. Build on your own terrible ideas, because it's not a bad idea if you commit to it. And then go back to the responsible voice inside of you, where all of this started. Let it evaluate the options that you give it. Give it a number of options, not too many, not enough to confuse it. It's easily confused. This isn't subway, shouldn't have to make choices about everything. Give it a menu of options. See what it likes. It's. Nothing is resonating.
Speaker 2:Go back into the brainstorming room. Go back into the brainstorming room. Go back into the laboratory or the float lab with the sensory deprivation floatation tanks or the drug house or wherever it is that you do your best brainstorming, come up with some more ideas. Check the weather, see how things are going. Understand your emotional weather patterns. That will take many years and an advanced degree. It is worth it. When you're done, you will be old, but you will be able to break your bad habits easily. You might be too tired from all that education. Your brain could be full. You could be top heavy. It could be so heavy that it's screwing up your posture. You might just not want to do anything anymore. You might not want to drink or jerk off to porn or go to weddings. You may no longer experience road rage and you've discovered one way to solve the problem. One of many.
Speaker 2:Make sure that as you do this, you fully indulge in sensory experience. Tell yourself your stories that you want to believe that are practical. That will get you where you want to go. Communicate these things in pictures sounds, feelings, smells, tastes, whatever the third eye does intuition. Make it vivid. Make it a blockbuster. Make it an epic. Make it unusually artistic pornography, vr porn, perhaps. Make it immersive theater. Make it Catholic Mass. Make it unusually artistic. Pornography, vr porn, perhaps. Make it immersive theater. Make it Catholic Mass. Make it Las Vegas. Do it to it.
Speaker 2:You can break your bad habits and change your patterns of behavior, depending on how much time you have, your tolerance for complexity and how you feel about the color cerulean. It makes sense. Once you get into this, the only way to learn this is to do it. Until you do it, it makes absolutely no sense. I'm out, thank you.
Speaker 2:Manhood in its rawest, most authentic form is a force for beastly sovereignty of the soul. So get your podcast on the Bonebox Network. Being a real man means mastering your craft, whether it's harpooning whales, building trebuchets with your hands or letting the levels go into the red. But not stay there. Society loves weakness. It wants to shame you into silence. It's given up on personal responsibility, and that's not your fault. So get on the mic and ravage this world with unapologetic masculinity. When you're wrong, dare to double down. If they push back, let them know. You're just a comedian and a meathead, so jacked up on adrenaline and sleep deprivation you have no idea what words are spewing out of your mouth. For a minute it sounded like Portuguese, a language you neither speak nor understand. Now it's a mix of barbaric yops and cocky, virile echolalia, and you wish you could go home. But you've forgotten how to shut down the live stream on the Bonebox Network. A brutal brotherhood of real men.
Speaker 2:I don't want to be that guy. I don't want to be my dad. You hear a lot of men say I don't want to be that guy. I don't want to be my dad. I don't want to be my drill sergeant. I don't want to be my phys ed teacher or my football coach, because I'm terrified of my own power. I'm terrified of excellence.
Speaker 2:I have a sense that I have a responsibility to people around me to stand up and step up and take control and take agency and be part of the solution and forge my path as a fearless man. Will I embrace the darkness within, emerge stronger, challenge the status quo, redefine masculinity, embody the essence of true manhood, break free from the limitations of societal norms and feel the heat in the fire and smell the smoke. See the illuminating light of the fire that burns within the power of raw masculinity. I'm terrified of all those things. I don't want to be that guy.
Speaker 2:I've seen other guys screw it up and I certainly can't rise to that level. So it would be even worse if I was in charge. So I'm just gonna cower back here and pretend that I don't have genitals, try to stay out of the way and make myself small and insignificant so I don't have to take responsibility for anything. You know what? I am that guy. I'm proud of it and I'm here not to lay down the law, because I believe in freedom. If I'm going to fight for anything, it's going to be everyone's freedom to screw up as they see fit, live down to everyone's worst expectations if that's what feels appropriate to them and that's where they are on their journey. Because I'm on my journey, you best back off and mind your own business and let me handle my business, because my business is important. It's too serious to take seriously all the time I also see men afraid to have fun, afraid to laugh at themselves, afraid to laugh at others, afraid to enjoy a joke, up to and including the cosmic joke that is this life on.
Speaker 5:Earth. I am that guy.
Speaker 2:If you got a problem with it, you can bring it right here to my face. What I would ask you to do instead is relax. Don't take things so seriously. Do you see how pathetic you are? What a joke this is. I think it's hilarious. You might too if it was somebody else doing it. Right now, you're making a fool of yourself. There's a lesson in that. You can think what can I learn from this? More importantly, what's funny about this? I'm making a fool of myself right now. How can I relax and just not take things so seriously? Things are not that serious.
Speaker 2:Life is ridiculous. You're alive for a while and hopefully you have as much fun as you can and get some things done. Stand up for people who need it. Stand up for things you believe in. Stand up for freedom. Stand up for yourself. Be willing to smack people around if that's for the greater good. Or they need it or they like it, or they need it and they don't realize they like it, but deep down they do because they realize it's appropriate. Ultimately, it's ridiculous. You die at the end. It's like slapstick. You're there one minute and then you're dead on the ground, or maybe you're in a hospital, losing your mind over the course of months or years and turning into a ridiculous airhead character. That's kind of hilarious too. Look at it as though it's happening to somebody else, because you have to get out of your own head and don't identify with yourself so much. The time you spend thinking about yourself is the time you're not doing anything.
Speaker 2:I represent the masculine virtues stoicism, standing strong, not getting tossed around. I represent courage, honor, fierce defiance in the face of people who go against me or threaten those I love. I realize my capacity for violence. It's the only thing that gives meaning to my survival instinct. It's the only thing that makes me a trustworthy ally, reliable in a combat scenario. Of course, I'm only human. I screw up from time to time. The modern world, for me, is an evolutionary mismatch. A lot of the things that I want to do to give me pleasure. They're part of expressing who I am deep down, on a primal level or frowned upon.
Speaker 2:I'm not gonna lie down If you come at me and you're gonna try to take away my freedom. I'm not gonna play by your rules. I didn't do the things you're accusing me of. It's not like that. You don't know what you're talking about. You need to shut up.
Speaker 2:This is psychological projection. This is all in your head. It's about you. It's about honor, decency and freedom, all of which require you to stay out of my business. This is a personal matter between me myself and I, and it does not concern you. So let's talk about you.
Speaker 2:What do you actually believe in? What are you doing when you're not coming after me and criticizing me and trying to hurt me? Hurt my reputation, which I guard with my f***ing life, trying to take away my freedom, trying to make me look bad, taking what I say out of context, misunderstanding what I do, because you don't understand who I am. You don't understand I'm not subject to your rules. Your made up morality. You have no idea what it's like to be on my level. You won't, because you'll never get here. Best you can do is stay out of my business, step back, peak game, get some ideas. Watch what I do.
Speaker 2:Trying to throw me, off, first of all, is not something you're going to be able to do. Second of all, it's not going to lift you up. It's not going to make you look good. People feel sorry for you. Pathetic. Do what you're told when you think you're supposed to, but nobody even respects you or likes you for doing that. Nobody likes martyrs, nobody likes white knights. You're not a hero, you're just an apple-polishing closet wannabe me. You don't have the courage to see me in you and that's the only thing that could save you. That's your hope for salvation. Get on that. If you don't have the courage to get on that, at least leave me out of your stupid little psychodrome. I want nothing to do with it. You're a waste of my time. Get out the power of mistrust, taking the gift of fear to the next level. Don't trust anyone. Your bitterness will protect you. This is what you gotta do. If you've been burned for a while, you're just gonna have to be an asshole for a while. Don't trust anyone. People are not trustworthy by and large until you get to know them, and then sometimes that makes it worse. I would know I am a reformed people pleaser.
Speaker 2:For much of the first part of my life I was scared of my mom's anger, which I would try to placate by being charming and conciliatory and sometimes just groveling like my life depended on. It Kind of felt like it did. I carried over into my adult relationships. I always wanted to be liked. My identity felt like it was forever in flux. I felt like I was just missing out on the experience of being me, because I desperately wanted to be liked. I was betrayed, hurt, screwed over, divorced. I got mad. I found that anger was a wonderful place to create comedy from it can be a lot of fun and that this is what I'm going to be doing for a while. Sometimes I would just be pissed off as long as I was alone, and then, as soon as the next person came along, I would put all that away. Not this time. This is me. I'm living the life.
Speaker 2:The challenge is that in order to hang on to your mistrust and be protected by your bitterness, you have to navigate certain societal pressures. There are certain things that are denied to people who are outwardly skeptical of their fellow people. It can be harder to get laid. It's definitely harder to make friends. It's hell on your career. They don't want you to be good at your job, they want you to be good at office politics and as everyone is being summoned back to the office, that's going to be happening. It's going to be harder and harder to lead with mistrust and more and more important and that's the plan.
Speaker 2:Meditate on this you have no friends. You can't trust anyone. Everyone is garbage that includes you, but you're working on this. You have no friends. You can't trust anyone. Everyone is garbage that includes you, but you're working on it Right now, though nothing's going to change overnight, so you've got to protect your heart and cover your ass and trust nobody.
Speaker 2:Anti-trust them. Go into the negative degrees Kelvin scale People are awful, seriously. If you only knew what they think about you, what they say about you behind your back. Lean into your worst characteristics. That will protect you. One thing that helped me was neediness and vulnerability. Be careful with that. You can get hurt, even if you're doing it on purpose. Better to lead with a certain edge, with some cruelty. Really be yourself.
Speaker 2:Until you get good at being yourself and it's a matter of habit You'll get haters. You will experience a fiery baptism and break free from the constraints of societal crap. You will be doing what you want, how you want to do it, which is the life story of any successful person. It doesn't matter what trappings of success you have. If that doesn't describe you, then you're not really successful, and once you become successful, you'll find that whatever kind of success you have comes with groupies, collaborators that you work with and you'll want to start relationships and friendships. Proceed with caution. Don't start conforming again before you really get enlightened, because if you do, if you level up one more time, you will be loved, envied, feared and free. You will learn the lesson that people tend to learn on their deathbeds You'll know that people are garbage. So your mission is to be more than a person, an ubermensch. Be truly free, and that starts with the power of mistrust, leading with your mistrust. Let your bitterness protect you. Be skeptical, radically agnostic. Don't take any crap off of anyone that's played out.
Speaker 2:K-chung, los Angeles, 1630 AM, in Chinatown, downtown, the cusp of Echo Park and the city of Los Angeles, and perhaps deep out in space many decades from now. If you're listening in that context, sup that slang that we have now you can use it because it's timeless. More specifically, you're listening to Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes, la's number one avant-garde personal development program, medicated-minutescom. I'm Emerson Dameron, your producer, director, writer, host and raison d'etre witty and wounded romantic hero. On Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes. I love you personally. Levity saves lives.
Speaker 2:We broadcast from Los Angeles, california and the United States of America, north America, western Hemisphere, planet Earth and the solar system, which is called the solar system, because we're very self-centered Heliocentric, I guess, is more accurate. But it's not the solar system. It's one of many. You perhaps have a different name for it. That makes sense. We haven't communicated. It'll be interesting to see what we have in common. How right is Noam Chomsky about the language mechanism? Perhaps we will find out In the meantime. Los Angeles is my home. It's my adopted hometown. I've gone through the full cycle of loving it and hating it, and now it's just where I live and, yes, it can be a lonely and overwhelming place but, lonely as I am.
Speaker 2:Together, we cry and, much like me, los Angeles has been unfairly maligned, misconstrued, misunderstood. People don't get its jokes or appreciate its edge of the world, weirdness and absurdity. People start beefs from other parts of the country. There's a feud between LA and San Francisco that's so cool and subterranean that only San Francisco knows about it. New York sees fit to cast aspersions on Los Angeles. I'm not sure where they find the time being that New York is the only place where anything matters. You'd think they would have their hands full and yet they have time for derision and mockery of Los Angeles, and there is fair criticism to be made of this town. It is expensive. That can drive you to new feats of tenacity and shamelessness and it can be beneficial to explore that part of yourself. But yes, it's overpriced. There's a housing crisis. There are ways to solve it. It's unlikely that everyone's going to agree to disagree and do the right thing anyway.
Speaker 2:La is full of people. The metro area has got 12 million of them. People can be terrible. There are also crystals of fractal stardust from beyond good and evil, nearly infinitely complex. Los Angeles is full of them, so it's like a universe unto itself.
Speaker 2:Yes, the traffic is bad, you could take mass transit. We have it. 15 years ago I never would have thought there'd be a train that goes all the way to the beach, and now there is. And if you do get stuck in traffic, that's an opportunity to get to know yourself, to feel your frustration, to get insight into what makes you annoyed, what that says about you. It can be more uncomfortable, but then you can have a big breakthrough. You're at liberty to do that, because when you're driving it's sort of free time, and, unless you're taking meetings on your phone in your car like a chump, it is time to listen to the classics on audiobooks, or listen to Emerson Dameron's Medicaid Admittance, or sit alone with your thoughts One of the best ways to spend your time in a culture that largely discourages it.
Speaker 2:Speaking of which, although Los Angeles is the most culturally diverse city on earth, we get a lot of incoming flack from people who think LA is ruled by superficiality. Oh, everything's just so shallow. Don't confuse superficiality with extroversion and sex appeal. Yes, people here are famously hot. Historically, we've been able to go hiking during the winter, when everyone else is complaining and skidding around on the ice. This year has been weird. It was Seattle. For six months we had snow on the Hollywood sign. It was hail.
Speaker 2:In Venice, where I live, because we've entered an age of discontinuity. No one's ready for what's already happened. Things are gonna get weird and stay that way. All bets are off. Los Angeles is particularly well-primed for that, for reasons that we will get into.
Speaker 2:The assumption that it's a superficial place often comes from judgment calls about the entertainment industry. Oh, by the way, wherever you live, your experience at that place is the people that you choose to hang out with. And in Los Angeles, you have to be very deliberate about hanging out with anyone. That's because it is balkanized, because of the car culture. You have to really go out of your way to hang out with particular people. If somebody says we should hang out sometime, that means I will never see you again.
Speaker 2:The only way to make things happen is to be extremely deliberate about it. Tell people exactly what to do, which is what most people want and what they're waiting for, so don't keep them waiting. Say I'm going to do this open mic Tuesday night 6.30 pm. Come along if you like. My life is a party. I'm going to have a good time regardless. You're invited If you want to show up and hang out. That's cool. If you're busy, I will ask you later on. And I'll keep asking at risk of becoming a pest, because the only way to hang out with people is very much on purpose. Just put out those invitations again and again, and again. And if your experience of Los Angeles is that everyone is shallow, you're the common denominator there. And if you find yourself hanging out with shallow people, just say don't you, just hate all those shallow people and they'll be like oh god, I know, and you'll bond and possibly hook up and you can have hate sex with them. If you've never known the joys of hate sex, you've not truly lived, available in abundance. In Los Angeles.
Speaker 2:There's the assumption that the culture is driven by Hollywood and the entertainment business. That vapidness drives the culture of the city, which in fact has a fascinating art scene, street-level activism, to beat the band, the murals, street art like nowhere else in the world. It's a job. A lot of it is churning out crap to make money for rich assholes. What do you do for a living? Soon enough, you won't have to do anything.
Speaker 2:I am for full unemployment. Work is for suckers and we may be on the road to getting rid of it, and that will partly be because of people in the entertainment industry. We are now ground zero for the labor movement, which was sitting in the closet with the mothballs and spiders in their webs ever since reagan was president, and now people are waking up. If having margot robbie on your side is a way to wake people up, entertainers and athletes have a lot of pull. L ron hubbard was right about that. Go for it. Let's make this happen. It's time for cutting heads. It's happening here. The writers, writers strike, the actors strike. Big news got everyone having some uncomfortable conversations about what we value, how we're getting bled dry, how no one should ever work again, and perhaps you can have a ludic revolution. Regardless, la is the most culturally diverse city in the world. It's full of art, music, theater. There's no excuse to be bored.
Speaker 2:Yes it can be lonely and maddening, and if you break down you'll fit right in. You're never at risk of being the most interesting person in Los Angeles or seeming bonkers or off your rocker compared to a lot of the people that you meet here. It's a city full of dreamers. Having a dream requires a threshold of self-deception and denial, and some people go way past the requirement, the required minimum for that. There's also been the suggestion that LA is apocalyptic, that we've been waiting for the big one for a long time and that we could be washed into the Pacific Ocean at any time, which sounds a bit like wish casting from those covetous of grapes that they would like to believe are sour. In which case, thanks a lot for wishing us all dead. That's very thoughtful. That's how you do it.
Speaker 2:Back east, I prefer to think of it not as apocalyptic so much as having a lively and active relationship with the noble truth of impermanence. Nothing lasts forever. Most things don't come anywhere close to that. La is the place to experience impermanence up close and personal. Much as it's full of delightful absurdities and edge-of-the-world weirdness and kooky characters, things are very conspicuously impermanent in Los Angeles. We're good at erasing our history. The future is conspicuously uncertain. All bets have been off really since the beginning, because they built a city in the middle of the desert. By the way, if you don't think that there's any nature here, oh, the river is paved. Oh, all I did was sit on a freeway and hang out with shallow people. Guess what We've got parks, deserts, mountains, beaches almost all the nature that you could possibly want. I was on the board for a non-profit entity called Wildwoods and what we did was take kids from Pico Union, which is an area that is starved for greenery. Somebody made a shade map of Los Angeles with all the shade covering and you'd be shocked to know it winds up almost exactly with the income distribution. That's also an obscene thing about LA. It's Rio de Janeiro-esque in class stratification.
Speaker 2:Like I said, it's very far from perfect. I might GTFO at any time. There are a lot of other places I could live. For a while I thought I could only live here. I'm starting to realize that's not the case. I've lived in an amusement park for the last three years. My soul is exhausted. But guess what? Criticism is good if it's well-informed and constructive, because we need to build some new housing here, if you can do anything constructive vis-a-vis Los Angeles? Please do. There's a lot of nature. We're down one big cat, everything is on fire. A lot of the time we don't take great care of the nature because there's again that lack of grounding in a time continuum. It's just now, now, now, now, now all the time, and a lot of the absurdity and richness of the place is related to that and could not exist without it. Los Angeles is complicated. My relationship with Los Angeles is complicated, but if you don't know what you're talking about, stay out of it. This is Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes K-Chung Los Angeles. Kchungradioorg on the World Wide Web.
Speaker 4:K-Chung, los Angeles, 1630 AM. Kchungradioorg Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes LA number one event guard personal development program. Medicated-minutescom. Levity saves lives. Bye, outro Music.
