Author: Fred Blahnik

People with true courage embrace the future and aren’t afraid to take risks, even significant ones.  People wanting for courage, on the other hand, cling to the status quo—and by extension, to the past—like it’s a giant security blanket.  They never know what they are capable of accomplishing because they’re chronically terrified of leaving their comfort zone behind, even temporarily.  These people’s lives unfold safely, but pitifully.  They connect with the past because no surprises lie there.  The future cannot be predicted, thus it is a minefield that should be avoided at all costs. Let others take risks; THEY prefer stasis. Let others experience a wide spectrum of emotions; THEY prefer but one: Personal security!  Yes yes, give them security or give them…..fun and excitement and vibrant challenges and exhilaration?  Well, now that you put it that way…..

She doesn’t miss me.  Apparently not at all.  A big fuckin’ nullity.  Zero squared, no…..zero CUBED! So let me ask you this pointed question right now: How much stronger of a character indictment could there be than that?  Seriously.  A tired old axiom holds that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but what if the heart doesn’t discern any feeling at all?  What if the heart doesn’t give two and a half shits that it has neither seen nor heard from her since last week?  What if said heart is even frankly ambivalent about the whole matter?  Her heart obviously hasn’t been growing fonder during this time spent away, and one could convincingly argue that our original strong relationship-—if one ever truly existed, that is—is now substantially weaker than before.  One could even tiptoe a step further down the path of logic and suggest that this now feeble relationship is in critical condition, on life support, and—Long pregnant pause here—nearing extinction. Jesus Christ……did I really just say that?! Seriously?? WOW!!!  So much for happy fairytale endings, I guess. But full disclosure, I always thought those ridiculous, smarmy things were for the birds anyway.

Today is a new day…..I will try my best to find myself within it.  I may feel lost and misguided at times, but there is absolutely no shame in that.  I will just shove this carbon-based, clumsily biped conveyance into “Drive” and thence never once look back.  The past consists entirely of memories, some good but not all, while the present and future hold the potential for creating memories majorly superior to the ones currently existing in my cerebral vaults.  I therefore intend to mine the present and hopefully the future as well—providing my heretofore aureate luck holds out indefinitely—for twenty-four-carat memories that’ll put everything presently residing in my Memory Hall of Fame to abject shame.  “Make America Great Again!”?  It’s already great, as is the rest of our world and our universe.  Nothing is more irksome than hearing some red-faced oldster snarling at length about how we must pull together to make the world that we live in “great again”, when obviously by dint of their age alone they must have been an integral party to its alleged downfall, whenever that degeneration supposedly happened.  If ya ain’t part of the solution then you’re part of the problem, and grumpy old fossils who insist on pointing to the past as the seminal roadmap that we should utilize for navigating the tricky byways up ahead egregiously miss this point.  Cavemen did not persevere and ultimately prevail by turning their backs on fire, their immediate successors did not persevere and prevail by turning their backs on the wheel, people of the middle ages did not persevere and prevail by turning their backs on the printing press, the descendants who followed them did not persevere and prevail by turning their backs on the internal combustion engine, their successors did not persevere and prevail by eschewing their yearning to fly freely not unlike the birds in the sky—first within the bounds of our earthly atmosphere and, much later, breathtakingly beyond those bounds—and our most recent ancestors did not persevere and prevail by ignoring the magisterial power inherent to the splitting of the atom.  Why should we be any different or, more appropriately—why should we WANT to be any different than any of our predecessors extending all the way back to the troglodyte era?  “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN???”  It’s always been great, just as the history and culture of mankind has sought greatness ever since we became bipedal creatures and migrated en masse out of eastern Africa eons ago.  That greatness has never been defined by looking backwards during times of need, during times of strife, during times of volatility, during times of trouble.  No, human greatness has always been defined by how we react to adversity by looking and moving FORWARD, not backwards.  The future holds the innovative solutions for the new problems that we humans constantly seem to create and stumble into without trying; the past only holds the reasons and root causes for those same problems.  Seeking to rectify current problems with old “solutions” will only exacerbate said problems and make them more intractable and long-lasting.  You can never be the solution to a problem that you admittedly caused yourself.  If a major predicament germinated and subsequently exploded skyward and thrived during your watch, then that is YOUR problem and not to be blamed on succeeding generations.  At this juncture, just graciously step aside and allow younger, more mentally nimble individuals clean up the mess that you were largely responsible for creating.  That is the proper thing to do, that is the logical thing to do, that is the moral thing to do…..that is the irrefutable RIGHT thing to do!  To do otherwise—to stand red-faced in the middle of the road with the veins in the temples of your skull dangerously distended, all outraged and disgruntled and unreasonably opinionated while chanting hypnotically about the need to make our country and world “great” again—is not just grossly immature behavior; it is a heinous reflection on an entire generation—YOUR GENERATION!—as well.  And it is, conversely, just about the most selfish, egotistical, tantrum-throwing behavior any human being of any demographic could ever engage in. Shame on you if you find yourself falling within such a misguided subset! Your descendants—your DNA bearers, your flesh and blood reincarnated, your legacy namesakes—deserve infinitely better even if you and your misguided ilk personally do not.

If you somehow miss out on your lifelong dream, then by all means create a new one as soon as possible!  Don’t just sit around moping and losing sleep over what might have been.  That ship has already sailed.  That egg has already been fried.  That raindrop is now part of the raging river.  That chicken has flown the coop.  That pot-roast is cooked. The aforementioned ship ain’t ever gonna return irrespective of your most fervent desires, ergo begin making preparations to climb aboard the next vessel that happens along, oftentimes unannounced and serendipitously.  Because if you don’t—If you continue gazing longingly backward into that unchangeable abyss which is the past—you’ll most definitely wind up missing out on the next craft that adventitiously passes through your life as well and, what’s more, you’ll have no one to blame for this “terrible misfortune” but yourself.

January 26^th, 2026

Heroes

By Frederick J. Blahnik

Martyrs

Slumped over lifeless with glazed eyes

Riddled full of Icemen bullet holes

Their only sin was standing up for disadvantaged brothers and sisters

And possessing healthy, hardworking consciences

Now they’ll never stand up for anyone or anything again

Their futures stolen from them by masked, barbarous criminals

Martyrs for a noble cause—Yes!

But were they bona fide heroes?

Were they the best of the best that mankind has to offer?

Probably not

Yet they did come painfully close; they were Pretti Good

Yes, those two blessed, altruistic souls were Pretti Good, for sure!

Martyrs

Got up in the morning believing a long future lay ahead of them

But that can change in the blink of an eye and the panicked tug of a trigger

Now slumped over lifeless with blood pouring out of Icemen bullet holes

Both meant well, but good intentions weren’t nearly enough to save them

Strong convictions grounded in kindness, but two horrible, felonious outcomes nonetheless

Fought the good fight, but dreams always die last

Martyrs for a noble cause—Yes!

But were they bona fide heroes?

Were they the best of the best that mankind has to offer?

Probably not

Yet they did come painfully close; they were Pretti Good

Yes, those two blessed, altruistic souls were Pretti Good, for sure!

Martyrs

Fighting a fight they didn’t have to

They could’ve just shrugged their shoulders and accepted government tyranny

But their consciences wouldn’t allow them to do that

No, they were virtuous people who stood for so much more than stasis

Now their bodies lie lifeless, punctured all over with murderous Icemen bullets

With their characters being assassinated too before their blood even stops flowing

Martyrs for a noble cause—Yes!

But were they bona fide heroes?

Were they the best of the best that mankind has to offer?

Probably not

Yet they did come painfully close; they were Pretti Good

Yes, those two blessed, altruistic souls were Pretti Good, for sure!

Victims of brutally tragic circumstances, Alex Pretti and Renee Good will live on in the annals of virtue forever even if they weren’t conventional, Wild West heroes.

May their souls rest in peace!

You cannot be the problem and the solution at the same time.  You cannot be the question and the answer all rolled together into one convenient ball of clay.  You cannot claim to be on the outside if you’ve lived all your life on the inside.  You cannot be the predator and its prey in the same instant.  You cannot claim empathy if you’ve never walked a mile in the other person’s shoes.  You cannot be truth and duplicity simultaneously. You cannot be tactful and tactless in the same breath. You just cannot BE any of these things and still be honest with yourself. To insist otherwise brands you a fake, a fraud…..an immanently mendacious charlatan.  Hence surveil your behavior at all times and don’t then!!!

She stopped praying one day simply because her prayers were seldom answered, and the random ones that were answered could just as credibly be ascribed to chance as divine intervention.  Who can reliably ascertain whether a prayer has truly been answered by a benign deity as opposed to the vagaries of fate “determining” what a certain outcome might be?  No one.  Modern science cannot answer such a transcendent question, nor can modern medicine nor a corps of the most learned philosophers ensconced within the lofty ivory towers of academia.  People have preconceived beliefs, usually strongly held, and they’ll believe only those parts of a narrative that align with their convictions.  In the same vein, positive outcomes will be ascribed to the God they pray to, while negative outcomes will be willfully ignored and “their” God will not be blamed for them nor vilified as an unreliable, backstabbing slacker. God has a pretty sweet life in the minds of these sycophantic disciples: He/She receives all the credit when something turns out peachy, but shoulders no blame when a situation ultimately heads south into the cesspool.

Human life is not for everyone. Let’s face it, some people are not well suited for an earthly existence.  They struggle to adjust to life’s many peaks and valleys and continue struggling just as hard at eighty years of age (if they happen to make it that far) as they did at eight months and eight years and eighteen blue moons. Just because you were born doesn’t mean the road ahead is perpetually straight, perpetually flat, perpetually sunny, paved with newly poured, pothole-free asphalt throughout its duration, and overhung with apple and citrus trees boasting epicurean fruit ripe for the plucking every step of the way.  For some people that scenario may be and is the case, but for others—for an unfortunately copious number, in fact—the aforementioned road is a godawfully curvy, hilly, overcast, pothole-infested nightmare with poisonous snakes periodically lunging at them unexpectedly from those suddenly barren apple and citrus trees. And these challenged people have no choice but to adapt quickly and learn to survive as opposed to thrive, to count their limited blessings instead of whimpering loudly about the frequent hurdles that spring up in their way, to settle for small pleasures in contrast to being the recipients of major, oftentimes undeserved, largesse, and—climactically…..to be satisfied with mediocrity in the end.  Yes, that’s right, to settle for much-derided mediocrity and, furthermore, to then feign ersatz happiness with same. Act like you’re a pig joyously gulping down slop compared to its erstwhile friend stuffed inside a livestock trailer that is being backed up to the intake door to a bustling slaughterhouse. Act like you’re the life of the party garnering flirtatious glances from every voluptuous, bodacious harlot in the joint rather than perpetually embodying the habitual wallflower. Act like you’re the hammer for a change instead of always manifesting the nail. Yes, I know these are awfully big asks, but what other recourse is there? Huh?! Bawling over your dinner each night while chronically decrying the unfairness and terribleness of life? Life is not fair by any stretch of the imagination, and these faux heroic people stand as Case Example #1 to support this assertion. Remember: They did not choose life; the metaphysical arbiters of life arbitrarily chose them and pursuantly threw myriad significant obstacles in their pathways as the Arrow of Time unalterably inched its way rightward. That said, these lost souls are nonetheless left to deal with the mess they were handed in the best manner they know how.  Nothing is fair also means that EVERYTHING is fair…..in love, in war, and in life itself. GET USED TO IT!!!

Some people live big lives while others live teensy lives.  Why is this so?  Why do certain people have such a disproportionately greater impact on humanity than their lesser compatriots, yet seemingly without expending any more effort and energy than their struggling counterparts?  The answer is fear or, rather, lack thereof.  Individuals who are not afraid to try new things, go new places, and meet new people live noteworthily larger lives than individuals who cling to their hometowns, cling to their small clique of friends, cling to their old traditions, and cling to the past analogous to an infant staunchly clutching onto its filthy security blanket. People like these—And there are a whole shitload of them probably comprising a sizable majority; let’s not fool ourselves here!—are akin to bloated cucumbers that, left unattended out in the garden, eventually turn a pukey shade of yellow and rot on the vine.  Change is nearly always synonymous with personal growth; stasis is nearly always synonymous with stagnation leading to an ultimate unnoticed demise.

Once in a while in life—not often, mind you, but every now and then—you just have to take a deep breath, close your eyes…..and dive into the deep end of the pool off the high board!  Throw caution to the wind.  Defy rationality.  Veer off the safe, beaten path.  Follow your gut instincts.  Trust in your inner self.  Cast aside your strict, oppressive budget.  Close your eyes and plunge into the darkness. Above all else: BELIEVE in yourself with all your heart and all your soul!  If all you ever do is chase after convention, then you are no better off and no more refined than any of the multitude of Holstein-Friesians that obsequiously follow the bell cow in from pasture every evening to be drained of their milk.  But, trust me, you are better than those mindless, docile beasts!  You’ve been blessed with a strong sense of free will; do not squander this empyreal gift by being afraid to take chances.  Life is all about making choices, but if you allow society and others to blindly make all those choices for you, then you slavishly deserve the boring, pedestrian fate that invariably awaits.