I have a story that unfortunately involves maths - a tale that when spun will reflect the true state of health care in this country. It's a story that isn't being told, isn't being acknowledged, and quite frankly, is making me sick to even think about it. So I'm going to share this story with you, dear readers, in hope that you also get sick.
I hope you have insurance.
Here's the story: a friend of mine recently started having these weird pains in her upper abdomen. She went to her doctor, who referred her to a specialist, who took an ultrasound of her entire chest area and decided that she was fine. The pains went away on their own. Diagnose as you will.
Either way, happy ending - right?
Except she then got her insurance bill, which she shared with me today, and which immediately gave me chest pains as I read it. The bill stated, quite clearly, that the hospital put a price tag of $2,700 on the ultrasound, an event which took all of 5 minutes to unfold (I know, because I took her and waited in the waiting room and didn't even get 3 paragraphs into a magazine article before she came bouncing out, saying she was ready to go drink beer).
The insurance bill then went on to say that the "negotiated price" for this event - for the insurance company - was $700. The insurance company then stated that my friend had to pay nothing - they covered this procedure - which is what we pay insurance premiums for in the first place.
Happy ending, right?
Wrong.
Let me be clear - this means that the hospital bean counters and the insurance company bean counters agreed that this procedure, which would cost you nearly three thousand dollars if you came off the street and asked for it - would be worth a quarter of that when payed for by the insurance company.
Let me restate this again, just to be clear. The hospital stated that the cost for this preventative measure - something that is designed to ensure the health of the hospital's patients - was a lot. The insurance company charges those same patients a monthly fee to ensure that they don't have to pay this amount. People who pay insurance companies a monthly fee don't have to pay anything, as they have worked out a deal with the hospital to ensure this.
Or, put another way, you run a convenience store on some corner in some city. Doing so, you run the risk that hoodlums from the area may or may not decide on any given day to come into your store and randomly smash the items you sell with a baseball bat, rendering them unsalable. This, of course, would impact your profits negatively, and directly affect your ability to buy a Porsche for yourself. Or, you would have to raise your prices, and your customers would suffer. The Mob comes along, and guarantees that if you pay them a monthly fee, they will insure against hoodlum debauchery.
Nevermind how they can do this, they just can.
That, in Federal Government lexicon, is called "Racketeering". And it's punishable by many, many years in jail.
So can somebody please explain to me why this is legal when it's called "Insurance"? And worse still, why are we still even considering electing people to office that condone this type of behavior?
I'll go ahead and answer this for you. It's because everyone that runs for office is somehow oblivious to the fact that this is actually illegal behavior. The Republicans don't give a shit if people have to pay $700 or $2,700 for a procedure that might save their lives, as long as businesses don't have to pay out of pocket for it. And Democrats are trying to pass laws that require everyone to have protection, not thinking about who pays for it or whether it's really even needed or even legal in the first place.
We are the Greatest Country in the World, but also the last civilized country left that structurally links healthcare to our jobs. And instead of figuring out how to take care of the people that live next door to us, our organized government is arguing over who is responsible for paying the racketeering costs to keep the healthcare system running at its current high level of profit.
What the fuck politicos, do you think we're stupid????
Hmmmm. Apparently you all do.
Aaaaaand, welcome to the 2012 Presidental debates. It's an exercise in futility, so no wonder we fall back on black and white issues like Gay Marriage or Abortion when we decide who should be in charge. Because the truth is that we need to dump them all and find someone who is willing to call things like they are and fix healthcare for real and force the NFL to play even if the players and owners can't agree on whether a game is worth 3 or 4 million dollars to those who play it.
I give up. I'll be in Mexico if you need me...
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Weird, Science.
Weird Science is, actually and probably, one of the worst and most cheesiest (albeit classic) movies ever made, ever, even compared to other 80's movies. Regardless, there is a lot to be learned from this movie, and most of that can benefit the female sex with regard to dealing with the male gender. I recently wrote a blog entry about how men can best win the affection of women, but so little is written about the opposite, mostly because it has little to do with anything except beer and blowjobs.
The truth is, everything women need to know about men can be learned from watching this (otherwise horrible, honestly) movie. Here are the top 10, for your convenience:
10) We want to feel like you will do everything we tell you to. And even if you do, we're still going to want other chicks more who won't do anything we want them to.
9) We like it when you cook for us.
8) Dressing in a man's shirt (while cooking) is one of the most sexiest things a woman can do.
7) "I am shitting in my pants!" is one of Robert Downey Jr's best lines in a movie, ever.
6) Women with British accents are really, really, really hot.
5) We will never understand that people will like us for who we are, not for what we can give them. But at the same time, we just want you to like us for who we are, not for what we can give to you.
4) A woman who reiterates to other people that we don't stand for baloney is a keeper, even if she's a bit mannish. Or old enough to be someone's grandmother.
3) We want you to push us past our comfort zones by taking us to nightclubs in which we don't belong, throwing parties in our house even though it'll get us in trouble, and standing up to people (like our parents) who we, for whatever reason, can't stand up to. But we'll still fight bikers when push comes to shove.
2) Even if we create you by connecting a Barbie to a car battery and hacking into an Air Force mainframe, we're still going to be more interested in impressing the alpha guys in the room than you, even if you do (or are) everything else in this list.
1) A woman who's primary goal is to make us a better man by bringing out our self-confidence and courage is the best kind of woman in the world. But she probably used to be a Barbie hooked up to a car battery, brought to life by an Air Force mainframe.
Bonus Observations:
- Ilan Mitchell-Smith is a lame replacement for Matthew Broderick.
- Mesh shirts used to be bad-ass looking on dudes, in the 80's. Now, they just look gay.
- Missiles are funny because they are shaped like penises. Doubly so during the Cold War.
The truth is, everything women need to know about men can be learned from watching this (otherwise horrible, honestly) movie. Here are the top 10, for your convenience:
10) We want to feel like you will do everything we tell you to. And even if you do, we're still going to want other chicks more who won't do anything we want them to.
9) We like it when you cook for us.
8) Dressing in a man's shirt (while cooking) is one of the most sexiest things a woman can do.
7) "I am shitting in my pants!" is one of Robert Downey Jr's best lines in a movie, ever.
6) Women with British accents are really, really, really hot.
5) We will never understand that people will like us for who we are, not for what we can give them. But at the same time, we just want you to like us for who we are, not for what we can give to you.
4) A woman who reiterates to other people that we don't stand for baloney is a keeper, even if she's a bit mannish. Or old enough to be someone's grandmother.
3) We want you to push us past our comfort zones by taking us to nightclubs in which we don't belong, throwing parties in our house even though it'll get us in trouble, and standing up to people (like our parents) who we, for whatever reason, can't stand up to. But we'll still fight bikers when push comes to shove.
2) Even if we create you by connecting a Barbie to a car battery and hacking into an Air Force mainframe, we're still going to be more interested in impressing the alpha guys in the room than you, even if you do (or are) everything else in this list.
1) A woman who's primary goal is to make us a better man by bringing out our self-confidence and courage is the best kind of woman in the world. But she probably used to be a Barbie hooked up to a car battery, brought to life by an Air Force mainframe.
Bonus Observations:
- Ilan Mitchell-Smith is a lame replacement for Matthew Broderick.
- Mesh shirts used to be bad-ass looking on dudes, in the 80's. Now, they just look gay.
- Missiles are funny because they are shaped like penises. Doubly so during the Cold War.
Saturday, June 4, 2011
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Song of the Sausage Creature
They say, and they would be right, that every time you ride a motorcycle you are taking your life into your hands. A more accurate statement, perhaps, would be to say "Every time you ride a motorcycle on roads where people also drive cars or trucks you are taking your life into your hands". In other words, motorcycles don't kill people, people in cars kill people on motorcycles.
And deer. Deer kill people on motorcycles as well.
I bring this up today only because earlier this evening I came within a cunt hair of being t-boned by an older woman driving a Ford Explorer.
Side note: does "cunt hair" even have meaning anymore now that everyone shaves their pubes? I don't know. I just wanted to see how many times I could legitimately use the word "cunt" in my post and not piss anyone off. Perhaps I've already failed.
Here's how it all went down. I was riding along one of the many country back roads we have here in lovely Virginia, inhaling the sweet smell of a beautiful and sunny Spring evening and ruminating on how happy I am to be living in this part of the country. I approached a road onto which I had to make a left turn to get home. I applied my turn signal, downshifted, and started to execute said turn. The aforementioned oldbag broad lady woman was pulling out from that side road into the main road I was on. We were both taking left turns. I had the right of way, as I was on a main thoroughfare and she was at a stop sign. I watched her (as if in slow motion) look left, look right, and look left again, and I immediately and intuitively knew that she didn't even know I was there. It was as if she looked right through me.
As a side note, when I bought my Harley I knew there were two add-ons I was going to be purchasing as soon as I could afford them. One is a custom paint job, to replace the traditional black and classic logo paint with something more befitting my personal taste, like neon blue skulls in a black vortex or an exploding Harley logo. The other is straight exhaust pipes, the sole purpose of which is to lessen the muffling effect that exhaust pipes have on the engine noise. Which is another way of saying "they make motorcycles obscenely loud".
I bring this up now not to build suspense (you already know she didn't hit me because otherwise I'd be in traction and unable to write this now), but to explain why it is that motorcyclists spend their hard-earned money to make their beloved machines obnoxiously loud. It's not because we are attention whores. Ok, it's not JUST because we are attention whores. It's because people who drive cars and trucks just don't seem to be able to SEE motorcycles on the road. So it's not a bad idea to give them something to HEAR, so they don't run us over.
Like I said, I don't have straight pipes yet. So my motorcycle is "stock Harley" loud, which is to say it sounds great, but you won't hear it unless you are standing next to it or driving behind me.
This lady didn't hear me and she didn't see me, and so she started to pull out into my lane, with me directly in her path, as I was in the middle of my turn.
If you've never driven a motorcycle, the way you turn is you execute a controlled "falling down" maneuver. You lean the bike in the direction you want to turn, and the acceleration of the engine (contributing to centrifugal force) keeps man and machine from lying on their side. Slowing or stopping when in this state means that vertical no longer can be a word used to describe you. "Road Pancake" might become more accurate.
So having to react to someone slamming into you from any direction when you are in the middle of a 90 degree turn is a bad thing.
Fortunately she saw me when she was about a foot away from my highway peg and slammed on the brake. Fortunately there was nobody else driving in either direction on the main road. Fortunately I've been through this before, and straightened out the bike, slammed on my own brakes, and prepared to launch myself off of the machine away from the car - preferring to sacrifice my beloved machine than get pancaked between it and the front bumper of her piece of shit SUV.
We both stopped - inches away from each other. I closed my eyes, breathed a deep sigh of relief, and revved my engine and finished my turn and kept on my path.
As I rode past her I looked up to see her reaction. I half-expected her to be pissed, or flipping me off, which would have been what would happen back in Massachusetts, New York, or Connecticut. Instead, she looked horrified, hands over her mouth, eyes wide open.
Which was the right reaction to have, and I would have had it too, if I didn't have another 15 miles to ride before I could pull my bike off into the relative safety of my apartment complex parking lot. I didn't have time or the luxury of flipping out, I needed to concentrate on driving.
Because nobody else seems to be...
P.S. - For those who don't know, the title of this post is a reference to Hunter S. Thompson's epic "Song of the Sausage Creature" article about riding speed bikes (when they were called "cafe racers").
And deer. Deer kill people on motorcycles as well.
I bring this up today only because earlier this evening I came within a cunt hair of being t-boned by an older woman driving a Ford Explorer.
Side note: does "cunt hair" even have meaning anymore now that everyone shaves their pubes? I don't know. I just wanted to see how many times I could legitimately use the word "cunt" in my post and not piss anyone off. Perhaps I've already failed.
Here's how it all went down. I was riding along one of the many country back roads we have here in lovely Virginia, inhaling the sweet smell of a beautiful and sunny Spring evening and ruminating on how happy I am to be living in this part of the country. I approached a road onto which I had to make a left turn to get home. I applied my turn signal, downshifted, and started to execute said turn. The aforementioned old
As a side note, when I bought my Harley I knew there were two add-ons I was going to be purchasing as soon as I could afford them. One is a custom paint job, to replace the traditional black and classic logo paint with something more befitting my personal taste, like neon blue skulls in a black vortex or an exploding Harley logo. The other is straight exhaust pipes, the sole purpose of which is to lessen the muffling effect that exhaust pipes have on the engine noise. Which is another way of saying "they make motorcycles obscenely loud".
I bring this up now not to build suspense (you already know she didn't hit me because otherwise I'd be in traction and unable to write this now), but to explain why it is that motorcyclists spend their hard-earned money to make their beloved machines obnoxiously loud. It's not because we are attention whores. Ok, it's not JUST because we are attention whores. It's because people who drive cars and trucks just don't seem to be able to SEE motorcycles on the road. So it's not a bad idea to give them something to HEAR, so they don't run us over.
Like I said, I don't have straight pipes yet. So my motorcycle is "stock Harley" loud, which is to say it sounds great, but you won't hear it unless you are standing next to it or driving behind me.
This lady didn't hear me and she didn't see me, and so she started to pull out into my lane, with me directly in her path, as I was in the middle of my turn.
If you've never driven a motorcycle, the way you turn is you execute a controlled "falling down" maneuver. You lean the bike in the direction you want to turn, and the acceleration of the engine (contributing to centrifugal force) keeps man and machine from lying on their side. Slowing or stopping when in this state means that vertical no longer can be a word used to describe you. "Road Pancake" might become more accurate.
So having to react to someone slamming into you from any direction when you are in the middle of a 90 degree turn is a bad thing.
Fortunately she saw me when she was about a foot away from my highway peg and slammed on the brake. Fortunately there was nobody else driving in either direction on the main road. Fortunately I've been through this before, and straightened out the bike, slammed on my own brakes, and prepared to launch myself off of the machine away from the car - preferring to sacrifice my beloved machine than get pancaked between it and the front bumper of her piece of shit SUV.
We both stopped - inches away from each other. I closed my eyes, breathed a deep sigh of relief, and revved my engine and finished my turn and kept on my path.
As I rode past her I looked up to see her reaction. I half-expected her to be pissed, or flipping me off, which would have been what would happen back in Massachusetts, New York, or Connecticut. Instead, she looked horrified, hands over her mouth, eyes wide open.
Which was the right reaction to have, and I would have had it too, if I didn't have another 15 miles to ride before I could pull my bike off into the relative safety of my apartment complex parking lot. I didn't have time or the luxury of flipping out, I needed to concentrate on driving.
Because nobody else seems to be...
P.S. - For those who don't know, the title of this post is a reference to Hunter S. Thompson's epic "Song of the Sausage Creature" article about riding speed bikes (when they were called "cafe racers").
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Fear is the Mind Killer.
Fear is an interesting human emotion. It's not just all about monsters in the closet or falling from great heights or being sat on my extremely fat white girls either. In fact, fear has one commonality, regardless of what it is you think you're afraid of. What we are always really afraid of is loss.
We fear losing a winning streak. Or our innocence. Or our health. Our wealth. Our lives.
Frequently, in a human twist of irony, loss is what helps us get past our fears too. Show me a truly fearless man, and I will show you a person with absolutely nothing to lose. And everything to gain.
I realized today, immediately after being stung by a wasp on the steps outside my apartment, that over the past 30 years I had developed a fear of stinging insects. And the only reason I had was because I had gone 30 years without being stung. Simple. I never had a traumatic experience with a yellow jacket, never saw someone die in my arms because they had an allergic reaction to a sting, nada. I just hadn't been stung in a long-ass time.
And every year that I became further removed from what it actually felt like to be stung by a wasp (I didn't enjoy it, but overall wasn't really all that bad), The more I feared that it might happen again.To the point where I probably acted pretty ridiculous if a bee was nearby, irrational thought kicking in and deciding for me that the more I moved about the less likely it was that I'd get stung.
But why? Who cares? I'm not allergic to bees, and like I said, it's not an enjoyable experience, but it wasn't so bad.
It's the fear of loss of innocence more than anything, I think. That pristine record of 30 years without a sting (which is a good thing, but not what I strive for in life) broken. The fear of a lovely afternoon outdoors marred by a little pain and discomfort and swelling, perhaps. The fear that I'd scream like a little girl and flail my arms about helplessly if I ever did get stung again (for the record, I swore - man-style - and kept on doing what I was doing).
It can't be that I had been afraid of being stung by bees, I'm way too manly for that...
We fear losing a winning streak. Or our innocence. Or our health. Our wealth. Our lives.
Frequently, in a human twist of irony, loss is what helps us get past our fears too. Show me a truly fearless man, and I will show you a person with absolutely nothing to lose. And everything to gain.
I realized today, immediately after being stung by a wasp on the steps outside my apartment, that over the past 30 years I had developed a fear of stinging insects. And the only reason I had was because I had gone 30 years without being stung. Simple. I never had a traumatic experience with a yellow jacket, never saw someone die in my arms because they had an allergic reaction to a sting, nada. I just hadn't been stung in a long-ass time.
And every year that I became further removed from what it actually felt like to be stung by a wasp (I didn't enjoy it, but overall wasn't really all that bad), The more I feared that it might happen again.To the point where I probably acted pretty ridiculous if a bee was nearby, irrational thought kicking in and deciding for me that the more I moved about the less likely it was that I'd get stung.
But why? Who cares? I'm not allergic to bees, and like I said, it's not an enjoyable experience, but it wasn't so bad.
It's the fear of loss of innocence more than anything, I think. That pristine record of 30 years without a sting (which is a good thing, but not what I strive for in life) broken. The fear of a lovely afternoon outdoors marred by a little pain and discomfort and swelling, perhaps. The fear that I'd scream like a little girl and flail my arms about helplessly if I ever did get stung again (for the record, I swore - man-style - and kept on doing what I was doing).
It can't be that I had been afraid of being stung by bees, I'm way too manly for that...
Monday, May 30, 2011
An Open Letter to the Media
Hey, reporters....
Psssst!
Yeah, you in the tweed jacket. With the broken spell-checker. And no common sense.
As an "average" citizen of the world, I have a few pro-tips for you about what and what does not constitute "news". In other words, stop bombarding the world with headlines (that simply won't seem to drop off of my news reader's top-5 list no matter what else happens in the world), unless they are actually meaningful.
For example, the following event is never, ever, under any circumstances, worth writing an entire article about:
The fact that she is not yet a declared presidential candidate makes it even less news-worthy. Don't you fucking idiots see that as long as you drool over every move she makes from now until Labor Day when she really does make an announcement that is news-worthy (sort of) you're giving her free publicity?
Ah sweet mother of shit, I just did it myself. Good thing nobody actually reads this blog...
Psssst!
Yeah, you in the tweed jacket. With the broken spell-checker. And no common sense.
As an "average" citizen of the world, I have a few pro-tips for you about what and what does not constitute "news". In other words, stop bombarding the world with headlines (that simply won't seem to drop off of my news reader's top-5 list no matter what else happens in the world), unless they are actually meaningful.
For example, the following event is never, ever, under any circumstances, worth writing an entire article about:
Some hockey mom from Alaska rides a motorcycle.
The fact that she is not yet a declared presidential candidate makes it even less news-worthy. Don't you fucking idiots see that as long as you drool over every move she makes from now until Labor Day when she really does make an announcement that is news-worthy (sort of) you're giving her free publicity?
Ah sweet mother of shit, I just did it myself. Good thing nobody actually reads this blog...
Friday, May 27, 2011
Hello, I am Nice To Meet You.
I'm not a PUA (Pick Up Artist). But I'm not an AFC (Average Frustrated Chump, in PUA-speak) either. I'm just a dude who has been through the dating process as an adult and learned what does and what doesn't work.
I'm going to go ahead and share that with you now.
The truth is that what works is not a list of sure-fire panty-dropping "openers", although that does help. There are no techniques for forcing a woman to want you, but you can memorize things to do and to avoid that will help you gain the affection of the fairer sex. If you're going to memorize anything, quite frankly, it's body language science, but that will only tell you if what you're doing is working or not - it won't ensure that your date will take you home after you feed her.
Women are people. That's rule Number One. That's it. They are just regular people that are physical configured differently than men. They eat, shit, and fart just like we do.
Ok, not fart, we corner the market on that. I mean women DO fart, but not like us. That's a unique manly trait. Women "poot". Silently. And not smelling-ly. Or so I'm told by the sexy naked twins in my bed.I just consulted them, and they wouldn't lie.
Here's the Second Rule: women already know the difference between men and women. They know we fart. They expect it from us. They just expect us to hold it in until we know them better. That's just common courtesy, as far as they are concerned (and they are right).
Here's the key to women, the final rule, or Rule Number 3: They don't want you to want something to happen between the two of you more than they do.
That's it. That's all I have to offer.Go ahead, read that back and digest it.
I'll wait.
This is the root meaning behind the wive's tale "Women want guys who are douches". They don't really want that, as evidenced by what they try to change about us when they get their hooks in us. Like shopping at the Container Store. (Guy Note: Apparently this is not a joke, this store really exists. Avoid. At. All. Costs).
The truth is that when a man is trying to impress a woman, he's on his best behavior. When he isn't trying, he does whatever he wants to. See Rule 2 (they're on to us). They know we fart. They know we laugh about it. They know we punch each other in the arm for no reason. They expect that ALL. If they weren't into that (or willing to put up with it), then they become lesbians.
It's normal to get the butterflies when you meet someone new. It's normal to want to impress someone so that they like you. These are all normal human interaction things we have to deal with on a day to day basis.
Where too many guys go wrong, however, is that when we go on a date we put the weight of everything in the world on the success or failure of said date. We assume that because we are on a date with this woman, well then we probably want them to be the mother of our children. We try to picture her on the porch next to us, white-haired and rocking and yelling with us at neighborhood kids to get off our lawn. And they say women are the romantics.
When a man is on a date, all he needs to remember is that the woman he is with is trying to decide if he is worth spending time with one more time.
And he needs to do the same in return.
Rule #TRUMPS ALL OTHER RULES: When you go on a date, just have some fun. Be yourself. And remember: you're trying to decide whether you want to spend another night with her, just like she is. And if the answer is "no", then that's FINE - now you won't have to get into the whole deal of returning CDs and underwear and someone's cat.
Chill out bro's. Just relax.You don't have to marry her.
If you don't dig her (even if her boobs are AWESOME, and c'mon, ALL boobs are awesome), then just call her the next day and tell her you aren't feeling the chemistry. There are about 150 million other chicks out there for you to date.
I'm going to go ahead and share that with you now.
As a disclaimer, before I continue, let me just say that there aren't sexy twins waiting naked in my bed for me to finish this post so they can ravage my body. My resume is simply such that I have failed as many times as I've succeeded when it comes to meeting women and then developing some sort of relationship with them, and I've made mental notes as to what works and what doesn't. Sorry, I wish it were sexier.
Believe me, I do.
You might hear "I'm just not feeling any chemistry" after a date or two. That's OK. Don't take it personally. Is it bullshit? A little.
But not really.
But not really.
What this means is: "You want this to work out way more than I do".
And women don't want that. It's too easy. It feels like desperation. Women want to feel like they are so special that they inspired you to want them, even though you had decided (for some inexplicable reason) that you weren't going to want anyone that night.
Women want to feel as though you were impervious to their charms, until you succumbed to their charms, at which point you were a slave to their charms. Because their charms are unlike anyone else's charms. Their charms, as it were, would have brought all the boys to the yard. Except, in case you weren't paying attention, they were only trying to bring boys to the yard that they actually liked. Like you. Unless you actually liked their charms.
In which case you don't qualify.
Unless you liked their charms only after you decided you weren't into any charms, but damn, these charms are so tasty.
If you followed any of that, you don't have to keep reading.
For all the men who read my blog, keep going.
Ok, not fart, we corner the market on that. I mean women DO fart, but not like us. That's a unique manly trait. Women "poot". Silently. And not smelling-ly. Or so I'm told by the sexy naked twins in my bed.I just consulted them, and they wouldn't lie.
Here's the Second Rule: women already know the difference between men and women. They know we fart. They expect it from us. They just expect us to hold it in until we know them better. That's just common courtesy, as far as they are concerned (and they are right).
Here's the key to women, the final rule, or Rule Number 3: They don't want you to want something to happen between the two of you more than they do.
That's it. That's all I have to offer.Go ahead, read that back and digest it.
I'll wait.
This is the root meaning behind the wive's tale "Women want guys who are douches". They don't really want that, as evidenced by what they try to change about us when they get their hooks in us. Like shopping at the Container Store. (Guy Note: Apparently this is not a joke, this store really exists. Avoid. At. All. Costs).
The truth is that when a man is trying to impress a woman, he's on his best behavior. When he isn't trying, he does whatever he wants to. See Rule 2 (they're on to us). They know we fart. They know we laugh about it. They know we punch each other in the arm for no reason. They expect that ALL. If they weren't into that (or willing to put up with it), then they become lesbians.
It's normal to get the butterflies when you meet someone new. It's normal to want to impress someone so that they like you. These are all normal human interaction things we have to deal with on a day to day basis.
Where too many guys go wrong, however, is that when we go on a date we put the weight of everything in the world on the success or failure of said date. We assume that because we are on a date with this woman, well then we probably want them to be the mother of our children. We try to picture her on the porch next to us, white-haired and rocking and yelling with us at neighborhood kids to get off our lawn. And they say women are the romantics.
When a man is on a date, all he needs to remember is that the woman he is with is trying to decide if he is worth spending time with one more time.
And he needs to do the same in return.
Rule #TRUMPS ALL OTHER RULES: When you go on a date, just have some fun. Be yourself. And remember: you're trying to decide whether you want to spend another night with her, just like she is. And if the answer is "no", then that's FINE - now you won't have to get into the whole deal of returning CDs and underwear and someone's cat.
Chill out bro's. Just relax.You don't have to marry her.
If you don't dig her (even if her boobs are AWESOME, and c'mon, ALL boobs are awesome), then just call her the next day and tell her you aren't feeling the chemistry. There are about 150 million other chicks out there for you to date.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Word to Your Female Parental Unit
Ever notice how the British tend to convolute the English language even though they are the ones that created it? They seem to always say things a little bit screwily like "I've gone on holiday" or "I'm in hospital", like those little articles "an" and "the" that we brutish Americans tend to rely on so much aren't even important.
"Oh Poppycock!" I can imagine those Brits spewing, "Bloody hell man, we INVENTED the rotten language!"
See what I mean? "Bloody".
Simmer down there Bangers and Mash, nobody's getting bloody here. Let's not get hysterical, you weigh what, a buck 'oh five? Tops? And a word can't get "rotten". A tomato can get rotten. And "Tomato" isn't spelled with an "e" at the end, like "Potato" isn't.
And while we're at it, "spelled" is spelled "spelled" not "spelt".
Sheesh!
Truth is, I love me some good words. Some good use of language, even. I also love to bastardize it, like with run-on or partial sentences, sentences without subjects or action verbs, sentences with half meanings or implied context; overuse of the semi-colon and dash - taught as I was by the American Novel greats like Fitzgerald or Kerouac or even Bukowski, taught that repetition, when done well, works, and commas, when used properly, can extend meaning tenfold.
Today, however, it came to my attention that I tend to be a wee bit too wordy.
I was working on putting together the mission statement and vision for the company I am starting up with a partner, and at one point she interrupted me with laughter - as I was reading a sentence I was particularly proud of - saying: "We sound like 'blah blah blah blah'... I think we're taking ourselves too seriously..."
And she was right.
Truth is, we all have doubts about our work, whether we dabble in wordsmith or bricklaying or finger painting; we all wonder from time to time if someone else is just doing it so much better than we are that it's time to hang up the gloves and set upon something else if we're going to be successful at life.
This is human nature, and it's good. It's a reality check designed to promote and foster fairness and equity in the race towards the survival of the fittest.
As such, I've periodically read my work and subsequently gone into fits of depression and melancholy and self-loathing where I decide it's no longer worth pursuing because "nobody wants to read a book that's all narrative, and no quotes", or whatever thing it is that I am down about at the moment. Then I might happen to pick up "On The Road" or anything by Palahniuk and I think "maybe I've got a chance here, maybe I'm not so far off base..." and I pick back up where I left off.
Othertimes, however, we simply take ourselves too seriously. Like those damn Brits and their proper-speak, we can put way too much emphasis on this or that or the other thing, and lose sight of the fact that sometimes, plain English is what gets the job done.
The truth is, I can be too wordy. Sometimes it's wonderful, when it's flowery and poetic and fits, but usually I am wasting people's time by refusing to use contractions or describing something in 50 words when I could have used 5, like Ayn Rand or Tolstoy. Or (gasp) Tolkien.
It's all about time and place. Today, we finished our work on our new company's Mission and Vision statements by wording them as if we were speaking to a 10 year old. Which worked, especially because core to our company values are simplicity and keeping focused.
And what I learned, or what I've always known intuitively but need constant reminding of, is that there is a time for poetry, and a time to just say what you mean so that a kid can understand you. And ironically, sometimes it's harder to talk to a 5th grader than an adult.
Today, however, we didn't drop the articles in our sentences, like those damnable English. Those we kept. Because "a" doesn't count much towards your word count, so there's no point in pruning it...
Disclaimer: I really do love the English and am jealous of how they talk. They do tend to be skinny though, don't they?
"Oh Poppycock!" I can imagine those Brits spewing, "Bloody hell man, we INVENTED the rotten language!"
See what I mean? "Bloody".
Simmer down there Bangers and Mash, nobody's getting bloody here. Let's not get hysterical, you weigh what, a buck 'oh five? Tops? And a word can't get "rotten". A tomato can get rotten. And "Tomato" isn't spelled with an "e" at the end, like "Potato" isn't.
And while we're at it, "spelled" is spelled "spelled" not "spelt".
Sheesh!
Truth is, I love me some good words. Some good use of language, even. I also love to bastardize it, like with run-on or partial sentences, sentences without subjects or action verbs, sentences with half meanings or implied context; overuse of the semi-colon and dash - taught as I was by the American Novel greats like Fitzgerald or Kerouac or even Bukowski, taught that repetition, when done well, works, and commas, when used properly, can extend meaning tenfold.
Today, however, it came to my attention that I tend to be a wee bit too wordy.
I was working on putting together the mission statement and vision for the company I am starting up with a partner, and at one point she interrupted me with laughter - as I was reading a sentence I was particularly proud of - saying: "We sound like 'blah blah blah blah'... I think we're taking ourselves too seriously..."
And she was right.
Truth is, we all have doubts about our work, whether we dabble in wordsmith or bricklaying or finger painting; we all wonder from time to time if someone else is just doing it so much better than we are that it's time to hang up the gloves and set upon something else if we're going to be successful at life.
This is human nature, and it's good. It's a reality check designed to promote and foster fairness and equity in the race towards the survival of the fittest.
As such, I've periodically read my work and subsequently gone into fits of depression and melancholy and self-loathing where I decide it's no longer worth pursuing because "nobody wants to read a book that's all narrative, and no quotes", or whatever thing it is that I am down about at the moment. Then I might happen to pick up "On The Road" or anything by Palahniuk and I think "maybe I've got a chance here, maybe I'm not so far off base..." and I pick back up where I left off.
Othertimes, however, we simply take ourselves too seriously. Like those damn Brits and their proper-speak, we can put way too much emphasis on this or that or the other thing, and lose sight of the fact that sometimes, plain English is what gets the job done.
The truth is, I can be too wordy. Sometimes it's wonderful, when it's flowery and poetic and fits, but usually I am wasting people's time by refusing to use contractions or describing something in 50 words when I could have used 5, like Ayn Rand or Tolstoy. Or (gasp) Tolkien.
It's all about time and place. Today, we finished our work on our new company's Mission and Vision statements by wording them as if we were speaking to a 10 year old. Which worked, especially because core to our company values are simplicity and keeping focused.
And what I learned, or what I've always known intuitively but need constant reminding of, is that there is a time for poetry, and a time to just say what you mean so that a kid can understand you. And ironically, sometimes it's harder to talk to a 5th grader than an adult.
Today, however, we didn't drop the articles in our sentences, like those damnable English. Those we kept. Because "a" doesn't count much towards your word count, so there's no point in pruning it...
Disclaimer: I really do love the English and am jealous of how they talk. They do tend to be skinny though, don't they?
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Happy Cinco De Mayo!
How will you be enjoying Cinco De Mayo this year? I will be sitting around in the sun on a deck drinking cervesas and grilling skirt steak to put into a burrito. Not because Mexicans are lazy and unemployed and sit around in the sun drinking beer, but because I am lazy and unemployed and enjoy sitting around in the sun drinking beer.
Fiesta!
Fiesta!
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Risky Business
I'd be interested to know whether people who know me, like, REALLY know me, would consider me to be a risk-taker.
I tend to fancy myself as a generally cautious individual, albeit stricken with fits of impulse that can only seem to outsiders (especially my mother) like reckless abandon, but what are really quite calculated and measured bursts of me saying "I simply can't take it any more, so sod off!" and then running off to cower behind any number of predefined hierarchical and conditionally-dependent backup plans.
The recent event of Quitting My Job, for example, actually was prefixed by three months of careful and private deliberation, discussion, and debate before it came to fruition, and only then was it actually swung into motion because a nice fat tax refund check that I haven't previously counted on showed up at my door. To those not in the know (i.e. Mama Finley) I'm sure the actual act of Quitting My Job seemed juvenile and delinquent and irresponsible, but I assure you, the yellow-lined paper with the Reasons For had considerably more black felt ink writing than the one with the Reasons Against.
Sure, I may get a little wild from time to time and fluff my couscous with a spoon rather than a fork, or sleep with the window open, or call in sick to work when I feel fine but just don't want to get up, but generally I'm cautious and careful and think things through before I do them.
That is, except when there is exhilaration to be had.
I have jumped out of an airplane for no other reason than to fall to the ground. I've ridden a sport motorcycle on public roads in excess of 140 miles per hour wearing a t-shirt and shorts. I only wear a helmet on my Harley because Virginia says I have to.
I can't, in fact, drive 65.
But I'm not a gambler. I don't drink and drive. I've somehow survived this long without contracting a sexually communicable disease. And I managed to save more than I spent in 2010.
Incongruous, no?
I was thinking about this today because (and I will spare you the thought train that led to this particular idea) I was getting on my my bike AND thinking about jet pilots and I was thinking that people (and by "people" I mean "the bad-ass 80's movie Top Gun") say that people like fighter pilots are addicted to risk-taking, so that's why all fighter pilots ride motorcycles. In fact, to hear some people talk about risk, you'd think that any moron stupid enough to ride a motorcycle should also be a destitute alcoholic gambler, unable and uncaring enough to pay child support for the 7 illegitimate children he's fathered with 8 different baby mommas.
Never once, in my 6 years and 30,000 miles of travelling on two wheels, have I ever considered motorcycle-riding to be akin to taking a risk. Maybe that's why I do it. And love it.
That is to say, I don't consider it to be any more a calculated risk than, say, the one I take every day by getting out of bed and into the shower. Or by falling asleep at night - what if I never wake up?
Holy shit. I just looked up "death statistics" on the internet. Want to know what the leading cause of death to Americans is? Heart Disease. That's right. HEART DISEASE. Nowhere on that list is "motorcycle accident" (although number 5 is "accidents" but that could just as easily mean "stabbing yourself in the eye with a knitting needle not on purpose).
I guess that everyone has a different definition of risk. Some people would never ever ride a motorcycle because it's too dangerous.
Personally, I think it's more dangerous not to live, than not to take risks...
I tend to fancy myself as a generally cautious individual, albeit stricken with fits of impulse that can only seem to outsiders (especially my mother) like reckless abandon, but what are really quite calculated and measured bursts of me saying "I simply can't take it any more, so sod off!" and then running off to cower behind any number of predefined hierarchical and conditionally-dependent backup plans.
The recent event of Quitting My Job, for example, actually was prefixed by three months of careful and private deliberation, discussion, and debate before it came to fruition, and only then was it actually swung into motion because a nice fat tax refund check that I haven't previously counted on showed up at my door. To those not in the know (i.e. Mama Finley) I'm sure the actual act of Quitting My Job seemed juvenile and delinquent and irresponsible, but I assure you, the yellow-lined paper with the Reasons For had considerably more black felt ink writing than the one with the Reasons Against.
Sure, I may get a little wild from time to time and fluff my couscous with a spoon rather than a fork, or sleep with the window open, or call in sick to work when I feel fine but just don't want to get up, but generally I'm cautious and careful and think things through before I do them.
That is, except when there is exhilaration to be had.
I have jumped out of an airplane for no other reason than to fall to the ground. I've ridden a sport motorcycle on public roads in excess of 140 miles per hour wearing a t-shirt and shorts. I only wear a helmet on my Harley because Virginia says I have to.
I can't, in fact, drive 65.
But I'm not a gambler. I don't drink and drive. I've somehow survived this long without contracting a sexually communicable disease. And I managed to save more than I spent in 2010.
Incongruous, no?
I was thinking about this today because (and I will spare you the thought train that led to this particular idea) I was getting on my my bike AND thinking about jet pilots and I was thinking that people (and by "people" I mean "the bad-ass 80's movie Top Gun") say that people like fighter pilots are addicted to risk-taking, so that's why all fighter pilots ride motorcycles. In fact, to hear some people talk about risk, you'd think that any moron stupid enough to ride a motorcycle should also be a destitute alcoholic gambler, unable and uncaring enough to pay child support for the 7 illegitimate children he's fathered with 8 different baby mommas.
Never once, in my 6 years and 30,000 miles of travelling on two wheels, have I ever considered motorcycle-riding to be akin to taking a risk. Maybe that's why I do it. And love it.
That is to say, I don't consider it to be any more a calculated risk than, say, the one I take every day by getting out of bed and into the shower. Or by falling asleep at night - what if I never wake up?
Holy shit. I just looked up "death statistics" on the internet. Want to know what the leading cause of death to Americans is? Heart Disease. That's right. HEART DISEASE. Nowhere on that list is "motorcycle accident" (although number 5 is "accidents" but that could just as easily mean "stabbing yourself in the eye with a knitting needle not on purpose).
I guess that everyone has a different definition of risk. Some people would never ever ride a motorcycle because it's too dangerous.
Personally, I think it's more dangerous not to live, than not to take risks...
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Go Ahead Kid, Touch The Bike...
I am sitting outside Starbucks trying to enjoy what can only be described as a ridiculously gay coffee (Grande Skinny Vanilla Latte - just screams italics, don't it?) and waiting with heightened anticipation for the moment when one of the kids loitering in the parking lot touches my bike and burns the skin off of his hand. I'm not a violent or angry person by any means, but at this point I'd be completely at peace with this, because it would teach these kids to keep their hands off of other people's things, especially if those things are Harley's and those people are bad-ass road-weary bikers in no mood for dealing with other people's kids.
Apparently their parents, who are sitting in the car right there are incapable of doing this.
Live Blogging Update: One of the kids just reached out to put a finger on the bike, and fortunately (for him) his mother (an obviously exhausted young woman who also seems to wish these kids were elsewhere) yelled at him.
I was considering for a minute yelling at him myself, but as scary as I am when I'm mad I can't compete with 1st degree burns.
I know that kids are hard to raise. I know kids are hard to keep track of. I know this all first hand. But I also know that this means that parking lots are not an ideal place to let your kids hang out. It's that simple.
The root of the problem here is that people with kids feel like they have the same rights as everyone else. I would submit that they do, but only if their kids can behave in a manner appropriate for the social situation. I don't frolic in parking lots (I reserve my frolicking for parks and sidewalks in he bar district) and I certainly don't expect kids to know this rule without being reminded, but if parents can't do sid reminding with any effect, then as far as I am concerned they all lose the right to be in parking lots.
Or restaurants. If I'm paying good money to eat at a restaurant, I don't want to hear your baby crying while I do it. It's a baby. It doesn't need to be at a restaurant, it doesn't even eat solid food. I hate to say it, but if you are the baby's momma or daddy, then you don't get to go to restaurants either unless you can find someone to watch your baby.
I didn't make you have that kid. Don't make me have to listen to it while I am eating.
And then of course there are the kids that stand in the booths at IHOP and stare at you over the back of the chair. It's cute and adorable for exactly as long as it should take the kid's parents to notice and correct the child, after that point it is only rude and annoying.
Tonight I paid $4.25 for this gay latte, with the expectation that I was also purchasing a seat in this wooded parking lot where as to enjoy the cool peaceful Spring air while I blog about how wonderful and beautiful the world was today. Instead, my nerves frayed 5 seconds after sitting down because of: kids screaming at each other, kids chasing one another around my bike (if it gets knocked over someone's face is getting introduced to hot exhaust pipes - just saying), kids oblivious to cars trying to back out of parking spots, and kids chasing an unleashed dog up and down the sidewalk where I am sitting, otherwise generally being unchecked suburban nuisances.
Never mind the legal system, its a sad state when a bad-ass biker gets terrorized by a bunch of 6 year olds in a Starbucks parking lot.
I guess I'm not as bad-ass or scary as I thought I was...
Apparently their parents, who are sitting in the car right there are incapable of doing this.
Live Blogging Update: One of the kids just reached out to put a finger on the bike, and fortunately (for him) his mother (an obviously exhausted young woman who also seems to wish these kids were elsewhere) yelled at him.
I was considering for a minute yelling at him myself, but as scary as I am when I'm mad I can't compete with 1st degree burns.
I wonder if I could be sued if a kid burned himself from touching my bike in a public parking lot. Probably. That's an unfortunate statement about the legal system in this country. It would be considerably less bad-ass for bikers around the country to have to put a "Please Do Not Touch - VERY HOT" sign on my bike every time we park. It's bad enough that the law requires us to wear these absurd giant mushroom-sized helmets.
I know that kids are hard to raise. I know kids are hard to keep track of. I know this all first hand. But I also know that this means that parking lots are not an ideal place to let your kids hang out. It's that simple.
The root of the problem here is that people with kids feel like they have the same rights as everyone else. I would submit that they do, but only if their kids can behave in a manner appropriate for the social situation. I don't frolic in parking lots (I reserve my frolicking for parks and sidewalks in he bar district) and I certainly don't expect kids to know this rule without being reminded, but if parents can't do sid reminding with any effect, then as far as I am concerned they all lose the right to be in parking lots.
Or restaurants. If I'm paying good money to eat at a restaurant, I don't want to hear your baby crying while I do it. It's a baby. It doesn't need to be at a restaurant, it doesn't even eat solid food. I hate to say it, but if you are the baby's momma or daddy, then you don't get to go to restaurants either unless you can find someone to watch your baby.
I didn't make you have that kid. Don't make me have to listen to it while I am eating.
And then of course there are the kids that stand in the booths at IHOP and stare at you over the back of the chair. It's cute and adorable for exactly as long as it should take the kid's parents to notice and correct the child, after that point it is only rude and annoying.
Tonight I paid $4.25 for this gay latte, with the expectation that I was also purchasing a seat in this wooded parking lot where as to enjoy the cool peaceful Spring air while I blog about how wonderful and beautiful the world was today. Instead, my nerves frayed 5 seconds after sitting down because of: kids screaming at each other, kids chasing one another around my bike (if it gets knocked over someone's face is getting introduced to hot exhaust pipes - just saying), kids oblivious to cars trying to back out of parking spots, and kids chasing an unleashed dog up and down the sidewalk where I am sitting, otherwise generally being unchecked suburban nuisances.
Never mind the legal system, its a sad state when a bad-ass biker gets terrorized by a bunch of 6 year olds in a Starbucks parking lot.
I guess I'm not as bad-ass or scary as I thought I was...
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
This is Your Life, and It's Ending One Minute at a Time
What would you do if you knew you were going to die one month from now? If the answer is anything but "exactly what I am doling right now", then why aren't you doing it? Do you know for sure you aren't
Monday, April 25, 2011
A Connecticut Yankee in Dale Earnhardt's Court
"Street Surfing" is a term I came up with a few years back to describe what is essentially "getting lost on purpose". It's a good way to kill time if you've got a full tank of gas, and is hands down the best way to find new gems in an area you think you know already, off-track places like beautiful backwoods windy roads, state parks overlooking the city, little hole-in-the-wall bars or taverns, or the parts of the ghetto where it's easy to get shot just for looking at someone wrong.
It's this last occurrence, by the by, that causes veteran street surfers to develop a very keen sense of "what might be two blocks ahead of you at any time". We base this mostly on how many people per block are "loitering on the stoop" rather than "enjoying the warm Spring evening out front".
Important distinction.
How street surfing works is you get a vehicle (preferably a motorcycle, although it works in a car) and drive with no destination in mind. Start on a road in a direction that you don't take very often. When you come to an intersection of any kind, make a gut decision about which direction is more appealing to you at that moment, and take that road.
Repeat. Rinse. Repeat. Get lost.
By definition, what I did today wasn't street surfing, because I left the house with a destination in mind and made turn choices based on where I hoped each street would take me. What I did today, however, is very similar to "getting lost", in that I didn't get anywhere close to where I wanted to go.
Still, it was one of the best rides I've ever taken.
If you look at a map of Virginia, specifically focusing on the coastal areas, the first thing that's important to take note of is that the Chesapeake Bay cuts up into the heart of the state like a knife, with tons of tiny tributaries and fjords and such spreading out in all directions from it. As such, it's actually difficult to find the actual coast here, because unless you end up in Virginia Beach (where I have been before and was trying to avoid - not because it isn't a fantastically joyous little beach town but simply because I was hoping to go somewhere new) you aren't really on the coast looking at the ocean, you're on a weird little fjordy doodangle thingie looking out into the Chesapeake Bay.
Which is all well and good and beautiful and scenic, I am sure, but today I had a hankering to see the ocean, so that's what I set out to do.
I picked a spot on the map that seemed bottom of the Bay enough to allow me to get my ocean fix, pulled up some simple-to-remember directions and set off on the bike. Somewhere around the Richmond International Raceway everything fell apart, as somehow I missed what was supposed to be the simplest turn I would be making on the trip, but I decided to press on. I knew I was heading East, I knew the coast was East, so I figured I couldn't go wrong.
And missing that turn ended up being the best thing that could have happened to me all day.
Not long after I passed the airport, I rode by a Nabisco factory (bakery? baketory?). It was like what I would think riding past Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory would be like - the sweet crisp vanilla-tinged smell of what I could only imagine were thousands of little 'Nilla Wafers baking covered the road like a warm, comforting blanket, and I closed my eyes and grinned like a retarded kid with a new Scooby Doo lunch box and inhaled deeply to get the full effect of it all as I passed. It was bliss.
This is one of the reasons why riding a motorcycle is so much better than driving a car - the smells are inescapable and immersive and you become one with the landscape you are riding through.
Coincidentally, that's also one of the reasons why riding a motorcycle is worse than riding in a car, especially when you are behind a truck filled with chickens or a dumpster hauler or riding through Vermont. (They have very smelly cows).
Shortly thereafter, the scenery turned to farmland (as it often does around here if you drive in any direction for more than 20 minutes), with some of the most beautiful windy country roads I've ever ridden. From time to time the roads were buttressed by forest, which would break - shooting you out into farmland again only to reform like a train tunnel for you to ride into a few hundred feet later.
When I moved down here from Connecticut I thought I would miss the windy wooded roads, but Connecticut has NOTHING on this state - today's ride alone took me through more beautiful and fun-to-ride areas than I had ever found in my years of riding up North.
After an hour or so of these curvy autobahn-like stretches, I ended up in Williamsburg, which is a beautiful and richly-historic area. I street surfed for a little bit through downtown and around the William and Mary College campus, enjoying the scenery (college towns in the Spring mean summer dresses, tank tops, and jogging shorts - YUM) and trying to find the Williamsburg beaches so I could get my fix of ocean. As it turns out, there are no Williamsburg beaches. I don't know why I was so convinced there were, but as I confirmed on the Internet when I got home, they most definitely do not exist. I decided to cut my losses and head back towards Richmond after an hour or so of bumming around the area, as the sun was getting low in the sky and my back was starting to hurt. As well it should have at that point - I had been on the bike for about 3 hours straight at that point.
I happened across a state road that cuts through Richmond right near my house, so I hopped on it pointing West and started for home. By the time I rolled into Richmond it was dusk, and rather than just shoot through it on the street that runs by my house I ended up getting a little twisted up and making my way through the city on an artery I hadn't been on before. This turned out to be a good thing, because as I found out when I recanted my route to a friend who's lived here some years longer than I have, the road I intended to take goes through a part of town that's, well, not so beautiful. And the road I ended up on led me through an area I had never been before, and gave me a chance to see first hand just how beautiful and hip our fair city really is.
Richmond has a bad rap. Hell, I've personally badmouthed it myself in the past. In fact, my first interaction with my new home city was about 3 or 4 years ago. I was on a motorcycle trip from Connecticut to Florida, ironically because I thought at the time that I was going to be moving to Florida, and wanted to check it out. I rolled into Richmond at the end of my first day of riding, and after 8 hours in the hot sun on the highway all I cared about was finding a hotel and a place to eat a nice fat burger. So I took a downtown exit, and ran smack into desolation. I wandered around, found a few abandoned hotels, didn't see much sign of life, and immediately popped back onto the highway to go South a few more exits to stay at one of those highway hotels that exist purely to serve highway traffic.
I believe I called Richmond a "shithole". I believe I described it as "one big ghetto".
I was so wrong.
When you drive through the rest of the city - the part I didn't see those years ago - you see things like a beautiful state park atop a hill overlooking the city, where battles were once fought during the Civil War. You drive down these beautiful colonial brick house-lined streets that could almost be cobblestone in their antiquity. You see these little corner restaurants with irreverent names, packed for dinner on a Monday night. You drive through a downtown that is actually living at night, unlike cities like Hartford or Charlotte that become ghost towns after 6 PM or on weekends.
What I learned today is that I live in one of the most beautiful and diverse states in the country. I learned that Snoop Dee Oh Double Gee will be in town tomorrow night. I also learned that I don't have to go far to street surf what is undoubtedly one of the most interesting cities on the East coast, which is exactly what I intend to do next time I go out for a ride.
On purpose, this time.
It's this last occurrence, by the by, that causes veteran street surfers to develop a very keen sense of "what might be two blocks ahead of you at any time". We base this mostly on how many people per block are "loitering on the stoop" rather than "enjoying the warm Spring evening out front".
Important distinction.
How street surfing works is you get a vehicle (preferably a motorcycle, although it works in a car) and drive with no destination in mind. Start on a road in a direction that you don't take very often. When you come to an intersection of any kind, make a gut decision about which direction is more appealing to you at that moment, and take that road.
Repeat. Rinse. Repeat. Get lost.
By definition, what I did today wasn't street surfing, because I left the house with a destination in mind and made turn choices based on where I hoped each street would take me. What I did today, however, is very similar to "getting lost", in that I didn't get anywhere close to where I wanted to go.
Still, it was one of the best rides I've ever taken.
If you look at a map of Virginia, specifically focusing on the coastal areas, the first thing that's important to take note of is that the Chesapeake Bay cuts up into the heart of the state like a knife, with tons of tiny tributaries and fjords and such spreading out in all directions from it. As such, it's actually difficult to find the actual coast here, because unless you end up in Virginia Beach (where I have been before and was trying to avoid - not because it isn't a fantastically joyous little beach town but simply because I was hoping to go somewhere new) you aren't really on the coast looking at the ocean, you're on a weird little fjordy doodangle thingie looking out into the Chesapeake Bay.
Which is all well and good and beautiful and scenic, I am sure, but today I had a hankering to see the ocean, so that's what I set out to do.
I picked a spot on the map that seemed bottom of the Bay enough to allow me to get my ocean fix, pulled up some simple-to-remember directions and set off on the bike. Somewhere around the Richmond International Raceway everything fell apart, as somehow I missed what was supposed to be the simplest turn I would be making on the trip, but I decided to press on. I knew I was heading East, I knew the coast was East, so I figured I couldn't go wrong.
And missing that turn ended up being the best thing that could have happened to me all day.
Not long after I passed the airport, I rode by a Nabisco factory (bakery? baketory?). It was like what I would think riding past Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory would be like - the sweet crisp vanilla-tinged smell of what I could only imagine were thousands of little 'Nilla Wafers baking covered the road like a warm, comforting blanket, and I closed my eyes and grinned like a retarded kid with a new Scooby Doo lunch box and inhaled deeply to get the full effect of it all as I passed. It was bliss.
This is one of the reasons why riding a motorcycle is so much better than driving a car - the smells are inescapable and immersive and you become one with the landscape you are riding through.
Coincidentally, that's also one of the reasons why riding a motorcycle is worse than riding in a car, especially when you are behind a truck filled with chickens or a dumpster hauler or riding through Vermont. (They have very smelly cows).
Shortly thereafter, the scenery turned to farmland (as it often does around here if you drive in any direction for more than 20 minutes), with some of the most beautiful windy country roads I've ever ridden. From time to time the roads were buttressed by forest, which would break - shooting you out into farmland again only to reform like a train tunnel for you to ride into a few hundred feet later.
When I moved down here from Connecticut I thought I would miss the windy wooded roads, but Connecticut has NOTHING on this state - today's ride alone took me through more beautiful and fun-to-ride areas than I had ever found in my years of riding up North.
After an hour or so of these curvy autobahn-like stretches, I ended up in Williamsburg, which is a beautiful and richly-historic area. I street surfed for a little bit through downtown and around the William and Mary College campus, enjoying the scenery (college towns in the Spring mean summer dresses, tank tops, and jogging shorts - YUM) and trying to find the Williamsburg beaches so I could get my fix of ocean. As it turns out, there are no Williamsburg beaches. I don't know why I was so convinced there were, but as I confirmed on the Internet when I got home, they most definitely do not exist. I decided to cut my losses and head back towards Richmond after an hour or so of bumming around the area, as the sun was getting low in the sky and my back was starting to hurt. As well it should have at that point - I had been on the bike for about 3 hours straight at that point.
I happened across a state road that cuts through Richmond right near my house, so I hopped on it pointing West and started for home. By the time I rolled into Richmond it was dusk, and rather than just shoot through it on the street that runs by my house I ended up getting a little twisted up and making my way through the city on an artery I hadn't been on before. This turned out to be a good thing, because as I found out when I recanted my route to a friend who's lived here some years longer than I have, the road I intended to take goes through a part of town that's, well, not so beautiful. And the road I ended up on led me through an area I had never been before, and gave me a chance to see first hand just how beautiful and hip our fair city really is.
Richmond has a bad rap. Hell, I've personally badmouthed it myself in the past. In fact, my first interaction with my new home city was about 3 or 4 years ago. I was on a motorcycle trip from Connecticut to Florida, ironically because I thought at the time that I was going to be moving to Florida, and wanted to check it out. I rolled into Richmond at the end of my first day of riding, and after 8 hours in the hot sun on the highway all I cared about was finding a hotel and a place to eat a nice fat burger. So I took a downtown exit, and ran smack into desolation. I wandered around, found a few abandoned hotels, didn't see much sign of life, and immediately popped back onto the highway to go South a few more exits to stay at one of those highway hotels that exist purely to serve highway traffic.
I believe I called Richmond a "shithole". I believe I described it as "one big ghetto".
I was so wrong.
When you drive through the rest of the city - the part I didn't see those years ago - you see things like a beautiful state park atop a hill overlooking the city, where battles were once fought during the Civil War. You drive down these beautiful colonial brick house-lined streets that could almost be cobblestone in their antiquity. You see these little corner restaurants with irreverent names, packed for dinner on a Monday night. You drive through a downtown that is actually living at night, unlike cities like Hartford or Charlotte that become ghost towns after 6 PM or on weekends.
What I learned today is that I live in one of the most beautiful and diverse states in the country. I learned that Snoop Dee Oh Double Gee will be in town tomorrow night. I also learned that I don't have to go far to street surf what is undoubtedly one of the most interesting cities on the East coast, which is exactly what I intend to do next time I go out for a ride.
On purpose, this time.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Hello Me, It's Me Again
It has come to my attention that we haven't been properly introduced, so I'm going to take this opportunity to tell you a bit about myself. This is, after all, my blog, and if blogs can't be used for shameless self-important self indulgence (essentially, I suppose, amounting to public mental masturbation), then what the hell good are they, I ask you. So grab the tissues and let's get into it.
This is my third such blog. I've been writing stupid shit and posting it on the Internet for strangers and friends to read for the past 5 years. You might recognize my writing style from [REDACTED] or [REDACTED], but let's not make a big deal about that here, shall we? I'm trying to start fresh. To turn over a new virtual leaf, as it were. Frankly I'm trying to attract a better class of readers this time around. If I'm not involved in any restraining orders this year then I'll know I'm headed in the right direction.
So, as far as you know, my name is Chuck. At the moment I live in Virginia, or as it says on the highway signs when you cross the border from Maryland: "Where the South begins"*. And Virginia truly is the gateway state to the Southern U.S. We have rednecks, but they are well behaved and generally have decent dental plans. You will see the occasional confederate flag, but it's usually tastefully displayed or small. Or both. We do have corn liquor, but it's not sold in stores. And while we have hundreds of baptist churches peppered throughout the state, there aren't a lot of anti-abortion anti-gay pro-God billboards along the highways.
So it's the South, but not "Banjo and Overalls" South.
I haven't always lived here. In fact, just last year I was wrapping up a 15+ year tour of duty in war torn Connecticut (a.k.a "Where Fun Goes to Die"). At some point after moving there back in the 90's (from Boston, for those playing Blog Bingo) I lost my way and started an insta-family with a girlfriend and her two daughters; we bought a nice house in the suburbs and I drove an SUV, wore polo shirts and khakis, mowed the lawn with a push-mower, and started taking prescription drugs for high blood pressure.
10 years, about 23 assorted pets, and one very broken relationship later, I was left alone, paying a mortgage for a house I didn't want to live in anymore, in a state that I never really wanted to be in in the first place. I burned all of my khakis, bought a motorcycle, got tattoos, started blogging, and promptly spent the next few years struggling through yet another disaster of a romance whilst trying desperately to sell my house.
Last summer I finally found asucker buyer to give me enough money for the property to cut lose and break out of Dodge, and so here I am.
The original plan was to head as far South as possible and settle somewhere in Florida. For the record, the motivating factors for choosing Florida were 1) sun, 2) sand, 3) palm trees, 4) bikinis (not on me), and 5) my B.F.F. Brian lives there. But for reasons that are not entirely your business, I instead found myself just outside of Richmond in a little apartment complex with a lake and fountains and a pool and just the right amount of old people (enough to guarantee that someone will chat you up if you go outside at mail time, but not enough so that there are bingo games held in the clubhouse every Saturday night).
According to the grey hairs starting to salt my otherwise brown hair and reddish goatee, I am pushing my late thirties. I suppose this means that in a few more years, I'll no longer be relevant. In general. I'm having a bit of an issue accepting this, but it's not because I'm in denial, mostly I kinda just think I'm still pretty cool, for an old guy.
I've been a computer programmer for 20 years, and am sort of going through a mid-career crisis at the moment, thinking defiantly that I'll be able to course-correct without crashing - even at this late stage in the game. It's going to be tough, for sure, on account of not actually having a college degree. I do have plenty of mostly useless skills, however: I was a classically trained pianist (lol peen-ist) as a child (I dropped out of Berklee College of Music because I slept through a meeting with my advisor and ended up getting stuck with a shitty major), and before I truly became a real grown up with actual bills and stuff I was a sandwich-maker, a record store manager, a college town pizza delivery boy (best. job. ever), a rave / club DJ, and an assistant manager at an Army and Navy store.
Not all at the same time, mind you, I don't have that kind of energy.
Lightning round:
I can spin a basketball on my finger for about 10 seconds, but never longer than that. I'm tall enough to have never dated a girl as tall or taller than me (but not so tall that I would become freakishly gangly). I can juggle. I hadn't touched a piano in 20 years until my buddy Rich conned me into playing a chopsticks duet with him at a restaurant bar in LA a few months ago. We ended up jamming some blues together. It may or may not have sounded good, we were pretty hammered. I rarely throw up (except when someone else is hurling). I am missing the tippity tops of both of my index fingers, lost in unrelated vegetable slicing incidents. I fancy myself a writer; I've got about a dozen unfinished books and screenplays sitting in my documents folder on my laptop. I'm single, but not looking (sorry ladies).
(That last one is a whole other blog post, so I'll leave it at that for now.)
And that's it. You now know more about me than my mom does (true story).
Before I leave you to clean up, I'll answer the burning question that I'm sure is on everyone's mind, which is: "That's all well and good Chuck, but what's this blog all ABOUT. What's it all FOR?"
Correction. I won't answer that. I can't. I honestly have no idea. I've done this long enough to know that I have no clue what this will turn into or where it will go, and that's part of the fun. For both of us. What it has been up until now, is probably a pretty good indication of where it's going, but since I don't really pay much attention when I write I'm going to be just as surprised as you are by the results.
Thanks for visiting, and don't forget to tip your waitress. Kisses!
* The highway signs don't really say this. At least I don't remember for sure whether they do or not, because every time I've passed them I've been sun-stroked and choking on truck diesel fumes after being stuck on the back of a motorcycle throughout the Beltway traffic corridor. **
** Consider the above footnote to be a generous correction of truth, and as such you probably shouldn't expect that it will ever happen again. Now that we've gotten to know each other, you should know that I'm simply not to be trusted to be a source of truth and knowledge, let alone wit or creative banter. On the scale of "things you should believe on the Internet", this site should fall somewhere just above Fox News, but below Wikipedia. I won't lie to you or mislead you intentionally, but I damn sure am not planning on fact-checking what I say, and whether something is funny to me is more important when deciding what to write than it's verity. You want independent and honest journalism, go here.
This is my third such blog. I've been writing stupid shit and posting it on the Internet for strangers and friends to read for the past 5 years. You might recognize my writing style from [REDACTED] or [REDACTED], but let's not make a big deal about that here, shall we? I'm trying to start fresh. To turn over a new virtual leaf, as it were. Frankly I'm trying to attract a better class of readers this time around. If I'm not involved in any restraining orders this year then I'll know I'm headed in the right direction.
So, as far as you know, my name is Chuck. At the moment I live in Virginia, or as it says on the highway signs when you cross the border from Maryland: "Where the South begins"*. And Virginia truly is the gateway state to the Southern U.S. We have rednecks, but they are well behaved and generally have decent dental plans. You will see the occasional confederate flag, but it's usually tastefully displayed or small. Or both. We do have corn liquor, but it's not sold in stores. And while we have hundreds of baptist churches peppered throughout the state, there aren't a lot of anti-abortion anti-gay pro-God billboards along the highways.
So it's the South, but not "Banjo and Overalls" South.
I haven't always lived here. In fact, just last year I was wrapping up a 15+ year tour of duty in war torn Connecticut (a.k.a "Where Fun Goes to Die"). At some point after moving there back in the 90's (from Boston, for those playing Blog Bingo) I lost my way and started an insta-family with a girlfriend and her two daughters; we bought a nice house in the suburbs and I drove an SUV, wore polo shirts and khakis, mowed the lawn with a push-mower, and started taking prescription drugs for high blood pressure.
10 years, about 23 assorted pets, and one very broken relationship later, I was left alone, paying a mortgage for a house I didn't want to live in anymore, in a state that I never really wanted to be in in the first place. I burned all of my khakis, bought a motorcycle, got tattoos, started blogging, and promptly spent the next few years struggling through yet another disaster of a romance whilst trying desperately to sell my house.
Last summer I finally found a
The original plan was to head as far South as possible and settle somewhere in Florida. For the record, the motivating factors for choosing Florida were 1) sun, 2) sand, 3) palm trees, 4) bikinis (not on me), and 5) my B.F.F. Brian lives there. But for reasons that are not entirely your business, I instead found myself just outside of Richmond in a little apartment complex with a lake and fountains and a pool and just the right amount of old people (enough to guarantee that someone will chat you up if you go outside at mail time, but not enough so that there are bingo games held in the clubhouse every Saturday night).
According to the grey hairs starting to salt my otherwise brown hair and reddish goatee, I am pushing my late thirties. I suppose this means that in a few more years, I'll no longer be relevant. In general. I'm having a bit of an issue accepting this, but it's not because I'm in denial, mostly I kinda just think I'm still pretty cool, for an old guy.
I've been a computer programmer for 20 years, and am sort of going through a mid-career crisis at the moment, thinking defiantly that I'll be able to course-correct without crashing - even at this late stage in the game. It's going to be tough, for sure, on account of not actually having a college degree. I do have plenty of mostly useless skills, however: I was a classically trained pianist (lol peen-ist) as a child (I dropped out of Berklee College of Music because I slept through a meeting with my advisor and ended up getting stuck with a shitty major), and before I truly became a real grown up with actual bills and stuff I was a sandwich-maker, a record store manager, a college town pizza delivery boy (best. job. ever), a rave / club DJ, and an assistant manager at an Army and Navy store.
Not all at the same time, mind you, I don't have that kind of energy.
Lightning round:
I can spin a basketball on my finger for about 10 seconds, but never longer than that. I'm tall enough to have never dated a girl as tall or taller than me (but not so tall that I would become freakishly gangly). I can juggle. I hadn't touched a piano in 20 years until my buddy Rich conned me into playing a chopsticks duet with him at a restaurant bar in LA a few months ago. We ended up jamming some blues together. It may or may not have sounded good, we were pretty hammered. I rarely throw up (except when someone else is hurling). I am missing the tippity tops of both of my index fingers, lost in unrelated vegetable slicing incidents. I fancy myself a writer; I've got about a dozen unfinished books and screenplays sitting in my documents folder on my laptop. I'm single, but not looking (sorry ladies).
(That last one is a whole other blog post, so I'll leave it at that for now.)
And that's it. You now know more about me than my mom does (true story).
Before I leave you to clean up, I'll answer the burning question that I'm sure is on everyone's mind, which is: "That's all well and good Chuck, but what's this blog all ABOUT. What's it all FOR?"
Correction. I won't answer that. I can't. I honestly have no idea. I've done this long enough to know that I have no clue what this will turn into or where it will go, and that's part of the fun. For both of us. What it has been up until now, is probably a pretty good indication of where it's going, but since I don't really pay much attention when I write I'm going to be just as surprised as you are by the results.
Thanks for visiting, and don't forget to tip your waitress. Kisses!
* The highway signs don't really say this. At least I don't remember for sure whether they do or not, because every time I've passed them I've been sun-stroked and choking on truck diesel fumes after being stuck on the back of a motorcycle throughout the Beltway traffic corridor. **
** Consider the above footnote to be a generous correction of truth, and as such you probably shouldn't expect that it will ever happen again. Now that we've gotten to know each other, you should know that I'm simply not to be trusted to be a source of truth and knowledge, let alone wit or creative banter. On the scale of "things you should believe on the Internet", this site should fall somewhere just above Fox News, but below Wikipedia. I won't lie to you or mislead you intentionally, but I damn sure am not planning on fact-checking what I say, and whether something is funny to me is more important when deciding what to write than it's verity. You want independent and honest journalism, go here.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Hiatus Status
I am, as previously stated, on hiatus from work, due simply to the fact that I've got a comfortable cushion of savings in the bank account and no desire to go to work at the moment. Rather than spending my time noodling with terribly interesting and smart people as I'd previously imagined I would, however, I've been mostly lumping around the apartment with the windows open (it's been beautifully spring-like here in Virginia), sneezing and coughing constantly because of my allergies.
I suppose that if you consider lying on the couch watching 3 seasons of Sons of Anarchy or repeatedly listening to side A of the old DJ R.A.W. Hellborn* mix tape or catching up on the last season of Dexter to be productive, then I've been a veritable Viking of efficacy, but otherwise, not so much.
I suppose that's not quite accurate. I've actually done stuff the past few weeks. Terribly productive stuff, in fact, like completing crossword puzzles (mostly) without cheating, writing, reading, and finishing a programming project I've been working on for the past 5 years. But mostly I feel as though I haven't done squat, I suppose because I haven't taken any gloriously long motorcycle trips or met any avant-garde intellectuals to drink a good chocolate stout with while we muse on the inner workings of the human mind or quantum physics. This is, of course, how I envisioned spending my hiatus - like one big renaissance of the mind and body that would inspire me to finish all of the writing and music projects I had ever started.
Of course, this whole concept was duly thwarted from day one by the fact that my seasonal allergies kicked in full force a week ago, and have subsequently led to me catching an insufferable cold, complete with a fever. This seems to happen every year. My body, quickly reacting to the THREAT of FLOWERS POLLENATING protects me by immediately and persistently creating the urge to sneeze, replete with the production of mounds of mucous and redness and itchiness from my eyes through to the bottom of my throat, all of which culminates after a week and gathers in my sinus cavity, which is apparently the catalyst for my immune system promptly giving in and succumbing to whatever biological weapons have been cast towards me from my neighbors the few times I ventured out to the grocery store.
It's incredibly hard to be productive when your body threatens to collapse from weakness every time you stand up.
So I've given up, at least for this week. Even as I am feeling better today, the storms are moving in, and will be hovering out there for the next few days, looking gloomily threatening and having the potential to create some more Southern hail, which would be disastrous were someone unfortunate enough to be out riding a motorcycle. Looks like I will be missing Bike Week in the Outer Banks this year.
Oh well, there's always next year.
Then again, this is what hiatus' are for, aren't they? They are for nothingness. Therefore I will embrace the Zen of my hiatus, and relish in the accomplishments I have made, rather than yearn for the productivity that my allergies and mental energy (or lack thereof) seem to be conspiring against me having at the moment.
And it is good.
Next week I will finish the next Great American Novel and publish a CD of original music, but this week I've got the rest of season 5 of Dexter to plow through.
And that couch isn't going to hold itself down.
*Interesting side note: Hellborn (currently playing as I write) runs at ALMOST the exact same B.P.M. as my washing machine. Wonderful when they are synchronized, not so much when they fall off.
I suppose that if you consider lying on the couch watching 3 seasons of Sons of Anarchy or repeatedly listening to side A of the old DJ R.A.W. Hellborn* mix tape or catching up on the last season of Dexter to be productive, then I've been a veritable Viking of efficacy, but otherwise, not so much.
Of course, this whole concept was duly thwarted from day one by the fact that my seasonal allergies kicked in full force a week ago, and have subsequently led to me catching an insufferable cold, complete with a fever. This seems to happen every year. My body, quickly reacting to the THREAT of FLOWERS POLLENATING protects me by immediately and persistently creating the urge to sneeze, replete with the production of mounds of mucous and redness and itchiness from my eyes through to the bottom of my throat, all of which culminates after a week and gathers in my sinus cavity, which is apparently the catalyst for my immune system promptly giving in and succumbing to whatever biological weapons have been cast towards me from my neighbors the few times I ventured out to the grocery store.
It's incredibly hard to be productive when your body threatens to collapse from weakness every time you stand up.
So I've given up, at least for this week. Even as I am feeling better today, the storms are moving in, and will be hovering out there for the next few days, looking gloomily threatening and having the potential to create some more Southern hail, which would be disastrous were someone unfortunate enough to be out riding a motorcycle. Looks like I will be missing Bike Week in the Outer Banks this year.
Oh well, there's always next year.
Then again, this is what hiatus' are for, aren't they? They are for nothingness. Therefore I will embrace the Zen of my hiatus, and relish in the accomplishments I have made, rather than yearn for the productivity that my allergies and mental energy (or lack thereof) seem to be conspiring against me having at the moment.
And it is good.
Next week I will finish the next Great American Novel and publish a CD of original music, but this week I've got the rest of season 5 of Dexter to plow through.
And that couch isn't going to hold itself down.
*Interesting side note: Hellborn (currently playing as I write) runs at ALMOST the exact same B.P.M. as my washing machine. Wonderful when they are synchronized, not so much when they fall off.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Mental Floss
Part of my rehabilitation, during this hiatus from work, is to work on my memory. I'd like to strengthen my mental skills all around, in fact, but mostly I need to focus on recollection. I have sharp short term recall, but have been cursed with one of the worst long term memories of anyone I know. I'd almost prefer it was the other way around. While it's great to be able to distinctly remember everything that's happened or was said over the past several months, sadly there are huge parts of my personal life that I simply can't recall. So I have to rely on friends to retell stories as if I wasn't there.
Part of strengthening the mind is understanding how it works. While scientists on a whole are still in the early stages of identifying and mapping brain function and linking it to what we perceive as our mind, we actually have a unique opportunity, each of us, to explore how the mind works ourselves, having access to a fully operational one at all times as we do. The trick, of course, is to get past the concept that you are using a tool to analyze itself, which some say is why we will never be able to fully understand how our mind works. I wholeheartedly disagree with this - our mind is capable of visualizing such unimaginable things such as invisible protons or vast solar systems - so why not think that one day we will be able to use it to understand how we think?
I've spent a lot of time thinking about this. My perception of the mind (based solely on the exercise of being aware of my own thoughts and where / how I become aware of them) is that it is made up of two distinctly separate pieces: the conscious and the subconscious. The subconscious mind operates exactly like the mind of an alligator or a dog or a cat; it is what allows us to function, to eat, to sleep, even to experience emotions. The conscious mind is a completely different animal, and seems to be capable of logical thought (based on pattern recognition and the ability to predict outcomes and make decisions accordingly).
This is pretty close to scientifically proven, and it doesn't contradict Dr. Freud - he was talking psychology and we're talking pure thought here. In fact, there are literally two different physical areas in the human brain that when measured for activity during different mental challenges each fire at different times. Scientifically, this seems to support the theory of dual conscious and subconscious minds by indicating that these distinct thought patterns take place in completely physically separate places in the brain.
Separate they may be, however these two pieces of our mental fiber are in constant communication with each other.They don't act as one, but they work together in near-perfect harmony.
Ever try your hardest to remember something only to fail and then have it pop up later when you are thinking about something completely different? That's your subconscious working in the background, executing a search, and then passing the results back to your conscious mind in the mental equivalent of a browser popup window. Ever have deja vu? That's your subconscious mind constantly comparing current sensory input with previously-recorded memories and sending an alert to your conscious when it finds a match that is worth noting.
I tend to think that we dream in our subconscious mind, and in a rested state with no sensory input, our conscious mind wanders over and watches from time to time, like some residential voyeur peeking over the fence at a suntanning neighbor's wife. This gives us a glimpse into the strange and jumbled world of our subconscious, a peek into how we actually think and process input.
Like dreams, this process is is illogical, intuitive, nonsensical, and completely meaningful.
It's also stubborn. While our conscious mind can be reasoned with, our subconscious cannot. It learns from repetition, and unlearns the same way. Have a cigarette with your coffee every morning for a year, and the first day you have a coffee and skip the cigarette, your subconscious (albeit fueled by chemical dependencies) will scream out for a smoke, desperately sending images of your favorite brand pack of smokes to its conscious cousin. Wake up every Monday dreading your work day for long enough, and even after you quit your job, Monday morning will arrive along with that same feeling of dread - now out of place and illogical, when viewed in the perspective of the rational conscious mind.
This is how I started my day today. Saturday and Sunday I rose full of hope and rested (despite not sleeping well), but this morning I woke up with the same nagging feelings of dread I used to get knowing that checking my e-mail would open a Pandora's box of misery to kick off my work week.
This is interesting insight, to say the least, into how complicated - and yet simplistic - the subconscious mind is. It tracked the day of the week in order to prepare me for my Monday, but couldn't track current events enough to know that work was no longer a factor.
Or, more to the point, it couldn't reason and predict that quitting my job meant that Mondays would no longer be depressing to me.
That's a task for the conscious.
And so the conscious and subconscious work together quite well, but then again are completely independent creatures and that's where we fall short of our true potential. The duality of man, so to speak, in that we literally have two minds operating for us (and against us) at any given time. How frustrating that I can be conscious of the difference of this Monday and last Monday, but still be a slave to my subconscious defenses that kicked in despite being no longer relevant.
Just like deciding to quit smoking isn't the same as quitting smoking.
(For those keeping track, by the way, it's day 4 and I'm not looking back. My subconscious mind can eat it.)
It seems to me that the key to life then, the key to enlightenment, and perhaps even the key to happiness is to tune our independent minds to work as one. Imagine how powerful a man would be if he could harness the strength of both halves of his mental capacity; the whole undoubtedly being greater than the sum of its parts.
Part of strengthening the mind is understanding how it works. While scientists on a whole are still in the early stages of identifying and mapping brain function and linking it to what we perceive as our mind, we actually have a unique opportunity, each of us, to explore how the mind works ourselves, having access to a fully operational one at all times as we do. The trick, of course, is to get past the concept that you are using a tool to analyze itself, which some say is why we will never be able to fully understand how our mind works. I wholeheartedly disagree with this - our mind is capable of visualizing such unimaginable things such as invisible protons or vast solar systems - so why not think that one day we will be able to use it to understand how we think?
I've spent a lot of time thinking about this. My perception of the mind (based solely on the exercise of being aware of my own thoughts and where / how I become aware of them) is that it is made up of two distinctly separate pieces: the conscious and the subconscious. The subconscious mind operates exactly like the mind of an alligator or a dog or a cat; it is what allows us to function, to eat, to sleep, even to experience emotions. The conscious mind is a completely different animal, and seems to be capable of logical thought (based on pattern recognition and the ability to predict outcomes and make decisions accordingly).
This is pretty close to scientifically proven, and it doesn't contradict Dr. Freud - he was talking psychology and we're talking pure thought here. In fact, there are literally two different physical areas in the human brain that when measured for activity during different mental challenges each fire at different times. Scientifically, this seems to support the theory of dual conscious and subconscious minds by indicating that these distinct thought patterns take place in completely physically separate places in the brain.
Separate they may be, however these two pieces of our mental fiber are in constant communication with each other.They don't act as one, but they work together in near-perfect harmony.
Ever try your hardest to remember something only to fail and then have it pop up later when you are thinking about something completely different? That's your subconscious working in the background, executing a search, and then passing the results back to your conscious mind in the mental equivalent of a browser popup window. Ever have deja vu? That's your subconscious mind constantly comparing current sensory input with previously-recorded memories and sending an alert to your conscious when it finds a match that is worth noting.
I tend to think that we dream in our subconscious mind, and in a rested state with no sensory input, our conscious mind wanders over and watches from time to time, like some residential voyeur peeking over the fence at a suntanning neighbor's wife. This gives us a glimpse into the strange and jumbled world of our subconscious, a peek into how we actually think and process input.
Like dreams, this process is is illogical, intuitive, nonsensical, and completely meaningful.
It's also stubborn. While our conscious mind can be reasoned with, our subconscious cannot. It learns from repetition, and unlearns the same way. Have a cigarette with your coffee every morning for a year, and the first day you have a coffee and skip the cigarette, your subconscious (albeit fueled by chemical dependencies) will scream out for a smoke, desperately sending images of your favorite brand pack of smokes to its conscious cousin. Wake up every Monday dreading your work day for long enough, and even after you quit your job, Monday morning will arrive along with that same feeling of dread - now out of place and illogical, when viewed in the perspective of the rational conscious mind.
This is how I started my day today. Saturday and Sunday I rose full of hope and rested (despite not sleeping well), but this morning I woke up with the same nagging feelings of dread I used to get knowing that checking my e-mail would open a Pandora's box of misery to kick off my work week.
This is interesting insight, to say the least, into how complicated - and yet simplistic - the subconscious mind is. It tracked the day of the week in order to prepare me for my Monday, but couldn't track current events enough to know that work was no longer a factor.
Or, more to the point, it couldn't reason and predict that quitting my job meant that Mondays would no longer be depressing to me.
That's a task for the conscious.
And so the conscious and subconscious work together quite well, but then again are completely independent creatures and that's where we fall short of our true potential. The duality of man, so to speak, in that we literally have two minds operating for us (and against us) at any given time. How frustrating that I can be conscious of the difference of this Monday and last Monday, but still be a slave to my subconscious defenses that kicked in despite being no longer relevant.
Just like deciding to quit smoking isn't the same as quitting smoking.
(For those keeping track, by the way, it's day 4 and I'm not looking back. My subconscious mind can eat it.)
It seems to me that the key to life then, the key to enlightenment, and perhaps even the key to happiness is to tune our independent minds to work as one. Imagine how powerful a man would be if he could harness the strength of both halves of his mental capacity; the whole undoubtedly being greater than the sum of its parts.
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Forward Looking
There is a term: "forward looking", that in business describes a method of decision-making with the implication that it is strategic rather than short-sighted; planned instead of reactionary. This applies to all aspects of life, not just business. All too often people react rather than plan, deny rather than fix, flee rather than fight.
Since the start of the year I've been honestly and abrasively looking forward in my own life, comparing the path I've put myself on to the future I wanted for myself, and realizing that there were no roads that connected the two. What I saw was that I had been in deep denial about the future of the company I was working for, that I couldn't see a particularly fruitful or fulfilling future there for myself or my team, and more importantly, that I couldn't imagine leaving that job for a carbon copy of it, starting the cycle over again, not bettering my situation, instead simply moving it somewhere else, like I had done in the past, over and over again.
For 3 months, this realization, as well as my father's words echoing in my head (something about not leaving a job without having an offer from someplace else, or maybe it was about hatching chickens) kept me mostly undecided about what to do to fix this. I was flat out miserable, this I knew. I woke up every day dreading going to work, even though I worked from home and all I had to do was turn on my laptop or dial into a meeting. I spent time and energy looking for other work and talking with a few other companies, but nothing seemed like a step forward, instead everything seemed like a step to one side or the other. Like dancing.
Dancing around the issue, perhaps.
Rather than continue to tango with inevitability, then, I finally and simply handed in my resignation. I realized that as scary as it was, I had to terminate the abusive and unhealthy relationship I have had with my career. I needed to do this swiftly and unequivocally, leaving no room for greyness or misinterpretation. I decided to jump out of the airplane, and check for my parachute on the way down rather than dick around in the door and risk losing my nerve.
I realized that I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up. But I'm damn sure that it's not what I've been doing. I'm not cut out for the corporate bullshit, I want off this stupid ladder.
Writing. Reading. Making music. Drawing. Crossword puzzles. Long motorcycle rides to nowhere. Hobby programming.
Like leaving an abusive relationship with a woman, I need to find myself, my own identity, and most importantly, my own values before I can move on to a new partnership. Nothing short of that would be right for me, or whoever I re-engage my career path forward with. It's terrifyingly exciting.
I won't be working for the Man ever again, because now I AM The Man.
But for now...
Since the start of the year I've been honestly and abrasively looking forward in my own life, comparing the path I've put myself on to the future I wanted for myself, and realizing that there were no roads that connected the two. What I saw was that I had been in deep denial about the future of the company I was working for, that I couldn't see a particularly fruitful or fulfilling future there for myself or my team, and more importantly, that I couldn't imagine leaving that job for a carbon copy of it, starting the cycle over again, not bettering my situation, instead simply moving it somewhere else, like I had done in the past, over and over again.
For 3 months, this realization, as well as my father's words echoing in my head (something about not leaving a job without having an offer from someplace else, or maybe it was about hatching chickens) kept me mostly undecided about what to do to fix this. I was flat out miserable, this I knew. I woke up every day dreading going to work, even though I worked from home and all I had to do was turn on my laptop or dial into a meeting. I spent time and energy looking for other work and talking with a few other companies, but nothing seemed like a step forward, instead everything seemed like a step to one side or the other. Like dancing.
Dancing around the issue, perhaps.
Rather than continue to tango with inevitability, then, I finally and simply handed in my resignation. I realized that as scary as it was, I had to terminate the abusive and unhealthy relationship I have had with my career. I needed to do this swiftly and unequivocally, leaving no room for greyness or misinterpretation. I decided to jump out of the airplane, and check for my parachute on the way down rather than dick around in the door and risk losing my nerve.
I realized that I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up. But I'm damn sure that it's not what I've been doing. I'm not cut out for the corporate bullshit, I want off this stupid ladder.
The thing is, Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care.So the first step, now that I'm in free fall, is to clear my head. Reboot my mind. In order to do that, I need to restore my emotional and physical health. I have quit smoking, quit eating junk food, and quit drinking (at least for the foreseeable future). I will be exercising daily in an effort to get back into the physical health I was in just two years ago. I'm going to focus on the things that, while working, I never made enough time for.
Writing. Reading. Making music. Drawing. Crossword puzzles. Long motorcycle rides to nowhere. Hobby programming.
Like leaving an abusive relationship with a woman, I need to find myself, my own identity, and most importantly, my own values before I can move on to a new partnership. Nothing short of that would be right for me, or whoever I re-engage my career path forward with. It's terrifyingly exciting.
I won't be working for the Man ever again, because now I AM The Man.
But for now...
Lawrence: Well, what about you now? what would you do?
Peter: Besides two chicks at the same time?
Lawrence: Well, yeah.
Peter: Nothing.
Lawrence: Nothing, huh?
Peter: I would relax... I would sit on my ass all day... I would do nothing.
Lawrence: Well, you don't need a million dollars to do nothing, man. Take a look at my cousin: he's broke, don't do shit.
- Office Space
Monday, March 21, 2011
Charlie Sheen is from Mars, Women are from Venus
I recently had an e-mail conversation (a "convo" is what I think the kids call it these days) with a female friend of mine about how guys approach picking up women. She was fascinated with some of the insight I was giving her about it (trying, as she was, to apply it to her own experiences with men), and once I resigned myself to the fact that I was being a traitor to my gender, I started thinking more about how we, as guys, interact with women in general. I'm going to break that down for you now. Consider this a gift to womankind, and I expect to be rewarded for my efforts with backrubs and other favors that start with the letter "b" (like "burgers").
First and foremost, if you smile at us, are nice to us, or otherwise treat us with anything less than disdain, our immediate reaction is that you are trying to tell us that you would like to have sex with us. We're going to promptly put you into the revered "possibility" bucket in our head, and there you will stay until you flat out reject us. Sadly, this means that waitresses, baristas, strippers, stewardesses, and other women in the service industry who rely on social grace for tips are going to go through the day unwittingly "signaling" men in their wake that they are hot to trot.
Many women realize this, and resort to being bitches to every man they meet who isn't Ryan Reynolds. I can't hardly blame them.
The reason for this is that most men are not very good at reading body language (this is a scientific fact) and so we will not know, in fact, with any amount of certainty whether a woman is interested in us sexually until our penis is actually moving in and out of her vagina. As a result, if we always erred on the side of caution, women and men would cease to have sex and the human race would die out in a generation or two. Therefore, we must assume that you all want us. All the time.
Of course, guys that are good at hooking up with women have found a way around their genetic gender deficiencies and have learned to bully through and succeed. My experience is that this has less to do with realizing the subtle nuances of courtship, and more to do with large egos and the assumption that every woman does, in fact, want to sleep with you, whether or not they are aware of it yet. Hence, the "nice guys finish last" stereotype, which is by and large true. Not to say that women are attracted to douchbags, it's just that douchbags don't second-guess themselves and that comes across as confidence.
It's a numbers game, really. Hit on enough women, and one of them will sleep with you. Repeat.
Women are far better than men at social interaction. Period. We are genetically designed to build things, hunt things, and burn things. Women are genetically designed to orchestrate all of the other daily workings of complex social groups, and as such are inherently more in tune to other people's needs, feelings, and status hints.
Before I get buried with hate mail from angry women, please let me clarify this for one hot minute by saying that of course women can also build things, hunt things, and burn things. What I'm saying is that men suck at social grace.
Or at least we men have to work at it. Our idea of courtship is grinding on your booty in a dark nightclub with a bottle of beer in our hand while we grin at our buddies. Women design complex mating rituals around subtle cues, sharing of thoughts and ideas, and a complicated game of give and take designed to feel out a potential partner's ability to provide, care for, and support.
Quite simply, this confuses us.
We have simply not evolved socially like women have. We are base and crude. And to further complicate and confuse things for us, women actually naturally do want this simple ruggedness in their man, but along the way, social evolution has required us to be what we are plus what we are not, in a way that is flat out contradictory to itself. We are expected to be all things at once. Ask any woman what she wants in a man, and you will hear things like "rugged" and "strong" and "dirt under his fingernails", but she will also say "understands me" and "likes to shop at the container store" and "sensitive".
To fully understand this, put your way-back-thinking-cap on and consider cavemen. And cavewomen. Our genetics do not evolve at the rapid pace that our brains do, rather they evolve slowly, across generations. Our minds evolve much more rapidly, even more so in the age of technology. Society at large is many times removed from the primitive society that lived in caves and revolved around a nightly campfire, but our genetics have not nearly begun to catch up.
Genetically we are more similar to cavemen than we are mentally. Mentally we are leaps and bounds ahead of them, but our genetics are still programmed around the camp fire. This is why it's so hard to understand human behavior, especially when it comes to the differences between the sexes. Because we're trying to frame it in the 21st century, when it really only makes sense in the pre-dawn era.
Primitive societies were intra-supportive. Families were less polar and individual than they are now. When a baby was born, all of the women of the village would care for it. When a sabre-tooth tiger was dragged home from the hunt, everyone would eat from it. Women got their social and emotional support from other women, and ran the village while the men were out procuring food for the table. Men merely had to bring home the sabre-tooth bacon and impregnate women. Those were our sole responsibilities.
Ah, those were the days.
Now, however, families are polarized even under one roof, and generations are generally physically separated. Even 50 years ago, 2 or 3 generations would live together, but now, each generation has it's own house, oftentimes in different localities. Women no longer have the always-present female support system they once had, and they don't think they need it any more, being the pants-wearing, no bra having, educated and earning types that they have become.
But they do need this female support system. And without the village, they now they expect men to provide that for them.
Gone are the days when men would see a woman they found attractive, beat other men into the ground who also felt that way, and then drag her off to a dark cave to lay seed in her belly. I say "Good riddance dark days, we have since evolved". And we have, but not quite enough yet.
The truth is that we are still genetically designed for something similar to this type of behavior, and anything else is difficult for us to process.
Which brings us to today. Today's social groups are much smaller than they were before. A couple without kids is akin to an entire village in caveman times. A man can bring home dozens of frozen sabre-tooth tiger patties from his job each day, and a woman (through the miracles of modern medicine) can conceive babies even without medical trauma. In vitro fertilization, adoption, welfare, unemployment, home alarm systems, 911; all replace the need for a tight-knit social strata by allowing us to survive on our own when we should not be able to.
But these technological advances have not replaced a woman's need to orchestrate social engineering within her social group, or a man's need to bond with fellow men on the hunt. So we turn to our spouses to fill those gaps, and they always fall short. Why? Because they're not programmed for it, as much as they might want to be.
How many men have you heard say "She's awesome, she loves sports"? How many women have you heard say "He's great, he listens to me"? Women are not programmed to love sports, and men are not programmed to listen - at least not to women's stories. Yet these become desired attributes in a mate. Why? Because we are genetically still cavemen, but no longer have the social makeup of caveman times, so we look to our spouse to fill the void.
I've digressed. But the point of my digression was to point out that men simply do not have the genetic abillity to process social cues like women do. We didn't need it. Sabre-tooth tiger had one social cue: hungry.
I'm not making this up, it's scientifically proven. SCIENCE says this. We're simply not built to be the specific pattern in the fabric of modern relationships that is expected of us; we're being asked to play a role that other women once played. Initially, we were designed (by God or science, take your pick, I'm not smart enough to get into that debate) to be involved in courtship rituals that involved hair-pulling and chest-beating. Genetically, women were designed to respond to exactly that as well, and back then, things were much more simple.
Nowadays, however, complication rules, and that is where women reign supreme.
First and foremost, if you smile at us, are nice to us, or otherwise treat us with anything less than disdain, our immediate reaction is that you are trying to tell us that you would like to have sex with us. We're going to promptly put you into the revered "possibility" bucket in our head, and there you will stay until you flat out reject us. Sadly, this means that waitresses, baristas, strippers, stewardesses, and other women in the service industry who rely on social grace for tips are going to go through the day unwittingly "signaling" men in their wake that they are hot to trot.
Many women realize this, and resort to being bitches to every man they meet who isn't Ryan Reynolds. I can't hardly blame them.
The reason for this is that most men are not very good at reading body language (this is a scientific fact) and so we will not know, in fact, with any amount of certainty whether a woman is interested in us sexually until our penis is actually moving in and out of her vagina. As a result, if we always erred on the side of caution, women and men would cease to have sex and the human race would die out in a generation or two. Therefore, we must assume that you all want us. All the time.
Of course, guys that are good at hooking up with women have found a way around their genetic gender deficiencies and have learned to bully through and succeed. My experience is that this has less to do with realizing the subtle nuances of courtship, and more to do with large egos and the assumption that every woman does, in fact, want to sleep with you, whether or not they are aware of it yet. Hence, the "nice guys finish last" stereotype, which is by and large true. Not to say that women are attracted to douchbags, it's just that douchbags don't second-guess themselves and that comes across as confidence.
It's a numbers game, really. Hit on enough women, and one of them will sleep with you. Repeat.
Women are far better than men at social interaction. Period. We are genetically designed to build things, hunt things, and burn things. Women are genetically designed to orchestrate all of the other daily workings of complex social groups, and as such are inherently more in tune to other people's needs, feelings, and status hints.
Before I get buried with hate mail from angry women, please let me clarify this for one hot minute by saying that of course women can also build things, hunt things, and burn things. What I'm saying is that men suck at social grace.
Or at least we men have to work at it. Our idea of courtship is grinding on your booty in a dark nightclub with a bottle of beer in our hand while we grin at our buddies. Women design complex mating rituals around subtle cues, sharing of thoughts and ideas, and a complicated game of give and take designed to feel out a potential partner's ability to provide, care for, and support.
Quite simply, this confuses us.
We have simply not evolved socially like women have. We are base and crude. And to further complicate and confuse things for us, women actually naturally do want this simple ruggedness in their man, but along the way, social evolution has required us to be what we are plus what we are not, in a way that is flat out contradictory to itself. We are expected to be all things at once. Ask any woman what she wants in a man, and you will hear things like "rugged" and "strong" and "dirt under his fingernails", but she will also say "understands me" and "likes to shop at the container store" and "sensitive".
To fully understand this, put your way-back-thinking-cap on and consider cavemen. And cavewomen. Our genetics do not evolve at the rapid pace that our brains do, rather they evolve slowly, across generations. Our minds evolve much more rapidly, even more so in the age of technology. Society at large is many times removed from the primitive society that lived in caves and revolved around a nightly campfire, but our genetics have not nearly begun to catch up.
Genetically we are more similar to cavemen than we are mentally. Mentally we are leaps and bounds ahead of them, but our genetics are still programmed around the camp fire. This is why it's so hard to understand human behavior, especially when it comes to the differences between the sexes. Because we're trying to frame it in the 21st century, when it really only makes sense in the pre-dawn era.
Primitive societies were intra-supportive. Families were less polar and individual than they are now. When a baby was born, all of the women of the village would care for it. When a sabre-tooth tiger was dragged home from the hunt, everyone would eat from it. Women got their social and emotional support from other women, and ran the village while the men were out procuring food for the table. Men merely had to bring home the sabre-tooth bacon and impregnate women. Those were our sole responsibilities.
Ah, those were the days.
Now, however, families are polarized even under one roof, and generations are generally physically separated. Even 50 years ago, 2 or 3 generations would live together, but now, each generation has it's own house, oftentimes in different localities. Women no longer have the always-present female support system they once had, and they don't think they need it any more, being the pants-wearing, no bra having, educated and earning types that they have become.
But they do need this female support system. And without the village, they now they expect men to provide that for them.
Gone are the days when men would see a woman they found attractive, beat other men into the ground who also felt that way, and then drag her off to a dark cave to lay seed in her belly. I say "Good riddance dark days, we have since evolved". And we have, but not quite enough yet.
The truth is that we are still genetically designed for something similar to this type of behavior, and anything else is difficult for us to process.
Which brings us to today. Today's social groups are much smaller than they were before. A couple without kids is akin to an entire village in caveman times. A man can bring home dozens of frozen sabre-tooth tiger patties from his job each day, and a woman (through the miracles of modern medicine) can conceive babies even without medical trauma. In vitro fertilization, adoption, welfare, unemployment, home alarm systems, 911; all replace the need for a tight-knit social strata by allowing us to survive on our own when we should not be able to.
But these technological advances have not replaced a woman's need to orchestrate social engineering within her social group, or a man's need to bond with fellow men on the hunt. So we turn to our spouses to fill those gaps, and they always fall short. Why? Because they're not programmed for it, as much as they might want to be.
How many men have you heard say "She's awesome, she loves sports"? How many women have you heard say "He's great, he listens to me"? Women are not programmed to love sports, and men are not programmed to listen - at least not to women's stories. Yet these become desired attributes in a mate. Why? Because we are genetically still cavemen, but no longer have the social makeup of caveman times, so we look to our spouse to fill the void.
I've digressed. But the point of my digression was to point out that men simply do not have the genetic abillity to process social cues like women do. We didn't need it. Sabre-tooth tiger had one social cue: hungry.
I'm not making this up, it's scientifically proven. SCIENCE says this. We're simply not built to be the specific pattern in the fabric of modern relationships that is expected of us; we're being asked to play a role that other women once played. Initially, we were designed (by God or science, take your pick, I'm not smart enough to get into that debate) to be involved in courtship rituals that involved hair-pulling and chest-beating. Genetically, women were designed to respond to exactly that as well, and back then, things were much more simple.
Nowadays, however, complication rules, and that is where women reign supreme.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
One For All and All For One
The quote: "One For All and All For One" probably makes you think of the Three Musketeers. It makes me think of when I was a kid and we used to say it when we were playing "Army Guy" out in the bushes; it just felt like a manly thing to shout when you were storming the neighbor's pup tent and throwing pine cone grenades, voice cracking with prepubescent excitement.
For some reason I was thinking about it tonight, or more specifically, the meaning behind it, and it really has the capability of being much more profound than all of that. If you consider "All" to refer to "All of Humanity" rather than the other two Musketeer dudes in short pants and a funny hat, "One For All" then means that everything each of us does must take into account the betterment of humanity, not just our own self-interests, and "All For One" would be the payback - assurance that the rest of humanity would look out for our best interest in return.
How nice that would be. Society at its best and most functional. No, I haven't been hitting the bong tonight, for the record.
These are lofty aspirations, at best. It's hard enough for one person to do what's best for themselves, let alone for everyone else in the world. It's hard enough, for example, for one person to quit smoking even though he knows it's bad for him to continue, hurting nobody else (let's not nitpick about second-hand smoke, let's assume for a moment that our protagonist only smokes when he's by himself, out on the front steps, when nobody else is around).
And we all know how well it works to ask others to do anything that makes sense in any way shape or form.
To quote the inimitable Ayn Rand:
"It was only in the first few years that she felt herself screaming silently, at times, for a glimpse of human ability, a single glimpse of clean, hard, radiant competence. She had fits of tortured longing for a friend or enemy with a mind better than her own. But the longing passed."
Yes, I recognize the apparent irony of quoting Rand in a post about social sacrifice and contributing to the welfare of others, but keep reading, dear reader, as I assure you I am being consistent. If not coherent. You can blame Sir Guinness for the latter.
Where was I? Right. So. Even assuming that we, as individuals, were capable of always doing the right thing, both for ourselves and for everyone else in our social sphere (at least choosing to do no wrong by others in a draw), expecting that other people will do the same in return is quite a leap. This would require not only trust in them to do so, but also that they trust us to do the same in return, and so on, and back, and forth, in a huge circle jerk feedback loop of trust and love and giving and blah blah blah I sound like Jesus.
In order to try describe what I've been thinking about without coming across like a sandal-wearing hippie, I'm going to go geek for a minute and talk Game Theory. Consider, if you will, the preeminent example of this philosophical discussion: the Prisoner's Dilemma. Allow me the indulgence of paraphrasing this concept in my own words, because this way I can invoke the 80's classic movie Tron in order to further confuse my boy Brian.
Therefore, only if you know for sure what your friend will chose, your choice is virtually irrelevant, as the outcome is as reliable as the outcome of a flip of the coin. And assuming that you and your friend didn't make a pact at the last Comic-Con regarding what choices each of you would make if you were even thrust into a real-life version of this exercise, it's safe to assume that you won't know for sure what your friend will choose.
If you trust your friend, however, to either already be a practiced connoisseur of Game Theory himself, or trust that he will spend as much time as you did to logically think through the outcomes, the only obvious choice is to remain quiet. Only if both of you choose this option will you both survive.
The right answer, then, in any case, is to choose for All, not just for One. Both actual choices (talk or do not talk) yield the same odds of personal death (50 / 50), but only if you add morality to the choice and choose not to betray your friend, trusting him to do the same, only then do you both have the chance at survival.
It is no small coincidence that the right logical choice in this game is also the right moral choice. It is, after all, a game devised by man.
The trick, of course, is determining whether all things actually are equal, and knowing that your friends and your enemies are honest and true to their word, and therefore worth your devotion and compassion. And that, my dear, dear friends, is why society is still a "doggy dog" or "every man for himself" sort of place to live.
Like Mad Max, except without the cool cars.
Here's what I've been trying to say here, but in fewer words:
For some reason I was thinking about it tonight, or more specifically, the meaning behind it, and it really has the capability of being much more profound than all of that. If you consider "All" to refer to "All of Humanity" rather than the other two Musketeer dudes in short pants and a funny hat, "One For All" then means that everything each of us does must take into account the betterment of humanity, not just our own self-interests, and "All For One" would be the payback - assurance that the rest of humanity would look out for our best interest in return.
How nice that would be. Society at its best and most functional. No, I haven't been hitting the bong tonight, for the record.
These are lofty aspirations, at best. It's hard enough for one person to do what's best for themselves, let alone for everyone else in the world. It's hard enough, for example, for one person to quit smoking even though he knows it's bad for him to continue, hurting nobody else (let's not nitpick about second-hand smoke, let's assume for a moment that our protagonist only smokes when he's by himself, out on the front steps, when nobody else is around).
And we all know how well it works to ask others to do anything that makes sense in any way shape or form.
To quote the inimitable Ayn Rand:
"It was only in the first few years that she felt herself screaming silently, at times, for a glimpse of human ability, a single glimpse of clean, hard, radiant competence. She had fits of tortured longing for a friend or enemy with a mind better than her own. But the longing passed."
Yes, I recognize the apparent irony of quoting Rand in a post about social sacrifice and contributing to the welfare of others, but keep reading, dear reader, as I assure you I am being consistent. If not coherent. You can blame Sir Guinness for the latter.
Where was I? Right. So. Even assuming that we, as individuals, were capable of always doing the right thing, both for ourselves and for everyone else in our social sphere (at least choosing to do no wrong by others in a draw), expecting that other people will do the same in return is quite a leap. This would require not only trust in them to do so, but also that they trust us to do the same in return, and so on, and back, and forth, in a huge circle jerk feedback loop of trust and love and giving and blah blah blah I sound like Jesus.
In order to try describe what I've been thinking about without coming across like a sandal-wearing hippie, I'm going to go geek for a minute and talk Game Theory. Consider, if you will, the preeminent example of this philosophical discussion: the Prisoner's Dilemma. Allow me the indulgence of paraphrasing this concept in my own words, because this way I can invoke the 80's classic movie Tron in order to further confuse my boy Brian.
Game Theory
Two friends break into a computer, finding themselves gloriously pixel-lated and rendered in glowing blue stripes with Frisbees strapped to their backs. They are both immediately taken prisoner and thrust into similarly glowing and blue prison cells, each aware only that they have both been given the same strangely complicated offer:
So where this gets fun, for math and logic geeks, of course, is that you now get to put yourself into one of the cells and play "what would I do in this position". A quick evaluation of the choices reveals this to be a zero sum game. That is, either option has equal risk and reward, depending on what your friend choses to do. Turning on your friend or keeping mum both have a 50 / 50 chance of leading to your survival.
- Turn on your accomplice, and if he remains quiet - you will be set free (but he dies).
- Keep your mouth shut, and if he does the same you both walk.
- If you both give each other up, you both die unceremoniously.
Therefore, only if you know for sure what your friend will chose, your choice is virtually irrelevant, as the outcome is as reliable as the outcome of a flip of the coin. And assuming that you and your friend didn't make a pact at the last Comic-Con regarding what choices each of you would make if you were even thrust into a real-life version of this exercise, it's safe to assume that you won't know for sure what your friend will choose.
If you trust your friend, however, to either already be a practiced connoisseur of Game Theory himself, or trust that he will spend as much time as you did to logically think through the outcomes, the only obvious choice is to remain quiet. Only if both of you choose this option will you both survive.
The right answer, then, in any case, is to choose for All, not just for One. Both actual choices (talk or do not talk) yield the same odds of personal death (50 / 50), but only if you add morality to the choice and choose not to betray your friend, trusting him to do the same, only then do you both have the chance at survival.
It is no small coincidence that the right logical choice in this game is also the right moral choice. It is, after all, a game devised by man.
The trick, of course, is determining whether all things actually are equal, and knowing that your friends and your enemies are honest and true to their word, and therefore worth your devotion and compassion. And that, my dear, dear friends, is why society is still a "doggy dog" or "every man for himself" sort of place to live.
Like Mad Max, except without the cool cars.
Here's what I've been trying to say here, but in fewer words:
It would be great if we could all just get along, but unfortunately life is full of those cops that beat on Rodney King for no apparent reason, so it's best to keep to yourself and take care of those closest to you. But that doesn't mean you should be a dick.Beer me, Sir Guinness!
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Forget...
Forget everything you know. Forget everything you have learned.
You are not what you have experienced. You are not what your parents taught you to be.
You are not your belongings. You are not the car in your driveway, the bicycle hat in your closet, the unworn shoes in the entryway.
What you are comes from deep within. We are born with this. We live with this. We die with this.
What is the meaning of life? The meaning of life is...
You are not what you have experienced. You are not what your parents taught you to be.
You are not your belongings. You are not the car in your driveway, the bicycle hat in your closet, the unworn shoes in the entryway.
What you are comes from deep within. We are born with this. We live with this. We die with this.
What is the meaning of life? The meaning of life is...
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