Are you a DC blogger…

… whose main topic of conversation is what’s wrong with Washington DC (typically with its “scene”)?

I’ve got some advice for you:

MOVE AWAY.

There, is that so hard?  If it sucks so much, just leave instead of bitching about it ad infinitum on your blogs.

It’s different when you own one

If you’ve lived in America for at least a few years and own a television, it is not possible that you haven’t seen a commercial whose premise is that middle-aged family men develop huge throbbing erections from a) having the greenest lawn in their neighborhood and b) bragging to other middle-aged family men about it.

Hell, if you lived in suburbia, you probably knew guys like them: religiously mowing, religiously sprinkling, religiously fertilizing, and obviously taking pride in their own personal acre of the earth.

Like you, I used to laugh at these people and gawk at the idea: how pathetic and sad.  Then I bought a house that had a (modest) yard.  It’s different when you own one.

Suddenly I find myself consciously distressed at the fact that through years of neglect from previous owners, the yard I purchased and have since pronounced “my baby” is in serious disrepair and has been since I bought it.  My future-father-in-law-probably commented about this when I was talking to my future-mother-in-law-probably about the state of our yard a few weeks ago that “it’s different when you own it isn’t it” and it’s so true.

I actually give a shit about my yard and I actually am ashamed that it looks so bad.  I sit around the water cooler with guys (some of whom are more than twice my age) and we discuss aeration strategies for tough, dry soil.  We discuss at length the pros and cons of evening watering.  I’m twenty four, which leads me to conclude that I was either born at 30 or that it’s not matter of being an old middle-aged man that suddenly inspires you to grow grass.  It’s the fact that it’s your grass.  And this is something that I pity about poor renters in cities who will never understand the pleasure of actually owning (beyond eminent domian of course) part of earth.

Owning a house (but more importantly to me anyway, owning land) has a very powerful psychological effect that I feel is underestimated, especially amongst city dwellers.  When you own some land, suddenly the fate of that land – everything on it, grass, trees, even a pond full of tadpoles – is under your jurisdiction.  Your land can become anything you want it to become, and more importantly, your land is the result of your efforts.  You have to take charge and control over your own land – if your yard is overgrown and filled with weeds, it’s no one’s fault but your own.  You are totally responsible for it, and therefore, it’s a reflection on you.  And that is why I think men care so much, and brag so much, about their yards.  When you grow a beautiful patch of grass (which, from what I am beginning to learn, is not nearly as easy as the commercials and your neighbors made it out to be) , you gain a very strong sense of satisfaction that is hard to imagine ever getting when you aren’t even allowed to paint your own walls unless you agree to paint them back before you move out.

Contrast this to city living (renting) where the minute anything goes wrong with your domicile, whether it’s your fault or not, the first thing you do is call your landlord and make him fix it.  In other words, it’s someone else’s problem.  If he doesn’t solve your problems, you start bitching and moaning and eventually take him to court.  This is an allegory for the larger relationship between a citizen and his government.  Do you really want to be a person who desires a relationship where even your very home is someone else’s responsibility?

The point here is what owning property puts its (and your) destiny into your own hands.  You aren’t truly independent until you own, and you’ll deny that statement until you find out for yourself.

As for me?  I’m going to spend my Labor Day weekend laboriously killing my existing weedy jungle of a yard so I can get ready for an optimal mid-September planting of a mix of fescue and heat-resistant Kentucky blue.  And I’m going to love every sweaty tiring minute of it.

We care what an 8 year-old wants

Rush transcript from the O’Reilly factor:

 COLEMAN: [Illegitimate son of deported illegal mexican Elvira Arellano] said he wants to stay in this country. And he wants to be with his mother. He’s quite definite about that.

MALKIN: Well, he can’t have both things.

COLEMAN: Both things.

MALKIN: Yes, right.

COLEMAN: I understand, but he’s 8 years old. And that’s what he wants. He wants to continue his life in this country. And he wants to be with his mother. And I think that as a country, we have to take responsibility. We, for years, left our borders open. We invited people to work. They worked. We invited them to pay taxes. They paid taxes. And then all of a sudden, we’re swept with a little bit of fear and hate and see the numbers multiplying. And let’s see, well let’s kick them all out of here. Well, we’ve got families here that are mixed status. Husbands and wives and U.S. citizen children. And we’ve got to take responsibility to fix the law. What Elvira did in taking sanctuary…

Yes, that’s exactly right.  Let’s base immigration law around what some 8 year-old Mexican bastard wants.

Do these people hear the words that come out of their mouths?

I swear, we need a major catastrophe, something that will bring down this decadant fantasy life that approximtaely 50% of Americans subscribe to.  I can’t believe that people like me afford, through the same common sense that has progressed humanity to this point, the ability for people completely not like me to believe that stupid bullshit like this matters.  You broke our immigration laws, now you are deported.  Fuck you, and fuck your illegal son.

My solution to this dillemma is practical, painless, and perfect.  Deport the mother and put the son in an orphanage, up for adoption.

I am sick of these whores crawling across the border to pop a citizen and then try to use sympathy to justify their illegal presence in our country.

I believe this particular problem can be solved very easily.

 If you give birth in a U.S. hospital and you cannot prove citizenship and residency, immediately after you recover from child birth, you will be picked up by INS and expressly shipped back to Mexico.  Your baby will be sent to an orphanage to be named and auctioned off to a family of United States citizens.  We will even be gracious about it and give first dibs on the baby to a blood relative with U.S. citizenship if one can be located.

Unsympathetic, yes.  Just what the doctor ordered?  Absolutely.  Fuck illegal immigrants: go back to where you came from.  And for all you people who whine about how they prop up our economy: fuck off.  Our economy has been world-class since 1945 and illegal immigration has only become an epidemic in the last twenty years.  Stop trying to use fuzzy statements that you can’t back up with any facts to rationally justify your bleeding heart sympathy.  Instead, try growing a pair and treating this situation with the kind of balls a world Super Power requires.  If you can’t, move to Canada.

Dear Diary

Dear Diary,

[My life is spiralling downward.]

Sunday was lethargic from the beginning as I wallowed in a morass of general and specific dislike and pity for most people but me especially.  Can you be a misanthrope and still love or enjoy some individuals?  How about a compassionate misanthrope?

[  ...My parents don't get me ya know?  I couldnt get enough money to go to the Blood Red Romance and Suffocate Me Dry concert. It sucks because they play some of my favorite songs like Stab My Heart Because I Love You and Rip Apart My Soul and of course Stab Me Rip Stab Stab and it doesn't help that I couldnt get my hair to do that flippy thing either like the guy from that band can do.]  Their reasons — money, fear of the city, they think I’ve been running around too much, etc. — are ridiculous.  Especially my mom.  I] don’t condone her actions but I’ll defend to expulsion her right to do as she pleases.

[People just don't get me.]  Are you satisfied with the part you have cast yourself in?  It seems that you have decided to become a reactor rather than actor — everything around will determine your life.  If people react to you in the role of answer bestower then quite possibly you are.  Man is born to live, not prepare for life.  Random thinking aimlessly through a verbal morass usually becomes a process of self-analysis with my ego coming out on the short end.  The easiest way out is to stop any thought approaching introspection and to advise others whenever possible.

[...My life is just a black abyss you know? Its so dark and its suffocating me, grabbing a hold of me and tightening its grip. Tighter than a pair of my little sisters jeans...Which look great on me by the way... ]  I’m sitting here at a stolen table in a pair of dirty denim bell-bottoms, a never-ironed work shirt and a beautiful purple felt hat with a purple polka-dotted scarf streaming off it.  God, I feel so divorced from Park Ridge, parents, home, the entire unreality of middle class America.  This all sounds so predictable, but it’s true.

I’m really tired of people slamming doors and screaming obscenities at poor old life. [I don't know diary sometimes I think you're the only one who gets me. You're my best friend.]

 -Me (the world’s saddest word)

The parts demarcated by [brackets] are quotes from the Emo Song by the Emo Kid.  The rest of the words are direct quotes from letters Hillary Rodham wrote during college between 65-69.  Including the signoff.

Mental Conditioning

Last time, I talked about mental conditioning.  I’ve decided to elaborate. 

It’s really not that hard.  All you need to do is step outside yourself for a minute and listen to your own conversation with yourself.  Here’s the mechanism I use to avoid what I consider generally negative thought patterns.

I devised this as my own cure for the severe bout with depression I faced right around the end of college.  My depression was what I imagine is fairly typical.  I would have long, never-ending conversations with myself.  They would start with Con, my negative and cynical side (the side that writes most of this blog), insisting on spouting a bunch of bileous venom that would cause me to be emo.  Then Pro, my positive side, would attempt to argue against Con by trying to find the silver lining on the cloud.  The conversations would go like this:

Con: My life has no direction.
Pro: Well, you’re graduating college.
Con: Yeah, so what.  It wasn’t like it was hard.  I can’t be proud of this accomplishment because for me it was easy.  Someone as smart as I am should have gotten a 4.0 even without studying.
Pro: Nobody’s perfect.
Con: I am.
Pro: Come on.
Con: No, seriously.  How did that dipshit girlfriend of yours get a better grade in a math class than you that one time?
Pro: She studied her ass off.
Con: Is there a reason you didn’t?
Pro: I was enjoying myself.
Con: Results talk, bullshit walks.

Any time I would think for a minute about something that might be going well, Con would chime in and inform me exactly why it was still bad.  Even if I were looking at a winning lottery ticket, Con would start talking about how 50% of it would go to taxes.

This went on for about 9 months.  Then I discovered Evan.  Evan’s the third figure in these conversations, the fly on the wall, the one who is listening to Pro and Con jabber on and on incessantly.

Once I discovered Evan and became aware of the fact that these two voices in my head were simultaneously me and not me, I was able to take control of who was allowed to speak.  Any time Con started whining about something, I would listen for a few seconds and then decide whether or not Con was worth listening to.  Because even though Con spends a great deal of time attempting to sap the joy out of the room, he has his uses.  But when he’s not being useful, I shut him up.

Con’s use?  He’s my bullshit detector.  He’s the one who hears someone saying something stupid, impractical, ideological, great in theory but useless in practice, or anything that has too much vested emotion to make any sense and calls bullshit.  Con is a staunch Republican.

However, when Con’s bored, and has nobody upon which to turn his scrutiny, he turns it on me.

Ipso facto, the reason I was so depressed and unhappy had a lot to do with the fact that I refused to let myself be content.  If I did something, Con would remind me that I could have done it better.  If I got into an argument with someone, Pro would explain why it was the other person’s fault.  Con would explain why it was mine.  Con was always right.

The truth of the matter is that everyone’s Con is always right.  A lot of people learn early on to shut Con up as a defense mechanism, which allows them to always believe everything they tell themselves, and that’s really dangerous.  But as I learned it’s just as bad to let Con get out of control, because he’ll make you miserable.

Once you learn to accept Pro and Con as not really you.  The conversations you have in your head are you, but they’re also not you.  Once you learn how to capture that third role – the observer role – the neutral third party – you can better control who you believe.

It’s hard to explain but you know what I mean.  For example with the argument example I gave earlier, when you’re busy fuming over how stupid and wrong that other person was, you are being Pro.  Pro is dominating your mind and you feel as Pro feels; you’re arguing as Pro against Con.  You are incapable of seeing Con’s point because Pro is engulfing you; in fact, when you do truly feel like you were 100% in the right after an argument, you are so totally Pro that Con ceases to exist in your moment of triumphant reflection and whenever you think back upon that argument. 

When you’re feeling depressed and emo and you’re obsessing over everything that’s wrong with you (or your lover, or your boss, etc.) you’re being Con.  The emotions that Con is feeling, you’re feeling.  Con’s generally not a very happy person, so when you’re being Con, well, your’e being snappy, negative, you are in a bad mood, you’re testy; Pro doesn’t even bother opening his mouth because again, you’re so engulfed by Con that Pro doesn’t exist.  If you go through the outside world as Con you end up pissing a lot of people off.

You could, if you wanted, extrapolate Pro and Con into a number of different voices.  Pro, Con, Emo, Arrogant, Victim, etc. 

Take a step back and be neither totally Pro or totally Con, ever.  Listen to what they have to say, but feel with both.  Feel with neither.  Let ‘em have their say but always remember that they’re not you, this third person is you, and you’re just watching them.

These truths are embedded in our culture but most people don’t see them.  You know those cartoons that show the angel and the devil (representing conscience) in a person’s ear?  Notice how that’s three people?  A good voice, a bad voice, and the person in between, listening to both, weighing their arguments?  How about the very notion of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit?  Lose all of the religious miracle mantra bullshit and break it down to the fact that this whole idea is nothing more than the concept that a being (in whose image we are said to be made) can at one time be three separate entities and one single entity.

So, from a practical standpoint, armed with this knowledge, I simply conditioned myself not to listen when Con started ranting about how awful my life is.  I’d just say to myself, “hey, guess what, I don’t want to hear it.  It’s not even remotely productive and it will just put me in a foul mood for no reason than myself refusing to let myself be happy.”

After a number of years operating under this philosophy, I have discovered that I am able to extrapolate this behavior to my relationships with other people.  When I’m with my girlfriend, if she’s being Pro, I stop myself from being Con.  If all of this were just a conversation in my own head, I wouldn’t want Con opening his big yap and raining on my parade, so why should I do it to someone else? 

When I find myself so engulfed in what I consider to be my bad side, Con, to the point where I don’t even hear Pro anymore, I take a step back.  I’m not saying that I am so disciplined that I can stop feeling as Con feels; that is to say, I don’t have total control of my moods.  But I do have enough temperence to be aware that I am not my whole self.  When that happens, if I’m in the company of others and its likely my un-whole self is going to manifest itself negatively, I’ll either make a note of it (“Honey, I have no patience right now.  I lost my temper.  I apologize in advance if I start snapping at you.”) or I leave the room and cool off.

That’s it.  That’s all.  That’s my secret.  This is how I prevent fighting with girlfriends, letting negative emotion dominate me, and wastinghours and hours listening to various voices in my head pollute my brain and my heart with unproductive nonsense.

Since this appears to happen naturally to mature adults, I would just call this growing up.  Whether you’re conscious of any of these facts or not, I think everyone eventually arrives at these kind of conclusions and matures.  However, some of these people take 30, 35, 40 years.  I think I’ve arrived at a very practical mental conditioning process to accelerate that outcome at 24.  And I really hope that when I’m 30, I will be looking back at this post and laughing at how little I really understood.

Smoke-filled Coffee House Crap

I read a lot of blogs that focus on their perception about the “world” and that “world” usually involves a dating in a metropolitan area.  In other words, Sex and the City.

I don’t write about that shit for two reasons.  The first is because I believe their entire perception about dating (and therefore, the world) is more or less irrelevant and second, as a consequence of the first, I am immune to having these problems.

The majority of local (DC) blogs that I read are, in the words of the great Sam Weinberg, “smoke-filled coffee house crap.”

The very concept that your relationships with other people is firstly a “game” and therefore somehow challenging has always baffled me.  What, pray tell, is so hard about finding someone you get along with and then getting along with them?

Most of the people I read focus their efforts on trying to understand the opposite sex, trying to hone their game, trying to form lasting relationships, trying to find “the one” (to divorce seven years hence), etc.  I focus my efforts on understanding these people.

I have never had problems ensnaring and dating girls long-term.  In the past seven years I have dated 3 girls, the longest of which was 5 years, followed by about 7 months (ended due to geographic separation, though I would have dumped her anyway because she started getting fat and was a tad on vacuous side) and my current girlfriend and I have been dating for about 8.  In that entire span, I can count on one hand the number of times I had a “fight” with a girlfriend.  Every time it was her initiation and her fault.  Aside from the relationship terminus periods (i.e., when shit is heading toward the breakup, both of which I initiated) I wasn’t particularly happy but I wasn’t manic.

How do I do it, you ask?  Simple.  I am a highly practical person.

I don’t bother wasting any energy on thinking about the things that I believe the majority of people think about, for example, dissecting everything about the person I’m with at all times and enforcing strict, arbitrary rules of perfection upon that person.

I wake up in the morning, get ready for work, and go.  Some mornings I poke my girlfriend if she happens to be over.  When I’m at work, I think about work stuff (and sometimes write blog posts when I’m waiting for shit to compile).  I drive home.  I think about stuff.  Generally, I avoid thinking any negative thoughts on the (long) car ride home.  I get home.  I eat dinner with my girlfriend.  We hang out, do whatever it is we’re going to do, we have sex, we talk, we laugh, I avoid saying anything to her that has no constructive value or might make her feel bad.  I don’t bother bitching about my day at work, my boss, my coworkers, or anything else unless I’m really upset, and even then, I make sure to control my tone.  If my girlfriend is dumping on me, I make a note of it mentally, but don’t say anything about it.   I move on.  We have sex.  Second verse, same as the first.

I plan for the future but I don’t worry about it.  I observe my girlfriend’s behaviors without commenting on them outwardly.  I treat her the same whether she is currently pleasing me or currently displeasing me.  I am watching her to make sure she is keeper material.  I let her know 100% of my expectations entirely up front.  For example, less than one month into the relationship, I warned her that if she gains more than 20 lbs at any time other than pregnancy, I will break up with her and never speak to her again.  Too harsh?  That’s the point.  If she thinks it’s too harsh, I won’t let the door hit her on the way out.  But at least when she does gain 30 and I tell her to pack her shit up and leave, she will have no one to blame but herself, right?  I don’t lie to her, I don’t keep things from her.  I’ve had enough experience with what’s keeper material and what isn’t to know by now and I don’t waste my time dating girls that I couldn’t see marrying, because every girl has a pussy.  If I’m not building toward something I’m wasting my time.  (By the way, if you’re reading this darling, don’t get all paranoid that I’m going to dump you at any second.  You are keeper material.)

I believe that ultimately, people break away from relationships because their partner fails their keeper material tests.  The keeper material test is not anything intellectual.  It’s a feeling.  My last girlfriend failed the test because when she gained some weight I began to feel embarrassed to be seen in public with her.  I can intellectualize that feeling until the cows come home.  I could write essays about the implications these feelings have on my morality for letting something like a few extra pounds condemn someone who I might otherwise love.  I could write a Ph.D. thesis about how these feelings are latent embarrassment emotions I feel from my childhood when I was myself overweight.  But all the brain power on planet Earth is not going to make me feel any differently.  I’ve written about this before.

Most people will sit there and analyze this kind of thing to death and then put all these thoughts (however correct or incorrect they may be) into their head.  Armed with this experience they have in coping with their past bad relationships, they’ll surely be led to happiness in the future, right?  Not really.  It’s all just mental masturbation, and there’s no such thing as truth when you chew over something in your head, especially as it relates to relationships.  Even if there were, it’s irrelevant.  You don’t listen to yourself anyway.

I think the biggest advantage I have over my peers is mental conditioning. 

I have conditioned myself mentally to avoid worrying, obsessing, or focussing too much on things out of my control, for example the behavior of other people.  I plan for the future but I don’t think about it constantly, and I never take things to infinity or extremes, because everything is bad when you think that way.

I think most people in their 20’s lack the mental discipline to do anything right, including dating, so they screw around for 10 years before they finally wake up one day and sheer desperation forces them to engage their brains in maturing a little bit.  I also feel like most people have so many problems (or, they believe that they do) that they themselves are always the problem in relationships.  They’ll never be happy not because their partner has issues but because they are too dimwitted to observe their own behaviors, the behaviors of their partner, and do any kind of practical analysis.  But then again, most people are very average, which means they have very average intelligence and come to very average conclusions about everything.  They’ll drift through the decade on whimsical emotions and pretenses built upon totally flawed premises that sounded good to them at the time, and end up complaining about how nothing seems to work for them (or, instead claim it does and write books) but one way another drone on and on about the complexities of life, relationships, and the opposite sex, without ever having contributed a single iota of useful information for anyone.

If you treat relationships like some kind of bizarre game, you’re going to end up miserable.  If you occupy your mind with this smoke-filled coffee house crap, you’re going to waste a lot of time.  Forget all this over analysis bullshit and just get through the day.

As for me?  I’ll just keep writing diatribes about how social progressivism will destroy the United States of America and pointing out the glaring hypocrisy of liberal doctrine, which hopefully no one will read.

Healthcare “crisis”

Oh Susan, don’t be silly.

It’s not that Rudy doesn’t know how hard it is to get private inusrance.  It’s that he doesn’t care.  Healthcare is a privilege, not a right.

I wanted to bring this story up because of what she’s talking about toward the end.  Susan Estrich is offering to pay for one of her friends’ healthcare because she can’t get it on her own.  I admire this kind of philanthropy and I am glad she’s doing it because whether she knows it or not, she’s the solution to the problem.

If you know someone who has healthcare woes and can’t be insured, why not insure them?  Why not forego buying that vacation home in the mountains or that new luxury car and instead buy medical insurance for them?  Because you want your vacation home and your fancy car.  You’d rather everyone pay for your friend instead of just you.  “Let’s all pitch in and share the burden.”

How about instead of me sharing the burden, you fuck off?  If you’re not willing to help the people you know, why should I be?

If everyone helped their immediately friends and family, we wouldn’t have a “healthcare crisis” as Susan puts it.  The reason we have a “healthcare crisis” is because people like Susan are few and far between.  Healthcare is expensive.  If you want it, you better be prepared to sacrifice other things.  If you want you and all of your friends to have it, maybe you should sacrifice and help them yourself instead of forcing other people to.  If everyone took care of each other in their own social circles, we wouldn’t need these expensive and useless social programs.

 I don’t understand how any intelligent person could subscribe to a party that claims to purport things like personal liberties and personal choice but has absolutely no respect for people who choose not to spend the money they earn for charitable causes – like paying for someone else’s child’s healthcare.  I guess it’s fine and dandy to demand to be free to smoke weed all day and flush your unborn baby down the toilet ad-hoc abortion style, but it’s not okay to be allowed to say “no thanks” when it comes to spending money looking after the health of other people.

Keep your hands out my pockets, and if your baby dies from pneumonia, tough shit.  If I gave a damn about you or your baby, I would have paid your hospital bills.  Since I don’t, I’ll see you in hell.