Your Father was Miserable

Congratulations, Roissy.  I’ve seen a lot of ‘em.  Some of them thinly veiled.  Some of them woven from a patchwork of allusions over the years.  Some of them in books.  Some of them in films.  But yours is one of the best.

Best what, you ask?  The best diatribe against the machine I’ve seen in a long time.

Unfortunately, his diatribe contains not even an atomic speck of originality.  Everything he’s said has been said in one form or another by every generation of males since the dawn of time.  I’ll take this opportunity to point out the fact that civilization marches on and that you and I are alive (enough to hold this conversation, anyway).  You’ll understand why shortly.

Roissy paints a bleak picture.  You, the guideless American man, do all of the things you’re told to do by “the man” which, by this estimation, have absolutely no value.  They’re meaningless and stupid.  You’re born, your suffer, you die.  And when you die, as Roissy puts it, “you will disappear from the world as if you had never been here and when they bury you no one will really notice and no one will really care because in your whole life you never never never, not even once, stepped off the hamster wheel and did anything courageous or interesting or different.”

Everything he says makes a lot of sense.  That’s why movies like American Beauty and Fight Club are popular.  His mechanical descriptions of the way the American Man’s life unfolds is entirely true.  Sprinkle in the negative emotional spin of the piece and the result is pure, unabated fatalism.  The consequences of pursuing this fatalism are: depression, suicide, or bold trips to South America.

I am convinced that every man goes through this existential crisis at some point in his life.  In popular culture this revelation is often referred to as a “mid-life crisis.”  The symptoms of the classical mid-life crisis include sports cars, marital infidelity, career changes, and other activities associated with a man well past his prime trying to recapture his youth and the life he could have had when he awakes one night in a cold sweat and concludes everything Roissy has so eloquently laid out.  “I’m just a cog in the wheel!  I’m going to die without ever having done something courageous and different!”

I went through this crisis when I was 22.  I was faced with embarking down the road Roissy describes.  The road that is so negatively portrayed by such compelling cultural icons as Tyler Durden.  And thought I, at 22, why bother?  If I don’t do something courageous and exciting, I’ll live and die on a hamster wheel.”  I drank heavily.

I’m not sure exactly when struck the epiphany that would pull me out of the existential crisis that demotivated me enough to almost fail out of college only twelve short months after I had seamlessly completed back-to-back-to-back 21 credit semesters without breaking a sweat.  Nor can I really be certain what that epiphany was.  But here I sit, a cog in the machine, tirelessly spinning my hamster wheel and shaking my head at poor Roissy, who, if he believes what he’s written, hasn’t figured it out.

Maybe the answer is in South America?

I studied anthropology as an undergraduate.  I can’t recommend this field strongly enough, specifically courses in human evolution.  Forget the facts about primates, about the punnet squares, and the lab techniques for tracing maternal heritage.  The take-away from even a 100-level anthropology course on evolution is the “evolutionary lens.”  Let me elaborate.

So many people are plagued with the ponderous behaviors they see in themselves and in other people.  They can’t wrap their heads around their emotions, their whims, their desires – all things they are lead to believe,  mostly through total lack of advice to the contrary, can be controlled through the mighty power of the human intellect.  The unstoppable logical intellect that conquers our animal natures.  They struggle against themselves, they struggle to comprehend the actions of others, and they are left wondering why.

My study of evolution has left me with a willingness to accept the undeniable fact that no matter how much we think we are above all of our primitive tendencies, we are biological creatures who are here today because our ancestors were better at surviving than everyone else.  We are biological creatures with traits we believe are flaws.  Some of us accept them.  Some of us don’t.

Modernistas scoff at religion any way they can.  Christianity is a favorite target.  One of the tenets of Christianity is a very powerful concept that only made sense to me after I studied a field diametrically opposed to another tenet of Christianity (Genesis).  The tenet to which I refer is original sin.  Our original sin has nothing to do with some girl named Eve, a serpent, and an apple.  Our sin – that which makes us imperfect – is the collection of all of our biological impulses that run contrary to civilization, which in an interesting paradox, appears to be the dominant survival mechanism for humanity and yet it conflicts with so many other survival mechanisms.

So, have I lost you yet?  Why did I take you off on this tangent?

Because, like you, I wonder why it is that Roissy, and Roosh, and millions of other men come to the conclusion that society sucks, the prescribed life plan for the unoriginal American male sucks, and if we don’t strike out boldly into the realm of the original and courageous, we’ll end an empty life dying into obscurity.

Could it be that this feeling, this instinct, this gut reaction to assuming membership in the tribe of Americana, is merely a modern expression of the biological instinct primate males have been experiencing for millions of years?  The instinct which drives young, unmated primate males to leave their tribes to start new tribes?  To form a new way of life – their way of life – where they’re the undisputed alphas and the culture they create around them will be better than the one they left?

An interesting question indeed.

Regardless of from where comes this negative reaction to assimilating into the American grind, I’d like to address the more important question.

What do we say to it?  How do we respond?  What to say to Roissy other than acknowlege that he’s right and book him on the next flight to Buenos Aires?

Roissy, your father was miserable.

Your father was miserable, and his father was miserable, and his father was miserable.  Your brother is miserable.  Your uncle is miserable.  Everyone you know is miserable.  Every minute of every day spent spinning the wheel is excruciating agony.  It is equally painful as it is meaningless.  Millions – no, billions of men suffer.  They suffer the fate of mediocrity, of boredom, of a total mundane existence.

Thank you, Roissy, for enlightening us.  To the 100,000,000 men out there: kill yourselves now.  You have nowhere forward to look except fading into the oblivion of obscurity as you rot in the ground.

Remember how I made a note of how you and I are both alive to have this conversation?

Am I mocking Roissy?  No.  I’m just asking him, and you, a simple question: where are all the suicide booths?  No, no, let’s extrapolate a step further (or, should I say, a step back?)  How is it that you were ever born at all?

You, Roissy, are so original and ingenius that you are the first one to ever realize that a boring life of working the same job in the same field for 40 years and retiring to a wife merely a shadow her former glory, as pitiful of course as it must have been to begin with is meaningless.  Because, if you weren’t, and let’s say for the sake of argument that your father came to this conclusion in place of yourself, would he have gone through with it all?  Would he have married your mother (who is obviously a fat sow worthless hog that your father married only out of desperation in his 30’s) and bore you?  No.  He would have traveled to South America and died of syphilis at 29.

Again, I’m not mocking Roissy.  As I’ve pointed out, everything he says is true.  Well, almost everything.

Try to imagine, if you will, a conversation between a person who has never done drugs and a heroin junkie.  The abstainer describes the high as fleeting and ultimately worthless while devoting his entire argument to the negative side effects.  If you had to find a flaw in abstainer’s line of reasoning, the simplest one would be that said abstainer doesn’t know what heroin feels like and therefore cannot possibly know whether or not it has value.

If you’ve stuck with me this long, congratulations.  Because here comes the conclusion.

I see every single one of these negative, fatalistic diatribes in very simple terms.  Those terms are that if human existence is really so bleak, we wouldn’t fight so hard to continue it.  99.999% of the human beings that have lived, are living, and will live will live a life you would describe as empty, uncourageous, boring, and awful.  You look down upon these people because they did what everyone else did – grow up, get a job, pay the bills, raise a family, retire, and die.  It’s true.  They marry women who get fat, old, and ugly.  They raise kids with attitudes.  Maybe the kids grow up to hate them.  The obituary in the paper is brief and unmemorable.

But for some reason we just keep on marching.

I work in software for a living and a big part of my job is to unravel complex bugs buried miles deep in obscure code written 15 years ago by men who are likely today dead.  The issues are not obvious.  If I think I’m missing something, chances are, I probably am.

So, the next time you feel like your life as an American man will be bleak and unfulfilling unless you go sow some wild oats on another continent or seek enlightenment by dipping your stick in as many different places as possible, just ask yourself how anyone could have ever found joy in their lives if their lives are so pointless.  How anyone could have bothered to go through with it all when its worthlessness is uncomplicated, unobstructed, and unmistakable.

And as you spin that hamster wheel, oh ye simple cog in the machine, take solace in the fact that when you die, you won’t make headlines.  But if you’ve done it right, your family and friends whose lives you touched in some way, no matter how small, will remember you.  Roissy would say that such a small indulgence is not something to justify a life he’d call plain.  And in this case he’s right.  It’s not something.  It’s the only thing.

It’s not too late to take a step back and look at your chains and realize they aren’t chains at all.

~fin~

You’re trying too hard

There are two kinds of writing: easy to read, and hard to read.  Alternatively, plain and direct, or deep and artsy.  Or, more to the point, good and bad.

The mark of a bad writer is someone who is obviously trying too hard.  Another mark of a bad writer is that dumb people think their writing is good.

How can you tell when someone is trying too hard?  Easy.  They look for excuses to use SAT vocabulary.  They purposely vary their sentence structure specifically because they got higher grades in high school when they did.  They sprinkle as many stupid metaphors into their work as they possibly can because they believe they sound deep and meaningful.  Their writing can be described as “poetic” by dummies and “verbose” by everyone else.

Here’s the epitome of this kind of writing.  After you’re done painfully stomaching this disaster, go back and read this and you’ll see what I mean.  While not as glaring as the aforementioned paragon, it shares many of the same elements.

Here’s just one of the many quotes in “That which we are, we are” that catch my eye: “Her photographs simmer out a celebrity’s essence. Of course, these are actors, so what their nature is is likely more artifice than depth. But there’s something about the way Uma Thurman tips her head up and her elbows just out that suggests defiance and intelligence. And there’s a look in Daniel Day Lewis’ eyes that hints at distrust and machination.”

Do you see what I’m getting at?  This author is busy piecing together words that make absolutely no sense but for some perverted reason cream up anyone who fancies herself as a literature buff.  The stock response to my assertion that these people are writing artsy metaphors for the sake of being artsy and metaphorical is, “you just don’t understand the deeper meaning of the language.”  This is often followed by, “if you had studied [English, Art History, or some other useless liberal arts program] at [a useless liberal arts college like the one I went to] you would have learned how to deconstruct the deeper meaning in the works like these.”

I’m sorry to disappoint you, but 40 Helens agree that photographs don’t simmer out of a celebrity’s essence.  I won’t take the time to point out the fact that someone’s nature can be neither artifical nor deep, the former because those two words are antonyms and the latter because they are totally unrelated.  In the same vein I could say something like, “Of course, these are actors, so their generosity is likely more greed than orange.”  Unfortunately words like “generosity,” “greed,” and “orange” don’t have vague meanings or appear frequently in poetry anthologies so are bad choices if I’m trying to sound erudite.  Fortunately for you, dear reader, I’m not.

Look, the bottom line is that the more time you spend trying to sound deep and poetic, the more obviously bad at writing you are.  What’s more nevertheless is that it’s clear that you perceive yourself to be a good writer and therefore take it very seriously, and probably feel like you have something to prove, or you wouldn’t be trying so hard.  Right?

Good writing is not good because it’s chock full of metaphors and words most people have to look up.  Writing is good because it expresses real ideas.  We don’t read your work because we want to see “machination” used in a sentence.  We read it because we think maybe you’ll put an idea in our heads that wasn’t there before.  But when you load it up with so much poetry, you bury those ideas in a dogpile of nonsense.

We really don’t want to have to read through sentences like “The gossamer nature of our life weighed and measured against the oldness of the glowing satellite” to get at whatever it is you were trying to get at, which, because you so tirelessly wove metaphorical nonsense into practically every sentence, is entirely obscured.  Gossamer?  Give me a break.  Who are you trying to impress?

Want a tip?  Stop trying so hard.  Anyone with www.thesaurus.com can write the way you write.  It doesn’t have to be artsy to be good.

Blog Action Day

Today is http://blogactionday.org/!

The issue is the environment.  My contribution will be an anecdote.

30’s something brunette with a fading dye job, non-soccermom haircut and non-trendy glasses in an all black woman suit with pointy triangle shoes and a gigantic 3-4 carat diamond/sapphire band on her wedding finger is shopping for groceries.  Her outfit and body suggest she doesn’t have kids, but that’s an assumption.  It’s mostly produce of the fruit variety.  She’s ahead of me in line.

She tells the ambiguously gay cashier to put her non-produce in a canvas bag she whips out that has an iron-on vaguely resembling the earth or something.

Wow, reusable bag.  She clearly felt good about herself.

The cashier then proceeded to double bag the remainder of her groceries.  If the cashier had instead used single bags, he would have used fewer total bags than one canvas bag plus two double bags.

This very important businesswoman seemed not to notice.  She took her groceries out to the parking lot and then drove away in her Chrysler Pacifica.

England

V for Vendetta.  Children of Men.  Both of these films predict a dystopian result from the collapse of Western civilization in which “only Britain marches on.”

You probably haven’t been following international news because this is an American blog which means you’re probably an American reader and therefore, despite claiming that you care about world affairs and fancy yourself “the global citizen” at parties staffed by idiot liberal drones, you really don’t give a shit what happens two cities over let alone across the Atlantic, but let me fill you in, because this is important.

England won’t be the last nation standing when civilization implodes on itself.  It will be the first one to go.

Last year, a record number of Britons fled their native country.  Why?  The reasons are many, but chief among the complaints of the British emmigrants is runaway immigration, devaluing of British culture and history in favor of multiculturalism, socialist policies that rely on government services that are rapidly being outpaced by said runaway immigration, and government surveylance on every street corner in London.

Pay attention kids, because some of the candidates working for your vote in 2008 would like to turn America into England Jr.  Socialized medicine, and relaxed immigration laws are on the horizon if we elect that woman.  Bush has already laid the foundation for live video surveylance with unconstitutional legislation like the Patriot Act.

I want you to read these next passages taken from an AP article dated today and give it a thought or two.  I will share mine when you’re done.

In what is a rare judicial ruling on what children can see in the class-room, Justice Barton was at pains to point out that the “apocalyptic vision” presented in the film was politically partisan and not an impartial analysis of the science of climate change.

“It is plainly, as witnessed by the fact that it received an Oscar this year for best documentary film, a powerful, dramatically presented and highly professionally produced film,” he said in his ruling. “It is built around the charismatic presence of the former Vice President, Al Gore, whose crusade it now is to persuade the world of the dangers of climate change caused by global warming.

“It is now common ground that it is not simply a science film – although it is clear that it is based substantially on scientific research and opinion – but that it is a political film.”

What should strike you here is three things:

First, a judge in England’s highest courts is ruling about what children should be exposed to in public schools.

Second, the judge is basing this decision at least in part on the fact that the subject matter won an Oscar.

Three, he ruled that the film is political as a basis for barring it from being shown in schools.

What the fuck is happening to England?

They have their judges ruling on school curriculums?  I’m sure this is a result of a lawsuit.  What does that tell you?  It tells you that the public – at least some of them, because I’m sure this is a class action suit or it wouldn’t have gone as far as it has – is fighting back against the bullshit liberal crap that’s being shoved down the throats of British school children, which is causing English families to flee their home country screaming.

The ruling should have read as follows:

“The courts of England do not control the curriculum of the public schools.  The Department of Education does.  If you have plead your case to Department officials and were turned down, I can suggest a number of top notch private schools that your children can attend.  Meanwhile, I would recommend running for office at your local school board, or campaigning for a candidate that shares your views on the curriculum.  This is not under our jurisdiction.”

But instead, the judge said this:

“Well, it won an Oscar, but I think it’s politically charged, so we wont’ show it in schools.”

While that response is better than one in which he agreed to show it, a different judge on a different day, perhaps one who leans lefter, could have easily ruled to indoctrinate an Inconvenient Truth into the already polluted minds of Britain’s youngsters.

Why does this kind of thing worry me so much?

Because England is walking down an experimental path that appears to be failing.  The evidence for Britain’s failure is in plain view and is undisputed.  As you might remember, when Bush deposed Saddam in 2003, we heard trumped up news reports about people who claimed they were moving to Canada.  Most of these people were absolutely radical lefties and for every 100 people who said they were moving to Canada out of hatred for Bush, only one of them actually did.  There is no greater display of civil protest than fleeing the country.

Remember the Berlin wall?  That wall was built to keep East Germans from escaping a horrible system of communism of which they wanted no part.  They built walls to keep people in, for two reasons:

1.  A huge number of citizens wanted to leave;

2.  Their social system couldn’t sustain itself without a large (coerced) labor force.

Hundreds of thousands are leaving Britain.  They feel they are losing their national identity for the sake of “one world, one people”.  They feel they are losing their freedoms of choice.  They are afraid to walk down the street in London without the fear of being photographed and watched by some man in black whose only job is to find criminals.  They are afraid to send their children to school to learn more about Kofi Anan than Winston Churchill.

Now, think about that for a minute.  If the liberals in this country have their way, we’ll walk in their foot steps.  They want us to model our healthcare system after theirs.  They want us to believe in accepting other cultures and other viewpoints.  They want to teach our children that bombing Hiroshima was bad.  They want to teach our children that the Nazis were misunderstood.  Unfortunately, I think both sides of the aisle want to spy on us.  I’ve already seen two sets of motor traffic cameras crop up on my commute.

Here comes the burning question.  If America swings as far left as the Rodhamites would take us, we’ll be a lot like Britain.  And if you’re a lot like thosee British who are fleeing in droves, where will you go?

The answer is no where.  America is the last bastion on Earth where the liberal crazies haven’t taken over and created a quasi-socialist dystopia where you can’t choose your own doctor and you get photographed on every street corner, and your kids come home and tell you that their great grandparents were war criminals for winning World War II, and that they hate America.

You think it won’t happen.  You think that it’s not as bad as I make it out to sound.  That’s how they get you.  That’s how Europe got duped.  It sounded great at the time.  All of these wonderful utopian promises politicans make like, “healthcare for everyone” sound great, except for the doctors and nurses who have to get paid by someone.  Don’t forget ”diverse, open-minded curriculums that examine all sides of the issues so that absolute truth can be determined while at the same time acknowledging that there is no absolute moral truth because morality is relative and cultural!”  And then it’s too late.  And then you’ll have to get out.

But there will be no where to go.  America is the best country on Earth.  Anywhere that you might go to escape this socialist purgatory is going to be a downgrade, and by the time America has been ruined with the same policies that I believe are going to destroy Europe in the next 20-25 years, anywhere left you might go will be 3rd world.  America is one of the last nations that hasn’t succumbed to the sugar-coated cyanide pill the progressive liberals are offering.

Take a look at England, and take a look at where we’re headed.  Do you want to go there?  You’d better be damned sure that you do when you cast your vote 13 months from now.  Because if you’re wrong, there will be no escape.

A very superficial, ridiculous book

Look at the reviews for The Death of the Grown-up: How America’s Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization.

I’ve said this a number of times, and I would like to illustrate for a moment some of the very intelligent reviews of this work, which is probably a pretty good rehashing of what I’ve come to believe through basic, independent observation.   I use “reviews of this work” liberally here, since it’s really more a review of the idea, rather than of the work, because you know these people didn’t actually read the book.

To quote, “The Author is correct in that our society now caters to the young and edgy demographic. She simply chooses to politicize the blame by pretending that it all stems from some sort of permissive Lefty society that took over the Universe at some point in the 60’s. This makes for a lovely theory for the Conservative faction, but rings false to anyone who actually *lived* through those decades.”

Of course it rings false.  If it rang true, you’d have to admit that she’s right and this cultural wasteland in which we currently live is your fault.  Passing the buck is a hallmark of liberalism.  Take for example the concept of welfare, or social security, or equal opportunity.  It’s not your fault that you’re poor, it’s someone else’s.  It’s not your fault that you don’t have money in the bank, it’s because of some other external factor beyond your control but within the government’s.

My favorite review comes from Karen K. Porter who I think proves the author’s point nicely enough that you don’t need to buy this book to see Boomer failure in action:

“I found this book extremely superficial and ridiculous, full of ignorant assumptions and unfounded (or unjustified) assertions. The one glaring error of this book, as well as most “cultural critiques” such as this one, is the omission of the fact that today’s American culture results from “capitalism gone mad.”  Instead of blaming individuals (although they bear much of the blame), the author ignores the fact that all our culture is “market-driven,” as promoted by the far right.”

Ah yes, “capitalism gone mad”, the silver bullet.  Let’s compare “capitalism gone mad” vs. “any other economic/social/political system gone mad”:

Stalinist Communism gone mad: iron curtain; secret police; thousands or millions starve to death as food is redistrubted from bread baskets to cities; oppressive propoganda control of the press; projection of wealth while reality of widespread poverty; requires walls to be built to keep citizens from fleeing country en masse; collapse of empire when territories are given the choice to return to capitalism

Fascism gone mad: initiation of a world war; basic human rights stripped from citizens; widespread murder for the sake of “ethnic cleansing”; decades of guilt and permament restrictions on future military buildup; world-wide embarassment that will never be forgotten; leader who swallows cynaide pill after collapse of reich

Asian Communism gone mad: millions dead in only famine in developed country in over 100 years; complete isolation from the rest of the world; political sanctions; desperate citizens illegally fleeing into neighboring countries; poltiical concentration camps against detractors of the communist regime; quality of life and human rights index both score in the bottom 1% of developed nations, worse only than most of Africa; millions dead as total communal agricutlural year-zero plan is enforced by crazy jungle guerilla freedom fighters who manage to wrangle power; corrupt governments based on bribes

Capitalism gone mad: highest GDP on the planet earth; lowest unemployment on earth; undisputedly the most desired place on planet earth to live; luxury cars, vacation homes, unrestrained consumerism, entire generation of materialistic valley girls with daddy’s credit cards; cocaine use; wealth that affords freedom to write stupid reviews of unread books online without experiencing a hard day’s work in your entire life

Also, I’m pretty sure that “blaming individuals” is exactly what this book is about, those individuals being anyone who was an adolescent between the years 1960-1975.

Let’s read on:

“As a Baby Boomer mother myself, I find that she totally ignores the start of a lot of today’s problems: The “Reagan Revolution’s” selfish “me decade” in which our sense of community totally vanished in the pursuit of capitalist selfishness – the rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer.”

There should be only one question in your mind after reading this sentence from Karen K. Porter: where were you in the 1980’s?  I’m pretty sure that if you are in fact a baby boomer mother, you’d be between the ages of 25 and 40, in other words, the prime of your adulthood.

Who the fuck do you think made the 1980’s what it was?  Could it have been you and all your peers?  In 1990, I was 7 years old.  I sure as hell wasn’t the driving cultural force of that decade: you were.  And by you, I mean boomers.  And so does the author.  How can you possibly use the “Reagan Revolution” and the “me decade” – which constituted your generation’s peak years – as the proxy of blame when “the 1980’s” and “you” are synonymous?  This logic only works if you’re a liberal, which is why we get so frustrated with you.

Also, take a look at the presidential election results of 1984.  Reagan won the largest number of electoral college votes in history that year.  I’d say that Karen K. Porter’s generation was pretty solidly behind Ronald Reagan in the 1980’s, so if the real culprit behind the downfall of Western civilization was Reagan and his “capitalism gone mad”, you have only yourselves to blame because you elected him.  Isn’t democracy the darnedest thing?

Then again, you can deflect that claim by asserting that you were one of the 40.6% of the population that voted for Mondale, or you can shift the blame entirely and suggest that Reagan betrayed his voting base by pulling his magic lever and making “capitalism gone mad” after promising in his campaign not to, but I think you’ll have a hard time proving that.  Anything you can say to render yourself blameless, right?  Wait, isn’t lack of personal responsibility one of the major arguments made by the book you’re reviewing?  Ah… of course, of course.

“The “investment classes” invest in all the pop culture smut we live with today – what sells rules, and what makes the rich richer, at the expense of the rest of us, is what perpetuates the smut culture.”

Oh really?  Well, I guess it is true that when your daughter buys a Britney Spears CD, she’s “investing” in pop culture smut at the “expense” of her allowance money that ultiumately came from you.  Certainly, record sales do make Britney richer.  Does this make you part of the “investment class”?

I hate to break it to you Karen K. Porter but there’s this economic principle that’s kind of obscure and you probably haven’t heard of it.  It’s called supply and demand.  There’s really only demand for something if people with money are willing to pay for it – and if they are, well, what do you know, a supply crops up.  This must be what you mean by “capitalism gone mad”.  Most people would call this “capitalism”.  Are you with me on this idea?  Yes?  Okay.  Let me ask you then: who controls the wealth of this country?

I know, I know.  Billion dollar corporations.  But let’s forget about them – I know it’s hard – but let’s focus on household wealth.  You know, every day people, consumers.  The people who enable the billion dollar corporations to exist by buying things from them, and by staffing their offices.  Out of those households, who do you suppose controls the most wealth?

Let’s look at this generationally, since that seems to be the issue at hand.  It certainly isn’t your parents’ (aka, the WW2 generation).  They’re retired and many of them are eating catfood because social security doesn’t pay the bills.  It certainly isn’t your children, Karen K. Porter, because we’re barely in our 20’s.  I know, it must be the Gen-X’ers?

No, I’m afraid not, Karen K. Porter.  It’s the boomers.  Boomers own the largest percentage of world wealth.  They are typically between 45 and 60 years old, have amassed a lifetime of savings, equity, and net worth, and they haven’t spent it yet on retirement.  You might call them the “investment class” but I call them the people who ultimately paid for 90% of the Britney Spears CDs by giving money to their children.

I’m surprised I devoted so much time to deconstructing such a completely stupid statement in the first place, but I’m trying to be thorough.

“I am a lefty-liberal with a strongly “conservative” sense of moral values – and I remember the segregation and nuclear bombs the author must think reflected the “values” of the past – and it wasn’t pretty then. I value diversity and “political correctness” (i.e., don’t use the “N” word to me!), but I think immodest dress and smutty music and videos horrid.”

Other reviewers jumped on this one like a bunch of wolves tearing up an elk, for good reason.  They argued that “lefty-liberal” with “conservative sense of moral values” are mutually exclusive, and they pretty much are, unless you live in a fantasy world where you can have it both ways.  Karen K. Porter is to imply, I assume, that she favors abortion, in-your-face LGBT lifestyles, cultural relativism, abandonment of traditional nuclear families in favor of divorces, single parent families, and long custody battles in crowded courtrooms, but she is stalwartly opposed to pop princesses showing their midriffs in music videos and singing “my milkshake brings all the boys to the yard.”  These contrasting values also make perfect sense to me.  I can’t stand those little sluts parading around the television in tube tops endeavoring to extoll the most male attention possible.  But if one of those little sluts gets knocked up as a result, I am perfectly OK with having the fetus sucked out of her vagina with a vacuum cleaner.  And gangta rap?  No way, they use the n-word.

“People like this author and William Bennett and all the rest of that hypocritical reactionary ilk would take us back to segregation and McCarthyism and everything wrong in the past with false claims that “liberals” are corrupting our culture.”

Karen K. Porter, like everyone who self identifies as a “progressive”, is incapable of seeing value in anything anyone else does.  These are the kind of people who always want everything their way.  Obviously if their parents were doing something, they needed to “progress”, and it’s impossible to claim that you’ve progressed unless you change it.  So their parents had a very comfortable family life: the father went out and worked, came home to the mother with money, and the mother kept up the house, raised the children, and they, well, you know, lived.  In order to progress from that “awful, mundane, limiting unreality”, they had to change all that, which meant wear ponchos, do drugs, have lots of promiscuous sex with many partners, not get married, get married and divorced.  Women couldn’t stay at home, they had to go out and work.  Children?  Let them raise themselves.

You can see this attitude in the way Karen K. Porter reflects upon the past.  The two examples she pointed out were segregation and McCarthyism.  Virtually every modern conservative recognizes the value in abolishing both of those things, and are more than willing to give credit where credit is due.  The liberalism of the 1960’s did finally codify into law the “all men are created equal” clause of the Declaration of Independence, and America is better as a result.

But culturally, segregation is still just as prevalent as it is today, and so is McCarthyism.  And culturally, the consequences of the liberalism required to believe in “diversity” and all of that other bullshit are a very heavy price to pay, and it’s that price that my generation is paying.

And Karen K. Porter looks to the past and thinks only of the negative aspects of that culture, and none of the positive ones.  In my opinion, the gains we made in the civil rights arena were not worth the abject destruction of a moral culture that took hundreds of years to sculpt, but you’ll never convince Karen K. Porter of that.  And that’s what this book is about.

“We liberals didn’t corrupt our culture – Ronald Reagan did that very well, thank you. The era of the “me generation” of the 80s (Reaganism), Iran Contra, murders in Central America – that had nothing to do with where we are now? GIVE ME A BREAK. This book is deplorable and stupid, and I detest seeing it given so much editorial space.”

I don’t understand how someone can be so delusional as to blame Ronald Reagan.  Let’s look at the facts.  Ronald Reagan was:

1.  Born in 1911, therefore not a member of the boomer generation, and was in fact a generation older than most other politicans in his day.  His age was frequently cited as a reason not to elect him.  Reagan was at odds, generaionally, than the majority of the movers and shakers of the 1980’s;

2.  Not single-handedly in control of the culture of the decade, which is very well known to be controlled by the dominant generation, the dominant generation being whomever is between the ages of 20 and 40 during that decade, which was you, Karen K. Porter;

3.  Elected in the largest landslde in American political history;

4.  Never so inclined to hire interns who would suck his cock in the oval office and then lie about it to the American people.

Who’s the “me president”, darling of the “me generation”, and darling of the “lefty liberals”?  You mean Bill Clinton?  Yes, exactly.

Iran Contra, Central America?  Who gives a shit?  What does that have to do with the rate of divorce, addiction to anti-depressants, a culutre of split-custody parents to chidlren force-fed rittalin by their parents?  Nothing.

Karen K. Porter, you are a trainwreck.  This is why there are books written about everything you did wrong.

Unmakings of an Alpha, Part 2

Continued. 

For 2 months between the time I graduated college and I found my first job, I lived with my parents in New Jersey again.  I had fantasized about working in New York City.  Ultimately, I realized that was a bad idea and moved back down to DC.  But while I was there…

One night, my parents and I were out at a local restaurant.  Entrees were around $20.  Who do I see waitressing the bar booths bearing a grimace that could wilt flowers, but Eastern European chick?

I purposely lingered in the bar area for a minute as we were on our way out and upon seeing me rapidly dispensed her drink order and hugged me.  “So you’re back in town?  Look I’m really busy right now but do you have my number?  Here it is, call me later, I get off at 11!”  I barely had time to say anything but I had her number.  I figured what the hell – I had dumped the dirty Indian about 6 months ago and I hadn’t been enjoying the regular sex I’d been used to for the previous five years so I figured what the hell?  I haven’t heard much about clap in F-Town, so she’s probably clean.  Slutty, but clean.  Despite my deep-seated aversion to banging sluts, that attitude is a luxury.  When a man is single and isn’t getting laid at least 3 times a week, his morals quiet down until his stick is dipped.  They drum up regret later.

Of course, at this point all I had of this girl were fond memories and her phone number.  And mental images of her naked.  I called her around 12:30 that night.  Sluts stay up late.

We made plans for a weeknight.  Something like a Tuesday, a night she wasn’t working.  We went to some local restaurant/bar.  I paid for her drinks.

We caught up.  She dodged questions about what happened with school down in Florida.  I had recalled that she went to some crazy party school and remembered hearing through the grape vine that she had failed out, but apparently the truth was that while she didn’t get booted by the school, her grades and behavior were not stellar.  I think there may have been some D/D arrests involved.  Her parents stopped paying for it and this girl didn’t have $30,000 a year, so she went home.

We had a few drinks, martinis mostly, I think.  She invited me back to her house.  How could I say no?  We took seperate cars.

As soon as we got back to her parents’ house, she led me upstairs.  The girl was practically giddy with flirtation.  We had already established that I was no longer dating the dirty Indian who according to EE was far below my standards.  Who am I to disagree?

It didn’t take very long to escalate to her straddling me.  We made out a little and I started feeling on her tits.  Her shirt was quick to come off.  She was wearing a skirt.  No panties.

Now, remember, this girl, along with her BFF, had pranced around naked in front of me years ago, kissed each other to entice me, and tried desperately to break me.  In turn, I had resisted their charms.  I masturbated dozens of times about what I should have done to them if it weren’t for my indomitable moral character.

You would think that after years of thinking about what it would be like to screw this chick, the fact that I was in the process of doing it would have been overwhelmingly gratifying.  I was disappointed to confirm what I had suspected since the second our “date” started, that is that my opinion of this girl had only gotten worse as time went on.  I liked imagining her naked, and imagining putting it in her, but in real life, I felt nothing but pity for her.  And while I was going through the motions of bedding her, I kept searching for a reason to stop.

And then, mercifully, it came.

“I don’t have a condom.”

Of course I did, but I lied.

“That’s okay, I don’t mind if you don’t.”

Ding ding ding!

This girl was a college drop-out waittress.  Her looks peaked at 18 and were heading down-hill.  She lived with her parents in a small, one-horse, bullshit little town in New Jersey.  The only people who are in Flemington between the ages of 18-24 are losers who never found a way to get out.  She was about to sleep with a handsome, college educated man with good genetics and strong earning potential and she didn’t want to use a condom.  She may be a slut but she wasn’t stupid.  She was sharp enough to know that a baby – my baby – would solve all her problems.  Even if she couldn’t convince me to marry her, she could slap me with child support.  Her baby would validate her as a member of society and give her a blanket excuse for why she never made anything else of herself.  I’m not a sucker.

“I’m sorry, EE.  I can’t do this.  I don’t want you to have any expectations.”

“I don’t, I just want you.  I wanted you 5 years ago and I want you now.”

“I know.  But I never had you then and I think it would be wrong of me to have you now.”

She didn’t say anything.  The mood was chilled.  She put her shirt back on.  I gave her a hug and let myself out.  We haven’t spoken.

Cool story Evan.  Yeah, but I haven’t told you the best part.

Before this date occurred, I told my dad about it.  I had told him all the flirtation stories when they were happening when I was 18, so he was familiar with this girl.  He warned me to make sure I had a condom.

When I saw him the following evening and he asked how my date with this girl went, the conversation went like this:

Dad: “So how’d it go?”

Me: “Eh.  I had her naked on her back but I didn’t do it.”

Dad: “What did you talk about?”

Me: “Caught up mostly.”

Dad: “Let me guess.  When you first started talking, she asked you three questions.”

Me: “Okay…”

Dad: “1.  Did you graduate?  2.  Are you still dating the dirty Indian?  3.  Do you have a job?  She asked you those three questions in that order.”

Me: “Wow, spooky.  How’d you know?”

Dad: “And let me also guess.  When you had her on her back she never brought up the condom did she?”

Me: “No.”

Dad: “And you sure you didn’t give her the solution to all of her problems and the cause of all of yours?”

Me: “You mean a bellyfull of Evan juice?”

Dad: “Precisely.”

Me: “Yeah, I couldn’t.  She’s just a poor, desperate slut, just like she was when she was 18.”

Dad: “That’s how I knew what she’d ask you.  Women are not complicated.  They are obvious and easy.  Most men are just too stupid to read them.  I’m glad you can.”

Women are not complicated.  They are obvious and easy.  Luring them into your bedroom isn’t a game.  It’s not even that challenging.  It’s just wrong.  The better at if you get, the more wrong it becomes.  Not because it makes her a victim at the mercy of your game, or any bullshit like that.  Not because Jesus says you shouldn’t.  It’s just wrong.  Stop wasting your time.

The end.

Unmakings of an Alpha

This is a long post, but it’s worth the read, especially if female high school nudity interests you.

Today I’ll tell you a story that contributed to my disdain for player culture and my aversion to the club-hopping pump-and-dump lifestyle which apparently defines the alpha male.

The year is 2001.  I’m a last-semester senior in high school.  I’m banging out my last 5 required English credits in a do-nothing class called “Honors Major Themes” (I wish I was making that up).  I’ve been dating the Indian for over a year.  I’ve already been accepted to UMCP, and I have fatal senioritis.  In addition to me, Honors Major Themes is filled with every 10 in the junior class.

My senioritis enabled to me to behave bolder* than I ever had before or since in a classroom setting.  I openly announced that I had better things to do than read the assigned material, I guffawed at quizzes.  I publicly demanded she give the class extra credit opportunities and I even got her to cancel a test simply by protesting.  Mind you, this is in the middle of class, audible to everyone.  The conversation went like this:

Teacher: “We’re going to have a test next Tuesday.”

Me, without being given the floor: “No, I think that’s a bad idea.”

Teacher: “Well, too bad.”

Me: “But I have things to do next weekend.  Well, it wouldn’t matter for me because I’ll ace it without studying anyway like I always do, but some of these people might feel they need to study and the weather is nice.  Who really cares about One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest anyway?  It’s an insignificant, and if I had read it, I probably would have found it boring.”

Teacher: “Well, it’s either a test or a paper.”

Chorus: “Paper!”

Naturally this raised my alpha status in the classroom rather rapidly.  And not surprisingly, it also drew the attention of a cadre of hot underclasswomen.  Also, I’m 100% positive that had I so desired, I could have bent this teacher over her desk and plugged her in her classroom after school, but she was over the age of 30 at the time so naturally I declined.

By April, I was dating my girlfriend, a 10 half-asian, a 9 short brunette, and a 9 blonde Eastern European.  Yeah, I was dating them.  At the time, I referred to it as less damning terms like “hanging out” or “chillaxing” but in reality, I was dating them.  I took them to movies, ice cream parlors, smoked copious amounts of weed with them, etc.  At the time my girlfriend was her overly conservative parents’ prisoner for 6 out of 7 days a week so I had plenty of time to filander.  The other girls were aware and cool with this arrangement probably for one reason.

Despite my own strenuously repressed desires, I was physically incapable of physically cheating on my girlfriend, even though she was only a 7 and I was in the company of 9’s and 10’s.  Spend more time, money, and attention on other girls?  Sure.  Form deep, emotional connections?  Sure.  Get my dick sucked?  Can’t do it.  I have some kind of moral mental block against rabbit-holing.  All three of these girls were single, two of them were virgins, and one of them claimed to be a raging bisexual.  I’d love to say that even now, in hindsight, I should have screwed them, I know that even today knowing all of the nights I beat off thinking about what I could have done to all those nubile fawns, I wouldn’t be able to do it now either, for the same reason as when I was 17.  At least two of them knew it.

The Eastern European chick was a slut in the making.  She was only 16 when I met her and she had enough in her to stay vaginally virginal but that’s about as far as that went.  She told me stories about late night nude pool parties and lots of oral sex.  EE and the 9 brunette were BFFs so I spent a lot of time with the two of them.  Part of our relationship involved a barter arrangement in which I would write their papers in exchange for bumming weed.  Back then, as in today, whipping out a 1,000 word masterpiece in less than half an hour took very little effort, so I was definitely getting the better end of the bargain.  However, one night, after several weeks of faithful paper writing service, these girls decided to tip me.

I showed up to EE’s house and hung around with them for a while.  The hours passed, but that night we were planning on hitting up Mine Brook Park for a little toking under the moonlight, and I wanted to get their latest English paper done before we went, so I sat down at the computer, cracked my knuckles, and got to work.  The brunette was sitting on the bed across the room and I started cranking.  EE hopped in the shower.

I wrote EE’s paper first.  She got out of the shower wearing only a knee-length towel, and asked to proof read the paper I had written for her, so I got up and sat down on the bed with the brunette.  After barely enough time to skim the paper once, she spun around the chair to face us and started yakking about our night plans.  She looked straight at me with a devilish, coy, extremely flirty face and very innocently propped her left leg up on the edge of bed.

Well, there it was, in all its glory.  Her unmodest leg position raised her towel plenty high enough to give me a panoramic view of her freshly shaven beaver.  She kept up the flirty grin as she wrapped her hands around her raised knee, quite comfortably exposing her puss to me (and the brunette, who didn’t even bat an eye), and continued to chat for a few minutes.  I, of course, was unable to do anything but stare at the gash between her legs.  It was obvious, but then again, so was she.  She knew exactly what she was doing. 

Then it was brunette’s turn to get into the shower.  EE followed her into the bathroom and started mucking with her face and makeup, her towel conservatively covering her D’s.  The door was of course wide open.  Tragically, I couldn’t see brunette’s naked body through the textured, steamy glass, but by this time, as I lingered in the doorway of the bathroom bullshitting with EE as she applied eyeliner, I had a mental image that wouldn’t go away.

I had always taken the brunette to be the more modest of the two.  She kept her sex stories to a minimum – she was the non-virgin of the three, lost to the future prom king of my graduating class, whom she dated for a number of years – and was the quieter one.  Maybe EE’s abject exhibitionism inspired her.  Maybe for once she didn’t want to be upstaged by her more outgoing friend.  Or maybe she just didn’t give a shit.  She shut the water off and grabbed her towel off the rack, and got out of the shower.

Needless to say, I was expecting the towel to be on her body, not wrapped up on her head.  She non-chalantly popped out of the shower ass naked, her freshly prepared landing strip ordering my cock to stand at attention.  I was a little bit flabbergasted.  I think I was in mid-sentence when she popped out of the shower, but I stopped dead in my tracks.  The two girls shared wicked grins aimed at my direction.  They both knew exactly what they were doing.

EE proceeded to remove her towel as well and begin drying her hair.  Here I was standing in this girl’s bathroom with two of the hottest girls in my high school ass naked drying themselves and each other off, casually talking about whatever crossed their minds.  Britney Spears, designer shoes, the price of tea in China… I couldn’t tell you what we were talking about to save my life, because I was too busy trying both at the same time to wage a mental battle between my desperate urge to make every man’s three-way fantasy to come true and my moral integrity which condemned me from cheating with my girlfriend, and concealing my growing erection.

They pranced around the upstairs of their house from room to room ass naked except for a towel wrapped around their wet heads, their nipples stiffening as their amazingly sexy bodies air-dried.  They decided to put on a lingerie show for me as they literally tried on every pair of panties EE owned to “see which ones they wanted to wear tonight” (yes, they were sharing) but in the end, naturally, they both decided to go totally commando.  No bra, no panties.  Just skank tanks and booty shorts.  It took every ounce of willpower I had to resist this temptation, but somehow I managed. 

The haters might extrapolate that I’m exaggerating the availability of these girls.  Maybe they were just cockteasing, right?  Teasing because they knew I had a girlfriend, and must have figured I was safe or they wouldn’t have done this, right?  Neither of these girls were chaste, and if the stories they had told me were true, this naked parade might have been tame in their minds.  I didn’t go into all of the details of what these girls were doing – this post is border-line erotic literature as it is – but trust me when I say that all I would have had to do was pull it out and I would have at least enjoyed a two girl knob job.

I count it as a mark of pride that I could resist these nymphs.  I also cry inside every time I think of what could have been.

Cool story, Evan.  What does this have to do with unmaking an alpha?

Even though I was incredibly turned on by this display and almost euphoric that two of the hottest girls in the whole school would more or less beg me to tag team them and cocktease me without abandon, at the same time, I was disgusted.  This was one of the first moments that I actually became aware of the many aspects of myself, because the me I thought I was would have thrown those girls down and made babies, but the me I actually am had no interest in banging these little sluts.  I couldn’t even begin to understand then why this voice inside of me restrained me from everything every sane healthy male should have done to them.  I remember feeling sweat on the nape my neck as I literally trembled with desire.  One part of my brain was screaming, as loud as any voice could scream, “fuck them!  fuck them!”  But the other voice inside me stopped me dead in my tracks.  It wasn’t saying anything, it was just asking me a question: “do you really want to bang girls like this?”  The answer was no.  At 17, it was no, but I didn’t know why.  At 24, the answer is no, and I know why.

And this is why I am not doing what the club boys like Roosh, and Roissy, and Virgle Kent, and all of the other “alpha males” are busy doing with their lives.  I don’t want to bang girls like that.  They have no value.  I can’t say anthing other than that, I can’t explain it.  No words I can use will make any sense to someone engaged this lifestyle.  No words I can use will defend the arguments they would make about the infinite pleasures of humping a different pussy every night of the week, which are largely true.  No words I can use will refute the fact that a man who can routinely score hot women with “game” has both balls and social wit.  But then again, no words exist that can accurately describe the feeling that men like me get in their gut when faced with the prospect of banging a bar slut, or working a girl for days or weeks just to get her in bed.  All I can say is that it’s just wrong.

So, I didn’t fuck EE or brunette.  I didn’t let them suck my dick.  I didn’t even kiss them.  But they desperately flirted with me for another six months, until I went off to college and we lost touch.  I knew what they were doing and it amused me.  It was a game to them – they were trying to see how much it would take to make me finally crack and do it, to cheat on the girl they knew they were so much more attractive than.  I know it frustrated them at times, to the point that they would tease me – they would giggle that I might be trying to hide something (a small penis was implied).  They would sit three feet away from me, look right at me, and start tongue kissing.  The nudity continued all summer.  They would “accidently” brush up against my crotch.  But I never budged.  I never indugled them.

I hope in the end that I showed them something.  I showed them that they won’t always be able to wrap a man around their fingers and win with their pussies.  That some men will resist them even in the face of open invitation.   That some men don’t respond to the only approach they knew.  It may have worked on brunette.  I don’t think EE ever got it.

This story takes place in 2001.  I met EE for drinks in 2005.  That post is forthcoming. 

Political Harmony

RE: Roissy

“…but in my experience a girl’s political opinions have zero correlation to how well we’ll get along as a lovemaking couple.  About the only time it matters is when… we’re discussing politics.”

If it’s not blatantly obvious from my previous posts, I am a hard-line Republican.  In my experience, Roissy is only correct when it comes to rapid weekly pump-n-dump flings that guys like me don’t waste their time with.  Out of the three serious girlfriends I’ve shared long-term relationships with, two of them were liberals, one of which was flaming.  I pumped both of them (hundreds of times), but in the end, I dumped them.

Political alignment is one of the foundations of a successful relationship.  Most people think of liberal vs. conservative at face value, meaning the resulting positions on “political” topics like abortion, universal healthcare, the war in Iraq, etc.  However, the real importance of political alignment is the fundamental character traits that cause a person to have liberal or conservative beliefs.  Those fundamental traits will express themselves in so many other thousands of very practical ways that when a man and a woman are out of whack, they are in for a stormy ride.

I’ll give you an example of a watershed experience that sealed the fate of my last relationship.  This girl subjected me to the silver screen edition of the musical Rent, which for those of you who have been spared the misfortune of experiencing, is a magnum opus of liberal utopia where a bunch of sexually liberated drug users all die of AIDS.  It features a straight white man with AIDS from shooting up heroin, a presumably straight Latina who has AIDS for the same reason, a black gay male who has AIDS from gay sex, a transgendered Latino who has AIDS from gay sex, a bisexual white female who does not have AIDS, a black lesbian female who proposes to the bisexual white female and does not have AIDS, and a straight white male who used to date the bisexual white female who was first portrayed on the stage by a bisexual white male who is “civilly unified” to a gay black male, neither of whom has AIDS.  If I didn’t already tell you this was Rent, you might think it was the newest children’s book to be introduced to the curriculum of elementary schools across the country.

My ex-girlfriend made me sit through this crap.  After a few people die from AIDS, the credits mercifully roll and my girlfriend says, “well, what did you think?”

I told her how awful it was on every count.  “They got what they deserved” was a common theme.  One of my primary objections to the film was that of all the characters in the story, it’s only evident that two of the main characters ever paid any taxes and yet it’s very clear that the transgendered Latino who dies of AIDS receives hospice care as he withers away, and I asked her who got the bill.  She was stunned that I would even ask such questions.  I asked her what she thought, and she said something stupid about how love conquers all (meaning gender and race) and the story is a showcase for alternative lifestyles and the endless possibilities of Western society.  I laughed in her face and asked her if the founding fathers had envisioned one day the endless possibilities of sleeping in the gutter, wasting your life shooting up opium, dying of AIDS, and then sending your non-fuck-up neighbors your hospital bill.  That’s when she started crying, and that’s when I knew it was over.

I knew it was over because I realized that I could never respect someone I knew to be so wrong about such basic life principles.  As you can tell, I am not an open-minded individual and I have no tolerance for this laissez-faire attitude about everyone and everything.  As I sat here and listened to her drone on about how acceptable these patent fuck ups were even in the face of their documented abject failure, I realized that she would let the wildly liberal school system brainwash our children and would never once call upon them to question the bullshit they’ll be fed at every level, all for the sake of this ridiculous notion of “tolerance” she obviously has if she can sit through Rent with a straight face.  She would divorce me when I suggested beating the queer out of our children at an early age (with words, of course).  She would slip our children money for heroin when they become worthless addicts.  She would let herself gain 50 pounds because I should love her for who she is.  She would also sue me for alimony because, like most useless liberals, she made $20,000 a year and then went to grad school to become a sociology professor (doesn’t it just figure?)

These beliefs had nothing to do with abortion, the war in Iraq, or any other political talking points.  They had to do with her deep-seated, unchangeable outlook on life and her unwillingness to render moral judgment on anyone or anything, flaws which I found to be fatally repulsive.

Political outlook, in my experience, is an excellent metric that can very quickly tell you a huge amount about a person.  I recommend probing this info on the first date.  There are plenty of subtle ways to find out without turning the entire conversation into a political debate.  Do yourself a favor and find someone with the same basic political views.  You’ll have a much happier relationships.