She almost had me…

Women always test.

The Journalist stopped by the desk, bearing a scratch ticket.

She: Give me a quarter. I’ll play it right here, and if I win, I’ll look out for you (she’ll cut me in).

Me: Wait–did you win? (I was referring to a conversation we had last week, when she bought a Big Game/Megabucks ticket, and told me not to play because she was going to win.)

She: I haven’t even played it yet!

Me: No, no–I mean last week.

She: (Blank look, then..) Oh! Uh, no–I lost.

Me: Waitaminute–you told me not to play because you bought a ticket! I might have won if I had played!

She: C’mon–gimme a quarter!

And I almost did it–I caught myself fishing a quarter out of my pocket. Damnit! Fortunately, she got distracted by one of my co-workers, and forgot about it altogether.

I’m not sure what I would have done; how do you diffuse a situation like that without seeming like a dick?

******************************************************************

Speaking of failing tests, I watched the following on Saturday:

There’s some kind of event going on at Government Center, and there are a bunch of performers on stage doing salsa and contemporary dance. One troop moves off stage, and move inside to change clothes–all except one woman, who proceeds to whip off her costume by the side of the stage. The Sergeant (Gold Shield means Sergeant, right?) steps up and asks her to move around the corner. She didn’t even look up at him, and said: “Do I make you uncomfortable?”, to which he responded, “Yeah, a little”. She chuckled, and said, “You’ll get used to it.”

And he let her go on disrobing. Poor bastard–that woman dissed him, and he didn’t have a clue as to what to do about it.

Women always test!

The dangers of inertia.

One of my worst enemies in my effort to re-make myself is the inertia of life: it’s the collection of habits and repetitive behaviors that occupy most of our daily activities. It takes a serious shake-up in your life to get you to start fighting against the usual, to make an effort to try to improve yourself; for me, it was cancer, and the naked terror of dying like I am. 11 minutes hit on the difficulties of staying on your new course in his Sex and Philosophy post:

There is enormous freedom in that state of mind. Your entire ambition becomes to live just for another moment. Nothing else counts. The people around you become strangers, possessed by an evil invisible force that drives them to not enjoy every single moment as you are. If you care enough about them, you want to shake them, tell them to stop worrying about their petty little worries and go and live! But you know that you now talk a language they will never understand.

But the state of mind of a survivor state of mind is short lived.

Soon after I had been told that my ulcer was benign, I slipped back into my old life. As soon as your time horizon fades back into a foggy future, you start worrying the human worries again. You need money. You do not want anyone to steal your stuff. You do not want to risk serious injury or disease. You do not want to fall behind your peers. The evil invisible force gets you under its control again.

I have been experiencing the exact same phenomenon that 11 minutes describes above. And, like he, I am acutely aware of how wrong it is to fall back into the old rhythms–”Once you took a sip from the spring of wisdom, it is hard to forget its taste.“; indeed, sometimes I am so aware of how much I am not getting done that I start having anxiety attacks–I worry that I might die before I’m done, or (worse still) that I might fail to transform, and live out the remainder of my life grieving for what might have been.

The answer is as 11 minutes describes it:

Life is not a parade of great experiences, one after another. It is trite, mundane, often boring, exhausting and insignificant. But then there are the brief flickers of exception The amazing moments. And it is those that we live for. And the art of life is not to miss out on them. Once you miss the moment, it is gone forever.

Don’t try to seize the whole day. Seize the best parts of it. Use the rest of the time to recharge for the next great event that makes your life.

I have to learn to seize the best parts of the day–to recognize those opportunities and to take them. If I succeed, I succeed; if not…well, I made the effort, didn’t I?

Seeing things in the rear-view mirror…

Come mid-August, it will be 11 long years since the ex left me, getting on a plane to Europe to disappear forever.

Looking back on it now, I dodged one hell of a fucking bullet; I’ve kept track of my ex, and I know what happened to her, the man she ended up marrying, and her kids. There, but for the grace of God, go I, my sons.

I don’t think my ex ever consciously meant to use me as an ATM–if she had, she would not have told me so much of the man she did end up with. But, she did–and she would still be doing so today, were we still together.

It was this post that got me to thinking about my initial meeting with my ex, and the mistakes that I made; Lord Almighty, I cringe at the mistakes I have made–yes, even the flowers I brought to the first date. I was Beta (Gamma, by Vox Day’s metric), and she treated me as such. Every day, from the point I found out my cancer had departed, must be a day that I say, “Never Again”–and mean it.

Which is why this post is so bloody disheartening. Nothing sucks the wind out of one’s sails than to realize that one can fall back into old habits so damn easily–and I have; I’ve tipped my hand to one of the hotties up on 9, and I can see her contempt in her eyes every time she walks past the desk.

“Hindsight is wonderful-it shows you how you busted your skull after you’ve busted it.” ~Robert Heinlein, Friday

Fuck it. Regroup, recover, and soldier on. Move forward, or die–and I’m not going to face God like this, damn it.

I could have written that letter.

Obsidian posted this letter on his blog, and only half-way through, I found two thoughts racing through my head:

1) A sympathetic “Oh, you poor bastard”; and,

2) “I could have written this letter.”

Truly we live in a world run amok. I have experienced moments like those the author relates, and have heard stories from others just as bad (and in some cases–worse).

Ultimately, this is a letter of despair: “why bother?” is the rallying cry of those men who have decided to go omega, to just chuck the whole nasty mess and do without. It’s a bothersome question, one that a lot of people can’t answer. Lord knows, I’ve asked myself that question a number of times down through the years–and the only response I could muster was, “why indeed?”

But a wise man once told me, “Despair is a sin”, and the sin of despair has its opposing virtue: Hope. By all accounts, I should be lying in a palliative-care unit somewhere, drugged into a stupor by morphine as the race to see what would run out first–my cancer-ridden liver or my health insurance. Yet, here I am–alive, and kicking like a motherfucker. Where there’s a chance, there’s hope. You have to have faith that that one out of ninety-nine women will say yes, and that it will be worth it.

Mind you, it’s not all faith; part of the problem with the author of that letter seems to do a lot of reading about Game, but he hasn’t internalized any of what people like Roissy et al teach. I mean, consider the moment that his hook-up said “Do you think I just have sex with random people”?, he should have flipped the script and thrown her last minute resistance in her face (“No, I don’t; I thought you were into me. I’ll see you later.”, and then go back downstairs and sarged right back into the crowd.). All the theory in the world doesn’t mean shit if it isn’t tested and tried–you don’t go swimming without getting wet. It’s the whole point behind that proverb by Alexander Pope:

“A little learning is a dangerous thing;
drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
and drinking largely sobers us again.”

Or, to put it in more colloquial terms: “Do, or do not! There is no try!”

Edit: Ok, having read some of the responses to the letter over at TOF, I realize my advice wasn’t the best–he should have said, “No, I don’t”, and gone for the kill. See why I’m not getting any? Live and learn.

It’s not like I’ve been having any more success that this kid–Mr. Wiggly is starving here, folks. But giving up now begs the question of why I should have survived cancer–what’s the point of going through all the pain of surgery and chemo if you’re going to live life in a dark hole in the ground?

Fuck that. I can do better. I fucken’ deserve better–and so does this guy, if he’d actually think about it. We all do. I have faith in that.

So, I’m going pub crawling this weekend. I’ll probably get shot down again; maybe I’ll get a slap in the face–the modern equivalent of a “red badge of courage”. Sooner or later, I’ve got to find that one-in-ninety-nine (or nine hundred ninety-nine)–I have to, dammit.

It ain’t much to have hope for, to have faith in–but it’ll do, for now.

Facebook gives you syphillis?

Just forwarded to me by a friend:

Facebook gives you the clap: Official

The sharp rise in syphilis cases in Teesside has been partially attributed to social networking sites which incautious locals are trawling in search of casual sex.

According to the local Evening Gazette, the number of reported cases jumped to 30 last year, up from less than 10 in 2008. Professor Peter Kelly, executive director of public health for NHS Tees, said that “reports from doctors and nurses diagnosing and treating patients suggest some sufferers are using social networking sites to find and arrange meetings with new lovers”.

He added: “Unprotected sex, especially with casual partners, is the biggest risk for syphilis. Social networking sites are making it easier for people to meet up for casual sex. It is important that people avoid high risk sexual behaviours and practise safe sex to protect themselves from sexually transmitted infections.”

I know there’s been a lot of sex on Facebook; all the friend invites I got on Facebook were from women promoting their adult websites. I just find it surprising that people hooking up on Facebook (or other social websites) would think that the risk for catching a disease was lesser than hooking up with someone they met at a bar. Some people have all the intellectual capacity of a thimble.

The Irony? This was originally produced by General Motors.

The Road To Serfdom, by F.A. Hayek, (in cartoon format).

We are all properly fucked now.

Some truths are so obvious that they are as rare as as diamonds.

Scrolling through the comments section of Infidelity and prole drift at In Mala Fide, I was struck by Snark’s comment to David Alexander:

DA:“You are an alpha, not an idiotic anti-social dysfunctional sub-human male that’s clumsy and bumbling and incapable of making a basic decision. From my perspective, it’s far easier to let her lead and pick everything because there’s a sizable chance that I have no idea of what to do, where to go, or how to do it properly. Why risk the embarrassment?”

Snark:The way to deal with this is to believe that you are always completely correct, and if it comes to it, everybody else is wrong.

Stick fast to this and other people will start admitting that you’re right. See? You always were.

That is so fucking brilliant and so fucking obvious that it is a truth as rare as a diamond. You have to have faith in yourself. It’s one of those things never talked about, because everyone assumes that everyone knows it.

But I–and I suspect, many others–did not; I grew up having no faith in my abilities, and believing that I couldn’t succeed. And because I learned very early on that the price of failure is punishment (either physical or psychological/emotional), I did the only logical thing–I stopped trying. And it had been that way for years, even after the actual threat of punishment ceased to be real (it’s an amazing thing, to realize your father can no longer physically beat you), because the perception of punishment–the fear of punishment–is usually enough to keep you in line.

At some point, you have to develop faith in your own abilities. Amazing how often that is missed.

We all seek our own comfort level.

A teacher once told me. “When things go bad, we all want to go home, to the place where we feel safe. We all seek our own comfort level.” Reading Ferdinand’s Infidelity and prole drift post, I think that may be what was behind Jesse James’ infidelity with Michelle McGee, I think that might be what happened: things were beginning to go south in the marriage between Sandra Bullock and James, and he sought out the familiar to take comfort in. The fact that he was previously married to porn star Janine Lindemulder lends strength to my theory.

I mean, lets face it, Ferdinand and Bob Belvedere are right–would you trade this:

Sandra Bullock Blacklund

For this?:

Michelle McGee

At first blush, fuck no. But if the first woman won’t go horizontal with you, while the second says, “You can put it in here, and here…and here…”, even a man who utterly loathes tattoos and piercings is going to say, “Well, maybe…”.

It’s not always a question of options–sometimes it’s a question of who makes you feel like you’re at home.

There’s a lesson for women in this, as well: if you want to keep him from seeking comfort elsewhere, provide him with what he wants at home. You can’t treat a man as an accessory. You wouldn’t expect a cat to stick around if you neglected it–why expect it of a man?

And for those of you who might think, “She’s better off without him”, is she better off with the world wondering why she couldn’t keep her man at home? If women marry bad boys, and the bad boys end up straying, no matter how much you blame the man for straying, the fact remains–she failed to tame him, and that’s a failure that she’s going to have a hard time living down.

And the worm does, indeed, turn…

Duke lacrosse accuser charged with attempted murder, arson

Durham, N.C. — Durham police late Wednesday arrested the woman who four years ago falsely accused three Duke University lacrosse players of raping her.

Crystal Mangum assaulted her boyfriend, set his clothes on fire in a bathtub and threatened to stab him, investigators said.

I wonder how many of Crystal’s feminist supporters will try to blame this on the boyfriend.

(Tip o’ the hat to Kathy Shaidle for the link.)

Hell hath no fury…up in big lights.

Jilted Mistress Takes Out Times Square Billboard

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Particularly if that woman has access to billboards in Times Square.

According to Gawker, a slew of giant billboards have popped up in New York, San Francisco and Atlanta featuring a mysterious couple, Charles E. Phillips and YaVaughnie Wilkins. The signs spotlight an oversize image of the couple cuddling, along with the words “You are my soul mate forever! – cep” and a link to a bizarre website littered with love notes and romantic pics of the canoodlers. (The site, charlesphillipsandyavaughniewilkins.com, has now been shut down.)

There’s only one little problem.

Charles is the co-president of software giant Oracle and on the board of President Obama’s economic recovery team. YaVaughnie is – not his wife.

First off: Damn! Talk about making the drama public! It sucks to be Charles E. Phillips these days.

Second: This is why you have to avoid women with low self-esteem; as noted by South, Clare & Franco in Practical Female Psychology, women with low self-esteem love drama, and will engage in destructive behavior to generate such behavior. Charles should have tested her much more thoroughly before starting the affair (not that I would advocate a married man engage in an illicit affair in the first place–it always ends in tears).

Third: You have to hand it to the woman–this is how revenge should be done. If you’re going to hurt somebody, hurt them bad. Your mark should feel the sting of your vengeance for years afterward. Poor ol’ Chuck is going to be hurting for a long, long time.