Don’t Self-Help, Just Help

Self-help books should come with disclaimers: Western civilization only. Restrictions may apply. May be illegal in some countries. Not responsible for maiming or death caused by applying exercises in this book. Self-help books promote the assumption that anyone can be happy and successful if they just believe it enough. If you really believe that, you don’t need a book.

First, you need to be born in a free country. And even then it takes a lot more than belief. Circumstances must be considered and compromises must be made, no matter what they tell you in the book. Throw health, intellect, insight, environment, ability, and a huge amount of luck into the mix too. So what about the millions of people trapped in unimaginable circumstances all over the world, especially women? Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, India, the Congo, Sudan, Ethiopia, Haiti…the list goes on and on. Clearly these books are not meant for them. Maybe those women are just being too negative. Maybe they’re not taking action. Maybe they need to work on forgiveness. Be thankful you’re not getting your nose and ears cut off for running away from the men you were sold to, acid thrown in your face for disobeying your abusive family, poisoned for trying to learn to read, or raped on a daily basis.

Unfulfilled Americans spend over $11 billion each year on self-help books, products, services, speakers, and seminars—a testament in itself to the argument that they’re not working. Many people, after buying one, become disillusioned and try another, and then another. Someone’s getting rich, but it isn’t you. If you want to be happy, you’re going to have to dump some of those meddlesome human traits, like compassion. This compassion crap will just make you sad or angry, and you’ll lose your focus on personal perfection.

It’s not all about you. Stop trying to make your self more successful and start trying to make your world a better place. Be polite but stand up for yourself and those weaker than you. Not everybody is going to like you—embrace it. Sometimes pain, anger, or distress is what you’re supposed to feel. Try to get over bad stuff and move on. Try to get through the day. Consider yourself one lucky bastard to be here.

And if you feel the need to rant, go for it.

What do you think?

Artifacts of Madness

I come with a lot of baggage but it ain’t Louis Vuitton. It’s not even the kind with the little wheels. I schlep it around kicking and screaming.

COVERS OF WOMEN’S magazines at the checkout counter:  Drop 2 dress sizes in one week!  Next line:  Chocolate cupcakes to die for! Look inside and see the Ask the Doctor section. I have a large mass growing on the side of my neck. What should I do? Here’s a suggestion—why don’t you go get a big pair of shears and cut it off?

THE NEIGHBORS I have the restraining order against had their water shut off the other day. You can always tell a shut-off compared to a meter reading. Readings are done methodically by street. Shut-offs require the serviceman to wrestle with wrenches and rusted knobs. Next thing I see cop cars racing down the street. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know what happened—the serviceman called the cops because the homeowners came out and harassed him. Maybe threatened him, who knows. It isn’t the first time I’ve seen this happen to some poor schmuck trying to do his job. They need to start hiring tough guys, like repo-men, to shut off deadbeats’ water.

SERIAL LIKERS: I will never click on your blog. I have disabled ‘likes’ from my posts but there is no way to disable them from the reader feeds. But your robo-likes will no longer show up on my blog. Here’s an idea: why don’t you try writing something? I’ve clicked on a few serial likers’ blogs and found hundreds of comments on their About pages. I thought, wow, they must be good. But this is what you see:

Thank you for liking my post!
Thank you for liking my post! I’ll be back!
Thank you for liking my post! You rock!
Thank you for liking my post! I’m following you now!
etc., etc., blah blah blah

Please go do your part to keep Facebook shallow.

RECENTLY AN ACQUAINTANCE told me I need to kiss more ass if I want to be successful. He said it was part of the job. Sorry but I can’t do that. He said, fine, but are you happy? Uh, like kissing ass is going to make me happy?

Every now and then I put an ad in the paper advertising my housecleaning service. And every time, I dread answering calls because the cheapest people in the U.S. live in Arizona. They’re used to cut-rate labor and have no clue what a really clean house is, performed by an ethical person. I think of each cleaning job as a work of art that I sign my name to. Last week I placed a completely different kind of ad entitled Not Like Other Housecleaners. This time I wrote what my requirements are, and included a minimum price. I can only do one house per day. It was a little snippy but I’m sick to death of retired people following me around like I’m going to steal something,  interrupting me, asking me are you almost done? and forcing me to listen to CNN. It’s oppressive and I can’t do it anymore. Well damned if I haven’t been getting calls all week from really nice working people. I don’t have to fear returning calls, they already read the ad. I don’t know what the moral of this story is—maybe don’t kiss ass, it’s not worth your self-respect.

A bathroom I was asked to clean. I passed. I have cleaned for people who treated me like scum—lucky for them, I don’t name names. I did laundry for a local couple who were very nasty to me. If I showed the pictures of their laundry (which I had to pick up with rubber gloves and a stick), you would get sick. But not as sick as I.

A keyboard at a jobsite.

What I find on my front lawn in the morning. Gosh, I’m so glad they switched to Bud Light. Even f*cking a**holes need to watch their waistlines!

A neighbor’s yard.

A friend’s garage.

You don’t have to have doors or hoods on your cars here.

Only in B*sb**. He’s got the purse, she’s got the exposed crack.

This newspaper, from a very liberal city we visited in the Pacific Northwest, tossed around the word ‘anarchy’ like it’s The Big Solution. A tidy, anti-gun city  with mowed lawns, no litter, no smoking, and thousands of conformist students all with the same unkempt look, all on their phones. How do they know what anarchy is? They should come down here to the border to see it in actual use. First thing they’d do if someone threatened them is call the cops. Then they’d run back home to their mamas.

Look at the bottom line on the bus. Religion OR reality? I don’t get it. Are they saying people need to make a choice, pick one or the other? What kind of message is that?

Holiday Unreality

Holidays. Gluttony, waste, forced obligations. Women exhausting themselves to get everything done on time for the great gorge. Millions of dead turkeys whose scraps will not be fed to dogs. I try to work on Thanksgiving if I can. One year I walked into a huge domestic dispute where the wife really didn’t want to go to her in-laws’ house. I had to go sit outside until they left. The spectacle called black Friday made me embarrassed for America, and that doesn’t happen often. Well there is Facebook, but that’s not just us anymore.

I need work. An acquaintance said, why don’t you make flyers offering housecleaning gift certificates? I said, that’s a great idea. She said, make sure you write Keep Your Dollars in America this Year! I said, I can’t say that, people here will get all offended. But consider not only giving work to people who pay taxes here, but also not detonating your credit card with crap made in China, or anywhere else but the US, the same crap people fought over on black Friday. Ugh. I hate that it even has a name and I refuse to capitalize “black” because that gives it credibility as a marketing tactic to make people crazy. This whole season from Thanksgiving to Christmas can go take a sleigh ride to Psychoville.

Our friend Hogan (Hoarder of History) appears to be levitating over carburetor of '71 Ford pickup. Hogan is a person to be thankful for.

She’s a handful is a typical euphemism for little girls who are consistently naughty. Jada, now 7 months, has gained 10 pounds and an attitude. She’s the kind of beautiful dog who gets adopted from a pound, then returned because she’s a project you have to stick with.  She’s soft and cuddly and loving, I hold her in my lap and she snuggles closer and closer into my neck. But keeping her from constantly jumping on everything and everybody is work. Paws on counters, stepping on my heels every time I walk somewhere in the house or outside, annoying the other dogs and cats, still not housebroken. Did I mention the jumping? She and Blitz are playmates but sometimes he hides from her and I have to watch she doesn’t get too rough—those puppy teeth are sharp and plentiful. I am committed to turning her into a respectable member of the pack.  This wild creature will be mine.

Blitz transforms into a wolverine when playing with Jada

I tell Jada, stop being such a baby and grow up!

Jada in a rare quiet moment (it didn't last). Who could resist this face?

Debra on Dogshit: Seven dogs. 14 piles of dogshit a day, 98 piles a week, 392 piles a month. The dogshit goes into plastic grocery bags and is eventually taken to the dump. My partner has never been seen picking up anything that came out of either end of a dog or cat. I went to NY for 8 days last year for a dictionary project and he claims he “took care of” the catbox. I know damn well he filled it up to the top with clean litter then shoveled it out once, the night I got home.

Here are some recent random pics of local interesting stuff…

Weird old combination stove, sink, and fridge seen at Hogan's

I had to look it up. Here's a classic ad for the 1952 General Fridge, Sink & Stove, same model as Hogan has. Look at that babe---as if! Sex sold appliances in 1952 same as now.

Two nice cats in a customer's yard

I became obsessed with making a celestial-themed quilt a few years ago. I just dug out the materials to finish it. I have to sew the batting and the backing, but we don't always finish what we start because every project has a passion tipping point, yes?

I hand-sewed each square, using a basic 8-point quilting star pattern. The fun was designing and making the top, not all this machine-sewing stuff at the end!

One last pedantic harangue: I recoil when adults refer to their parents as ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad.’ Up to about adolescence, it’s acceptable to refer to them as “my mom” or “my dad.” After that, it should be ‘my mother’ or ‘my father.’ ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’ should only be used among siblings. When an adult who is not related to me says “Mom used to hit me with a ruler,” I cringe. Why not be correct and say “My mother used to hit me with a ruler.” Just sayin’.

The Week in My Infotoxic World 11-8-11

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The Information Abuse Superhighway

Are you as afraid to look at your homepage as I am? Is the entire planet contaminated by a rapidly spreading virus composed of computer-enhanced human ignorance? There’s a sense of malaise around the internet, with some bloggers questioning what we’re doing here. Part of the helplessness many of us feel is a side effect of the filter bubble, an algorithm-driven defilement used by major search engines to collect and control every one of our keystrokes. Google keeps harassing me to “customize” my news, so I can skip those offensive alternative viewpoints. Quite a change from the “fair and balanced news” MSM boasted just ten years ago.  Controlling our exposure to information serves to isolate both sides and is deadly to human development. It’s one of the worst things to come out of technology, period. A nanny Internet goes a step further than a nanny government, it paralyzes our minds. We don’t know where to turn for truth, for hope, or for compromise.

The infection is also spread by Smartphones and Twitter and laptops. I just read a reasonable post by a successful person on a subject that interested me—but his ever-constant Twitter feed displays a much less relatable, and less interesting, persona. Why do I need to see personal minute-by-minute updates when I came to read an essay? He was heading down to the Occupy protest in his city. I was going to comment. Discuss. Interact. Now, I’m not. I’m Occupied-out and not impressed.

Nowadays I read my home page for one reason: in the morning to find out if we’re going to make it through the day, and in the evening to see if we’ve made it through the day. How close to me are the quakes, floods, fires, bombs…how close are the US mobs defecating on American flags, how close to my home on the border is the latest drug-cartel slaughter. I’m afraid to even click on a link on my homepage, because it changes what I see on my homepage within minutes. It’s literally useless.

Many live in filter bubbles of their own making, it’s so very obvious and easy to see in a certain area of the town I live in. The personalized info-smog makes it a snap to remain unchallenged by creating a world of denial. I don’t want to choose sides and then have propaganda shoved down my throat. Fight the filter bubble by choosing what you read yourself. Don’t let search engines decide for you.

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I’m irritated with academic-types this week because they manage to plant  snide snippets of their political views into venues where they have no business doing so. In no way should any reference book reflect the personal, especially political, opinion of its contributors. It should not be tolerated but it is, it is. I have little recourse but to resort to negative fantasy…

The Professors

Two English professors were co-writing a scholarly paper regarding the etymologies of words describing difficult people. They passed the manuscript back and forth with notes attached through interoffice mail.

The professors began arguing over the word ‘stubborn,’ whose uncertain origins date back to the 14th century. The first professor called the second professor an ‘obstinate oaf’ to which the second retorted ‘recalcitrant rube.’ The notes began to get ugly. The second professor’s temper finally got the better of him. ‘I will not tolerate such pertinacious disrespect!’ he gasped as he marched into the first professor’s lovely walnut-paneled office and stabbed him through the heart with a medieval dagger.

Well, so much for the old saying ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’!

Surviving the Nonjudgmental

The word judgmental is the spiritually-correct label of shame. Apparently the reasoning is this: it’s not judgmental to say that a person who committed an act of cruelty did a bad thing, but it is judgmental to say that the person who committed the act is a bad person.

In a world of 7 billion people, many behaving badly, being judgmental is a survival skill as well as a cause of suffering within a social structure. But a truly nonjudgmental person would not support taking sides, so in our daily lives, being judgmental is unavoidable if we have values that guide us. A man who beats children or animals can’t be a good person in some unidentified way we just haven’t tried hard enough to find.

Wild Bill wrote last week of rescuing a dog whose owner had tied cinder blocks to it and dumped it in a lake. I am judgmental because I freely base a person’s (the abuser and all like them) entire worth on a single act, even though there are several million articles that say this is the wrong way to live.

Every day, judgments are made in millions of blogs, news articles, and comment sections. News articles are passively judgmental while commenters are viciously so. People who consider themselves nonjudgmental encourage public condemnation of Christians, atheists, conservatives, liberals, smokers, alcoholics, yuppies, welfare mothers, celebrities, adulterers, prostitutes, or anyone who does or doesn’t share our beliefs. We are judgmental out of jealousy, poverty, wealth, frustration, self-preservation, compassion—just about any emotion or life stage imaginable. It is not possible to ask humans to not be human, the lesson to be learned is in our reactions.

I am pleasant to everyone I meet but that doesn’t mean I want to fraternize, it means I want to live. I don’t publicly denigrate or feel superior, I judge. Every single one of us knows people we think are useless, mean, difficult, stupid, or annoying. If you’ve never had contact with someone and then said to yourself, “what an asshole,” then you can join the rest of the people on the head of the pin who are candidates for sainthood.

There are so many interpretations of this word that it’s become one more smarmy term whose reputation can’t be lived up to. I judge this word meaningless.

Urochrome Pigment—A Primer

Brightening a kitchen as dreary as mine can only mean one thing—yellow. Yellow is the color of sunshine, daffodils, lemons, electricity—and also of cowardice, jaundice, hazard signs, and a type of sensational journalism.

It’s also the color of a specific bodily fluid released when a bladder is full. Here in Arizona where water is an issue, a certain amount of license is permitted after expressing said organ. But enough is enough. I’ve begged, I’ve pleaded…please flush when the bowl becomes saturated in Dijon mustard hues.

I brought home paint sample strips from the hardware store and chose my kitchen color. The strips were too pretty to toss. I thought of making bookmarks but found a better way to recycle them. They are now tacked on the wall above the toilet.

Educational color chart for men

Acceptable yellows are Pearl Star, Lantern Light, Lemon Cream, Sunny Day, Goldilocks, Dipped in Honey, Straw, Honey Pot, and Saffron.

Firefly, Daisy Heart, Yellow Brick Road, Glistening Gold, Stella ’d Oro, Downy Chick, Sun Porch, Band of Gold, Sunnyside Up, Tropical Sun, Marigold, and Golden Path warrant a flush.

If this still isn’t clear, please step outside. Ya got that, Goldenrod?

A Whole New Kind of Politically Incorrect

Sometimes I speak to men and women just as a little girl speaks to her doll. She knows of course that the doll doesn’t understand her but she creates for herself the joy of communication through a pleasant and conscious self-deception. Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

In these times of poverty, foreclosures, fear, and anger, most people are somehow able to afford Smartphones and Kindles. I understand that Kindles come with a dictionary, with larger downloadable versions available should the default not be adequate. I envy those with Smartphones and the ability to quickly research any question on their mind no matter where they are. When I am reading a book I am never far from a dictionary, but what a joy it must be to have a Smartphone handy instead of a cumbersome tome.

Yet we are not smarter. Our vocabularies dwindle as abbreviated text and computer-driven writing advice increases. Error-ridden blogs, newspapers, and even books are now acceptable. I just read a post that began: So here’s some info about a blogging workshop I’ll be facicilitating next week. With a facicilitator like this, would you sign up?

We fear appearing intelligent. In a world of flamers, trolls, and Wall Street Occupiers, we don’t want to stand out. Eloquence has become politically incorrect. We’re afraid we’ll be seen as arrogant if we use any more than the several thousand words used by teenagers, if we publish works that we proofread first, or if we dare use a word that the least articulate reader may not know. We’re uneasy asking readers to learn something new. What a drag.

We need not pen periphrastic phrases or long-winded circumlocutions, recondite riddles or abstruse analogies, bombastic observations or cryptic correspondence. But I say, writers (and speakers): mutiny against the mundane. Not by making a spectacle of your composition with specious synonyms that have strayed from the concept you are trying to convey, but by choosing from the powerful array of options available to us all. Our language is the richest in the world. Lexicographers are reluctant to report a number, but with derivatives and inflections it is estimated to be around a million words.

We are free to describe our thoughts with unimaginable ardor, animation, and artistry. If readers are insulted by this, you have no need to apologize. Instead, instruct them how to use their Smartphones for something productive.

It’s Not About the Acting—Four Boxes Review

Movies are a form of therapy that help distract us from the constant assault of negativity in the world, and I love them for it.  A small luxury in life is Netflix, and my plan allows unlimited streaming. The selection of movies available for streaming is meager compared to regular-delivery DVDs, it’s only the gratification of an immediate need for escape that supports its appeal. I often scan the instant movie list looking for something that isn’t awful. Many of them are either Independent or “B” movies, but you can sometimes find a sparkler among them. I don’t read professional reviews because they often pan my favorite movies but praise convoluted hipster crap.  So it’s helpful to read customer reviews, but not for reasons you might think.

One common complaint by amateur reviewers is the quality of acting and/or graphics. You should hear them go on. Even low-budget movies I really loved such as Four Boxes continue to get terrible reviews full of much worse clichés than the movies they complain about. It’s as if the reviewers see this venue as a legitimate invitation to flame something that displeases them. Many of the reviewers are semi-literate and out of 78 reviews for Four Boxes, a few people loved it and nearly everyone else complained about the bad acting. The reviews basically read like these:

stupid, the acting is bad, and im glad they all die.

i got to say this was the worst movie ive got from u it absolutly sucked never quite got the plot and far as acting VERY POOR.

whoever wrote the dialog for this steaming pile of feces should do the world a favor and never write again. words cannot desrcibe how much I detested this aweful, aweful abomintion before god.

And here I thought the characters in this movie were acting like real-life 20-somethings. I had no idea that made them “bad actors.” I was finally compelled to join about three other people and write my own favorable review.

How do they know the acting was bad? Is it because they found the characters annoying? Then what difference would it make if they cast Shia or Leo or Keira? Why does the acting matter so much if a movie is original and intriguing? It’s all about the writing. I would watch a school play if the story was good and I could hear it. Half-billion-dollar budgets featuring gorgeous Hollywood clones are no guarantee of a good movie—just witness the heap of boring clunkers starring highly paid actors. My biggest complaint is the trend toward non-articulate speech, and that’s why subtitles are indispensable. In streaming, subtitles are rarely available, so if the music is overpowering, the actors mumble, or the script ridiculous, they lose me. Subtitles would have greatly enhanced Four Boxes, but despite the fact they weren’t available I was completely absorbed.

I don’t care how primitive the production or how unskilled the actors. Movies are all about the script, and that’s what smaller production companies should strive for.

The Perils of Honesty

If people are clueless because they just don’t pick up on things, I accept that. An acquaintance I spoke to recently had never heard of hoarders. I don’t know how she’s gone through her long life managing to miss this serious psychological malfunction, but she has. OK, so she didn’t get that memo—I can see how not everybody is able to follow everything that’s happening in our culture. I didn’t get mad at her, I explained it to her.

But there’s a different, more dangerous kind of ignorance, and that is defiant ignorance. I encounter this more often than is comfortable, and it makes me squirm. This is not merely clueless, this is clueless with a badge and gun. This is not “I don’t know” but “I don’t know, don’t want to know, and do not attempt to contact me again with enlightening information or I will shut down and stare at you blankly.”

At one time I thought it was a disease of people of a certain age. For example, those who refuse to learn how to use a computer, even though it’s essential in order to be a useful member of a volunteer organization. People who refuse to acknowledge that the world runs on computers make it harder for everyone else to communicate with them. But I’ve learned that young people can be just as resistive to knowledge. A young person who refuses to learn about the outside world in a purposeful, prideful way is just as frustrating, and it’s a personality type I’m very uncomfortable around. When each conversation builds a new barrier instead of tearing one down, the less interest I have in trying to communicate at all.

So I write about it. It’s not easy to avoid topics that affect me deeply, whether it’s our forests burning, the general shitty state of affairs on our planet, or a difficult person in my life. I am intrigued by various personality types and when I encounter one that’s especially distinct, I like to think about it out loud. I am careful to keep people’s identities anonymous and confidential, as the point is hardly to direct readers toward a specific person.

This weekend I was tried and convicted by an online community who know nothing about me. They stalk me online, never write a comment, and have never had anything to contribute until I wrote about gaming addiction. Then they came out to attack me, knowing absolutely nothing about me, my relationships, or my history. They’ve told me what a very, very bad person I am. One e-mail I received was a sort of outline of all of my personal faults, all laid out for me so I can begin to work on my wickedness as soon as possible. I couldn’t read it, and trashed it immediately. Wow. I cannot imagine, ever, in any way, sticking my nose into a couple’s personal relationship whom I have never met, choosing sides, and then carrying out a personal assault.

This is my blog and my outlet, and I write, with careful research, about my life. I would never, ever, write insulting comments on another person’s blog. I have never done so and will never do so. If I find a blog distasteful in any way, I leave immediately and do not go back. I do not stalk people who irritate me and then flame them when they write something I don’t like. The blog helps me to vent,  recover, and move on—and sometimes this brings unwanted drama. This is a decision each of us has to make.

I could dump this blog and start a new one with a pseudonym but I just don’t see the point. Posting as a fictional character holds no appeal for me. If people don’t like what I have to say, my heartfelt advice is to go away. You have your own blogs to rant on, so please, use them.

Video Game Schizophrenia in Young Adults

An 18-year-old male human is staying in my house right now. He is very shy around humans, and hasn’t been able to find a job, but doesn’t try very hard. He has no interest in acquiring a car, but has a Smartphone that costs about $100 a month to maintain.

He’s not a bad person at all. He’s good to my animals and has a sense of humor if the joke isn’t too complicated. There’s a lot of work to do around here as I try to prepare for whatever life’s next chapter may be, and I can ask him to help rip up old carpeting or move furniture. The problem is asking him to do anything harder than that.

He is a video game addict. What’s amazing is the change of personality when he’s facing a screen instead of a real person. At first I thought the raucous laughter and swearing was good because he seemed to be having fun…now, after two weeks of it, it’s depressing.

He’s on the phone often but not to look up words, read the news, find out what that weird frog in the yard is, or even talk to somebody. All of his energy is directed toward something that’s not real.

How utterly, totally different he is from me when I was 18. He’s not motivated or proactive or curious about life, books, people, travel, or current events. Imagine having the contents of the Internet at your fingertips at any time, and not using it to look stuff up. We had libraries and books and crappy jobs and junkers and were bursting with adventure even if we had to hitchhike—these kids have World of Warcraft and Facebook and texting. Nobody held our hands or paid our bills (at least not mine). I don’t know how to talk to him or what to say. I can’t stand baby talk and have an extremely difficult time dumbing myself down, but each attempt at conversation has to be prefaced with “do you know who … is? Do you know what a … is? Have you ever heard of … ?”  It’s so exhausting I’ve given up. I don’t think his vocabulary is more than a few hundred words. He is also so inarticulate I have to ask two or three times for him to repeat himself.

An excess of video gaming takes a socially awkward person and polishes them until they are completely disabled. It discourages personal growth and enables unworldly kids to remain that way for the rest of their lives. No new life experiences are required, no further knowledge of the world is needed to advance your online character—only more hours in a dark room in front of a vivid screen. In spite of the laughter, it’s very, very sad.

Vacations or road trips or any activity that costs money are no longer a part of my life, and I’m very sorry that I can’t help him explore the area here. But the world outside my door holds much fascination if observed closely. I can’t make another person see it, and I’m tired of trying to explain everything. Because he doesn’t have a car and mine has a standard shift which he can’t drive (of course), he’s stuck in the house. But it doesn’t seem to be an issue because he’s not interested in going out. An 18-year-old without a car is like a fly with no wings.

Whose “fault” is it? Anybody’s? I don’t think so. It’s an aggregate cultural blight, fed by genes, parents, advertising, peer pressure. I was not immune to peer pressure, but my mother was a freak and a loner and absolutely would not allow us to have anything that would have helped us fit in (though we were all long gone by 18). Is this bad or good? Is it the reason I’m such a misfit today? Maybe, but I’m a damn self-sufficient one. This kid is headed to college in the fall to study a subject that couldn’t be more unrealistic for his personality type and future employment. I am sad and embarrassed for our culture, and just about all cultures everywhere.