I would prefer not to

Tales from the darkside - actual Dr. Phil comments

2005-04-11T21:44:00.000-07:00

Hi all,

I am continuing my war against Dr. Phil, and have encountered several ridiculous, yet ostensibly genuine, opinions expressed on his message board. Some of the more entertaining ones I will reproduce below.

This one references an episode about revenge.

"That's the subtitle for the upcoming "Star Wars" movie on May 19. Back in 1983, "Return of the Jedi" was going to be called "Revenge of the Jedi," but the producers realized that Jedi do not carry out revenge, that is a characteristic of one of evil such as the Sith; hence, the Episode III title. As a Jedi, all I can say is two wrongs do not make a right and attacking in anger is a one-way ticket to the dark side. Avenging one's death will not bring them back sadly. I hope any of you considering revenge will do the right thing. (emphasis added by author)"

Yes, my friends, this one apparently thinks he is a jedi. There is some measure of irony in a clearly delusional man offering mental health advice, don't you think?

Here is a comment from an episode that discussed pornography. One poster suggested that pornography leads to rape. Another poster who happened to be a Pd.D. psychology student (and wasn't me) pointed out that the quoted studies didn't really demonstrate what she claimed they demonstrated. She issued this response,

"All those statistics have references. You're welcome to research the studies. At the same time, I don't think you need to be a scientist to figure out that pornography destroys marriages and destroys real sex between married people.

I wonder if you have seen pornography. Unfortunately I've seen it, and what I saw was dominating and degrading toward women. I've heard the way men talk about women after seeing pornography. There is a huge difference in the treatment of women by men who look at pornography and men who don't.

A man who looks at pornography will compare his wife to the women in pornography. He will likely attempt to get his wife to perform some of the degrading acts women in pornography engage in. Above all, his motivation will be LUST not love. He will think of how he can use his wife to get off, the way men in porngoraphy do. And maybe after that he can brag to his pornography-watching buddies about how he "got laid."

How could such a marriage be a happy marriage. The sex life of those two people would be destroyed. The woman would feel degraded and violated, the man would feel like he has the right to get what the guys in pornography get and will try to pressure his wife to give it to him. This will only make the woman feel disgusted whenever she imagines sex with him.

There will be no love, no respect, no tenderness, no complete giving of self that true conjugal love requires.

You said that your professor didn't say anything negative about pornography... well, I've heard of highly educated people who think that homosexual sex, threesomes, swinging etc. are normal. (And those who disagree are repressed puritans.) Just because one professor thinks a certain way, doesn't mean it's fact. There are many scientists and law enforcement professionals who DO think that pornography and sexual offenses are connected."

So there you have it folks ... if you are married you best avoid porn because it will DESTROY your sex life and result in husbands engaging in unseemly discussions about their wives with their other degenerate friends. Oh, and whatever you do, don't listen to scientists; they are all just Godless sex freaks themselves constantly engaging in bizarre and unnatural acts with both man and beast when they get a few moments off from data entry and statistical analysis. Having been thus informed, you might be wondering exactly how immoral pornography happens to be. Luckily, the same poster tells us in a latter entry.

"I think there are things that are absolutely wrong, all the time. (Such as murder, rape, pornography etc.) There's nothing you can say that will make these things okay. You can corrupt your mind and heart, but as long as there's humanity left in you there'll be revulsion at those things."

Yes, pornography is comprable to murder and rape. On to the next post.

This was in response to Dr. Phil's visit to the Osbournes.

"I'm very disapointed in some message on this board,some peolpe should be ashamed a lot more then the osbourne.ITS SO EASY TO POINT FINGERS IN DIRECTION OF OTHERS TO MAKE OURSELF LOOK BETTER i'm saying that for everyone who think the osbourne are such an anormal familly.

I think they have courage to do what they do ,and there is nothing absoulutly anormal whit this familly,and to top it of i'M very suprised that they are so much like us AMERICANS (by AMERICAN I mean also canadians ) THEY ARE NOT FROM AMERICA they are from a place were poeple are a lot more judge then here,so for the fact of beeign who they are and were there from i consider them to be extremly courageous to do such a thing, because british people are more reserved then us and they are more strick on behavior mostly in public.

AND I'd like to also tell you about ozzy, I was a teenager in the early 90's and i taugh of him to be sadistic and wondered sometimes if he was not the anti christ.

Well I was so wrong ,he his a normal person who do shows for a living and a lot of poeple like him (its a fact he's famous )and we should not forget that the people who like him for his music are poeple, who have been abused,neglected and worse then we could think . as mush has he has some fans in high society in ministers cabinet ,gouverment cabinet who enjoye his music.

(it goes on for awhile here so I took out the middle paragraphs)

so I think there are normal typical familly of this time in history and year of ages.

and behing hypocrites and denying who we are and what we do and point the fingers at others his hurtfull demeening incomprehentional.

I dont realy know them but from what i've seen this his my opinions and i dont think badly anymore of ozzy the way i did in the 90's and i still wont listen to his music its not my style.

I aplaude and apreciate there courage."

Umm... what? I don't get it. Are ministers and members of high society abused, neglected, and worse? "year of ages," what was that about. Oh, and lest you think the poster's use of "anormal (sic)" was a typo -- it was used TWICE! And what was up with that "by Americans I mean also Canadians." What about Mexico, El Salvador, or Panama?

Well, this is likely to be the last post for a couple weeks. I leave with my wife for Europe (and by Europe I mean exclusively Ireland) tomorrow.

Passive-aggression and Dr. Phil

2005-04-08T15:07:00.000-07:00

Hi all,

Well, I may not have posted anything new for awhile, but at least I posted the same message several times. Oh well, my computer ineptitude strikes again.

I have recently begun a clandestine campaign to annoy Dr. Phil as much as he annoys me. You see, Dr. Phil’s cliché-filled, simple solution focused, confrontational horseshit is now what many people think constitutes therapy. It doesn’t, and none of the crap he spews will work. Unfortunately, actual therapists now have to compete with this hillbilly Hippocrates when counseling clients suffering from complicated and multifaceted problems. Even worse, I am certain there are a tremendous number of clients who are unwilling to come to actual therapy because they think it will be as hokey and mean-spirited as the so-called “wake-up calls” issued by Dr. Phil.

My first tactic in my Dr. Phil war is to infiltrate his message board and take him down from the inside. To this end I intend to post messages on their board until I am kicked off. Here was my first attempt. It concerns some episode in which a 13-year old girl claimed to want to get pregnant or something (I don’t know exactly because I only skim the recaps).

“Wow. All of you seem to be as quick to judge as Dr. Phil. I guess I have a couple of questions I’d like to have answered before branding “harlot” onto the poor 13 year-old’s forehead. First, if she wanted to be pregnant and truly thought she could handle a kid, why is she asking for birth control? Using condoms doesn’t seem terribly consistent with getting pregnant. Second, if she wanted to have sex undeterred, why would she tell her mother anything at all? I know when I was a teenager I did everything in my power to ensure my mother did not discover what I was doing with whatever partner I was seeing at the time. The 13 yo’s mother doesn’t seem to have a lot of time for her; why is that? What circumstances in their lives contribute to this state of affairs? Are there unavoidable financial pressures that compel her to work long hours? How has her mother been treated by men? In what way may this serve as a model for the way she is being treated by men (or boys)?

It is amazingly arrogant of all of you to assume you really understand someone after seeing them interviewed for 15 minutes between commercials for Tide and Walmart. I wonder how aspects of your life would appear if compressed into easily digestible 15 minute summaries. Would all of your parenting decisions stand up to such quick and facile evaluation?”

This biting criticism garnered no response at all though it was posted on the site. For my second attempt, I used a different strategy. This time I was subtly sarcastic in response to a moronic thread in which a whole bunch of white-trash Dr. Phil fans were suggesting that a rude 14-year-old girl should be spanked.

“Dr. Phil is right. People need to own their own actions. I don’t think Jodie is owning her actions right now, but her parents are owning their actions either. Everyone in the family seemed pretty impulsive. I know I was impulsive when I had ADHD. Maybe Jodie has ADHD. Her mother may have it as well. You shouldn’t spank Jodie if she has ADHD, she just needs a prescription for amphetamines. Then maybe everyone could take responsibility for what they contribute to the negative interaction and their could be some peace in their house.”

I fear the amphetamine comment may have made things a bit too obvious. I will keep y’all posted.

And fuck Dr. Phil!

Éireann go Brách

2005-03-31T12:25:00.000-08:00

Before continuing with my entry, I should apologize for the recent paucity of updates. Over the last two weeks I have been forced to frantically assemble a final report for a grant so that it could be submitted to the federal granting agency by our April 1st deadline. I’ve spent hours carefully crafting an evaluation strategy, devising statistical analyses that elegantly balance explanatory power with simplicity, and writing all of this in a final report whose prose I like to think is reminiscent of Gore Vidal – conversational yet informative. Unfortunately, no one will ever read it. Some bureaucrat will check to make sure it has been submitted, note that it was received, and immediately put it in a file that will next be opened by archeologists long after the collapse of our civilization. (Future Archeologist: this society seemed to pray to a god named “ANOVA.” No new knowledge could be obtained unless ANOVA(1) deemed it significant.) Such is my life.

Normally pissing away two weeks into the black hole of research would annoy me to no end, but not today. Today I am too excited by my upcoming trip to Ireland to be upset.

The trip to Ireland was born out of desperation last December. My lovely wife informed me that she wanted me to get her something other than jewelry for Christmas. I was shocked and dismayed by her request. Personally, I thought we had a good gift routine down. Megan and I would agree on some dollar amount we would each spend on one another for Christmas. Then she would buy me some piece of electronics/kitchen accessory/assortment of guy stuff and I would buy her some piece of jewelry. We would both spend about twice what we had agreed upon because getting the perfect gift for the one that we loved was more important than groceries or rent or other trivialities. We’d both be taken aback by our partner’s generosity and she usually cried. It all seemed to work fine to me.

Not this year. This year had to be different. With jewelry off the table, I was a bit lost. My decade of experience with women had turned me into a relatively good jewelry buyer. I was familiar with the norms of jewelry shopping. I could enter a jeweler’s place of business and conduct myself in a manner that was consistent with his or her expectations of a customer. I knew what questions to ask (is that a created emerald?), what questions were stupid (is it waterproof?), and how to politely say that I couldn’t afford that piece if I sold all of my worldly possessions including a kidney and part of my liver (I think she would prefer something a little more understated). I had no such relevant experience with the other things my wife likes. How do you buy a purse? What makes one purse better than another? Are big purses cool because they cost more or lame because they are mostly used by rich old ladies as shoulder-mounted doghouses for their mini schnauzers? Are they waterproof? Is waterproofing even a valid concern?

After some awkward encounters with salespersons unlucky enough to approach me in stores, I realized that I was not going to be able to manage this social situation by myself. Only further humiliation and befuddlement on the part of the sales community could possibly result from continuing my efforts. I had two options: bring in reinforcements or confine my search to items with which I had some familiarity. I chose the latter largely because I did not know of any purse, perfume, or makeup experts. This choice meant my wife’s gift had to relate to something I was good at doing/evaluating. Since I am not good at doing much of anything, my choices were limited. I could get her therapy, but I thought this an imprudent gift. I could buy her some sort of cooking thing, but I would be the one who ended up using it anyway. I am really adroit at finding coffee in unfamiliar neighborhoods, but I didn’t know how to convert this ability into a gift. Most of my other talents, like writing papers in unreasonably short periods of time and gambling, only benefit me. The only talent I had left was travel. I am, all things considered, a relatively good traveler and a grasped this idea like a drowning man clinging to driftwood.

Still we had the issue of the dollar amount. While it was generally considered acceptable to spend up to 200% of our agreed upon maximum, travel to most places my wife would want to go would far exceed this total. While the number one destination would have almost certainly been Madagascar, even a budget trip to Madagascar would have required approximately 4000% of our agreed upon maximum. Likewise, I would have liked to buy a trip to Tahiti, but this would have amounted to approximately 2000% of our agreed upon total. After a great deal of research I came upon two possible trips. Trip one was to Ecuador and would have required 300% of our budget for fabulously luxurious trip (Ecuador is very cheap). Trip two was to Ireland and would have required about 350% of our budget for a modest trip.

I eventually decided on the second trip since I was afraid Ecuador might be a bit rustic for my honey. When I gave it to her, she got confused and then cried so I guess it was a success. We are leaving two weeks from today and I can’t wait to get there. I just hope next year I can buy her jewelry again; otherwise Ecuador, here we come.

1. Yes, I know that a joke about statistics is incredibly lame. Fuck off. (2)
2. Yes, I know footnoting a joke is even lamer. Fuck off again.

Why Corpro Media Sucks

2005-03-24T15:02:00.000-08:00

Hey, do you know who Jeff Weise is? It is entirely possible that you do not despite his recent killing of 10 people on a Minnesota reservation. This event was the worst school shooting since Columbine and yet so far as the copro media was concerned it ranked behind continuing round-the-clock coverage of the single most pointless right-to-life fight in the history of the US and the Michael Jackson freakshow parade. People, Terry Schiavo doesn’t have a neocortex; she is dead whether or not she breaths for another 10 years.

The lack of attention paid to the slaughter of 5 innocent children highlights some uncomfortable questions about our news and our society at large. Does your life matter if you are not famous or white? Corpro media would seem to suggest that it does not. I promise you if this shooting had occurred in Grosse Point or involved the child of the “Country Crock” dude it would have resulted in special reports, 24 hour news coverage, and in-depth interviews with the school’s former principal’s second cousin’s wife concerning her impressions of the school‘s climate of diversity. As it was, the story didn’t even make the first segment of one of the Chicago nightly reports on the evening after it occurred. This isn’t an isolated incident either. A few months ago a colleague asked one of her client’s (who was a gang member) if he knew whether or not he had ever killed anyone. He said that he did not. When further questioned he revealed that he knew he had shot people, but no news organizations report on murders in his part of the city so he has no way of definitively knowing whether or not his victims died. Just to clarify, he wasn’t saying that they didn’t make the first page of the Trib; these crimes don’t find their way into the Tribune at all. On the other hand news about a serial rapist who preys on people from the wealthy Lincoln Park neighborhood frequently gets placed on the front page above the fold.

It doesn’t surprise me that the US remains afflicted with our worship of fame or latent racism; it does disappoint me that the tragic deaths of five children was not enough to overcome these failings for a brief moment in time. Even the flawed and ultimately exploitative attention of the infotainment empire would have been better than no attention at all. Sometimes the United States is a hard country to love.

I hate the gym

2005-03-21T13:30:00.000-08:00

After 26 years of denial I am finally ready to admit the sad truth underlying my relative lack of physical fitness: I hate the gym. Everything about the gym is repulsive from the nasty carpet gyms insist upon installing in the locker room to the water fountain polluted by a gallon of some stupid fuck’s steroid-laced spit. I hate the tiny little towels that are only purchased by gyms and hobbits, and I hate the junk bond terms imposed by most gym’s contracts. Most of all, I hate “let’s get physical” by Olivia Newton John. The song is not about exercise, people, it is about SEX!. SHE DOESN’T WANT TO DO PILATES, SHE WANTS TO SCREW. SO PLEASE, FOR GOD’S SAKE, STOP PLAYING IT OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN IN THE AEROBICS STUDIO UNTIL THAT SICKNINGLY SWEET CHORUS GETS STUCK IN MY HEAD AND MAKES ME PRAY FOR DEATH WHILE I AM LYING IN BED KEPT FROM SLEEP BY THAT STUPID FUCKING SONG!

Ah, much better. I needed to vent. Seriously, though, I really find the gym obnoxious. I don’t think my reaction is caused only by the petty annoyances encountered in the gym but rather stems from a philosophical difference. The gym is a temple for those who find health fun. I do not find health fun. In fact I think there is a linear association between the amount of fun you can have doing something and its potential to cause you harm. For example, sharing some carrot sticks and protein drinks with a good friend is precious little fun. Make that some pizza and a bottle of Chianti and now we are talking fun. Transplant this action to some dive pizza restaurant located close to a survivalist compound in Michigan and throw in a half-breed wolf with a taste for cheese and you’ll have something to tell you grandkids about.

While fun and exercise are not necessarily mutually exclusive for me (hiking, rafting, and skydiving would all serve as both fun and exercise) I am largely denied any opportunity to engaging in potentially unhealthy exercise because I live in the frozen tundra known as Chicago. Thus, I am stuck with going to the gym or turning into one of those people who has to call the fire department to free himself from his house. The problem is that I clearly don’t belong in a gym. I am an obvious interloper in the world of the “runners’ high” and everyone knows it. My presence is disconcerting to both myself and the group who rightfully claims the gym as their natural environment. There needs to be an alternative gym, one with a coffee bar and desert selection, that is dedicated to those who only go to the gym because they have to. Smoking and drinking would both be encouraged as a way to keep the real gym people away, and there could be classes more relevant for the anti-gymrat like “smash the state cardioboxing” and “fleeing the fascists crosstraining.” Until such an anti-health utopia comes into creation, I guess I am stuck with my treadmill and that VILE PIECE OF SHIT C + C MUSIC FACTORY SONG. NOBODY WANTS TO SWEAT TILL THEY BLEED DUMBASS! THAT’S IS WHAT WE CALL HEMORAGING!

Sorry.

Coherent narrative is beyond me today

2005-03-17T14:37:00.000-08:00

5 random thoughts

1. Maroon 5 is really boring. It isn’t like their songs are bad or anything, just painfully dull. They need to team up with Cyprus Hill or GWAR or something. That or dress like demonic leprechauns. Anything to rescue them from light FM.

2. Update on things Tyler will eat. Dryer sheets = Yes. Citrus fruit = no. Cucumber = no. McDonald’s Shamrock milkshake = yes.

3. Quite unintentionally the first two random thought are somewhat related to St. Patrick’s Day. How odd.

4. “No really, I’m not that drunk” invariably means you are that drunk. Don’t waste your breath.

5. Today I made a series of decisions that may keep a client in a place he doesn’t want to be against his will for several years. Authority kind of sucks.

A clean, well-lit toilet.

2005-03-14T12:13:00.000-08:00

Few aspects of one’s environment are as important as a good bathroom. In addition to the obvious purpose they serve, bathrooms represent the only true privacy available to most of us. Cell phones and e-mail now penetrate every other traditional bastion of solitude; only the restroom stall remains beyond communication’s reach. If work has become too stressful or boring or demanding, one can always claim asylum in the porcelain palace. If your wife insists upon watching American Idol with the volume turned up to jet-engine-like levels and your dog will not stop trying to eat your latest copy of Esquire you can always retreat to the cool, calm surroundings of the bathroom. If you are eating out with friends and the one from New York begins his 20 minute exposition on the superiority of everyone and everything in his home city for the 10,000th time, you can always excuse yourself and wait him out in the bathroom. Bathrooms provide a sort of last resort for coping; when annoyance has brought you to the brink of madness, the bathroom is always there to give escape, solace, and peace. Going to the restroom is kind of like calling a “time-out” in life.

This is why having a quality bathroom is so important. A bathroom should invite you to linger. If a bathroom is dirty, dark, or otherwise uninviting people will not be able to derive the maximum possible benefit from their bathroom breaks and will return to their lives cranky. In stressful surroundings it is often the bathroom that prevents widespread conflict. Skeptical? Then look at the bathrooms at hospitals. Hospitals are terribly stressful environments in which highly egotistical professionals battle one another for control over their patients’ treatments and ultimately their lives. Serious work, but they are given exceptionally nice bathrooms. The standard issue hospital bathroom is now of the private room design with “hands-free” soap dispensers, paper towel dispensers, light switches, and trashcans. They are also exceptionally well-lit. Really, the only fault one can find in your standard hospital bathroom is a certain antiseptic quality that is entirely understandable given a hospital’s mission.

Still skeptical? Go to the bathrooms in a corporate law firm. Corporate law is again a terrifically stressful job in which even a little mistake could cost millions of dollars. Undeniably overwhelming but they have truly spectacular bathrooms. Corporate law bathrooms lack the scrupulous attention to cleanliness that characterizes hospital bathrooms, but they make up for it with a host of little luxuries. Automatic shoe shining machines, little bottles of cologne, and those really nice paper towels that almost feel like cloth help attorneys continue to protect The Man’s money without feeling too stressed out.

I consider myself somewhat of an expert in bathrooms because I have been exposed to so many terrible examples of toilets and have seen the havoc they wreck upon the social fabric of the organizations involved. Take, for example, the bathrooms at Comiskey park. When they redesigned Comiskey park they converted to the dual-trough system of restroom design. For the unfamiliar, this design involves one giant urine trough and another circular cleaning trough that shoots water out of a pipe in the center of the structure. As you can imagine, this is a terribly uninviting bathroom design. Foreigners can’t even quite figure out how the hell to use the various apparatuses (I have personally seen a distinguished looking Asian man take a leak in the sink). Since the Comiskey redesign the White Sox attendance is down precipitously and the team hasn’t won jack shit. Coincidence? I think not.

An even clearer example of bathroom-related functional impairment can be provided by my former fraternity. My fraternity had what was certainly the single worst bathroom in North America. Every 20th or 30th time it was used the urinal in this bathroom would get stuck in super-flush mode and spew water all over the bathroom floor. In addition, one of the stalls was referred to as the “rainy stall” because another toilet on the floor above constantly leaked what we hoped was clean water onto the toilet below. Furthermore, ours was the only bathroom in the world that ran out of cold water. After about 3 seconds of using any of the fixtures the water temperature would go from tepid to boiling regardless of whether you had the hot or cold water running. This rendered the shower unusable for obvious reasons. These deficiencies were only the consistent problems. There were other, more episodic, issues. Like the roof falling down (this was probably somewhat related to rainy stall). I once had to rescue our chapter president and my roommate when a large piece of rotten drywall fell from the ceiling and trapped them in the toilet. Then there was the constantly flushing toilet. This doesn’t sound that bad until you realize we had one of those industrial tankless toilets that shot a highly pressurized stream of water in the bowl in order to flush. The sound was really annoyingly loud, and our water bill for the month in question rose by 1200%.

As you might surmise, our dilapidated bathroom began to affect our overall effectiveness as an organization. We became crankier and were unwilling to kiss a sufficient amount of national ass to stay on their good side. Eventually, we were reorganized (for a particularly funny reason that I will detail in a later entry). All this occurred because we didn’t care to linger in our bathroom for an appropriate amount of time.

The High Water Mark Continued

2005-03-09T21:13:00.000-08:00

Dammit people.

I can’t actually be too lazy to keep up with the blog I started because I was too lazy to do my dissertation. Though a day late, the story continues now.

So after waking and introducing ourselves again to the person who urinated on our floor, we again divided into two groups to pursue entertainment during the daylight hours. One group (we’ll call them Team Bankruptcy) immediately left with Mr. Tilty for the tables. At this point our unofficial tally put Mr. Tilty approximately $1000 in the hole which was approximately $900 more than he could afford to lose and $1000 more than his fiancé would condone. A large part of his problem on this particular trip was the composition of Team Bankruptcy. His gambling friends were all people he met in high school while attending a tremendously expensive private school that catered to children of the exceptionally wealthy and uninvolved. This meant they were both rich and fucked up. The combination lent itself to some truly stupendously high-stakes gambling that made Mr. Tilty’s paltry $1000 seem like chicken shit. It is a well-known phenomenon in psychology. Outrageous behavior can seem normal provided that the social context is even more outrageous. This dynamic underlies binge drinking in college, the prices of souvenirs in tourist areas, and all of the Girls Gone Wild videos. Unfortunately for Mr. Tilty, this dynamic also seemed destined to underlie the cancellation of his honeymoon and his castration at the hands of an infuriated fiancé.

The other group of which I was a part (let’s call them Team Dumbass) retired to the pool to plot our next move. Ultimately we decided upon a stroll up the strip followed by the buffet at the Aladdin and a nightcap of a little bit of Studio 54. Our plan was to attempt to steal Mr. Tilty from Team Bankruptcy before going to the club and save him from a repeat of the previous night’s financial disaster. Every step of this plan was an unmitigated disaster. While walking down the strip we got distracted by a stage show at the Tropicana. This led to 2 hours of sketchy gambling. Our trip to the Aladdin was equally dumb. Most of the people in Team Dumbass were from San Francisco. Being young and from San Francisco they are incapable of undertaking any activity without some form of weed. Luckily for them, three separate member of the San Francisco crew brought some form of semi-legal ganja from the stoner motherland. After smoking some sort of bizarre weed/hash/tobacco combo they accompanied the rest of the team to the buffet and promptly ate enough food to render them comatose for the rest of the night.

However, one of the San Francisco members of Team Dumbass did not go gently into that good night. Though a friend who happened to be a chemistry Ph.D. student at a highly respected Bay area university he managed to acquire some very potent upper. In order to combat his fatigue, he took two.

The diminished Dumbasses then went to retrieve Mr. Tilty and stand in line at Studio 54. Unfortunately when we found Mr. Tilty he was wearing tennis shoes. Knowing this would not fly in a club as pretentious as Studio 54, we asked Mr. Tilty what he would like to do. Not surprisingly, he told us that he wanted to gamble.

This could not be allowed to occur. We had to come up with some sort of alternate plan fast. Luckily one of the Dumbasses who was not stoned came up with the idea of a strip club. As we were participating in a bachelor party, this seemed an entirely appropriate way to save what little remained in Mr. Tilty’s savings account. Of course, we couldn’t tell Mr. Tilty that we were going to a strip club; then he would have refused and insisted upon persisting in pursuing his lemming-like path of self-destruction. So we did what any honorable group of friends would do … we lied and told him the strip club was a casino.

At the strip club everything just got dumber. The group ordered bottle service which means you are given mixers and a bottle of liquor for the paltry sum of several hundred dollars. More important than the money, however, was the unfortunate fact that a group of sleep-deprived people who had been drinking fairly continuously for 24 hours now had an entire bottle of Jack Daniels to finish. While this was bad news for all of us, it was particularly bad news for our new speedy friend. We discovered something very important that day, passing out can be highly beneficial. Our speedy friend just kept getting more and more drunk but would not pass out because of the uppers he had taken. Eventually his behavior became too bizarre to continue in the strip club. He kept trying to steal this one dancer’s purse. Then he started pointing at other customers for no particular reason. Then he menaced another dancer with an ice scoop. Clearly he had to go.

And go we did … BACK TO THE CASINO. Oh no, we certainly couldn’t go back to sleep in the room. There was drunken, speedy gambling to be had. First Mr. Speedy sits at a pai gow poker table and tries to play blackjack. This doesn’t work and the dealer sends him to the BJ table. Now things get really weird. He sits down at the blackjack table muttering gibberish and immediately is on fire. He wins his first 5 hands all while being largely unable to count. It turns out conscious mediation of behavior deleteriously affects Mr. Speedy’s blackjack skill. He was amazing. At the end of the night he managed to go up $300 (and he started down $200).

The rest of the trip proceeded without incident and we were able to make our escape before the Flamingo was able to figure out all of the ways we had defiled their hotel.

So what does this have to do with a friend from high school’s website? I was looking on his blog the other day and encountered an entry talking about buying a house. This made me realize how much time has passed since I was actually a kid and how impossibly adult my world and the world of my contemporaries has become. I found it difficult to think of houses and marriages and children connected to the same group of people whom I last remember wearing fuzzy hats and terrifically unattractive plaid band uniforms. It highlighted for me how long it has been since I was that kid with a stupid hat and my own piece of tartan plaid. It was then I finally understood what bothered me about the Vegas trip: I wasn’t the subject of any of the stories. In the past I would have been. More accurately, in my youth I would have been.

If it has not already left entirely, it must be said that my youth is leaving me. I can pierce my tongue (I have) or get arrested at a protest (I might) and it will not change the incontrovertible fact that I am now and will forever be more of an adult than a child. I wasn’t part of the Vegas stories because I couldn’t be; there were wives and careers and dependent dogs at home to consider. The responsibility that comes with maturity killed the insouciance of youth forever, and I mourn its loss. I am reminded of a quote from Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. While writing about the decline of the ideals of the 60s, Thompson remarks that as he looks west out of Vegas he can just make out the high water mark where the wave of idealism broke and receded back into the sea. The high water mark I saw is far less profound yet equally powerful to me. As I looked out over the fountains at the Bellagio standing amongst a dozen drunken men in my suite at the Flamingo I saw the receding wave of my youth rushing ever faster back towards a sea of inevitable death

The High Water Mark

2005-03-07T11:34:00.000-08:00

Those of you who have faithfully read my blog realize that I have yet to describe my recent, extra stupid, trip to Las Vegas. Until today I didn’t really understand why I found it so hard to chronicle. It was, after all, a trip very similar to a dozen trips I have taken before. We showed up, raged for 48 hours, and then departed. It wasn’t until I read another blog maintained by a contemporary of mine from high school that I came upon the reason for my reticence; this trip was different from those preceding it in a very important way. But first, the trip …

The excuse we had all marshaled to justify our trip to Vegas was the bachelor party of a college friend. I characterize this as an excuse since most of the people who attended the party were not actually invited to the wedding and hadn’t kept in close contact with the groom over the preceding 3 and ½ years. The real reason we convened in the great state of Nevada was a reunion of sorts. While it was certainly true that we intended to show our friend an appropriately good time before he married, we also wanted to see each other in some sort of neutral state from which we could be banished with few consequences in our future lives. (You may think I am exaggerating, but two of my college friends are no longer allowed to enter Canada. There was some unpleasantness at a casino in Windsor. They can never return.)

The plan was standard guerilla tourism. Descend en masse, engage in senseless acts of excess and absurdity, and leave before the authorities could fully appreciate the bizarre and depraved character of that which befell their city. Our home base for this operation was a suite at the Flamingo hotel. This room was clearly intended for two well-heeled Vegas travelers -- the sort who booked a suite because they enjoyed having a living area in their room to facilitate afternoon tea. The Flamingo’s first indication that our group had little in common with the elderly couple they hoped would be visiting came at check-in. We asked for four keys. The room sleeps two. The front desk noted this discrepancy and asked, “what exactly is going on here?” Now the really amusing part of this exchange isn’t that we were questioned within FIVE MINUTES OF OUR ARRIVAL regarding our sketchiness; it isn’t that the Flamingo was objecting to four people in their two person room when we would eventually have 14 staying there; the truly hilarious part of this exchange was that the person checking in had absolutely no idea what the front desk was referring to with their question. It didn’t even occur to us that it would be odd to ask for four keys when two people were checking in. On our sketch-dar (our inner sense of things that might be considered sketchy) this did not even register.

Most of Friday night was consumed with people arriving, meeting up with the others, and watching the groom lose tremendous amounts of money. This was to be expected because the groom is a terrible, yet enthusiastic gambler. He managed to max out his daily ATM withdrawals within an hour of his arrival and was talking about a “cash advance” by 10 PM on the first day.

It should be said that we did not decide the location of the bachelor party. The groom is our friend after all, and we wouldn’t have been able to live with ourselves if we had been responsible for his near certain financial demise. The groom insisted upon going to Vegas, and all we could do was try to limit his losses by distracting him with women and booze. We largely failed. At about 2 AM I ended up leaving the groom (let’s call him Mr. Tilty) and going with a group of more modest, yet skillful, gamblers to the Boardwalk casino so that we could be insulted by the surliest dealers on the strip. After three hours of abuse, a heated disagreement about addition with the dealer (2, 8, 4, 1, and 6 equals 21 not 22) , and a near fight with some jack-off from LA we left Boardwalk to find Mr. Tilty and a casino that was still willing to serve us drinks. And find Mr. Tilty we did. He was incoherently drunk at a $25 minimum bet table in the MGM Grand. In the 2 minutes it took us to walk to his table after we noticed him he lost $150. Mr. Tilty is not a rich man; he is a graduate student. There is no reason for Mr. Tilty to play at a $25 minimum bet table under any circumstances much less when he is trashed. We extracted him from the table and were treated to 15 minutes of pure gibberish about how he hadn’t done well at the tables. No shit Mr. Tilty! We just saw you hit an 18. There was some disturbing talk of a savings account and then we thought he said he was going to bed.

We decided to follow Mr. Tilty to “bed” a few hours later. We discovered upon entry into the room that nothing resembling a bed was available. Somehow in the course of the evening 14 people showed up in the room. One of these people (a friend of a friend’s brother) passed out several hours before the only person in the group who knew who he was went back to the room. He showed up at the Flamingo wearing a filthy, half tucked dress shirt, sneakers that had somehow shed their laces during the evening’s festivities, and a vacant drunken expresses. He mumbled something about a bachelor party and the people in the room considered this sufficient bona fides to let him sleep on a chair. Later that morning he stood up in the middle of the room and urinated on the floor because he mistakenly believed someone was in the bathroom. All in all, he made quite a first impression.

The four of us that arrived to the room last made a valiant effort to sleep in the hallway leading to the bathroom, but this effort was met with little success. I gave up at 9:30 AM when another person arrived.

I would like to continue this chronicle, but suddenly there are too many authority figures around my office. I guess I better look as though I am doing something productive for awhile. This story will continue tomorrow.

Developments on the Song Futures Market

2005-03-04T14:06:00.000-08:00

I know I promised to detail my recent trip to Vegas, but today I have been distracted by another fantastically useless idea: a song futures market. I came upon this when listening to the radio the other day. While executing a particularly advanced piece of driving Kung Fu the radio station began to play Eve 6’s “Promise.” Generally speaking, I hate Eve 6 and would have immediately changed the station, but at the time I was wedged between a Lincoln Navigator and a garbage truck and I thought it prudent to attend to details other than music. By the time I freed myself it had occurred to me that “Promise” actually isn’t a terrible song. I remembered it as being yet another piece of post-grange alternative tripe in the late 90’s but by 2005 its chorus seemed kinda catchy and lyrics like “everybody wants a promise and a smile” didn’t annoy me as much as they used to. It was clear; the entertainment value of this song appreciated dramatically since its debut. Should it continue to make steady gains over the next few years it could become a song I would actually seek out.

As I thought more about this issue, I realized that most songs become more or less cool as time goes on. There needs to be some sort of secondary market to protect individuals from fluctuations in the coolness of their music. Too many otherwise cool individuals find themselves humiliated by their Motley Crue past or ill-advised opinions like “Nirvana really isn’t that musically talented.” One should be able to invest part of one’s “cool” social capital in a music options market. For a nominal decrease in one’s popularity individuals should be able to obtain the option to trade in their musical likes or dislikes at some sort of optimum value should the music appreciate or depreciate much faster than originally expected.

Here’s how it would work. My wife loved New Kids on the Block. Now she has to hide this fact for fear she will be ostracized by people who had cooler historical musical taste. If she had purchased a “sell” option on her NKOTB fandom it would have slightly reduced the amount of coolness she could have derived from being a fan in 1992, but in exchange she could now simply produce the option and let those around her know that it had been exercised in 1997 resulting in a net loss of only a few cool points by 2005.

Let’s look at the other scenario. Say you just couldn’t let go of hair bands in the early 90’s. When confronted with Jane’s Addiction you said something like, “Tesla could kick their ass any day of the week.” In 2005 this unwise opinion would likely end up a centerpiece of ridicule. However, if you had purchased a Buy option on Jane’s Addiction you could produce it and let others know you had exercised your rights to become a Jane’s Addiction fan at 1994 coolness levels upon the release of Tesla’s final album. The cool points lost would be minimal.

Since this is just too good/stupid of an idea for me to stop talking about it, here are some of my insider tips for the song futures market.

OutKast – Rose – I’m sorry. The writing is on the wall with this one. It sucks (or should I say it smells like poo poo poo). The only reason we all thought this was cool was because of the transitive property of cool. The people in OutKast are cool. The people in OutKast are responsible for this song. Ergo, this song is cool. Except it isn’t. No song that uses “poo-poo” as a euphemism for excrement can be. Get a sell option.

Counting Crows – The entire collection – I think I speak for everybody when I say that counting crows have been a bit of a disappointment recently. There first album was so good, and then … Shrek happened. However, even a lot of their latter songs possess a kind of haunting quality that hints at some songwriting skill. Counting Crows has the possibility of coming out with a truly great album one of these days. Dis them with caution and make sure you have a Buy option.

Franz Ferdinand – Take Me Out – This is a difficult one. Though the song is catchy, it really isn’t that interesting once you’ve heard it a thousand times. On the other hand, it is just creative enough to possibly belie a talented group of musicians who could continue to produce catchy songs for a long time. Hedge your bets either way on this one. If you are a fan, get a sell option; if you are a detractor, get a buy.

Hillary Duff/Lindsey Lohan/Jo Jo – Everything – You had better have a sell option or avoid these altogether. Being a fan of “teen pop sensations” is kinda like buying Argentinean junk bonds. Probably it’s a bad idea, but if it works out you will make a killing because nobody else is willing to take the risk.

Death Cab for Cutie – Transatlanticism – Awesome CD, but no one knows about it. Being a fan could be highly rewarding if anyone ever finds out that they exist, but otherwise your fandom will be greeted with an increasing number of blank stares from people who are cooler than you. Get a Sell option and curse the capricious nature of modern cool capitalism.

Please add to this list through the comments section. Remember, five minutes of advice could save you or someone you know from a lifetime of ridicule.

Chapter 3: The reckoning.

2005-03-01T16:25:00.000-08:00

Howdy everyone,

I actually have a plethora of things that I could write about today. As I mentioned in the pathetically short post on Friday, someone in authority mistook me for a successful graduate student and gave me an internship. As long as they don’t discover their mistake before I can write an official letter of acceptance, they’ll be stuck with me. In addition I just arrived back from 52 waking hours in Las Vegas (5 sleeping) and there is much general stupidity to report. But before I get to all of this, I believe we have some unfinished business: the final chapter of Wash U guy.

Following my last encounter with Wash U guy I took a hiatus from psychoactive substances for about a year. I was applying to graduate school and trying to put together an EEG experiment so I really did not have and entire weekend I could sacrifice. Now I know some of you are saying that tripping does not take an entire weekend. It is true, the act of tripping does not. However, all of the associated waiting for dealers, organizing people, finally going to sleep, and then recovering from the after effects seemed to take me at least two days to accomplish. Thus, even if I were to indulge on a Friday night I would not expect to be able to do something else until Sunday afternoon. Given my personality at this stage in my life, two days represented an unacceptable level of commitment (I’ve held college majors for less time).

During this year-long period of abstinence, the legend of Wash U guy had made its way into our house mythology. We had noted that Wash U guy only two awkward appearances involved people at their most f’ed up and began to joke about his return. Whenever someone was tripping, intoxicated to the level of incoherence, or otherwise impaired we would joke that he was going to knock at the door.

I think you can see where this is going.

So, finally after I had finished my honors thesis, gotten into graduate school, and generally put my sh*t in order, I finally had some time to be stupid with my friends. Someone had some mushrooms again and asked if I wanted some. I said that I did, began to trip, and heard the front door open.

As was typical, someone shouted out, “oh F*ck, its Wash U guy.” We all laughed, and then we saw him in the bedroom door.

“Hey guys, I heard about your house getting reorganized. Can I have a beer?”

Frankly, I remember little of what happened then. I distinctly remember a very theatrical “NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!” echoing through my head, but I am not sure whether I screamed this, someone else bellowed it, or it was just part of a silent internal dialog. I know I offered to get one of my friends a drink and then hid in another bedroom for the remainder of his visit. I also know that was the last time I did any sort of psychedelic substances while an undergraduate. Wash U guy should have his own anti-drug commercial. Screw “this is your brain on drugs,” show kids their bedroom on Wash U guy and they’ll never touch drugs again.

Some of you are undoubtedly thinking that this story is bullshit. I don’t blame you. I would too. Let’s look at the statistics. First of all, we will ignore the time he found us tripping on dillo day. DD is a very popular time to both visit my college and to take drugs. Lets only consider the two other encounters since they were more truly random. There were approximately 50 weeks in between the two tripping incidents. Of course many of those would have been dumb weekends to trip or visit a college (i.e. summer, Christmas, finals week, etc.). Let’s be conservative and say that only 20 weekends were appropriate travel times/tripping weekends. This means that there are (20*19)/2 possible weekend pairs. According to my calculations, the probability of us randomly selecting the same two weekend is about 0.66%. That said, I assure you that Wash U guy is real. I couldn’t make this shit up.

PS -- In honor of Wash U guy, I wrote a song.

(to the tune of “Santa Clause is Coming to Town)

Oh, you better not trip
And don’t get high
Don’t candy flip, I’ll tell you why
Wash U guy is coming to town

He’ll show up uninvited
And act strange around your friends
He’ll fuck with all your mushroom vibes
And his visits never seem to end.

Oh, don’t do drugs
Say no to pot
Missouri’s too close, you might get caught
By Wash U guy who’s coming to town.

Woo HOO!

2005-02-25T10:12:00.000-08:00

I found out this morning that someone somewhere wants me as an intern. I'll know more by Monday, but for now it is off to Vegas.

Chapter 2: The Wash U Guy Strikes Back

2005-02-24T16:08:00.000-08:00

Chapter 2

Two months after my initial encounter with Wash U guy I had finished the major project in one of my classes and was looking for a way to celebrate. A friend had a bunch of psychedelic mushrooms and offered to share. I had lived a relatively monastic life since the debauchery that was Dillo Day, so I agreed. The set-up was similar to Dillo Day. This time there were about 6 of us (with 3 overlapping members from DD) and we decided to confine our wanderings to the house. After a few hours everyone was well on their way to oblivion, and we heard a knock at the door. When we opened it we saw Wash U guy. I immediately thought I was having some sort of bad trip. It was simply impossible for Wash U guy to be there again while I was tripping. We had not seen him since Dillo Day and it was too big of a coincidence for him to again arrive under the EXACT SAME SET OF CIRCUMSTANCES.

He walked in and asked, “Hey guys. What are you up to? Listening to some music?”

As I sit here a few years later and ston- cold sober I still don’t exactly know how to answer that question. There was music playing so it was obvious that we were listening to music. Was he looking for a yes? For more information? Lest you have any doubts, this was an actual question. It was not some sort of idiosyncratic greeting that did not demand a response. Both the inflection used and the long pause at the end indicated that this was a genuine inquiry regarding what appeared to be an obvious state of affairs.

We all looked at one another trying to figure out who was coherent enough to understand/respond to this request. The answer, frankly, was no one. I think Wash U guy gave up on an answer after awhile and sat down.

I was in no mood to pretend to be normal again and was about to let Wash U guy know about the mushrooms when another guy walked in. A freshman had come over from one of the dorms to see what was going on at the house. The freshman was a little excitable when it came to things that were illegal and I knew that now, for better or worse, I was stuck trying to behave as if I had not just sucked down a sizable quantity of neurotoxic mushrooms. The situation deteriorated rapidly.

Another person in the room somehow started to believe that the freshman was sent by “the authorities” as some sort of spy. Spy for whom or what purpose we were never able to ascertain. All we could really get out the paranoid mushroom eater was that he was certain there was a turncoat in our midst and the infiltrator had to be dealt with immediately. After several minutes of intense whispering in which we tried to convince our now delusional friend that no “authorities” had any interest in us, he decided to make his accusations public. He violently rose to his full height, pointed his finger at the freshman, and bellowed in his loudest theater-major voice, “J‘ ACCUSE!”

The freshman had no response for this because 1) he didn’t speak French and was not familiar with Les Misarable or 2) it was insane. All in all, I thought the freshman handled himself very well. It is not easy to know how to respond to a de-contextualized accusation made in a foreign language. Given no further information, he decided to laugh politely in the hope that something less awkward would follow. Sadly, this was not the case.

“Should you be writing this down for your report?” the asked the paranoid theater major menacingly.

Again denied sufficient information to base a reasonable response, the freshman joked, “yeah, I am helping President B---- put you guys on double secret probation.”

Sarcasm was unfortunately beyond the paranoid theater major’s capacities at this point. He took this as confirmation of his worst fears and ran out of the room. Now often when one says that someone has run out of a room, they mean that the person left the room quickly. Not in this instance. When I say the paranoid theater major ran out of the room, I mean he tried to sprint through the coffee table, fell, picked himself up, and then sprinted out of the house running into several walls along the way. Furthermore, I am not really sure why he ran. Perhaps he thought the freshman had been granted police powers and was about to make an arrest.

The freshman was understandably confused, but seemed to let the issue go when another couple of people came into the room to ask if he wanted to join them at the campus bar. I later found out that one of my friends who was also in the room anticipated that no good could come out of this collection of people at this exact time, and dispatched the other people with the bar invitation in an attempt to avoid any unpleasantness. He failed.

Throughout all of this Wash U guy remained silent. Once the freshman left he said, “Sorry I missed your party last time. My friends were pretty tired.” No mention was made of the previous 20 minutes of insanity. It was like he hadn’t noticed. He then stayed in the room with the five remaining mushroom-intoxicated individuals for another hour. I don’t know exactly what he did the entire time because eventually I decided to ignore him. After an hour we decided to walk around campus, and Wash U guy said that he was going to head back to his friends. He said that he’d stop by again, but we were sure he was lying. A reasonable person would have concluded that our house was inhabited by a collegiate version of the Manson family, and it was only a matter of time before we lost our tenuous contact with reality for good. We assumed the only reason he didn’t run out of our house earlier was fear that he might be attacked by the stark-raving mad, musical theater fan he knew was prowling about. As you might imagine, we were wrong again. Wash U guy was not a reasonable person.

Stay tuned for Chapter 3: the return of Wash U guy. Of if you hate this series, don’t worry; there is only one more left.

Wash U Chapter 1

2005-02-22T17:46:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone,

While at a small soiree thrown in honor of one of my friend’s return to the United States an odd thing happened. An older man arrived at our party and asked to see one of the guests. Now this would not be terribly strange had this been a larger gathering, but in a small group of a dozen people who know one another very well, it was kind of weird. One of my fiends asked, “so … how do you know E----?” He was rewarded with awkward silence. My friend didn’t seem to know how to respond to the silence, so he let him in. This just proves that an utter lack of social skills can be handy. Next time someone asks you a question you’d rather not answer, just stare at them. They’ll be too uncomfortable to be insistent.

Eventually it was determined that the older man in question did know our friend and was not some sort of poorly socialized collection agent or a bizarrely well-informed mass-murderer. The whole scenario brought forth memories of another odd fellow from a long time ago: Wash U guy. In order to preserve the strange yet true tale of Wash U guy, I’ve decide to record it as a series of blog entries. Enjoy.

(Fair warning, this is kind of a long story. I suggest you go to the bathroom now if necessary)

We first met Wash U guy during the last week of Winter quarter during my Junior year of college. The college I attended was a serious place full of serious students who did everything very seriously. While there were outposts of slackers (and I was an occasional member of such an outpost), most took college very, very seriously. All of this seriousness led to periodic explosions of drunken, self-abandoned fun. The pressure was simply too much; release had to be found. Often you’d find a very serious chemistry student who had finished her organic chemistry test at noon was blind drunk, half-naked and screaming along to Dexie’s Midnight Raiders by five PM. Generally these orgies of self-destruction were solo affairs and relatively disconnected to the surrounding college community … except for one day of the year. On one day all of the undergraduates coordinated their emotional collapses so that they would happen at once (along with a barbeque). This periodic destruction of all that was scholastic and serious took place on the Saturday before Winter reading week and was called Dillo Day.

A senior told me on my first Dillo Day that it was the one day a year when “those who don’t drink get drunk, those who don’t take drugs get high, and those who get high get really high.” In keeping with these instructions, I had planned a particularly brutal regimen for myself. I planned to begin the day at the afore mention outpost of slackerdom with the traditional DD breakfast of eggs and beer. Following such sustenance two friends and I had planned to eat a hit of acid along with a particularly good dose of E. While I am not typically such a stoned freak, it is easy to get carried away on a special occasion.

By 2 PM I was blissfully aware that nothing I was thinking made even a little bit of sense. Despite this inner maelstrom of tangential and illogical thinking my conversation skills remained somewhat coherent, and I found I could participate in a dialog for a couple of minutes without saying something incomprehensibly weird. Most importantly, I was relatively certain I would remember all that occurred. It turns out I was largely correct in this assumption (though details are a bit fuzzy).

By this point in the afternoon most of the drunk and merely high people had passed out for a nap leaving only those who were tripping awake. We had assembled in one room and were entertaining one another with our stupidity. It is into this morass of psychedelic nonsense that Wash U guy made his first appearance.

Apparently we left the front door open and Wash U guy decided it would be perfectly appropriate to drop in and wander around until he found someone awake. Eventually he found his way to our room and introduced himself. He said his name, which we promptly forgot, and explained something about visiting friends at our college from Wash U. He then unsuccessfully attempted to have conversations with us that went something like this.

Wash U: So, what year are you in school?
Tripping person: Are you talking to me or him?
Wash U: Him?
Tripping person: sorry, that is what I thought.
Wash: What???
Tripping person: (10 seconds of silence)
Tripping person: Did you say something?

Another conversation went something like this.

Wash U: Did you check out the bands by the lake yet?
Tripping person: Oh no, there isn’t going to be a band at the party.
Another TP: No he is talking about the lake concerts.
Tripping person: No the party is going to be here, not at the lake. The administration won’t let us on the lake because it is made of water and we would drown.
Room: general laughter
Tripping person: no, think about it!

In addition to our sparkling small talk abilities, we looked very, very strange. One group of women brought over a bunch of colored candles and had been playing with them earlier in the day. Unfortunately the dye in these candles proved to be stubborn, so all of their exposed skin was rainbow colored. I, on the other hand, had found a supply of glitter. Liking the effect of the bouncing rays of light, I had covered my face in it. I had also found a cowboy hat somewhere and claimed it as my own. Altogether, I must have resembled the world’s ugliest showgirl (or a transvestite in serious need of a make-over). Another person was sitting on his back playing with his fingers because they looked, “really cool on the ceiling.” After sitting among what must have seemed to be a gathering of brain-damaged, postmodern circus clowns for indeterminable length of time, Wash U guy left saying he would attend our party later that night. He didn’t, and we thought he had frightened the poor man out of our lives forever. We were terribly wrong.

The Good Dr. is Dead

2005-02-21T11:29:00.000-08:00

Hi all,

Noticing that my blog had become a little heavy in the past few entries, I had resolved to write about a light, funny topic today. My frantic attempts to distract myself from the impending match day have resulted in some really impressive depravity, but an account of my accelerating moral decline will have to wait for another day. Today I heard that Hunter S. Thompson has killed himself.

I assume most are familiar with Hunter S. Thompson, but for those who are not … imagine this blog if the topics were more interesting and written with more skill. Seriously, a great deal of the way I write and the way I think is a pseudo-conscious imitation of Thopmson. He possessed a cynicism that managed to be endearing rather than biting, and he wrote with unparalleled wit. His were the books that you avoided reading in public for fear of collapsing into fits of uncontrollable laughter (unless you didn’t want to share a seat while riding public transportation, then HST was the way to go).

Though I admire his writing, there is perhaps a more important aspect to Hunter S. Thompson that I will mourn. Thompson was unabashedly weird. He was attracted to strange people and was part of strange things. He seemed to hate convention as much as he was hated by the conventional. (I believe it was Nixon who once called him representative of the evil, violent side of America.) I can’t help but feel that people would be happier, healthier, and a hell of a lot more free if we all followed Thompson’s example and appreciated oddity rather than condemning it. Conformists are boring; the world needs more freaks.

I don’t understand why Thompson killed himself, and frankly I don’t want to consider the implications of that action right now. Instead I will concentrate upon finding some small way to celebrate what Thompson’s writings brought to my life. If any of you would like to join me, here are the ideas I’ve come up with so far.

1. Become a goth for a day. So you work in an investment bank; who cares? If a black business suit is good, then black fingernails must be even better. (Alternatively, if you are a goth, dress like a young Republican for a day. Nothing is more disconcerting than seeing extensive body modifications on some guy wearing a polo shirt.)

2. Take some mescaline and harangue a local politician about something/anything/nothing. It probably doesn’t matter what you previously planned to say once you’ve taken the mescaline; it’s all bound to come out as some anger gibberish tirade anyway.

3. Take a few of your most depraved friends, a supply of your favorite psychoactive substances, big sunglasses, and a fedora to one of those large gatherings of the self-righteous in which a thin veneer of creepy wholesomeness covers a core of judgment and aggression (for example, a Promise Keepers rally). Participate enthusiastically.

Freak Power!

PS - I wanted to thank the person who lent me the book. It looks very good, and I am planning to begin to read it today instead of working.

See no evil, hear no evil, or at least pay no attention to evil

2005-02-18T12:33:00.000-08:00

So the past two weeks have been a bit stressful. I recently completed my interviews for my clinical internship and now have to wait for the results. Because the people who run such things are all deranged psychopaths who find torturing graduate students more fulfilling than beating puppies, the national matching service makes you wait three weeks after you submit your ranking list to tell you where and if you matched. Mind you, the match requires nothing more than the application of a very simple algorithm to a relatively small group of lists. I am sure that given the proper software the average desktop computer can perform this task in under a minute. We wait 30,240 minutes. Then all of the results are delivered at once to all of the clinical psychology graduate students in the US and Canada. This allows everyone to call all of their classmates and congratulate one another on their success or find out how many Flinstones Vitamins are required for a lethal dose.

A wise person takes opportunities such as this one to learn a little something about themselves. You can use the experience to help you really examine your priorities, your way of dealing with stress, and the all-to-human tendency to allow anxiety over that which you cannot control to compromise full and total self-actualization.

Or you can go to Vegas.

So I am leaving for Vegas the day I find out if I’m getting called up to the majors (so to speak) largely so that I can distract myself if the news is bad. I have been perusing the distraction coping strategy now for about a week and a half, but I am starting to run out of bars, plays, and concerts. No, Chicago simply is not distracting enough; only Vegas has enough neon, vice, and excess to keep me from dwelling upon the prospect of another pointless year of research. Additionally, one of my friends from college will be having a bachelor’s party in Vegas that weekend … sort of … it’s complicated.

You see, the friend in question is marrying a lovely woman who hates all of his friends with every fiber of her being. I haven’t even met her and yet I am certain she hates me by association. Somehow, for reasons I cannot even pretend to understand, the job of purchasing the groom’s ticket to Vegas fell to his bride-to-be. Not surprisingly, she hasn’t found time to take care of this yet. But wait … this gets dumber.

We decided to just get one exceptionally large suite in Vegas rather than several smaller rooms. This suite was reserved under the Groom’s name and the name of his best man. The groom’s best man knows none of the other people invited to our little sock-hop and may or may not attend if the groom flakes out. This has the potential to leave 10 + of us wandering around the strip without a hotel room. But wait … there’s more.

Some of us are driving from San Francisco, some of us are flying from San Francisco, one is bussing out from Colorado, one is flying from Boston, and the rest of us are flying from Chicago. No more than three people are taking the same flight or car. So we are all planning to meet up once we get to Vegas (drum roll please) magically!

Yes, we have no plan regarding how we are going to meet up. Somehow a dozen or more people are supposed to somehow run into one another somewhere in Vegas. We know the name of the hotel, and presumably someone will be there sometime, but this is by no means assured.

Whatever happens, whatever stupidity ensues, at least I will have neither time nor energy to consider my potential professional failure. At the very least, my first trip to Vegas should be distracting. Of course, all entertaining stupidity will be dutifully recorded here.

Sell-out Doctor Network Strikes for the last time

2005-02-16T13:59:00.000-08:00

(Warning, very long rant ahead. You should get a snack)

Today you will find me a very angry graduate student. One of the many ways I have found to waste time over the previous three months has been obsessive monitoring of the Student Doctor Network’s clinical psychology forum. Today, I stop. I have finally had enough of listening to people whine about the field of psychology and pontificate on subjects with which they are unfamiliar. I’ve had enough of the whining about money, enough of the whining about social workers, and enough of the whining about affirmative action. Every time I browse the forums I just find myself pissed off that so many shallow, intellectually dishonest, uncaring people have mysteriously decided to employ themselves in a helping profession. What, there aren’t enough consulting jobs to go around?

I suppose I should probably give a little more background. The SDN forums are designed so that students will have the ability to share information about their professions directly with other students. Unfortunately, all of the threads in the clinical psychology forum turn into one of three debates.

1. Psychologists don’t make enough money.
2. Ph.D. psychologists are better (smarter, better trained, more physically fit, etc) than Psy.D. psychologists.
3. Affirmative action is “unfair” because “two wrongs don’t make a right” and “racism isn’t a factor in 21st century America.”

Bullshit! All of it! Yes, psychology is not the most lucrative field in the world but it is not as if psychologists have to moonlight at McDonald’s to pay their rent. It would be kind of funny if they did (Cust: Can I supersize that? Psych: it is not my place to tell you what you can and can’t do), but they don’t. If you wanted to make a ton of money, then pick a career that pays well. Go be an accountant or actuary or gagsta rapper but get the hell out of my profession. I don’t want to work with you if money is your primary concern. If the rewards of helping others and a modest though comfortable income are insufficient motivation for you, then psychology is not your field. Similarly, I am sick and tired of all of these disparaging comments directed toward PsyDs. Clinical psychology Ph.D. programs have lower acceptance rates than any programs other than veterinary schools. There just aren’t enough positions in Ph.D. programs to accommodate all of the talented and qualified people who may want to become psychologists. If we did not train psychologists in Psy.D. programs, then psychology would be even less available to those in need than it is right now. In a world in which 19 out of 20 people who are treated for depression do not receive the benefit of therapy this is unacceptable. And this isn’t just sectarian advocacy on my part; I am in a Ph.D. program.

(I told you that you should get a snack)

Finally we come to affirmative action and diversity within the field of psychology. The Sell-out Doctor Network is populated by a whole bunch of relatively privileged white kids who are constantly getting their panties in a wad over diversity initiatives within the field of psychology. I constantly have to trudge through the same tired old neo-con arguments talking about “reverse discrimination” and how diversity is “watering down” the field of psychology. They further assert that “the world has changed since LBJ instituted AA, and it is no longer needed.” To these arguments I present my well-reasoned and measured response … F*ck You!

First of all mental health is not like other industries. Unlike the CEOs of major corporations, mental health professionals directly serve the varied communities in which they practice. It is imperative that there is come congruence between the ethnic diversity one finds in population and the ethnic distribution of service providers. Underserved communities will continue to be underserved until such congruence is reached. Second, it pains my heart when supposed social scientists suggest that discrimination is no longer a factor in 21st century America. They should know better. Countless studies suggest that implicit racism is alive and well in America even among those who do not consciously profess racist beliefs. Finally, I find it incredibly offensive when people compare difficulty getting into the University of Michigan with true racism in all of its ugly fury. When I most recently read these posts I had just come from the Chicago indymedia website where I had been reading about Lt. John Burge of our fine Chicago Police Department. Good Lt. Burge is being investigated for torturing dozens of black men into confessing to crimes they did not commit. These men were held without being given a phone call or access to an attorney while he and his henchmen used tazers, batons, and loaded guns to convince suspects to cooperate. Most suspects seem to have been selected at random. Of course, no white victims have been identified. That is real racism; going to your safety school is not.

By the way, I don’t mean for this to offend anyone who disagrees with my position on AA. I have heard reasonable arguments against the program in other instances. The part of this that really offended me was the self-serving nature of the arguments as they were being made among the sell-out doctors. It is clear these individuals do not give a damn about racial equality if it means they will be less likely to get a big NIH grant after their post-doc.

In a way this is part of a larger sort of disillusionment. I went into psychology as a crusader. I wanted to join with other like-minded people and “rescue” the mentally ill (naïve, I know). Unfortunately I have discovered that psychology is just a job for many people. If that is all it is, then there are better jobs; it is too hard to help people for nothing more than money. In the end I am not sure whether I am more angry at all of the other psychologists for treating this profession with such nonchalance or scared that eventually I will too.

Things Tyler will eat and things that make him hide under the table.

2005-02-15T10:14:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone (or no one, it’s hard to tell),

Hope you had a happy Valentine’s Day. My wife and I engaged in our traditional Valentine’s Day activity of cooking a ridiculous number of dishes and eating them over the course of an evening. I really like to cook, so this gives me an opportunity to try complicated recipes I would not usually have time to make. I know, it must shock many of you that I can honestly say I “don’t have time” for anything. After all, I appear to have time to blog, surf the net, rant on message boards, and consider the social significance of reality TV (more on this in an upcoming entry) for several hours a day. These activities, however, can be accomplished at so-called work. I cannot do prep work for cooking while at work without attracting undue attention (or maybe I can; I’ve never really tried).

Anyway, I planned a relatively complicated five-course meal for my sweetie and me that was fairly typical of the meals I had prepared in previous years. However, unlike previous years, my wife and I had company for Valentine’s Day. We were joined by our one-year-old dog named Tyler.

One of our favorite activities we share with our dog is playing the “will he eat this” game. Tyler will eat nearly anything including paper, carrots, most relatively soft textiles, and all processed snack foods. My wife and I were both excited to play the “will he eat this” game on Valentine’s Day because we would have so many exotic foods to try. So here, without further ado, are the results from the most recent game of “will he eat this.”

Woody Asparagus Stems – You know that end part of asparagus that is really, really tough. Tyler does too … and Tyler likes it.

Good part of Asparagus – Oddly enough he prefers the woody stems.

Mesclun – Hell no. This was half-heartedly chewed for a few seconds and then discarded out of our sight. We think he does this so as to avoid offending me. Such a considerate dog.

Pate – In a heartbeat. It is kinda like expensive dog food after all. (And yes I know I am missing the accents in “pate.” Deal with it.)

Coffee Cremets – He tried this, but I don’t think his heart was into it. He would have rather had some more asparagus stem.

Steak Poivre – Yes and no. He certainly enjoyed the steak part of this, but the flambé freaked him out. It probably didn’t help that the smoke alarm also reacted badly to my flambé. He cowered under the table for a solid 30 minutes and was only willing to emerge when we placed a little bit of steak far enough away from the table that he couldn’t reach it with his paws. Considerate dog -- yes. Brave dog -- no.

If any of you have any requests for the next round of “will he eat this,” let me know. Any reasonable suggestions will be entertained.

2005-02-11T13:42:00.000-08:00

Howdy everyone,

Today I took a much needed break from not working and stayed home all day with my dog. I am happy to say that I accomplished nothing more profound than receiving a package over the previous five hours.

All right, I’m lying. I wish I had spent the day reveling in sloth. Instead, I ended up spending most of the day cleaning. I am terribly ambivalent regarding irresponsibility. Even when I try to act as if possessed by a devil-may-care insouciance I end up doing something lame like washing the floors.

My impulse toward industriousness arose when I realized that I only had three weeks left before my wife and I will have a houseguest. At that time a prospective student will stay with us while she is interviewed for admission into my graduate school program. Typically we don’t let people see our apartment until they know us fairly well. By that time they expect the insanity with which are confronted. My perfect plan of eating junk food and napping with my perpetually tired dog was compromised by the fear that a stranger might actually see what my apartment looks like most of the time. Oh no, this will not do. Clearly I had to take decisive action.

I know what you are thinking; three weeks is a long time away. You have plenty of time to erect your façade of organization and cleanliness next week. Not so. It will take us at least three weeks to figure out all of the things that orderly people do to their apartments to make them orderly. Neither my wife nor I have an innate sense of order. We just don’t understand how reasonable people organize things. For two months we stored our tea in the laundry room – not because we were looking for a better place or we were too lazy to move it – because it didn’t really strike us as a problem! In our previous apartment we stored our spare towels under the desk for similar reasons.

So I spent several hours pretending to be neat today. I did things that seemed neat to me like washing the baseboards and dusting CDs. And even though I spent a great deal of effort trying to hide my true nature, I am sure that somehow I have failed. I am sure that there is some monument to my disorganization sitting in the middle of my living room that will be immediately noticed by my unprepared guest. She’ll say something like, “what an unusual place to store fruit” and I will realize my deception has failed. I know this now, and yet I am compelled to spend the next few weeks battling the inevitable. I think there is a existential lesson in all of this, but I can’t dwell upon it right now. I’ve got to put all of the wine in the linen closet where it belongs.

BTW – I probably won’t be updating this before Monday, so happy Valentine’s Day.

TMI vs. TLI

2005-02-10T15:01:00.000-08:00

It seems to me that one of the primary social difficulties facing each one of us is the decision about how much personal information to share. More often than not, people share too much information. No stranger wants to hear about your tragic divorce when they ask, “how’s it going.” What they want to hear is “fine.” Truth be told, strangers don’t care how it is going for you; they just have to say something to fill that awkward silence before they ask you for something. Saying “fine” regardless of one’s true condition allows everyone to conduct their business as efficiently as possible so that they can devote their energies to more important tasks like daytime TV or heavy drinking.

However, occasionally you run into a situation in which someone has provided you with entirely too little information. For example, this week a good friend of mine received an e-mail from a mutual friend that went something like this.

Hi -----

I got your e-mail. I’ve been really busy lately with the police. Crashed the car.

Later,
-----
WTF! This is not an appropriate amount of information to convey. What does “busy with the police” mean? How did he crash the car in question? Are the two incidents related? We initially thought that we would receive more information when the mutual friend had more time to respond. After all, he was “busy with the police.” I don’t know from personal experience but I would have to assume being busy with the police is a little more difficult to remedy than being busy with decoupage or being busy because you are talking to your mother or something. You probably can’t tell the police that your cell phone is about to die so you have to make this conversation quick. We waited another three days and received … nothing! Apparently he thought that his e-mail comprehensively answered the question “what’s up?” I wholeheartedly disagreed and spent part of today finding his e-mail address so I could see if he needed any help. On the bright side, e-mailing my friend and then writing about e-mailing my friend has distracted me for about 45 minutes. I think I can now return to productivity for another few hours before calling it a day. Score.

So now I am wasting time for real

2005-02-09T09:22:00.000-08:00

It's on, baby! No more half-assed wasting time. Now I am going to waste some serious time. Entire hours will pour into this black hole of a blog instead of the mere minutes I was able to waste viewing other people's blogs. This is going to be sweet.

Why am I wasting time? It's simple; my dissertation sucks. You probably knew this already if you read the description of this site or my profile, but the point is worth reiterating. In fact, I'll say it a third time (in caps). MY DISSERTATION SUCKS.

To be fair, the problem is not so much that the topic of my dissertation sucks or that the information I will eventually convey in the paper is not of value; it is more of an issue of process. The process of completing my dissertation is boring in the extreme. If prisoners of war were compelled to work on my dissertation it would violate the standards of conduct endorsed by the Geneva Convention. If given a choice between working on my dissertation for a day or watching 24 uninterrupted hours of the PAX network any sane person would say "bring on Diagnosis Murder. Its party time!" Working on my dissertation is truly, terrifically boring.

All the while I have been struggling with this albatross around my neck I have had occasion to wonder, "how exactly did I get here?" In high school I was your typical good student who nursed a well-hidden rebellious streak. In college I was a typical rebel who wasn't quite rebellious enough to compromise his academic progress. Now both seem like fraudulent identities and yet I can't seem to come up with an alternative. Maybe this blog is intended to help with this search, or maybe it is here just to entertain others with the ridiculous crap that happens to my circle of eccentric friends and me. I guess I'll find out in time.
One other note ... some of you who may occasionally visit this blog (assuming anyone visits) know my name. Please don't use it in comments. I can't have my patients looking me up to see what I do in my spare time, and my name is unusual enough that google is remarkably effective at finding me. THX.