Sociopath test

There's an old riddle that goes something like this: A man goes to a friend's funeral, and meets an amazing beautiful woman and they really hit it off. He keeps thinking about this girl and regrets not having gotten her number or asking her out on a date. So he kills his friend's sister. Why would he do that?

The idea is that only a sociopath would know the answer to this riddle: if he kills his friend's sister, there will likely be the same guests as there was at the first funeral, and so the girl is likely to be there.

The problem I have with this so-called "test" is that if you come up with that as the answer, you're not a sociopath, you're an asshole. Not even a sociopath would consider this the most obvious answer. People suffering from sociopathy see no moral qualm with killing people, but that doesn't mean they'll consider it the answer to all of their problems. That's like saying anyone who is pro-choice thinks the solution to any problem is to kill babies. (Remarkably, there are some who actually think that's what pro-choice means.)

How about calling the friend's sister and saying "hey, there was a really interesting girl I met at Steve's funeral. I was wondering if you could help me get a hold of her"? Is killing her really a more practical option? I mean, even if you have absolutely no problem with killing people, even if you've done it before, it would be just plain stupid to kill the person who is most likely to be able to hook you up.

So I submit that if you can answer the above riddle, it proves that you aren't a sociopath: rather, you're a full-on psychotic killer who gets a great deal of enjoyment out of killing people, so much so that you will go out of your way to find any excuse to kill someone. A sociopath would never consider the idea of killing someone just to get a date, not because of their lack of social understanding, but because it's a stupid fucking idea.

They Don't Fall Far from the Tree

Just a couple days ago I found out that Britney Spears has a little sister, a cuter, happier Spears, and she even seems to be smarter. At first I thought, maybe this can show that people from the same upbringing can come out differently. Sure, Britney is complete trailer trash, but maybe lil' sis will come out differently. Then I thought, no, any product of Lynn Spears' will not come out well. Even if Jamie Spears did go the "clean girl" route and appear on a kids' show instead of making her name by prancing around in a slutty schoolgirl outfit, she'll end up with her equivalent of the shaved head crazy farm drunk binge.

Or so I thought.

Then, right on time, the train arrived. Jamie Spears, Britney's sixteen year-old sister, is pregnant from a boy that she met in church. Yep. Evidently the Spears have taken it upon themselves to repopulate Louisiana.

I'm in no way surprised, of course. You're talking about a woman (Lynn Spears) who thought to herself, "I'm just a useless trailer trash trophy wife, but I've got tits and a pretty smile! I'll just pop out a bunch of me's and push them into the spotlight before they're old enough to make rational decisions for themselves." I'm not suggesting she thought that whole thing, not because she isn't that fucked up, but because she's a fucking retard. But on the bright side, look at that girl. Most girls that hot are very protective of their bodies, but this girl is wet and ready. Hell, everyone else is exploiting her, why not?

Incidentally, Lynn Spears' book on parenting, to be released by the Christian press, has been cancelled. No, I'm not joking.

Oh, The Guilt

Once again, there are those who would try to coax me into feeling guilty for my situation. My ex-girlfriend was fired from her job a couple weeks ago–she has known about her impending doom for over six months, and had many chances to do something about it, but was so resigned to her "miserable luck" that she just let it happen. Another old friend was fired last week–his job started at 5 a.m. and rather than adjusting his schedule so that he would be going to bed at 7:00, he continued staying up until midnight as if life were just a continuation of being a teenager, and after one too many tardy appearances and (I presume) multiple warnings, they let him go.

The Gay Pirate continues to not have a job–though he has been offered various day jobs, he has rejected them on the basis that he's not a "office type person," but unlike many office-type-people who have outside passions and aspirations, his only real passions are easy women and massive amounts of alcohol. There are spangers with more impressive resumes than him. So, he continues living in complete deficit, accumulating a thousand dollars a month in debt, which he has been doing for years now. It's fascinating for me to experience, and if he weren't a raging alcoholic I'd still keep in touch, if only to see the actual process people go through on their path to being one of those dirty crazy old alcoholics on the street. They weren't always that way, you know. Once they were a twenty-something idiot who threw their lives away, too.

Me, I got up in my downtown apartment at 5:00, made myself an omelette, and sat out on my balcony and had breakfast while I read the newspaper. I went inside, put on a festive holiday tie, and made my way to my office in the financial district. Tomorrow night I'm going to set up my music studio and record a Christmas album. I'm going to give it out as a gift, but it's mostly just for fun. You know, because I have an artistic life outside work. There's a really cute girl I met from my apartment complex that invited me over, I may swing by and say hello before I take a flight to Washington and spend Christmas with my family, mostly composed of rocket scientists and professors (no, I'm not kidding). Then I'll get ready for my trip to Europe, tickets compliments of a family travel fund, and spend two weeks paid vacation with the most beautiful, wonderful woman God ever put on this Earth.

Ask me if I feel guilty that my life is so different from theirs. Go ahead. And let me tell you why not– they all had their chance. None of them are from broken homes. Boring homes, maybe, but of the four of us, only one of us had to sleep at his parents' store as a kid, so they could work through the night. Only one of us had to get his shoes extended with duct tape when he outgrew them. Only one of us has divorced parents. Only one of us has never gotten prematurely married, pregnant, or a VD (and only one of us has never cheated on any significant others). Only one of us gave up drugs when they got in the way of day-to-day activities. The only thing all four of us share is that we're all from white, middle class backgrounds, and have been given numerous opportunities to succeed. I may not have taken every opportunity, but at least I'm the one who took a few.

A fun practical joke

Do you know someone who is cheating on their wife or live-in girlfriend? Submit a change of address form redirecting all their mail to his girlfriend's house. Let him explain to his wife where all their mail is going. For extra fun, get into their computer and set all his wife's email on Auto-forward to go to his girlfriend's email. Knowing the kinds of women who fuck married men, she would be confused enough to reply to the emails. Let him explain to his wife why her mom keeps getting email replies from his toner saleswoman.

Fuck you

Isn't it a little ridiculous that people still try to stigmatize office workers? Maybe sixty years ago, during the era of the "Company Man," you could tell a lot about somebody by where they worked, but the offenders weren't alive then. No, these self-aggrandizing mavericks are from the slacker generation. You know, the ones who started Apple, Google, Starbucks, and Paypal. There's a quote from Mission Hill that I can't remember, but it goes something like this: "while I was busy living my generation's dream of fighting the system and living through art, everyone else in my generation was out getting jobs."

Here's my surprise for all these 30 year olds who think they're looking down at professionals: every teenager, from every generation, dreams that they will be the first person to earn a living just doing whatever they feel like. Most of those people, however, grow up. It's very romantic that you're living in a paint-covered studio apartment with furniture that you found in the basement. You are so kafkaesque. I was in college, too. Then I grew the fuck up. I thought to myself, hey, you know what would be fun? Being able to buy an iPod. Maybe I'll go out and get a real fucking job and I'll have the money to do that. You know what else would be neat? A trip to Europe. Too bad I can't afford plane tickets when I'm still making $7 an hour.

You know why people get paid to do things? Because someone out there wants what they're offering so bad, that they'll pay to get it. You have a debit card? Surprise, asshole– you're paying someone to be your banker. (And I know full well that you pay $200 a year in overdraft fees.) You want to buy a piece of shit car with the quarters you scrounged up? Good for you. The government knows you're an idiot, though, so just to be safe they're going to require you to spend hundreds of dollars a year on car insurance. That money will be given to–guess who–someone who works at the insurance company. And if you want to live somewhere other than your parents' house (actually, even then), you're either going to be paying a property management company to buy an aparment for you, or you're going to need a realtor to sell you a house. And guess fucking what.

When you were eighteen, there were all sorts of exciting words to describe people like you: cool, exciting, unpredictable, artsy, deep, ambitious. Unfortunately, after a few years of actually going to our college classes, learning a trade, and being successful, we became a bit smarter, and we learned that those very poetic-sounding ambitions of yours were missing a vital piece: common sense. I'm not saying there isn't a market for emo punk-rock guitarists who don't spend more than ten minutes writing their songs, I'm just saying that they have plenty of NOFX albums to go around in the four dollar bin at Borders. Yeah, you're still living the life of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll, except that it's all a farce, it's just bullshit posturing that would only fool you and a fifteen year old you (which, due to your complete lack of evolution, are the same thing).

But look at the bright side– while I'm working a "nine to fiver" that pays me triple your salary, with vacation time and bonuses, that allows me to go home at five o'clock and write my own songs, which are better than yours, with equipment you can't afford, and then I can get shitfaced and call in sick the next day, and they'll pay me my wages anyway, no questions asked, and despite the fact that you get all sorts of self-destructive co-dependent needy bimbos to have meaningless sex with at the cost of constant haranguing and possibly violence, litigation, and herpes thrust upon you, I can get a tight, wet nineteen year-old any time of the night because my ironed clothes scream out that I have real value... you know what, now that I think of it, there isn't a bright side.

A conversation with Electrum

I, PORTLANDER: In a democratic presidential debate, one of the candidates, Mike Gravel, was asked why he should be trusted to run the country when he went bankrupt himself in the 70s and never paid them back. He replied, "if you want to make judgments about being greedy... I left the Senate no better than when I came in. I left the American credit card companies $90,000 out, and they deserved it."
In a poll after that debate, he was polled as having 0% support. His campaign has raised approximately $500.

ELECTRUM: At least he’s honest about how he feels.

I suppose that's something. So's Bush.

It will be interesting to see if Bush is honest about how he feels after his presidency is done and he is asked to explain his decisions. I think Bush is sneaky with hidden agendas.

No. Bush will never come clean. Bank on it.

I don’t think he could come clean, then he’d have to deal with hypocrisy.

I don't think he'd come clean because he doesn't really realize that he's President. He's like America's Peter the Great. He comes from such an absurdly overprivileged background that he thinks the presidency was given to him as an amusement for eight years. He doesn't have any problem with killing tens of thousands of people or costing trillions of dollars or handing our country to China, because he doesn't have to suffer the consequences of his actions. He's entitled, in his mind, to do anything he wants. He is the only person who matters. Hell, his own dad campaigns against him on a regular basis.

Prior to George Bush Senior’s Presidency he was a diplomat over in China for the US, and when he became president, he lifted the trade embargo with them. Now his son has sold American off to China, and the Chinese government has blue prints to our military ships because we are on “friendly” relations with them now.

When I was in 10th grade debate in 1994, the topic of the year was "should China receive Most Favored Nation status?" There wasn't a single student, after looking at the material, who would answer yes (except for a few kids who heard somewhere that you get better grades by being adversarial but never backed their points). The debate topic became which reason was the biggest reason not to give them MFN. A bunch of high school kids, two years into the Clinton era, had a better understanding of diplomatic consequences than our standing president.

For That I owe

Oftentimes I will be hanging out with someone and they’ll just stop and sigh, lost in their thoughts. “What’s wrong?” I ask.

“Oh,” they say longingly, “this song. Cindy loves this song.” Or whoever their ex might be who ruined a perfectly good song.

Now, I have a litany of music that I own purely because an ex-girlfriend liked that band. I’ve even been sitting at work, toiling away, when a Beck song comes on, and I’d stop and listen, and I’d have to call up my girlfriend and tell her I love her. Just like anyone, I attach music to memories. Moreover, I have a plethora of songs I wrote about girls myself. Not much chance of detaching those songs from ex’s.

I even have songs that have been ruined by bad memories. “I am One” by Smashing Pumpkins is ruined for me– when I first bought Gish, I was playing a lot of this freeware video game some college dude made called “Billy goes Bowling,” which is basically like Shinobi but instead of throwing shiruken you throw a bowling ball. And you have a dog. And now, any time I hear that song, I just picture that stupid game.

But having a song ruined by a relationship? Never. The biggest reason is probably because I don’t really get hurt by breakups. I don’t get some complex that they don’t want me or that I’m worthless– if I were worthless, they wouldn’t have been with me in the first place. Nor do I feel like something is missing in me when I don’t have them as that song plays– I’ve never really been attracted to the kind of woman who dumps me. And I wouldn’t dump them unless I didn’t want to be with them anymore. There’s only one girl I feel empty without, and while I am without her, her old favorite songs only give me hope and inspiration that I will be with her again.

So, if anything, my ex-girlfriends’ favorite bands only enhance my life. So, to all the girls who have been kind enough to share part of their lives with me, I thank you. Not only for all the wonderful times we’ve shared, but for opening my eyes to bands like Green Day, Operation Ivy, Beatles, Blink-182, Manau, Plastelina Mosh, Sting, Clint Black, Moby, Beck, Soul Coughing, and Eve 6. They’re all perfectly fine artists in their own right, but every time I hear their songs, there’s a part of me that comes out, that you gave me, that makes it personal. For that I owe.

Lothario

At lunch with my (female) friend, I noticed a girl with a distinctive, short-crop haircut and freckles. She reminded me of this girl I palled around with in college, who ended up taking me to her bedroom and going down on me around the end of school. I didn't get around much in college, so this stood out as a memorable event.

Thinking aloud to my friend (who knows I may soon be engaged), I said, "there was this girl in college who, against all odds, had a huge crush on me. She had this really distinctive haircut, and every time I see a girl with that haircut, on a subconscious level I think, I bet she wants to sleep with me."

"Wow," she said, clearly put off by the remark. "You are really narcissistic."

Now, I disagree with that observation. I don't actually think she wants to sleep with me, for one. I was making more of an observation about schemas in the mind than anything else... I presumed that a 35 year-old woman wouldn't be sensitive to sexually charged remarks like that, or else I wouldn't have said it. I also made a point to throw in that crushes on me are "against all odds." And they are. No, stop it, I'm not feeling sorry for myself. I'm not that shallow. But I'm not the kind of guy who attracts people with his appearance. It's what it is.

It occurs to me, though, that I frequently run into this conflict. I know a lot of women who get really uncomfortable at the idea of me talking about sex. Me, personally. And I talk about sex quite a bit. We all do, really. I just tend to talk about it more bluntly than some. I'm also not afraid to make sex jokes, particularly around women who know (or should know) perfectly well that I'm not interested in them.

The disparity, though, that made me realize it was personal came to me when I befriended a true Don Juan whom we shall refer to as the Gay Pirate. Those who are familiar with him knows who I mean. This is a man who, by all objective measures, should be repulsive to women. He's unemployed, he's flunking school, and spends all his time playing video games. He has less hair than I do, a beer gut, a drinking problem, and regularly pisses in the sink. As it would happen, though, he has a string of women who fall all over him whenever they see him. I wouldn't say they all respect him per se, but they clamor for his company, and he can make the most lewd and offensive remarks to them and they just giggle and brush their fingers along his sweaty, acne-covered arm. A good 2/3 of them fuck him.

Now, I've made some salacious comments, in a non-aggressive way and oftentimes not even sexual, to a few of these girls. I don't get the giggle-arm-rub response, but I'm not looking for that, and I'd probably be a little embarrassed if I got it. I certainly wouldn't sleep with any of them– I know where that thing's been. But in at least three cases, they got visibly disturbed by me and openly expressed not wanting to be around me. Now, that's a pretty severe reaction. It's never really hurt my feelings, I think it says more about them than it does about me, but I think it's fair to say that I have no illusions of being a narcissus. I'll add that these aren't the only girls who have been actively turned off to me, these are just the easiest illustration.

Gay Pirate, incidentally, was not above remarking on this disparity. His mistake, though, was to believe that if I couldn't get the girls he could get, I couldn't get any girl at all. Meanwhile, he jumped from one shallow relationship to another, with a whole entourage of girls who give him no sense of fulfillment in any way but pose a constant burden to him and his way of life. I have had a healthy share of fulfilling relationships (and platonic friendships), and I still get laid if I need to. I just go fishing in a different pool– the pool of open, honest girls who aren't ashamed of themselves and realize that sex can be fun if you don't use it as a tool for self-vindication. Girls who don't consider sleeping with me a favor, nor do they expect me to love them for it, who see the mutual benefit in being concenting adults.

Shit, I lost my train of thought.

For you college football fans

You probably need to be a pretty avid college football fan to even understand this blog, but I think it's pretty interesting to see how various coaches voted for the final polls. USA Today published them. Check this out:

Boise State coach Chris Peterson ranked former Fiesta Bowl adversary and Big 12 champs Oklahoma #7. Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops didn't rank 2-loss Boise State at all.

Bob Stoops put Big 12 schools Oklahoma, Missouri, and Kansas all in the top 4. The other vote was Ohio State #2

Hal Mumme of New Mexico voted Hawaii #1. The coach of Texas A&M ranked Hawaii, the only undefeated team, #22. Tommy Tuberville of Auburn ranked Hawaii #4 behind LSU, Oklahoma, and Ohio State.

Tommy Bowden of Clemson ranked Missouri as #6 and Oklahoma as #10, even though Oklahoma won their conference and beat Missouri, soundly, twice.

Mike Leach ranked Georgia #2, even though they couldn't even get to their conference championship, and conference champs LSU #5 even though they never lost a game in regulation.

Two Sun Belt coaches (for Troy and FAU) ranked Boise State in the top 12. Chris Peterson ranked them #14. The only Big Ten coach to vote for Boise State was Jim Tressel of Ohio State, who voted mid-major teams BSU #21, BYU #16, and Hawaii #11.

Howard Schnellenberger, coach of FAU, voted almost exactly by number of wins: the only one-loss teams Ohio State and Kansas were voted #1-2, then undefeated Hawaii, then the 2 loss teams, then the three-losses, all in order.

and, saving the best for last:
Seven BCS coaches ranked BCS-busters Hawaii in the top 8. Five of them have since been fired.

Ron Schmaul

This is for all of you out there who think that Ron Paul has no chance to get the Republican nomination for President. There are even a few who think that he shouldn't even be allowed to debate, as it takes time away from the talking heads who are perceived to have a chance, like Giuliani. Two things to think about before you dismiss Ron Paul: 1) The original Republican party, Lincoln's party, was the humanitarian party, the fighters for equal rights and freedoms, the liberal party. So the question isn't whether Ron Paul is sufficiently Republican; the question is whether anyone else is. 2) Many of the Democratic candidates, especially Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, are chomping at the bit to take on Giuliani or Romney, because they know they can win against them. Even if you're a Democrat, it's important to realize that it isn't really Democracy if you're running against a weak candidate. Look at what happened with John Kerry.

That said, please listen to what the GOP audience thinks of the so-called front-runners bickering at each other like children:


Now look at their reaction to Ron Paul, when confronted over his credentials as a candidate:


Of course, then there's the crowd response to Dennis Kucinich, a man who has even less of a chance of running than Ron Paul (at the 8 minute mark):

God Damnit

I want to get her an engagement ring. Every time I say "I'll just get her a nice topaz ring" or "I'll get her a promise ring for now" it just sounds wrong in my head. If ever there was a situation that warrants an engagement ring, ours would be it. It's supposed to be symbolic of commitment, right? It's the ultimate gift, something so wonderful that a man wouldn't buy it for the girl unless it were a once-in-a-lifetime occasion. And here I am, asking her to leave her home and family to be with me, and we're already discussing where we could live and where we would work, and I'm not even putting forth the dedication to get her a ring.

I know there are a lot of people who think it's "crazy" to be talking about getting a ring for someone I haven't seen in ten years, but that's what makes marrying her so important to me— she's not some girl that I just never broke up with so I got her a ring to shut her up. I have never wanted the typical life of finding someone who you're compatible enough with, and give her a wedding. I've long been skeptical of marriages because I haven't ever seen any indication that the betrothed were really interested in sacrificing everything, ending their lives as individuals and starting a new life as a single unit. That's what I want to do, and there's a whole ritual based around the symbolism of making sacrifice to tie two people together, and I need to do it.

I can't tell my parents, they'd go ballistic (my mom would, at least) if they knew I was planning on proposing to someone that doesn't even live here. Almost everyone I've asked about how they could afford the ring just said "my parents helped." That's no kind of sacrifice—that's tantamount to an arranged marriage. Buy me a woman, dad. Thanks.

Okay, I got that off my chest. I don't see how I can not buy her a ring. I know she'll say yes, but I have to show her that it's okay for her to take that step to leave her entire existence behind.