Hell, as long as I’m broke and all of my students keep canceling flights, I might as well sit in front of my typewriter in a blazer with elbow patches and sip coffee as I create my opus. Well, that’s how I always pictured it, but really it’s been more of a hangover/bedhead/in my underwear sort of creating.

Funny thing about the job – The flight school’s business is slowing down due to myriad factors, but we’re operating and keeping the doors open. No danger of the unthinkable, but as a result, I and other guys aren’t getting as much flight time as we’d like.

“Well, it’s the economy, Dusty.” Is what everyone says. However, all I hear is “Dusty, you need to meet more people with airplanes.” So I printed out a dozen resumes and spent 3 hours walking around the airport in my pilot costume talking to people. Overall it was a depressing experience. Most were firing pilots and/or selling their airplanes. So I told them I’d fly for free. They were willing to take my card at that point, and I’ve flown a couple hours I wouldn’t have otherwise.

So working for free seems stupid, and according to my bank and my mortgage company it really is, but if you think about the Kenny Chesneys, Billy Crystals, Oprahs, and anyone else you know who has “made it” in whatever way they chose, every single one of them spent some time doing it for free. You could say they got paid retroactively, and according to the forecasts in the aviation industry, pilots have 2-4 years before we get paid like mob lawyers for working 6 days a month. A mere 40 years after that I will have possibly paid back all of the people and companies who have loaned me money and I can enjoy my smug self-satisfaction for the 15 minutes I have remaining to live.

I love shitting on my own point like that. What I’m saying is I have chosen this field and I will stay with it until I either cross the hump or have to start pumping gas.

Meanwhile, almost everybody I know is busy blaming the economy. I’m not a fucking genius, I’m not a better pilot than the other guys, and I’m certainly not better looking or more charismatic than anyone else. What I am is what one of you once called “negatively optimistic”. I hope that means I see everything as a seasoned cynic, but I look for a better way. If it doesn’t, please explain.

What am I getting at? The premise of this book I am writing and how I hope some of you can help me write it. Obviously I can’t pay you right away, but I’m not asking for much. The idea behind this book is to illustrate and hopefully do a small part in reviving optimism. It’s written pretty much like my blog (which means I’ll probably have to self-publish), and it attempts flailingly to examine causes of optimism and pessimism and how creativity, common sense, comfort zones, and other factors play in.

That description might suck, but the whole thing is based around stories like the ones I put in my blog. It’s definitely not a self-help book – hopefully it will be a chance to present some of the stuff I have written in a more meaningful way.

Since I wouldn’t have had much of this material or a decent idea without this blog, and I wouldn’t have this blog if it weren’t for you people, I think it’d be rad if anyone felt like sharing any stories they might have that they think could find a place in the book. I also think it would be rad if we all used the word “rad” a little more.

So send me an email if you need me to be less confusing about what I’m looking for.

Remember when I turned thirty and everyone I talked to acted like I had just been told I had cancer? “oooh. You’re turning thirty this year?” (inhale through clenched teeth) “Are you okay?” I didn’t understand that, and I don’t understand why everyone is acting like I should be all in a twist about my wedding. Which is four weeks away. Holy crap.

“So…are you and Sara doing okay with the wedding planning?”
“Huh? Yeah. It’s all pretty much ready. Really all we had to do was send what felt like an oil tanker full of money to St Croix and then we have to show up at a certain time.”
“DUDE. A destination wedding? You’re a dick making everybody travel and get a hotel and stuff.”
“Actually, I’m not. No one has to come if they don’t want to or don’t have the funds. Shit, I wish I had that option for most of the weddings I’ve been to.”
“Yeah, but what about all of the invitations and stuff? Isn’t that a pain?”
“It took us a weekend to make and mail them all. Probably would have paid someone else to do that if I was going to do it over, but it wasn’t a big deal.”
“Is she freaking out about the color of the napkins and stuff?”
“No. I would never marry a retard.”

I’ve seen the TV shows about insane brides, and I see it like I see the guy who got killed trying to skateboard down the St. Louis Arch. You’re sort of putting these things in motion yourself. See if you want complete control of every detail of everything, you’re bound to overload and have lots of problems.

Oh, we’ve had moments where we both sort of looked at each other and said “dude. That is something to address”. It started the day I gave her the ring. We said “Let’s come back here and have a wedding on the beach by ourselves, hire a videographer, and go back and have a party.” Groom’s dream – no responsibility at all. Second only to driving to the courthouse.

Awesome idea, but it’s a lot like saying “We just won’t invite our friends and family to our wedding.” See, my mom will not believe I am getting married until she sees it, and most of my friends won’t believe Sara agreed to marry me until they see it.

Plus, we started thinking that we’d get a little bored all by ourselves. So we’ll just invite our parents. Okay. And our brothers and sisters. And their kids.

It literally took 12 minutes for the guest list to reach almost a hundred. Then we had to decide on how to pull it off, assuming 15-20 people would actually show up. We decided to get one of those wedding packages that are designed for a certain number of people. After a day or two of looking at the options, it was pretty much good to go.

Then we found out that we were going to have closer to 50 people show up. So start over on that one, but we are harvesting organs for our guests because this is going to be the best party they will ever see, and replacement livers are going in the gift bags.

She has only asked my opinion on a few things because she knows that if it doesn’t matter, I’m not burning calories. What kind of frosting on the cake? White? Fine with me. What kind of cake? Don’t care as long as it is in the shape of boobs and has at least one endangered species in it. Just keep it classy.

I have heard stories of people paying thousands of dollars for flowers that go on tables, lights strung across the room, and other stuff. Really we haven’t encountered anything that I thought was totally insane except the photographer. Sara is keeping me away from her because “she can’t be in therapy for our wedding.” Wedding photography is a massive racket, but when you go 1600 miles offshore, they can really make with the dry rape. Charge whatever you want because there are only four people with cameras on the island.

So it’s some insane number of dollars to hire the photographer. But wait. That’s only for two hours. What about the drunken debauchery to follow? Another twelventy thousand million to have her there for that. But the thing that sends my monkey ass into orbit was that you have to pay MORE for the actual pictures. I’m sorry- help me understand. So I just paid you enough to buy all new equipment and you’re going to take pictures for four hours, but what do I get out of this again? Pictures? No? Those are extra? Even though you work digitally and it takes zero to one minute to “develop” the images?

So just when I think the photography is crazier than a rabbit’s ass, I see that we have an option to have said pictures put into a nice album. And the album costs even more. A hard cover book of printed images we already paid for once would be a price that made me suck my office chair halfway into my anus.

But wait. It gets better. There was also a stipulation that no one else is allowed to take photos while the photographer is working. This is where I got vocal. I agree that if she lights a shot just so and someone comes in and tries to capitalize on her work so we can get a free picture, fine. Not cool. I wouldn’t let someone do that. But if she thinks she’s going to tell my parents that they can’t take pictures while we’re getting married, there will be a lot of camera equipment at the bottom of the ocean tied to one overpriced photographer.

Basically I spend a lot of time asking myself why no one else is outraged about things that outrage me. I think the only way to get a cop to come take a report of your car being broken into would be to park it at an expired meter for thirty seconds. I see someone leave their grocery cart in the parking lot and I want to throw it through their windshield. I hear an employee at a company tell me that it is “not possible” to get something shipped overnight, and I wish I could fire them myself. Paying a photographer a price to show up and then paying more for the photos makes me crazy. Stuff like that.

I don’t know if it is the scenario itself that makes me mad, or the fact that almost everybody I know has an attitude of “that’s just how it is” and rolls over like a pussy. I’ll admit that things are the way they are, but for some reason I refuse to believe that things must remain that way. I think that is a kind of optimism, and ironically I deal with it by being negative. I think. Is it really negative to call someone out for doing something stupid or refusing to understand a simple concept?

No. It’s not. It’s what needs to happen more often. You’re not necessarily a special snowflake and you are not necessarily capable of anything you put your mind to. You will be a better person if you give it a shot, though. I do know that much.

First, the definition and origin of a tip – popular myth says that it means “to insure prompt service.” It originally started in caveman days when the patron would put clams on the table little by little as Triceratops liver was being served, depending on how the service was. The better the service, the larger the pile of clams.

That is one explanation I have heard that uses the grammatically incorrect “insure” and is probably false and made up by a publicly-educated American who can’t spell in his native language. In any case, it gets the general point across. Tips are extra compensation at the discretion of the diner based on service.

If you work in the service industry, you work mostly for tips and probably make like $2 an hour. That is the job you signed up for, and if you want your tip, you need to do your job. If you think it sucks and you don’t make enough money, find another job.

No matter what, you are never entitled to a tip, nor is it ever cool to ask for a tip. Sometime in the last ten years or so, the standard tip went from 10% to 20%. That’s alright too. Most people aren’t cheap and don’t have a problem tipping. Personally my only problem with tipping comes from my complete inability to do math after consuming alcohol. I think I have mentioned it before – alcohol paralyzes my calculation cortex.

I can calculate 10% even if I am intoxicated. I can double that and come up with 20% while intoxicated as well. However, I am not super great at doing that while dividing my attention between a story I am telling or listening to, and if someone wants to split it up and put in a $20 and ask for $5 from me and $2 for the guy to my left, I usually start crying.

This is what got me last Friday night at La Terrazza in Miami. We were eating dinner with some friends and drinking wine. To protect my friends’ identities, I will Call them Chris and Angie. Dinner was coming to a close and the service was great, food was good, and we were happy.

I screwed up on the check when it came time to calculate the tip. Due to math paralysis coupled with Chris telling me about pulling Angie around the yard in a wheelbarrow behind the riding lawnmower, I mistakenly wrote in a tip that was about 12% of the total bill.

For the record, 12% is low by today’s standards, but it is by no means unacceptable. It was an honest mistake on my part, but I was temporarily retarded.

A few minutes later, the manager came by the table and asked how everything was. “Did you enjoy dinner? Was everything okay? Did you find the service Acceptable?” And so on. The answer was yes to all of it.

Then he made that move that they do when they are giving you news that is potentially embarrassing – like if your card is declined or you didn’t wear pants – they lean over to you and say whatever it is in a hushed voice that just makes everyone else listen intently.

“Yes…sir…” he said in my ear. “This total…it is…well, that’s only about a 10% tip.”

Instantly seeing my mistake, I was apologetic. “OH! Wow. Sorry. I just can’t do math sometimes. No problem. I’ll fix it.”

And as he was walking away, I realized the absurdity of what had just happened, and I changed my mind. Although the service had been fine, this asshole just told me I need to tip more. While a 10% tip is low, it is a fucking tip, not the price of something I bought.

I asked around the table if I was just being stupid or if I should be a little offended by that. It was unanimous from a table full of folks who had collectively spent years working in retail and/or for tips that the manager was out of line.

The waiter came over and asked me if I would like a new receipt, and I said, “Yeah. I think that will work.”

When he returned, I said, “Hey, we really enjoyed the meal and our service, and you were great. What I am about to tell you is going to suck, but your manager needs to know that his choice of action is bullshit. The low initial tip was totally my mistake, and I apologize, but it was a baseline tip, and he should be smart enough to take that and hope for better next time.”

Really I was sort of talking to the waiter about his actions, because I know the manager wouldn’t have said anything if the waiter hadn’t run crying to him about his crappy tip.

“Yes, but he doesn’t lose any money if I don’t get tipped, I do.”

“I understand that, and I apologize if this is going to ruin your night, but the tip is staying where it was, and your boss is the one to blame for that.”

“But you said it was your mistak…”

“It was my mistake. A mistake that I shouldn’t have made, but people mess up now and then, and you still got a tip. Not a great one, but it is a gratuity and not really required at all.”

Now I was passively hinting that it could go to zero percent if he wanted to keep talking about it.

Meanwhile, Angie was over there giving the manager the what-for. I don’t know what she said to him, but she’s Messican and they know how to get jiggy with the verbal beatdowns. The manager was staring at her as she walked away and sweat was beading up on his brow. Meanwhile her husband Chris, who is a large guy who used to play college football, was returning his stare in a sort of “Go ahead and say one goddamn word, you sorry mother…” kind of way. I love having good friends.

So I guess this is yet another of my battles against stuff that shouldn’t be. The service industry may need to be reminded occasionally what a gratuity is, and that a minimum amount is not legally owed to them even for spectacular service. Acceptable service should get you around 15%, and sometimes people are going to be dicks, make mistakes, or just not pay you much for your help. It’s socially unacceptable, but still their choice.

I’m sure it will come as no shock when I say that I have an exceedingly low tolerance for dumb people. Let’s define that, though. If a person has an IQ of, say, 70, and wears a dirty crumpled up baseball cap with a picture of Big Bird on it and spends lots of time clapping, they are retarded, not dumb. I have nothing but love for those folks, and I have found in my limited interaction with them that they can actually teach the rest of us a lot about how to enjoy what we have.

When it comes to the people I can’t be around (the other kind of retard), I’m talking about people with average and sometimes above average IQ (or whatever quotient they use to measure basal intelligence) who for some reason depart from logic and spend lots of time wringing their hands in fear of some scenario they have dreamt up, rather than learning from experience and using life to help them understand the way things are. These are the people who are generally ineffective because they are just bright enough to have a semi-profound thought, but not quite bright enough to do anything with it.

Shitty Lifechoicers – I mentioned it a few entries back – they know that a certain friend is a douchebag who causes trouble or has no social skills, but every time you talk to them, they have another story about how that person made bad things happen to them. A similar condition afflicts people who date losers over and over, but I think in that case it is more of a psychological condition than simple stupidity. An extension of the self-loathing it takes to surround yourself with people who are no good for you is this person –

“Dude, did I do something to piss Steve off?”
“You mean Salesguy Steve?”
“Yeah. I said hi to him today and he just looked at me and walked by. He seems like he’s pissed about something.”
“Wait. Steve from sales. Right? The guy who doesn’t wear socks, shaves his forearms, and cheats on his wife? We’re talking about the same guy?”
“Yeah. Cockbag McToolbox Steve. That’s the one. He seems like he hates me all of a sudden.”
“He’s a total douche. Why the hell do you care, and can I get back the time I just spent talking about this?”

We all know someone who doesn’t like someone else, but for some weird reason is disappointed if that person doesn’t like them. I don’t understand that. I like everyone I meet until they give me reason not to, and then if I decide I don’t like them, they no longer exist. I won’t necessarily walk up to them and force them to hate me, but I’m not going to go out of my way to accommodate them or engage them in conversation, and nothing could possibly matter less to me than what they think of me. In fact, it’s better if they don’t like me, because that reduces the number of seconds I have to waste interacting with them.

Another example – people who will not admit that there are correct answers to certain questions, or notruthers. When I was in high school I took this civics class and we talked about social issues as a group. A group of Georgia public high school students. So you know it was awesome and insightful. The debate of the day was the Iraq/Kuwait thing that was in full effect at the time. We had people who thought war for any reason was wrong, people who wanted to put it in God’s hands, people who said we should nuke the entire region, and a handful of people who weren’t retarded. We (non-retards) brought up the issue of alternate energy sources. How are we going to incentivize anyone to really dump some huge bucks into batteries, solar, wind, whatever and make it work like it should? It came to a point where our teacher asked us for an answer, and we’d have to debate it the next day.

So I thought long and hard about it. I wanted an answer that I knew would work. Nothing will make everybody happy, but I know there is an answer to the question “What will make us as a nation really look for other ways to produce energy?”

My answer the following day was “Oil needs to cost $300 a barrel and gasoline should be about $10 a gallon.” (collective gasp). ONE person agreed with me, and I was baffled. Considering the millions of times we have seen this economic model in action, people still whined about a bunch of apocalyptic scenarios in which people would have to burn their children to heat their homes. Crazy, illogical, slippery slope answer that stupid people use. BULL. SHIT. Call it a flaw in the system or the beauty of free enterprise, but if you can make it financially more appealing to pursue another avenue, they will find their way every time. None of the world-ending scenarios that the worriers dream up have ever come to fruition. Why? Not because a government program prohibited it, but because that scenario stops making sense somewhere between “people will not enjoy paying that much” and “nuclear holocaust”.

Fast forward roughly 20 years, and look around you. Gas is expensive. People like me (yes, I am the little guy. I have to be extremely careful where I put my dollars) can hardly afford to drive anywhere. And holy shitballs, batman – suddenly Atlanta is figuring out how to make a workable light rail system. Our current light rail system is seeing more business than ever, the big bad evil oil companies are putting record numbers of dollars into battery technology, wind energy, and other non-oil sources. It’s even starting to look like America is finally going to wake the fuck up and start producing nuclear energy like the rest of the world has been doing for 40 years. Can you believe it? Out of financial necessity we are polluting less and walking more. Sure, we’d all like to see a world where everyone does those things out of the goodness of their hearts, but that’s out in the realm of warm fuzzy feelings, which is not the way things work.

So I went into more detail than I had intended with that one, but my point was that some people will only argue the negative – Ooh. look what bad could possibly happen. We’d better not try anything. Special thanks to the dipshits who tied themselves to bulldozers in protest of building nuclear power plants in the 70s. I’m sure the thousands of people who die every year due to the mining and use of coal are grateful that you had your best stupid opinion in mind. Look at what history shows to work, and give that a shot.

Before you fire off an angry email, let me assure you that I am one of the losers in this situation. You think auto fuel is expensive? Try filling an airplane with aviation fuel. As a result, no one can afford flight training, every airline and charter company is feeling the pain, and guys like me have a tough time finding a job. Do I cry about it and wish ill on the big bad corporations? Hell no. Those corporations are going to be at least partly responsible for whatever gets us out of this, so we’d better be careful which hand we bite. Anywhere there are losers there have to be winners, and they are the ones I need to watch and learn from. I personally think that the current energy “crisis” is going to turn out to be a renaissance of ingenuity that history will look on very favorably, and I’m amped to see what new ideas come out of it. Hopefully my generation isn’t such a bunch of weeping pussies that they can see past their temporary setbacks and do something useful.

Back on subject now – more categories of irritating dumbness:

People who get way too caught up in stupid details/their own ego. Also known as people I wish would kill themselves. I was watching that show “Flipping Out” where this completely obsessive compulsive gay dude buys houses and fixes them up. He is a hard worker and therefore successful, but a nasty rude piece of shit, too. I saw one clip where his assistant gets him a starbucks coffee and he says “Is this 140 degrees?” “Yeah. that’s what I asked for.” she replies. “I think it’s more like 150 or 155.” he says “I need it to be 140″. He went on for a minute or two, seemingly just to prove how picky he can be.

I don’t know why, but even seeing someone else have that conversation makes me want to punch a wall. It was even worse when I used to work at AppForge. Anyone who works in a corporate environment knows that there is nothing worse than a self-important moron with a big title who is bored. I have tons of these stories, but I’ll recount only a few.

A few years ago we were having a career fair where we invited a select 20 or so of Georgia Tech’s top computer nerds to come see our company in hopes of hiring a few of them. This chick that worked upstairs asked me to make name tags for them, and although I knew that it was something that could easily be done by our admin assistant, I wasn’t terribly busy so I did it. I made neato name tags for each of them with a Georgia tech logo and an AppForge logo, printed them out, and put them in little badge holders. Done in an hour. Immediately thereafter I had another project come up with a deadline, so I got busy with that. Then the bored retarded chick decided she wanted me to re-print the tags with each person’s major listed on it. I said I couldn’t because I had to do the other project.

Then she came back down and said “We really need these nametags. The event is tomorrow.” “Uhh…you have the name tags.” I said. “No we need them to have their major on them.”

NO YOU DON’T. YOU ARE BORED. GO CHASE A LASER POINTER OR SOMETHING.

Finally the person who requested the new project said that the chick needed her nametags, and I should work on those. I am convinced that a huge number of decisions like this one in all areas of the company eventually led to AppForge closing its doors. We are going to put our only creative resource on (pick one – making name tags, changing someone’s title on their business card from VP of sales to VP-sales, creating package graphics for a product that no one intends to launch, making custom placeholders for a meeting, or any of a million other things that will never have a positive impact on the bottom line), instead of doing the things that help us sell software? It was everywhere – meetings to discuss how we would categorize customers we didn’t even have, meetings to schedule meetings, new products built on products that had already failed, the list is endless.

So I put their goddamn majors on the name tags and printed them out again. Still not good enough.

She said “I think we should put the date of the event on them.” “Really? Why?” (hoping she had a damn good reason, but disappointed as usual) And by the way, why does it take an entire batch of finished name tags for you to make the next stupid decision on how to waste time?

“In case they decide to come back next year and want to use the same name tag.”

She actually said that in front of three other people, and I am the only one who laughed. Are you fucking joking? Do you really have nothing else to do but micromanage a completely inconsequential project? Do you honestly believe that ANYONE will keep up with this stupid tag for an entire year and bring it to the next job fair? Please kill yourself. Please. I’m begging.

Sometimes when these situations came up I would go to someone else just to make sure I wasn’t crazy. Why can’t anyone keep this from happening? SOMEONE PLEASE SHAME HER AND MAKE HER UNDERSTAND THAT SHE NEEDS TO FOCUS ON SOMETHING ELSE. In every case, there would be a shrug of the shoulders, some kind of “I know it’s frustrating” rigamarole, and a “just get it done and it’ll be over.” I’d walk away wondering if maybe I just live in a parallel universe and there was something huge that I didn’t understand.

In the end, I spent six hours reprinting those name tags until they were the best damn name tags ever to be completely ignored and thrown away before the job fair was even over. I took the time to point this fact out to the retard who thought they were so important- *holding the garbage can up with a dozen said name tags in it* “Hey, do you think we should maybe get these out and clean them up and then mail them to their owners? It should only take a day or two to figure out where they all live, and we can pack each one in a custom made wooden crate…”, but that was just me being difficult, as I later learned while being reprimanded for my out of control common sense.

Another great example – we were throwing a party at a trade show and I wrote and submitted phrases for fortune cookies we would have there. Little somewhat humorous things about how the future is bright for you if you use our stuff. Whatever. A few of them said “Confuscious say….” (because they were fortune cookies, and that’s a classic fortune cookie line) and someone with the word “Chief” in their title actually made us change the whole frigging thing because “If we have any Asian people there, they might get offended.” If you are the person who made that phone call, kill yourself. Your job and lot in life are useless and pointless. Really.

Someone also had an idea for the name of a database where customers could share applications they made with our product. Since our name was AppForge and Napster was all over the news at the time, one of our more inventive software guys coined the name “AppSter”. Simple. Descriptive. Topical. Very good.

As I was producing graphics for what I thought was one of only a few truly creative ideas that hadn’t been dumbed out of existence, I was informed that we would not be using that name. “Too much negative publicity around it, and we didn’t want to give anyone the wrong idea.” Yeah. Just too edgy and dangerous. What were we thinking?

Again. PLEASE. Kill yourself, whoever took the time to come to that conclusion. If it was a group decision, tell me what room you are in so I can lob a hand grenade in there.

Another agonizing example (and I swear on whatever book you worship that I am not making one word of this up) – I designed and printed brochures for another company I was working for, and on the back in 6pt type it said “copyright blah blah blah, all rights reserved” We had to re-print them because someone said there needed to be a period after the word “reserved”. Kill. self. now.

Again, it comes back to a matter of there being a right and a wrong answer. It may be merely my opinion that this font is better than that one when I use it on your letterhead, but it is a fact – undeniable and provable beyond any doubt – that the time and money it takes to change it to a different font, add a period, or shorten the music by two seconds in the intro is not going to make a single penny, improve anyone’s experience, or otherwise improve the existing situation in any way.

A slight variation of this is the clutcher. This is the person who will pick something irrelevant out of a conversation or situation and get their little mind all twisted up into it to the point that they can’t move on. Think of a car driving through a parking lot at 5 MPH, running over a skittle, flipping into the air and bursting into flames. That’s how I think of these people. I dated a lot of girls who had this flaw, and that may be the reason I can pick it out from three statute miles. Let’s say you’re discussing something about technology, and you mistakenly use the word “pornograph” instead of “phonograph” while making a point. Slip of the tongue, two second chuckle, and move on, right? The clutcher will bring it up over and over in an attempt to derail the conversation because he or she has nothing useful to offer.

“Where you going? Gonna go listen to your pornograph? haha.” Shut up.

It’s like having a conversation with a friend and his dog is sitting there, and then you say something like “…after she left, the sheets were in a ball at the foot of the bed. I’m telling you- best $13 I have ever spent…” and the guy’s dog goes bonkers and starts running around barking and won’t shut up because you said the word “ball”. You’ve lost the dog at that point and he’s just going to ruin the conversation for you and your friend.

the clutcher also suffers micro-traumas from other events that would be ignored by most people. Let’s say my ex girlfriend was so stupid that every time we went to her house, she would get off the highway at an exit, drive across the overpass, and get back on the same highway. One day I asked her why she always did that (I thought she might be afraid of bridges or something), and she actually thought she was getting on a different road. I laughed a little bit about that, as I was entitled to do, and thanked god she wasn’t ugly, or she’d be in the middle of the desert begging for water. She was a clutcher, so any time anyone did anything mistakenly after that, she’d say “Are you going to make fun of them? Wanna’ make them feel stupid? Seems to be your hobby…” instead of just letting me forget about it.

Now let’s get into naysayers and pointmissers -

Naysayers are the people who will always take an opposing position to what you say, just so they can consider themselves objective. They are closely related to the Negative people, but really just have loose control of their mouths. If you make any kind of observation about how something is crap and you got railroaded (even if all you are doing is venting), they’ll come immediately to the defense of the other side and make you start defending your position like they have some special interest in whatever you are ranting about.

“I got a frigging parking ticket, and I was walking up to my car at the same time the meter maid was. What a bunch of losers those people are, you know? Just walk around giving tickets to taxpayers. Was there really no better job available, or are they being punished? I mean really, is there a life form below meter maid? I’d rather have dinner with a child molester.”
“Well, you know…they’re just doing their job. It’s just like you have a job doing whatever you do…”
“Seriously? Is meter maiding a proud family tradition for these losers? Did their grandparents travel across the ocean from the old country in a ramshackle golf cart with blue lights mounted to the top of it? Because I really really doubt it.”
“No, I’m just saying, you need to look at it from their…”
“Shut up. You might as well be saying ‘Hitler had a point’ right now. I can’t believe you are asking me to defend my stance on being raped.”

The pointmisser/reinterpreter is the person who will write me an email after reading this and say “You sure are angry lately. I thought you were smarter than this – you hate people who disagree with you? That is my definition of a stupid person. I wish someone would kick you in the balls.” Instead of understanding that writing style and actual mood are separate entities, and sometimes examples are used to illustrate a broader idea. You have to explain things to some people as if they are three years old.

“We do need to figure out a way to control the borders. I mean, how much longer can a country sustain…”
“So if you hate Mexicans, then why don’t you stop eating those delicious burritos, you racist?”
“Uhh…hate what? What part of your brain is malfunctioning right now?”

Of course, that doesn’t cover every kind of stupidity out there, and everyone does some of this stuff now and then, but overall, those are a few of the characteristics of the kind of people who mess things up for the rest of us.

I will also set a few that I can’t miss, just so I don’t feel like a douche for failing at everything. These are things like “Gain 10 pounds”, “Stop eating Feces”, and “Poison a hobo”. You’re on your own with these, too.

What I can offer is my set of universal truths; things that every human on the planet can – nay, SHOULD – do to improve the general quality of their lives

1. Stop trying to fool yourself – I am astounded by the number of people who are well into their adulthood and still think they are going to play pro whateverball or that their crappy paintings are going to make them famous. Having a hobby and being good at something is one thing. Pinning your dreams on it at the detriment of things like your family or something that can realistically benefit you is another thing entirely. On a small scale, stuff like setting your clocks ahead so you won’t be late is a sign that you are developmentally disabled. It is your clock. You set it ahead. What part of that makes you think that you will be fooled by that? Help others out with this one; if you look at the clock at your friend’s house and say, “Well, it’s 3:45…” and they say “No, that clock is ten minutes fast…” berate them accordingly. Better yet, wait for them to leave the room and set their clocks to the right time. Do you know the main benefits of having accurate clocks?
- Not having to do extra math eighteen times a day.
- Knowing what time it is.
- The warm, secure feeling that comes with being a functional human being

2. Throw some crap away – You have a box that contains old CD cases, keys that fit no lock currently in existence, those big square “wall wart” style power supplies that charge a phone you threw away , and maybe some smaller boxes that you haven’t opened since you moved out of your crappy apartment two years ago. Gather it up, throw it away, and start a new box – something about 12x12x18” any time you are cleaning up and moving the same shit to a different location and wondering why you have it, put it in the box. When the box is full, tape it closed and keep it for 90 days. If you have no need to open said box in that time, throw it away. Do not open it and don’t pretend that you’re going to go through it and donate it to charity. Just throw it away. And stop keeping the stupid shit that people give you. Sure, if you got a set of silverware shaped like human reproductive organs for Christmas, it would be rude to open it in front of your aunt and immediately throw it away. That is why you say “thank you” and throw it away when you get home. Or give it to charity. There are dozens of children out there who have to eat mayonnaise off a spoon that is not shaped like a scrotum.

3. Turn off your phone whenever you are doing something that could be made less enjoyable (to you or to others) by a phone call. Unless you are an on call doctor, pilot, or cop, there is no reason that a phone call should interrupt dinner or a conversation with your family. Please stop acting like anything is going to change or anyone’s life is going to be affected if you wait until after dinner to tell your secretary where the extra toner is. You are not that important and no one thinks you are because you always walk into the next room with your stupid phone up to your stupid ear. Enjoy the here and now because it will go away and you will miss it.

4. Dump a friend and replace him with a better one– Everybody has at least one friend who either always has been or has become more of a chore than a joy to have around. The one who borrows shit all the time, gets too drunk every time you go out, or otherwise isn’t doing anything to enhance anyone’s life. Get rid of that person. Don’t focus on how you do it, just do it. I have completely removed all such people from my life to the point that I am actually working on the second tier. There are a few people I have known over the years who are negative, disagreeable, self-absorbed down-draggers. These are people I look at and wonder how anyone could be friends with them. Then I talk to my other friends who still hang out with them and they say the same thing, “Yeah, he’s still constantly trying to outdo everyone and lying about his station in life and it’s just a joke. Last month he got arrested and mike and I had to bail his dumb ass out.”

…and I can’t help but wonder how bright he and Mike are for still willingly hanging out with this person. So maybe they have to go too. The adage “you can tell a lot about a person by the decisions they make” should never be far from your mind.

Once you have lightened your load, find someone worthwhile to fill the space. I’d offer my friendship, but no one likes me, either.

5. Be realistic with the things that you hear before you repeat them – In my lifetime I have witnessed the collective retardification of humanity at the hands of things like Monkey Pox, Bird Flu, the “super Bug” bacteria, near earth meteors, global cooling, SARS, gay marriage, the teaching of evolution, the teaching of creationism, global warming, antidepressants, fluoride, organic foods, peanut allergies, vaccinations, anti-bacterial soap, and so on down the retarded line ad infinitum. Has anyone else come to the conclusion that that the very worst of these is barely worthy of a double take, or am I the only one?
Here’s my secret, and the secret that will set you free-

Logic.

I’ll explain it in case it is confusing: Saying that someone got a flu shot and it caused them to get Alzheimer’s is very a very caveman way to think about things. I saw video of an earthquake in San Francisco that happened during a baseball game. That has to mean that baseball causes earthquakes, right? Do you know anyone who won’t go somewhere because they got in an accident when they went there once? That person is an idiot. If you eat at McDonalds every meal every day for a month it will cause bad things to happen to you. Really, Lieutenant Deducteypants? What if you ate four meals a day at a five star French restaurant? Are you dumb enough to think that would turn out any differently?

Look at all of the bullshit that has caused media panic in the past 20 years and think of how many of them resulted in anything. The answer is none. In fact, the only ones that really caused any harm are the ones that genuinely scare people and they usually ignore. Focus on the stuff and the people who can kill you and enjoy the fact that you live in a society that basically has no problems and therefore has the time and resources needed to devote thousands of man hours to a shocking exposé on the dangers of Neoprene.

If someone begins explaining to you that there is a strain of acne going around that is deadly, ask how many people it has killed. When they answer “Katie Couric said that three people died of it last year”, punch them in the nuts and explain that there are 280 million people in the United States and ask them to express their number as a percentage. The problem with an “epidemic” that claims 2 lives is that it is niether epi, nor demic. The problem with reporting it as an epidemic is that stupid people repeat it. The problem with repeating it is that it tells logical people that you are stupid.

Don’t let anyone get away with the slippery slope argument, either. “If we let the fags get married, next thing you know your son will want to marry an air conditioner and your dog will marry a starfish and everything will go to hell and the human race will be extinct.” Yeah, moron. If we hadn’t allowed women to vote, we wouldn’t have this problem with Sharks and rocking chairs clogging up the polling places, would we? Oh wait. That didn’t happen BECAUSE IT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE.

If they can’t wrap their tiny minds around that, assume that anything can marry anyone and ask them how they will be affected in their personal life if a cloud marries a pizza.

6. Try something uncomfortable and scary – You will be a better person and more respected by yourself, your friends, and your family if you find something you are afraid of and walk toward it. If you are afraid of snakes and you know that is an unfounded fear (unless the snake can kill you), go to a pet shop and hold a snake. I know it sounds minor, but take whatever is your biggest thing, and fix it. If you sleep late and miss appointments, get your dumb ass out of bed earlier by doing whatever it takes. If you are afraid to fly, book a flight the next time you go somewhere and force yourself onto it. Keep doing it until it is no longer a source of stress.

The comfort zone is a dangerous place. As soon as you have convinced yourself that this is all you are capable of, you have gone as far as you will go. Whatever it is that you have to work around, don’t let it win. Then after you are comfortable flying with a pocket full of snakes, go to the next thing and keep on going.

I just overheard something on the radio about the black caucus. Is that really bigger than the average white caucus, or is that just a myth?