By Greg Evans
There is no easier and more inerrant measure for determining the constitution of a person then by observing them at the dinner table.
I was sitting in a pizza place the other day waiting for my large cheese pizza to be served to the table which I eat every Friday night because Friday is pizza night. Occasionally I will have it on a Wednesday or Sunday but it doesn't taste the same as it does on Friday. I was sitting there observing the people around me eating their meals and certain practices struck me as not only disturbing but wholly manic behavior that made me feel unusually uncomfortable. With each order that arrived at a table the first thing the person did, before even trying their dish was reach for the salt shaker and start covering their food with the small white hypertension crystals. One seemingly normal person after the other in robotic fashion would pick up the salt shaker and begin shaking it wildly, contorting their faces and disjointing their wrists for the perfect shake and the sound, the chica, chica, chica, chica, chica, chica, was beginning to drive me mad. I ordered three Guinnesses from the waitress who suspiciously asked me for my ID and said I can't order beer for people who aren't here yet. "They are all for me dammit!" I howled and whipped out my taser with the full intention of zapping the liberal cow but she shrieked and scurried off to the kitchen. I was sure my time at the restaurant was now on borrowed time and I wouldn't have lost it if it wasn't for the hideous salt craze sweeping through the mountains like a reemergence of the crack epidemic of the 80's. Along with the excessive and unnecessary use of the sodium was the unmistakable and bi-polar affliction with the constant checking of the cell phone. Every three minutes these neurotics staring wildly at their cell phones. It was none of my business but I simply couldn't ignore the deviants. It was a miserable distraction. How can one expect to go out and have a nice dinner in a pizzeria or any restaurant for that matter anymore with everyone checking their damn cell phones throughout the entire meal . If I am at dinner with some schmuck who can't keep the damn phone in their pocket it will take a $400 trip out the window into the parking lot.
How far life has progressed with all the stupid cell phones and salt shakers turning us into schizophrenics. Not to mention the fact that the pizza is excessively salty and people wonder why they can't sleep at night and turn to sleeping pills and wonder why they end up on a dirty mattress in some flophouse in Queens ravaged by scabies. I don't trust people who cover their food in salt before trying it first. Most likely they are promiscuous sexual perverts with no convictions on anything but grotty photos uploaded to pin-interest and Facebook stalking. Salt used to have the value of gold, but now is worth about the value of the liberal vote. I probably lost about 600 readers with that line. The road ways and highways are peppered with salt junkies, haphazardly driving with a volcano taco in one hand and a salt shaker in the other. I heard a rumor not long ago that Prius was planning on building their cars with salt dispensers right there beneath the steering wheel. It's marketing genius in my opinion.
For whatever reason the snotty little waitress didn't squeal to management about my antics and instead brought me my beer. I chugged the first two in record time as a family of four scowled at me from the adjacent table. In what seemed like an eternity my pizza finally arrived and I wondered if each member of the staff took turns hacking spit bombs over the entire thing, but I figured I caused enough trouble in the place to send it back. Doing that in this day and age is a recipe for contracting Tuberculosis or Swine Flu. In my younger years working in the food industry if the food we served was poor or took too long and the customer was unhappy then we took it upon ourselves to produce for them a new higher quality dish. We took pride in our work back then and only one time did I ever encounter a dirty fellow who would spit on somebody's food if they had a complaint. He didn't last long and one day was dragged out into the alley by the security brutes and never seen again.
It doesn't matter what kind of eatery you go to, a fancy restaurant or a fast food chain you will be surrounded by the salt junkie culture and they are a ferocious. During one of my stints of low-level employment some years ago I remember how sought after a commodity the salt was and no matter how often it was refilled, it just as quickly depleted and people would be scurrying around the room, pulling out items from the cabinets in a furious rage, flipping over tables looking for any loose granules of salt that may have fallen off somebodies double cheeseburger. Even back then I remember contemplating opening up a salt stand right there in the break room and charging $25 an ounce for the white gold. The health habits of the majority of people you pass by on the street are absolutely horrible. People love to talk about their fad diets and their elimination of starches like potatoes and spaghetti, no bread and no corn, while shoveling a bunless triple cheeseburger with extra salt and a 54 ounce coca cola down their throats. The sugar phenomena is another story that will have to be covered on another day. The one sure thing about human beings is that they have always been the same and they will be the same until the world ends in the year 3797. Archeologists who have studied the ancient Egyptians found that many of them were suffering from excessive plaque build up in their bodies from eating "garbage", fatty foods probably laden with sodium. They were no different then Joe the Plummer gorging on a plate a french fried potatoes. Who are you kidding? I wouldn't ban salt. Even if I was the Mayor of New York City I wouldn't ban salt just because I disagree with the overuse of the substance it is the choice of the fat population to do as they wish. If people are offended by the usage of the term "fat" then by God stop eating McDonalds and start eating Quinoa. It's not rocket science but everyone is so darn sensitive. I don't make fun of fat people to their faces because I am a courteous person and I am not out to hurt people's feelings but I in my head I am dissecting the human race. Who doesn't do that? Everyone is judging each other from the wreckage of their outfits worn that day to the stupid hair do to the new gait to the ridiculous boyfriend or girlfriend. I know people judge me, they do it all the time. They send me crazy emails about how wrong I am about everything and how stupid my views are and how I should find the nearest bridge and take a plunge but the fact of the matter is that I couldn't give two hoots about any judgements of me. The wonderful thing about being an imperfect cynic is that nothing anyone says is any surprise!
So where does that leave us now? Maybe this will give you something to think about tonight while you lay in bed suffering from insomnia trying to subtly flip on the dirty showtime late night movies hoping that your spouse doesn't wake up and catch you. Or maybe you are a loser and your spouse packed up and ran off with your brother and you are alone with an empty bottle of wine staring up at the ceiling dreading having to go into the office in the mourning to listen to the boss complain about what a schmuck you are. But life doesn't have to get you down. The trick is to face it with a little sense of humor and the realization that that terrible day you are having is going to end and who knows, maybe the next day some Victoria's Secret model or a J-Crew model will sit next to you at Balthazar's for breakfast and beg you for a date. Talk about optimism. Maybe if you used 1/1,000 the amount of salt your used to, you might become as cynical and optimistic as me. The first major I ever considered during my freshman year at Manhattan College in the Bronx, NY was psychology. I have always been fascinated by people, human nature, human sexuality, human diets, human everything and I imagine you can tell this is the case from my rantings. We are not strangers in this world, we are individuals, granted some downright lunatics, but still individual souls and each one with a story to tell. But if you keep ingesting the records amounts of sodium you won't be around long enough to tell your own story. Einstein once said, "I'm not sure if I'm the one that's crazy, or if everyone else is!" You won't find that kind of wisdom in the salt shaker.
Simple Life
Monday, July 29, 2013
Sunday, July 28, 2013
A GENERATION OF TWEEDS
By Greg Evans
The first time I learned we were in trouble as a people, was when I was judged on the merit of the education for which I long ago forgot.
I am sick and tired of elitism and the beast it stands for, like the throbbing itch of a fat mosquito bite under the thigh and every time you put original strength Benadryl itch stopping cream on it to sooth the agony the shorts wipe it away before it has a chance to work. At every turn, in every facet of life it seems I have come in contact with the toffee-nosed personality that makes me want to reach for the hard object for which to bludgeon the louse. Early on in my post collegiate years of struggling in the throngs of minimum wage misery in a coffee shop with a fixed customer friendly smile and quivering eyes, I would regularly receive customers in my mid-town manhattan location who acted as if they just got out of the premier of the latest Hollywood blockbuster film. Dressed to the nines with the sunglasses on even though it was getting dark out, ten pounds of makeup on both the guys and girls, reeking of cologne and perfume they would put on their elitist attitude as if the world owed them recognition without having to earn it. They were stars in their own heads, walking around as if everyone in the place was staring at them, wondering which celebrity they were when they were nothing but two-bit schmucks probably living in some studio flat in Astoria. Everyday after their job in some deadbeat salon or street marketing $9.00/hr job they'd get all dolled up and head into the glitz of Manhattan and wait to be discovered. It was a sad show and we all could see right through the act.'
Then you have to deal with the human resource associates who take themselves ultra serious, getting off on the rejection of candidates who could run circles around them in the real world. The GPA phenomena of the 21st century is the pit in the owl's stomach. The facade that some people out there are somehow exclusive because they were able to memorize more journal entries than another person and therefore are the only ones worthy of the hallowed halls of Ernst & Young or Deloitte. It is a manic practice that has left many companies having to deal with lazy halfwits with the work ethic of a clam and regular instances of fraud and scandalous behavior because they cared solely about the GPA and didn't bother to check up on the person's actual working habits and behaviors. Is it any wonder the world is run by B and C students. Do you think I just made that up, then you are sorely mistaken. The way the world works people, is that A students teach the B student who work for the C students. That is an actual quote by I believe a psychologist from somewhere in the past. The problems we have today in the world stem from the fact that too much weight is given to academics and not enough weight is judged on who the person actually is. In the late 1960's PricewaterhouseCoopers in New York City realized that the ivy league students were performing as well as they had hoped. They were regularly disappointed by the ivy leaguers and the upper 5% of the class who they were hiring. In an experiment they began hiring non-ivy league students who were average students and they were amazed to learn that they did the better work, stayed with the company and worked their way up and were more productive. The other A students and Ivy league kids had poor work habits and elitist attitudes and didn't feel like some of the work assigned to them was worthy of their high-level degree. That my friends is not fiction but cold hard facts. Whether or not PwC still follows that practice I don't know, but for a while it worked and while it did there is no record of unethical behavior going on. Arthur Andersen, known to hire only the top of the class from the top schools ran into terrible ethical problems primarily, I believe, out of the Atlanta office and that company was forced to close its doors after the Enron scandal. Though you may accuse me of speaking shallowly toward academia don't forget that I have two degrees from great institutions one ranked in the top five in the world and I work 40 hours a week with a great company, but it is the principle that bothers me and I think it is wrecking the country which each year these unfaithful practices continue. The whole thing in my opinion stems from laziness in the corporate structure and an elitist aura that needs to be eliminated from society because it has no place. I have used the accounting field to talk about because I spoke recently to a friend who traveled up to Chicago in the hopes of landing an accounting job with a CPA firm. He holds a bachlor's degree with a 3.9 GPA and a Master's in Accounting with a 3.4 GPA. During the interview he was asked, "of course" what his graduate school GPA was and he said 3.4. The hiring manager said, "Sorry we only hire candidates with 3.5 or higher." And there my fellow cynics you have the answer to much of the problems with contemporary America and the reasons why the future of corporate America is doomed. They didn't care about his past work ethic and the fact that he went through school while raising two children while his wife was working. That hiring manager should be taken to a local park and put into stocks for 8 hours. It all has become a butchering like I've never seen before. Chicago needs George S. Patton to whip it into shape. Had Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton, two notoriously poor academic students ever applied to entry-level accounting work at that sham of a CPA firm they too would have been rejected. The list of great minds who had fretted and fought their way to the top of their fields despite waves of mediocrity desperatly trying to stymie their production and progress throughout the entire journey. It is an inevitability that anyone must face when recognizing that for which they are intensely passionate and working toward a career in that endeavor.
The answer to the problem is to stay focused and disciplined and never, never give in to the hacks and deny the world the gifts you have to offer. It is documented by one of his ex-wives that Ernest Hemingway, early on in his desire to become an established novelist used to sit before his typewriter sobbing with a stack of rejection letters in his lap wondering if he was ever going to make it as a writer. The hacks just didn't think he was good enough and today his work is Canonized. The mediocre minds, the elitists will never stop attempting to belittle the great minds. It is a peculiar conundrum. Walt Disney was told once by an editor of a newspaper where he worked that he was "not creative enough to ever make it in the newspaper industry." Want more...? I can go all night.
The first time I learned we were in trouble as a people, was when I was judged on the merit of the education for which I long ago forgot.
I am sick and tired of elitism and the beast it stands for, like the throbbing itch of a fat mosquito bite under the thigh and every time you put original strength Benadryl itch stopping cream on it to sooth the agony the shorts wipe it away before it has a chance to work. At every turn, in every facet of life it seems I have come in contact with the toffee-nosed personality that makes me want to reach for the hard object for which to bludgeon the louse. Early on in my post collegiate years of struggling in the throngs of minimum wage misery in a coffee shop with a fixed customer friendly smile and quivering eyes, I would regularly receive customers in my mid-town manhattan location who acted as if they just got out of the premier of the latest Hollywood blockbuster film. Dressed to the nines with the sunglasses on even though it was getting dark out, ten pounds of makeup on both the guys and girls, reeking of cologne and perfume they would put on their elitist attitude as if the world owed them recognition without having to earn it. They were stars in their own heads, walking around as if everyone in the place was staring at them, wondering which celebrity they were when they were nothing but two-bit schmucks probably living in some studio flat in Astoria. Everyday after their job in some deadbeat salon or street marketing $9.00/hr job they'd get all dolled up and head into the glitz of Manhattan and wait to be discovered. It was a sad show and we all could see right through the act.'
Then you have to deal with the human resource associates who take themselves ultra serious, getting off on the rejection of candidates who could run circles around them in the real world. The GPA phenomena of the 21st century is the pit in the owl's stomach. The facade that some people out there are somehow exclusive because they were able to memorize more journal entries than another person and therefore are the only ones worthy of the hallowed halls of Ernst & Young or Deloitte. It is a manic practice that has left many companies having to deal with lazy halfwits with the work ethic of a clam and regular instances of fraud and scandalous behavior because they cared solely about the GPA and didn't bother to check up on the person's actual working habits and behaviors. Is it any wonder the world is run by B and C students. Do you think I just made that up, then you are sorely mistaken. The way the world works people, is that A students teach the B student who work for the C students. That is an actual quote by I believe a psychologist from somewhere in the past. The problems we have today in the world stem from the fact that too much weight is given to academics and not enough weight is judged on who the person actually is. In the late 1960's PricewaterhouseCoopers in New York City realized that the ivy league students were performing as well as they had hoped. They were regularly disappointed by the ivy leaguers and the upper 5% of the class who they were hiring. In an experiment they began hiring non-ivy league students who were average students and they were amazed to learn that they did the better work, stayed with the company and worked their way up and were more productive. The other A students and Ivy league kids had poor work habits and elitist attitudes and didn't feel like some of the work assigned to them was worthy of their high-level degree. That my friends is not fiction but cold hard facts. Whether or not PwC still follows that practice I don't know, but for a while it worked and while it did there is no record of unethical behavior going on. Arthur Andersen, known to hire only the top of the class from the top schools ran into terrible ethical problems primarily, I believe, out of the Atlanta office and that company was forced to close its doors after the Enron scandal. Though you may accuse me of speaking shallowly toward academia don't forget that I have two degrees from great institutions one ranked in the top five in the world and I work 40 hours a week with a great company, but it is the principle that bothers me and I think it is wrecking the country which each year these unfaithful practices continue. The whole thing in my opinion stems from laziness in the corporate structure and an elitist aura that needs to be eliminated from society because it has no place. I have used the accounting field to talk about because I spoke recently to a friend who traveled up to Chicago in the hopes of landing an accounting job with a CPA firm. He holds a bachlor's degree with a 3.9 GPA and a Master's in Accounting with a 3.4 GPA. During the interview he was asked, "of course" what his graduate school GPA was and he said 3.4. The hiring manager said, "Sorry we only hire candidates with 3.5 or higher." And there my fellow cynics you have the answer to much of the problems with contemporary America and the reasons why the future of corporate America is doomed. They didn't care about his past work ethic and the fact that he went through school while raising two children while his wife was working. That hiring manager should be taken to a local park and put into stocks for 8 hours. It all has become a butchering like I've never seen before. Chicago needs George S. Patton to whip it into shape. Had Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton, two notoriously poor academic students ever applied to entry-level accounting work at that sham of a CPA firm they too would have been rejected. The list of great minds who had fretted and fought their way to the top of their fields despite waves of mediocrity desperatly trying to stymie their production and progress throughout the entire journey. It is an inevitability that anyone must face when recognizing that for which they are intensely passionate and working toward a career in that endeavor.
The answer to the problem is to stay focused and disciplined and never, never give in to the hacks and deny the world the gifts you have to offer. It is documented by one of his ex-wives that Ernest Hemingway, early on in his desire to become an established novelist used to sit before his typewriter sobbing with a stack of rejection letters in his lap wondering if he was ever going to make it as a writer. The hacks just didn't think he was good enough and today his work is Canonized. The mediocre minds, the elitists will never stop attempting to belittle the great minds. It is a peculiar conundrum. Walt Disney was told once by an editor of a newspaper where he worked that he was "not creative enough to ever make it in the newspaper industry." Want more...? I can go all night.
Friday, July 26, 2013
THE NINE-TO-FIVER SYNDROME
By Greg Evans
That boring, restrained life you left behind for the few seconds when your heart is pounding in your ears and the wind is blowing your cheeks into malleable claymation, eyes squinted and rectum puckered you dive head on into the most pure moment you have ever experienced since the moment you were born and as fast as you reached that euphoric utopia, you are thrust back in to the reality of your life.
The practice of overeating, overspending, poor theater etiquette, living without a sense of humor, throwing tomatoes at the neighborhood children, internet chatrooms, and driving ten miles over the speed limit as if your going through a sexless mid-life crisis boils down to only a few things. The most likely crack in your armor is that you aren't getting laid nearly enough or maybe you hate your job, hate your wife, your kids hate you and you'd rather be in Sarasota, Florida instead of Grundy, but that's life. You get what you put into it as far as I'm concerned and the luck factor. Well some are and some simply ain't. As you well know driving ten miles over the speed limit faster, you really aren't going to get where you are going that much sooner Johnson. You only raise the likely hood of wrapping yourself around a telephone pole, running over an innocent child on a bicycle, flattening some poor animal's brains out and there is a good chance that you are either talking or texting while driving only increasing the risk factor. Now texting and driving is a whole new can of worms that we will delve into one day and I am filled with opinions and solutions to derail the teeny-bop fad. And then the speeders will drive behind me in the slow lane and tail gate me while steering with their thighs and staring into the palm of their hands typing a thousand letters a second. It's asinine. There should be a device put into the car that won't allow the car to move until the phone is plugged to it whereby rendering the phone useless until the car is again turned off. And that is not a violation of privacy by any stretch of the imagination. Instead it is ensuring thousands of people the right to breath because those who would have been struck down by the careless would be able to live. But in our society that would be too costly and an inconvenience for the schmucks screaming about their rights to drive with a cell phone in their possession. The governments of the states would rather spend the money on Jacuzzi meetings in Vegas casino resorts or on 50" flat screen televisions for the penitentiaries so the poor downtrodden convicts can watch their reality TV. Another day I will get into all my peeves regarding all the damn convicts and criminals out there. Be glad I'm not President because that problem would be solved.
If I was a cop I'd give out an estimated 500 speeding tickets a day! I wouldn't feel bad for all you lead-footed ninnies. Did you ever stop to think that maybe those speed limits on the roads were derived from some complex algorithm that took into account the weather conditions of the area, the curvature of the road, the slope etc. No of course not, you figured it was the last traffic cop who wrote you that $150 ticket with a smile who came up with the speed limits so to hell with them! Petal to the medal. Now don't misinterpret me when I talk about cracking down on speed limit regulation. I am actually opposed to many, many, many regulations that this country and numerous other countries around the world unnecessarily impose upon the people for example, gun restrictions. I don't believe in gun laws, just like I don't believe in minimum wage outside the market value and I don't believe in welfare, and numerous other things. We need to be a society that is able to live and function based on common sense and understanding the common courtesies. You may say to yourself that that is preposterous and that no society can function without heavy regulation and police presence. That is not true. I know well of at least two societies that have very little regulation, almost zero crime, high employment and almost no visible police presence. I am not going to share those places with anybody because I don't want it to get out there that they exist and then the idiots who wrecked this society to go there and ruin those.
Did you know that the fastest speeding ticket ever given out was in 2000 in Texas for going 242 mph in a 75 mph zone. In Finland the fine amount is correlated to your income. There are multiple instances of six figure fines. Chew on that for a while. We'd all like to think we have the tar to take that adrenaline rush to the limit, and 242 mph hour can surly get you there for that split second where you are face-to-face with your soul and however you want to look at it, I imagine you do some serious self-reflecting in such a moment. That boring, restrained life you left behind for the few seconds when your heart is pounding in your ears and the wind is blowing your cheeks into malleable claymation, eyes squinted and rectum puckered you dive head on into the most pure moment you have ever experienced since the moment you were born and as fast as you reached that euphoric utopia you are thrust back in to the reality of your life. And then you are desperate to return to that feeling, that place and you try the affair because it seems exciting but it really is nothing more than more baggage and an annoying set of personality quirks so you become buddy, buddy with a new brand of hootch which is great for the first week but then you find yourself regularly tired and impatient, prone to common colds and a cramping stomach. The movies you used to watch and interject yourself into in your head pretending that you were some kind of hero become stagnant and hard to get through. Sleep becomes a challenge, getting through work focused without messing up and getting chewed out by the boss is like trying to swim across the Atlantic. Nothing makes any sense anymore and what's worse, the whole world is going through some bizarre economic woe that the cost of living is through the roof so all the money you want to put aside for retirement which looks to be around age 92, is now non-existent and all you have to look forward to is pizza and porn on Friday night. Yippy. Do you know people like that? The kind you reason will end up in their office one morning armed to the teeth on an empty stomach battling an everclear hangover? You better believe they are out there and you may be one of them. That is why you want to stay on everyone's good side because you never know who is suffering from the Nine-to-five syndrome. There comes a time when it is time to pull it together and start figuring things out. What people fail to understand is that everyone has a talent, an ability to reach into themselves and fine tune some energy that is waiting to be set free. Most people either don't want to make the effort because it will take nearly everything out of you to get to that point where you are self-sufficient and able enough for others to believe in you, but it is there, it is alive in all of us only a few ever find it.
The more hectic it may seem to be becoming, the more progress you are making. The more people tell you that you are worthless, the more ground you are covering. The more hacks out there who tell you your query isn't for them, or the HR rep you says your GPA isn't good enough, or the coach says your too frail and short, or the girl says your not fun enough is all the more reason to get up earlier, work harder, run the gauntlet, take that risk and fail. Fail a thousand times to all the bobbling, laughing heads. Claw your way out of the slums, out of the trailer parks, out the mundane suburbs of expectation, out of the wood and mortar cabins and give the world something worth a damn. It doesn't matter where you came from, what you've gone through but what matters is what are made of and where you end up. Some don't even make it until after they are dead and gone but dammit they made it in the end. But understand the world needs the nine-to-fivers and there are many out there who are great at it and move up the ladder and find success and that should be paradise for them. And along the way they too will face the brutes and trolls of the the working world looking to denigrate anyone with promise, it is just the way of the world.
The real world is a cut throat land of scorn and ridicule, gritty knife fights produce winners and winners are promoted and then have to face off against the next batch of stinkers looking to bring them down but they find it within themselves to persevere through the storms and regular assaults on their work ethics and character. They aren't about just going into work, doing what has to be done and then going home. They are constantly learning as much as they can and moving forward. They aren't just sitting in the studio painting the same old paintings but they are experimenting and creating new mind blowing original works. They aren't just building the same old log cabins, but new glass homes with rivers running through them. Find inspiration in those that have forged a path through the mediocrity because they too faced off against the mediocre who are a ruthless bunch of vultures looking to feast on the weak. And the weak never make it. They cower and meekly give in to the brutal assaults that confront them daily. Embrace the competition, the struggle, the suffering, the early mornings and late nights. Find something and go at it as if the world is going to come to an end the following day. Get home at night so exhausted you can barely keep your head up and keep working until you fall asleep at your desk, easel, tool bench, or whatever pursuit you embrace. God gave us this life to make something of it, not just to live within it.
And above all, whether or not you are affluent or making a measly $10.00 an hour, you have to learn to save your money because the golden years are golden only for those you foresee such a conclusion to their lives. You don't have to be rich to be comfortable later on in life. I wasn't going to get into this tonight and I will hit on it again sometime in the future, but there are methods of living that can provide you with a comfortable life after the treacherous years of nine-to-five work is over. If you have the stomach for it, think about this for a moment. You get married young in your twenties, say 25 years old and both you and your spouse are working. Say you earn $10.00 an hour and your spouse earns more. If you can convince your spouse that all the money from all your checks from all your working life will go into a savings account and you will live only off the spouses salary, figure this. You work for thirty years which means by 55 you will be ready for retirement and say you never make more than $10.00 an hour which is unrealistic because you will be promoted and just by seniority alone your salary will increase but just for the state of the argument you remain at 10 bucks an hour for your whole working life which is 30 years. If you saved every penny, when 55 rolled around you'd have over $2 million dollars saved up and that is enough for both you and your spouse to retire and live out the remainder of your lives doing nothing but playing golf, bridge, sunning on the beach, etc. But people don't think like that, they don't save. They live in the moment and spend all their money on fun and then when 75 rolls around and they are still working or struggling to survive on social security they wonder what happened. Years ago I worked in a bank as a loan processor and my job was to dig through clients' financials and determine whether or not they were credit worthiness for a loan or a refinance and what I noticed was that people had many assets, houses, and boats and cars and time shares and this and that but when it came to their savings they had very little and some of the people were already in their 50s and 60s. I came across people who only had $10,000 saved up and it baffled me how they could go through their whole lives earning salaries in excess of $100,000 with nothing to show for it but a bunch of assets that didn't necessarily appreciate in value. What they suffered from was called the nine-to-five syndrome, living as if it was pay check to pay check, spending everything in sight trying to rationalize their miserable existences instead of being disciplined and focused and working towards something better. The difference between those who are happy and those who aren't is that some people exist and some people live. Those who live are the savers, the disciplined, who know what they want and are determined to get it. Those who exist are the majority of the population. The world really isn't that much of a mystery. The poor neighborhoods aren't so by accident. The struggling people out there are struggling because of some inequality though it may initially play a part. Don't buy all that rubbish, it's nothing but recycled gibberish that people in similar situations in ancient Rome, middle ages Finland, 3rd century Mongolia complained about. It's always been there, but there has always been a light at the end of the tunnel for those willing to search it out. Go out and become someone in your own little world because your own little world is all that matters. Be respectful of the grind, the struggle and before the dust of the gladiatorial match concludes you will see a positive response from the spectators. That is the real world people. I hope that analogy there made sense.
That boring, restrained life you left behind for the few seconds when your heart is pounding in your ears and the wind is blowing your cheeks into malleable claymation, eyes squinted and rectum puckered you dive head on into the most pure moment you have ever experienced since the moment you were born and as fast as you reached that euphoric utopia, you are thrust back in to the reality of your life.
The practice of overeating, overspending, poor theater etiquette, living without a sense of humor, throwing tomatoes at the neighborhood children, internet chatrooms, and driving ten miles over the speed limit as if your going through a sexless mid-life crisis boils down to only a few things. The most likely crack in your armor is that you aren't getting laid nearly enough or maybe you hate your job, hate your wife, your kids hate you and you'd rather be in Sarasota, Florida instead of Grundy, but that's life. You get what you put into it as far as I'm concerned and the luck factor. Well some are and some simply ain't. As you well know driving ten miles over the speed limit faster, you really aren't going to get where you are going that much sooner Johnson. You only raise the likely hood of wrapping yourself around a telephone pole, running over an innocent child on a bicycle, flattening some poor animal's brains out and there is a good chance that you are either talking or texting while driving only increasing the risk factor. Now texting and driving is a whole new can of worms that we will delve into one day and I am filled with opinions and solutions to derail the teeny-bop fad. And then the speeders will drive behind me in the slow lane and tail gate me while steering with their thighs and staring into the palm of their hands typing a thousand letters a second. It's asinine. There should be a device put into the car that won't allow the car to move until the phone is plugged to it whereby rendering the phone useless until the car is again turned off. And that is not a violation of privacy by any stretch of the imagination. Instead it is ensuring thousands of people the right to breath because those who would have been struck down by the careless would be able to live. But in our society that would be too costly and an inconvenience for the schmucks screaming about their rights to drive with a cell phone in their possession. The governments of the states would rather spend the money on Jacuzzi meetings in Vegas casino resorts or on 50" flat screen televisions for the penitentiaries so the poor downtrodden convicts can watch their reality TV. Another day I will get into all my peeves regarding all the damn convicts and criminals out there. Be glad I'm not President because that problem would be solved.
If I was a cop I'd give out an estimated 500 speeding tickets a day! I wouldn't feel bad for all you lead-footed ninnies. Did you ever stop to think that maybe those speed limits on the roads were derived from some complex algorithm that took into account the weather conditions of the area, the curvature of the road, the slope etc. No of course not, you figured it was the last traffic cop who wrote you that $150 ticket with a smile who came up with the speed limits so to hell with them! Petal to the medal. Now don't misinterpret me when I talk about cracking down on speed limit regulation. I am actually opposed to many, many, many regulations that this country and numerous other countries around the world unnecessarily impose upon the people for example, gun restrictions. I don't believe in gun laws, just like I don't believe in minimum wage outside the market value and I don't believe in welfare, and numerous other things. We need to be a society that is able to live and function based on common sense and understanding the common courtesies. You may say to yourself that that is preposterous and that no society can function without heavy regulation and police presence. That is not true. I know well of at least two societies that have very little regulation, almost zero crime, high employment and almost no visible police presence. I am not going to share those places with anybody because I don't want it to get out there that they exist and then the idiots who wrecked this society to go there and ruin those.
Did you know that the fastest speeding ticket ever given out was in 2000 in Texas for going 242 mph in a 75 mph zone. In Finland the fine amount is correlated to your income. There are multiple instances of six figure fines. Chew on that for a while. We'd all like to think we have the tar to take that adrenaline rush to the limit, and 242 mph hour can surly get you there for that split second where you are face-to-face with your soul and however you want to look at it, I imagine you do some serious self-reflecting in such a moment. That boring, restrained life you left behind for the few seconds when your heart is pounding in your ears and the wind is blowing your cheeks into malleable claymation, eyes squinted and rectum puckered you dive head on into the most pure moment you have ever experienced since the moment you were born and as fast as you reached that euphoric utopia you are thrust back in to the reality of your life. And then you are desperate to return to that feeling, that place and you try the affair because it seems exciting but it really is nothing more than more baggage and an annoying set of personality quirks so you become buddy, buddy with a new brand of hootch which is great for the first week but then you find yourself regularly tired and impatient, prone to common colds and a cramping stomach. The movies you used to watch and interject yourself into in your head pretending that you were some kind of hero become stagnant and hard to get through. Sleep becomes a challenge, getting through work focused without messing up and getting chewed out by the boss is like trying to swim across the Atlantic. Nothing makes any sense anymore and what's worse, the whole world is going through some bizarre economic woe that the cost of living is through the roof so all the money you want to put aside for retirement which looks to be around age 92, is now non-existent and all you have to look forward to is pizza and porn on Friday night. Yippy. Do you know people like that? The kind you reason will end up in their office one morning armed to the teeth on an empty stomach battling an everclear hangover? You better believe they are out there and you may be one of them. That is why you want to stay on everyone's good side because you never know who is suffering from the Nine-to-five syndrome. There comes a time when it is time to pull it together and start figuring things out. What people fail to understand is that everyone has a talent, an ability to reach into themselves and fine tune some energy that is waiting to be set free. Most people either don't want to make the effort because it will take nearly everything out of you to get to that point where you are self-sufficient and able enough for others to believe in you, but it is there, it is alive in all of us only a few ever find it.
The more hectic it may seem to be becoming, the more progress you are making. The more people tell you that you are worthless, the more ground you are covering. The more hacks out there who tell you your query isn't for them, or the HR rep you says your GPA isn't good enough, or the coach says your too frail and short, or the girl says your not fun enough is all the more reason to get up earlier, work harder, run the gauntlet, take that risk and fail. Fail a thousand times to all the bobbling, laughing heads. Claw your way out of the slums, out of the trailer parks, out the mundane suburbs of expectation, out of the wood and mortar cabins and give the world something worth a damn. It doesn't matter where you came from, what you've gone through but what matters is what are made of and where you end up. Some don't even make it until after they are dead and gone but dammit they made it in the end. But understand the world needs the nine-to-fivers and there are many out there who are great at it and move up the ladder and find success and that should be paradise for them. And along the way they too will face the brutes and trolls of the the working world looking to denigrate anyone with promise, it is just the way of the world.
The real world is a cut throat land of scorn and ridicule, gritty knife fights produce winners and winners are promoted and then have to face off against the next batch of stinkers looking to bring them down but they find it within themselves to persevere through the storms and regular assaults on their work ethics and character. They aren't about just going into work, doing what has to be done and then going home. They are constantly learning as much as they can and moving forward. They aren't just sitting in the studio painting the same old paintings but they are experimenting and creating new mind blowing original works. They aren't just building the same old log cabins, but new glass homes with rivers running through them. Find inspiration in those that have forged a path through the mediocrity because they too faced off against the mediocre who are a ruthless bunch of vultures looking to feast on the weak. And the weak never make it. They cower and meekly give in to the brutal assaults that confront them daily. Embrace the competition, the struggle, the suffering, the early mornings and late nights. Find something and go at it as if the world is going to come to an end the following day. Get home at night so exhausted you can barely keep your head up and keep working until you fall asleep at your desk, easel, tool bench, or whatever pursuit you embrace. God gave us this life to make something of it, not just to live within it.
And above all, whether or not you are affluent or making a measly $10.00 an hour, you have to learn to save your money because the golden years are golden only for those you foresee such a conclusion to their lives. You don't have to be rich to be comfortable later on in life. I wasn't going to get into this tonight and I will hit on it again sometime in the future, but there are methods of living that can provide you with a comfortable life after the treacherous years of nine-to-five work is over. If you have the stomach for it, think about this for a moment. You get married young in your twenties, say 25 years old and both you and your spouse are working. Say you earn $10.00 an hour and your spouse earns more. If you can convince your spouse that all the money from all your checks from all your working life will go into a savings account and you will live only off the spouses salary, figure this. You work for thirty years which means by 55 you will be ready for retirement and say you never make more than $10.00 an hour which is unrealistic because you will be promoted and just by seniority alone your salary will increase but just for the state of the argument you remain at 10 bucks an hour for your whole working life which is 30 years. If you saved every penny, when 55 rolled around you'd have over $2 million dollars saved up and that is enough for both you and your spouse to retire and live out the remainder of your lives doing nothing but playing golf, bridge, sunning on the beach, etc. But people don't think like that, they don't save. They live in the moment and spend all their money on fun and then when 75 rolls around and they are still working or struggling to survive on social security they wonder what happened. Years ago I worked in a bank as a loan processor and my job was to dig through clients' financials and determine whether or not they were credit worthiness for a loan or a refinance and what I noticed was that people had many assets, houses, and boats and cars and time shares and this and that but when it came to their savings they had very little and some of the people were already in their 50s and 60s. I came across people who only had $10,000 saved up and it baffled me how they could go through their whole lives earning salaries in excess of $100,000 with nothing to show for it but a bunch of assets that didn't necessarily appreciate in value. What they suffered from was called the nine-to-five syndrome, living as if it was pay check to pay check, spending everything in sight trying to rationalize their miserable existences instead of being disciplined and focused and working towards something better. The difference between those who are happy and those who aren't is that some people exist and some people live. Those who live are the savers, the disciplined, who know what they want and are determined to get it. Those who exist are the majority of the population. The world really isn't that much of a mystery. The poor neighborhoods aren't so by accident. The struggling people out there are struggling because of some inequality though it may initially play a part. Don't buy all that rubbish, it's nothing but recycled gibberish that people in similar situations in ancient Rome, middle ages Finland, 3rd century Mongolia complained about. It's always been there, but there has always been a light at the end of the tunnel for those willing to search it out. Go out and become someone in your own little world because your own little world is all that matters. Be respectful of the grind, the struggle and before the dust of the gladiatorial match concludes you will see a positive response from the spectators. That is the real world people. I hope that analogy there made sense.
Thursday, July 25, 2013
THE WHAT GOES UP, COMES DOWN EXPERIMENT
By Greg Evans
I woke up as usual early before the sun rose and slid out of bed and headed over to my phone to check the time. I had the phone attached to the charger and when I picked up the phone the cord plugged into the wall tensed and as I pulled the phone toward me the cord pulled the phone free from my hand and fell only about three or four feet to a wooden floor, face down. When I picked up the phone I realized that the face had shattered like a car windshield after taking the brunt forced of someone's head. I couldn't believe my eyes. I took the phone into the bathroom and turned on the light to make sure I wasn't sleep walking but sure enough the damn thing broke. The face of the phone was made of glass! I had always figured that it was made of plastic because who doesn't drop their phone? What kind of company would make a cellular phone out of glass!?! I actually had at one time a cover for the phone but I had dropped the phone protected by the cover into a simmering pot of spaghetti sauce and the cover had saved the phone but now I don't have a cover on it and it's broken and I have to spend money to have it fixed.
I want to throw a question out there. Am I going overboard when I say that it is obnoxious for a phone company make the face of the phone out of glass knowing full and well that glass often breaks if dropped and people drop phones regularly? Question number 2, did the companies do this on purpose because it would then force the public back to the phone stores to purchase another phone and they would then probably update the phone and the company would make more money? Of course that was the reason. Some smart guy probably working as a low level marketing or accounting associate had the great idea and brought it to his manager who passed it on up the chain of command. If the phone is made of glass and falls and shatters people will just accept it because that it is the newest and best cellular phone. But they will go to the phone store and purchase an upgrade. The problem with this concept is that it goes above and beyond the realm of tolerance. In a world where photographs are taken of earth 900 million miles away and sent to the computer of a scientist, can't they come out with something any more efficient than glass phones. It isn't even logical. As much as I like my phone for it's uses, I am simply dumbfounded and tired of the products being put out that are so prone to having to be repaired. Buy a car these days and it spends half it's life in the shop. Buy a toaster and it only lasts a couple of years. Products used to be made to withstand time and they were solid and worked and many from our grandparents young adult time still work today. Such industry won't be the case when our grand children and great-grand children are our age and you can bet glass phones won't survive 100 years unblemished if not completely shattered to pieces unless you live your life in a bubble.
I woke up as usual early before the sun rose and slid out of bed and headed over to my phone to check the time. I had the phone attached to the charger and when I picked up the phone the cord plugged into the wall tensed and as I pulled the phone toward me the cord pulled the phone free from my hand and fell only about three or four feet to a wooden floor, face down. When I picked up the phone I realized that the face had shattered like a car windshield after taking the brunt forced of someone's head. I couldn't believe my eyes. I took the phone into the bathroom and turned on the light to make sure I wasn't sleep walking but sure enough the damn thing broke. The face of the phone was made of glass! I had always figured that it was made of plastic because who doesn't drop their phone? What kind of company would make a cellular phone out of glass!?! I actually had at one time a cover for the phone but I had dropped the phone protected by the cover into a simmering pot of spaghetti sauce and the cover had saved the phone but now I don't have a cover on it and it's broken and I have to spend money to have it fixed.
I want to throw a question out there. Am I going overboard when I say that it is obnoxious for a phone company make the face of the phone out of glass knowing full and well that glass often breaks if dropped and people drop phones regularly? Question number 2, did the companies do this on purpose because it would then force the public back to the phone stores to purchase another phone and they would then probably update the phone and the company would make more money? Of course that was the reason. Some smart guy probably working as a low level marketing or accounting associate had the great idea and brought it to his manager who passed it on up the chain of command. If the phone is made of glass and falls and shatters people will just accept it because that it is the newest and best cellular phone. But they will go to the phone store and purchase an upgrade. The problem with this concept is that it goes above and beyond the realm of tolerance. In a world where photographs are taken of earth 900 million miles away and sent to the computer of a scientist, can't they come out with something any more efficient than glass phones. It isn't even logical. As much as I like my phone for it's uses, I am simply dumbfounded and tired of the products being put out that are so prone to having to be repaired. Buy a car these days and it spends half it's life in the shop. Buy a toaster and it only lasts a couple of years. Products used to be made to withstand time and they were solid and worked and many from our grandparents young adult time still work today. Such industry won't be the case when our grand children and great-grand children are our age and you can bet glass phones won't survive 100 years unblemished if not completely shattered to pieces unless you live your life in a bubble.
THE INFIDELITY CLAUSE
By Greg Evans
Do you think your the first person to learn that your spouse went out to the nightclub and ended tangled in some stranger's bed sheets after being ravished in a drunken haze of moans and grunts. All the while you are home with the kids wondering where so and so is. Come morning your frantically calling and sending out text messages while your "significant" other is going for another round feeling like a new person and realizing that the stuffy, boring, mundane marriage is what was making life so miserable. You are the reason why they are so exasperated at having to simply wake up and go off to the lousy job. All their friends are either divorced or cheating and your spouse as contemplated it a couple of times, maybe even going so far as to make out with someone while on the "girls," or "guys" only vacations. Now people get very offended when you say to them that their spouse may be interested in other people. Don't be so shocked. 85% of married persons have contemplated adultery and who knows how many have actually gone racing around the bases when the opportunity has posed itself.
We must understand that this kind of behavior has been going on since the cave men times, but it seems that with the decline of society and the regular misunderstanding of the whole marriage idea, people are loosing their grip on reality, forgetting that kids are psychologically sensitive and these wives and husbands are running around like college freshmen and society is not only accepting of the behavior but they often offer lucrative television deals to film the salty lifestyle. Are you one of those cheaters? Is society the problem? Is it the fact that you are too lazy and can't handle the reality that life isn't supposed to be fun, it's supposed to be work? Is the problem simply because you are a big tool with no future but the joys and mysterious of the VD. There was once a time when life pretended to be pure and wholesome. And having that illusion helped the kids to believe that that was the way it was until they were old enough to think for themselves but they loved the illusion so they raised their own kids in a like fashion. Let's give the kids the illusion again.
Does it matter what kind of affair it was, whether it was a spur of the moment, one-night-stand or something that started as a "friendship" and turned into hot sweaty porky. And here is a question that might hold a drop of ambiguity. Would sex talk over the internet in a chatroom be considered having an affair and be worthy of a spouse filing for adulterous behavior? Would it make a difference if it was just a random screen name or whether it was an actual person that he/she actually knows? None of it would make any difference. People have a certain character and you are either of high quality or you are a weak, spineless loser and if you happen to be one of those, then go sign up for that one-way trip of no return to Mars. You won't be missed.
Earlier today, I spoke with a young lady, we'll call her Holly, who told me her heart breaking tale of raising two kids on her own, struggling in this terrible economy and it was all because her husband of many years couldn't stop cheating. Notice the use of words there. He couldn't stop cheating which meant that he had been caught and was given a second chance and couldn't keep it in his pants. What is wrong with people? Two kids, a seemingly nice woman and you run all over town probably with the ugliest, filthiest cows the night club can produce. You all know people out there in similar situations and by no means is it always men who are the lechers. Women are far from saintly. There are a few saints out there but they are hard to come by. Now what makes it difficult to protect yourself against the cheaters is difficult because just because they run around doesn't mean they aren't nice people. And by nice I mean, a friend or a sibling may be into the adultery movement but they are still the same buddy or sibling as before. So it is tricky to sift through the BS to figure out these crack pots before they play their turn on you and hurt you. These wretches come in all packages, some outgoing, some quiet, some party goers, some more homebodies who find the UPS guy or girl a catch, you really have to depend on your intuition to pick and choose your spouse or significant other and even if you are the most attentive and careful person in the world, you may just get betrayed without ever having any red flags.
It is a sensitive subject for many people and for many people who have experienced it it becomes difficult to learn how to fully trust again. But one good thing is that it is a big world with a lot of people in it. Get out there and take a risk or two, you may be surprised.
Do you think your the first person to learn that your spouse went out to the nightclub and ended tangled in some stranger's bed sheets after being ravished in a drunken haze of moans and grunts. All the while you are home with the kids wondering where so and so is. Come morning your frantically calling and sending out text messages while your "significant" other is going for another round feeling like a new person and realizing that the stuffy, boring, mundane marriage is what was making life so miserable. You are the reason why they are so exasperated at having to simply wake up and go off to the lousy job. All their friends are either divorced or cheating and your spouse as contemplated it a couple of times, maybe even going so far as to make out with someone while on the "girls," or "guys" only vacations. Now people get very offended when you say to them that their spouse may be interested in other people. Don't be so shocked. 85% of married persons have contemplated adultery and who knows how many have actually gone racing around the bases when the opportunity has posed itself.
We must understand that this kind of behavior has been going on since the cave men times, but it seems that with the decline of society and the regular misunderstanding of the whole marriage idea, people are loosing their grip on reality, forgetting that kids are psychologically sensitive and these wives and husbands are running around like college freshmen and society is not only accepting of the behavior but they often offer lucrative television deals to film the salty lifestyle. Are you one of those cheaters? Is society the problem? Is it the fact that you are too lazy and can't handle the reality that life isn't supposed to be fun, it's supposed to be work? Is the problem simply because you are a big tool with no future but the joys and mysterious of the VD. There was once a time when life pretended to be pure and wholesome. And having that illusion helped the kids to believe that that was the way it was until they were old enough to think for themselves but they loved the illusion so they raised their own kids in a like fashion. Let's give the kids the illusion again.
Does it matter what kind of affair it was, whether it was a spur of the moment, one-night-stand or something that started as a "friendship" and turned into hot sweaty porky. And here is a question that might hold a drop of ambiguity. Would sex talk over the internet in a chatroom be considered having an affair and be worthy of a spouse filing for adulterous behavior? Would it make a difference if it was just a random screen name or whether it was an actual person that he/she actually knows? None of it would make any difference. People have a certain character and you are either of high quality or you are a weak, spineless loser and if you happen to be one of those, then go sign up for that one-way trip of no return to Mars. You won't be missed.
Earlier today, I spoke with a young lady, we'll call her Holly, who told me her heart breaking tale of raising two kids on her own, struggling in this terrible economy and it was all because her husband of many years couldn't stop cheating. Notice the use of words there. He couldn't stop cheating which meant that he had been caught and was given a second chance and couldn't keep it in his pants. What is wrong with people? Two kids, a seemingly nice woman and you run all over town probably with the ugliest, filthiest cows the night club can produce. You all know people out there in similar situations and by no means is it always men who are the lechers. Women are far from saintly. There are a few saints out there but they are hard to come by. Now what makes it difficult to protect yourself against the cheaters is difficult because just because they run around doesn't mean they aren't nice people. And by nice I mean, a friend or a sibling may be into the adultery movement but they are still the same buddy or sibling as before. So it is tricky to sift through the BS to figure out these crack pots before they play their turn on you and hurt you. These wretches come in all packages, some outgoing, some quiet, some party goers, some more homebodies who find the UPS guy or girl a catch, you really have to depend on your intuition to pick and choose your spouse or significant other and even if you are the most attentive and careful person in the world, you may just get betrayed without ever having any red flags.
It is a sensitive subject for many people and for many people who have experienced it it becomes difficult to learn how to fully trust again. But one good thing is that it is a big world with a lot of people in it. Get out there and take a risk or two, you may be surprised.
Monday, July 22, 2013
THE THIRTEEN CONNOTATION
By Greg Evans
What do you fear? Snakes, spiders, roller coasters, water, the unknown, or maybe you are afraid of the number 13. What is it about the strange number thirteen that gives us that empty hollow feeling inside? We notice shivers racing through our body and sensations of cold and occasionally a sour taste develops in your mouth. Would you really want to live on the 13th floor of a building or walk thirteen blocks to work in building number 13. Would you feel awkward baking thirteen cookies or getting married on the thirteenth day of the month? Where did this remarkable fear of the number 13 originate from?
It is said that the number 13 was first used to represent evil in Norse Mythology when Aegir had twelve gods to a banquet and a 13th god showed up, uninvited. This god was Loki the god of evil. There is also the story of the Last Supper when Jesus dined with the twelve apostles. As the story goes, Judas who was the thirteenth apostle betrayed Jesus giving him over to the Romans. Those are some of the stories of the origination of the number thirteen as having evil connotations but you also have the number thirteen representing other forms of darkness and discomfort. Did you know that there are thirteen members in a witch's coven. We all know from the Wizard of Oz the evil witches are capable of and then those witches we would see as children flying across the sky at night as we lay in our beds staring out the window at the bright moon through the pines. How about this one? Remember the Apollo 13 mission? On April 13th the shuttle left the launch pad at 13:13 hours and then exploded. Was it just a coincidence or was something peculiar and sinister going on that day? Do you believe in coincidences? I'm not sure I do. I have always been a superstitious person but the context of the superstition wasn't always black and white. I have been superstitious of the number 13 periodically in my life and I have always been grateful when I have been on an elevator and noticed that the building didn't have a thirteenth floor. Though I once did briefly wear the number thirteen basketball jersey while in middle school and even then I was somewhat conscious of that superstition.
In sports Dan Marino of the Miami Dolphins wore the number thirteen and has gone down in history as the greatest quarterback ever to play without winning a Superbowl. And do you think that also is a coincidence? Triskaidekaphobia is the name of the phobia for people who are afraid of the number 13. I don't think I would use that label for myself but I understand where the fear derives from and it isn't the unknown. There are many people out there who have thirteen as their lucky number. Poets I imagine. On Friday the 13th, 1407 King Philip the IV of France put out an arrest warrant on the Knights Templar. Those captured were tortured and killed in horrific manners. A great many people will say that it is mind over matter, and that people come up with all forms of craziness and lore but is it really all just craziness. If it didn't have some element of truth would the superstition have lasted through the ages? That is for you to determine for yourself though the next time you are walking through a dark parking garage at midnight and you realize you parked in spot number thirteen, don't get scared.
What do you fear? Snakes, spiders, roller coasters, water, the unknown, or maybe you are afraid of the number 13. What is it about the strange number thirteen that gives us that empty hollow feeling inside? We notice shivers racing through our body and sensations of cold and occasionally a sour taste develops in your mouth. Would you really want to live on the 13th floor of a building or walk thirteen blocks to work in building number 13. Would you feel awkward baking thirteen cookies or getting married on the thirteenth day of the month? Where did this remarkable fear of the number 13 originate from?
It is said that the number 13 was first used to represent evil in Norse Mythology when Aegir had twelve gods to a banquet and a 13th god showed up, uninvited. This god was Loki the god of evil. There is also the story of the Last Supper when Jesus dined with the twelve apostles. As the story goes, Judas who was the thirteenth apostle betrayed Jesus giving him over to the Romans. Those are some of the stories of the origination of the number thirteen as having evil connotations but you also have the number thirteen representing other forms of darkness and discomfort. Did you know that there are thirteen members in a witch's coven. We all know from the Wizard of Oz the evil witches are capable of and then those witches we would see as children flying across the sky at night as we lay in our beds staring out the window at the bright moon through the pines. How about this one? Remember the Apollo 13 mission? On April 13th the shuttle left the launch pad at 13:13 hours and then exploded. Was it just a coincidence or was something peculiar and sinister going on that day? Do you believe in coincidences? I'm not sure I do. I have always been a superstitious person but the context of the superstition wasn't always black and white. I have been superstitious of the number 13 periodically in my life and I have always been grateful when I have been on an elevator and noticed that the building didn't have a thirteenth floor. Though I once did briefly wear the number thirteen basketball jersey while in middle school and even then I was somewhat conscious of that superstition.
In sports Dan Marino of the Miami Dolphins wore the number thirteen and has gone down in history as the greatest quarterback ever to play without winning a Superbowl. And do you think that also is a coincidence? Triskaidekaphobia is the name of the phobia for people who are afraid of the number 13. I don't think I would use that label for myself but I understand where the fear derives from and it isn't the unknown. There are many people out there who have thirteen as their lucky number. Poets I imagine. On Friday the 13th, 1407 King Philip the IV of France put out an arrest warrant on the Knights Templar. Those captured were tortured and killed in horrific manners. A great many people will say that it is mind over matter, and that people come up with all forms of craziness and lore but is it really all just craziness. If it didn't have some element of truth would the superstition have lasted through the ages? That is for you to determine for yourself though the next time you are walking through a dark parking garage at midnight and you realize you parked in spot number thirteen, don't get scared.
Sunday, July 21, 2013
THE GAS TANK DICHOTOMY
By Greg Evans
What does it tell you about a person who fills up their gas tank when it reaches the half-way mark compared to those who wait until the "nearing empty" light is on and their tank is about 99% empty? Are those who fill up their tank once it reaches the half-way possibly more attentive, keep their home cleaner and more organized, their yard is in perfect shape, they work a steady nine-to-five job, earn a decent living, even to be considered affluent. Whereas someone who allows their tank to drain down to practically nothing tends to be more of a free spirit, seat-of-their pants. Maybe they are more creative, scuttleminded, heavy coffee drinkers, recipients of the popular ADHD diagnosis of the late 1990s, have difficulty sleeping and work at odd hours. Does the gas tank determine who might someday become the President of a country or a politician most likely to end up with a 20 year bid. If you were looking for a spouse and the only criteria you had to judge the person by was whether they filled up their tank at 50% or 90% who would you choose and why? It is an interesting question because that may give a psychologist some insight as well into the person being questioned. What kind of person wants to marry a half-a-tanker instead of an empty tanker. They may say why would I want someone so square as to have to fill up their damn tank at the half-way mark. "What a stupid waste of time!" But you then can take the angle of the person who fears the half-a-tanker as a horror feature snap shot of a guy like the one from American Psycho; everything too perfect, too organized, too regimented, too crazy. They need the person who will fill up the tank once it gets low but before it runs completely out. The kind of person who doesn't have to have all the dishes done before going to bed at night. The person who will wear the non-matching socks hidden beneath their suit pants. They want someone who will run out to the Shop Rite at 2 am., and pick up a bag of Cheetos without entering the calorie count into a spreadsheet.
Do you think age has any play in the determination? Were you the same at seventeen as you are now? Probably not though there are people who literally matured fully by seventeen and went out into the working world stuffed their bank account while you were still trying to figure it all out. They were filling up their gas tanks at the half-way mark while you are broken down on the side of the road. But most people mature over time and find their way in the world by at least 50 or become raging alcoholics. People are fascinating creatures if you take the time to observe them one day. Stop walking at moc-9 along the sidewalk trying to get to your lousy job on time, lean against a wall and look around. You'll notice that most people are rushing and hustling and bustling and honking and flipping fingers and pulling out shotguns while leaning out their windows with pulsating veins in their necks and foreheads for the same reason you are spilling coffee on your lap, on the verge of tears, depressed with a passenger seat full of shitty resumes printed with dime-store ink on bargain-basement paper as the rain pounds your beat-up junker with the yellow engine light that has been perpetually on for a month. Those busy healthy people who park in handicap spots or knock into you on a sidewalk wide enough for five cows, cutting you in line at Starbucks, most of them are on their way to the job where they are overworked and underpaid feeling like offing themselves, wishing they were Dr. Oz, just like you.
Everybody thinks that their own life is soooo important and for them it is and it should be. You should think your life is important and what you are striving to achieve will provide you with the security and happiness that you are so desperately dreaming about and seeking. But what you fail to reason into the equation are the small details of your so important life. Have you ever wondered why you are always filling up your tank, which is on empty, when you are in a rush? And while trying to get to the gas station with the screaming child in the backseat you catch every single red light and traffic is unbearably thick and people seem more interested in their smart phones then getting the hell out of your way. The details are the things that people make a great effort it seems to overlook. And you know it goes far beyond the gas tank. Once you leave the aerie you start to see the litany of small indicators as to who you are, why you are in the position in life you are, where you want to be and how you can get there. It might sound like poppycock but it actually has significant relevance. Do you go to the barber on a schedule or do you go when your hair starts to resemble a bird's nest? Are you working in a minimum wage job despite having a college degree or are you in a professional setting earning a decent wage? Those working minimum wage have followed similar patterns in their lives, and vise versa. If you don't believe me sit around with your co-workers and that includes the colored hair and nose piercing ones and ask them to tell you their stories. Other then upbringing you will see yourself in them and the same goes with the ones who "made it." Buildings are built from the ground up one brick at a time. You must never forget that fact when examining the details in your own life because you have to look at the smallest of details to understand some of the bigger ones.
I am a product of the minimum wage working world and spent my fair share of time within stepping distance of the gutter but I wanted something more and it took many years of early mornings, late nights and often seven days a week, hard, hard work to accrue the necessary skills to propel me from that brutish horror. Can you judge the direction of society by the condition of the people and the way they collectively think and act and vote? You sure can and it is as frightening as the moron who allows their gas tank run out on some deserted road in the middle of the desert and wonder why they are crawling along in the dust with parched throat, blistered lips and bloody fingers and knees. My mother once told me a story about her father, my grandfather who was as interesting a person as anyone you could meet on any unique street anywhere in the world. He was a man who would mow the lawn in a suit and a top hat, import cigarettes from England instead of purchasing a pack from the deli feet away from his building, and took his wife, my grandmother on their first date to a park bench and people watched for hours. In academia that would be a core course called How to live life 101. Tomorrow when you wake up or if you are sitting at your desk staring at "TPS" reports wondering what in the hell you are doing other than wasting away and waiting for your husband or wife to leave you for some schmuck with red corvette, take a look at your gas tank and figure yourself out.
What does it tell you about a person who fills up their gas tank when it reaches the half-way mark compared to those who wait until the "nearing empty" light is on and their tank is about 99% empty? Are those who fill up their tank once it reaches the half-way possibly more attentive, keep their home cleaner and more organized, their yard is in perfect shape, they work a steady nine-to-five job, earn a decent living, even to be considered affluent. Whereas someone who allows their tank to drain down to practically nothing tends to be more of a free spirit, seat-of-their pants. Maybe they are more creative, scuttleminded, heavy coffee drinkers, recipients of the popular ADHD diagnosis of the late 1990s, have difficulty sleeping and work at odd hours. Does the gas tank determine who might someday become the President of a country or a politician most likely to end up with a 20 year bid. If you were looking for a spouse and the only criteria you had to judge the person by was whether they filled up their tank at 50% or 90% who would you choose and why? It is an interesting question because that may give a psychologist some insight as well into the person being questioned. What kind of person wants to marry a half-a-tanker instead of an empty tanker. They may say why would I want someone so square as to have to fill up their damn tank at the half-way mark. "What a stupid waste of time!" But you then can take the angle of the person who fears the half-a-tanker as a horror feature snap shot of a guy like the one from American Psycho; everything too perfect, too organized, too regimented, too crazy. They need the person who will fill up the tank once it gets low but before it runs completely out. The kind of person who doesn't have to have all the dishes done before going to bed at night. The person who will wear the non-matching socks hidden beneath their suit pants. They want someone who will run out to the Shop Rite at 2 am., and pick up a bag of Cheetos without entering the calorie count into a spreadsheet.
Do you think age has any play in the determination? Were you the same at seventeen as you are now? Probably not though there are people who literally matured fully by seventeen and went out into the working world stuffed their bank account while you were still trying to figure it all out. They were filling up their gas tanks at the half-way mark while you are broken down on the side of the road. But most people mature over time and find their way in the world by at least 50 or become raging alcoholics. People are fascinating creatures if you take the time to observe them one day. Stop walking at moc-9 along the sidewalk trying to get to your lousy job on time, lean against a wall and look around. You'll notice that most people are rushing and hustling and bustling and honking and flipping fingers and pulling out shotguns while leaning out their windows with pulsating veins in their necks and foreheads for the same reason you are spilling coffee on your lap, on the verge of tears, depressed with a passenger seat full of shitty resumes printed with dime-store ink on bargain-basement paper as the rain pounds your beat-up junker with the yellow engine light that has been perpetually on for a month. Those busy healthy people who park in handicap spots or knock into you on a sidewalk wide enough for five cows, cutting you in line at Starbucks, most of them are on their way to the job where they are overworked and underpaid feeling like offing themselves, wishing they were Dr. Oz, just like you.
Everybody thinks that their own life is soooo important and for them it is and it should be. You should think your life is important and what you are striving to achieve will provide you with the security and happiness that you are so desperately dreaming about and seeking. But what you fail to reason into the equation are the small details of your so important life. Have you ever wondered why you are always filling up your tank, which is on empty, when you are in a rush? And while trying to get to the gas station with the screaming child in the backseat you catch every single red light and traffic is unbearably thick and people seem more interested in their smart phones then getting the hell out of your way. The details are the things that people make a great effort it seems to overlook. And you know it goes far beyond the gas tank. Once you leave the aerie you start to see the litany of small indicators as to who you are, why you are in the position in life you are, where you want to be and how you can get there. It might sound like poppycock but it actually has significant relevance. Do you go to the barber on a schedule or do you go when your hair starts to resemble a bird's nest? Are you working in a minimum wage job despite having a college degree or are you in a professional setting earning a decent wage? Those working minimum wage have followed similar patterns in their lives, and vise versa. If you don't believe me sit around with your co-workers and that includes the colored hair and nose piercing ones and ask them to tell you their stories. Other then upbringing you will see yourself in them and the same goes with the ones who "made it." Buildings are built from the ground up one brick at a time. You must never forget that fact when examining the details in your own life because you have to look at the smallest of details to understand some of the bigger ones.
I am a product of the minimum wage working world and spent my fair share of time within stepping distance of the gutter but I wanted something more and it took many years of early mornings, late nights and often seven days a week, hard, hard work to accrue the necessary skills to propel me from that brutish horror. Can you judge the direction of society by the condition of the people and the way they collectively think and act and vote? You sure can and it is as frightening as the moron who allows their gas tank run out on some deserted road in the middle of the desert and wonder why they are crawling along in the dust with parched throat, blistered lips and bloody fingers and knees. My mother once told me a story about her father, my grandfather who was as interesting a person as anyone you could meet on any unique street anywhere in the world. He was a man who would mow the lawn in a suit and a top hat, import cigarettes from England instead of purchasing a pack from the deli feet away from his building, and took his wife, my grandmother on their first date to a park bench and people watched for hours. In academia that would be a core course called How to live life 101. Tomorrow when you wake up or if you are sitting at your desk staring at "TPS" reports wondering what in the hell you are doing other than wasting away and waiting for your husband or wife to leave you for some schmuck with red corvette, take a look at your gas tank and figure yourself out.
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