Bill's Notes

Scott Adams of Dilbert fame asks, "What's your permanent age?" He says 42. I'd say 38.

It was 84 degrees early last week. It was 4 degrees early in the week before. I think that's the biggest one-week swing in temperature I recall that didn't involve travel.

Because the world is changing. Because you're changing. Because the blogosphere's changing.

Because to keep up with the pace of change, we need to change, too.

Okay, that's bullshit.

I've changed the name to more accurately reflect what this website is. These are notes, not essays. I've stressed from the beginning of this blog that anything that appears here is by definition unfinished -- it's certainly unedited and sometimes merely nascent, hoping someone else will pick up the idea and run with it. My greatest writing efforts must, by definition, go into my job as a writer. This is what's left over.

I've also had a tacit assumption that perhaps a miniscule amount of this stuff would be re-worked later into a usable, professional format.

I think the name change will help remind me, and the readers, what you're reading.

FWIW.

You don't need to me to tell you we live in an age awash in communication. People are attempting to communicate with you, very frequently, including me right now. How we manage this communication matters greatly to our mental health.

That's because writing has an impact — often an emotional one. Say I tell you a story about a woman who has cancer, and she was bitter and miserable her whole life, and then she died, alone, unloved, forgotten and afraid. You'd be sad. But suppose I told you that there was a woman dying of cancer, unloved, virtually forgotten and very afraid, and she lived in your town. In fact, she lives in a facility right up the street from you. You would not only feel sad, but you'd feel prompted to take action.

Maybe you'd resolve to visit this woman. And then maybe you would. Or maybe you'd resolve to visit this woman, and then feel so good about yourself for such a generous intention, that you wouldn't actually visit the woman. Just put it off, and eventually, you learn she died. Then you'd feel guilty.

My point is not to lay a guilt trip, but to argue that when you read, you subconsciously ask yourself this: What can I do about it?

A lot of news is what Saturday Night Live once called, "Head shaking news." There isn't anything you can do about "it" but shake your head. A woman dying of cancer in Adelaide, Australia. Perhaps you could send her a card. But it's awfully remote.

Or a war. Or a plague. Or a political figure. Ralph Waldo Emerson said our political debate is filled with emotion-laden topics such as "This man is right" or "This man is evil" and the like. Seriously, you, Dear Reader, what can you do about the current President's decision-making or the current Speaker's decision-making. You could potentially join with like-minded individuals hoping to influence them. And sometimes that work. Sometimes not. Remember — no matter who's elected, the government gets voted back in. (I forgot who said this.)

Reader impact. What can you do about what you read? Usually, most things you read about will be beyond your "locus of control." This doesn't mean you can't set out to right a great wrong — indeed, go for it. But I submit that if you do, you will have to choose among wrongs to right, and that you will read more unrightable wrongs in a few days of perusing the newspaper than you can hope to right with a lifetime of sustained effort.

And how will that make you feel? Powerless? Frustrated? Angry at our limitations? Saddened? Enraged? Maybe you will find yourself so unable to accept that you can't fix this horrible thing, whatever it is, that you find yourself fantasizing about what you would do if you were in a situation to fix it.

And none of that's good for you.

And it gets worse. There's gossip, too. What is the function of gossip? What is the emotional core? Don't we feel superior, even self-righteous, when we learn of this celebrity's failings or that celebrity has gone into rehab? Maybe we even feel the score's a little evened? I don't know how you feel. I avoid gossip stuff, but something I see it, and inevitably feel superior to some of the celebrities ... and that's not a good part of my soul to magnify.

What is the "reader impact" of this entry?

1. Take stock. I'd like you walk away from this entry with a greater awareness how what you read/watch on tv impacts you. Bring your attention to how communication is impacting your soul/psyche/emotional life. Is it upsetting you? Is it inspiring you? Is it bringing out a dark part of your soul, or a good part of your soul? Do you feel empowered? Or utterly powerless?

2. Consider communication as you would a person in your life. Avoid reading too much highly emotional material that you can't do anything about. You would avoid someone who frequently told stories that left you emotionally drained and unable to help, wouldn't you? Same goes for certain kinds of info. Beware of being addicting to negativity, gossip, anger, lust, etc. Our info age makes us all extremely susceptible to all the worst instincts of mankind. And on the contrary, you would invite someone into your life who made you feel empowered, inspired and in control of your life.

3. Consider news- and info-fasts. Almost every spiritual teacher will tell you this, from the wackiest New Age guru to your local priest/rabbi/imam. A lot of communication is distraction — and your mind is more able to hear God in the silence than in the cacophony.

4. Remember, you shoot ducks one at a time. None of this is to say you can't do something about info you receive. When a dog rousts a flock of ducks, they all take off at the same time. A hunter's natural instinct is to shoot at the flock, and miss them all. A hunter has to train himself to pick out ONE duck, a duck he's capable of shooting (that is, in his range), and then aim for that one.

5. Be gentle with yourself. Like all humans, you live in difficult times. (That's stolen from somewhere, too.)

That's all. Have a good weekend.

In this post I neglected to define jerk. The shrink who wrote "How to avoid marrying a jerk" says there are three characteristics of jerks:

1. A habit of breaking boundaries.
2. A refusal to see things from others' point of view.
3. A pattern of emotional instability and lack of emotional controls.

He defines each of these as meaning persistent behavioral problems. He also makes a sophisticated distinction (IMHO), in which he says people can become jerks in the wrong relationship, and then de-jerkify, so to speak, later.

One thing he (the shrink) says is that jerkdom can be hidden for a while, but warning signs will usually manifest itself within a few months. He says (adding all the usual caveats): If you've had six months or more of thoughtful, loving behavior from your significant other, you probably are not dealing with a jerk. What you have is a relationship problem, that is, the jerky behavior is probably caused by relationship dynamics. Remember this is a rule of thumb, and I may have misread it.

Albert Ellis. Famous and very old psychologist. Pioneered a cognitive behavioral approach to psychology. Basically, it boils down to "think clearly and you won't piss yourself off so much." A lesson that I've been learning and relearning every since I first did therapy about 18 years ago. One of the first thing I learned was — you can "right" on the facts but still "wrong" in terms of psychological health. Usually, it means you're missing the point. For some reason, I keep forgetting this. For some reason, it's easy in the blogosphere, when you're often reading others' thought distortions.

1. Visine A.C.
2. Claritin non-drowsy formula.

Whew!

I haven't blogged that much lately. There's been some good reasons: I'm mostly happy, and I've been busy at work. And I've also been spending a lot less time in the blogosphere. There are various reasons for this:

1. I've recognized that there is a great deal of repetition in the blogosphere, practically as much as in the news media, and it's getting boring.

2. I'm not sure anyone is convincing anyone else of anything.

That's all. Enjoy the nice weather.

I abandoned watching the television show 24 midway through last episode that the show is officially deeply retarded.

People do things that make no sense, over and over again. In one scene, a woman betrays Jack Bauer and gets his whole unit killed, except for Jack. After one sharp exchange with her, he drops it. Entirely. In fact, a few minutes after that (in real time), she's refusing to help him save others unless gets her terms. And Jack negotiates with her ... huh?

Remember, the show is in real time, yet they act like an entire week has gone by instead of one hour.

But there's also been something else, and that's been a creeping political correctness. The Middle Eastern terrorist wants peace, but [white] White House aides attempt a coup d'etat through a terrorist bombing. A Middle Eastern aide at CTU is tortured, but she's innocent of course — it's the white guy working for a Halliburton-like company that's betrayed everyone. There's a Middle Eastern terrorist, yes, but he's working at the behest of a Russian general, and besides, the whole thing has been accidentally set in motion by a corrupt, evil American corporation that's engaged in a massive coverup.

Then there's the moronic responses of the White House. The VP wants to fire a "warning shot," a nuclear strike on a Middle Eastern country, but in a sparsely populated area. This is supposed to send a message.

Clue: There's probably no way to seem less serious than a "measured" nuclear response, and God help us if anyone suggests such a thing. That doesn't mean a limited response, in the sense that everything has limits. But if we have people in high places that suggest we respond to nuclear terrorism by a "warning shot" nuclear strike, then we've gotten friggin' idiots in high places.

Yes, I know this is fiction ... but the scary thing is I can see our country doing such a moronic thing, a tit-for-tat strategy. Perhaps that's what bugs me. I can see such fecklessness happening for real to nuclear terrorist act. I mean, basically, 24's saying if we get nuked by a terrorist, there isn't a lot we can do about it. Because any response is destined to fail.

And 24's gone on and on like this all year. Done with it.

*****

But a question remains ... what about nuclear terrorism? I'm beginning to think, perhaps 24 is right. Maybe there isn't anything our nation-state could do against a nuclear terroristic act. Perhaps what we could witness in this century is the obsolescence of the nation-state. Or at least the limited nation-state.

I imagine that what we'd see post-nuclear terrorism is a RFID- and GPS-powered police state. Which is a very scary idea.

People like to throw around the term "Jacksonian Democrat" and wear it as a badge of honor. It refers to a combination of pragmatic domestic politics (let's help others if it works, not if it doesn't), populism, a reluctance toward foreign intervention, and an absolute ruthlessness in times of war. Basically, in foreign policy, it means we don't go looking for trouble, but if someone messes with us, we crush them.

But there's something we also forget about the term Jacksonian. It refers to Andrew Jackson, one of the biggest assholes of all time. See Trail of Tears. The Cherokees in Georgia sued to keep their land — and took their case to the U.S. Supreme Court. They won. Jackson confiscated their land and force-marched them, anyway. That is, Jacksonian also means ignoring the rule of law.

All the major "strands" of American politics — Jacksonian (populism), Wilsonian (interventionism), Hamiltonian (it's all about the money) and Jeffersonian (leave me the fuck alone) — have upsides and downsides.

It's not unusual for young women to refer to themselves as "whores" these days, often on personal blogs. It's part of a rhetorical technique known as pre-emption. You state the accusation yourself, and by doing so, you empty it of its meaning and transform an epithet into something different.

It's a time-tested, common technique, and sometimes legitimate. When blacks among themselves used the word "nigger," for example, they pre-empted the use of the term and changing its meaning. However, by keeping the word taboo among non-blacks, they have been able to maintain some of the words' power.

Other times pre-emption is not so legitimate. Although not remotely in an analogous situation as blacks, homosexuals have used the "pre-emption" technique over and over again, taking ownership over queer, faggot, sodomite, etc. The result was not empowerment, but a conscience-seared shamelessness and a total shut-down of debate and discussion, as approval of homosexuality was added to the topics of political correctness, about which no one may differ.

Similarly, post-feminists* have been trying to reclaim "whore" and other anti-women epithets in a similar effort to, uh, deflate their meanings and take control of these words while inoculating themselves from any criticism of their own promiscuous and self-destructive behavior. The result is similar to homosexuals — they're not empowered, just pathetic. They become conscience-seared and shameless. They try to claim that acting like horny teenage boys somehow makes them stronger, instead of making them, well, disreputable.

I've read a few of these young women's blogs, and rarely do you read, "I've been a total ho, and now I've found fulfillment." More like, "Gee I'm unhappy and can't imagine why." [Inevitably, they eventually ridicule and bash "organized" religion, too.]

By the way, this isn't a new phenomenon — it's just something that's gotten progressively worse.

One story: One ex-girlfriend back 25 years ago explained to me that after the sexual revolution in the 60s, husbands should no longer expect that their wives to be virgins on their wedding nights (or to have only "been" with their husbands before marriage), and that previous standards of sexual morality were outmoded. We were part of a new generation, she said, and we had new moral standards. I even asked her mother, one day, if she agreed with her daughter, and she repeated, well, it was a new generation ... but you could tell she didn't quite believe it.

Punch line: My ex-girlfriend's parents have been happily married 45 years. They have three children, who account for seven marriages among them. But hey, that's just anecdotal evidence.

Harder data: Studies have shown (according to the book "How to Avoid Marrying a Jerk") that there is an inverse relationship between marriage success and promiscuity before marriage. In fact, there's a direct relationship between the number of sexual parners you've had before marriage and the odds you'll commit adultery in the relationship. The more sexual parners you have had before marriage, the more likely you will be unfaithful in the relationship, and the more likely you will eventually get divorced.

And as a man, I can tell you this: Your eventual husband isn't going to dig reading about your sexual exploits on the Internet years from now, and he's certainly not going to feel good about buying the cow when everyone else was getting the milk for free, especially if the cow's documented bragging about distributing her favors, uh, widely. (And of course this is true for wives-about-husbands, too. No woman wants to read her husband was a whoremaster/manslut, especially on the Internet.)

Moral of the story: If you can't be good, be discreet. If possible, thoughtful and kind. It's just good manners.

More here.

And check out "How to Avoid Marrying a Jerk." Great book. Wish I'd read it when I was 16. The thesis is that you have a better chance of finding a compatible partner if you intentionally pace the relationship. What you do is look at sliding scales in five areas to keep your relationship "in balance":

Know
Trust
Rely
Commit
Touch

First, you get to know someone. To remain safe in a relationship and avoid "jerks," know someone more than you trust them. If you trust someone more than you know them, you're taking an unnecessary risk ... and are more likely to get burned.

Next, always trust someone more than you rely on them. Think about the opposite: Would you rely on someone more than you trust them? Not if you could help it, right?

Taking the relationship to the next level, you rely on someone more than you commit to them. Would you commit to someone you don't/couldn't rely on? Obviously that's a recipe for disaster.

Finally, after you get knowledge, trust, reliance and commitment to someone all at about the same levels (that is, high), only then do you consider touch.

FWIW. YMMV.

* My point is more subtle than perhaps I'm making it here. I'm not arguing for the return of double standards — I'm arguing for manners, discretion, thoughtfulness and modesty by both sexes. This doesn't seem as clear as it could be in the post.

1. Saw a 2004 movie, "I Heart Huckabees." Terrific, well-written, funny-as-hell movie. Existential detectives, indeed. The kind of movie I wished I'd written when I was 25, if only I'd had the talent and sense of humor.

2. Bought an electrical kettle. Should've gotten one a long time ago. You flick a switch, and voila, it boils water. Much better than the extreme inconvenience of having to put a legacy kettle on a stove and then turn the stove on, then have to move the kettle to a different burner after you're done using it.

3. Went furniture shopping. Went to two stores. Both times I was immediately met by a salesperson. Both were named Nancy. QED, all furniture salespeople are named Nancy.

4. Saw the wildest accident this morning on the NE Extension. A truck managed to go off the road and travel to the top of a 60-foot-hill or so. Half the trailer was dangling off hill and it was perpendicular to the highway. Never mind. Let me put it this way — the tractor trailer looked more like it slipped off the top of the hill than it drove up the hill from the turnpike.

5. Recently I've found the NFL channel on cable. What a great channel. Last night there was a very cool documentary on the World Football League. What was surprising to me was how many of the old players they interviewed simply loved the opportunity to play. Another great documentary: The 1976 Tampa Bay Bucs, which went 0-14. Same theme — a lot of the former players were happy to have a roster spot.

That's all.

UPDATE: Okay, bonus anecdote ... I was being tailgated on a country road for a couple of miles. I'm driving as fast as I believe it's safe, but the person behind me disagrees. I knew there was a convenience store up a ways, so I decide to stop and pick up a Diet Coke.

But guess what? As soon as I approach the entrance to the convenience store, a driver coming out of the store totally blocks that entrance. That requires me to stop and let her onto the road before I can go in. And the tailgating driver, an 18-year-old girl, proceeds to beep and give me the finger.

I was like -- I wasn't the one blocking the entrance ...

BTW, I won't get into the details, but getting the Diet Coke was a similar comedy of errors. Let me put it this way -- whenever I tried to go anywhere in the store (and as I tried to leave) someone got in my way. Fortunately, it was so weird that I could laugh it off.