When you’re sixteen, extremely esoteric ideas seem enlightening and profound. When you’re raised in the staid suburbs, this is particularly true. I hung out a lot with misfits in school. Then I got online and I hung out with misfits there, too. We were all ruthlessly non-judgmental and yet self-righteous, simultaneously left-wing and yet apathetic, atheistic yet “spiritual”, and as cocky as all get-out.

The truth is that we were smarter than most of our peers. We had, in fact, put a lot more thought into world issues and religion than most of our peers. In some ways, our peers had yet to catch up with us. I would later find out that many never would.

But we were far from finished growing up. We were misguided and wrong in ways that we had never even considered. We had ideas, but our outlook was exceedingly warped by being outcasts. It wasn’t until college that most of us lost the anchor-sized chip on our shoulders and it wasn’t until college until we met enough people like us that we didn’t want to be like that anymore.

Some people, unfortunately, never quite grew out of that. When in college I dated a girl not yet out of high school. She had yet to snap out of it. She wore all black, worshipped the spirit goddesses of gaea, and was bisexual. This was a not-infrequent combination when I was in high school. But it was forgiveable because she was so young. Forgiven, but dumped. Later I met and dated another girl. One-by-one the facts started coming out: goth, pagan, and bisexual. Others had the distinction of being some combination of goth, pagan, bisexual, former goth, former pagan, and former bisexual. But the “former” modifier was irrelevent because all they ever talked about was having once been goth, pagan, and bisexual.

Then I met Libby. Libby was like a small-pox shot. She had enough of the triad to permanently innoculate me from them forever more, but not enough to kill me. Libby was seriously disturbed. I mean seriously, seriously disturbed. She opened my eyes in a number of respects. She took scattered thoughts I had about the triad and brought them together with crystal clarity. It’s not about a love for Mother Earth or a sexual interest in other women, but about cultivating and being able to project the desired image of being different and unlike all those people they don’t like. Libby was so intent on being different and special and unique and most of all surprising that she would sleep with girls and pretend to talk to spirit-goddesses to do it. That’s how lost she was. Had I not been caught and beat up in here histrionic tempest, I would feel sorry for her. After all that happened, and after witnessing her jarring ignorance of herself, it was all I could do to avoid contempt.

Ever since then, I’ve had a keen eye for those that strive to be unique by neglecting any steady footing in reality. Those are fools I no longer suffer.

So my partner at work is this guy named Simon. Simon and I get along extremely well. He really wants to be my friend, but he is engaged to a girl named Paige.

Goth, Pagan, Bisexual Paige.

On days that I don’t see Libby when I look at her, I see someone that accepts even less responsibility for her life. I see an even bigger hypocrite. I see someone that unrelentingly complains about the fascist, oppressive government that sends her monthly checks for her children because she can’t track down the fathers. I see someone that has made mistake after mistake, but says over and over that she would do it all over again. I see someone complaining about the parents that house her, complaining about the job market when she’s worked for and quit half the jobs in Mocum, and complaining about the “backwards town” she refuses to get herself out of if it means taking responsibility for her life.

But she really likes me. From the second we met - when she worked at FalStaff - she has liked me. She sees in me what Mocum is by-and-large devoid of: tolerance, compassion, liberalism, and worldliness. She has no idea what I really think, mind you, because she’s never asked. It’s enough that I listen to her talk. And talk. And talk. And talk. Out of respect for Simon I do not verbally render judgment upon her or create a stirr.

And yet it’s because of my friendship with Simon that keeping quiet is so difficult. The most responsible thing she’s ever done is ask him to get a vasectomy so that she wouldn’t breed anymore. He’s become more of a father to those children than she has ever been a mother. He’s paying her rent while she skips around from job to job. Simon is introverted and an odd duck in a very straightlaced town. He may have had another girlfriend prior to Paige, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he hadn’t. Either he’s going to spend the rest of his life with her, he’s going to have to get a vasectomy for her, or he won’t get to have children of his own.

But he’s happy with her. He’s one of the few coworkers I have that is in a happy relationship. So what’s to say, really, other than “No thank you” when he asks if I want to hang out.

7 Answers to 7 Questions

7 things I plan to do before I die:

• Have at least one moment in time where I am not afraid to go to the dentist, optometrist, or doctor because I don’t want to hear that I have cavities, an outdated prescription, or an ulcer.
• Make a movie or short film.
• Learn the basics of auto maintenance.
• Have a computer with internet access or at least a television in a house bathroom.
• Read the Bible from front to end and at least one other religious text (Talmud, Koran, Book of Mormon, etc.) from cover to cover.
• Get a dog or preferably two.
• Learn another language.

7 things I can do:

• Sing all 50 states in alphabetical order. The real states, that is. I can’t do that with the Trumanverse states. Yet.
• Touch my nose and walk in a straight line no matter how plastered I am.
• Make unbelievably good egg-based breakfasts and chili-based dips.
• Make myself sound more educated and intelligent than I am by using unnecessarily long and obscure words without making myself sound like the intellectually insecure pompous prick sort of person that uses long and obscure words to sound more intelligent and educated than they are.
• Find something to appreciate about any moderately coherent artistic work.
• Block out the whole world in pursuit of a singular task for hours on-end some times and yet be completely unable focus most of the rest of the time.
• See and understand both sides of an issue, even when I feel strongly one way or the other.

7 things I cannot do:

• Carry a tune.
• Keep a straight face when I witness or think something hilarious. I’m told that my face lights up when I think of something funny.
• Keep my mouth shut whenever most appropriate to.
• Be comfortable in a room full of strangers.
• Keep track of time mentally.
• Dance.
• Let go.

7 things that [used to] attract me to another person [before I got married and lost all notice in women other than my lovely and talented wife whom I love more than all others]:

• Intelligence.
• Marches to the beat of a different drummer. I don’t get along well with normal people.
• Competence. I am really attracted to people that are really, really good at something. This applies to friends, but moreso to significant others.
• Patience. I couldn’t survive a relationship with someone that didn’t have patience.
• Sociability. Someone needs to help me get out.
• Mental instability. Hey, it doesn’t say that I have to like the fact I was attracted to a particular sort.
• Red or black hair. Everybody’s gotta be frivolous sometimes, no?

how’s that for a disclaimer?

• Very good
• Very true
• Very good and very true
• The words of wise man
• The very good and very true disclaimer of a wise man
• A good way to get out of trouble.
• The very good and very true disclaimer of a wise man that are effective at getting someone out of trouble.

7 celebrity crushes:

• Lisa Loeb
• Nabiki Tendo
• Nicole Kidman
• Molly Shannon
• Claire Danes
• Penelope Ann Miller
• Sela Ward

7 Things I say the most:

• “I didn’t do it.”
• “Sorry, I can’t smell it.” Having a poor sense of smell is not the curse one might think it to be.
• “Oh, sorry, I was just talking to myself.”
• “Outstanding!”
• “Well, it’s complicated…”
• “Ready to get up and face the day?!?!” This one is not-so-popular with Clancy.
• “Uhm.”

7 bloggers I am tagging:

• Hey, I already answered 7. This is 8. Sorry, no dice…

This guy reminded me of something. He’s talking about those annoying “I ______ and I vote!” with the blank filled by some cause that the person fervently buys in to.

I’m not much of a bumper sticker person. I’ve got a Southern Tech Alumni sticker on my window, but that’s about it. I do not have nor will I likely ever have anything remotely political on my car. I generally believe that a philosophy that can fit on a bumper-sticker is poorly developed. To each their own, though.

Anyway, what I think would be cool would be to have one of those “And I Vote” bumper stickers with some absolutely stupid belief or detail. “I was abducted by aliens and I vote!” or “I believe in cannibalism and I vote!” or just “I can’t dress myself and I vote!”

It would be kind of fun… for about two minutes.

Woman drives recklessly. Man fails to compensate for woman’s reckless driving. Woman yells at man. Man flips woman the bird. Woman shoots man’s finger off.

Amusing story and not-so-much what I see a lot of out here. I’d expect that sort of thing back in Colosse, but the drivers out here are remarkably better. No one up here seems to recognize that, though. They complain and complain, but really have no idea how good they have it. Southern drivers, on the other hand, complain less. I’m not sure if it’s because they’ve resigned themselves to being surrounded by bad drivers or simply because they are bad drivers and don’t want to cast the first stone.

Helen the Everyday Stranger has a thoughtful post on gender stereotypes in movies. The two (three?) of you that have been reading me a while may recall that is a subject of some interest to me. My general view is that there are definitely stereotypes and most stereotypes have a counterpart that, being equally flawed, peeves the other side as well. The know-it-all wife suggests that women have to do everything, for instance, is countered by the can’t-do-anything-right husband. I thought that I’d written on this, but I can’t find the post to save my life.

In any case, Helen observed something while watching the Horse Whisperer:

Last night I watched Horse Whisperer on tv, even though the satellite kept kicking out and even though the movie is mediocre at best-while I like Kristin Scott Thomas and I think Scarlett Johansson is the bee’s knees, the movie was one of those sappy tear-jerker types that follows the following pattern:

- Rugged, quiet durable man
- Woman in an unsatisfying relationship, whose attentions are devoted to something else to get through the days
- Unsatisfied Woman meets Rugged Man
- Rugged Man and Unsatisfied Woman hook up
- Unsatisfied Woman feels torn, but ultimately returns to unhappy relationship due to a sense of obligation, leaving Rugged Man to spend the rest of his life mending fences or whatever the fuck Rugged Men do.

This pattern is repeated in most sappy chick films. Bridges of Madison County is another good example. The people decide to continue their lives, lives in which the woman is ultimately responsible for something that means she has to live that life, and the man is a nomad, live-off-the-land kind of guy. I sit there on the couch, drinking a gin and tonic and nursing the beginnings of one hell of a cold, and I think: What a stupid movie. Why can’t the woman be the live-off-the-land, wild exotic creature, for once, instead of the Unsatisfied Woman? Why is it always the man that gets to be the one with the luck of the nomad?

My first thought is that as a woman she would be in a better position to answer that question than I. These films are, after all, are not made with the male ego in mind. On that score I would guess that it’s because independent and self-directed men are in high demand despite a good portion of society attempting to change course on that. A woman is also more likely than a man to pride herself on being supportive. And outside of tastes, for good or for ill women are more likely to find themselves in a supporting position than an emotionally independent one. Helen, as she points out, is an exception to that stereotype.

As it so happens, so am I. If I’d had my druthers, I probably would have spent the rest of my life in the city that I was raised in. Range-roaming? Not so much. I obviously came willingly, but Clancy had to drag me out to new horizons and chance-taking. I find women like Clancy and Helen interesting, if only because I have a habit of seeking out people different from me. Helen is apparently a former military brat and has never really had a home. Clancy had a home and escaped it at the very first opportunity.

Clancy and I have another year or so here and then we live Mormonville for somewhere else for a little while followed by somewhere else. Just thinking about it exhausts me. Interestingly, and sort of lending credence to stereotypes (which are likely at least partly self-perpetualizing) I often found myself out-of-step with most young ladies. It wasn’t that we didn’t see eye-to-eye. We did, but when I looked forward I saw a very dark abyss of isolation and never moving beyond pre-set boundaries. Of never being free and of living a life of servitude for the spouse and the kids. Neither wanting to bust out and therefore just staying in night-after-endless-night.

That feeling alone accounts for why I left Julie after several years. Some years later a similar guy with a similar temperament left her largely for the same reasons. Ironically the prospect of stasis lead to adventuring. Not much, though, as I latched on to the next girl I found and geared to settle down and my successor with her latched on to her predecessor. In some ways, we stuck to our homesteading ways. Or at least I tried to before I met someone bound to end up anywhere-but-where-we-were. Anyhow, myself , my Julie’s ex, his ex-wife-slash-fiance, and my wife are all different ducks.

Which brings me back to popular entertainment. Of the five of us, only Julie really buys in to mainstream romantic movies. And Julie only got that way cause my predecessor with her was a domineering military-wannabee-type. Well, that may not be range-roaming, but he strived to be a stereotypical guy. And I suspect we all look at movies like the Horse Whisperer and ask ourselves “How come all the movies end up this way?”

In her look at the upcoming movie “Crash,” Becky broaches the subject of racism. The film apparently tackles the subject in a non-formulaic manner. It sounds like a breath of fresh air. I get nervous when the subject of race gets brought up in the same tired PSA manner context. Racism is bad. Racists are bad people.

Yawn.

Let’s look at the first statement (that racism is bad) first. Racism, narrowly defined, is indeed a bad thing. Calling people names or refusing to serve them because they look different is… good god… it’s bad. I feel like a dang Public Service Announcement voiceover for even having to say it. We’ve moved beyond that point in the debate. The point we’re at now is… a little more complicated.

The question is whether or not when an immigrant is shot 42 times was it because of his complexion?

The question is when we instinctively shift away from a black man as we walk down the street is it because he’s black or because he’s wearing chains and baggy clothes?

The question is when someone tells a racist joke do we take them to task?

The question is do we oppose government programs because we mentally see the beneficiaries as being… different from us?

The question is whether or not we should give preferences to people historically discriminated against when stacked up against a while or Asian with a better resume?

These are the questions we face, and while they’re serious questions we should recognize that we’re a long way from Jim Crow. The question isn’t whether or not people of different races should be treated with equal dignity and respect, it’s what exactly equal dignity and respect mean when say it?

I’m trying to avoid getting political here. To be honest, I’m not that interested in hearing differing views on affirmative action or Jesse Jackson or Pat Buchanan. Rather, I’m trying to say that the issues at hand are complicated, but popular entertainment almost never treats them as such. Nor does it treat the players of the morality tale.

That brings me to the second statement, that racists are bad people. As long as we perpetuate this myth, no one is going to be looking into themselves and wondering if some of their behaviors and beliefs aren’t informed by the percieved differences by ethnic and racial groups. Presenting every racist individual as a member of the KKK is simply not helpful.

A while back DC Comics had a series called The Kents that explored the history of Clark Kent’s adoptive family. I never read the series, but the premise itself put me off. The Kents, as it turns out, were ardent abolitionists and borderline-pariahs in their community because they fought the good fight against racism. As it turns out it has been established that the Waynes helped out in the underground railroad to free the slaves. It props up both the Kents and the Waynes, which is good, but it completely sidesteps the very complicated issue that a lot of otherwise good people had some very, very unfortunate beliefs and participated in an inhumane institution that destroyed families and lives.

And with that, there are story possibilities abound. The Facts of Life, of all shows, did an admirable job where one of the characters discovered her ancestor was a segregationist. Granted, they chose the least sympathetic character (Blair, the snob), but the treatment was very sympathetic. Roseanne also had a good episode where the characters were left to wonder if they had let racism taint their reactions to various events. Solid stuff and not preachy.

And what those portrayals would really accomplish is giving people the ability to investigate their own behavior without having to condemn themselves as bigots if they find out that their reactions to certain things are based on preconcieved notions based on racial perceptions. That would in turn allow them to change their behavior. But no one is going to alter their behavior a bit if it requires first admitting that they have horns growing out of their temples.

The truth is that we all treat those different from us differently. It’s human nature. A lot of people have generally negative views of other ethnic groups, often unconsciously. On the other end of the spectrum some people are extremely condescending. And in some ways it’s a catch-22 wherein however you treat people different than you you’re guilty of something in someone’s eyes. But most people are just content to say that they’re not a part of the problem and the la-dee-dah portrayal in popular media does nothing but reinforce that erroneous self-image.

I was needing to take care of some chores in Zarahemla, so I delayed my trip out to work in Mocum for a couple hours to take care of this and that. Then I locked myself out of the apartment. I decided at that point it was worth my while to get myself an extra set of keys, so I was further late because I went to the hardware store. I called my boss Willard every step of the way to give him a head’s up.

So at roughly lunchtime I get to work. No one was there and I got a little agitated at the thought of a group lunch that I was not a party to because I was late getting in. Then Edgar got here and said that of the ten or so people in our department, a whopping four showed up today. The rest called in sick, including Willard. My partner Simon was also out, basically leaving me in charge.

Being in charge is kind of fun, it turns out. I like organizing how other people work better than doing the work myself, though I had to do both. In any case, despite half the office being out, the work coming in did not slow down one iota. I got through everything I needed to, but with one QA person showing up (and taking charge) half-way during the day and one person getting temporarily shifted over to QA, things kinda spun out of control. I’m impressed with all that we got done today, but it’s unlikely we’re going to be able to make tomorrow’s deadline unless everyone shows up.

The sad thing is that the department as a whole has been aching for things to do for weeks now. Finally things start coming in at the end of last week and some bug wipes out half the office.

When I was in high school I had to write a paper describing a place. I decided to make a unique twist and describe a place without actually naming it. I figured if I described it well enough without naming it, that would be a demonstration of effort. “You’re describing a water park, I think, but you should have said so. C-”

Apparently I had missed my calling. I should have gone in to physician recruitment.

Clancy is due to finish her residency next June. She put her name on an employment search list. Family practicioners are in somewhat high demand, so there have been an awful lot of queries. We’re really not looking yet since we’re probably not going to jump straight from a residency in to a practice, but it’s good to get a lay of the land. A lot of the job offers are for positions that she’s not interested in. She doesn’t want to do a high-volume in-and-out clinic or be the in-house doctor at a sauna.

But the ones that interest me the most are the cagey ones that don’t actually mention where they are. You’d be surprised at the volume. They will give flowery descriptions of how it’s near a specified landmark or an unspecified city. One went on and on about all the things it was near in such depth that we were able to get out an atlas and isolate where the practice was. It was in southwestern Colorado. We could even tell why they were so quiet about where it was: It’s on a tribal reservation. Just the other day we got one that boasted being nearby a major metropolitan area, nearby parks, and in a university town. Sounds like it could be perfect, except that we don’t know where it is. Even the website that the contact email address used is dormant.

What strikes me as odd about these cold calls is whether they really intend to get by without letting prospective people know where it is. I guess they’re just trying to get the opportunity to give a highly-charged sales pitch before breaking the bad news that it’s on a reservation or in a bust coal-town in Appalachia. Bu what kind of doctor even responds to such an ad. Any employer that doesn’t say what you’re going to be doing or where you’re going to be doing it is suspect. It’s one thing if it’s a three-line ad in the paper and they’re trying to save money, but another thing entirely if they’ve got paragraphs describing the place without so much a word as to where it is. And yet if doctors did not respond, they wouldn’t be doing this, would they?

MSN Dating & Personals asks the question of whether it’s okay to date your friend’s sister or not.

Last week I mentioned Dave, a really good friend from high school. Dave was really my best friend Clint’s best friend, but we became great friends on our own in high school. Dave had a younger sister named Dana. Dana was an awkward little girl with an obsession for horses. She was also smart with an odd figure, braces, and acne. She came with us to school when we set up our own carpool in high school.

Flash forward several years and I ran in to Dana at a Christmas Party. She was, in a word, hot. Like really hot. Well, she wasn’t a 10 but the transformation was so drastic from her former incarnation that the comparison only exaggerated the improvements. She had also grown up quite a bit.

Dave, Clint, and I were hanging out one summer. I can’t remember where exactly Dave was when Clint asked if I’d seen Dana recently.

“Yes. Holy cow. Yes.”

“It’s too bad, isn’t it?”

“Too bad?”

“Yeah, that she’s Dave’s sister.”

“I don’t see a problem.”

“Dave’s my best friend, dude. And he’s protective of her.”

“Well yes, he is your best friend.”

Dave came back and Clint relayed the conversation. Dave was not amused.

The answerer is correct insofar that such relationships ought to happen a lot more often than they do, but guys in general are pretty good about respecting their buds’ wishes whether it’s a sister or an ex. And when it comes to your best friend, you know them a whole lot too well to let them ever date your sister. I don’t have a sister, but if I did I would not let most of my friends - who are great people on the whole - anywhere near her.

The devil whose exploits you hear is much worse than the devil whose exploits you haven’t heard, I think.

Lana takes calls for Falstaff on most afternoons. She used to be an account manager and then sales, but she didn’t seem to suit either position. She’s extremely pleasant to look at, though, so they stuck her at the front desk.

I’m understating things when I say that she’s easy on the eyes. Were it not for one thing she could easily be a model. She has a great smile, perfect skin and teeth, and adorable blue eyes. 6′ tall. I’m not saying this as an admirer (she has this glazed look in her eye, signifying helium behind them, which has always been a pretty big turnoff for me), but as matter-of-fact observations. Anyway, the one thing? She’s carrying twenty or so extra pounds.

In the greater scheme of things, twenty extra pounds is not too bad. I wish that was all the extra weight that I carried. But what’s weird to me is how the near perfection of every other feature. It’s weird. You see somebody like that and part of you - conditioned by Hollywood’s obsession with beauty - expects to see perfection all around. And then you see the… I don’t know what it is. I wonder if she knows its there, judging by what she wears.

So that got me thinking about what a curse it must be to be almost perfect. I was disabused of any notions of being particularly attractive when I was young and fat. I learned that I would never the cheerleader and then, of course, later on I learned why that was probably a good thing. What I’m getting at here is that it was never a “close call” for me. I found that my advantages - and things that attract me to people - were outside the purely physical realm. I don’t say so with a superior attitude as unless I was going to die a virgin it was something I had to realize and decide.

On the male side of the spectrum is Blake, the assistant cheif of accounts. This guy could probably give Brad Pitt a run for his money. Tall, dark, and handsome - but with baby blue eyes. Straight teeth and good hair to boot. But it’s interesting that as time has wore on, he’s become more and more tan and more and more thin. It’s like he decided to go Hollywood, except that doesn’t really fly in Deseret. Not that the ladies don’t swoon (well, some don’t because unlike Lana he’s a prick and carries a definite air of superiority). It’s odd in that it’s sort of like watching an actress starve herself to be beautiful by the standards of nobody but vapid tastemakers. It’s possible that Blake is losing the weight by other means and getting a tan accidentally (it’s not hard to do that out here - high elevation).

I have a somewhat high tolerance of conspiracy theories. They’re often quite fun, if nothing else. It can also make you see things in ways that you wouldn’t otherwise - even if the conspiracy isn’t as overt or literal as you conceived.

But then there are conspiracy theories that are just plain dumb. A coworker put forth that conspiracy just last week:

“The drug companies have a cure for cancer. They just don’t want to release it because then they can’t profit from treatment.”

This breaks one of the two fundamental rules of institutions.

It suggests a level of competence that an organization the size of a Big Pharm company cannot possess. How could you keep such a thing a secret? It would be awfully difficult. Even if there was a non-disclosure agreement, the first employee to break it would be an instant celebrity. Also, assuming that only a dozen or so people know about it (a very conservative estimate), the chances of at least one of those people either having cancer of having a loved one inflicted with cancer hovers above 100%. Would they let their loved ones die prematurely in order to keep their job? Unlikely.

Corporations are really good at taking short-term profit over the long-term. Long term profits don’t mean anything, after all, if you’re not around to make them. Also, making enough money quick enough and you retire. The CEO that presides over a cure for cancer will make zillions for the company. Even if that did come at the cost of long-term treatment prescriptions, they would take it because they wouldn’t be around for that part of it. But honestly I doubt it would even cost them in the long term. People that get cancer and survive are reasonably likely to get cancer again. And again, and again…

Now that’s not to say that R&D isn’t more geared towards treatments than cures and that there’s not a profit motive in that, but that’s a different duck altogether. But the two need not be mutually exclusive. The more we learn about cancer, the closer we come to treatments and cures. And if any drug company ever sees itself within spitting distance of a cure, I’ve no doubt that they would jump on the opportunity.

Keywords: Preventative Medicine

Clancy and I spent the weekend at a friend’s place up in Shoshona. Dave and I have been friends since high school and we were attendants at one another’s weddings, so we’re fairly close. By pure chance we ended up moving within a couple hours of one another.

Dave is one of the best people I’ve known. Extremely intelligent, pretty charismatic, and he has moral aspirations far above and beyond what I would even attempt. Two of his moral stances are environmentalism and anti-materialism. All but the most rabid right-wingers like to consider themselves one or the other, but Dave walks the walk. To give you an idea, he said with honest lament that as much as he would really enjoy being able to take cold two-minute showers, a warm morning shower is his vice.

He doesn’t hold these ideas in a showie look-at-me kind of way like some. Which in some ways makes it harder.

When you’re a guest in someone’s home, the last thing that you want to do is offend. If in the home of conservative Christian sorts, I try not to use the Lord’s name in vain even if I don’t consider it a big deal to do so. It’s a matter of respect.

But unfortunately, we both kind of spent the weekend worried that we were offending by taking too-long showers or eating or drinking too much or what-have-you. I also bit my tongue before mentioning that some of what I was wearing was bought at Walmart. That’s the last thing that Dave would intend, but it’s kind of hard not to think about it when confronted with someone that’s constantly striving to live up to his value system.

On the upshot, it’s people like those that propel you to take stock of who you are in comparison to who you would like to be. He retouched me with some of my younger hippier beliefs. He and I disagree on an awful lot of things, but it makes me even look at those ideals I have that doesn’t in a more intense way. In a good way, though. Because he doesn’t take a holier-than-thou posture, he doesn’t make me defensive or make me feel like I’m lacking. Taking stock means not only looking at the distance between where you are and where you would like to be, but also the distance between where you are and where you started out from.

Pure Nerd 60 % Nerd, 43% Geek, 47% Dork

For The Record: A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia. A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one. A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions. You scored better than half in Nerd, earning you the title of: Pure Nerd. The times, they are a-changing. It used to be that being exceptionally smart led to being unpopular, which would ultimately lead to picking up all of the traits and tendences associated with the “dork.” No-longer. Being smart isn’t as socially crippling as it once was, and even more so as you get older: eventually being a Pure Nerd will likely be replaced with the following label: Purely Successful. Congratulations! Also, you might want to check out some of my other tests if you’re interested in any of the following: Buffy the Vampire Slayer Professional Wrestling Love & Sexuality America/Politics Thanks Again! — THE NERD? GEEK? OR DORK? TEST

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I got the test from my cooler counterpart Barry. Not sure how much I agree with the results - particularly on the dork index. Which is not to say that I’m not a dork, but the 84th percentile? Given how much I agree with the general assessments outlined here and here, I’m either a hypocrite or the test is off-base. My guess is that’s it’s conflating introversion with dorkity and/or (more likely) a lot of the folks taking this test vastly overestimate their computer skills. While I agree with the given definitions, I consider a dork’s difficulty in social situations to be more a product of a lack of skill rather than a personal preference. Not that I am unbiased, of course.

When I was twenty or so I was dating a girl named Julie. Things were a bit on the rocks because I was always late for dates. I’d lose track of time at the drop of a hat. I’d know that I needed to leave at 10 and I would see it turn 9:40, 9:50, and then 10:20. She took this as a sign that I didn’t care about her when, at the time, nothing could have been further from the truth. But as much as she tried to get me to remember things, I simply could not. The answer came in the form of a cell phone. That way if I was running late or if she was worried that I would she could call me. She agreed to call me before she got angry and I agreed not to be defensive or feel condescended to if she called to remind me of things that I hadn’t forgotten about.

Some people, apparently, believe that our solution was incorrect because if she had just kept getting mad at me, I would have stopped forgetting (all evidence to the contrary withstanding).

There seems to be some people out there that seem to get a high out of telling people that the only reason they are low is because they are inferior. They are quite understandably angry at a society that often says no one is to blame for any of their shortcomings, but then take the opposite tact and say that dyslexic people like reading backwards and once you say that dyslexia is actually an impediment to otherwise intelligent people that everyone will use dyslexia - or whatever ails them - as an excuse.

And it just seems like these “some people” really like having their beliefs firmly entrenched and their self-righteousness so rigorous that they can shoot down anyone that disagrees as weak, stupid, or insufficiently caring.

Dr. Mike Adams is apparently one of those people:

I always know which of my students have been told that they suffer from adult ADHD. They are often late and sometimes leave class early to go potty, unlike most students who go potty before class begins. They blurt out the answers to my questions constantly – always without the courtesy of a raised hand. And, usually, they fall asleep in class (probably from exhaustion) after the fifteenth or twentieth interruption. Later, they are awakened by the cell phone they forgot to turn off before arriving in class.

After being diagnosed with ADHD, two things usually happen to the newly “disadvantaged” student. First, a psychologist tells the victim that he cannot pay attention nor control various impulses. Next, he is given a dosage of drugs. Neither one of these responses actually works. In fact, telling him that he cannot pay attention – rather than that he simply does not pay attention – usually reinforces the problem. The drugs don’t work because, again, the disorder is fictional.

As I read this, I pondered. Dr. Adams is not merely suggesting that ADHD does not exist, he is (by extention) suggesting that people that seem to be afflicted by it are (a) lazy, (b) stupid, or (c) self-centered.

That got me thinking.

When I was nineteen I ran out of gas. I had told myself and told myself that I needed to fill up with the odometer read a certain number (the gas gauge was broken). So, as I walked over a mile to the nearest gas station in 100-degree heat, was I lazy? Was I stupid? Just like I was stupid when I got an honors degree in college?

Was I being lazy, stupid, or self-centered when I had to get up to use the restroom five times in the course of taking the LSAT? Self-centered? I wasn’t getting any extra time on the test. There was no competitive benefit to doing it. People who take the LSAT are looking at law school and are, almost by definition, not lazy. Stupid? I scored above-average on a test with some pretty stiff competition. But somehow I just decided to tank the test. Musta been, cause ADHD doesn’t exist and can easily be “cured” the second someone stops allowing for it.

Except that some of us don’t allow for it. My cell phone goes off at 4:45 every day so that I don’t forget to take it home with me. I set myself up to get to work 15-30 minutes early every day. I set up Momento-like routines so that I don’t forget my things in the morning. All to compensate for the fact that I’m lazy, of course.

I bite my tongue to get myself to stop fidgeting in inappropriate situations. I bite it until it hurts, but sometimes it’s the only thing that helps. To compensate for the fact that I’m self-centered, of course.

As for being stupid. Well, I’ll leave that judgment to others. Most people that know me do not believe so. And I venture to guess that if I were a student in his class he would not consider me so.

Or maybe he would, because there are certain things that I cannot compensate for. Unless he wants me to bring a pee-bottle to class or wants me to skip class, during an 80-minute lecture I will probably have to get up and pee once. I miss key elements of movies because I have to do the same there. Believe me, I wouldn’t if it wasn’t necessary.

But it’s all in my head. It’s because I’ve been coddled (though my parents, having believed as he did, cut me no slack). It’s because I’m still out for the drugs that I don’t actually take. It’s to explain my failure, though I don’t actually consider myself a failure and whenever I talk about why my life hasn’t turned out the way I might have liked I very rarely mention learning disabilities.

The thing is that I agree with Dr. Adams in regards to classroom policies. Attention difficulties are not an excuse for tardiness or the complete inability to contain oneself. Or for forgetting to turn one’s cell phone off, for that matter. Bathroom breaks aside, what really bothers me about this is the smug sense of self-righteousness. The refusal to be had that’s turned him into an ass. The wrong-headed “science” he uses to justify his being an ass.

But I run to it every day. On one side, you really do have the people out there that want to excuse everything by citing some disorder. I have as little tolerance for such people as Adams does. But on the other hand, you have folks that tell people that have struggled their whole lives to overcome certain biological setbacks that there are no biological setbacks and that they’re just lazy.

Consider, I guess, a 5′4″ basketball player. You don’t put him in the starting line-up just to be “fair” because he probably doesn’t belong on the court. But at the same time you don’t tell him that the only reason he’s on the bench is that he’s not trying hard enough.

Before chaos struck in the Gulf Coast, I was looking at Hit Coffee and realizing that it has become somewhat depressing. I looked above me and didn’t see a black cloud following me around, so I determined that I was using this blog as a venting mechanism. There’s no shame in that, of course, though I’ve generally tried to be entertaining about it in a more humorous than sad way. It’s not cool to be a downer.

So I decided that I would find something in my life - preferably relating to work - that I am really happy about. The answer did not take long at all to find: My seating arrangement.

The Girl’s Club was interrupted when Marc made the quick transition to QA. Along with Simon and the girls, we get along extremely well. Marc and I have similar interest and temperaments as well as a sense of humor. He also doesn’t have a significant other that I detest.

As I type this, I am no longer sitting with Marc. It seems that by pointing out an area in my job that I’m really happy with, it had to change. The good news is that I have a coveted window seat again. The bad news is that I’m sitting in Jarvis’s seat, next to people I don’t care much more.

Jarvis, it seems, took the job at the nuke plant that I declined. Jarvis and I have butted heads a lot in the past, but I have little but respect for him. When we were doing the W-2’s in January, working 55-hour weeks, he would not leave until the last person left. Compared to the managers that would talk about how important something was and be out the door at 5, he stacked up very well. Eventually I told him that he was okay to go home and I didn’t mind working by my lonesome.

He and I mostly butted heads over procedure. He was liberal and I conservative, in the true sense of the words. He was always trying new things, which I liked, but always tried them in the form of grand pronouncements rather than incrementally and I believed that he jumped headlong into a bad policy more than once. More often than not, though, he was right. I am just change-averse, I suppose.

I inquired about Jarvis’s position, figuring (correctly) that they were going to discontinue it. So Willard is deputy-less, although he seems to be grooming someone for the position. More on that another time.

Even though my position is the same as it was last week, just sitting in Jarvis’s chair makes me want to boss people around.

We had our annual company meeting last week. The Fallon family - the collective owning the company - are great cooks and laid out a feast of ribs and taters and ribs. I had eighteen ribs and was reminded why I should not have eighteen ribs. Some were small, though. I mooched off the food and left, apparently right before things got interesting.

The festivities included the Employee of the Month award and, more importantly, the Employee of the Year award.

In my approaching two years of employment here, I have never once seen Willard get truly angry. But apparently he left fuming. As did George Welton, the chief of our sister department. The two winners were (surprise!) account managers. They were lauded for various things, but primarily because they had so much knowledge of the industry. They have that knowledge almost solely because they basically just turn around and ask Willard and George, who are the ones that actually know stuff. Kudos for the accmans for getting answers, of course, but a slap in the face to the ones that actually have them.

It’s also a source of irritation for the rest of us because the two were also commended for getting the requests to their requestors in an expiditious manner. This is a stupid thing to compliment them for because they don’t actually complete the requests! They simply slap a date on it two weeks before it’s needed and then tell us the world will end if we don’t have it done. The fact that they look good by making promises on our behalf is a constant source of disgruntlement.

They also announced that this is a jeans-safe workplace now. No word yet as to whether or not they’re going to reimberse me for all the money I’ve sunk in to slacks, but I’m not hopeful on the matter. I’m also {sob!} denied the opportunity to go buy more slacks. Had my eye on some white Dockers at JC Penny.

Ah, well.

Sometimes no news is good news.

Sometimes good news kicks no news to the ground and keeps piling on.

We’ve gotten a lot of good news today.