You Foolish Person!

(Why am I writing this in the 3rd person when it's so obviously about me?)

You don't need that item. You've already got one which is just as good, and in some important ways probably a lot better.

But you want that other one.

You want it really bad. And the Internet knows you want it, and is following you around with advertisements for it. (It's no mystery how the Internet knows: you keep clicking on ads for the item, and you haven't undergone any radical cookie-blocking program. You're not mad at the Internet. On the contrary, you wanted to keep seeing those ads.)

But you're not exactly made of money. This would be, for you, a substantial expense. You keep telling yourself just to work harder, try to make some money, and forget about that item, at least forget about it until you're rich. When you're rich you'll be able to buy 5 of them, or 10. You'll be able to buy one for everybody you know, and maybe 1 or 2 of them will actually also think that it's really cool, and then you and them will have something to talk about, and wouldn't that be excellent.

Yes, it would. But you're not great at making money. If you were you would've been rich a long time ago, cause you really want to be rich.

Ahhhh, the temptation, to just click, click, click and buy it! Oh, what folly! Put it out of your mind!

You look at the one you have. Did I say probably in some ways it's a lot better than this other one you want? It's not probably, it's definitely. The one you have is excellent. How can you be so unappreciative of it as to think that you need this other one?!

But of course none of this has anything to do with thinking. It has to do with feeling, with wanting, with passion --

With madness! This is madness! Stop it! You're not crazy!

Well, maybe you are. You just did it. Click, click, click, you bought the son of a bitch. And one moment later you felt horrible about it.

And now, not many moments later than that, you feel great. You're NOT crazy. You're pretty frickin' stable, actually. This will not ruin your life. If you tried to do something like this every day, sure, or even twice a week, then your life would be turned upside down pretty quickly. But you don't do this sort of thing at all often. And there's such a thing as being too stable and walking around like a clenched... fist, and dying young of a stroke, bitter, because you never had any fun. And you only have one life, and this "madness," this purchase which the extremely-stable side of you called crazy just now, will add some freakin' joy to what is left of your life.

So enjoy it.

I just want to say one more thing: I've always thought that "Hot Hot Hot" by Buster Poindexter is a thoroughly excellent, underrated record. People laugh at it all the time, treat the record as a punchline -- they're fools. (And it fits in with the theme of this post: enjoy your life every now and then instead of always walking around like a clenched... fist. And all of the above goes for "Disco Inferno," too!)

Signs That There's Something Seriously Wrong With Me

I had noticed that over the course of the last year or so, I had begun to harshly criticize atheists much more often than religious believers, but recently it occurred to me that I had been spending less time with time with believers, and almost no time discussing religion with believers. it may well be that

1. I criticize everybody. All the time. Excessively. Very excessively, maybe.

I started watching "The Big Bang Theory" when TBS started showing it in syndication. It took me a while to get over my annoyance at the show's laugh track -- it's the 21st century, for crying out loud -- but right away I identified strongly with the character of Sheldon Cooper, and thought: He's so wonderful, such a brilliant autistic genius.

2. It took me over 20 episodes to realize that Sheldon constantly annoys all of the other characters on the show. Severely annoys them. This annoyance, Sheldon's social dysfunction, is in fact the biggest driving force of the action of the series. And all I could think, 20 shows long if not longer, was, He's so like me and He's so wonderful. Self-absorption and lack of self-awareness calling, will I accept the charges?

3. Over the past 35 years, I've never maintained a romantic relationship for more than 3 months.

4. Over 35 years ago, when I was a teenager, I maintained a relationship for 2 1/2 years, but recently I completely forgot about that when thinking over my relationships, and considered my longest relationship to have lasted 3 months.

And so, to some up,

It seems I may be a real bastard, an extremely annoying old fart who does not even honor the best things which have happened to him. This would explain some things like why I'm so lonely.

I really don't like to think of myself as nasty old bastard -- but seriously: who does? I'm guessing: fewer than the actual number of nasty old bastards. It's not at all pleasant to think of myself in this way, but here, as always and everywhere, recognizing a problem and facing it squarely is essential to any hope of ever solving it.



Okay, I may have achieved one insight from this exercise already. Maybe not a big one, I don't know. It's just that I can keep in mind how harsh my criticism feels when I focus it on myself.

Keep that in mind when I'm talking to others.