Author’s Note: The following is based on a true story. Yes, really! Names, places, and other details have been omitted to protect the guilty.
A Word or Two About Being Different
As a kid, I indulged in make-believe much longer than I care to admit. What can I say? I had a vivid imagination! I was a middle child; my parents separated when I was about 10 years old, my eldest brother left home when I was 13, and my parents officially divorced when I was about 15.
Growing up, I had no prospects, no close role models, few friends, and was treated with a mix of indifference and open hostility. So I mostly avoided the harshness of reality by daydreaming, letting my mind explore the fantasy worlds of video games, movies, artwork, and music. But I always understood the difference between fantasy and reality, and I never insisted anyone else play along!
All that to say that I know what it’s like not to belong, and I don’t begrudge people their private thoughts. Where I draw the line is when someone demands that I believe as they do…
A Time and a Place For Everything
“Ain’t nobody got time for that!” – Sweet Brown, 2012
I go to a grocery store to exchange my money for their goods. I’m there to buy some meat, butter, eggs, maybe some plain Greek yogurt, and whatever the fuck else they have for sale, cheaper than I can get somewhere else… No more, and no less!
I’m not there to discuss or debate politics, sexual orientation, gender, religion, or race relations; In the immortal words of Sweet Brown, “Ain’t nobody got time for that!”
There’s a time and a place for everything, and I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect to conduct my business without becoming an unwitting participant in someone else’s fetish.
It’s Ma’am!
“An insult is like a drink, it affects one only if accepted.” – Robert A. Heinlein, Glory Road, 1963
I remember the 2018 meme of the grown-ass man, cosplaying as a ‘Karen’, and throwing a tantrum in the GameStop for allegedly being “misgendered”. My friend Lars once told me, “Offense can’t be given, it can only be taken.” I believe this is a Danish proverb, and I don’t mind old man Bob Heinlein cribbing it. But I do resent the idea of that minimum-wage employee being abused by some mentally ill man LARPing as a woman. I generally try to avoid people and places where I might be exposed to such silly behavior… So you can imagine my surprise (and disappointment) at my own It’s Ma’aming!
After we finished shopping, my wife and I looked for an empty checkout line and a fat, unkempt young urbanite with a large beard waved us over. Normally, these details wouldn’t matter to me, were it not for what would shortly unfold…
You see, Costco doesn’t have plastic bags, but they did have empty cardboard boxes scattered around. I asked if I could use one for my groceries, and the cashier said I could. As he scanned the items, he handed them to me, and I politely and earnestly said, “Thank you very much!”
This seemed to upset the man, and before I understood what was happening, he huffed, “Excuse me!? Did you just call me ‘Man’?” Years of verbal (and sometimes physical) abuse have made me hypersensitive to aggression, and in anticipation of an altercation, my hackles went up, and my fingers curled instinctively into fists. My gaze focused on him, and he was trying to draw attention to a small badge I hadn’t noticed before that read, “She/They.”
I was slow in answering. My mind was still assessing the threat and regulating my composure so as not to make a scene. Then I noticed his ill-fitting T-shirt read, “Strong Black Woman.”
He seemed to notice my agitation, so I said in a slow, even tone, “No. I said, ‘Thank you very much.'” My body language said, in no uncertain terms, “Sonny, Uncle isn’t interested in playing word games with you, so you’d best conclude your business and make yourself scarce.”
I suspect some people crave attention and look for an excuse to go off on some poor, unsuspecting victim. Apologizing rarely helps, and only serves to vindicate their behavior. I acted rightly, I think.
Hypocrite
“What about all of those assholes you yelled at through your doorbell camera? ” I hear you say…
I’d argue it’s a question of roles. The provincial laws that govern me explicitly state that I have a right not to be bothered by either panders or canvassers, and that neither may linger on my property if they have reason to believe they’re not welcome (read: my clearly posted signs, visible from the road).
If someone chooses to ignore both the law and my personal wish not to be disturbed, I may then exercise my right to instruct them to vacate my property, and I don’t have to be polite about it!
This young cashier, on the other hand, was in his place of business, being paidto do a job. He’s expected to behave professionally and courteously at all times, and if he feels that the customer is harassing him, his recourse is to notify his manager. Therein lies the difference!
Epilogue
I’m over it. I suspect this one came in with a number of others brought in from out of state to help with Le Grande Opening, and now that’s all over and done with, we’ll have some regular ass normies running the store (hopefully). All the while, Jim must be looking down from the Heavens, laughing his ass off at my antics… Ah well!
“Ah shit, here we go again!” – Carl “CJ” Johnson, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Here We Go Again…
So it’s been a couple of years, and once again, I gained back all the weight I lost and then some, this time reaching an all-time high of 270 lbs… Enough was enough, so on August 1, I set my calorie tracker to a net loss of 2lbs/week, and have averaged about 2.5 lbs a week (15lbs so far!). No surprise, I’ve done this at least half a dozen times… counting calories and staying under your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR, i.e., the calories you naturally burn just by being alive) to maintain a deficit is effective!
The rule of thumb is ~3,500 calories = 1 lbs of fat loss, so a deficit of 500 calories a day gets you roughly 1 lbs of fat loss per week. Some of this might come from exercise, but most (probably 80% or more) comes from what you cram in your pie hole… But raw calories aren’t everything!
Calories In, Calories Out (CICO)
It’s entirely possible to subsist on nothing but pizza and Diet Coke. Hell, John Carmack did while developing such beloved titles as Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake. If the legends are true, he ate one medium-sized Domino’s pepperoni pizza daily and drank eight or nine Diet Cokes.
Baffled by how this could be, I looked up the nutrition information for said diet, and by my reckoning, that’s about 1,680 calories a day. As far as I can tell, John Carmack weighed something approximating 155-160 lbs. in his early 20s, was about 5’10”, and used to wrestle and weightlift. Given all of that, I would say he was staying around (if not under) his BMR and could do this (at least for a while) without becoming a fat fuck…
Even so, while you will most certainly lose weight while maintaining a caloric deficit, some of that weight will be muscle if you’re not getting enough protein and incorporating resistance training, but more on that later…
Why You Have to Cook for Yourself
If you want to be less of a Porker, you need to learn how to cook. It doesn’t have to be fancy, but it doeshave to be edible. Jack LaLanne is sometimes quoted (by scooby1961) as having said, “If it tastes good, spit it out!”
I’m sure there’s a cheap, “That’s not what he said!” joke in there somewhere, but we’ll leave that out… we’re classy here!
What he meant was that you shouldn’t eat calorie-dense, heavily processed food, devoid of nutrition, and chock-full of preservatives, artificial colors and flavors, sugar, salt, and fat. Lay’s Potato Chips’ old slogan was, “I bet you can’t eat just one.”
And they’re fucking counting on it! They want you [over]eating and going back for more! That’s the point: to get you to stuff your fat fuck face with delicious, carcinogenic cardboard food, then go back for seconds! So if you want to stop being a fat fuck, you need to stop eating food specially designed by food scientists to make you a fat fuck.
On the other hand, I can’t advocate (for myself) a monastic diet where food is viewed only as fuel and what someone ought to eat is min/maxed for macros, or worse yet, a monostrophic diet (e.g., eating only potatoes, plain, boiled or baked, for every meal, every day). While I’ve gotten short-term results eating this way, they were…
Miserable,
Detrimental (I always gained back whatever I lost, and then some), and above all,
Unsustainable.
Learning to cook for myself is the only way to ensure that what I eat is nutritious and tastes like something I’d want to consume. Even then, it can be tempting to slather your food in off-the-shelf condiments and sauces, but you shouldn’t! Because chances are, it’s probably full of empty calories from added sugar and oil…
…and [Added] Sugar is in EVERYTHING!
If you bought it in a grocery store and it…
Came in a box, bag, or jar and/or
Has more than one ingredient and/or
A TV commercial…
It probably has added sugar, although it may not be called that. That’s not to say sugar (or anything, really) is inherently good or bad, but those empty calories mean you can’t eat as much as you’d like and still maintain a caloric deficit.
Okay… So What Do I Do? I Compromised…
“You want compromise, how’s this? Twenty years in the can I wanted manicott’, but I compromised. I ate grilled cheese off the radiator instead. I wanted to fuck a woman, but I compromised. I jacked off into a tissue. Now go home and get your fucking shinebox.”
– Billy Batts Vincent
I like to eat. I can try to fight it, be miserable, and give up. Or, I can be smarter and make better choices. What follows is a bit of a rant, detailing unhealthy shit I used to eat, and what I’ve done to raise the bar on things I enjoy eating, significantly lowering the calorie count, in 20 minutes or less.
Tacos
Back in the day, we’d get one of those Old El Paso soft taco kits… You know, the ones that come with a little shitty package of tortillas, “sauce”, and seasoning. You throw the seasoning in with some ground beef, add some shredded cheese, lettuce, and tomato if you’re feeling fancy…
Remember what I said about these fuckers adding sugar to everything?
It’s fucken sugar!!!
There’s motherfucken sugar in the goddamn seasoning (maltodextrin) and cock sucken sugar in the goddamn sauce! Why the fuck do we need sugar in the seasoning and sauce!?
So instead of flour tortillas (usually 90-100 calories each), I opt for yellow corn tortillas. They’re only 40 calories each, and you get more of them (usually stacks of 30). Wrap 4 in a damp paper towel, then pop them in the microwave on High for 1 minute. This makes them nice and pliable.
Instead of ground beef, I prefer to spend $1 more per lb and opt for beef stew meat. I season it with smoked paprika, cumin, salt, pepper, garlic paste, chili lime, and NO GODDAMN SUGAR! Cubed chicken thigh also works great, and you can either add chopped white onion on top or cook red onion in with the meat.
For the sauce, Herdez or La Costeña brand Salsa Verde is easy to find, tastes good, and has only 5 calories per tablespoon (and NO SUGAR!). My wife likes cheese on hers, which you could do, but I prefer a sprinkle of queso fresco. The leftovers are great for breakfast tacos (half meat, half scrambled eggs)! Delicious!
That’s only about 120-130ish calories per taco, and I can eat about 4 of them and feel satisfied (480-520 calories total). Each El Paso Dinner Kit “taco” (without the ground beef) is 90 calories, with nothing fucken on it! They’re about the same size and mass as the corn tortillas, but TWICE THE FUCKEN CALORIES! FUCK!
YouTube food snobs will insist you make your own tortillas and salsa, braise your meat for hours in fresh chili sauce, and while all of that sounds amazing, I don’t have that kinda time… My way takes all of 10-15 minutes to prepare… Sear the beef to medium rare, season it with the spices above, heat up your corn tortillas, then plate and eat them. Some Abuelita out there is rolling in her grave, and Jim is rolling his eyes, but he was living the good life in Mexico, surrounded by homemade food, and I’m in Anytown, USA, and fucken busy. These aren’t the best tacos you can eat, but they’re about 100x better than fucken cardboard Old El Paso bullshit.
Spaghetti
Growing up, spaghetti sauce had many names… Ragu and Prego, and later, as my tastes refined, we started buying Classico… You dump it into a pan of ground beef, cook up some spaghetti pasta, and maybe buy frozen garlic bread to go with it… But what they all had in common was the fucken ADDED SUGAR! Every…goddamn…one!
Then I found Rao’s, which costs three times as much as any of the other brands, and while it doesn’t have added sugar, it has more than double the calories (110 for Rao’s versus 50 for Classico) per 1/2 cup!
So I stopped buying the jarred stuff and just made my own, and it works out to about 35 calories per 1/2 cup of sauce… I start by frying up the ground beef (usually about 2 lbs), then seasoning it with salt, pepper, chili flakes, and Italian seasoning. Then I add about a tablespoon of tomato paste and a tablespoon of minced garlic, and mix it all up. I add about 4 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar, a 28oz can of crushed San Marzano tomatoes, and a 15 oz can of tomato sauce. That’s it! The wife doesn’t like mushrooms or spicy food, so if I want those, I add them to mine separately…
It doesn’t take any longer to prepare – maybe 20 minutes, maybe less if you multitask (e.g., start the pasta water boiling at the same time as your beef if browning)…
Most pasta is about 200 calories for 2oz of dried pasta (~4.75 oz cooked), which is enough for one good-sized bowl, once you add around 8 oz of sauce, for a grand total of ~450 calories per serving. Sub out the garlic bread for a 2oz hunk of sourdough (~140 calories), and you’re still under 600 calories for dinner.
You can cook the spaghetti sauce longer and deepen the flavor, or make your own baguette, but again, that’s up to you and how much time you wanna spend on it…
Thrown Together Meals
Because I didn’t know how to cook, my wife would buy bullshit in three general varieties:
Frozen Bullshit (various bags of shit you put in a baking pan)
All of these were laden with sugar (are you seeing the pattern yet?) and preservatives, and required about the same level of effort as a proper meal.
I eat a bit simpler these days. Beef or chicken stew with potatoes, carrots, and onions, sometimes cabbage, flavored with smoked paprika, salt, pepper, and a little soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, or balsamic vinegar.
Sometimes steak and potatoes, steak and eggs, or beef bacon strips and eggs. You can’t go wrong with these ingredients, and it’s hard to screw them up. Just make it a point not to overcook the meat or the eggs, which you can avoid with practice. When I wake up, I take a package of meat out of the freezer and start thawing it on the counter, and by dinner time, it’s ready to cook.
That Old, Familiar Road…
I’ve done this weight-loss thing enough times to know how it ends. I’m currently back down to 250 (roughly where I started 2.5 years ago), and I’ve been steadily losing 2-3 lbs a week, which is how it always begins. My calorie counter says I should hit my goal of 180 lbs by June 2027 at this rate, but we both know that my body will eventually rebel, and when it does, my weight loss will slow as my body adapts and grinds to a halt, usually 30-40 lbs in.
Like it or not, I’ll have to start incorporating physical activity to preserve muscle and keep my metabolism from tanking. Also, I need to take especially good care of myself… injury and sickness always seem to derail my progress, so if/when that happens, I can’t relent. I need to push through that shit no matter what!
This morning, my nostrils were assaulted by the stench of recycled plastic, briefly stunning me, as I unsealed a fresh box of Finish dishwasher pods. I asked Gia P. Torres to write me a Haiku about it, and this is what she came up with:
Plastic tomb unsealed
Ancient polymers arise
God abandons me
Life was pretty confusing for me as a kid in Sand Land. I have very few memories from that time; I barely spoke the language (though I could read and write), and, as I often couldn’t understand what was going on around me, I spent much of my childhood in a world of my own imagination. We moved around a lot, and so my treasured childhood possessions often ended up in lost luggage or abandoned, leaving nothing to remind me of that time…
But a few memories stand out in my mind: Frozen Suntop Juice boxes with collectible stickers, warm, U-shaped za’atar rolls they served for lunch, and a mysterious, trapezoidal concrete building I liked to climb.
“Can’t you see this is a land of confusion?” – Genesis, 1986
Commandment VIII: Thou Shalt Never Assume?
My mother was an avid reader and encouraged us kids to read as well, and would occasionally buy us books she thought we might enjoy. In my late teens, she bought me a copy of Richard Marcinko’s Leadership Secrets of the Rogue Warrior, and it’s every bit as cheesy as it sounds, but it did impress me (an unworldly, unlearned, and impressionable teenager), with a particular passage about memory and perception (p.108):
We all like to think that we see things accurately and objectively, but that in itself is a faulty assumption. Think I’m wrong? Think you have a good fix on the world as it is? Okay, then try a little experiment. Do you assume that you know what a penny looks like? Are you a reliable eyewitness on even that one simple thing? Then tell me the eight things that are pictured or written on every penny. Can you even name four or five of them? Probably not. The average person is only able to name three.
(Just so you won’t have to dig one out of your pocket, here they are: Lincoln’s face, the Lincoln Memorial, “One Cent,” “In God We Trust,” the date, “E Pluribus Unum,” “United States of America,” and “Liberty.”)
Naturally, I memorized those eight things and used this as a parlor trick to impress strangers… Re-reading some of those passages as a middle-aged man, I’ve come to see what fucktard Marcinko is (was?)… That particular chapter was about not making assumptions, and he goes on to site an example of some asshole named Lew Wasserman who fired an assistant for showing initiative rather than following his instructions exactly – i.e., the assistant assumed incorrectly. The very next chapter says you’re paid for results, not methods…So which is it, Dick??
You can’t have it both ways…
A Few Words About a Mysterious Trapazoidal Structure…
I don’t recall what the structure was used for; it might have been concrete bleachers, bathrooms, or a storage building. It was made of solid concrete, which wasn’t particularly remarkable at the time and place, but what was noteworthy about it was its sloping sides. They looked something like this:
I recall some details, such as it being adjacent to the outdoor basketball court, and that you could see the dirt soccer fields and jogging track from it. Having poor proprioception, I couldn’t swear to direction or orientation – the sun always hung oppressively in the sky with recess being in the middle of the day, and it was always dry and dusty.
I didn’t play basketball, wasn’t very good at soccer, and wasn’t particularly social, so I usually looked for ways to spend my time by myself. On a whim, I decided to try to climb the sides of the building. My first few attempts failed, but I worked out that with a running start, as long as I maintained my momentum, I could sprint most of the way up, catch the lip of the roof with my fingers, and pull myself up the rest of the way.
I don’t know why this memory has stuck with me all this time, but as the years marched on, I began to wonder just how accurate it was. After waking up one morning thinking about it, I decided to look into it…
Putting Together the Pieces
I knew the city’s name, but hadn’t realized until I looked closely at the map that it was divided into an old part of town and a new industrial city, built only a few years before my family’s arrival in the early 80s. I have other fond memories of my black BMX bike, and my father would sometimes drive us down to the long, concrete promenade that ran parallel to the ocean.
We lived in a new subdivision, and every house looked much like the rest, so finding a particular neighborhood was out of the question. Though how many elementary schools might there be, given that some were for expats, and the one I went to was for nationals, and was a boys’ school (though most aspects of life in that part of the world are segregated).
After an aerial search on Google Earth, I eventually located what I think was the school. According to the scalebar, 90 pixels represented approximately 20 feet, which, if true, is a remarkable resolution of ~0.067 meters/pixel or about 6.7cm/pixel. So I measured a known object (passenger sedan) for scale, and sure enough, the dimensions worked out to be about 2.66″ per pixel, which is remarkably good!
After carefully reviewing large areas of the map, I finally found what I was looking for:
The details loosely align with my memory; however, I recall there were two soccer fields (side by side), both dirt, not grass (which was rare and very expensive at the time). If you wind back the clock to 2006 or earlier, you can see that my recollection was accurate (i.e., dirt soccer fields):
The more recent image seems to have a scale of approximately 2.7″ per pixel, which is remarkably good. This would give the mystery building a footprint of approximately 80′ long by 40′ wide.
Filling in the Blanks
The names of both the district and the elementary school were also familiar to me after reading them, as well as other secondary details, such as the thoroughfare, named for the King whose visage appeared on the local currency at the time.
All that to say that I was as reasonably sure that this was indeed the location I spent many recesses, sipping an orange Suntop and daydreaming before being thrown back into the endless boredom of the classroom. The only thing I can liken it to is the Adults in a Charlie Brown cartoon, if Charlie only understood about 25% of what was being said…
Vindication, However Limited
Although I tried to find pictures of the grounds, most outdoor shots featured the soccer field and faced west (away from the structure/basketball court), so I suppose I’ll just have to be happy with what I found. It’s quite remarkable when you think about it in its entirety:
The structure still existed 40 years later
Sufficiently detailed satellite photos were available and [publicly] accessible
The names of the district, the school, and the thoroughfares were familiar to me, once I’d read them
The memory turned out to be true, not some invention of my overactive imagination…
For instance, one of my childhood friends who had a similar ancestry to mine used to make up stories about how Kermit the Frog would sneak into your bedroom at night and shove needles up your butt, then collect your diarrhea in a glass jar (yes, really), which was accompanied by the songof the same name.
It’s fair to say that I had a very strange childhood…
A couple of weeks ago, I dreamt that Jim messaged me via Discord. He didn’t have much to say, only asking, “How’s it goin’?”
In the dream, I remember being confused, wondering if a friend or family member accessed his account, or if it was really him, either returned from the dead, or maybe he even faked his own death! Then I woke up…
Perhaps this was the ghost of Jim looking in on his old friend. Or perhaps it was just my subconscious replaying an old memory fragment in a misguided attempt to give me some closure. Or maybe I just missed my friend…
McPublicity Stunts
On a lighter note, the current McCEO of McDonald’s decided to make a video of himself pretending to eat a Big Arch Burger. It reminded me of the time McCEO Steve shot down the McWhopper collab; it turns out he was later fired for McSexting using his company’s McEmail address, and paying female employees for limey McDick suckings (probably) with McStock Options (I get a lot of mileage out of McJokes)…
A lot of people are shitting on the video, and for good reason…
His apparent inability to hold a hamburger properly
The awkward little bite
Declaring his intent to eat this burger for lunch (you’re not fooling anybody!)
His use of corpo-speak phrases like “beef notes” and referring to it as a “product” as opposed to, oh, I don’t know? Maybe…Burger…or Sandwich?
Now I’ve had my share of McDonald’s (and then some)… so I actually wanted to try this fucken thing and see what all the fuss is about. I was unimpressed, here’s why…
The reason the Big Arch is so fucken hard to hold is that it’s basically a Double Quarter Pounder, but with Big Mac fixins; the thousand island drenched onions and lettuce create a viscous barrier between the patties, causing them to slip, and makin’ a fucken mess all over the place.
The Big Mac solves this by including a middle bun for structural integrity. Seriously, look it up! They can’t do this with the Big Arch because the goddamn thing is already 1,100 calories, so you’re basically adding another 100 calories on top of that, not to mention the Mc Brick you’d excrete later…
While the Big Arch contains a slightly different lineup (i.e., white cheddar instead of American cheese, crispy onions, and a slightly more thousand-islandy McSauce – i.e., it has ketchup in it) than the Big Mac, I struggled to taste much of a difference, and still prefer the Big Mac or a Royale with Cheese (I learned that this was a real thing when I lived in Sand Land).
Last month, I decided to prematurely upgrade the PC I had built about 3.5 years ago. I’ve been going 4-5+ years between upgrade cycles, and truth be told, didn’t quite get as much PC as I wanted for the money I spent.
It started with an RTX 5080 GPU, and followed by a new motherboard (mine only supported DDR4, even though DDR5 had been out for a couple of years prior), and hell, why not go all in and get a current-gen CPU while we’re at it?
I’ve typically been team Intel, but with the price of RAM being through the roof ($885 for 64GB of DDR5-6000 CL36), I got lucky with a NewEgg bundle, only paying $939 for an AMD 9800X3D (arguably the best gaming CPU on the market at the time of writing this), a mid-range motherboard, and 64GB of DDR5 RAM. They also threw in a free mid-tower ATX case and an AIO!
So I took freebies and built a second PC out of my old spare parts, picking up an Intel B580 GPU (slightly better than the one that came with the PC I bought for Jim).
“I’ll bet those golden tickets make the chocolate taste terrible.” – Charlie Bucket
I cranked every graphics setting to 11 and could still eke out 240+ FPS (albeit with 4x frame gen), but what I didn’t count on was how distracting all the bloom, volumetric fog, and the like would be. Charlie Bucket once speculated that the golden tickets would make the chocolate taste terrible, and I think I finally understand what he meant.
The game is most enjoyable when stripped down to its purest core – the window dressing isn’t just superfluous, I’d argue that it’s a net negative. FPS is a big fucken lie – what really matters is local latency, and with the frame gen overhead, I was pushing 55-65ms whereas ‘good’ is somewhere in the 25-45 range… Perhaps I’m just jaded?
The Really Real World
“Cinco De Mayo,
Fed Up With Politicians,
They are All Liars.” – A Haiku by Joe Jim, 5/05/2026
I’m not a Democrat, nor am I a Republican. The last presidential election seemed like the difference between hot dogs made from lips and assholes, or ones made from foreskin and gallbladders. Neither party has my best interests in mind. So the question becomes, “Which one am I likely to survive with most of my freedoms intact?”
My Blue-Blooded Blue No Matter Who™ friend seems to suffer from a brand of TDS, characterized by Tourette-like tics, where he must express his disgust whenever any right-wing-associated figure (or Catholic) appears on screen – or at least that’s how it appeared to me at first. Having gotten to know him better, I think what he’s exhibiting is more of a Pavlovian stimulus, as he always seems to look to me for a reaction, which I fail to give, partly because I just don’t care that much, and partly because I’ve come to accept a simple truth: Left or Right, it’s all the same, and I’m tired of pretending otherwise.
I only go into the office a couple of times per week, so I don’t need to fill the tank more than once a month. The last time I did, I noticed the price of gas was the highest I’d ever seen it here, by about a dollar/gallon. It’s funny what it takes to manifest an abstract concept, a war being fought 7,150 miles away, into reality. Only then did it become ‘real’ to me.
I don’t have many friends, but I try to look out for the ones I do. Most of my life has been an uphill struggle, and while the top of the mountain isn’t as tall as the dreams of my youth, it has a pleasant view, and I can see myself being happy here for a very long time (if I let myself be). It’s lonely up here, though, and as much as I’d like to bring my friends with me. My work often feels like I’m saving the world, yet I cannot save my friends from themselves…
“Hey, hey, I saved the world today!
…And everybody’s happy now,
The bad thing’s gone away!
And everybody’s happy now,
The good thing’s here to stay!” – Eurythmics, I Saved the World Today
It seems that life is just harder for some people, even for simple things like keeping a job or even an appointment. They mean well, but have proven time and again to be utterly unreliable. I’ve given this problem a lot of thought, trying to understand why some people make it, and others don’t. What follows are my reflections on this…
Safety Nets
About 20 years ago, I was completing the last year of my undergrad. I’d quit my internship for my first big-boy job, working for a local telephone division in enterprise support. I’d get up around 7 or 8 pm, eat something, then head to the office to start my shift at 10 pm. I’d work until 7 am, drive 40 minutes to school for my 8 am capstone courses, then on to my second job working at the library, and finally, home sometime early afternoon to try to sleep, then do it all over again the next day.
I did this because I had to support my wife and myself. There were no safety nets, and no one to turn to for help. My mother and father separated when I was 10, my eldest brother left home when I was 13, and my parents officially divorced when I was 15. I wasn’t particularly close to my other siblings, and I left home the first chance I got, and never looked back. I had to learn self-reliance because I had no choice. I had no one else to look to but myself. I made a lot of mistakes, but I learned from them.
On the other end of the spectrum, I’ve had smart, capable friends in their late 20s, even 30s or 40s, who couldn’t keep a job at a fast-food restaurant for more than 2-3 months at a time, let alone pursue any career. Most of them lived with a parent, sibling, or friend. Hell, I’ve taken in many friends to help them get back on their feet, and it almost always ended the friendship. Easy come, easy go, I suppose… people tend to take things for granted when they don’t have to struggle for them.
They give themselves permission to fail, reasoning that someone will always be there to help them. They may not be proud of it, but that blow to their pride isn’t a sufficient deterrent, or they just refuse to accept responsibility…
It’s Always Someone (or Something) Else’s Fault
A common trait among my friends who suffer from this is a tendency to deflect responsibility onto someone or something else… This is normal for children, but I expect better from grown-ass men…
Yes, sometimes, somebody might have it in for you. Yes, the odds aren’t in your favor, and things are harder than they have to be, but that’s life! The trick is to accept the hand you’ve been dealt, and make the most of it! But what does that look like?
For me, it was turtling up, buckling down, and making do with what I had for years on end. I didn’t go out. I lived modestly. I didn’t take vacations. I didn’t travel. I stayed at home, and my computer was my sole source of entertainment. But not these guys!
I have a friend we’ll call “Cap’n Fazoli”. He had aspirations of doing contractor work as a side hustle and needed a work truck. Around here, that shouldn’t cost more than $3-5k if you know what to look for. It doesn’t have to look good; it just needs to run.
Instead, he found his “Dream Truck” (a late-70s show vehicle) and paid about $10,000 for it (borrowed from his parents, of course). It wasn’t long before the cracks started to show (oil leaks, wiring problems, etc.. It became apparent that it would need a lot of work and was never intended to be a daily driver, let alone a proper work truck.
Now he’s saddled with a $400/month payment (about a quarter of his paycheck). He complains about money trouble but continues to spend cash he doesn’t have on things like guns (bought an $800 pistol), going out to eat, and frequent vacations, even though he hasn’t been in his job long enough to have PTO to use.
Fazoli blames his wife, who, admittedly, he should never have married. She’s mentally unstable and suffers from frequent crash-outs. These episodes seem to be limited to her interactions with him (and other social situations like work), leading me to believe that this is how she’s learned to manipulate him into getting her way…
I have to remind myself that he alone is responsible for his own situation, and he alone has the power to change it. All I can do is try to be there for him when he needs someone to talk to, and encourage him to work it out for himself.
I did manage to get him a job working for a municipal government, so if he can stick with it for 5-10+ years, he’ll have a nice safety net. He’s just now finished his 6-month probationary period, so I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see.
Some People Aren’t Ready for Help
“It is impossible for anyone to be responsible for another person’s behavior. I spoke of myself as ‘responsible’ for this group; that was verbal shorthand. The most I can do, or you, or any leader-is to encourage each one to be responsible for himself.” – Robert A. Heinlein, Farnham’s Freehold, 1964
The last point/realization is the most devastating: Some people aren’t going to make it, and there’s nothing you can do to help them. Porkbun was one of them. Porkbun was a big, friendly doofus, touched with the ’tism. Now that I think about it, conversations with him were a lot like conversations with generative AI; he was overly eager, enthusiastic, could repeat facts he’d learned, but utterly dependent on being told what to do and how to do it. No imagination.
There came an opportunity at my side hustle to bring on someone to handle the low-hanging fruit. They didn’t have to be particularly bright, and the position wasn’t well-paid, but it was just perfect for someone who needed help breaking into the industry. I arranged a call with the CEO, and everything went well, but then he had to go and shoot himself in the foot.
I made the mistake of having a side channel conversation with him in Discord, which he took out of context and shared with his mother. Mother Porkbun then insisted the whole thing was a scam, which utterly baffled me. I spent about an hour on the phone with him, explaining that, for that to be true, it would have been a long con to put Victor Lustig to shame!
I patiently explained that, over the course of several years, I had helped him with job applications, reviewed job postings with him and explained the particulars, helped him with his resume, and even hosted his website, which was intended to be a portfolio of his work that he could share with prospective employers.
It was then that I realized that I was not dealing with a 28-year-old man, but rather a child – incapable of making his own decisions. So I rescinded the offer, citing that I didn’t think he was ready, and withdrew all personal association with him.
I asked if he had any interest in keeping his website, and although he’d only logged in 7 times over the 3 years I’d hosted it for him, he insisted he did, so I backed it up and helped him transfer it to his own provider. With that, I washed my hands of him.
I don’t blame Porkbun – he couldn’t help what he was. The fault lay with me for not recognizing his limitations. One day, I’ll learn to mind my own goddamn business…
“Y’know, the world’s gone crazy, and it ain’t safe on the streets.” – Cheeseburger, Comin’ Home, 2008
A few years ago, I wrote a blog post lamenting the pointless fatalities during the mostly peaceful rioting. This year, we’re seeing more of the same, and once again, stupid people are learning the hard way that if you go looking for death, you’re sure to find it.
“…life’s hard, but it’s harder if you’re stupid.” – George V. Higgins, The Friends of Eddie Coyle, 1970
Parallels: Sovereign Citizens and Mostly Peaceful Rioters
My YouTube feed has been sending me a lot of sovereign citizen arrest videos, and I find them as fascinating as they are formulaic. Essentially, “john doe” [sic]. A “natural man” representing the corporate entity known as “JOHN DOE” gets pulled over for an easily avoidable traffic violation (i.e., displaying a bogus license plate), then exacerbates the situation by refusing to identify himself or comply with lawful orders. Invariably, the officer reaches a point where he’s had enough of the SC’s shit and gets him (or her) out of the vehicle, in cuffs, and off to jail they go…
Watching these interactions through the lens of the officer’s bodycam, I can’t help but marvel at the SC’s surprise. What did he think would happen? Whether they, in their stupidity, earnestly believed what they were doing was right and just, or they were just another antisocial fuck trying to game the system, is irrelevant; the result is the same…
What Did You Think Would Happen?
When I hear about the coordinated mobs of people blocking streets, harassing fellow citizens after mistaking them for ICE (even after it was established that they weren’t), and stalking, doxing, threatening, obstructing, and attacking federal agents, I can’t help but be reminded of those sovereign citizens. I ask again, “What did you think would happen?”
I have no love for cops, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m afraid of them. It’s within their lawful authority to detain, search, arrest, and use (and sometimes abuse) deadly force. Yes, there are rules and standards, but most hinge on the officer’s reasonable belief; they must be able to act decisively in uncertain situations, and sometimes mistakes happen…
Their response to a given situation is contextual. On one side of the spectrum, you have Smokey the Bear, benign and preventative. On the other end is a man-eating grizzly. Depending on the circumstances, things can quickly escalate from Smokey to Cocaine Bear. Do not poke the bear!
In situations like this, I ask myself, what compelled a mother of three to intentionally prevent ICE agents from conducting a lawful investigation? Why did an ICU nurse vandalize a federal vehicle, resist arrest, and obstruct law enforcement? Did they earnestly believe that they were revolutionaries protecting their communities from jack-booted thugs, kidnapping innocent people off the streets? Or were they antisocial miscreants looking for trouble?
Did You Think This Was a Game?
“We don’t rise to our expectations. We fall to our level of training.”
– Archilochus, 645 BC (possibly)
The partner of the young mother who was shot in the head when she attempted to flee from federal agents is alleged to have shouted, “Why did you have real bullets?”
I find this statement to be quite telling, and she isn’t alone in her (mis)understanding of how the world works. In a later conversation I had with a friend, he expressed similar childish naivety. We got to talking about the shootings, and he mentioned a video he’d seen where the crowd managed to snatch someone who was being arrested back, and another where a community of people came out of the woodwork and chased off those nasty ICE people. It sounded like he was describing how to play ‘Red Rover’. At one point, I interrupted him to ask, “Do you think this is a game?”
The partner also said in the aftermath, “I made her come down here; she didn’t want to come; it’s my fault.”
Some of the worst trouble [with the law] I’ve ever been in, and certainly the closest I ever came to losing my liberty, was the result of being in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong people. I suppose I was lucky, as all it cost me was 3 hours in jail – but I learned my lesson! These two weren’t so fortunate…
From all accounts, they were good people, but fell in with the wrong crowd, followed bad advice (e.g.,”…put your body on the line”), and paid for it with their lives.
Here Endeth the Lesson
At first, I pitied them… but then I think about the criminals ICE is trying to remove, and their victims… Victims like Victoria Eileen Harwell. She was a mother, too! No one wants to talk about her. No one is protesting for her. No one is giving speeches about her. Do black lives stop mattering when they’re politically inconvenient?
There’s a section up on the DHS website, forty-one pages there by now, probably more. I do wish these people would go out and count them sometime, maybe they’d learn a lesson. No, probably not.
Epilogue
“If it doesn’t matter in 20 years, it doesn’t matter.” – Dave, the Guy on the Couch, 1998
There’s a lot to suggest that some of these agitators were [Minnesota] state-sponsored, and possibly even used as fodder to distract from widespread fraud. It wouldn’t surprise me either way, and I’m no longer bothered by it…
###
When I was a kid, just starting out on my own, I lived in a flophouse with Jungle George, a pot dealer and Capoeira enthusiast, and his old friend Dave, ‘the guy on the couch’.
Dave had a hard life and desperately clung to whatever dignity he had left, despite being well beyond caring about what anyone thought of him. His most redeeming quality was that he viciously stood up to anyone who challenged his friends, and was always there to offer helpful advice to us young, dumb, hormone-fuelled idiots.
In an effort to comfort me through a bad breakup, Dave relayed a little piece of wisdom allegedly passed down to him by an old Mafioso: “If it doesn’t matter in 20 years, it doesn’t matter.”
This made me feel better, but more importantly, he was right! It’s a shame more people don’t think this way… perhaps the world would be a better place.
My last couple of posts have been a bit on the heavier side, so I thought it was time for something a bit more light-hearted and playful, just like the old days. Today, I made some ramen for a friend who came over to redo some shit the contractors fucked up in my guest bathroom. When I was living in Sand Land, instant ramen was a frequent staple, and being reminded of the this site's roots, was inspired to make theis post. Enjoy!Student of Ramen Eating:Master, Soup first, or noodles first?Master of Ramen Eating: First, observe the whole bowl. Appreciate its gestalt, savor the aromas. Jewels of fat glittering on the surface. Shinachinku roots shining. Seaweed slowly sinking. Spring onions floating. Concentrate on the three pork slices...they play the key role, but stay modestly hidden... what's important here is to apologize to the pork by saying, "See you soon."
Prep Time1 dayd
Cook Time10 minutesmins
Course: Main Dish
Cuisine: Japanese, Korean, Merican
Servings: 1Ramen Enjoyer
Calories: 800kcal
Author: Joe-Jim
Ingredients
1packageinstant ramen (spicy)I recommend Paldo Namja Ramen, Nongshim Shin Ramyun, or Shin Black, but really any spicy instant ramen would work.
1wholeeggSoft boiled, marinated if you wanna get fancy.
2ouncesgreen onionchopped
2ounceskimchiOr seasoned bamboo shoots, or vaguely asian pickled vegtable of your choice
2ouncesmeatThe featured image of the post was gochujang ground beef, but chicken, left over thanksgiving turkey, bits of steak, bacon, or even hot links would work here.
1tbspLao Gan Ma Spicy Chili CrispOptional, but if find yourself outside of the US, get the forbidden beef one!
Marinade Mix
.5cupwater
.25cupsoy sauce
.25cup dark soy sauce
3tbsprice wine vinegar
2tbsphot chili flakesI use a ghost chili blend, but whatever you like, so long as your butthole can cash the check that your mouth writes.
1tbspLao Gan Ma Spicy Chili CrispBecause you can never have enough of it...
2tbspgochujangPreferably the hotter variety
Instructions
Spicy Marinated Soy Eggs (Day Before)
Soft-boil a few eggs for 6.5-8 minutes. My saucepan holds about 10, so that's generally how many I do.
Halt the cooking process by running the eggs under cold water, or give them a nice ice bath, Wim Hof style.
While the eggs cool, in a large plastic container, mix the marinade ingredients together.
Peel the eggs and place them in the marinade. Cover them with a clean paper towel, absorbing the marinade, so the eggs get a nice, even coverage. Place an airtight lid on the container, then put it in the fridge over night.
Ramen
Melt a pad of butter at the bottom of your saucepan.
Place thinly sliced beef (or other meat of your choosing) in the pan and lightly sear it on both sides. Don't cook it all the way through, it'll cook some more in the boiling broth!
Pour 500ml* of water into the saucepan. Add any flavor and dried vegetable sachets, and a spoonful of Lao Gan Ma Spicy Chili Crisp.
When the water begins to boil, add the noodle block. Gently agitate the noodles with your spoon, chopsticks, or whatever utensil is handy.
When the ramen block separates into strands and softens slightly, pour the contents of the saucepan into a large bowl.
Garnish with green onions, a marinated egg (sliced in half), and kimchi. Other fresh vegetables that work well are mushrooms (white button, shitake, or whatever you can get your hands on), bok choy, bamboo shoots, and corn (although that's actually a grain).
Notes
*With Shin Ramyun, the instructions call for 560ml of water; I use less because I like a bit thicker broth.Alternatively, if you wanna go a bit simpler and more 'traditional', you can poach a raw egg in the broth while it's boiling, then add a slice of American cheese on top of the noodles and some kimchi.
"The important thing is eating the Ramen, not how you get to it." ~ Cord (probably)
Below is an email I received from Jim nearly 10 years ago. Looking back, it was probably one of the most lucid and self-aware messages he’d ever written to me, and it provided some profound insight into how troubled he was then…
On Friday, April 29, 2016, at 1:18 AM, Big Jim <email@redacted.null> wrote:
Joe Jim,
I have two overwhelming fears in life, phobias, if you like. One you can probably recall from our previous talks: violent home invasion. I am deathly afraid of some shit bags kicking in my door and torturing my mother and myself. This fear has subsided since I left Gary, IN. I live in the country on the out skirts off a really small town where crime outside of drunken driving does not occur.
I have nothing to fear like I did before, or the guilt of thinking I did something wrong. I have told many people to get off my porch before, no matter what their story was. Maybe all those claims of needing to use a phone, or “I’m bleeding, please help,” were true. I have no idea, but I never lost sleep – or my life – over them.
My other fear is wrongful imprisonment and beingrailroaded through the system. I have no defense against this. No amount of security lights, guns, or dogs is going to help. I feel like I am dangling in the wind by the powers that be. I am honestly fucking terrified.
It is not always enough to know you are innocent. This whole situation has me stressed out to the extreme. I am not eating or sleeping well. For the past week, every time a car slows down in front of the house and my dogs start barking, I am thinking, “Great, here we go. I am going to get hauled off.”
I know this is an irrational fear. I am more likely to get run over by an Amish buggy, but my rational thinking side does nothing to help the butterflies in my stomach, sweaty palms, and deep-seated fear of becoming a statistic.
Sadly, he managed to manifest his fears into a self-fulfilling prophecy, and all his worst nightmares came true…
On June 24th, 2019, Jim got into a verbal altercation with his mother. What followed is unclear, but the police were called, and Jim, who was outside with a rifle slung on his shoulder when they arrived, went back into the house, up to his room, and passed out.
SWAT went upstairs where Jim was passed out at his computer, and he awoke to the smell of blood (his) and gun powder. They shot him from behind, twice in the arm, and once in the leg. He almost died in prison when his wounds became infected, but he pulled through, though it left him with severe nerve damage – a sensation of constant pain and discomfort he described as agonizing pins and needles that never went away.
Arguably, it worked out for the best; It was the kick in the ass Jim needed to turn his life around, although perhaps too late… He moved to Mexico, lost 120 lbs, met a lovely woman, and got married. He lived a quiet life, managing his pain through pot and LSD, and once again, we gamed and we bullshitted about fitness and food. In life, there are no happy endings, but his was as close as one can hope for.
~~~
Footnote:The featured image is a picture of Jim’s dogs, sent to me on August 25, 2015. The doggo on the right is Darwin, I never knew the name of the other.
