Dangers Inherent in Exercise

Ok, so one of the selling points for my apartment complex is that it is connected to a series of trails that, according to the manager, run all the way around the lake. So in one of my fits of crazy, I decided that I was going to start making a habit out of exercising (a concept so foreign to me that I literally just had to use the spell check function in Outlook in order to type the word properly).

My plan was to find the pair of rollerblades that I had purchased from (and I’m not making this up) the very first store in the world to ever carry rollerblades (it’s in Uptown near lake Calhoun where they were invented), and take a leisurely skate around the lake.

Now, remember, I’ve been on rollerblades once before in my life. It was on the day that I bought them, 8 years ago. I took them straight from the store to a parking lot by Lake Calhoun, tied them on, and proceeded to endure the most excruciating 45 minute long quarter mile of rollerblading in the history of shoes or wheels. Upon returning to my car, I tied the laces together, and promptly took them straight home to be stored in a closet where, like a naughty pet, they haven’t been allowed out since.

But none-the-less, THIS was a good idea.

So, with my blades in tow, I walked downstairs in my socks to find the entrance to this path. I sat down on the curb in front of my apartment and laced up (yes, my rollerblades had laces, unlike any model made after the Carter administration which now all have those snappy strap thingies – technical term, try to keep up).

And off I go, like a giraffe on an ice rink, legs all a-wobbly, knees pressed together, arms out, terror in my eyes, and head around the corner toward the path. Unfortunately, between the front door and the path’s beginning there's a hill. Well, I use the word “hill” here pretty loosely. It’s, at best, a slight downcline. In fact, I’m pretty sure that if you put a superball down on it, it wouldn’t roll. Put a 225 pound moron on deathskates on it, however, and he can break the sound barrier within 7 seconds.

This is where I took my first digger.

Realizing that I was picking up speed at an alarming rate, and simultaneously that I had no idea how to stop, or even slow down, I had to choose between making a controlled exit on to the grass on my right, or in to the thicket of pine trees in front of me. I chose the grass, though the caravan full of teenagers driving by seemed to find either option equally funny.

So there I sat, literally 35 feet from my front door, re-examining my decision making process. “This is clearly a bad idea,” I thought, wisely, “I should just pack up and go home.” But no, I was determined. I have given up on everything, and a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step and all that crap that you read on posters with pictures of eagles and whatnot, so F it, I got back up, turned my skates sideways, and side-stepped down this “hill” 4 inches at a time. At the bottom, thankfully, it flattened out for the foreseeable future, and I felt confident that I had made the right decision. So I pressed my knees back together and, with all the confidence of a teenage boy at his first formal dance, I began down the path.

From there things got better…for a while. I made it about 300 yards without spilling or screaming, and felt as though I was beginning to regain all of the expertise that I had developed eight years ago on the banks of the Calhoun. Then obstacle number two presented itself – a cute girl with her dog were walking along up ahead of me (truth is, I don’t know if she was cute or not, but for the sake of the story and to express the degree of embarrassment that I am about to admit to, let’s assume she’s Cindy Crawford). Now, my particular skating style is not one that is forgiving of sharing a path. With all of the muscle control of a newborn baby calf, I would amble back and forth across the path three or four times for every foot I moved forward. Add to that my arms, spread wide for balance, and I could easily have taken up a whole second path, had one been presented to me.

Nevertheless, I was moving faster than Cindy and her Golden Retriever, so a passing event was imminent. I timed my sways perfectly so that I could be moving right to left as I came up on her, then back from left to right as I passed her, and I DO IT!!! OMG!!! I’M THE BEST ROLLERBLADER EVAR!!!

So happy, I am, with my perfectly executed pass that I forget what I’m doing, stub a skate, and take my second digger in to the weeds between the path and the lake. Cindy, very concerned, rushed up to help me, which posed a WHOLE new set of problems. I mean, if she got ahead of me again, I’d have to pass again, and since it was purely due to pure, dumb luck that I was able to get by her in the first place, I decided a hasty exit with a vague “I’m ok thank you…..” whispered in to the wind would better serve us both.

The next quarter of a mile went by relatively without incident (there was a flashing danger light as I passed a man walking while simultaneously turning off the concrete path on to a rickety, Indiana Jones style wooden rope bridge, but I was able to do it without falling or having my still beating heart torn from my chest by an Incan shaman (Kali Mah!!!).

The story begins again on the far side of the lake, just as my legs – which haven’t been asked to do anything more strenuous than lift my fat ass off a couch in roughly 6 years – are about to give out. There, returned with a vengeance, is the “hill” that I descended on my out of my apartment building except this time it goes up at what I can conservatively estimate was an 85 degree angle. Sherpas and rope ties are required to ascend this mountain, I swear to god. I have no chance. I have no momentum (it’s hard to generate momentum when 90% of your energy is spent staying upright and swaying from side to side) and even a good rollerblader would have to have prepared to round the corner and climb K-2. So I sit for a while and contemplate my options. Again, my wording here is generous – “options” indicate that I had more than one. So, one more time, I turn my skates sideways and begin to inch up toward the peak one tiny baby step at a time.

At the top, I notice that the terrain has changed. I’m no longer on a path. I’m in a residential neighborhood without so much as a sidewalk. I look back down the hill, and knowing that there’s no way to retrace my steps, I opt instead to lose my fucking mind. I start screaming at the top of my lungs, angry at God himself for allowing me to have lived all the way to age 29 without enough good sense to know that if he wanted us to have wheels on our feet he would have damn well put them there himself.

But again, I find myself without many choices. I plod on.

Down the street, around a corner, turning in directions that I have to hope lead back, generally toward my apartment. After a half mile of this, with every muscle in my body screaming at me (did you know that you had muscles below your ribs? And that they are vital to the act of rollerblading? Neither did I), I give up.

I collapse on to the front yard of some random person’s house and lay there, chest heaving, eyes staring blankly up at an unforgiving blue sky, and pray for death. The owner of the house, a nice middle aged white woman, comes running in to her front yard, sure that I’ve died on her lawn. “Oh my god are you ok!?!” she screams? Slowly, I turn up on on my side, favoring my lower rib muscles.

“I will pay you an obscene amount of money to drive me back to the Lake Susan Apartment building” I say. “I will write you a check, you will merely need to fill in any amount you desire.”

“Oh! Lake Susan?” she cheerily replies, “You’re almost there, it’s just right around the corner! You can cut through my lawn if you like!”

I didn’t have the heart to explain to her that even if it was “just around the corner,” as she had said, that I still didn’t have the strength to make it. But I’m a man, and I’m lying in a stranger’s lawn, and I am bound by the laws of ManLawnLayersLocal #438, of which I am a dues paying member, to get up and accept her courtesy.

So I cross her lawn, head over a patch of twigs that took no small amount of skill to navigate, down yet another hill, and on to highway 101, which I finally recognize as the patch of highway a good mile PAST my goddamned apartment building. At this point I’m wondering if one can die from rib-muscle trauma.

But no! My dominating spirit resumes, and I skate up the highway like a champion heading down the final stretch toward home. Until the sidewalk ends, and is replaced by 2000 feet of mud and rock, combined in a pattern designed specifically to break the ankles of would be rollerbladers.

Finally defeated, I sit down again and look out at the stretch of ground that represents my final defeat. It has won. I have nothing left.

With a sigh, I bend over to unlace my skates. One by one, I take them off, and like before, 8 years ago in the back of my Honda, I tie the laces together. But this time no such enviable fate as closet storage awaits these instruments of medieval torture. No. No more. I get up, socks pulled high in defiance of the Lord, and drop my rollerblades on to the ground next to the mailbox of whatever house’s lawn I was now standing on, and proceeded to walk myself home, in the mud, free of the burden of ever wanting to exercise ever again.

And there they sit, to this day as far as I know, and the muddy footprints in my closet will forever serve as a reminder – never again.

Fiction

I’ve decided to open a new thread here entitled “fiction”. It will consist of stories that, while often based on actual events, are embellished significantly for the sake of entertainment. If anyone who I mention in some of these stories happens to run across this blog, please don’t be offended if the events described differ wildly from your memories or (as is more often the case) are purely inventions of my own. They are supposed to be fiction. Anyway, I hope you enjoy them.

The Well Planned Heist of Alycia Silverstone

So I had a friend in high school (Shea Chwialkowski…not that that matters, but I just wanted to type his name so I could imagine you trying to pronounce it in your head….it’s “Shay Fill-kowski if you’re curious…goddamned Poles and their crazy names…) and he was OBSESSED with Alicia Silverstone (from the movie Clueless). He had all the celebrity magazines with her, owned every movie she was in, watched her every time she came on anywhere, etc.

Well one day I get a page from him with “911 911 911” at the end. Yes, I had a pager in high school. No, I wasn’t a doctor…so no, I can’t justify it. Anyway, three 911s indicated a MAJOR emergency, so I stopped whatever I was doing and called him back immediately. Turns out that he and another friend of ours (Adam) were at the Ridgedale Mall where they had spotted a life-sized cardboard cutout of Alicia at the Sam Goodie, and they were planning to steal it.

Problem was, they had developed a plan, but it required 3 more people. So my job was to round up 2 more of our friends (John and Grant) and proceed immediately to Ridgedale to act as accomplices to this magnificent heist.

So here was the plan:

Sam Goodie had 3 employees working that afternoon. These three employees tended to congregate near the front of the store where the cash register and (unfortunately for our would-be criminals) one life-sized cardboard cutout of Alicia Silverstone was. However, in a brief period of reconnaissance, Shea and Adam discovered that it wasn’t too hard to distract the staff of Sam Goodie, all one needed was to ask for help finding a CD.

So Shea and Adam had already done the homework for us by the time we got there, and have found 6 CDs, two per accomplice, all of which are housed near the back of the store.

So Grant goes in first, grabbing one employee and asking her to find one of the predetermined, ingeniously placed, faux CDs. Johnny is second, and I’m third. Shea is waiting, like a ninja in the night; pressed up against the wall in the entryway to the Sears around the corner…making it obvious to anyone who was watching that he was up to no good.

But, like the seasoned veteran leader of a team of mastermind criminal geniuses, Shea waited the prescribed 45 seconds after I entered the store (30 would have been too little time, we decided…I mean, what if small talk carries over?) and then stormed in to the store, grabbed Alicia under his right arm and, without so much as a look back to make sure that we had done our jobs and that there were no employees near the entrance, took off like a bat out of hell, sprinting through the food court toward the nearest exit and in to Adam’s waiting pickup truck. Alicia got stored in the bed, according to the story.

My employee looks at me, and then at the front of the store, then back at me.

“Did you see that?” he asks.
“Yeah, what the hell was that all about?” I reply.
“Not sure” he says. “So, do you want to buy this Seal album?”
“No,” I say, “I don’t think I’m ready to pull the trigger on that just yet. Thanks for your help.”

We leave as we came, separated by a few seconds so as to not appear together, and meet in the food court.

And off we go, back to my blue 1969 Volkswagen Beetle with the broken muffler to make our very noisy get-away.

What's Wrong With Republicans?

So I think I’ve figured it out. I think I know why the Republican platform has become so distasteful to me.

It seems as though the party has made the conscious decision to play on the worst parts of the American consciousness.

Think about the things that you associate with “conservatism”. Defense, Border Patrol and Immigration, the "Moral Majority," and a Non-Interventionist Economic Policy.

Now let’s really look at what’s appealing about each of those positions.

Defense: plays on our fears.

They scare us in to believing that, even though our Military is larger than the militaries of all of the industrialized countries of the world combined, we need to increase spending because we are constantly under threat. And what’s worse, I think at this point it should be clear to everyone with an IQ over 50 that it’s the very fact that our military presence is so great that fosters the animosity in the world that is threatening us.

You know those guys who are always out looking for a fight? Well, they always seem to find them. I prefer to be nice to people, and as a result, have never been in a fight in my life. What the Republican position on defense breaks down to for me is a nation wide policy of buying a bigger gun to make up for a tiny penis. It’s a lack of courage or maybe self-esteem made up for by a bigger stick. So they appeal to all the people who are constantly fearful by promising them that they don’t need courage or true personal strength, because we have the biggest stick.

Border Patrol and Immigration: plays on xenophobia and racism.

Let’s be honest: there’s absolutely no evidence that foreign nationals are taking our jobs. In fact, in another article that I plan to write, the exact opposite is true: nationalizing foreign workers is creating jobs in the most important fields – industrial innovation and R&D. Every time I hear a Republican talking about Border Patrol or Immigration what I hear is “gotta keep those damned darkies out of our country!” But there is no basis for their dislike of foreigners, except that they are foreign, and the weak minded tend to fear what is foreign.

Now, I’m not against a reasonable immigration policy. I do believe that we should be selective in who we allow to become citizens here – in my opinion we have enough idiots running around already without taking the rejects from other countries too - but being smart about who we nationalize is different from trying to build a fence along our border, closing our eyes and covering our ears to the world and yelling LA-LA-LA-LA at the top of our lungs until everyone goes away.

The Moral Majority: appeals to the worst in everyone as far as I can tell.

I don’t even know where to start with this one. Let’s take Gay Marriage. The claim is that sanctioning Gay Marriage will devalue Straight Marriage. Huh? How? How does anything that someone else says or does affect your marriage at all? Do you think that because two men down the street get married that all of a sudden your wife won’t love you any more? Or that the institution of marriage will become meaningless just because it’s available to everyone? Like “Honey, I still love you more than ever, and I want to be with you for the rest of my life, but those two homos got married and now we have to get divorced.”

I should say that I don’t understand it, but I do. It’s homophobia – nothing more. I accept that homophobia is the new racism, and I can see that for the racists and homophobes of the world, legitimizing something like marriage threatens you because it grants an acceptability to the people that you irrationally hate.

Fine. You’re a douche bag. Just admit it. Stop trying to dress it as something that it isn’t, and please please please stop pretending that you are taking the “moral” high ground. You aren’t. You’re being a racist and a homophobe. I bet that the people who pushed for the mysogenation laws of the 1930s (in which Blacks and Whites weren’t allowed to marry) toed the same line as the Gay Marriage folks. Are you comfortable with that? Would you also be comfortable passing a constitutional amendment in which people of different races, or religions, weren’t allowed to marry? If not, why not? What’s the difference?

Non-Interventionist Economic Policy: plays to our greed.

This is a sticky issue, because greed is always going to drive economic policy in one way or another. But look at what happens when we allow corporations free reign without any oversight: lead in toys, rotten, diseased food, Enron and corporate scandal, mortgage crises, Blackwater and Haliburton with no-bid contracts worth billions of dollars.

I can accept the fact that I’m not an economist, and that I can’t prove that giving tax breaks to corporations doesn’t create more jobs (though the evidence seems to back me up). For the sake of argument, if you wish, we can assume that the best way to get money in to the hands of poor people is by giving it to rich people. But look at what happens when you don’t impose strict regulation on business. Look at what happens when the almighty dollar becomes the only goal. Companies cut every corner, put out toxic and dangerous products, are caught, consumer confidence drops, people stop buying, and the economy tanks. What’s the end result? The Almighty Dollar suffers.

But all that aside, the Republican Policy on Economics always sounds too much like a 4 year old with a new toy. “You can’t have that, it’s MINE!” I get it, you worked for your money. Guess what? Someone helped you along the way. Be it a professor, or a boss, or a friend, or your parent’s trust fund. Some people don’t have those weapons in their arsenal yet, and so we, as a society, determine that what is good for all of us is good for each of us. We want to have fewer poor people, because fewer poor people means more people making things, more people selling things, and more money for everyone. Hiding your money in an ivory tower and going swimming Scrooge McDuck style doesn’t accomplish that. Admit it, you want to vote Republican because you’re greedy. What I believe, but can’t prove, is that you’re an idiot as well, as all your greed is actually holding you back.

So Republicans, know this. Starting now I am not going to hide it any more. I’m going to tell you what I hear when you talk about your policies. I hear “I’m weak, and therefore I’m afraid all the time…I’m a racist and a xenophobe and I don’t want any more darkies in my country….I’m a douche bag homophobe and I’m so ashamed of my beliefs that I’ve become the modern day equivalent of a high priest in the Spanish Inquisition imposing my morality on others to justify my own existence…and on top of it all, I’m a greedy bastard.

There's Something I Just Don't Understand

Someone’s got to explain Dick Cheney to me.

And Karl Rove.

Well, this whole administration, I guess.

I mean, President Clinton got a blowjob and I had to sit through six months of impeachment hearings.

President Bush sends at least 4,000 American boys and girls to die in the desert based on a lie, and not peep one about impeachment (well, at least not until the advent of www.wexlerwantshearings.com , but that only popped up in the last few months.)

On top of that, the economy has been destroyed; veterans hospitals aren’t taking care of the sick; homes are being foreclosed all over this great nation; and our national debt – if coined and printed, bundled up, and launched in to space – would be the 4^th largest planet in our solar system.

I guess I have to admit the possibility that I’m just young and naïve and every generation has a president who they find to be utterly incompetent. But this smells of a different flower, methinks.

Am I wrong? Is this the kind of utter disregard for the will of the nation that we are to expect from an administration? Or is the level of destruction wrought by Bush and his cronies something extraordinary?

So, assuming that this administration does, in fact, represent something beyond the norm, I have to wonder: how have they gotten away with this?

How have they convinced the nation to sit idly by as they condemned our children to irrevocable debt and a world that hates them? How have our country’s parents allowed themselves to stand stoically as our soldiers were sent to die in a war that has no justification? How have they convinced the voices of good reason to stay silent as our homes were taken, our jobs were lost, and our economy spiraled down to a point where realistic people don’t foresee us ever rebounding?

Does Dick Cheney have some sort of power that we are unaware of?

Does he have naked pictures of every congressperson with 8 year old Filipino boys?

I mean, that’s about the only scenario that makes sense to me: that somehow Dick Cheney and the Bush Administration has such powerful, career crushing evidence against every possible voice of dissention that to speak out against them would be tantamount to suicide.

So what is it going to take? Do we just need (gasp) 60 senators who put the good of the nation above their own careers?

Or is it worse than I imagine? Are the interests that dictate the actions of the office of the president (oil, Halliburton, Northrop Grumman, Satan himself I think) the same as the interests that dictate the actions of the House and the Senate? Are the families who run the most powerful lobbies in Washington SO powerful that no one is immune to them?

In an episode of The Unit last year, a line of dialogue indicated that there were “about 14 families that run this country”. At the time of viewing it, of course, I dismissed it as a silly bit in a TV show. But I’m starting to wonder if there isn’t some truth to that. I mean, somebody’s interests have to be being served by the idiocy that we have endured these past eight years. The CEO of Halliburton certainly hasn’t been missing his mortgage payments, for instance.

So is that what we’re seeing? Have the interests of these “14 families” finally become so disparate from the interests of the nation that they cannot be hidden any more? During the cold war I could imagine the people not noticing (or caring) that the false war against the Soviets actually existed to feed the pockets and power base of the Military Industrial Complex that President Eisenhower warned us so strongly against in his farewell speech in 1961.

But this new war is a different kind of war. Planes and Tanks and Submarines aren’t as necessary any more. So that money still needs to be spent, but it needs to be spent in different areas. I don’t doubt for a minute that it isn’t ending up in the same pockets – it’s just that it gets filtered through different companies on its way there than it used to.

So Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld foresee these developments in the late 80s when they first tried to get the US in to war with Iraq. And when Bush the Second becomes president he hires on Rumsfeld under the oh-so-laudable goal of privatizing the military (yikes). The point, Rumsfeld argues to Congress, is that privatizing the military leads to competition which will drive down prices, and save the country money during war time. Then war starts (odd) and Halliburton, Blackwater, and a number of other companies are awarded multi-billion dollar contracts on a NO BID BASIS. How, Mr. Rumsfeld, is competition supposed to drive prices down when you DON’T ALLOW ANYONE TO COMPETE FOR THE FUCKING CONTRACTS? Instead, we have a war that will end up costing this country upwards of 4 Trillion Dollars. To compare, the whole Vietnam War cost the US just over $133 billion dollars. This war is costing us TWICE that, PER MONTH.

So someone explain this to me.

Explain where this money is going. Explain how there are no checks anymore on the power of the President. Explain how our constitution is being spit upon and no one is saying boo. Explain how our liberties are being one by one dismantled by a single man, and we are allowing it to happen.

Explain it, because it just doesn’t make sense.

If You Don't Vote for Barack Obama You're an Idiot

It’s time to come out and say it:

If you don’t plan on voting for Barack Obama this November, you’re an idiot.

What’s your excuse?

He’s too inexperienced? Prove that. In the 4 years he’s been in office he’s passed through more legislation that most of his colleagues, garnered bi-partisan support, and has picked all the right fights.

His inexperience also (and this is not based on any facts I can provide – just intuition) means that he hasn’t accrued the long list of debts that more “experienced” candidates bring to the office. My feeling is that Washington works on the basis of favors. Special Interest Group A provides support / votes / money for Elected Official B at some point, and in return, Elected Official B enters in to a tacit agreement to provide support for that Special Interest Group at a later date. It’s not that Elected Official B necessarily gets put in the pocket of Special Interest Group A, but I would assume that to not return the favor would get you labeled as a “favor not returner” (elegant, huh?) and in the future could mean that Special Interest Groups C, D, and E wont be as willing to provide that Official with support / votes / money.

So I don’t worry about experience. I understand that it’s a concern, but given the choice between the wrong man and a man with limited (but not limiting) experience? I’ll take the latter all day.

More important than his actual experience is the approach that he takes to dealing with the issues. One of my favorite professors in college once said “You can always tell an argument from a discussion because in a discussion you are trying to learn from the other person, while in an argument you are trying to teach them something.” I carry that quote in my head at all times now, and use it to change my tone any time I find myself trying to teach someone something in an argument. Sure, sometimes the other person continues along that track, but there isn’t much I can do about that. However, when I switch from teacher to student, you’d be amazed how much better the conversation goes.

So it was with that in mind that I read this article, written by a self-proclaimed avid conservative, and (like so many of the articles about Obama) it almost brought tears of hope to my eyes. The gist of it says “Sen. Obama believed something, but knew that many people disagreed. So he called me because I’m one of those who believes the opposite of the Senator, and asked me to explain everything about my position.” Now, that SHOULD be commonplace amongst politicians. They represent a huge number of people, all of whom have slightly to drastically different opinions on issues. It would just make sense that their leader would want to know what all those positions were. It should be common, but do you really feel that it is?

In the 2004 election, the term “Flip-Flopper” became a common talking point to degrade the Kerry campaign. At the time I thought, “So? He thought something, he was wrong, he learned better, he changed his opinion…what’s so wrong with that?” It certainly beats the alternative: “I believe this, I don’t care what you say, I believe it, I don’t want to hear any evidence against it, shut up, fuck you.” If you want a leader who won’t listen to advice, well, you’ve got that. How’s that working out for you?

Then there’s the argument that he’s too good of an orator.

Really? That’s a concern? He’s TOO good at the primary skill of a politician?

Ok, there’s the chance that he’s all rhetoric, no substance. But I think we can already clearly see that that isn’t true. There’s nothing concerning to me that a man who eloquently states his position. I guess I just don’t understand how that’s a bad thing. If a man can say something in such a way that you believe him, there’s two possibilities: One, he’s really good at oratory and you got duped or Two: he’s right about it, and you finally see the light. Every speech I’ve heard Barack Obama give was an example of the latter. Add to that the point I made earlier (that he’s a man genuinely interesting in having the right positions, even when they differ from his established positions) I am confident that when he speaks, and speaks eloquently, that he’s more than just words.

I guess there is some concern about his ethnicity. His middle name is Hussein after all. Just stop right there. If you are actually worried about that you’re a racist and a xenophobe, and therefore an idiot. Kill yourself.

Most recently, we’ve had this debacle involving his Pastor and his commentary on race relations in this country. This isn’t breaking news or anything, but here’s The Daily Show’s quick recap of the events:

Everyone should do themselves the favor of watching the full speech, but it is thirty seven minutes long so grab some popcorn and a Dr. Pepper first.

However, if after having viewed it you don’t believe that this is the right man to be president, you’re an idiot.

Imagine: an honest discussion of race in this country. Black men and women still remember the shame and cruelty of the 1960s and earlier. White men and women harbor resentment about having to “pay” for injustices of earlier generations. Let’s not sugar coat it; let’s not judge the feelings; let’s just accept them as facts. Now what? Well, we’ll see. But to open it up honestly is something that we’ve never seen before from a major politician…and most certainly not one before his job was secured.

So here’s what I propose:

Let’s stop hiding.

Let’s stop pretending that we don’t look down on the idiots of this nation who hold irrational opinions. Let’s stop giving credence to racists and homophobes. Let’s make the wrong opinion the unpopular one, for once. Lets make “Conservative” the dirty word. I’m so tired of “Liberal” being slopped about as an insult. What? It’s wrong to want to make things better? It’s wrong to accept that change is part of life? No. No more. People who doggedly hold on to old, malfunctioning beliefs should be the ones who we ridicule. You should be ashamed to be a conservative. You should be ashamed to vote for what does best for your own, selfish pocketbook. You should be ashamed to think that you have the authority to dictate morality to others. You should be ashamed of your fear mongering. You should be ashamed to be a Republican.

To that end, I propose a new direction for the intelligent, liberal voters of the world.

A T-Shirt

http://www.zazzle.com/republican_quiz_shirt-235167695595331340

OMG!! A DATE!! (PANIC!!!!)

A few days back I wrote that I was going to try a new tack in dealing with women. Well it worked. Well, that’s kind of cheating – guys if you think I’m suggesting that you can go from being a douche bag to being yourself around women and meet someone in a week you’re probably going to be disappointed in your results.

Instead what this is is the culmination of the anecdotal facts that led me to the conclusion that I am much more successful dealing with women when I’m simply myself. That conclusion came from my long, long history of miserable failures at bars trying to impress “chicks” compared to the numerous times in the past that I have known a woman for a long time (lived across the building in a dorm, went to school with, worked with) and never tried to “pick them up”, but instead was just my normal old idiotic goofy self around them with no pretense. Apparently that me is pretty damned adorable. Yay!

So there’s this girl I work with who, as it turns out, really likes me – which is awesome ‘cause she’s cute and funny and cool as shit. So anyway, we’ve worked together for a year, and she had a boyfriend, and I didn’t try to hit on her or anything. I was just me and she liked it! Weird, right? So it was based on that that I developed this new life plan. I suppose being conscious of it helped some, because the other night when we were out with some colleagues the old me would have been aware of the fact that she liked me, gotten all weird and nervous, tried to hard to say the “right things”, to play the “right games” and ended up fucking it up. Instead, I just kept on being me. I didn’t let the prospect of sex ruin me. Yay again!

But now I’m screwed. Now I have to take her on a date.

I’ve never been on a date. Swear to god. I’ve had a fair bit of sex; even had a “steady girlfriend” or two, but never “dated”. I’m philosophically aware that dating is what grown-ups do, and despite my ever-present immaturity, it’s time to admit that I’m supposed to be a grown-up now. However, the actual prospect of taking a girl on a date is daunting as hell. Where do we go? What do we do? How do I act? (Ok, I’m supposed to have that last one answered already – see above – but it’s a lot easier to write about it in a blog no one reads than it is to put in to practice.)

Enter the Internet; the nerd’s solution to everything.

What you seem to want in a first date is a place where the date is the focus – not the place or the event. Movies are bad, because you are both watching the movie, not each other. Concerts are bad because you can’t really talk – noisy bars with live bands probably fall under the same category, to a lesser degree.

You want something that says “hey, I like this sort of thing!” or, even better “hey, I bet that YOU really like this sort of thing!”

It’s seems option A would be easier to find. I mean, this is your first date, it’s not easy to know what she would really like.

Or maybe it is.

Maybe I should work that in to it.

The only problem is that you have to find a way to have the “what do YOU want to do?” conversation while not coming off as an insecure, indecisive moron (which, let’s be honest, I am…it’s just that that’s one of the pieces of crazy I want to hide for a while).

You should probably avoid things that are going to make you look like an idiot, unless you think you can pull off the “spectacular disaster” theory of first dates, like taking a girl to a charity event in which you volunteer to be repeatedly pelted with pies for children’s cancer research. However, aside from intense, intentional personal humiliation (for you, now, not for her), it seems prudent to avoid things like pasta bars where you have to make that slurping motion to get the last strand of spaghetti in to your mouth. That’s just not hot, I don’t care who you are.

So common wisdom seems to point towards the dreaded Dinner Date.

Upsides: free and open conversation, focus on the person not the event, chance to show off both your conversational skills and your coolness factor by picking a trendy, fun, out of the way spot.

Downsides: It’s too traditional, I’m broke, and besides it’s been years since I knew where a trendy, fun, out of the way spot was. Enter the internet again?

Other options (thanks to http://onlinedatingmatches.com/why-guys-need-to-get-creative-when-taking-a-girl-out-on-a-date/44/ ):

1. Take a walk on the beach/strand/outdoorsy area.

No. I’m not outdoorsy. I live in Minnesota. It’s cold. No. However, I get the point – it certainly hits some of the upside requirements.

2. Go to Starbucks and then take a walk around the immediate shops and area.

Alright if you remove the Starbucks requirement. There are thousands of decent coffee shops in metro areas that aren’t Starbucks, and I’d much rather go to a place that, you know, has a soul. However, the idea is sound. You can start with a little caffeine so you can stay alert and interesting (careful not to go overboard and get too talky), and then wander the city finding weird stuff. That’s good. Not formal, no constraints, just wander around learning about her.

3. Art museum.

Ok, it’s kinda cool, and I do like going there. You can wander around and talk about whatever, and the stuff you see you can talk about later. Besides, it’s one of the options that Will Smith suggests in Hitch, and Will Smith, as we all know, is never wrong.

Downsides: it’s clichéd. It has a definite “meh” factor. I doubt that many girls would brag to their friends about a first date at an art museum. I can imagine this conversation:

“So, where’d he take you?’

“The art museum.”

”Oh…”

Besides, you risk the “omg, what a fag” reaction if she turns out to be an adolescent cunt. Well, that’s not really a downside, because if she is an adolescent cunt what do you really want to be dating her for?

I guess instead of phrasing it that way, I should just say that you have to accept the possibility that she could just be bored at a museum without other judgment. That’s a risk. I guess that would have to depend on the girl. I think the only time I would take that chance would be in the case where there was an event planned at a local museum that I was really interested in going to see (or it seemed that she was really interested in going to see). Let’s say they did a surrealist color nature photography show, I could get in to that.

Anyway, we’ll call the art museum a situational possibility.

4. Local charity event (eg: pick up trash in a marshland area or the beach…just make sure it is some sort of sponsored event, lest you ruin the romance by asking her to grab that hypodermic needle sitting off to the side).

Wow. I wish I was that guy. I’m not. Still, there are always little events that you get invited to for charity. If one pops up and she seems interested in it, I can see how this would make you look like a king. It just seems so unlikely that there would be something in the near future AND you knew that it was something she was interested IF you didn’t really know her yet. On the other hand, the upside is huge, so I’ll keep it in mind.

5. Shopping !!! Every girl loves shopping, even if it is window shopping (this is a quote from the website, not from me).

This one is probably a good idea. Much like the Starbucks (shudder) plan, it’s good because it’s amorphous. I do have some reservations about asking a girl out to “the mall.” I mean, that’s just not romantic.

“So, what do you have in mind for us tonight?”

“Well, I figured we’d start at Baby Gap and just see where we end up!”

6. Cooking dinner together. This is a lot different than going out to dinner, as it involves interactive activities and is a really fun thing to do.

Great idea. Only you have to be a good (or at least a passable) cook, so this isn’t for everyone. Luckily, I am. I can thank my mother for that – she trained me well. However, doesn’t it seem a little forward for a first date? Third date, sure – even second if the first goes really really well. But do just open with “I figured we’d skip all that other stuff and you’d just come right over to my place” seems to have a higher “no” risk than some of the others.

However, I think that this is a great idea for some point. You could do the shopping together first. Wandering through the isles, learning a little about what she likes, talking about things you like, trying not to look too much like a nancy boy.

7. Riding bikes/rollerskates on the beach or trail.

Again, no. Have you ever seen me on rollerskates? I look like a giraffe would look if you put him on a hockey rink and removed his kneecaps. I think in general its best to avoid activities that could result in a dislocated shoulder on the first date.

8. Something she has never done before, but always wanted to do.

Sounds great. What is that? Maybe if you were set up with her by one of her friends, you could mine this sort of data. Otherwise, you’d just be guessing. Maybe I don’t have a ton of faith in my investigative skills, but “I’ve always wished a boy would take me ‘here’ on a date” has never slipped its way in to our conversations. I guess I could snoop around a bit, lead conversations a certain way, etc. but that seems difficult in the time granted while leading up to a first date. Again, this may be one of those ideas that is more appropriate for a third or fourth date. Better yet, a first anniversary. Start where you started your very first date, and then take her to the place she’s always wanted to go. That would be money.

9. Animals. Nothing softens a girl up more than being around cute fuzzy little animals. Try going to a pet store or maybe take her out horseback riding.

I’ll keep this idea noted as a part of one of the other plans – like the coffee shop wandering or the shopping plan – try to incorporate a pet store in to it. But “hey baby, meet me at Petco” just isn’t the kind of thing I’m comfortable with as a whole date plan. Maybe if you knew a restaurant that was right next to a pet store, and you also knew that it always had a long wait, you could hit the pet store instead of the bar. But let’s be honest – that bar is gonna look tempting.

10. DANGER !!! It is a well-known fact that some women are turned on by danger. Try suggesting bungee jumping or skydiving or something of that nature. Just don’t bring your 9mm along (with Snoop Dogg in tow) and go rob a 7-11 with your date still in the car and lead the cops on a wild police chase…..Keep it safe and keep it sane. Perceived danger is the best kind of danger because no one gets hurt (unless your parachute fails to open while you are sky diving….)

This one has some real possibilities. However, it has some practical constraints. Here in the suburbs of Minneapolis, danger is, for a rule, kept to a minimum. I have been skydiving, but I had to drive 50 miles out of the city to get there. Now that may be a good or a bad thing. On the one hand, the drive itself gives you time to chat about whatever, and that fulfills one of the requirements for a good date. On the other hand, in my mind the destination of a first date is generally kept to be a secret, particularly if it’s something big like sky-diving or bungee jumping – and 50 miles is a long drive not to reveal that secret.

An amusement park might be a good middle ground here. Roller-coasters have that element of danger. There’s the aspect of walking around and talking. It has the feel of wandering from shop to shop checking out weird stuff. It’s got a nature-y kind of vibe, without actually forcing you in to the back woods. Also, there’s usually one pretty close to you. Hell, sometimes there are animals there. I think we may have a winner. Except its March and none of them are open yet. Shit.