THE BENEVOLENT CHAUVINIST

I've avoided evangelical man-groups for years, declining sometimes even the sincerest of invitations to bond over good food and "fellowship" (An ambiguous term which always brings to mind Rubadub-dub, three men in a tub, an occurrence I'm happy to say I've avoided). I especially avoid these gatherings when a book is involved. Not only has this awkward form of networking bypassed the normal, social speed for the development of genuine friendships to which I'm accustomed, but the language spoken in these sorts of settings might as well be Klingon to me. I'm not certain what is meant by QI'yaH, loDnI', lifting Ha' latlh jaj HoSqu'mo' lan chaH joH tIqwIj (Klingon for Hey, brother, I was lifting you up the other day because the Lord laid you on my mind) to which my normal response would be MajQa' Hech, DaH? chay' jen 'ej nuq porgh 'ay' ghop Hot mojpu'? (Oh, he did, did he? Well, how high? And exactly where did you put your hands?). But then I think I'm missing the point of the man-group altogether.

The main reason I sweat at these groups is that the subject of women comes up. Nine times out of ten, someone is going to remind us why we are at the meeting in the first place and will mention "emasculated" men, what society has "done" to manhood, "real" masculinity, the feminist movement, fatherlessness, and other curious suggestions for why masculinity finds itself rocking back and forth in the fetal position in the corner somewhere. Why am I bothered? Because in these conversations the elevation of men is almost always invariably achieved by the diminishment of women.

In group talks about masculinity, "real" men tend to establish themselves by essentially retracting the years that woman's suffrage, democratic progress, and a more progressive understanding of human nature has gained on behalf of women everywhere. The idea is that where a woman's place cannot be understood except be it in diminutive, servile, and patronized contexts, "real" men can't be who they need to be (That is to say, "real" without the quotation marks). And if "real" men cannot be who they need to be, then no hope exists for culture. Now, considering the roots of male-dominated culture, it's an understandable but unfortunate mindset.

When I ran a school full-time for eleven years, I failed to lay the foundation stones for a healthy view of female sexuality. To many traditional families, sexuality meant sex, not gender orientation. And to many progressive families, sexuality meant orientation which was sexist. So I straddled the dichotomy like a chameleon and was understandably misunderstood. When the majority of my families wanted to ban girls from Airsoft wars, I didn't raise much of a protest. And when the majority wanted the girls to wear dresses on the "dressier" days, I didn't raise much of a protest. But I finally drew the line when I was asked to officially ban dating and impose a 6-inch rule. Seriously? For me that was a sharia I was unwilling to impose for the very stupid assumption it necessitated: that female sexuality is forever the instigator in the moral failures of male sexuality. 

But was the 6-inch rule and the dating prohibition for the male or for the female? Think. Unless you have a private school full of boy perverts and helpless girls, boys can't date girls unless the girls let them and they can't touch girls unless the girls let them touch them. But do the girls initiate the aggressive desires in the boys or are the boys... well, boys? 

So when problems arise, it is the girls who have to be covered under more fabric to hide their curves, and it is the girls whose activities were restricted to limit contact with the porn-stimulated boys. And all the while the boys get to walk around with their boners poking out of their pants, taking sneak peeks at the girls' budding, feminine curves.

Now, I look like the hypocrite that, indeed, I had been all along, reinforcing sexist behavior without looking at sexuality in light of a much larger world. In all honesty, the best years of my school were when the boys and girls played Buck buck together before we got political about what special restrictions to impose on the female gender.

For Moderns, sexuality is largely empirical. So physical form is important to them. Moderns tend to see sexuality as a physical orientation that necessitates all the other sorts of orientations like emotional, psychological, and spiritual orientations. So if a human has a wiener, then he is categorically different than a "non-wiener" human. And in the same way those two categories are polar opposites, their emotional, psychological, and spiritual orientations and manifestations are categorically opposite, too. Which sets us up for, oh, so many literal ironies.

Even the progressive Modern thinks this way (though he would argue in the "opposite" direction. But still, in his zeal to eradicate sexual categories, the progressive Modern simply thinks that erasing the "obvious" distinctions of male and female creates a mashup of a wholly different category with an entirely new set of emotional, psychological, and spiritual orientations. 

Come on, a homosexual is a male who is affectually oriented to other males. And a lesbian is a female affectually oriented to other women. Neither is an inhuman hybrid of male and female or some macro-evolutionary transitional form like the progressive Modern fancies). But the physical category seems always to be primary to the Modern so that the "other" human categories of emotion, psyche, and spirit follow.

So many analogies have been drawn to describe the fundamental difference between women and men (with the women being generically weaker and the men being generically stronger). But my question is What difference is being described and to what end? Certainly, we aren't describing the physical difference. I mean, we understand that. However, the generic emotional, psychological, and spiritual differences are always linked back to a woman's physical design or limitations (body) as reference. 

The same with the men. One such evangelical concept tries to describe this ultimate difference by underscoring in the Creation narrative that Eve was created inside the Garden of Eden while Adam was created outside the Garden of Eden. Therefore, women are domestic and men are... well, not domestic.

The furthest difference back of this discussion there is (which has been used time and again as a hammer blow to the progress of women everywhere) has been the question, What was in the mind of God when He created the female? Shoddy apologetics reinforces that, yes, "male and female created He them" and both were made "in the image of God." But those affirmations can be doctrinally held while practically treated as blanket sentiments when the Creation chronology is considered. 

The chronological account has Adam created perfect before there was ever an Eve. Granted, Adam was "lonely", but when you get to the eating-of-the-fruit part, we have been taught to side with Adam in practice ("The woman who I didn't ask for, but whom you thought I needed, made me do this. Therefore, you made me do this"). I'm certain that a different and, probably, more positive angle can be drawn from this text, but the dominating mindset is that Eve was chronologically an afterthought. That is the practical and old-fashioned conclusion drawn almost every time.

So before the human race even gets out of the chutes in the minds of many evangelicals, the female is at a "Biblical" disadvantage and lags far behind. Ask kids who go to Sunday School, and they will insist (in comprehension at least) that the literal translation of the Creation account underscores Eve being referential to Adam. That is to say, many of these kids believe male is primary and the woman is secondary. The man is base and the woman is derivative. 

But can't we simply go along with the law that says It is what it is? A man is a man and a woman is a woman, no matter how widely the spectrum is for each? Is it necessary to underscore that difference with a list of impositions highlighting the flawed distinction that the male is the stronger and the woman the weaker or that the male is the more intelligent and the woman the less intelligent or that the male is unrestricted while the woman domesticated? Can't a man be a real man because he is a man? Can't a woman be a real woman because she is a woman? 

People will always have special definitions and qualifications for titles like masculinity and femininity that go beyond the common understanding. But don't we realize what "real" men everywhere are trying to do? They are trying to save the world! And clearly the only way they know how is publicly to affirm the old-fashioned, fuzzy notion of the female as contingent with a great amount of time spent on the cathartic process of decrying the history of civil rights in this country, the creation of pseudo-covenants between fathers & sons or fathers & daughters, the advocation of neo-Medieval chivalry as a current, legitimate model for masculine and feminine roles, etc. 

But what about being a real man in a way that is currently meaningful instead of applying artificial pressure to roles that exist whether or not we want them to exist? What about being a good man instead of trying to match the perception of an aggressive feminist agenda with an equally obnoxious masculine agenda? A chauvinist is a chauvinist, no matter how benevolent. 

And a note on people who create special definitions: vaj chaH neH SoH, 'ej SoH yong reinventing qaS pagh.

That didn't translate well from Klingon to English (understandably), so here is the original: He who creates special categories to exclude others can easily reinvent those same categories to make sure you don't qualify to be in.

And that's a fact.

MY YEAR OF LIVING CONFEDERATELY: WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT WATER

It's been almost eight months that I've lived in this antebellum (1847) that sits on 600+ acres. Below is a picture of the antebellum tucked away in its grove of trees from the vantage point of a family of hay bales where I go to think. I typically leave a beer at the hay bales to determine if any trespassers are, well, trespassing on the property. To this day the only wino who has opened that beer is me.

While we have breathtaking views all around, we also experience difficulties of the most fundamental sort that we find to be both perplexing and discouraging. And, also, disturbing, taking into account that I've professionally taught children the laws of nature for the last sixteen years. 

For example, I direct you to the embarrassing situation below:

For someone who learned to swim at age eighteen, I certainly think I know a lot about water. In an overgrown tangle of trees on the property is an abandoned house as my kids like to call it. Oops, I didn't realize that I didn't take a picture of the house. To prove there is a house, here are armadillo remains near it.

One afternoon I thought I would visit the abandoned house. Instead of walking, I thought I might drive the car down to see it. Yes, I said "down." The object of my attraction lay near a culvert. That's why this happened.

Of course, a culvert is designed to catch water. Culverts would not catch water if, like me, they didn't understand the nature of water. Here are two things I did not take into consideration that got me in a considerable bind:1) It rained all day the day before and 2) culverts can only collect water if they are "lower" than the water they intend to catch. Yes, I drove right into a flood plain that was flooded. I realized my mistake three seconds before it was too late for me to back out. As I started to sink, I began to laugh at myself for being so naive. 

I wouldn't have laughed had I not known that my car would remain there for three days. If you look at my back tire below, you will see that it has sunk almost a third of the tire. That's because I spent three moronic days trying to "rev" it out of the flood plain which was foolish because revving it lost me solid dirt and, being at the lowest point in the flood plain, that dirt was rapidly replaced with water which everyone knows is impossible to ride on. Oh, but, no, I know something that no one knows, right?

That's my friend, Ed, behind me with his Ford 250. I asked him to come help me. Ed told me later that he had a hunch he would sink, but he hadn't seen me in a while, so why not come by? Ed sunk. And he laughed.

Some guy driving past thought he wanted some of the action when he saw Ed and me stuck. 

He proposed that he pull us both out with his suburban, but Ed told him to focus on his Ford 250. Well, suburban guy, kind as he was, almost got stuck. He called up his friend with a tow truck. I recognized these guys, because they towed my brown Volvo sedan three years ago. They pulled Ed out, but had to go get more chain to pull me out. 

Ed left. I figured I would keep busy while I waited. So I got myself some garbage bags and policed my property perpendicular to the culvert. I must have picked up well over 100 bottles. It's like people driving buy know to toss their bottles into the culvert... or the bottles know to be tossed into the culvert like Tolkein's ring trying to get back to its master.

I'd like to say that I learned my Physics lesson that water lusts for the lowest point possible and, being a liquid, is malleable enough to conform to the size of any space. And then it sunk into my head that the classic illustrations will always be the organic ones. Like water, I am driven to a certain... bottom line, shall we say. Like water all of those actions, no matter how differentiated they appear to be, are all expressions of that bottom line. That bottom line, whether or not I acknowledge it, speaks to the sum total of all that I do from waking to sleeping, working to resting, thinking to daydreaming. So what is that bottom line for me? What is that bottom line for you? Good question. 

Below is a picture of me after the adventure. And I don't look in the mood to have six children ask me what's wrong. I calculated how much time ignorance cost me, and it was shy of almost 75 hours. And by that time you know what I wanted? A beer. But this wino had already drunk the last one.

MY YEAR OF LIVING CONFEDERATELY: WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT MICE

The picture above are little mice made from spiced or peanut butter cookie dough. Adorable with their little almond ears. But Mickey Mouse, Mighty Mouse, Chucky Cheese, Stuart Little, Despereaux are all lies to extol the myth that mice possess a benign cuteness. Within two months of moving into this antebellum in Franklin, Tennessee (aka, "Sweet Home"), I thought I was seeing ghosts, but little, furry ghosts that ran along baseboards, always keeping in my periphery so that I couldn't honestly say I ever really laid eyes on one. Each night I believed the same mouse to be raiding each of our rooms, leaving black poopies in almost every corner. Clearly the media fiction I'd been fed for the last 40 impressionable years of my life barred me from seeing what I now attest to be obvious realities. Oh, I will confess my delusions first.

First, media never mentioned mice. They always mentioned mouse, as if each is a little, unique individual sparsely distributed throughout vast but proportionately contained ecosystems in conservative ratios like that of the one-Black-man-per-Starbucks-at-any-given-time ratio. It never occurred to me that mouse might be an intentionally individualistic term used by pro-rodent propagandists.

Secondly, I believed that like angels, mice (if they existed at all) must only reveal themselves to that group of humans who don't possess the articulation to snitch on their whereabouts. My then two-year old possessed the vocabulary of the King James Bible (but evidently not the inherency, revealed in heretical statements like "God hit me in the face", "Dobby is bad", and "Mice play in my bed"). It's just like the devil to have me discount the one honest statement of a two-year-old by confusing me with two or more falsifications.

Thirdly (because there has to be a third or its not a legitimate sermon) mice were responsible for the plague in England... but that was a long time ago. They are more progressive now, differentiating themselves and burrowing their little furry selves into the hearts of non-discriminating Americans through the Disneyfication of the masses, fictional superhero antics, bland pizza adverts, and compulsory middle school reading lists. 

But the one lesson I learned and learned well is that you never have only one mouse. Field mice move in families with copious reproductive abilities, rapid replication of themselves evidently the focus of all the gnawing on my furniture, scurrying along my walls, and scavenging for my crumbs. Where there is one, there are many in the shadows that support that one. This sunk in when one evening I looked behind my daughter's toybox to locate what I thought was the same little brown mouse I had seen the past two nights, and a larger and heavier mouse thudded along the wooden floor between my feet. When I believed that there was more than one, it was easy to see that one mouse couldn't have pooped all of the mouse poop in my house unless he were the size of a small dog.

One day I was playing piano in my piano room, being accompanied by an awesome cellist, Stonewall Jackson Pent. We actually didn't get to play that Tuesday because each time I hit the keys we heard squeaking. After starting and stopping for a while, I lifted each of the keys of the middle octave only to find a nest of five baby mice living there. Here are two below, peeking their noses out.

You can imagine how baffled I was at a couple of things. Number one, mice really did get jiggy at all times throughout the year (and were doing "it" in my house). Number two, the parents were brilliant to raise their babies beneath the keys I pounded on at least once a day. I presumed that the mice I finally believed existed lived in holes in the wall when in reality they lived under my very nose. 

Here are the five baby mice I pulled out (None of these mice were harmed. I simply put them outside in the woods at the base of a tree).

I finally got some mousetraps, liberally spread with peanut butter. One evening I caught six within fifteen minutes of putting out the traps. I finally knew I was getting somewhere when the only mice I was catching were babies (someone has to feed them when the parents aren't around). I now have a cat, which I learned is the best mousetrap in the world. Females are the best mousers actually. Not only does Bailey dispatch of the mice in the house, but she dispatches the mice outside the house as well as moles, and bunnies, and she's crossed the path of the groundhogs living beneath the barn. 

I now know that Mickey Mouse is just a cartoon character, Mighty Mouse is just a, I don't know, flying squirrel, Chucky Cheese doesn't really make pizza (he just endorses them), Stuart Little is just the fiction of some post-modern's imagination, and Despereaux is... well, Despereaux is still cute. Below is my tribute (my caricature, compliments of Ahmed Saleem from New Delhi, India http://www.3danimationindia.com) to all of the mice who endured a short stay in our now mouse-free antebellum.

Or peanut butter.

MY YEAR OF LIVING CONFEDERATELY: WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT FIRE

I finally moved out of the suburbs last August: a reprieve from HOA conformity in order to regather my clever wits about me. When I first moved into my suburb over nine years ago, I thought I was going to be experiencing something we had been "missing" while holed up in a condo. They called it "community", one of those "filler" words people use to capture the idyllic essence of something they read about in a British novel. So after nine years of experiencing our nascent cul de sac neighborhood grow into a dictatorial monstrosity of sectarians, gossips, and tattle-tales that resembled something like the farming communities of early Greek history, we realized we were out of our league in the "community" scene (my wife uses our suburb as the backdrop to her book DAWN HYPERDRIVE & THE GALACTIC HANDBAG OF DEATH at http://www.dawnhyperdrive.com/).

We landed in this beautiful 1847 antebellum quite by accident (but that is a story for another time). No longer being in the burbs, we decided that it was up to ourselves to thrive.

I quickly learned how ignorant I was about the "laws of the farm." Because a quick learning curve is vital when you are on your own (our house sits on 600+ acres), I was forced to face the myths I've carried around with revival-like certainty for 30+ years. Like fire.

When Fall came, I took apart the wood stove in the kitchen to clear out the flue (I previously thought the flue to be the "flute" because it carried air. Which illustrates my pre-antebellum ignorance).

This picture below is me thinking I'm cool because I'm about to do a man's job. The soot on my face was a nostalgic but nonsensical thing to do as I grew up in Germany with the tradition of St. Nick leaving coal in your shoes at Christmastime if you were bad.

This is the wood stove taken completely apart.

This is a picture because I have a curious three-year-old who wanted to intervene somehow.

Now I'm serious.

I took a picture up the chimney to see how blocked it was with soot.

So I scrubbed and scrubbed like I've seen them do on the BBC movies in Charles Dickens' television specials. And down came all the soot.

Then I cleaned out the stove proper. Part of what you see is the remainder of a bird. Cooked, I think.

After clearing the stove out, I began to make my fire. My first fire lasted for a little bit. But ultimately my first few fires failed.

Here is a critical point to understand why I believe this lesson was an important one for me. When I believe that a natural law (like fire-starting) happens one way and it doesn't work for me, I don't immediately think there is fault with me. I tend to believe the fault lies with the natural law. So you can imagine how frustrating it is for me to be instructing the fire on the eleventh failed burned that it has a "serious problem" and "what the hell" and "dammit." Especially with a three-year-old around. 

That's because I'm very optimistic about the things that I do. And that includes the ignorant things. However, when I watch someone else do the exact same thing I have done (and was optimistic about) or am doing (and am optimistic about), I immediately notice their stupidity. For me, the rule has been to try it out several times, and after I've had a good cry to read the directions. The directions on starting a fire, however, came from a boy scout who came to my house with his parents several weeks later.

We were out in my yard this time, and I was trying to show off, starting a fire in my mobile fire pit (by this time 2 out of 5 times my fire would start but not because I knew what I was doing wrong. I was just lucky). The boy scout watched me use several matches. And then he said a very profound thing. In fact, it is still so profound to me that my eyes almost tear up each time I hear these words in my head: "Fire goes up."

I asked him to clarify, and he told me two things: 1) fire follows the laws of gravity, but being lighter than a solid, it goes up and 2) start a small fire first. 

So, first, if I am to "feed" my fire I need to make sure that the "food" it will eat is "above" the fire. Secondly, I need to curb my ambition and make a small manageable fire (furnace). Once that catches, I can build a larger fire (furnace), and so on and so forth. And it works more times than it did before.

I said at the beginning that I carried around a wrong notion about fire. What the payday has been for me is that I had a similar wrong notion about business. 

For example, combining a match with a stick (or anything else) does not automatically and necessarily produce a fire. You have to have proper conditions to start and sustain a fire just as you need proper conditions to start and sustain a company. First, one has to be aware of the laws of business (like the laws of thermodynamics): like the idea that a "need" is only a "need" if someone finds it "necessary." Second, to start a business you need "food" for your business to grow. I don't know how many businesses I've come across that don't have a clear product for sale or a clear demographic who needs the product. So they have no food and they have no hungry people.

Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, not only do most of my fires burn longer and stronger, but my business sense burns  as well. But only carry my analogy about fire and business halfway or you'll have nothing but ash!

DAWN HYPERDRIVE & THE GALACTIC HANDBAG OF DEATH

Dawn Hyperdrive & the Galactic Handbag of Death is the first in a new children's series of four space adventures. In Dawn Hyperdrive suburbia meets its match in the galactic wasteland of outer-space. Kevin Dearman, the eldest of three children, lives in a ritzy suburb, carved out of the sprawling countryside. In the heat of summer vacation, Kevin's favorite past-time is sitting in his room, playing the game Dawn Hyperdrive online by siphoning the internet service of his neighbor, Mrs. Spears, who also doubles as babysitter for the Dearman family.

But Kevin's gaming console breaks, boring him outside where a failed attempt at a foolish skateboard trick finds him head-over-heels in Mrs. Spears' peonies. Recovering from his injuries, Kevin holes himself in his room, fuming about how everything his family has is falling apart from his father's injured back to--you guessed it--his gaming console that allows him to play Dawn Hyperdrive for hours of mind-numbing enjoyment. 

What Kevin doesn't realize is that an intergalactic space agent named Dawn Hyperdrive has been monitoring his  gaming activity through the portal of Mrs. Spear's internet service. Realizing that Kevin's knack for navigating the complicated matrices of the Dawn Hyperdrive game is the exact, strategic mind she needs to crack an intergalactic piracy ring, Dawn Hyperdrive switches the role of babysitter with Mrs. Spears to intercept Kevin and his sisters in order to take into custody Mrs. Scales, the intergalactic space pirate who Dawn Hyperdrive believes is the hub of the ring. What was meant to be a boring evening becomes a night of adventure that literally changes the direction of Kevin and his sisters' lives. For good. We hope.

Two issues struck me about this book. The first was the irony of suburban life. The neighborhood where Kevin lives is almost an intrusion in the middle of the hilly countryside. The only greenery we see is Mrs. Spears' peonies: everything else seems to be shriveling, dead, or dying. (Where are the trees?) Aside from a few children playing with water guns outside, one gets the feeling that life in this neighborhood has been forced inside. To contrast the variegated countryside, Kevin is privately unnerved by the equally confining uniformity of the cookie-cutter, neighborhood houses. In short, Kevin feels that he doesn't belong, that he doesn't fit the "right" shape.

The second issue that struck me was the relational dynamics of families who struggle in the middle of middle-class affluence. Kevin's father by necessity is a long-haul truck driver and is gone throughout the week. Kevin's mother is beginning a new job as a night clerk at a local grocery store to make ends meet. In addition, they can hardly afford a babysitter. Troubled by his parents' lack and feeling isolated in this otherwise beautifully laid-out community, Kevin's resentment causes him to shrink inward and hate his family.

In my opinion, Dawn Hyperdrive arrives at the right time on both these accounts. Not only do Kevin and his sisters get a change of scenery that makes home (and each other) an enviable place to be, but they also learn that money is no final, limiting factor when opportunities to do great and permanent good exist. What is primarily needed is willingness. This space adventure is exactly what Kevin needed to put his family back into perspective. I project that not only will middle-schoolers like this book, but their parents who buy them the book will want them to like this book.

Dawn Hyperdrive is available on KINDLE at 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/288514

 And on NOOK and EVERYWHERE ELSE at

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00BJRI6S6

Oh, and it will be available in PAPERBACK in two weeks!

BUY!

MY 40 ACRES & A MULE (1972-1979)

I turned 40. On May 29, 2012. It seems I was born just a few years ago, my earliest thoughts being those of a profound sense of wonder... during nap times... that I existed at all. I wanted to sum up my years with little "wisdoms" I have learned via the oddest of circumstances. All these little vignettes are real but not in any particular order. Oh, Lord, I just realized I'm over halfway dead...

1972. "Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency." NATALIE GOLDBERG During the German winters I would sleep with my rolladens (rolling shutters) up and my window wide open, shivering with the perverse pleasure that if I ever had to suffer unexpectedly in front of others, I wouldn't be the one hyperventilating like an idiot or babbling OUR FATHER like a baby. How ignorant, though, because for the better part of my life I've enjoyed sleep like a thief, stealing snatches here and there.

1973. "Forget your enemies. It's your friends you frustrate that cause all the problems." MICHAEL J. TUCKER In college too many friends meant too many obligations. I had a hard time saying "No" because everyone was so intriguingly interesting... I accompanied a college professor to a "fine arts" concert at the last minute, because she asked me and I couldn't say "No." Oh, also, I didn't want to say no because I enjoyed my peers thinking that I had the certain faculty members "in my pocket." She showed up in this atrocious formal. I was so embarrassed to be seen with her that I disappeared during intermission and sat elsewhere for the last half of the concert. She was angry. How did she repay me? I was on the front row of a class she was teaching. She sat on her desk in front of me (at eye level), opening and closing her legs while she lectured. She never looked my direction, never spoke outside class with me again, but I learned rather quickly that she was paying me back for "using" her.

1974. "Stop being humble, you are not that great." GOLDA MEIR I once had a parent not enroll their child in my school because during their visit I answered the phone in the middle of a lecture. As a matter of course, I occasionally swear, smoke a pipe, or drink a beer in the presence of moralists who think me to be the apex of perfection. Because I have such an adaptable personality, I've learned to purposely "slip up" in front of people who consider me to be the fourth or fifth Personage of the Trinity. In so doing I deflate gnostic expectations I can't maintain... like people believing that I don't need to get paid, don't need to eat, or don't need to pee. 

1975. "Break the leg of a bad habit." PUERTO RICAN PROVERB I recently threw away years of documentation I had on someone I planned to take legal action against for a certain fiscal matter. It occurred to me that not only was a sizeable portion of my files dedicated space for this future event, but a generous amount of space in the underworld of my subconscious was also dedicated to it, flaring up in the occasional nightmare (or daymare). So I killed the possibility of following through on any judicial fantasy I had by destroying the entire lot of papers. I was hyperventilating while I did it (which thankfully sped up the process), but when it was done I had no longer any need to remember. Haha, I was screwed, but I didn't care!

1976. “Better an honest enemy than a false friend.” GERMAN PROVERB I remember being asked over to a "friend's" house in another country during a lunch break where he proceeded to tell me (in front of his entire family) some pretty distressing news. As I soaked in the implications of his little diatribe, I realized it was a set up. He suspected what my reaction would be (I might break down and cry or punch him in the face), so he had his wife and cute little kids present. It wasn't even his place to tell me the "news" (I found out an hour later from my family). What was his motivation? 19 years later I'm still wondering. Contrast that with a neo-Nazi I knew... I never had to wonder about his motives towards me. He stayed on his side of the street, and I stayed on mine. Once we met in the middle and we stared each other down nose to nose until he cried he was so hateful. This other guy, I never knew what to think after the incident when he would wave at me or smile in my direction.

1977. "The person who reads too much and uses his brain too little will fall into lazy habits of thinking." ALBERT EINSTEIN In college I rarely read an entire book for required reading: I would read the books cited in the forwards, footnotes, or end notes, but not the entire text itself. Why? Because the college I attended always told us what kinds of conclusions they wanted us to draw in our papers. Why read a book from beginning to end when the conclusions you would draw from it would complicate the idea you have been told to parrot? I virtually always got a B because I modified their conclusions... based upon the footnotes and endnotes read.

1978. "Some people like my advice so much that they frame it upon the wall instead of using it." GORDON R. DICKSON People like to cite me as a source or reference even though they don't follow my advice... which makes me look like an idiot because I endorsed them. I used to give people free advice and free endorsements, but I learned rather quickly that if you give free advice or endorsements, you are liable for that advice or endorsement. It costs you emotional stress & time when it costs them nothing. I now bill people for my advice or endorsement which makes them that much more likely to follow my advice (because if they don't, they are out thousands of dollars). I had a client who paid me for advice & an endorsement. He wasn't following my advice & frankly making me look incompetent. I found out why: he had a third party pay for my consultation fees. So I billed the third party twice as much as I originally billed my client (That cleared up  the problem rather quickly, but if someone is going to make me look incompetent, I'm at least going to charge them for it).

1979. If you don’t make mistakes, you’re not working on hard enough problems. And that’s a big mistake. FRANK WILCZEK I like making mistakes. That seems like it should be an embarrassing admission, but it isn't. I have learned invaluable truths about how the world does NOT really work by testing the waters. When I first started a school in Tennessee, I started on less than $200. No lie. All compliance & financial issues, I learned on the go (how else do you learn?). I come across so many people who are forever planning to do this or that but never do anything but plan. Such people actually do so out of deference to compliance issues; that is to say, they don't want to make mistakes. Well, if one does not want to make mistakes, one might as well not dream. Oh, also, I think the idolatry of compliance to be a kind of enslavement because one can be relatively compliant but never totally compliant because compliance is transient. And nature also allows for generous margins of error.

Oh, don't  follow my advice unless it resonates with you (or it might cause you more problems than it's worth).