In many ways, after almost 50 years in this universe, I am still insecure. But I’m fine with who I am. I don’t feel that I have to fake my opinions or tastes. That doesn’t mean that I think they are objectively right. But I am confident in myself and I trust in my opinions. If you really think that my musical taste sucks, it is probably an indication that you are insecure about your own musical taste. Regardless, everyone should get to this point in life. And actually, my closest friends are the same way, even though we rarely agree about much of anything in terms of art. (We tend to agree on politics, which is quite a lot more important.)

One thing I really hate is the use of people’s insecurities in commercials. A great example of this is the new Infiniti Q50 “conformity” ad. It shows a line of humans being created with their business suits and all that stuff. The announcer says, “Commence conformity protocol.” And then one guy is slipped a key to the Infiniti Q50, and he escapes. Freedom is just one purchase away!

The thing is that the commercial is not targeted at kids. The Infiniti Q50 is a $40,000 car. They are going after business people who probably think of themselves as secret rebels. It reminds me of those bumper stickers I used to see that said, “Why Be Normal?” I always thought, “Why not be normal?” All my life, I’ve tried to be normal. I’ve thought I was normal. For someone like me, being weird is not something you choose to do because you want to give the squares a fright. That’s childish bullshit.

So for all those people out there who think that they are “passing” and that deep down they’re really creative rebels, I have some news for you. If you’re passing, it’s because the “conformity protocol” worked really well on you. There’s a reason why society calls people like you “suits”: it’s the most memorable thing about you. You have two options if you want to change that. You could stop being a suit and try to do something good with your life, even if it is only on weekends. Or you could buy this totally rad car that only creative, individualistic rebels drive. It’s your choice:

Sometimes, Matt Yglesias makes me proud to be a nerd. That was the case last week when he wrote, The Case Against Eating Lunch Outside. (Note: I believe his original title was, “Eating Lunch Outside Sucks; Stay Inside.”) He’s completely right, of course. I am definitely an inside person.

There are rare occasions when eating outside is not bad. It has to be a warm day; you have to be under a tree or otherwise shielded from direct sunlight (clouds work); there can’t be any wind; and you need a table and chair. This confluence of necessities happens less often than I get married. And the case that Yglesias is talking about—a group lunch—makes it rarer still because you add greatly to the table and chair arrangements.

I would take the whole thing further than Yglesias, although that is probably only because he is better adjusted than I am. If I made more money so that I could have all of my groceries delivered, I’m not sure I would ever leave the house. I like inside a lot, but I like my inside even more. Still, he certainly does show signs of some of my neuroses. For example, he spends a whole paragraph explaining that grass really is just dirt. Hey: I agree! In fact, plain dirt is better because there are no hidden surprises like water or scorpions. It strikes me as an unnatural obsession. (Note: it is also true that he just doesn’t like lawns.)

What’s more, this article is 8 paragraphs long. This is from a writer who normally provides only two when discussing SNAP benefit cuts. However, this all goes along with Yglesias’ interest in urban planning. And he’s right that humans have spent the last few thousand years trying to find ways to spend more time indoors. It’s all about controlling one’s environment and the best way to do that is to be inside.

One of my favorite places on earth is the Timber Cove Inn. I don’t get to go there much because the rooms start at about $200 per night. But it is beautiful. And you can enjoy all of that beauty from your room with the fireplace and jacuzzi without ever going outside. And that really is key, because the weather is always terrible there. It is right on the edge of a cliff on the Pacific Ocean. In fact, if you will forgive me, I wrote this poem when I was there:

The Pacific Ocean really is badly named. In fact, it’s name is an offense to naming. It reminds me of this:

The truth is that ever since I was a child, lying on my back looking up into the blue sky brings on a panic attack. Strangely, I have no such problem at night. Regardless, the great outdoors is no friend of mine. So even if it is the case that Matt Yglesias likes inside because he’s studied urban planning and he thinks indoor spaces are the best places to be, we are still allies. Because outside sucks. Except when viewed from behind glass while sitting in a nice climate controlled room—preferably with a jacuzzi.

Ever wonder about all those Bed Bath & Beyond walls of towels?

Via Buzz Feed, it is all a lie:

My mother-in-law despised Martha Stewart, although I never really knew why. Probably something to do with a disagreement over the proper use of little forks. I, on the other hand, don’t care for Oprah Winfrey. I can get past the creative collective that is the Martha Stewart brand, because I can always use clever hints to help me stay at the top of my womanly game. Housekeeping, gardening, home decorating, entertaining, pet care, arts and crafts with found objects, and recipes for foods I can explain to guests; she tells us how to do it all. If I were insecure her spectacular array of skills might make me feel like a failure as a keeper of home and hearth. Instead, I look to Martha for the inspirational guidance that is preparing me for the day I too have servants.

Americans are fascinated by narcissists. We either hate them, mock them, or emulate them. Stephen Colbert is a narcisstic caricature, an egomaniac with titanium balls, who entertains. Bill O’Reilly’s inflated self-worth has made him an arrogant bully. Martha Stewart is a confident and apparently savvy entrepreneur with a fairly benign influence.

Then there’s Oprah. Her ego is as alarming in its breadth as in its effect on others. I think its very mass may even pose a threat to our tidal system. Oprah has taken self-promotion to an outrageous level. Where Martha sells the promise of perfection (and the products to get you there), Oprah sells her thoughts and opinions. Those are the products she hawks to the public. Where people of influence like Martha Stewart and Stephen Colbert have fans, Oprah has followers. If she tells her adoring minions to read this, hate that, eat something else, they’ll hop to as if God had spoken to them. And pity the unfortunate being who pisses her off. She can destroy you.

Rather than being repulsive, Oprah’s confidence seems as infectious as the common cold. How else to explain that she has become the Queen Confessor? Celebrities are granted televised sessions with her and pray they are found worthy. (I’m actually a bit disappointed with Colbert for accepting her permission for an interview).

Take Lance Armstrong. (He now comes in pill form!) His unflagging and very public denial of doping wasn’t worth the attention given it. His final admission of doping was as immaterial as Elton John telling the world he’s gay. Why the need to be interviewed by Oprah? Was finally manning up (or giving up) to announce, through the Oracle of Oprah, that he had lied (something everyone already knew), the act of penance that would absolve him of past deception?

There was a time when celebrities and politicians with Announcements, would only talk to Barbara Walters or another respected journalist. When a talk show host can become the Great and Powerful O, it’s time to tune out.

I’ve heard a lot of loose talk about schizophrenia and (much more) psychopathy. They are not the same thing. They aren’t even all that similar except that they are both pathologies and people suffering from both can be dangerous but in completely different ways. Schizophrenia is a broad term, but in general it causes people to experience things that others don’t. Or perhaps more bluntly: schizophrenics often hear and see and believe things that are simply not real. It is a heartbreaking disease. Schizophrenics tend to live in an uncertain world that is often malevolent.

This is all very different from psychopathy. Psychopaths see the world the way the rest of us do. They just don’t respond to it the way the rest of us do. We’ve all known people with more and less empathy. Psychopaths are people with very little or no empathy. That doesn’t mean they are violent or antisocial. In fact, being a psychopath is very good in certain professions. Globally, about 1% of people are psychopaths, but 4% of corporate CEOs are. And you can well imagine that rescue workers might be better off not having emotional reactions to other people’s suffering.

The Psychopath-Schizophrenic Connection

Psychopaths often are violent, of course. In general, our society is based upon us all not being psychopaths. So much of our social order just comes down to us all caring about each other. And whether they are violent or not, psychopaths can use all of our empathy against us. But outside of that, I have very mixed feelings about them. On the one hand, I could sure use some of their low-anxiety confidence. On the other hand, I think they’re almost non-human—what is it that makes us human but our empathy?

I tend to think these shooters are schizophrenics, rather than psychopaths, simply because they reliably kill themselves. Just the same, the whole murder process in these mass shootings is so systematic they seem psychopathic. And who knows: maybe it is both. Or neither. But I know that we need to try to help the schizophrenics, regardless of their effect on us. I’m not sure there is much we can do about the psychopaths.

Afterword

I’ve known quite a number of women who have self-mutilated themselves. It is a small example of people behaving in extreme ways that don’t make sense and don’t (in any direct way) lead to the resolutions of their problems. In saying this, I am not justifying killing or self-mutilating. I am only saying that it would be useful to help people before they get to that point. Or at least to try.

Fucking in the abstract is not that interesting. Much as it may surprise some men, foreplay is not a bribe to pay to get to the coitus. The process normally goes: guy sees a girl (if only in his mind) and gets horny. It doesn’t really work the other way around. This is because sex is part of relationships, not some disjointed activity. (Don’t bug me about the details, I’m talking generalities here.)

Thus, it came as no surprise to me that the whole “hookup” culture that is supposed to be so big is, in fact, not. This was reported today by Adam Hoffman of The Brown Daily Herald, Hookup Culture Not as Prevalent as Believed, Study Shows. The study found that between 7% and 18% of college students had hookup sex within the last month. There were other telling results, such as the fact that people are most likely to hookup at the beginning of the school year.

The big deal made of this comes from a media always looking for the salacious. To state the obvious: “College students in committed relations” is distinctly “Dog bites man.” Nothing to see here. Of course, the hookup culture is nothing new. It is just a new name. In general, it has different names or no names. Remember the “free love” pledge? It wasn’t about freedom.

So the vast majority of college students are just in regular, boring monogamous relationships. And there’s a reason why these relationships are boring: because it is what everyone does. It’s in our DNA. People who are having hookup sex are getting something different from it. And that’s great! But it’s not going to take over our culture. You know why? Because we’re more like prairie dogs than we’d like to think:

Sarah Kliff over at WonkBlog has written a very useful employment article. It isn’t useful for employment. It is useful for telling your friends who claim that they work 80 hours per week that they’re wrong. Kliff puts it more bluntly: Your friend who claims to have a 75-hour work week? He’s probably lying.

I’m not going to bore you with lots of facts and figures—and graphs, because Kliff works for Ezra Klein (you can imagine what their parties are like). Instead, I’ll give you the take home: the more people work, the more they over estimate how much they work. People who work 40 hours per week, tend to overstate their hours by two. But it goes way up from there. People who claim to work 60 hours per week, really work 50 hours. But there is a wrinkle. People who claim to work 75 hours per week, also work 50 hours!

A much better gauge of this is not “How many hours do you work in a typical week?” This number is understandably vague and error prone. A much better question is, “How many hours did you work last week?” In this case, people are much better. People who claim to work 60 hours per week, really work 54 hours. Those who claim 75 hours, really work 60 hours.

There are two take aways from this. First, don’t ask people how many hours they work. Ask them how many hours they worked last week. Second, tell them they’re full of shit.

Afterword

An interesting aspect of this is that people who work part time claim to work less than they actually do. So if you’re working part time, make sure you get paid for all your hours!

Aging, thankfully, is an effortless transformation; having to work at it would be a pain in the ass. Instead, every morning — after putting on my glasses of course — I eagerly gaze into the mirror. What new magic did the Fairy of Death work upon my face as I slept? Puffy eyes that last a little longer each day? A slightly deeper brow furrow? Or maybe a long chin bristle that I can feeI but not see without my glasses and a magnifying mirror? Every day brings me a little closer to becoming the scary old lady I know is trapped inside.

One aspect of getting older that does require effort is collecting doctors. It is not easy to find doctors one is comfortable with and that accept our insurance. As of now, I have a GP, a dentist, a gynecologist, a dermatologist, and a chiropractor. Once I find a good psychatrist I’ll have a full set!

Everyone knows that having doctors means having prescriptions, which also means plenty of pharmacy visits. I imagine that some time in the next ten years, I’ll have been to the local RiteAid so often, there will come a day when I’ll hobble in and the staff will yell “Norm!”

On a recent visit, as I sat waiting for a prescription to be filled, a gray-haired man of about 70 stepped to the counter. The clerk cheerfully asked, “How are you today?” The man replied with the gusto of a man twice his age, “Still vertical – so that’s something.”

“I told the doctor I broke my leg in two places. He told me to quit going to those places.” —Henny Youngman (1906 – 1998)