Observations Of A Verbal Autistic: November 2014

Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Name Combinations

EXOTIC FOREIGNER ALIAS: (Favorite Spice + Last Foreign Vacation Spot)

Cinnamon Tours

SOCIALITE ALIAS: (Silliest Childhood Nickname + Town Where You First Partied)

Neener Nuts Springfield

"FLY GIRLGUY" ALIAS (a la J. Lo): (First Initial + First Two or Three Letters of your Last Name)

F-Ba

DIVA ALIAS: (Something Sweet Within Sight + Any Liquid in Kitchen)

Jellybean Karo

GIRLGUY DETECTIVE ALIAS: (Favorite Baby Animal + Where You Went to High School)

Cub Harrison

BARFLY ALIAS: (Last Snack Food You Ate + Your Favorite Drink)

Corn Dog Pina Colada

SOAP OPERA ALIAS: (Middle Name + Street Where You First Lived)

Coffman Fox

(PORN STAR ALIAS: (First Pet's Name + Street You Grew Up On)

Dixie Park

Your Jedi Name:
First name: First three letters of your first name, first two letters of your last name
Last name: first two letters of mother's maiden name, first three letters from city of birth
Title: last three letters of last name, backwards, first three letters of make of first car, OF, last medication taken.

Fraba Comou, of Yelfirzer

-Frank

25 Random Things About Me.

1. The only party I remember being invited to in high school ended up with me singing Weird Al songs from a high place while everyone laughed. With me or at me I'm not sure.

2. Being an atheist, I am probably not going to ever enter a church again unless it's for a wedding or a funeral. If it's my own wedding, I'll have to try for an Oscar at the religious parts, but that'll be the least of my problems if that day comes, trust me.

3. I got kicked out of a Catholic Church in Springfield once for taking communion while not being a Catholic. The person who invited me there really should've explained that being a no-no.

4. When I was in kindergarten, I got punched by a coach for defying his orders to get on the monkey bars as part of P.E.

5. I have a superstition about Walgreens kitchenware. The stuff is cursed, I swear. NOTHING works right for long from that store's kitchen section. It all falls apart or simply fails to function outright.

6. I can't chop wood. Something must be lacking in the technique, because all I do is create dents in wood.

7. If I could, I would audition for American Idol. I'd get laughed off, but I just want to hear what Simon would come up with.

8. I am amused every time I hear chefs complain about having to bake on Food Network. Yeah, all your speed and multitasking won't save you now bitch.

9. Lemon meringue pie is my culinary kryptonite. Only when I have conquered this troublesome pastry will I feel I have fully mastered baking.

10. Song lyrics are often open to hilariously incorrect interpretation in my hands. Example: I lean against a zebra while you get your tetrahedron and you get it while it's goin' but not while it's for free and all your sister Christians singin' 1-2-3: real lyrics, I ain't got a fever; got a permanent disease and it'll take more than a doctor to prescribe a remedy I got lots of money, but it isn't what I need gonna take more than a shot to get this poison outta me and I got all the symptoms count 'em 1 2 3.

11. My best physical feature is my hair, which I'm losing, and my worst physical feature is my weight, which I'm not.

12. I think I can sing in Latin and German respectively when I hear Adeste Fideles and O Tannenbaum.

13. I peeled, quartered, and shocked with ice water over 20 pounds of turnips recently and I didn't have to eat a single one. Get is not the word to use in reference to turnips. They are definitely a have food.

14. The only reason I want a lawn is so I can put a smoker and grill out on it. Also a fire pit like Kate and Vic have would be nice. S'Mores a poppin'!

15. I recently learned through Shinga (a webcomic artist and livejournal writer I have come to follow) that there is a website dedicated to 80s T-shirts. This could have a serious effect on my disposable income for a while.

16. If I wasn't pretty sure they'd be terribly uncomfortable, I'd wear a monocle.

17. I have watched and liked exactly three animes ever that I liked. Dragonball Z, Cowboy Bebop, and Lupin the Third. Dragonball Z is silly and infinitely mockable, I must note.

18. My Starbucks order takes ten words to say. Am I officially a yuppie?

19. I once had a gaming room decorated and built expressly for that purpose, complete with dice jars and a handmade table. The gaming community in Northwest Arkansas sucked though, so it existed as a mausoleum to a formerly great hobby for three years that I lived there.

20. I own a black pipe from a company called Dunhill. It is among my most prized possessions.

21. I bought a baker's shelf to lighten up the storage load in my kitchen and the thing is still overflowing with equipment.

22. I have been informed never to return to Disney World unless I'm with a kid. Last time I went, I was 12. If I go again, the magic may be gone without at least someone having that sense of wonder.

23. I had a dog briefly named Simon. He was named after Firefly's Simon Tam and, if he hadn't had to be put down due to a disease called globoid leukodystrophy, i would've eventually gotten a second dog and named her River.

24. My Hotmail account (frankcritic@hotmail.com) was originally made in college to refer to me being the school newspaper's movie critic. Now it just sounds like I'm hypercritical or something.

25. Saturday morning cartoons will never return to their former glory. Why do kids even get up at all on Saturdays now? I used to be up at 5:30 so I could eat real quick before CBS' lineup started.

-Frank

Things I Wish I'd Said To My Exes

Strap In.

This one is going to be mean.

I will at least try to keep the misogyny to a dull roar.

1. You know how you're afraid your sister is hotter than you? She is. Know who else is? Your mother.

2. If you want me to cheer you up every single day over every little thing, how about I make you cry? Reverse psychology don't you know?

3. If you make me overdraw on my bank account again, I'm sneaking crumbled bacon into your food you vegetarian harpy.

4. You're crazy, and not in the good way. In the, "We the members of the jury find the defendent," sort of way.

5. I think your parents love me and you're lying to me about them complaining about me behind my back. They always act like they like me, and I'm not backing off if they're going to be dicks, so safe difference either way right?

6. I don't believe your stories. Any of them. At this point, I don't believe the name you've given me is a real one. Christ, you're worse than the Janitor on Scrubs.

7. Yes, you're fat. You are, in fact, fatter than my own fat ass. In that dress, in those shoes, after you eat salt, in a plane, in a train, with green eggs and motherfucking ham, you're a plus-sized Orca of a fat woman.

8. I'm just going to sit here and think of legal ways to make you cry.

9. Don't threaten to kill me you psychotic bitch. We both know you'd never set me completely free that way.

10. You know what, after a year of me reading books, taking sex and psychology classes, buying expensive equipment, and trying just about everything under the Sun to try and get you off, if you still can't maybe that's your fucking problem.

11. You have enough clothes and for fuck's sake you're in college and could get by on pajamas alone with your lifestyle. Quit begging for money.

12. Yes. You hate my mother. I get it. Can we move on please? Not that she doesn't hate you too, as does nearly everyone I knew before you, but still.

13. If you keep trying to manipulate me, I'm going to Just For Him and smoking something that tastes better than your vagina.

14. I made promises I couldn't keep about self-improvement. You cheated on me twice and had lesbian affairs that remain unnamed. The moral high ground is not yours.

15. You have the spine and moral integrity of a Jew in 1941 Poland showing the Nazis where all the other Jews are hiding.

16. Good God almighty, never spawn. Your children will grow up in a house of madness.

17. It's surprising, I know, but telling endless stories about how much better every other guy you've ever been with was in bed than me is fucked up psychologically abusive behavior.

18. Honesty is, believe it or not, applicable in situations where it does not make you feel better.

19. I've been having dreams where you die in horrible ways. I'm hoping dreams are a window into alternate realties and these are really my own personal you snuff films.

20. You know how you like cutting yourself during sex and playing with the blood? I hope whoever you're with in the future thinks he's a vampire and that, when you inevitably manage to find an artery, he chokes to death trying to drink it and it gets infected and you die from the infection, which will also be incredibly painful. And the hospital's out of painkiller. And bullets to bite on.

21. People should try to not to mispronounce words and that's a noble ideal to have. Punching people because they mispronounce words is not acceptable behavior though. You abusive cunt.

22. Knocking people around from the moment they are a passenger in your car by driving so erratically that they don't even have the chance to get the seat belt on is also abusive behavior, not to mention passive-aggressive bullshit.

23. Punching people for saying songs you don't like on iTunes? Also not okay.

24. Your hair is not a unique snowflake. It is like steel wool and smells funny.

25. Get the hell out of my home and enjoy the freefall in your standard of living that will ensue you ungrateful bitch.

-Frank

25 Most Offensive Article Topics

Here's how this works. I will come up with 25 hypothetical article topics that are intended to get me yelled at more often than my standard fare. From the title of the hypothetical articles, you should be able to get the gist. From there, it works like a dare in reverse. Everyone will vote for which one they actually want me to write and whichever one wins, I have to write it. No exceptions. Voting can only be done by people on my friend list, which are also the only people who can see it. Mostly I'm doing this just to see how many people vote and also because I'm curious if I can write something that actually offends someone enough that it gets me physically wounded. That said, here are the articles topics, pretty much off the top of my head.

1. My thoughts on pornography and when, if, and what age it's okay to be exposed to it.

2. The following people at Just For Him are worthless assholes I never liked but have shut up about until now.

3. Anime sucks, and here is why in great detail.

4. The world would be better off if the following people I know personally were never born.

5. My thoughts on global warming and environmentalist nitwits.

6. The following non-anime media franchises liked by my friends are worthless bags of fail.

7. Humans are superior to other animals and here's why.

8. All the people in high school I should have gotten in a physical fight with at some point.

9. All the people I made friends with whom I shouldn't have done.

10. The following women are all people I would've liked to hook up with during college.

11. I will name ten female porn stars and ten male porn stars without looking anything up just off the top of my head.

12. Top ten most doable animated characters.

13. The following songs that the rest of you seem to like suck.

14. The following women I know are fat.

15. These are my views of prostitution.

16. Pornography is superior to regular sex for the following reasons.

17. Why smoking should be allowed everywhere outside of hospitals and in baby's faces.

18. These are my views of drugs.

19. No holding back: Going medieval on religion's ass.

20. Pro-death: How deep the rabbit hole really goes.

21. Why freedom from other people's children is important.

22. Children should be able to defend themselves from bullies by any means necessary.

23. Selfishness: A virtue I will defend to the death.

24. Toys need to be dangerous again, a lot more dangerous.

25. A comprehensive explanation of my view on sex with all the gory details.

So there they are. Any one of those in its fully composed and highly offensive version could be written. To vote, simply leave a comment with the number of the article you'd like me to write. Voting lasts until 10:30 a week from this posting, after which all votes will be null and void. This should be fun.

-Frank

The Subject Of Suicide

Here's the article that inspired a lot of what I'm going to say here, if you're interested. http://townhall.com/columnists/KathrynLopez/2009/04/17/suicide_isnt_a_painless_debate

So, I'm going to be advocating suicide in this one. If that's going to affect your blood pressure to the point where it might kill you, or at least shave off a few years of your life expectancy, you probably should just stop reading. Of course, regular article readers will know I'm pro-death in general. Hell, I consider abortions mercy killings, so much does life suck. However, I'll also talk about people like me in this article, by which I mean people who think life sucks just as much as someone who is suicidal typically does, yet aren't actually suicidal. Not killing yourself is an option I respect just as much as I respect the alternative and there are many valid arguments for it, just few that people actually tend to make. So in that sense, this will be a balanced article. For most of it, I'll categorize different types of suicidal people, starting with the most justifiable cases and moving down to more objectionable levels.

Terminally Ill/Chronic Pain Cases: Within this category, you have varying degrees. Guys like Kevorkian used to kill who would die in minutes without round the clock nursing care anyway, just because they keep almost swallowing their own tongue or something, to people who just have severe chronic pain that will never go away no matter what they do. Severe paralytics also fall into this category. People tend to be most okay with this form of suicide because it's pretty inescapable that these people live in hell. They can't do anything anymore because their condition is just too prohibitive. Dogs in their condition, hell, ANY SPECIES, other than their own, in their condition would be put down to ensure a merciful death, and you would face animal cruelty charges if you didn't, in fact. Personally, if I'm ever that bad off and you can kill me but you don't, I'm finding a way to haunt you.

A Comin' Cases: My clever name for these people is based on the fact that they're suicidal because they know something really bad is a' comin. Maybe the enemy army is about to overtake their castle, in olden days, so they fall on their sword, or maybe they just lost all their money in a market crash, in the modern era, so they eat a gun. Not all cases like this are so dishonorable. Some prisoners facing torture situations commit suicide rather than face more torment, something John McCain attempted at one point. Completely understandable. Other examples include murder suicides or suicide by cop, which I assume are self-explanatory.

Loser Cases: The difference between losers and the previous type is that a comin' cases know that something bad enough to kill themselves to avoid is imminent. Losers just don't have any more reason to stay alive. Maybe they don't have any kind of a career, no lovers, no kids, no friends, and sometimes not even any family. You might be tempted to call these people depressed, but people who are depressed are sad even when things are going good for them. In the case of the loser, it just sucks being him. There's no place in this world for him. No love, no mercy, no compassion, no pity. He's just an insignificant man neither loved nor needed by anyone. Why are you trying to convince him he shouldn't kill himself? How many guys like that do we need?

Mentally Ill Cases: The thing about mentally ill cases is that some people believe that everyone who wants to commit suicide is mentally ill. That makes no sense to me. Acting out of desperation or wanting to end suffering, for instance, isn't crazy. It's perfectly rational. Now maybe you insist that there's always a better way than killing yourself, but you can insist on anything by definition. Doesn't make it true. Sometimes it is the best possible option for both the person committing suicide and the society that shall be rid of them. Now, if you're talking actual mental illness, as in they're not actually capable of making rational decisions, that's different. People who are clinically depressed or bipolar or whatever are not making a rational decision if they kill themselves. Their madness makes that decision for them. So we should try and get them lucid if at all possible.

Sad Cases: These are cases where someone is simply sad about something, like a death, a temporary loss of employment, or even something as trivial as a band breaking up. Someone I know likes to say that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. For the most part, I agree with that on this level. The only defense I could make for suicide in these kinds of cases would be a Darwinian one, because it's pretty clear the weak are dying off and therefore not reproducing, but that's more relevant to my next category.

Suicidal Teen Cases: Okay, I realize defending teen suicide is kind of extreme, but we have enough teens already and I'm pretty sure most of the people who think they won't be missed are right. That said, I'm effectively against it, I guess, because I believe in parents having the right to make decisions regarding their children until they're 18, including decisions regarding killing oneself. I can easily imagine cases where I can sympathize with them though, because they sense they have no place in the world. Some of them don't fit in either at school or at home. They know a loneliness that you can only know in a school cafeteria. At one time, I would've told them things get better in college, but that's temporary. Workplaces are much like a high school, and they're going to get pushed around and picked on for the rest of their life if it's already happening. Whether that's enough reason to kill themselves, well, that's up to them. I've made my choice. They might make a different one.

Okay, now that I've spent a lot of the article defending suicide as a personal choice, I'll give you some reasons to live. I consider the conventional reasons to keep living, beauty, love, religion, not hurting your loved ones' feelings, nonsense. These reasons do not assume life doesn't suck, because it does. You'll be hard pressed to find someone more consistent on that than me. However, I continue to live. Here are a few reasons why.

1. Curiosity: You gotta admit, this is a great show. No matter what kind of life you're living, you never know what's going to happen tomorrow. New and interesting things are blowing up all the time on the macro and micro level. If you're pessimistic and think the world's just gonna burn here soon, stay and watch. They'll be enough guns around for a situational suicide if peril becomes imminent, don't worry.

2. Revenge: If you're like me, you know there are a lot of people out there whose life would be better if you were dead. Do keep in mind that you don't like these people. In fact, they suck. Why are doing them a favor? Whatever sort of suffering you're enduring by living, give back as good as you get. I say if other people would rather die than live in the same reality as you, you win.

3. Practical Reasons: Any form of suicide can fail. Know what happens after a failed suicide attempt? Life sucks worse than before! Think you'll get a second shot? No! Everyone will make sure of that. So you'll have less freedom and you'll be mangled or crippled or something. Fantastic. No, better to endure the slings and arrows of a natural lifespan than risk a failed suicide attempt.

4. Stubbornness: You want to make sure they win? Is that what you want? You know they they I mean. The ones that you've been pushed by your whole life and you've been pushing back. Doesn't even have to be actual people. It can be unseen forces or ways of your culture. Heck, even God. My mom offered me to move out of Harrison after 9th grade and go to school in Springfield, but I stayed because, whatever else I did, I wasn't running from those bastards. So now they'll never have that. Can't say they scared me off. Can't say they made me quit. No, I was there all through the spitting and the smacking and taunting. Sometimes they're still in my nightmares, their twisted twangs torturing my slumber, but I stayed until the end and not even the ghosts of the past can change that.

5. The Ending: Gotta know how it ends don't you? Sure you do. There are a heck of a lot of people betting against me right now. Some think I'm basically a retarded child man. Others think I'm a useless spoiled rich boy who won't ever do anything with his life. Still others root for me to fail because of my politics and the deeply immoral man they believe they make me. So we'll see how I end up. Will diabetes slowly eat away at me until I'm dead or well and truly wish I were? Perhaps medicine and my own discipline will mitigate things. Can I start Bailey's Bakehouse and make it work? Can I even get my first pastry job? You know what? None of it's certain. There is no fate but what we make for ourselves. The enemies and mistakes I've made in life are lined up against me and I stand ready to take them on. That's the real advice for any person out there who's actually suicidal. I'm not like the others, I respect and condone your decision...but maybe you shouldn't forfeit the game just yet. Maybe you're going to show the fuckers a thing or two and you just don't know it yet. Be a shame to miss that, is all I'm saying.

-Frank

Proper Nostalgia

Living in the past is bad thing, but so is forgetting it. The past is important and you'd be a fool to think otherwise. Nostalgia is a phenomenon that I am very familiar with and which we are all familiar with, at least a little bit. For me, an autistic who has difficulty both understanding or accessing his emotions, nostalgia is some of the most ready access I have to positive emotions. Raw nostalgia is probably not much good for anything, but if you can harness it, channel it, and learn to focus on what's good about it while using your rational mind to keep in perspective and context what needs to be kept in perspective and context, it can be a powerful way to access positive emotion and know how one can and ought to live in the present. A discussion of nostalgia could go all over the place, but I will limit myself to three different varieties, which I do believe basically cover it. You've got nostalgia for youth, nostalgia for a time in your life, and nostalgia for fiction, and they all work a little bit differently. What they have in common though is a sense of possibility, and, more specifically, an implied hope. If things were once good or it's possible to think of things as being so good, then we may make them so. When you get older, nostalgia probably seems different in important ways, but, as someone who has recently completed growing up, at this age, it's all about what growing up entailed, because it entailed so very much and there is so much to draw upon for the future, which still lies ahead.

We'll start with nostalgia for youth, which is defined, in a general way and to varying degrees, as a time of less responsibility, less disillusionment, and less general worry. There are two important lessons to draw from here. The first is that happiness derived from naivete cannot and ought not be sought again and the second is that being less busy, less cynical, and worrying less do, in fact, make you happier. You don't really want to be a kid again though, because you had fewer rights back then. That didn't matter because you didn't have the responsibilities associated with those rights, but that doesn't mean the tradeoff's uneven. For my part, the rights you get are way better. If someone's annoying you socially as an adult, you get to leave and not be forced to be there by your parents or the government. Bullies are now subject to actual laws and you can get an actual concealed carry license (unless you live in Illinois). Also, you get whatever you want for dinner, whether that's steak, cookies, or spray cheese. Now that we've recognized the negative of youth, what of the positive? Well, disillusionment is about finding out things you loved weren't so awesome or that the world works in horrible ways. Some things, such as romantic love in my own case, are horrible and you just have to move on from them. However, the whole world doesn't suck because, as it turns out, the world is a pretty big place with a lot of stuff in it. If you can get a career you enjoy going, find a place to live you like, and, if you're not me, find love, you don't have get your illusions back because you can be happy with your life as it is. Sure, it's always going to be a compromise, but you can find enough magic in the world to make it worthwhile.

When it comes to nostalgia for a time (or place for our purposes), it's all about matching up the actual version of events with your recorded one. Take Drury from fall of 1999-spring of 2000. You know when Harry Potter is leaving Hogwarts in the first movie and he's euphorically happy with his new life and knowing he'll come back next year? That was me as I walked along campus to my car with my old friend Jon looking back on how awesome the year had been. Harry and I are both being ridiculous though, and for largely the same reason. In Harry's case, he had found out a powerful dark wizard had wanted him dead his whole life and, in fact, murder was attempted again that school year, his best friend had nearly died playing wizard's chess, and he'd been granted his own personal dedicated bully. For my part, I had alienated advisors in two majors, been bullied and intimidated by most members of my group of friends who were sporting a festering misogynistic streak, lost a scholarship to bad grades in political science, had developed a pathetic crush yet again, and ended the semester by destroying my roommate's painstaking drawing of his supervillain headquarters (we became best friends, actually). Why do Harry and I, absent reminders from our sense of logic and our contemporaries, have such a positive vision of our first year? It's because it was the greatest rush of hope for the future we'd ever had. Neither of us believed we'd ever have any friends, so the rush of excitement of having them was amazing enough to cast everything else we experienced in a much more kindly light. How do you apply this? Well, basically it's important to remember why you're nostalgic for a time or a place because it's not about that time or place, not really. Believe me, I've walked around Drury and I'm now just a stranger, so that rules of place. Talking to your peers from the time is all you can do to gauge what the time really was. All that matters and all that you need to worry about recapturing is the positive emotions that that time and place created in you.

Nostalgia for fiction is probably fairly unique to people who get fairly geeky about said fiction. Several different examples exist within my own life. If you're talking my teenage years, it's Star Trek, Xena, and Babylon 5. My college years would be Lord Of The Rings, Harry Potter, and Stargate SG-1. Further back, you've got Dr. Seuss, The Indian In The Cupboard, and My Teacher Is An Alien. One of the things that's different about nostalgia for fiction is that the fiction still exists. For instance I HAVE The Lord Of The Rings on Blu-Ray and regular extended editions on my shelf right now. If I so choose, Frodo will get his uncle's ring again, have to destroy it again, and Pippin will have to stop Faramir from burning alive again. That might be fun, as I haven't done that in a while, but that's not why the dwarves singing Over The Misty Mountains Cold in the trailer for The Hobbit sends chills down my spine as I realize that world is back. As good and timeless as the fiction may be, it's either about what it got you through or who was with you when you were first exposed to it. Star Trek mattered so much as a teenager because it presented a world of intelligence and conversation where I would have something to bring to the table that had never mattered or been acknowledged in Harrison, AR. Lord Of The Rings mattered so much both because of the strange symmetry that developed between the initial shock of 9/11 and the alternately escapist and pragmatic themes of confronting evil in one's time and because it was my baptism into geek culture officiated over by my best friend and many other people, many of whom remain great friends of mine. When I saw Return Of The King, a rising cheer unanimously developed each time Gandalf struck Denethor and THAT is what I'm nostalgic about in that case. We were all united in our disdain for leaders gripped by cowardice and madness because it was all so very relevant to our lives. So when I get nostalgic for Harry Potter, as I certainly found myself doing at the park in Florida, it's not really about the stories, but about going through them with my friends. It seems to me if that if you're nostalgic about fiction because it helped you get through a time, you should probably watch or read it again to get through tough times to begin with. Hope springs eternal, as does messages of it. However, if you're nostalgic about fiction because you went through it with your friends, that probably just means you need to have friends over more often. Of course, it could also mean that you miss your friends, like I do in too many cases, and there's nothing for that.

Through nostalgia for the time and place that was Drury in my day, I will remember to be optimistic because that will make even the bad stuff not seem so bad. From the nostalgia for fiction I shall remember that one must always keep, remember, and respect one's consolations and that it is not really what you experience, but with whom it is experienced that counts. All nostalgia is rummaging through the past and all of us will do it, but we have to understand, or, indeed, have in the first place, a purpose for such strenuous sifting. However you go about your personal nostalgia and whatever or whomever it may be about which you are nostalgic, just remember that it's a powerful thing and an efficient tool for accessing positive emotion. What you must remember is that nostalgia is only useful in any important sense if it is useful to your efforts to build a better life in the present and in the future. Fiction for which I feel nostalgia tells me this. Samwise has his family, the greatest adventure of all. Harry grows up and sends his children on their own adventure. Maybe I won't have a family, but I'll go to the oldest of all nostalgia for me and say that I HAVE THE POWER!!!

-Frank

The Moral Concensus

There's an awful lot of different kinds of people I know at this point. Sure, some of them are actors and actresses I have enjoyed late at night on premium cable, but there's still a surprisingly large number of people I've met in real life. Rich and poor, nonbeliever and believer, right and left, young and old, straight and gay, white with a tiny minority of exceptions, they're all here, and I disagree with just about any random one of them a lot for any number of reasons. Yet, we get along, whatever pyrotechnics of argument may present themselves. So what is it, exactly, that we all agree on that allows for a basic moral consensus. Atheists and believers HAVE to share a certain set of core values in order for them to exist civilly together in the same society or, especially, the same room. That I see this, or its corollary with other diametrically opposed individuals, on a daily basis underlies that we are significantly less opposed that we suspect. A Christian and an atheist arguing over what is the best way to raise productive adults who will be moral and capable of raising their own productive adults are, unknowingly in most cases, conceding a great deal of common ground. Consider a Christian arguing with an ancient Aztec about whether it would be better to have a productive adult capable of raising other productive adults or a human sacrifice victim with his chest ripped open to appease the gods and ensure the sun would rise, and you'll find out really quickly that atheists and Christians have more important priorities than nonbelief and belief. As an atheist, you can believe in Jesus all you want, go to church four times a week, and you know what? I'll take you over an atheist Stalinist who thinks it's okay for people to die horrible deaths in the gulags, because there are more important underlying things. With all that as a jumping off point, here are ten things that pretty much all people I'm willing to consider my moral equal must believe.

1. Suffering is, at best, unfortunate, and needless suffering is a damned tragedy. Inflicting suffering upon nonconsenting individuals is evil, regardless of context, and all the moreso if done to children.

2. Activity that harms none but those consentingly participating cannot be evil. Such activities are, at worst, inadvisable and dangerous.

3. Looking for excuses to hate people who have done nothing to harm you is evil and a profound waste of time.

4. Exceptions to rules must exist because people who are exceptions to the rule exist. Stubborn adherence to the rules in the cases of these individuals is evil because it represents a willingness to grind those who do not and cannot conform in the gears of efficiency and convenience.

5. Withholding compassion and/or empathy is always evil. However evil the individual suffering, it still hurts and they are still human and flawed. Vulnerable, naked, and afraid, the most evil person who ever lived, whoever that might have been, would've deserved compassion. It neither picks your pocket nor breaks your leg to show compassion to your enemies. For some, such compassion might be the only good in this world they'll ever see.

6. Humanity has potential and it is exciting to think about where it may be going. However cynical one might be about our species and however many appalling reversals one might have seen or experienced in the progress of humankind, it simply must be considered an objective fact that we have come further as a species than we ever had any right to expect and that this upward momentum is far from done with us.

7. Pursuing happiness is the right of all persons and, insofar as it does not interfere with the happiness of others, respecting said pursuit is a moral imperative.

8. Romantic love that involves loving the other person more than you love yourself is redundant. Romantic love that does not involve this is not romantic love at all.

9. When people speak about their own lives, it is a moral imperative to believe them.

10. The collectivization of guilt is never morally justified.

-Frank

A Drive Like No Other

All sound seems to fade away, despite the fact I'm listening to a book on tape on my iPhone. Thoughts of the present leave me and ghosts and shadows of the past fill my being. A single emotion does not contain the feelings and it is not anything rational. There is a terrible focus that feels loose and disconnected despite its intensity, like a dream. This is me driving through Harrison, Arkansas on my way home from my father's in Mountain Home. Mountain Home was my life on the weekends. No memories there are really all that negative, except for a prison-like daycare called Small World I stayed at there for a while, but, really, Mountain Home is just boredom and old grumpy Chicago retirees. Unpleasant, sure, but in no way malevolent, as least from my perspective. Harrison was another matter entirely. Maybe it would've been easier if I'd known going in what I was up against, but no one understands that when they're just starting out as a kid do they? Driving through Harrison traditionally involves angry music, such as The Unforgiven, Bodies, or Epiphany, or, at other times, total radio silence in the car as I let the memories wash over me. Not this time though, for this time I just continued to listen to my book on tape, though I'd be hard-pressed to tell you what Jim Norton was talking about on it, for my memories and thoughts were as ever with a childhood I may forever endeavor to understand in futility. Going through Harrison takes me past my old junior high, elementary school, and high school, because it's just the kind of town that there aren't that many routes through. At any given moment along that route, I can envision people there, some long since gone from Arkansas, some long since gone from this Earth. All these memories gnaw away at me like an army of fetid rats. What the whole town wants to remind me of, what I'd give just about anything to forget, is, essentially, the following. "This is your home. You have no choice in that matter. You can call Springfield your home, or Fayetteville your home, but this is your hometown. It was here that you first experienced all the things a child or young man may know. Here it was that you sought your first love, here it was that you tried to make friends, and here it was that you came back to work after college. Oh, you can run from all these memories, and lie to others about what it means, but the fact of the matter is that this place never had any love for you, and that just hurts so much doesn't it? Yes... You'll spend your whole life trying to figure out why the community you were born into hated you so much, why you could never connect with them, why you were a pariah among people you desperately loved and tried to get along with. None of it will ever make sense to you. So you sit there and you act detached, and cynical, and selfish, and emotionally dead, but I'll always be here in your nightmares reminding you that you don't belong. No one loved you here. No one accepted you here. Seek out sweeter tender voices that will tell you that you belong on this Earth with this species if you will, but alone, in the dark, you'll breathe shallow breaths and you'll hear me reminding, insisting, and judging with finality that this place of your childhood will always know who you really are."

I don't know what other people get from their hometowns when they drive around them. Maybe it's a pleasant experience. Good, bad, or ugly though, I doubt it's as intense.

-Frank

Movie Memories

If you heard that a 33-year-old man was looking for the storefronts that, many occupants ago, used to contain Mr. Movie and Video Gallery back in the 80s and early 90s in a fit of insane nostalgia, you might find yourself wondering what in the hell his problem is, but not with me. In my case, it all kind of makes sense doesn't it? Oh, how I love movies and treasure my earlier exposure to them. Movies are better when they're not just windows to other lives or fantasies, but suggestions of things one might actually do or experience as a child. The boy I was didn't know what was coming, or the underlying neurology that was already there. My later childhood assumption that I'd never make friends hadn't even come to me yet. All I knew was the bliss and wonder of movies and I was able to enjoy them in and of themselves without the grim reality of myself in the back of my mind adding a note of bitter to even the greatest sweet. One thing I've come to realize about movie theaters is that they are the only places I feel at home. The etiquette for them is so bone-deep in me by now that I don't feel worried I'll get banned for things I don't even realize I'm doing. I've never even been threatened with it. There's also the fact that I'm among people in a social setting and they're not hating me. In fact, they're not even noticing me. Oh, maybe if they've got kids they move away because I look like a big fat sweaty pedophile or something, but on the whole people don't seem to regret their decision to sit next to me. Compare this to being banned from two Catholic churches in Springfield, and you'll get an idea of the contrast. Being that it's pretty late, I don't want to go on with this for too long. Mainly I just wanted to give some insight into why I want to review movies as the main productive thing I do with my time. I don't expect film critics, as a community to like me and I don't expect to get paid for this. Having already tried to have a career in journalism, I know the professionals in that community find my politics and my personality insufferable enough that I don't have a chance. Still, I'll keep writing over here by myself where I'm not bothering anybody and I hope that's okay

-Frank

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

The Complexity Of Life

Alton Brown teaches us that many cooking procedures involve denaturing protein strands, which are normally tightly coiled things that can be coaxed into relaxing by various means. Once these strands relax, they're much easier to work with. Life is much like this for me. Everything's so tightly coiled and difficult to understand or work with, and I'm constantly trying to understand and analyze it so it can relax into strands I can work with.

A very frustrating thing about life is the fact that I keep trying to figure out its rules and what it wants from me and it's like trying to solve a Rubik's Cube whose panels keep changing color. Social life has ridden the extremes for me. Friendship has been completely impossible, then possible to the extent where the friends I had were the greatest of all things in my life, back to impossible again, and now possible, but only with the people I'm already friends with, and even these people may decide I'm no longer worthy of their affections. Employment follows an equally maddening path. Go college and major in what you're good at and like, but then find out that what you're good at and what you like makes you only slightly more employable than a rabid rat. You must have experience to get a job, but you cannot get a job without experience, and what jobs you can get will involve skills you can't do, which will result in you being forced to leave those jobs on varying degrees of good or bad terms. You must be capable of working independently, thinking critically, and show initiative to get through college, which you will need to get a job, but when you get that job doing any of those things will make people hate you and cause them to try and get you fired. In order to win over a woman in a relationship you must be an independent fellow who knows what he wants out of life, yet at the same time be willing to become a codependent fellow willing to conform to most if not all of the things she wants out of life. The contradictions and the paradoxes compound upon one another, compelling one to wish to shout to the world, "WHAT THE HELL DO YOU WANT FROM ME HUH?!" Even in my deepest anger to the world, I'm still trying to understand it, but I have the feeling I'll be dead long before I get to that point.

-Frank

What ______ Means To Me

Tis' the season. What does that mean though? It means a lot of things to a lot of people and, to some, it means absolutely nothing. To others, it means nothing good. Part of me is wondering this Christmas if the part I always find comfort and value in is really a part of the season, or the result of me imposing my own worldview on Christmas. As ought to surprise no one, nothing religious informs my perspective on Christmas. While I might want to say that humanism, in fact, is what Christmas is about, that's a term I've only had a proper understanding of since late 2007. For better or worse and in any event, the highest concepts of good of which I am aware are tied into the Christmas holiday as I have always understood it. There is not a time I can remember, even during childhood, where it was not about the giving for me. Gift giving is something I've always seen as a redemptive act, because it says to one's family or friend, "Goodness knows I can be a pain. I talk too much, have table manners of infamous lacking, don't like any of the things that people who grew up around here in Arkansas ought to like, and I sing at the top of my lungs in less than appropriate circumstances, but right now I want to show you that I know you and that I love you so I have given you something that you want, like, and will find useful. All through the year, I try and get it right, but in this season I shall do my utmost to show you that I love you and that I recognize I need forgiveness for all the times I fail you the rest of the year." Giving gifts is a fine concept, but I am told not everyone views it as an expression of love and a demonstration of connection. How sad is the fact.

Christmas is composed of many things, but there are basically four kinds of ingredients. 1). Christian ingredients: Here you've got the birth of Jesus and the surrounding mythology involving the Star In The East, a manger, and three magi. Throw in anything related to the religion itself like angels and, if you wanna stretch it, Santa Claus and associated characters due to St. Nicholas. 2). Pagan ingredients: Here you've got the tree itself, shiny lights, the green and red of holly, ham, and the date of the holiday itself, all of which are pretty much directly descended from the Nordic festival of Yule, which is not an unfamiliar word in Christmas to this day. The festival involved worshipping fir trees decorated with bits of metal that would shine in the glow of the Aurora Borealis, sacrificing a pig, the holly warding off evil, and the date comes from the time frame of the winter solstice, although the exact date of the 25th comes from when the Roman winter solstice was. 3. Entirely secular ingredients: Most of these have to do with snow. Oh do they have to do with snow. Snowflake symbols, Frosty, Jack Frost, Let It Snow Let It Snow Let It Snow, Baby It's Cold Outside, Jingle Bells, and on and on. Other examples are mostly culinary, such as eggnog, Christmas logs, Chex Mix, and so on. 4. Humanism: This is the element I'll be able to enjoy about the season even if I spend the holidays alone one day. Every good story about Christmas, beginning with A Christmas Carol, is about human solidarity, compassion, and forgiveness. Plenty of things divide us as human beings and there is no need to look for more of them. You throw a toy in the Toys For Tots bin, give a gift to someone you know won't give you one in return, and you work very hard on generally behaving as though you are the person you know you can and ought to be.

Writing this article followed a conversation I had with a friend about whether or not Christmas should be in schools. I am on a weird side of this argument, because I'm kind of saying that a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet. Take Jesus out of it, take the pagan elements out of it, take out the snow and traditional food, and call it, I don't know, Festivus. Yeah, I remember hearing Festivus somewhere or another, and it seems like a perfectly reasonable replacement. So long as what's left is full of enlightenment values and a sense that redemption, forgiveness, and generosity are to be extolled as virtues during the holiday, what's important to me remains. Maybe's my friend's right though and, for most people it is only about their religion and greed, but I'm a true believer here. Let the world decide whether to prattle on to schoolchildren about virgin births, Nordic tradition, snow and ice, and Black Friday. It can decide what it likes and I care not. Whatever cynicism may be present within Christmas, I reject it. My Christmas is not the time for that kind of petty nonsense. Life is hard and the pain of each and every man woman and child on this Earth matters to me. During this season, I do what I can to show my fellow human beings that I love them and I consider no leap of compassion too grand to make during this time of year. Believe whatever you want to believe but I'll always believe that all people everywhere need to give and receive compassion and that any definition of Christmas that excludes this simple tenet is unworthy of consideration on my part. Bring joy into the lives of all you can during the season and don't worry about the name or the meaning of the holiday because the name never mattered to begin with and if the holiday has any other meaning, I for one, say bah humbug to it.

-Frank

Over A Percentage

For those of you who don't know, I played football in 7th grade for Harrison Junior High School in Harrison, AR. Our colors were blue and gold and our mascot was the Goblin, which looked like a combination of a 70s punk rocker, a meth addict, and a vampire. All the boys had their reasons, but I can only speak with certainty of my own, which was to impress a girl whose identity should be easy to guess by now. Of course, I did not impress her, being very unathletic, and it ought to have been unsurprising that failing at a task important to a woman repeatedly and in front of her is pretty self-defeating. Anyway, although it was customary to ride the bus to away games, my mother drove me instead. Having no friends and being prone to getting bullied meant that I was simply not safe in a school bus supervised solely by a bus driver and coach who, between them, were all out of fucks that they gave. One night, I showed up at a game and learned of an unfortunate incident that had taken place mere hours earlier. If you don't know, and I didn't before this, some school buses have exits on the top that, if activated, blow clean off the roof of the bus with a great deal of force, achieving significant height. Tampering with one of these doors, my teammates managed to send it soaring very high, whereupon it landed on the Vice Principal's windshield. Having shattered the glass, discipline was in order for the entire team, including myself, even though I could easily prove I wasn't even there, as I was in my mother's presence and custody during the incident. Got that? I had a freaking alibi. Nonetheless, all the coaches understood was that the demographic known as the seventh grade football team had committed major wrongdoing and must all be punished severely, regardless of concerns of justice, evidence, or rational thought. Though I was then, and am still now, considered to be a total wuss, I had, to that point, only vomited twice during practice. D-Day, short for Discipline Day, was on a whole other level. Attending our normal courses was not necessary, as this practice was specially called for a Saturday, so the punishing PT would last all day and on into the night. Making it several hours, I finally, out of desperation, faked a leg injury well enough to be excused. Days like that are part of why I never played a sport again, but it stuck with me for another reason. Group punishment is bullshit, because punishing the innocent along with the guilty is evil, cruel, and unjust. So I look to those complaining about my income demographic, prepared to blame and demand punishment for it, and I see wisdom not surpassing that of junior high football coaches in the national headquarters of the Ku Klux Klan.

It is quite difficult to hurt my feelings. I repress them and don't trust or rely on them, so you've got to work pretty hard to break through the combination of autism and self-training that causes me to do that. When I moved away from Harrison, I thought I was moving away from people with that little perspective and that little interest in working and thinking a little bit harder to always take into account exceptions and to avoid quests for vengeance where it is simply so intense that whether good people people get hurt in the determined effort to harpoon the proverbial white whale doesn't matter. Some in the 1% have behaved very badly indeed. So have some in the percentage of those who wear pink shirts. If you'd look into it, I'm pretty sure some in the guys named Ted demographic have been guilty of some outrage or another. Imagine people with signs saying, "Pink stinks," or, "Down with Ted," protesting all pink shirts and all the guys named Ted. Then one of good people wearing pink shirts or one of the good people named Ted objects and is told, "Oh we mean all those other pinkos (people wearing pink shirts, not the other meaning) or Tedheads, not you Ted. You're one of the only good pink-shirt-wearing Teds though, and while I realize the action we're demanding would hurt you too, you're just gonna have to take one for the team Ted. You could just stop wearing all your favorite shirts and change your name too Ted. Why are you so attached to your shirts and your name? Besides, it's not like pink shirts REALLY means pink shirts and Ted doesn't REALLY mean Ted. Can't you sense the subtlety in saying those exact things and meaning some other completely different thing? It's not like that would involve mindreading superpowers Ted." Every person with a sign, a facebook status, a blog entry, or any form of communication presenting the 1% as people who exploit the poor, lack a conscience, and/or are guilty of a white collar crime are accusing me of that because I am a member of the 1%. Perhaps you'd like to argue that I have power because of my money and therefore is okay to accuse me and many other completely innocent people in the 1%, such as my entire family, of immorality, inhumanity, and felonies. You might be interested in tales of my grandmother giving food to most of her neighbors out in Oakland, AR. These are people who I remember well for their kindness and decency, as well as poverty that I highly doubt the vast majority of my friend list has ever experienced. We're talking about people who hunted, trapped, and fished, or they didn't eat, and who had lived that way for generations. Fluoride in the water wasn't a thing, so they were mostly missing a lot of teeth and diabetes was quite a thing as they got old, so many of them were missing legs. Memories of delivering food to all those families in tiny rural Oakland with Leone M. Bailey fill my head every time someone starts talking about the 1%. So do memories of my grandfather denying loans because they'd be bad for the bank, only to give money to the person because he also knew it was direly needed. Also my mother comes to mind for her common practice of buying art supplies for classmates in watercolor classes whose talent is stunted by their inability to afford proper art supplies. Sixty dollars came out of my father's wallet and went to a hungry-looking homeless man in Philadelphia once in my presence, and he lectured me for my fear of the man and about how helping him was the right thing to do.

THESE are the people your rhetoric about the 1% include. You are mad at criminal cocksuckers who committed unsound, unethical, and unlawful acts against their own businesses, shareholders, investors, employees, and families in collusion with a government equally as unsound, unethical, and unlawful acting against the best interests of its own electorate. Everyone who contributed to this situation in both the near and long-term has a name and we live in an age of information technology so affordable and vast that most of the greatest minds of history could've never contemplated it. If you're that concerned, find out the names of everyone who was involved and refer to them by name for the specific crimes about which you are concerned. However, if you don't care enough about the truth and justice regarding the financial collapse you're so hot about to get your facts straight and avoid collateral damage, then maybe your opinion isn't really worth a warm bucket of spit. If your chief concern about the people responsible for this financial collapse is what percentage of income they represent in the country, there is something seriously wrong with your priorities. So I'm asking you, please, for the love of every sane and decent idea of justice that there could ever be, stop lashing out so blindly. Does it really matter so little to you, the people I've helped, am helping, and will help in the future to the best of my ability. Do the hillbilly children who ate many of their meals only because of my grandmother really matter so little to you? Do the impoverished pensioners needing that money to pay their mortgage and the mercy my grandfather routinely granted them matter so little to you? Do the starving artists my mother has provided brush and canvas for matter so little to you? Does the starving man who wasn't hungry anymore for a while because of my father not matter to you? They matter to me. Everyone does. Maybe you'll get your way though, and the 1%, good, bad, and indifferent will pay, regardless of whether they were innocent or guilty, because that doesn't matter to you if you're holding one of those signs with that percentage on it does it? Well, if it does matter to you that there are people out there with wealth who use their wealth to improve the lot of anyone they can and that I am one of those people you will put down that sign with a percentage on it and put another name on there that well-researched knowledge you possess tells you deserves to be on it. So what'll it be Occupy and its sympathizers? Are you a hate group who cares only about group punishment and nothing for me or the people you hurt, or are you a group who seeks punishment only for the guilty individuals, regardless of wealth?

-Frank

Friday, November 14, 2014

My Role As An Atheist

Having formally and informally declared that I am no longer a part of the atheist community, I have been asking myself where that leaves me. Essentially, I have concluded that, being as I spend far more time around believers than nonbelievers, I am likely to be the only atheist many people know. While I am not the S.E. Cupp sort of atheist, by which I mean sad I am not awesome and lucky enough to have faith, and would not describe myself as a friendly atheist, exactly, I would claim to be a reasonable and fair one. Having been a believer until I was 26, I don't think I'll ever be able to generalize that believers are stupid, as some atheists do. Most people are believers, so I'd have to believe most people are stupid, which, again, would not be a problem for some of my friends. Anyway, while I dislike and disbelieve religion and all things that are supernatural, I understand that believers do not necessarily reflect the elements to which I object. Likely, the average believer in most secularized nations, meaning nontheocratic nation states, embraces, as I did, a sort of nebulous humanism for which they incorrectly give total, or near enough to it as to make no difference, credit to their faith, rather than the philosophical advances made throughout human history, notably during the Enlightenment, which are far more likely to be reflective of their values. Here I will present the four basic ingredients of my atheism, which happen to be well-represented by the work Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett. From there, I will explain the atheist movement in terms of believer's concerns and where I might differ from it in important ways.

Richard Dawkins' book The God Delusion was the first book I read after I'd lost my faith. I did not read it as an atheist proper, mind you, so much as believer whose faith had gone and left a vacuum. Other books of textual criticism, notably the work of John Shelby Sprong, had led me to this point and affected how I reacted when my church's Sunday school conspired to end my then relationship with a fellow member on the grounds of disliking me personally, admittedly a near-universal quality for Arkansans. All the centuries of conflict between science and religion are documented here from the Catholic persecutions of Galileo Galilei, to the American Christian denouncement for the irreligious Einstein (only to be abandoned in later generations of efforts to falsely claim the great physicist as one of the faithful), to modern attempts to teach religion in science class. None of that is what interested me at first though. All I wanted to know was the answer to the argument from design. All my life, I had been told I have been created by an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient being and I was finally beginning to understand the permanent state of profound loneliness, alienation from my fellow humans, and heartbreaking personal weakness in which I would be living. Reconciling all of that with a benevolent creator of any sort had become impossible for me and I no longer cared what his excuse or the excuse of any of his followers was. Dawkins details very well why God almost certainly does not exist and why we have a perfectly serviceable understanding of evolution through natural selection. All my problems are the result of either my own mistakes or an impersonal process of evolution through natural selection. If I am weak, then I possess weak genes, and my bad social skills will prevent me from reproducing. Evolution simply does not care about my personal feelings, which also means it means me no harm. That is far more comforting and easier to live with than a God who is supposed to have a plan and trying to reconcile my life with that plan.

Christopher Hitchens book makes the case for anti-theism first and foremost. Yes, Hitchens states that there is nothing supernatural, but also that we should not want there to be. The myths and texts upon which the world's religions are based are not of a character wherein one might wish them to be true stories. Yahweh, though his various names and reputations through various texts, is among the worst, but every real world deity which has been significantly worshipped with which I or anyone I have read is familiar is, at best, an advocate of unreasonable things, and at worst, an advocate of things to which ordinary morality would object. Hitchens took me through the horrors of sectarian violence. Catholics and Protestants in the United Kingdom, Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic with Muslims in the middle, in Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia, Tamil Hindus and Muslims in Sri Lanka, Shiites and Sunnis in...um take your pick, and on and on and bloody on through the bloody millennia. For the first time, it was made clear to me the realities of female genital mutilation, honor killing, and the systematic, repeated, and covered-up rape and torture of children. This was all necessary to open up my mind to the reality that my own history with the Methodist church had been soft and easy. Many parts of the world had failed to sequester and tame the religious impulse. Scripture calling for one to kill in God's name tends to not have clauses allowing oneself to abstain if the secular government says it's not okay. Worldwide, you see sects of religions who still do what their ancient holy books say to do to the letter, and the results are not communes of love and wisdom. Neighborhoods where Sharia Law reign display this better than anything else. On a personal level, my ex-fiance had quite a campaign, of manipulation, lies, wishful thinking, and general delusion she embarked upon with me. Seeing that the world's religions reminded me more of her tactics than they did not was a real eye-opener, and closed the door to faith forevermore.

Sam Harris' The End Of Faith is principally concerned with morality. Later, he would write a whole book just on morality, but The End Of Faith is very focused on looking at it in theological terms. Essentially, its thesis is that there is nothing in in religion that can be arrived at as regards morality than cannot be arrived at by entirely secular means that is worth having. Coming at from a psychologist's perspective, Harris takes emotion out of it more than the previous two. Dawkins was passionate about science enough to lose his patience with the faithful and Hitchens had seen too many die for or by faith around the world to be dispassionate, but Harris is probably the most objective of them. A dispassionate text like his goes about its task of systematically proving faith incompatible with reason. By tracing the roots of morality and comparing the morality of believers and nonbelievers, Harris manages to prove that morality is mostly secular and cultural. A breakthrough of sorts for any atheist is realizing that religious morality is secular morality dressed up in religious clothing. Cases where this is not so tend to involve crimes against humanity. Most people consider the opposite to be true and that we need God to be good, lest we turn out to be like the Hitler and Stalin regimes. Moral progress, whether it be in the abolishment of slavery, the emancipation of women, the reduction of tribalism in the species, or a general increase in human solidarity have no place in ancient holy books. Once one has accepted that humanity has already vastly improved upon and exceeded the morality of the Bible, one starts to get a true sense of how paradigm-changing atheism can be.

Daniel Dennett was the final of these four authors to whom I was exposed I would say that in Breaking The Spell, he writes at a level where I can barely comprehend it. I'm not exactly an intellectual lightweight either, so that should tell you the deep waters the philosophy professor sails upon. Essentially though, he's the only one to be writing about religion itself and trying to figure it out in a completely impartial way. Every atheist eventually asks themselves why these lies were told to them and Dennett does as good a job as any in explaining the reasons. Key among the concepts he lays out is the idea that many people who do not believe nonetheless believe in belief. Many nonbelievers believe that faith, nonetheless, has good consequences, whether for themselves or in a more altruistic sense, so they help to keep it going. Some atheists don't want other atheists in positions where moral responsibility plays a large role because they want someone who at least believes in something. To some extent, this is a problem of linguistics. Atheists can and do have principles of objective morality and ideas about what makes for a happy productive human life that are not at all out of the norm for the species. When an atheist says he doesn't believe in anything, he means in anything supernatural, which means that he has, through logic and reasoning, arrived at the same level of stability in his morality and happiness that would be available to a person of faith. Born Again Christians are onto something when they say that atheists are trying to do it on their own strength, but a fundamental misunderstanding is in play when they say that they are trying to be their own God. So ingrained is a belief in the absolute and supernatural sense that a belief of a more reasonable and practical variety that one's own faculty of discernment is both enough and all that is available is alternatively baffling and incredibly depressing to the believer.

If it seems to you that the atheist movement is overwhelmingly a leftist one, I cannot disagree. My own experience is that many believe the right is not even worth arguing with and there is, it turns out, an organization with that as its guiding sentiment. More recently, I've divorced myself from the atheist community entirely due to its solidarity with the Occupy movement and that movement's zealous hatred of me, my family, and all in our socioeconomic class who refuse to prostitute ourselves by begging to have our taxes raised, regardless of the quantity or quality of our personal charity. From the religious right's point of view, it would seem that acknowledging the nonexistence of God would require having the government replace God, and that certainly seems to be the goal of much of the atheist movement. Instead of being forced to tithe for some grand cathedral, I shall be forced to pay my taxes to cover the important work of building a bridge to nowhere, and my objection in both cases will compel those who demand more of my money without cause to call into question my morality and compassion. All I can tell you is that there is more than one kind of atheist. This atheist rejects all masters, supernatural and governmental alike, and disbelieves in God without the slightest desire to replace him with anything. While I am very lonely and convinced that there is no reason whatsoever to believe that state of affairs will ever cease, I cannot look to a deity, a government, or anything else to solve the lonely nature of my own human condition. Instead, I can only accept it and attempt to be as happy and productive as I can be within the context of it. So many believers would long to tell me that I would be happier if I sought deific help, but then they nearly always make the mistake of telling me that that deity created me. From that point on, I don't listen because I know that if he is as is popularly believed, I can only patiently wait for hell due to my utter rejection of any being that would create a man like me for a world like this, and if he is, instead, benevolent, then I await the merciful oblivion he shall surely grant me. Fortunately, for all of us, I am not the created creature of any deity, but simply a small weak man too unappealing to attract women who will not hurt him and it is no one's fault that I was born that way. Given this, all I ask is for the compassion I try and show to people with whom I interact, because it's a hard world and, although I am very lonely, there are much worse problems to be had.

-Frank

The Green Fire

There are two kinds of people in the world. The first kind want money and the second kind are lying, if only to themselves. Those of us who have it, especially if we've had it all our lives and have been taught what ought to be done with it and how to think about it, understand it in a way that, well, too many people don't. Money isn't like human solidarity or rational thought where human happiness and functionality is both guaranteed to exponentially increase with its application or a thing of which there can never be too much of a good thing. Neither is money the root of all evil that turns good men bad, rock stars into drug addicts, kids into spoiled brats, or idealistic Charles Foster Kane's into melancholy billionaires living in opulent Xanadus. No, my friends, money is like fire. Immense amounts of good and productive things can be done with it and it can be pretty fun to play with, even a bit irresponsibly at times, but it can bring misery. Most of all, it can and will turn upon those who fail to respect and understand its power. If you're living a good life with good people in it and headed in a direction where you're going to be positioned to accomplish things you want to accomplish, then all of that is better with money. Those who think that they may find happiness with money need to rejigger the old chestnut. Money does buy happiness, but only if you know what to buy, and for whom, and why you want to buy it. What money isn't is happiness in and of itself. Power's always been about how you use it and money's about how you spend, invest, save, and otherwise distribute it. Real rich people don't swim in a Scrooge McDuck vault pool. I've tried it and it hurts. Kidding, kidding.

Most of you weren't born with money. I think that's fair to say and I think it is then equally fair to say that most of you are going to be earning your money. Maybe you'll start your own businesses or climb to the top of your own profession and leave me in the dust financially, or maybe you'll have a high amount of relative wealth as you grow older and progress in your career. Whatever you have and whatever you do, ask yourself why you're working towards that money and what you want to use it for. Is there a person you want to use it to become or a well-defined goal you want to accomplish and, most of all, is the end game going to mean that you're happy? Maybe, like Daniel Tosh, a Waverunner is all it takes for you to be happy. If that's true, then go for it. If you're absolutely sure that whipping through the water on a lake somewhere with the wind flying through your hair and crystal clear water splashing about your thighs will make you truly content and whole as a person, work until you can afford such a vehicle. We've all got our reasons why money would make us happy and they are as unique as we are. Personally, I like money because it allows me to contribute to society and do some good in the world. Friends can be gotten out of sticky situations, I can give my young children relatives twenty bucks when they see me (someday), and generally be someone who is depended upon for the well-being and happiness of others. Nobody can get a significant amount of money without becoming responsible for the well-being of others and that responsibility only increases the more the money does.

Often, I admonish my friends to not hate the rich and I'd like to go beyond that to say that you shouldn't hate money either. You may earn a great deal of money someday and it's worth learning to respect its power, both destructive and constructive, so you're prepared on the day that it happens. For one thing, preserve it. How? This way:

Make a will.
Pay off your credit cards.
Get term life insurance if you have a family to support.
Fund your 401k to the maximum.
Fund your IRA to the maximum.
Buy a house if you want to live in a house and can afford it.
Put six months worth of expenses in a money-market account.
Take whatever money is left over and invest 70% in a stock index fund and 30% in a bond fund through any discount broker and never touch it until retirement.

If any of this confuses you, or you have something special going on (retirement, college planning, tax issues), hire a fee-based financial planner, not one who charges a percentage of your portfolio.

That's all a list from the comic strip artist and humor author Scott Adams, and it's one of the best I've ever seen coming from four generations in the banking industry. I sure hope that stuff doesn't bore you because all that is very real and something you're not going to be able to avoid as part of adult life. Stop thinking that you're a more evolved being because you're not into material things. Make no mistake, YOU are a material thing and will need to concern yourself with material things in order to live, thrive, and survive. So will every last person about whom you care. Should you be concerned with material things are unnecessarily opulent, I.E. that you don't personally want? Think about something you're really into and a really nice version of that thing. You want it. Are you an artist who works from a computer? You want a tablet and a damned nice one. Chef? That Pampered Chef stuff looks pretty sweet, no? Musician? About time you got yourself a nice new set of whatever different instruments are called isn't it? There's a lesson here and a distinction with a difference. Don't buy a Lincoln Navigator because it's a status symbol of your wealth. Buy one because it's huge and luxurious, because you love Abraham Lincoln, because you loved Lincoln Logs as a child, because Flight Of The Navigator is your favorite movie, or any reason that comes down to, "Because I like it on account of it making me happy." If your reason is, "Other people think I should," or, "This will affect the emotions of others in the way I want," however, don't. Like fire, money is not good, money is not evil, and money can be one of the most powerful forces on Earth. You play with fire, you better be playing smart and you better have a sense of decency. Money's the same.

-Frank

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

The Conversation

There is a conversation that I have had before and will have again. I don't know how long I'll keep having this conversation and it is entirely possible I'll keep having it until I die. The conversation always takes the same basic form and that makes it a little bit easier for me to respond to it. It is similar to the way celebrities can breeze through interviews since everyone always asks them the same questions. Explaining what the conversation is about is quite simple. Someone will object to my conclusion that autism precludes a romantic or professional life for me. Like everything else in my life, especially things that involve autism, I think this perennial conversation is eligible for an article. So here's what I'm going to do. While I am writing this paragraph in my usual style, the following four paragraphs will be written in the second person to serve as a response to those who seek to have this conversation with me.

You claim that with sufficient motivation, willpower, and fortitude, anyone is able to accomplish anything, or, at the very least, is capable of making some sort of professional and romantic life for themselves. This premise is false and it is helpful to consider the term disability. What does the term disability mean? It means, quite simply, not able. In all fairness, I have spoken with autistics who do not feel their autism is a disability, but I also know at least one autistic who is on disability because he has autism. Part of the problem here is that autism famously is a spectrum and that means that the degree it affects one's life is highly variable. Low-functioning autistics generally are not questioned about their employment or romantic prospects, especially if they are in a catatonic state. My autistic friend on disability is higher-functioning than me in some ways and lower-functioning than me in others. Determining whether or not one is high-functioning enough to be employable and maintain romantic relationships requires experimentation.

My experimentation with employment has been rather thorough and has spanned 15 years. Professionally, I have attempted eight careers in all and autism prevented them all from succeeding. These were journalism, which didn't work out because of social problems, marketing, which didn't work out because of problems with mulitasking, technical writing, which didn't work out because autism denies me scientific aptitude, teaching, which didn't work out because of social problems, college teaching, which didn't work out because of social problems, freelance writing, which didn't work out because of social problems, real estate, which didn't work out because autism denies me sufficient mathematical ability to manage the numbers involved, and baking and pastry arts, which didn't work out because autism meant I worked too slowly and lacked the dexterity and coordination to clean properly.

My experimentation with romantic relationships has been rather thorough and has spanned 10 years. Romantically, I have had six major relationships and autism either prevented all of them from succeeding or prevented me from realizing that they never would. Tishia didn't work because I didn't realize that A) She was using me for my money or B) That she was cheating on me with two people, Marie didn't work because I failed to realize she was a sociopath, Donne didn't work because I failed to realize I had alienated everyone in our mutual Sunday School class and they insisted she break up with me, Amy didn't work because I failed to realize she only dated me because she was too nervous to decline, Randi didn't work because I failed to realize she didn't really want a relationship, and April didn't work because I failed to realize I was moving the relationship forward too quickly and was unable to manage slowing down even though this was repeatedly pointed out to me.

So there you have it. You may well remain unconvinced that the evidence I offer to prove my autism prevents me from having a professional or romantic life, but it is not and cannot be your place to make that judgment for me. The fact is that unemployable and permanently lonely people exist and always have. Given this, what on Earth makes you think that I am exempt from being among their number? There is not someone for everyone and not all members of a society will be wanted by that society. However, of those who find themselves one of these people, I am fortunate. Born into money, I may live comfortably and pursue my writing and baking free of the concerns of survival. This is not to say that I do not fear the oncoming loneliness as I grow old and my family's elders begin to die off. Indeed, matters like this weigh heavily on my mind. In any event, that is my position and it is mine to have. I hope you have some understanding of the limitations that autism places on my life. Lately, there is talk of a cure and I will take said cure if it ever comes to fruition. If that day ever comes, I will embrace the possibilities.

-Frank

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Ten Movie Quotes Young People Should Know

People my age and older have certain movies that are dear to our heart. However, some of these that aren't in the zeitgeist today are being forgotten by the younger generation. Below are ten movie quotes, unattributed, that I think young people should be able to get. If you're a younger person, see how many you can guess.

1. It's 106 miles to Chicago, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark... and we're wearing sunglasses.

2. You have city hands, Mr. Hooper. You been countin' money all your life.

3. I hit him in the head with a frying pan and put him in the trunk... so he wouldn't get hurt.

4. Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.

5. Wise men say forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza.

6. If ya don't eat yer meat, you can't have any pudding! How can ya have any pudding if ya don't eat ya meat?

7. Way to go, Paula! Way to go!

8. Alright, listen up! I don't like white people. I hate rednecks. You people are rednecks. That means I'm enjoyin' this shit.

9. Those aren't pillows!

10. Ray. If someone asks if you are a god, you say, "yes!"

-Frank

The New Meaning

Having investigated intellectually and searched inwardly, I find that I and ultimatley an existentialist. In my darker moments, I have professed nihlism, but that is imprecise. Nihlism states that life has no meaning whatsoever. Existentialism, however, tends to view life as a blank slate and, while there is no inherent meaning, it is up to each of us to find and make the meaning in our individual lives. Accepting that premise, I postulate that one of the most difficult things a person can encounter is the loss of the things that give one's life meaning, particularly if they have done so for a long time. Even if these things are replaced, we miss the old ones because they formed so much of our identity.

Many things that once gave my life meaning no longer do. In some cases I no longer believe in them, in some cases they are no longer practical, in some cases they are lost causes, in some cases they remain but are too diminished to be relied upon any longer, in some cases they have betrayed me, in some cases I have simply been provided proof that they provide only misery where I thought out would flow happiness, but whatever the reason, rebuilding is necessary.

Pragmatist that I am, I find that attaining meaning in my life means actively seeking it. Most significantly, I now find meaning in my life through my simple quest to preserve my ability to determine my own destiny. That means nothing more complicated that just being able to go my own way, no matter what, and beyond that it's just about getting by. Still, the freedom to determine your own destiny being an end unto itself, though providing powerful meaning, is not very defined. The defining is the part I'm working on. Getting myself some hobbies that don't require the participation of others is the current strategy. I already have movies and pipe smoking, but here's a few more.

1. Writing: I've got this blog and my ability to provide daily versions of my unique outlook on life to my readers, however many or few that may be.

2. Cooking: Well, baking. The cigar shop is an endless venue to give away my tasty treats. Even though I no longer do it professionally, I can still enjoy this craft.

So I'm off to a start. Don't know if it's good or bad. But it's my start. That'll have to do.

-Frank

Note To The Faithful

Having lost friends over my current position on religion, I feel the need to clarify it and express it clearly. Many of you on my friend list are devout worshippers of some kind or another and, even though this won't be a giant news flash to anyone who's been paying much attention, I do want to get it quite out in the open.

I am an atheist in the sense Richard Dawkins means when he says that term. To this extent, I am not saying I know for an indisputable and certain fact that there is no god or gods, just that I very much doubt it for a variety of good reasons. You might say that makes me an agnostic, but what use is that term when I'm equally agnostic about Thor, Zeus, The Flying Spaghetti Monster, Gandalf the White, the Bajoran prophets, and the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Your typical Christian is not agnostic in relation to these gods and are, in fact, atheists regarding them. So you can consider me wrong when I call myself an atheist and more properly refer to me as an agnostic if it makes you feel better, but honestly what's the difference past a certain point of nitpicking?

Dawkins, who I have been studying and finding myself agreeing with, seems to argue against religion primarily becuase it demands belief with lack of evidence. For instance, compare science's insistance upon keeping everything a theory, including tetonic plates, gravity, the spherical nature of the Earth, and so on no matter how well they prove them to religion's insistance on everything it says about the world being unquestionably factual even after disproven rather conclusively or, in many cases, the religion in question just changes its mind about the rules. My concurance with Dawkins on these points certainly reinforces my position but does not form its core.

Fundamentally, I am unable to worship or believe in a God who denies me my individual liberty. The Christian God in particular does this constantly. Constantly throughout years of church and association with Christian friends being told to subvert my will to God's will. You know what? No. If God did not want me to have my will, why in the heck did he give it to me, and if he didn't give it to me, who outdid his omnipotence, and if it was Adam and Eve and the serpent's apple, what in that equation was more powerful than God? If you're omnipotent, you either are omnipotent or you aren't and if you leave apples that can nullify your omnipotence lying around and then act surprised when it gets nullified, especially with the influence of a serpent whom, by definition of being the creator of everything ever, you had to create yourself, you're pretty irresponsible and irrational. So Dawkins is right, I think, the more general question, but if you want to know why I rejected the Abrahamic God, then look no further than this. I will determine my own destiny and I won't believe that my ability to do so is supposed to only exist because an omnipotent perfect being got overpowered and planned imperfectly.

-Frank

Saturday, November 8, 2014

Mansplaining & Misogyny

Among the creative people who regularly gain my attention is one Amanda Bussell, who sometimes goes by the nom de guerre Shinga and produces a webcomic called Head Trip (which can be found here: http://headtrip.keenspot.com/) and a regularly updated blog that is poignant and eminently readable (which can be found at shinga.livejournal.com). Recently, her anger at a certain species of male ignorance and dogmatism flared up, but focusing on her anger at it seems beside the point. Anger, after all, is the strong and defiant expression of pain, in fact normally very deep pain tinged with no small amount of sadness. Her list of grievances (the post that inspired this note can be found here: http://shinga.livejournal.com/1006944.html) falls under two general umbrella categories. 1). Men explaining to women what the experience of being female is, how to best cope with and fix female specific problems, and patiently explaining to women how they feel under some sort of presumption that a woman's own feelings are some sort of mysterious realm unaccessible without the aid of a guide possessed of testicles. 2). Men simply disparaging women as a misogynistic blanket statement, normally for being overwhelmingly emotional and underhwhelmingly rational, for making choices in romantic partners that he perceives as unwise (nearly always a thinly-veiled whine about why women don't choose him), and for living a lifestyle that embraces all of the varieties of sexual experience without even so much as a cursory nod to institutions like marriage and motherhood are the basics of the second umbrella. My goal in this note is to provide a perspective originating from a person with testicles that is neither mansplaining nor misogyny. As a writer myself, that seems quite the compliment and a testament to the effectiveness of her work, and that's how I hope she'll take this.

Okay, let's deal with the main problem here right up front. Women are human beings, equal in every relevant respect to men, and worthy of the same moral consideration, capable of the same degree of diversity, and deserving of the same freedom to control their sexuality and reproduction capacity as any man would have or expect. These are the basics of having a discussion about women and men that does not devolve into unscientific, unconscionable, and uncivilized ravings. Males who reject any of these points have made their maleness beside the point and if we should reject their arguments out of hand for the purposes of this discussion their maleness will not be nearly so much of a reason as will their barbarism. Having laid out my basic feminist thesis here, one may infer from it all the things I will say for the rest of this tone-setting paragraph, but I will set it out plainly in the event anybody misses the broader implications of my position. A woman's body is her own, her reproductive capacity is her own, and she is the person chiefly affected in every measurable way, except perhaps financial in some cases, by a pregnancy. Exceptions to any life is sacred rule are already made by virtually everyone not drinking their water through a sieve to avoid killing the tiniest gnat, so I will simply demand any staunch pro-lifer make an actual argument instead of relying upon a thoroughly devastated one. Rape is a terrible crime, not just because of the increased emotional damage sexual violence has the power to inflict, but because of the violation of any victim's personal power and control. Long after the vaginal tears heal, the morning after pill is taken, and the humiliation of the rape kit is complete, that loss will remain a terrible struggle. Consent is the crucial ingredient for moral sexual encounter and lack of it, whether rescinded during the act, because of context of power differential, because of diminished capacity through chemical intervention, or any other reason you can think of, is unambiguously, absolutely, and categorically rape. This is a fact that is as true as anything we know and argument about it is like arguing the atomic number of Boron. Lastly, each individual woman is her own self, meaning that she has the same responsibility and rights as any other human being, and that she is not the property of her family, her husband, her children, or anybody else. Instead, she is a sovereign being capable of being brilliant and terrible in the same breath and doesn't owe anyone an explanation for anything except herself.

Okay, so I'm going to tackle the umbrellas by giving each their own paragraph here.

1). Men explaining to women what the experience of being female is, how to best cope with and fix female specific problems, and patiently explaining to women how they feel under some sort of presumption that a woman's own feelings are some sort of mysterious realm unaccessible without the aid of a guide possessed of testicles.

First of all, let's establish the basic philosophical principal that informs all my moral reasoning. A person's individual liberty is an inalienable right that is worth nearly any collateral damage in order to preserve. This does not mean I'm opposed to government power, so long as it seeks to protect people from one another instead of themselves, and is democratically elected. It does mean, however, that there can be no initiatives from anyone to ensure what they perceive to be the best interests of another person if those initiatives are clearly contrary to the expressed wishes of that person. If there's diminished capacity to steward one's own individual liberty, that is one thing, but a certain kind of man seems to be under the impression that women are in this state of diminished capacity, one I'm referring to people like minors, addicts, and the mentally ill by, as some inherent part of their being. Honest subjective personal experience ought to be enough for any clearthinking man to utterly disprove this and, if it isn't, I recommend meeting more women, or, failing that, acquiring useful tools like an open mind and a teaspoon. There is, in some respects, nothing special about being female in terms of how one ought to expect to be regarded. Just as you do not explain to a bricklayer, a Frenchman, or a senator the experience of bricklaying, being French, or governing if you are not these things yourself, you do not explain to a woman the experience of being a woman. You also do not stick forks in light sockets, eat lead paint chips, or run your head into the wall repeatedly to see how many times it will take to knock you out. For any man genuinely confused about explaining to women the experience of being a woman, I figured those would be helpful tips as well. Female-specific problems should be covered under this as well for obvious reasons. As for explaining a woman's emotions to her, one, whether male or female, should never expect that they know anyone else better than they know themselves. I don't care how many times you've been down the same road in life that she is traveling because you haven't done it as her. As infinite is the diversity of human beings, so is the diversity of human experience, whatever gender one might happen to be. Besides, no man ought to want these things to be true of women. A woman who needed her own gender explained to her, needed all her problems solved for her, andneeded her own feelings suggested to her would by no means be a woman who constituted good company. Any man who believes, really believes, women are this way ought to lose no time in embracing homosexuality in the interests of ever having a romantic partner of any charm, interest, or substance.

Now we deal with misogyny.

2). Men simply disparaging women as a misogynistic blanket statement, normally for being overwhelmingly emotional and underhwhelmingly rational, for making choices in romantic partners that he perceives as unwise (nearly always a thinly-veiled whine about why women don't choose him), and for living a lifestyle that embraces all of the varieties of sexual experience without even so much as a cursory nod to institutions like marriage and motherhood are the basics of the second umbrella.

One thing I will not dispute here is the magnitude of women's capacity to hurt men. Following my own advice from the previous paragraph, I will decline to comment on how much men can hurt women, although I suspect it's fairly severe, but I can tell you from my own experience that women can hurt men very badly indeed. In fact, it would be very easy for me to embrace misogyny and an ideology that deems all women crazy, as nihilistic and self-defeating as such a pronouncement would be. However, in order to do so, I'd have to ignore my own mistakes, the wider general context, and positively betray and forget all the good women I've known. For instance, I suspect that sexuality magnifies and distorts things in ways that simply aren't present in relationships with people who do not fit one's particular sexual orientation. Of course, my gay friends would be the only ones with any real idea, but I suspect men are just as capable of being irrational and emotional as women in the context of sex and love and that a gay male comic could make his own variations of many of the jokes straight comics have been making about relationships for decades. Now, there is a certain ugly sense of ownership over women that can creep up in men who do not think of themselves as misogynistic or even as having bad intentions. When female friends, particularly ones one finds attractive consciously or subconsciously, date someone one disapproves of, this can lead to a lot of texting or PMing that rarely result in anything but oneself looking like a petulant jerk. Having been warned about the various women I've dated by female friends before, and them having always been right, I can easily concede the point that one might be right about this sort of thing, but that still doesn't matter. Each individual adult person's life is their own to succeed or fail within and, sometimes, you have to let them. If he's beating her or something, then yes go ahead and risk the friendship over genuine concern for your friend, but only if you'd do the same if a male friend were in a similar circumstance. While there is grey area in that scenario, if you simply disapprove of a lifestyle that embraces all the varieties of sexuality available, there are only two things for a morally responsible man to do. First, shut up. Second, grow up. At some point, a point that slams shut like iron gates in its applicability to the context of any other human being's private sexual life, things are none of your business. An abusive boyfriend is quite a different thing from a polyamorous lifestyle, goth subculture, homosexuality, and any number of other things happening between consenting adults. Ancient books of Iron Age mythology do not count in terms of moral philosophy an you'll have to do better than that if you want to tell anyone, male or female, how to live their private sexual life.

What I hope I accomplished here is something of a feminist treatise against misogyny and male arrogance. Feminists and I tend to disagree a fair amount of the time, but there are certain bedrock principles you're seeing here. Having breakfast with a rape crisis counselor freind every Sunday for three years definitely shows its influence here. A rape crisis counselor has harrowing tales of mansplaining and misogyny that will turn the skin of any decent man white as snow. She showed me every week why this kind of thing isn't just an annoying grievance of young women, but a dangerous mindset that can and has led to violence against women. Women are not born housewives, baby machines, sexual playthings, or Madonnas or whores. They are people, by which I mean fucked up, complicated, and fantastic and brilliant at the same time. In my time, I have known women who have an old-fashioned effect on men, including myself. Some women make me want to tuck in my shirt, stand up straight, and be on my best behavior. Others are good to get a beer with and laugh and cry with. A few have made me cry, taken all my hope and self-esteem from me, and left me a broken man with no capacity for faith in any benevolent deity or world that ultimately will see goodness prevail. Evil women do not cancel out good women or make them unimportant, and the good ones have been worth the evil ones, and the same goes for the evil and good men I have known. Probably, I have some things in this article that will annoy some of the women I know. Perhaps this is even true of Ms. Bussell herself. Good. It means we're all people and we all have our opinions and we respect one another enough to engage. When I address women, I am sometimes arrogant, strident, smartassed, and every word of my writing sounds tweedy and egotistical. After all, I'd hate to tone it down because of some misguided notion of women having delicate natures. You ladies seem pretty sturdy to me.

-Frank