The Meaning of Freedom

“Why do you have mama’s phone?” my sister asked me.
“Because she can’t handle having AT&T,” I replied.
“Why can’t she handle having AT&T?”
“Because she thinks she pays 60 dollars a month.”
“What does she really pay?” she asked.

We were sitting in my sister’s car, I could feel the warm waves hitting the coast as we came closer to the beach.  I knew the tension that was about to smear into my sister’s emotions.

“She pays one hundred seventy a month,” I told my her.  I could feel the disappointment in my sister’s silence as we continued driving.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *

I planned it all out in front of my mom.  I told her a million times not to switch over, not to waste her money, not to move from MetroPCS.  In MetroPCS there was no contract, she would be safe.  She wouldn’t have to pay for minutes, or hope they “roled over,” or anything!  She would pay a fixed price of 40 dollars and could spend her day calling llamas in Pennsylvania for all I cared.  But she didn’t.  She fell for the price of a cheap phone, signed up, and now we’re in debt.

I wrote it all out for her.  I pulled out a pen and a piece of binder paper.  I did the math in front of my mom as if she was in elementary school and couldn’t understand a simple multiplication problem.  “You think you pay 720 dollars a year, but you really pay 2,040 dollars a year.   If you go back to MetroPCS you’ll pay 540 dollars a year.”  She was paying a difference of 1,500 dollars more a year.  My mom loved misery.

When I was a freshmen in high school, I read a book called, “Rich Dad Poor Dad.”  In one of the earlier chapters the author, Robert Kiyosaki, talks about liabilities with the example of car payments.  Brand new cars are great to look at but they’re a total pain in the ass to purchase.  People think you could pay installments and it’ll be easier.  The truth is these installments grow with interest.  And after the 2 to 4 years when you’re done paying the car, you’ll be stuck with a lot of debt to own a car that’s now out of fashion.  You could have saved that money on your own and earned your own interest and made a profit.

Car payments are different from cell phones.  However, they have something major in common.  Contracts.  Contracts will follow you for however long they need to.  When you breach a contract, you’re not breaking free, you’re just getting into more trouble.  The contract owns you.  No one really wants to be owned.

A lot of people don’t notice it, but a lot of things are really contracts.  Everyone’s trying to own someone else.  Jobs, family, religion, your relationship.  Your job wants you to be somewhere so they could tell you what to do.  Your family wants you to stay home, walk the dog, meet your relatives.  Your religion wants you to embark on this incredible journey of praise and being humble.  They all own you?  However, what is it that you want?

Do you want to help the sick in some saintly endeavor?  Then you should become a citizen of church.  If you’re doing it because you heard hell sucks, and that’s the reason why you put on a tie and go to church every Sunday and try not to think of naked women, you might be doing it for the wrong reasons.  I’m not sure about religion, but I’m sure people are there because they believe in the good and they “want” to praise the good.  It shouldn’t be that they’re scared into it, that makes for a terrible life.  Does someone value the good or evil.  Values!

Same with family.  Do you value that connection with your family, enough that you will drive whatever distance with them and let them talk down to you about your lack of a job or the fact that you’re sister is ruining her life.  Do you value it enough that you would sacrifice for it.  Sacrifice!

My friend Noah use to work graveyard shifts.  He woke up every night, worked until morning, and then fell asleep.  He was 21.  The best year of his life spent working to pay off car payments, insurance, a blackberry phone, and to rent a small room in a big house with socially impaired roommates.

“Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate, so we could buy shit we don’t need.” – FightClub

I love being in a relationship.  I let my girlfriend own that part of my life.  It’s still sacrifice.  I don’t go back to the apartment of the random girl I met on a subway train.  I keep my distance from touching the next girl I’m in a conversation with.  Because it’s worth it.  I get to stay in bed with the girl I’ve chosen and know that I get to see her after that.  I get the plan.  I get the contract.  Because for however long, I want to be like this.  I don’t want to wonder where this relationship is going.  I want that security.  That’s where I give up my freedom.  That’s sacrifice.  I don’t complain about it, because there’s nothing to complain about.

If you’re complaining about something in your life, cut it out.  You don’t need it.  You could weigh it out and see how it goes, but that’s only lying to your happiness.  You could cut off your family like you could cut off your phone contract.  It’s not going to be easy.  You might have to pay for a termination fee. It might be unethical to think of it that way, but you got to make the decision and ask yourself, “Is this really worth it?”  If it’s not worth your happiness, cut it off.  Stop complaining.  No one deserves to be complaining.  You don’t own anything to anyone or anything.  Cut it off, and you’ll never have to worry about it ever again.

Read last life lesson: How Nickelodeon Taught Me to Become a Better Son

Why Doing Homework Will Make You Fail

Every monday in 7th grade our section in biology class had to do a presentation on a news article.  Everyone had to come up to the front of the class and recite from a piece of binder paper and turn that binder paper into the teacher for credit.  If everyone had their binder paper, news article, assignment in a section, everyone in that section’s grade would go up.  But there was one person in our section that almost never turned in that assignment.  That person was me.

I never did my homework.  When everyone passed homework around to the person in front of them so it could be graded, I never had anything to show.  I never did my homework, I was late with all my projects, and I sucked when it came down to presentations.  So I didn’t do it.  I didn’t care, I was a rebel.  Everyone knew I was a rebel, the one and only boy with the firm belief as to not do his homework.  The day I went into the counselors office where I was told that I was in danger of repeating the 7th grade was the day everything changed.

It was probably late March.  It was early that week and in two days I would have to figure out how to not fail a test.  I didn’t know what to do.  My teacher said I needed to borrow people’s homework so I could read over them and study them.  No one wanted to let me borrow their homework.  Nobody liked me.  I was a rebel.  A day had passed and I had scrambled to find study material, but ended up with nothing.  The idea of repeating the seventh grade was soon becoming a reality.  I felt it was inevitable.  I would fail.  I already felt like I had the hardest life that anyone could’ve thought up, and things would eventually get harder.  It was the natural way of things.  I would be this person forever.  The universe was after me.

I pulled my biology textbook out of my bag.  I opened the book to the beginning of the chapter that the test was on.  I turned the pages until I got to the last page of the chapter.  31 pages.  I never read a book in my life.  I still don’t remember any story or novel or title to any book I’ve ever read in a middle school English class.  However, I turned back to the beginning of the chapter and started reading.

There’s probably a lot of reasons why I didn’t care for middle school.  I had issues in my personal life.  I had video games to play.  Reading the voice bubbles in role playing games like Final Fantasy was the most reading I had ever done continuously.  I had family problems.  Nobody liked me in school.  I was incredibly ugly.  I’m perfect now.  My teachers hated me and picked on me.  One of them even shook my desk and told me I was pathetic.  He was my math teacher and every time he handed out protractors he’d look for the most beat up broken one in his protractor filled box and then he’d throw it on my desk.  All those things were all excuses, and when I was staring at the rest of your life tearing apart in front of me, I knew I better open that book and start reading.

The chapters were broken into segments.  When I finished a segment I went back and I read the captions that had key terms and special requested notes.  I read the segments out loud.  I don’t know why I did, but I did.  It worked better.  I mumbled the words out, recited the definitions over and over, but more importantly I recited the chapters over and over.  By doing this, by reading the whole chapter, the material made sense.  The way homework was designed was to answer numbered questions and to fill in sentences that seemed arbitrary to the next one after it.  This is why people don’t understand homework, because it was presented in pieces of broken glass.  How could someone make sense of it, when the pieces are broken down.  They’re really just broken pieces.

When conversations turn out to be interview questions, people leave them thinking, “What was the point of that?”  When someone gets a bicycle in pieces, and have to figure out how to assemble it, it’s irritating.  Making something out of nothing is the problem.  Getting people to understand things as a whole, as a system, as something that correlates to their life was where information should’ve been but somehow went wrong in the teaching process.  Someone could know all these things about who King Arthur is, but unless they know what order they came in, unless they know the whole story, it really doesn’t make sense how Lancelot ended up with Guinevere.  Everything needs to make sense for people to understand it.

We were grading each other’s test in class.  I gave my test to the person in front of me and I graded the person behind me.  The teacher recited what the answers were, whether they were multiple choice, true or false, or fill in the blank.  With every question we went through I wondered whether or not I got it right.  I hoped I got it right.  I could feel anxiety wrapping around my breaths as we got closer to the end of the 60 questions.

“You did terrible!” my classmate told me with a smile on her face.
“Really?”
“No,” she said, “You got 100%.  You didn’t get anything wrong.”
I felt the breath of hope ease into the pores of my back.

The monday after the weekend my teacher told us who got the highest scores on the test.  He got his Starburst candies to award the highest grades on the test.  “The first person with the highest grade with one hundred percent,” he said, “is Jonathan.”

Everyone stood frozen, jaws open, as if a bullet had just exploded in their mouths.  Even the class suck up, Stephanie, who never got any question wrong was confused.  My biology teacher smiled as he threw me a pack of Starburst.  I caught it in my left hand with brilliance.  I looked around the room to see everyone staring back at me.  All I could do was shake my head and laugh.

Everyone thinks that an A letter grade is only for the incredibly smart prodigies who were naturally born to succeed in life and that everyone else in the world was meant to fail.  That’s not true.  Everyone has the ability to be smart or to succeed.  The material just never made sense to most people, and because of that people tried helplessly to piece it all together.  That’s how people failed.  It wasn’t because they couldn’t learn.  They failed because teachers and their lesson plans were just stupid.  It was never my fault that I couldn’t understand things.  It was their fault that I couldn’t understand what they were teaching.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *

“Hey Stephanie,” I said getting the attention of the person who was supposedly supposed to be the smartest person in class, “What’d you get on the test?” I asked her.
“I got 98%,” she replied.  She was in second place.
“Oh,” I said casually, “I got a hundred. . .”  I laughed at her.
She looked at me with glowering hurtful eyes, “Shut up Jon,” she said miserably.
I smiled happily and wondered if she liked apples.

Evaluation:

• Cut the clutter out.  A lot of information overlaps.
• Everything’s easier when you start at the source or the root of an issue.
• Read it out loud.  For me, it helps me catch a lot of things better in my head.
• Make fun of people for trying so hard.

Read last life story:  That Girl at the Party (Part 2)

That Girl at the Party (Part 2)

Continued from, That Girl at the Party (Part 1)

After the party pretty much thinned out to close friends, we started baking the pizzas that Gavin bought.  It pretty much narrowed down to about 8 or so people.  Bodin was about to fall asleep.  Dina, the puker, left.  Several taxis passed by to pick up different groups of girls.  It was settling down to become the chill night it was meant to be, instead of the over dramatic alcoholic festival cramped into the upstairs of a house.

“Did you just jizz cheese on your pants?” someone said as they noticed that I was rubbing the front of my jeans with a paper towel.  I dropped my pizza on top of my crouch.

“Yeah, I have this premature ejaculation problem.  I should really get it checked,” I said smiling as I wiped myself down in front of everyone.  Everyone stared.  It wasn’t awkward for me as nothing usually is.  I turned around with my back towards everyone and turned my head to stare back at them as I continued to rub the pizza off my crouch.  It looked like I was doing stuff.  Everyone laughed.

Amongst all the people standing around the kitchen oven, there was a tiny girl named Lindsey who stood quietly with her arms crossed.  “Are you hungry?”  I asked her.

“No, I’m fine,” she said with her tiny mouse-like voice.

“Are you sure?” I asked her again, “It’s like a pizza explosion in your mouth!”

She laughed.  “No, I’m fine,” she said again.

“Okay, just making sure,” I said before I took another paper towel and turned away from her and rubbed my pants down again while I stared at everyone.  They laughed.  It was just a funny bit.

“She’s vegetarian,” her boyfriend said.

“Oh there’s a slice without pepperoni on it, right there,” I said pointing to it.

“No I’m really not that hungry,” she replied again.

I looked at her.  She was a tiny girl.  There was something about the way she crossed her arms and wrapped them around her body.  She seriously did look hungry or at least cold.

I ended up playing bass guitar on a dinky looking 6 string guitar along with Gavin and Drake.  They both have bands, and I don’t.  I’m a loser when it comes to music.  The day before, we went to this show Gavin’s band was hosting.  The line up was incredible! There was this one band in particular, that just blew people away.  They had these bright fluorescent lights that would turn on at the peak of a crescendo.  They had this adorable female pianist who set her keyboard away from the audience so they couldn’t see her face, but could only see the sweat glistening across her shoulder blades from the open parts of her tank top.  And there was this one point in their last song where the bassist put down his bass guitar and started playing on the drumset along with the drummer.  It was all really beautiful.  Everyone who saw it must’ve been dreaming in awe.  Gavin and I definitely were; we couldn’t stop talking about it after the show.

After playing guitar, Bodin needed to fall asleep so we needed to clear everything out of his room.  I took the oreos I bought and I placed them on a shelf in the dining room.  Gavin and our friend, Carlito, started placing whatever cans left from our 36 pack in the refrigerator to keep them cold.  Most of us ended up sitting in the living room talking about stupid crap.  I honestly don’t remember because I was falling asleep.

“Look at this bitch right here, the sleepster!” Carlito said.  Everyone laughed.  Carlito always picked on me.  It was funny stuff, nothing personal.   “Sleeping all day everyday!” he continued while everyone laughed.  Long story short, we all went to Vegas for a week and for some reason I was sleeping really early and waking up really early which was pretty much not what everyone else was doing in Vegas.

I walked back into the dining room after hanging out with everyone in the living room.  The only people there were Lindsey and her boyfriend Timmy.  They were eating my fuck’n oreos!

“So how do you like them oreos?”  I asked sitting down across from Lindsey.
“Are they yours?” Lindsey asked.  She looked cautiously nervous.
“Do you know that oreos are vegan?” I said swerving around her question.
“Yeah, I love oreos!” she said.  “So they’re yours then?”
“Yeah, it’s not a big deal, go ahead.  I thought you weren’t hungry?”
“Oh I’m not.”
“You seem like you really like those oreos,” I smiled.  She laughed, her mouth full of oreo cookie.  She was holding two oreos in her hand, one that was bitten in half in one hand, and one side of an oreo with the cream still hanging from it in her other hand.
“You know I strategically put those oreos casually up on that shelf because I knew you were a vegan and so I sneakily put them up in a position so that you’d see them?”  I said talking out of my ass.  She laughed.
“So you put them there just for me?”
“No, I actually just put them there on accident,” I said honestly.

When Timmy came back I started talking about his drumset that was in Drake’s room.  He had just moved up here and didn’t have a place to stay.  His drumset was pretty epic, with several toms and a lot of extra cymbals with a champagne colored finish.  It pretty much filled up half the space of Drake’s room.  When he moved down here he met Lindsey somewhat three weeks ago.  After maybe the second day, they pretty much just hit it off.  Just like that.  Boyfriend and girlfriend.  Titles, notifications, and everything.  They seemed really cute together.  Like one of those couples that look somewhat similar in appearance.

The night was falling quickly.  It was 4am when we started baking the pizza.  Now it was already 6am.  Carlito fell asleep in the corner of the living room and was snoring pretty loudly.  I decided to sit on a round cushioned shape chair.  Gavin sat next to me, his eyes drifting slowly into steady prolonged blinking.

“Hey,” Lindsey said as she appeared in front of the doorway of the living room, “Are you guys all sleeping here?”
“Why are you crashing here too?” Gavin asked her.
“Yeah, usually we sleep in the living room, but it’s okay don’t worry about it,” Lindsey replied.
“No it’s okay, we’re about to bounce anyways.  I just need a few minutes to rest my eyes because I can’t drive right now,” Gavin responded; translation: he was perked.  He got up from his chair and walked out of the room.  I could see him place a pillow on the floor and lay down in the hallway.

Lindsey walked over to where Gavin was first sitting; curiously taking the seat next to mine.  “So where are you from?” she asked me.

“I’m from San Bruno, you?”

“Oh I’m 6 hours north of here.”

“Humbolt?” I said guessing.

“No, a little west of Humbolt.”

“It must be a sucky place if you’re not even going to specify the name of it,” I said.

She laughed.  She told me where it was and that it only had about 700 people population.  She then asked me what I do, and I told her the last job I had was a website content writer.  She asked me if I was going to school, and I told her no, because there seems to be a pattern with most college students nowadays where they go to school and can’t afford to pay off their tuition because they can’t find a job.  She then asked me a whole series of interview questions that I wasn’t too crazy about.  On some level I felt like she just enjoyed my company a little too much.  I wasn’t attracted to her, plus the fact that I had a girlfriend stacked on top of that just made for very unsatisfying riveting answers.  I figured that she was either into talking to me much, or that everyone she has ever met in her seven hundred populated life must’ve sucked some major donkey ass.  I must’ve just happened to be that much more excitingly humble.

Her boyfriend walked back in.  I didn’t care about my seat as much as I didn’t care for Lindsey’s list of questions.  I got up and left them alone.  As I passed Gavin in the hallway he told me to wake him up in 30 minutes or whenever the sun comes up so we could leave.

I sat alone in the dining room with my empty box of oreos.  30 minutes passed and the sun didn’t come up.  I saw a small bright red sweater on one of the dining room chair.  It was probably Lindsey’s because Lindsey was tiny and the sweater looked like it could’ve been worn by a prepubescent ten year old girl.  I walked over to Gavin who laid on the hallway carpet.  He slept on his side facing the wall.   I laid down next to him, rolled the sweater up in a ball and placed it under my head and fell asleep.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *

Note from author: If you don’t know yet, my friend’s are in a contest to win band of the month and the contest ends today at 10pm.  Both first place and second place are tied, so we’re pretty much head to head right now.

If you could please tell your friends, your mom, your long distant twin cousin to vote for Commissure, it’d be really awesome!

Go to:  http://sf.thedelimagazine.com/snacks

Vote:  Commissure

It only takes 6 seconds to vote.  And we really need to win this.

Read last literary piece here:  No You Cannot Have My Number:

Boyfriends Don’t Cheat

That Girl at the Party (Part 1)

“I heard Sylvia Plath, she’s awful!” I said upon hearing the name Sylvia Plath.

I walked out of Bodin’s room, two beers quickly traveling through my system in jolly mayhem.  The facial expressions on the two girls sitting in the living room were ecstatic, jaws dropped, and all hell about to go boom.

“Did you just say, Sylvia Plath sucks?” one of the girls said with the slowest ill intentioned tone she could possibly establish.

“Yeah, she’s pretty awful.  Are you a fan of depression or sticking your head in an oven?”

“I don’t know if you know anything about Sylvia Plath, but she is amazing.”

“Not as amazing as John Keats, Pablo Neruda, or Charles Browning.”

“You just named three male poets.”

I looked at her and her focused effort to prove anything.  “Emily Dickenson,” I said in reply.

“Well she’s pretty good.”

“I like Charlotte Bronte,” the other girl said.  “I have a really old used version of Jane Eyre I found in a used bookstore.”

“Yeah?” I said intrigued, “Did it have a little inscription in the cover?”

“Yeah, it was a nice letter or something.”

“Cool!  Did you watch Definitely Maybe?”  I asked her.  Her face suddenly broke.

“Yeah. . .” she replied nervously.

“Wow, well you’re just a pretty little liar now aren’t you?”  She didn’t know anything about Jane Eyre, she just watched the movie Definitely Maybe, and said she read the book because of the part where Ryan Reynolds finds his old love affair’s copy of Jane Eyre she’s been looking for all her life.

“No I read it!  Really!” she proclaimed.

“Okay so what’s the first few chapters about?”

“I don’t know, I read it a long time age,” she replied.  I couldn’t stop laughing at seeing her try.  The other girl, the more feisty argumentative one, got up from off her chair and proclaimed that Bronte sucks.  She was weird.

She was “that” girl at the party.  The one that had to prove people wrong.  She had the solid cementing tone that broke the liquid flow of the party.  She was a downer!  A few hours earlier she had come into Drake’s room as he was choosing music.  With every song that Drake put on, she would comment saying the music was either emo, or screamo, or pop punk.  We would all stare at each other to silently acknowledge that we were all on the same page about ms. know-it-all.  Her name was Dina.

It wasn’t supposed to be a party.  My friend Gavin decided to pick me up along with our other friend Nina, to come hang out at Drake’s house for a chill night.  By the time we got over there, the house was filled with about 15 short skirts and several of flip flops and stilettos.  These girls didn’t even look anywhere near our usual type of crowd.  We all chilled in Bodin’s room isolated from the others, with our 36 pack of MGD beer and packages of store bought cookies, as  we listened to new age heavy metal; not the screamo stuff.

I felt out of place.  I usually do, most of the time I don’t, but this was different; I had a girlfriend.  I lounged around floating in between the large crowds of people that formed from inside the hall, to the kitchen, and into the dining area.  I watched Drake have this conversation, that almost seemed interesting, with this 29 year old girl who talked only about herself.  She was drinking water from a wine glass.  It was all a very confusing group of people.  Heavy make up, furry white jaguar printed coats, and big loopy ear rings.

After 4 cans of MGD, I was pretty much set.  I heaved back and forth in my seat heavily sedated and stumbling over my words.   The house was finally thinning out.  A large group of women disappeared and there was only a few more left stranded.  I found Dina sitting in the hallway, her back leaned up against the wall.  I took a seat next to her on the carpet.

“Hey Bronte lover,” she said.

“Yep, that’s me,” I replied.  “You got a better book that defines your Victorian literary personality?”

“I don’t know,” she said.  She looked like she was about to fall over.  “I like J.D. Salinger.”

“What the fuck?” I said promptly, “Catcher in the Rye???  Nobody likes Catcher in the Rye.  I mean it’s only the most uneventful book in all of history.  Everyone just loves the climactic conflicts beyond talking to hookers and blowing smoke in the faces of nuns,” I said describing my thoughts on Salinger.

She looked at me, her eyes turning sideways.  “You okay?” I asked her.

“. . .  I need to puke.”

The door to the bathroom opened across from us.  Dina got on all fours and crawled herself into the bathroom, closing the door behind her.  The guy who just came out of the bathroom watched her travel from where I was sitting to the now closed door.  He turned back to look at me, “Is she okay?” he asked.

“I think she’s puking. . .”  I said.

To be continued.

Read last literary piece here:  No You Cannot Have My Number:

Boyfriends Don’t Cheat

No You Cannot Have My Phone Number: Boyfriends Don’t Cheat

“I’m sorry I just had to switch chairs because the person behind me had this major coughing issue and it just kind of grossed me out,” I said as I took the seat next to her.  It was getting kind of crowded on the train.  Before it got too crowded I decided to switch seats, in hopes that I wouldn’t be stuck standing or sitting in front of sir sneezes-a-lot.

“It’s okay, that’s really gross,” she said.  I looked down at the book she was reading, the title American Mind.  Between her index and middle finger she held a pencil in her left hand.

“So do you usually read with a pencil?”  I asked her.

“Oh no, this is for school,” she said humbly.

“There’s nothing to be embarrassed about, if you read with a pencil it’s totally fine.  I won’t judge you or anything,” I said in polite sarcasm.  She laughed.

She goes to Berkeley.  One of the most prestigious Universities in California, if not the world’s.  She studies anthropology, had two rings on her left finger, and had skinny forearms.  Her glasses were Dolce Gabbana and the color of her hair was dyed a shining rusty autumn red shade.  We talked about how she got into the major, and how she originally was a journalism major.  I asked her if she was in the archaeological category of anthropology.  Then I told her about how my friend went to school for archeology but then decided to drop out one semester away from completion because he didn’t want anything to do with an archeology degree.  I talked fast.  She laughed.  She listened.  I kept my distance.

I asked her if she could watch my things for a quick second so I could check the subway map as to see where I should get off.  “Where you heading to?” she asked me as I came back to take my seat.

I swallowed politely and gently told her, “I’m heading to my girlfriend’s house.”

I could see the thoughtful ease in her eyes dwindle away.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *

A few weeks ago I was talking to my girlfriend about how some guy asked her for her number and her friend’s number to hang out.   She told me that he asked for her number simply to hang out and play tennis.  Being a cereal flirt at one point in my life, I understood this process.  The need to build that comfort and cement that bond that seemed so effortless.  Not to be pushing things forward, however, letting them be guided gently towards your favor.  Then just letting things happen.  I knew the rules.  I wasn’t stupid.  Men will take whatever they want from the women they want something from.  Whether it be marriage, or just one night.  When us men, see an opening, we’ll take it.  This is what I told my girlfriend.  I knew this, because I already lived through it.

As I sat down next to my new subway friend.  My stop came closer and it seemed like time had just flew by.  I was wondering if I should ask her for her phone number.  Maybe we could hang out?  Maybe I’d invite her to hang out with my friends?  Maybe she’d read my blog, because getting one new reader is always that exciting.  These were all stupid reasons.  I truth was that I didn’t need her number; I didn’t need it for anything.  Sometimes in life we like to replicate enjoyable moments; that’s why friends hang out together more than once, and the reason why people find themselves in relationships.  I already had enough friends.  I already had a girlfriend.  Finding excuses to get this girl’s number was simply about finding excuses.

A few minutes before the train stopped at my stop, I said my goodbyes and she told me about how much she enjoyed talking to me.  I replied likewise.  As I waited for the train doors to open, I could see her looking vicariously in my direction.  I stared at her deeply with a mugging shifty eye stare.  She smiled. My life wasn’t built around women and the way to flirt with them.  I was built around my natural immaturity and my practical enjoyment of my own insecurities.  Life itself, just came naturally.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *

I waited at the nearest bus stop closest from the train station for my girlfriend.  She arrived on bike with her usual cheeky grin.  I hadn’t seen her for almost 2 weeks.  We kissed a dozen times in front of the view of ongoing traffic.  I told her about the girl I sat next to on the train and my amazing feat of my awesome boyfriend’liness.

“But she could’ve been your soul mate?” she said to me sarcastically.
“You’re a dork,” I said before kissing her.
“And you’re beautiful, and perfect,” I said kissing her.

“And, oh so amazing!!!” I said immaturely exuberant, right before she told me to stop.

Read last literary piece here:  Wrapped Around a Park Bench

Violent Super Powers and Zombie Horses: An Interview with Gillian Ramos

Interview: Gillian Ramos
Website: The Portrait of a Would-Be Artist as a Young Woman
Link: http://ohemgillie.wordpress.com/

The Titan Project: First off I wanted to ask you what your blog is about?

Gillian.Ramos: It’s a combination of a few things. First, it’s a slice-of-life piece about graduating from college and not having a whole lot of security or options. Second, but probably more importantly, it’s a way for me to exercise my skills as a critical reader and writer.  So, there are things like book reviews and journal reviews, plus things I’ve learned along the way about becoming a professional writer.

The Titan Project: Cool.  Yeah, from what I’ve seen of your site you put much emphasis on books.  If you could play a character in a book who would he or she be?

Gillian.Ramos: That’s a really tough question. I read from so many different styles and time periods, so there are always fascinating characters I’d love to be, even for a day.  But if I really had to choose, it would be Anne Shirley, from Anne of Green Gables. She was one of the first characters I came across who wanted to be a writer (other than Jo March from Little Women, but who needs all those sisters?)

The Titan Project: Well then, if Charles Dickens and Jane Austen were in a fight, who do you think would win?

Gillian.Ramos: Jane Austen, hands down. Did you ever see the Jane Austen Fight Club video?

The Titan Project: No i haven’t, does it feature Kierra Knightley because she has really purdy features.

Gillian.Ramos: It does not, I believe it was put together by a comedy troupe:

The Titan Project: Sweet, I’ll have to check that out along with our audience.  I’m with you on the whole Jane Austen beating up Charles Dickens though.  I feel Charles bases his writing on emasculated men and Jane bases her novels on empowering women.

Gillian.Ramos: Plus, it must take an awful lot of energy to write such mopey characters. Dickens would be sapped before he even started.

The Titan Project: sapped? like a tree?

Gillian.Ramos: Exhausted.

The Titan Project: Oh, exhausted like a tree.  Moving on. . .

If you could save one book from zombie horses, what book would that be?

Gillian.Ramos: Just one? I guess it would have to be a book my grandfather gave me called A Child’s Guide to Freud. I don’t think it’s in print anymore, but it’s about the funniest thing I’ve ever read.

The Titan Project: Funnier than zombie horses, i think not, there are some very comedic horses out there

Gillian.Ramos: See, I had to proofread a story once that had zombie mooses (meese?) and zombie bears. Horses are nothing in comparison.

The Titan Project: Zombie bears sounds overrated; way to make a violent creature more violent. . .   and less huggable

Gillian.Ramos: It was truly the worst piece of student writing – nay, any writing I’d ever read.

The Titan Project: Must’ve been horrifying.  Going back to horses.  Even if zombie horses ate all the books in the world, and this one book, A Child’s Guide to Freud, would be the book to guide a new humanity, would that be fine with you?

Gillian.Ramos: Okay, maybe it’s not the pinnacle of human literary achievement, but it has a lot of sentimental value.  If we’re going for something to guide and save the new humanity, I would force-feed the horses the works of Ayn Rand to make sure they don’t survive. And then I guess I would rescue The Prince.  Machiavelli. It’s cliche, I know, but if humanity has to be rebuilt, you could do worse in terms of a primer on leadership.

The Titan Project: . . . not a big fan of FightClub huh?

Gillian.Ramos: Haven’t read it. Or any Palahniuk, for that matter.

The Titan Project: *gasp

Gillian.Ramos: I know, I know, totally un-cool.

The Titan Project: Very.  If you had an incredibly violent super power, what would it be?

Gillian.Ramos: It has to be violent?

The Titan Project: of course 🙂

Gillian.Ramos: I’m not one for blood and guts, but I do like some serious mischief. Would Inception count as a superpower? You can do some serious damage messing with people’s minds.

The Titan Project: You would mess with people’s minds?

Gillian.Ramos: If I were feeling especially mean-spirited, I could cause some serious trouble. Imagine Inception meets Mean Girls.

The Titan Project: Sweet.  You know if that was your power, your arch nemesis or primary villain would have the power to throw books at you?

Gillian.Ramos: I’ll take my chances.

The Titan Project: Cute.  The love of your life is sitting on a park bench reading a book, what book is it?

Gillian.Ramos: I’m a sucker for a boy who reads, period. It’s a win/win situation – it may be a book I know and love or it may be one I’ve never come across. Either way, it’s a conversation starter.  But if he’s reading Harry Potter or Twilight, all bets are off.

The Titan Project: Well let’s say for viewer purposes, that he’s holding a specific book. . . any idea what that book would be?
1, 2, 3, go!

Gillian.Ramos: Any Christopher Buckley novel. Especially Florence of Arabia, one of the few books that has actually gotten me really emotional – and that’s saying something, since Buckley is a satirist.

The Titan Project: Cool.  So if any guys out there read this and are madly in love with you and your blog, they know what to read.

That’s all for the interview, is there anything you’d like to say or share with The Titan Project before we finish?

Gillian.Ramos: Yes. Whatever your taste in literature is, make time to read writing about something else, something in the real world. A good piece of travel writing or food writing can be as satisfying and engaging as a good novel. So, whatever your outside interests are, read about them. and if there isn’t a lot of material available, write it yourself. If it’s a subject you love and are knowledgeable about, you can speak from an authoritative place. Just take the time to speak from your heart and not just your brain.

The Titan Project: Great.  Nice having you over at The Titan Project

Gillian.Ramos: Thanks for being interested.

Subject: Gillian Ramos
Blog: The Portrait of a Would-Be Artist as a Young Woman
Website: http://ohemgillie.wordpress.com/

Turn ons: Handwritten letters and overcrowded book stores that are overcrowded with books, not people.
Turn offs: Reality tv and the font Comic Sans.

The Cure for Assholes and Losers: How Gambling makes Dating Easier

I use to play a lot of Texas Hold’em.  I still consider myself pretty good at it today.  I liked it because poker had a lot to do with life.  There’s a lot about poker that parallels everything that we do.  How to play one of life’s hands.  How and when to make moves.  How to use body language to express certain cues.  Pretty much how to win at the tables all comes down to how smart you play.  There’s a lot of people at the poker tables that are just desperate for money.  They play a hand as if it’s their last hand that they’ll never play another hand in their lives.  These people tend to lose a lot.  They lose a lot because they think like idiots.  They lose because they don’t have control.  A lot of poker has to do with controlling what you want to express; which is also a major attribute when it comes to successfully dating women.

There are two types of people who continuously lose at poker.  The aggressive players and the passive players.  Aggressive players tend to bluff their way through every hand hoping to steal small pots and accumulate chips.  On the other hand, passive players don’t make enough moves and don’t play enough hands to accumulate chips.  The problem with aggressive players is that they bluff so often that it’s not long until one of their opponents catches on and calls them out on one of their plays.  The problem with passive players is that they’re too conscious of their stack to make any plays in the first place. This is much like the two most unsuccessful men when it comes to dating.  You have your men that are too aggressive and you have your men that are too passive.

Aggressive Men and Dating:

Aggressive men are the type of men who feel as if they could do anything without having drawbacks.  These type of men tend to dismiss other people’s feelings and other people’s space.  Ultimately, they tend to repel people.

How to spot an aggressive man:

• They’re usually loud.  Somehow they feel the need to yell even when there isn’t loud music to yell over, large crowds, and the people he’s conversing with are practically in conversational range.
• They usually laugh at their own jokes even though no one else is laughing.
• They talk about sexually driven subjects incessantly, in way that’s too sudden and too often and at most times before a relationship has even been given time to build.
• They have awful hygiene.  They usually smell of beer and cigarettes or some close combination of unearthly chemicals.  They tend to not shave very often.
• They tend to have these rapist staring tendencies.

Passive Men and Dating:

Passive men have the issue of taking orders from everyone and being everyone’s bitch (literally.)  They usually feel the need to please everyone.  Since they try to please everyone they’ve inherited the nickname of being a “tool.”  A lot of this doesn’t seem that bad, however, what passive men lack is a sense of passion.  A passion is usually what makes men unique and different from one another.  Since they lack such a powerful attribute when it comes to dating, they tend to blend in with everyone else who’s too afraid to take risks and make a move; leaving them hidden from attracting any type of women.

How to spot a passive man:

• Most of their movements are small and common.  Their range of actions are minimal.  You almost never see them dance, or they have some type of large protest against dancing.
• Most passive men altogether stand up straight with their beer close to their stomach in the spot right below their sternum, with their arm at a somewhat 80 degree angle.  This is the common position that most boring frightened men entail.
• Most passive men have a speech impediment in which they’re not loud enough for anyone to comprehend.  Even in loud crowded places like bars and clubs people usually have to ask them to repeat themselves numerous times.
• They usually dress a step behind most fashion that’s up do date.  They tend to be equipped with large Vanhuesen polo shirts and jeans labeled baggy instead of relaxed (which is the furthest that men’s jeans should go.)
• They usually don’t know how to have a good time.

Theories/ Diagnosis:

There’s a lot of reasons why someone would find themselves to be either too aggressive or too passive.  Some aggressive people are stuck in their category because they use to be popular in high school and are use to having people agree with them.  After leaving high school they still keep that mindset that they’re always right in everything that they do.  Another reason why people might find themselves in the aggressive category is because they’ve been exiled or outcasted by people their whole life, either by not fitting in or avoiding people altogether, in which they tend to blame everyone else for their problems, hate the world, and indefinitely divide themselves from caring about anyone else’s feelings.  This leads to anger, isolation, and denial in a sense where they always believe that they’re right.

Passive people on the other hand have been heavily nurtured in a way that they don’t know what it is to break from their nesting.  Not only does this pertain to family but it also pertains to friends.  Passive people tend to follow whatever their friends do.  This leads to them only taking advantage of a limited amount of knowledge usually found within the bubble of their friend’s knowledge.  They end up with an inability to make their own choices and follow their own paths.  This leads to a mediocre and painful life.

The Upside/ Treatment:

The answer to a great social life and dating life is not that anyone shouldn’t be the passive or aggressive person, but that they should be a balance of both.  Going back to the poker analogy, you need to make plays to win the game (aggressive,) and you need to play smart by considering other people’s actions to make sure you don’t lose (passive.)  When it comes to dating, women aren’t going to just give directions for every little thing.  However men can’t just assume the green light is on for everything.  Men have to know when to ask a girl out, when to go in for the kiss, and when is it okay to move further.

If you observe the game of poker, the people who make the moves end up winning more than the people who wait for a good hand to play.  This not only goes for dating, but it also goes for practically everything else.  In fights, the person who wins is usually the person who throws the most punches.  In work, the person who gets the promotion is the person who’s more involved at work than anyone else is.   It’s the same with dating.  A man who waits for a woman to ask him out is pretty pathetic.  In some cases, even the most pathetic men get lucky.

However, luck isn’t something worth bragging about.

 

Read last life lesson here:  How Nickelodeon Taught me to become a better Son

How Nickelodeon Taught Me to Become a Better Son

When I was younger, I watched a cartoon on Nickelodeon about this father who always makes crappy homemade inventions for his family.  One day his son wants to make a go cart for a race.  His dad steps in and makes him an awful looking go cart.  His son refuses to use the go cart for the actual race because it’s ugly, slow, and doesn’t drive well.  The day of the race, his mom talks to him and tells him, “Do you know why I use all the things your dad invents for me?  Because it makes him happy.”  The boy ends up pushing his dad’s dinky creation up to the starting line.  His dad jumps into the go cart, and right when the race starts, the go cart falls apart.  They laugh.

I guess it really makes you think.  What’s more important?  A go cart race or seeing your father happy.

This was from afternoon cartoons.

Read last life lesson here:  How Glee can Help you Run a Business

“Do Over” Bloggerstock Day

Bloggerstock
Guest Post by Author:  Tazim Danji
Website: Being Tazim
Link:  www.beingtazim.com

Do Over

We all think about it all the time. Hindsight is 20-20. If you got one “do-over,” what would you do differently?

Did I pick Auckland, New Zealand for my university exchange because it was just about as far away as I could get from Vancouver, Canada? Not exactly, but it didn’t hurt.

The stressful application and visa process, packing everything away, and then having to change flights several times, not to mention the 3 hour wait at the airport in the security line, should have tipped me off. Of course, at that point, it was too late to change my mind. Because my best friend and I would be out of the country for a year, and sub-letting wasn’t a possibility, the exchange forced us to put everything in storage and find another place to live when we returned.

Why did I initially think that it would be worth it?

1) I was tired of living in Vancouver, and dealing with the rain. . . plus the bureaucracy at the University of British Columbia was getting to me.

2) I needed some credits in Indigenous Art to finish my Art History degree but the courses at UBC in this area were severely lacking. Maori/Pacific art being taught in New Zealand or Aztec art being taught in Vancouver, by someone who’d rather be backpacking than teaching? It seemed like an easy choice.

3) I’d heard about how beautiful New Zealand is, but didn’t quite buy in to the allure of this tiny country. What changed my mind was the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

4) The fact that New Zealanders speak English was a big draw – I didn’t want to have to figure out a different language on top of trying to study.

5) It was supposed to be an inexpensive year – that is, until the New Zealand dollar decided to rise in value. The country turned out to be an expensive low-value place for me to spend my year.

So, what would I do differently? I would have shortened my stay to one semester and spent more time travelling around the country. My best friend and I didn’t make it to the South Island (where the majority of the Lord of the Rings scenes were filmed), because it cost $200 each way on the ferry, but we did manage to buy a car and drive around the North Island a fair amount. I don’t regret having gone to New Zealand – it would have been great if it were a vacation instead of the place where I was forced to live for a year – but I do wish things could have gone differently. For instance, wouldn’t it have been great if the courses that I flew for 24 hours to take hadn’t been cancelled and that the ones that I did take had transferred properly? If I had to do it again, I’d make sure that I had a lot of money and time.

Tazim Damji is an art historian, interior decorator and artist residing in Vancouver, Canada. You can check out the guest post, by Michael Venske, on the Being Tazim blog she writes here. This is her first time participating in Bloggerstock, a monthly blog event where participating blogs all post on the same topic.

Click here to see the full list of bloggers participating in this month’s Bloggerstock.

Jonathan Manor guest posted for Roxy Pants.

Website:  Getting There

Link: http://canyousmile.blogspot.com/2010/09/bloggerstock-do-over.html

How Watching Glee Can Make You Become A Better Marketer

Yeah, I admit it, I watch Glee.  It’s actually not a terrible show.  They do have cheesey pop music sequences and dorky male teachers doing pirouettes, but the show’s practical plot is pretty good.  I like it because they make fun of High School Musical by having horrible lives, and I think that’s cool.  For the most part, Glee can be summed up as a collaboration of social outcasts trying to be a part of something which is Glee Club, along with juggling a teenage social life.  How Glee ties these characters together makes for a really illuminating phenomenon on how people associate with others people.

At first glance you could pretty much already see which characters are the main characters.  You could see the typical High School jock, Finn, who, like his male vocal strength, his leadership skills are heavily relied on and is somewhat the inspirational backbone for the whole team.  Then you have Rachel, the studious, tedious, over achiever, who’s knowledge and experience is crucial for the Glee Club’s success.  Then you have the two conflict characters which are always essential for a teen drama when there are no villains or specific bad guys.  These two characters are Puck and Quinn.  Puck, the overly rugged jock trying to make an effort to be a good guy; he’s your typical Wolverine.  And Quinn, your overly sensitive, angry pregnant teen idol, whose reputation is everything; she’s your typical Blair Waldorf.  (Gossip Girl)  We’ll skip the teacher as he’s more like your Professor Xavier or Charlie from Charlie’s Angels.  The boss figure doesn’t exactly do much when everyone else goes out to fight for world peace.

Then you have these guys:

Who are these guys?  What do they mean to the group?  What do they do for the overall storyline?  A lot of them do pretty much nothing, except for maybe Kurt and Mercedes.  Kurt, the gay fashionista whose storyline pretty much isolates around himself.  And Mercedes, the girl who seems rather as if she’s being dragged into a storyline by becoming Quinn’s newly best friend.  You have two Asian people, where one of them doesn’t even talk.  And since there are two of them, their Asian’ness ends up canceling each others out.  Same with the random quiet black guy whose main storyline is nodding his head when everyone sings.  You have two extra cheerleaders and a guy in a wheelchair.  There seems to be little or no value to this large group of marginal comic relief characters when it comes to the main storyline of the show.

This large cast of people are pretty much extra people, with extra personalities, with nothing that turbulent or extreme that pulls or pushes the main storyline of a love triangle (or love square) between the four more important characters: Finn, Puck, Rachel, and Quinn.

The four main characters are what Malcolm Gladwell, the author of The Tipping Point, would call connectors.  They’re the driving force between social interactions.  They end up being the backbone in most decision making events.  And they make great business partners because they have a way of bringing people together.  This idea of connectors is what actually separates the losers and the jocks in High School.

Finn, he’s your typical connector.  He’s a jock, he’s social, and he has friends.  His main storyline is about balancing a club which seems like it’s for losers and his jock reputation.  He views his jock reputation as something of value.  Why?  Because he likes having friends.  Typical connectors will go out of their way to build friendships, keep friendships, and retain a great social reputation.  In business, these are the ideas sparkers aka “the marketers.”  You could have the best idea for a product, but if you can’t get the word out, you’re pretty much screwed.  If you can’t make any friends and “connect” with people, then your product isn’t going to reach very much people.  Good marketers and good connectors have a large ocean of friends and acquaintances that could spread information like wildfire.

Rachel, she’s your different type of connector but still as effective.  She’s what Malcolm Gladwell calls a Maven.  The thing about Rachel is that her social skills aren’t that great.  She’s a whining know-it-all who believes that she should become popular simply through hard work, paper gold stars, and consistent exercise.  However, the thing that sets her apart is that she’s knowledgeable.  When people ask her for her help, they ask because she’s a compact resource of knowledge.  Mavens aren’t the type of people who spread ideas by telling their acquaintances, they spread ideas because their acquaintances are the ones that come to them.  This makes Rachel’s role in Glee club integral to everyone’s success.

Those are the two main connectors, your typical connectors and Mavens.  Malcolm Gladwell also talks about sales people, but I couldn’t find a way to incorporate salesmen without stretching the idea too far out of the circle.  Puck and Quinn are still connectors, but in comparison to Rachel and Finn, they’re just not as powerful.  More importantly they provide conflict to the storyline which is essential for a captivating plot.

As for the large class body of comic relief marginal characters, Gladwell defines them as “weak links.”  They provide stoic value to the connectors.  Weak links do play their part in setting off an idea.  They are the information neurotransmitters that sends messages to the frontal lobe and the amygdala.  Without them, messages would never get to the connectors, or the connectors would not be able to get their message across to so many people.  Without weak links, how would they make the Mavens look helpful without inquiring about their advice?  Without weak links, how can a connector spread information amongst a large population?  The weak links are basically workers.  They’re the employees.  The CEO runs the company, but the CEO pretty much doesn’t do anything but make agendas and tell people what to do.  They don’t go out and sell the product themselves, they outsource that work.  However, if nobody listens to the CEO and everyone chooses not to work for them, the CEO is left trying to run a business on their own.

In conclusion, the random other, not main, characters in Glee are essential to Glee being a club, much like employees are essential to a company.  If Glee didn’t have these numbers then the whole show would probably be about these two to four friends who got together and made an a’cappella group.  In which nobody’s really going to buy that idea.