You Saw It

And now it's down. Caught you looking, again.


From now on, I'd sincerely appreciate it if you'd stop stalking me. Thanks.

Don't Worry

I'll let you know what I think of you in approximately two weeks, so you don't need to "monitor" me until then.

Hopefully my evaluation of you both can help you come closer to achieving your career goals.

Dream big, guys. Just try not to wake up.

Video

You know those YouTube videos where you really, really want an explanation for what the fuck you're looking at, but none exists? Here's one of those. Enjoy.

The Road

I went to San Francisco for the first time two weeks ago. I was in Los Angeles the week before that. Both trips were fun. Here are some photos from the Los Angeles trip:

This was on the sign by the elevator to my hotel’s parking garage:

This is from a sort of cliff at Point Dume in Malibu – specifically Westward Beach. I climbed to the top with my friend Matt (who’s from Long Island but just happened to be out there on business at the same time I was):

 Then, today, I saw this. It’s an Ed Hardy steering wheel grip:

In San Francisco, I wanted to see everything, but I didn’t have a lot of time, so I went on one of those hop on/hop off double-decker tour buses. The highlight of this was the Tenderloin. First, the (recorded) tour guide told us not to go there at night because of “prostitution, drug abuse, and high crime.” Then, it told us that the area was becoming “more bohemian.” Then, pretty much everyone we saw on the street yelled something at us. I ended up with a very bad sunburn because it was the hottest day in San Francisco in recent memory.

Also, Fisherman’s Wharf is the tackiest tourist trap on earth.

Additionally, if anyone cares, I’ll be making a fairly significant (at least to me) announcement next week. 

Damn

People say prescient things when they break up with you. The best line anyone’s ever used on me was this: “I hope one day you meet someone who’s exactly like you.” Great line, right? Sure, but it was lost on me at the time. I responded, at least in my head, with something idiotic like, “Well, yeah. I’d love to meet someone with whom I have an abundance of qualities in common. That would be a very pleasant experience.” In reality, this came out as “Go fuck yourself” with both middle fingers actively pulsating skyward, but since there’s a point to this story, I’ll make myself look like a slapdick to properly illustrate what I’m getting at.

Someone exactly like me. I didn’t know what this was at the time, because I was perfect. Right? I was just perfect. I couldn’t possibly see how meeting someone exactly like me could have been meant pejoratively. From an outside perspective, this is likely pretty obvious, but I wasn’t seeing it.

Now, the one thing I’ve realized I need, within the context of any relationship, is good communication. What this used to mean was that I needed someone to sit and listen to me, and this didn’t need to be a two-way street. It didn’t matter what anyone else had to say, as long as I had my sounding board and the person who was supposed to be listening to me was rapt and reacting positively to whatever bullshit was coming out of my mouth. Would I return the favor? Occasionally. Never consistently. Just sometimes, but I didn’t know this—or what it was like—until the shoe was on the other foot.

I think I didn’t know what it was like to have someone tune me out until recently because I’m typically only around people who pay attention to me. This would seem to be some form of natural selection, i.e., if you’re tuning me out in the middle of a conversation, I won’t want to be around you for very long—I kind of need to talk—and our time as friends or significant others will be short. I’m not used to that, and I’m sensitive to having it done to me despite neither noticing, nor giving a flying fuck, when I do it to others.

This is known as narcissism, but the fact that I swing that way is old news by now.

It took someone doing this to me—tuning me out at random intervals because they seemingly found me uninteresting—to understand what was meant by the whole someone exactly like me thing. You’re not listening to me. Yes I am. No, you’re not. You have no idea what I just said. That’s not true. Yes it is. You just completely tuned me out because you were thinking of your own shit and you don’t give a flying fuck what I just said. Yes I do. No you don’t, oh my God, holy crap, you don’t think I’m interesting. I bore you. I actually bore you. I don’t bore anyone! How can this be happening? What the fuck?

But yeah, see, I get it now. There are people in the world who can’t even fake it. Crazy, right? Maybe it doesn’t even mean the person they’re listening to is boring. Maybe it means they’re just too wrapped up in their own shit to pay the requisite attention to anything but what’s happening in their own head. Whatever it is, whatever the reason, the irony isn’t lost on me.

I’m fucking boring. Wow.  

Court

I spent today in court taking care of a slew of parking tickets. They’d been hanging over my head for a while as a result of cursing out a parking enforcement agent. The guy was about to write me a ticket — he hadn’t started it yet — and I tried to talk him out of it by telling him I’d move my car. He responded by being an asshole. I responded by being myself. I believe the term “meter maid” was used, and I may have referenced his parents and their pride in their son’s occupation once or twice. For the next month, I became his primary target.

Thirty-something tickets later — several of which never even appeared on my car — I’m in court with a folder full of evidence saying my car was registered and inspected at the time the tickets were issued. I managed to get them all dismissed — every single one — but still ended up paying a $15 surcharge and $2 credit card processing fee for each one. $500 lighter for having committed no violation other than losing my temper. 

Two highlights:

They move you through the system in groups of four, apparently. First, you see the District Attorney, who listens to your bullshit, examines your evidence — provided you have any — then makes a recommendation to the judge. Then you sit down and wait for your name to be called, at which point you see the judge. In my group of four was perhaps the hottest Hispanic girl I have ever seen in person. This made things slightly more palatable. Pretty much everything a beautiful girl does is fascinating — until you get to know her, of course — so this made the time pass a little more quickly.  

Next, one of the District Attorneys was engaging in a running monologue about the stupidity of the general public. The best part of this was that the people he was ridiculing had no idea they were being made fun of. The general public being who they are, few people in the courtroom understood this. I caught on, and was kind of hoping I’d be called by this particular DA. I wasn’t.

One guy came up with a shitload of speeding tickets. His goal was to get his fines reduced. The DA offered him a very generous reduction, in both the fine and the points on his license, but this evidently wasn’t good enough, because the guy kept saying he wanted to plead not guilty. The DA, who’s not supposed to give advice, was blatantly telling the guy to take the deal, but the guy was adamant about getting his ninety seconds with the judge.

“You sure you want to take your chances in there?” asked the DA, gesturing toward the trial room.

“Yeah.”

“Well, you like speed, and you like to gamble. I like your style, Mr. Rodriguez. You’re my kinda guy.”

Back. Again.

I’ve written a lot of really tacky motivational shit on this blog over the past several years. I’m referring to this garbage as “motivational,” but the only purpose it served was to express whatever mood I was in at the time – usually during some period where I was all fired up about “getting shit back on track,” listening to the Gladiator soundtrack, and making myself look like a very uninteresting person.

Whatever. It’s where I was at the time. If you don’t churn out shit like that once in a while, I don’t think you can develop the ability to know the difference between abject tripe and something that’s actually worth your readers’ time.

Anyway, life is different now. I’m motivated, but I think it’s for the right reasons, in the right mindset. I’m typically loathe to reference Tony Robbins, but one of the more prescient things I’ve ever heard him say is that you have to hit rockbottom before you’re ever seriously compelled to make things better. You do this by associating a shitload of pain to something so you’ll get off your ass and change it, and by attaching massive amounts of pleasure to whatever you want to go after.

This approach works. For too long now, I’ve been surrounded my mediocrity – mediocre people, mediocre surroundings, and mediocre situations. Things haven’t been awful, mind you – just subpar. The reason for all this mediocrity comes directly from me. I’ve been the King of All Mediocre Motherfuckers for years, now – personally, at work, with side projects, and with everything else I’ve tried to do. And since mediocrity attracts mediocrity, I’ve been measuring myself against mediocre people everywhere I’ve gone, thinking that’s the scale I should be using. I’ve sucked – and when you suck, you get “peers” who suck, and you fall into the trap of comparing yourself to them when you should be worrying more about not sucking anymore.

I don’t like this. It’s literally becoming painful.  

One of my best friends celebrated his 40^th birthday the other night. This should have been a fun night, but in looking around the room and knowing the life stories of most of the people there, I started thinking about how disappointed most of them are in their lives. Some are in bad marriages they can’t get out of. Others are divorced, unemployed, underemployed, in poor health, or just completely depressed by how things have turned out. I don’t think there was a single person there, male or female, who didn’t have some kind of negative undercurrent going on, including me.

And yes, I know things could be a lot worse. That’s not the point. When you have some modicum of talent and intelligence, and you’re wasting it through a combination of laziness and poor decision making, there’s nothing really good to be said about that.

I’m not criticizing anyone here, and none of their shit is really any of my business. It’s just making me think a little more critically about my own life – about how I don’t want to be mediocre anymore, and about how I don’t want to suck. I also don’t want to be surrounded by mediocrity or people who suck anymore – either at what they do for a living, how they conduct themselves with their family and friends, or life in general.

The first step for me is awareness of the problem. Everywhere I am right now, things are mediocre, and it’s my own fault. I’ve worked very hard to cram myself into this box where I’m not fulfilling my potential, and I’m definitely not delusional about the amount of talent I have. I don’t think I’m any good at anything right now, because I’ve been content for far to long to simply be slightly-above-mediocre in order to set myself apart from a bunch of people who suck. I do know, however, that I can actually get a lot better if I choose to work at it – instead of carrying around a victim mentality that has me thinking that other people’s mediocrity is somehow targeted at me, when in reality, it shouldn’t even be a blip on my fucking radar.

The past three years were spent becoming a lemming, but at least I was moving. Now, with the cliff approaching, it’s definitely time to veer off and escape the suck.