 Home  What's New  Feedback / Submit Reader Photos  PGDesigner  Cylindrix  Links  Personal |
|
Links: Watch Me Eat a Hot Dog www.glitch13.com Live New Orleans Yaddoshi's site Six Ten Split Fleshbot Offbeat |
Go to Misc Stuff Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46
|
||
Permalink to this post. |
||
Permalink to this post. |
||
Sorry I didn't respond to your email. I am very bad about responding to emails regarding this site. I don't know why. I actually have a folder of feedback from this site with many many emails that I would like to think I will respond to someday. This folder is full of other people who have also lost a lot of weight. Other white guys with (in my case former) Taiwanese girlfriends. Other people who I should appreciate for reading all of this crap, but for some reason find myself incapable of answering. I don't know what to say, so I just fill up this folder. So I will attempt to answer Matt V's email in some sort of allegory that will be interesting to the tens of tens of people who read this site religiously. x) Obsession is wonderful in a way. You accomplish so much, you learn so much, and years from now you get the joy of showing some random the skills you learned from this obsession. You are a renaissance man! What haven't you done? But obsession is exhausting, obsession literally eats you. One day you say "Fuck Fish" and look around. And you feel like you have been asleep for two years. Where did that time go? That time was consumed by the obsession. y) What is the best use of your time? Is the best use of your time home-schooling your child, or is the best use of your time trying to make money to pay a genius to tutor your child? This is not a loaded question, it is not intended to make any sort of judgment, it is a genuine question. I find myself asking a very similar question often. Should I spend my time on Obsession X, or should I spend my extra time on my moneymaking gig, which in turn will give me more time to devote to obsession X. z)In Poker there is the term "Results-Oriented." You are not supposed to be Results-Oriented. You make the correct mathematical decision, and regardless of outcome you played correctly if you made the proper mathematical move. Results do not matter - it is the proper decision that is important. Part of the reason I have quit Poker is because results do not reflect your performance. You could play perfectly for years and still get screwed. I suppose the same could be said for regular life, but I think in non-Poker life there is a closer correlation between decisions and results. (Get to the conclusion man, you're losing them!) Almost every person with whom I have something in common -- Pretty much anybody that bothers to read this -- almost all of us have a fixation on an aesthetic. A fixation on an idea of how we should live our lives. "I'm not going to be a cubicle-monkey," says the Ghost of Chrissy Past. We dye our hair, we write our songs, we paint our paintings, we work for the non-profit it goes on and on. We work for the independent company that does not require a degree, we gravitate toward(s?) the startup, we chase these dreams. And they do not matter. Life IS results oriented. What matters is the results. It is not the journey that matters, but in fact the destination. Trying does not matter. All of the inspirational words in the world are just air. At the end of the day, if you have money you can solve more problems than you could if you did not have money. (And my liberal friends, I swear to God if you use this opportunity to talk about Government Health-Care I will skullfuck you) As gross as it is, as crass and common as it is, all of us guys have to do the old-fashioned thing. We have to toil to put a roof over our kids' heads. We are the providers. Whatever that entails is what we need to do. No matter how unpleasant these things are to our refined senses -- we must do them. We are the ducats we bring to the table. Permalink to this post. |
||
The doctor said that there was a good chance she had spinal meningitis, and that someone would need to authorize a spinal tap. My X couldn't talk coherently. Her sister's English wasn't the best, so I had to explain the situation to her. The tap was authorized, and she did indeed have spinal meningitis. The doctor told me should would have been dead within hours had she not come to the Emergency Room. (Fun Sidenote: She lost like 20 pounds in two weeks and was totally hot. I highly recommend nearly-fatal spinal meningitis to lose all that winter fat.) To my knowledge my X never paid for any of that, and she isn't even a citizen. And over and over I hear these horror stories about how horrible our health care system is. This is wrong with it, that is wrong with it. "The system is fundamentally broken," I hear. What? The system saved her life, and saves many lives every day for free. It's against the law for them to turn someone away who is dying. So, exactly what is wrong with the current system? People say this and that, but it all boils down to personal responsibility. People want to live whatever lifestyle they wish, make whatever poor decisions they wish, and ultimately have the government swoop down and provide a safety net when they need help. Quite simply it is socialism. It's not "fair" that rich people can afford better health care than poor people. Therefore money should be forcibly extracted from rich people's income and used to fund health care for the poor. Period. Say what you wish, but there is simply no other way to look at it. It is socialism. While I am not a proponent of socialism, I can at least respect the opinions of overt socialists. What disgusts me, however, is the doublespeak of the modern left as they push a socialist agenda. Call it what it is. Then see if you can get any votes. Several years ago I was quite rabid in my politics. I was angry all of the time, and I even had a "Politics" section on this site. I got hate mail by the bucketful, but I kept on speaking my mind. Then I lost a bunch of weight and moved to the French Quarter. Two things became apparent pretty quickly: 1) I was completely alone in my political beliefs among the quarter kids and 2) It was really hard to get liberal chicks to sleep with me when I went off on conservative political rants. So I shut down the political section of my site and pretty much kept my mouth shut about politics. There are a few quarter-ites with whom I enjoy political debate, but they are few and far between. The average quarter kid's political acumen amounts to "Bush is Hitler," "Jon Stewart is a Genius," and "Republicans are Fascists." Hundreds of times I have uttered the sentence, "I don't discuss politics when I'm drinking." Hundreds of times I have deleted emails before I sent them, deleted posts on this site before (or after) posting them. Hundreds of times I have just kept my mouth shut. All through this election I kept my mouth shut. I didn't mention that McCain -- who had been the Republican Darling of the media for years -- was painted as the devil himself. I didn't talk about the skewering of Hillary. I didn't talk about the demonization of Palin. None of it. I didn't talk about the bailout. I didn't mention that McCain's support of this bailout, and indeed the Republican party's support of it was essentially a death knell for any sort of Republican enthusiasm in this country. But this health care shit is too much. It is more than I can stand. "That's all I can stands, and I can't stands no more!" What we have here is a fundamental rift between people like myself, and what seems to be a growing group of helpless children in this country. There are those of us who believe in freedom, liberty and an American Dream of almost radical individualism. Our idea of government is similar to the idea of the founders of this country: An intentionally limited government, a government who provides a military, infrastructure, and laws -- and otherwise stays out of the way. The idea of this government providing health care is absolutely ludicrous. We inherit a distrust of the government from our intellectual forefathers. We understand that the government's soft hand of comforting support is inextricably attached to another hand gripping shackles. On the other side of the fence you have the intellectual heirs to the ideals of the 60s. Our forefathers, rather than being visionaries who created the greatest country on earth, are instead white slave-owners who raped the Indians of their land. The American government has committed atrocities here and abroad, and must make up for it. What a strange dichotomy that this same evil empire is to be trusted to run every aspect of our lives. For these people there is no limit to government responsibility. The government exists to fill every hole in our lives. Any and every mistake we make should not (must not!) cause us harm. If we build our homes next to water and a hurricane comes, it is the government's job to pay for our house. If we smoke and drink our lives away, and have too many neck-tattoos to get a good job with insurance, it is the government's job to pay for our doctor's visits. After Katrina I had to leave New Orleans. I love New Orleans more than I can describe, but I had to leave. My career had moved over an hour away, and the commute was impractical. As much as I wanted to stay, I made a sacrifice because I knew it was the best thing for my life financially. I have been making sacrifices of this sort my entire adult life. I have skipped the Rock Shows on the Wednesday night because I had an important meeting in the morning. I didn't get the tattoos because I knew it would be harder to climb in business. I didn't get the piercings, the hair, any of it. I have sacrificed. I have spent months at a time in hurricane-torn areas far from home doing computer work. I have literally traded months of my life for financial security. For money. I have not had children because I felt that my life was not stable enough to do so. Even now I am afraid of not being able to provide a stable enough life to have children. Sunday night I was in the Quarter. It was my birthday, and I wanted to spend a couple of hours in the quarter just grabbing a few drinks and relaxing. It began to storm, so I had to stick around a little longer than I'd like. Next to me in the bar was your typical quarter rat. Piercings, tattoos up his neck, strung out all-to-hell from drinking and drugs. I generally don't judge. It's his life and he can live it how he sees fit. If he wants to spend his life at a bar, then so be it. In a way I envy him. There is an allure to that lifestyle, but it comes with inherent consequences. As long as somebody accepts that, then how they live their life is none of my business. Then, after about an hour of his stories about passing out in bars, having random sex with bartenders, drugs, etc., he makes a passing mention of his kid's health problems. Yes, this is the kid that will be on governmental health care. This kid, who for all intents and purposes was engineered by its father to be fucked up and require governmental support, should be my financial responsibility. You see, me, I had to leave as soon as the rain let up. I had work the next morning, and I had a drive ahead of me. I couldn't drink any more because then I couldn't drive for a few hours. Then I would get home late. Then I would be useless at work the next day. It is through this work that I make my money, and also through which I have a health insurance policy. I understand the consequences of my actions, and I live my life accordingly. The Quarter Rat? There is a pretty good chance he was still in that chair drinking when I got up for work the next day. Where was his kid? Who knows. All I do know is that this is the true face of government health care. You support government health care? What you really support is ME paying for YOUR health care. Let's call it like we sees it. I am the guy who has gotten up every morning since he was 18 and busted his ass. I am the guy who has been careful, and made sure that he could always take care of himself. I have struggled in my career, and I have sacrificed. I have missed out on a whole lot of fun to earn my place in life. So it's fair to forcibly take my money away to pay for that Quarter Rat's health care? I think not. He made his choices. Indeed, he is still making them. He stayed there late on a Sunday night while his kid was God-Knows-Where. Permalink to this post. |
||
Ten years into this site and I still have to type HTML escapes for newlines. It's almost embarrassing. This year's obsession: Poker. Playing Poker several hours a day takes away from my posting time. I don't have the time to talk about politics and hollywood hotties. I don't have time to talk about my boat or the swamp or the New Orleans sluts. And I look at digits on the screen that are less than I spend on an average night of carousing in the Freedom Quarter and somehow these digits have meaning to me. The $25 I make off of a call with an overpair (when you really shouldn't call considering these nits' tendencies) is worth more than $5,000 made legitimately. Fun Fact: I sprained my ankle New Years of 2008. I broke my hand in October of the same year. I gained about 20 pounds. Suddenly Johnny, angry Johnny, was no longer the machine he once was. But then: Every grandma has a remedy. My grandma's remedy was Vick's. No matter what was wrong with you, Vick's would cure it. Asthma, a cold, a cut, freaking Aids. Vick's was the answer. I have found my Vick's. Epsom Salt is the cure-all of freaking reality. One horrid side-effect of being disgustingly and horribly fat was boils. I used to (still do) get boils on the inside of my legs from my fat rubbing together. These boils would get huge and swollen, and I shit you not would shoot bloody puss about 5 feet. One day one of these boils got aggressive and traveled up my thigh onto my junk. And there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. I had to find an answer. Enter: Epsom Salt. I read all of the InterWebs for an answer, and I concluded that Epsom salt might be the One True Way. I boiled a pot of water with Epsom salt and soaked a rag in it. I pressed the hot salt-soaked rag onto the boil and VOILA! Boil Gone. Returning to the ankle. I have been fighting with this ankle for over a year. Every few months I try my hand at running a few miles, and the ankle swells up like Angelina Jolie's lips. Then I started soaking it in Epsom Salt. Insta Freaking Cure. Epsom salt is magic, and I am now officially a grandma because I have a home remedy that I recommend for every ailment. I can now run on my awesome un-fucked ankle, and my thighs rub together totally devoid of boils. The cells of my body are forgetting that I am (cough cough) years old and I am starting to look like a piece of carved wood again. Rock On Epsom Salt. Permalink to this post. |
Go to Misc Stuff Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46
Philosophy |
Computer Stuph |
My Weight Loss Program |
Misc Stuff |
Dream Page |
My Adventures |
Media Reviews |
Poker |
People |
Hardcrawler |
Toilets |
Gods of F*!@ING Rock! |
Starcraft II |
Video Games |
Random People |
Live Show Reviews |
John's Guide to Being a Metrosexual |
My MAME Project |
The Coolest Men on Earth |
Hottest Hotties of Hollywood |
My Taiwan Adventure
My Hong Kong Hijinks