He doesn’t have to let her win at the board game. He DOES, however, have to make sure nothing is stuck in his teeth. (image via wikimedia)
Dating can be tough for anybody, but it was especially rough for an introvert like me. I’ve never liked talking to people I don’t know very well. I’ve never liked unpredictable situations. To make matters worse, people who weren’t familiar with me have always thought I was kind of awkward. Despite these disadvantages, I eventually I learned to thrive in the harsh world of dating.
25 years ago when I was dating, it was easy for me to tell if I was a good dater or not. From what I had heard, a good date usually ended a certain way, and none of my dates were ending the way I had heard they should. I knew I was getting better at dating when more of the dates started ending right.
Soon after that, I ended up with a girlfriend, and then I got another one (not at the same time), and later on I even got a fiance who became my wife. My dating had become so successful that I had to quit dating. If I’m lucky, I won’t ever have to date again.
Looking back, there were a few things that an introvert like me had to do to make each social outing a cringe-free experience, so here are a few lessons that I learned.
Be the BEST version of yourself.
“Be yourself” by itself is lousy advice. During my dating years, being myself meant reading comic books and watching football games while wearing a superhero t-shirt and baggy shorts. Today, wearing a superhero t-shirt is socially acceptable, but it wasn’t 25 years ago. That was a bad version of myself to use as a first impression.
The story about how I figured all this out is kind of long (60 episodes, starting here), but I eventually learned (or was taught). Wear nice clothes. Clean the car. Be ready to pay for anything, and don’t complain about the price. I wasn’t the most handsome, most fashionable guy around, but I was acceptable to the kind of woman I was dating (I had surprisingly high standards). That by itself meant I was doing a lot better than I had been.
Stay away from unpredictable food.
Too many things can go wrong when you’re eating food on a first date. You can spill something on an inconvenient location. You can get food stuck in your teeth and not know about it. Hot food can cause your nose to get runny. Bad food might cause stomach problems which lead to embarrassing public situations.
You can’t avoid food on most first dates, but you can be careful about the food you choose. I learned to go for thin sandwiches and fries, and I let them cool a few minutes before I eating. Thin sandwiches don’t spill. Fries are manageable also and don’t cause a runny nose after they’ve cooled down. Once I found my “safe food,” I never had another food disaster on a date.
Script it out.
Sometimes my mind blanks out when I’m in unfamiliar surroundings or situations. I’m not scared or anything. I’m just processing, but to others, it looks like I’m freezing up. Sometimes when I’m processing, my conversation skills deteriorate, and that can make a lousy first impression, so I learned to script a few conversation starters.
When on a date, I stayed away from the topics of weather (unless it affected the date), politics (unless I decided I wanted the date to end early), and sports (unless my date showed up wearing a jersey). I usually had snappy patter prepared about music, entertainment news, and puppies. I also pretended to like whatever music my date enjoyed, unless it was too sappy (in which case my date was probably testing my masculinity).
Learn to dance.
Dancing is a great skill/activity for an introvert because we don’t have to talk.
Just to be clear, I never succeeded at dancing. When it came to dancing, I was a failure. I think today I would be called a dancing fail. An introvert friend of mine, however, became very good at dancing and met his first (and second) wife dancing in a certain style. He became very good at dating, but not so good at marriage.
Me? I couldn’t dance without injuring myself and others, so I got better at other activities like bowling, pool, and putt putt golf. Women love beating guys at putt putt golf. I’m not saying a guy always has to let the woman win. In my case, I was always doing well just by keeping the games close (I’m horrible at pool, bowling, and putt putt golf), but my dating game improved drastically and led to other activities (like sunset walks and European vacations).
The point is that quiet, non-aggressive guys can find ways to succeed at dating without coming across as trying too hard. Follow these rules (I’m sure there are more and better rules, but this is a blog and it’s free so what do you expect?) and you can be an introvert success story too!
*****
It has been over 20 years since I’ve had to worry about dating, so maybe some stuff has changed since then. What advice do you have for introverts who are dating today? Since my advice has been male-oriented, what advice is out there for the female introvert too?
*****
And while you’re thinking about that, here’s the perfect book to read before, during, or after a date.
The independent author just looked at his monthly writing income. (image via Wikimedia)
It’s not whining for a writer to say that most writers don’t make much money. It’s simply the truth. The last time I wrote about writers not making money (this was a couple years ago), some commenters accused me of being a whiner. I didn’t mean to come across that way (if I even did). I was just preparing myself and other and prospective authors for what lies ahead if they decide to try to make money from writing.
I don’t make much money from my writing right now. If you look only at what I made from my writing, the last few years have been financial disasters. I write my blog for free, and my ebooks are doing okay for somebody in my situation (a blogger who can’t tell anybody in his personal life that he’s blogging), but the books don’t bring in much money. I haven’t quit my day job.
A few years ago, famous rich author Elizabeth Gilbert said writing was “f*cking great.” That was easy for her to say because she’s f*cking rich. I make next to nothing from writing, and I still think writing is “f*cking great.” I think I have more credibility on this issue than she does. But even though writing is great, I know that I probably won’t make much money (I hope I’m wrong) for five basic reasons.
1. THERE ARE TOO MANY WRITERS
It’s supply and demand. With ebooks and blogs/websites, millions of regular people who otherwise wouldn’t write are writing. I’m one of them. I gave up my dreams of becoming an author in 1997 after I had been told several times that I was talented but my niche had limited appeal, so publishers would be reluctant to sign me a deal. I put writing out of my mind for almost 15 years.
Yeah, there are a lot of other writers out there, but since I don’t like blaming myself (and other writers) for my low pay, I present…
2. THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH READERS
Technology has created millions of new writers, but that leaves fewer readers. All those people writing used to be reading, and they might still read, but they probably read less, and if people are reading less and writing more, than the writer-reader ratio (or reader-writer ratio) goes down (or up). That means there are fewer readers to buy the books that that new writers are writing. And my mom will only buy one copy of each ebook.
3. WRITERS PUBLISH FREE STUFF
Not only are there a bunch of writers out there, most of their material is now free. Blogs and websites (and even videos) are free. Some ebooks are free, and the others are really cheap. If so much reading material is free (and some of it is actually good), then readers will be attracted by that and avoid paying for anything. As a reader, that’s great. I love free stuff. But as a writer? I know that creating a reliable income from writing (at least the way I’m going about it now) is a long shot.
Despite the lack of income, writers probably shouldn’t start charging for the stuff that’s already free. If they do that, readers would stop reading, and most writers would rather get read for nothing than charge and not get read at all. Feedback is a payment in its own way, so I figure any authors who get feedback from their writing are doing a good job.
4. MOST WRITERS AREN’T GOOD SELF-PROMOTERS
It’s tough to pitch a book without turning people off. If you want friends to buy your books, they might feel they’re being used just so that you can make money. If you have a blog that only promotes your book, then readers might get tired of seeing your books over and over again. If you don’t use your blog to promote our book, then nobody will see your books. If you spend a bunch of time on social media, then you’re taking valuable time and effort on something that is NOT your writing.
Some writers aren’t good self-promoters. Some writers have abrasive personalities and need to be kept away from the public. This is why most famous authors have publicists. If an independent writer wants to sell books, then that writer has to become good at self-promotion, and that’s a different skill from writing.
5. FAMOUS AUTHORS WRITE TOO MANY BOOKS
Authors on The New York Times Bestsellers List from ten years ago looks a lot like the authors on the lists today. And a bunch of those authors write more than one book a year. I’ve scanned through these books. A lot of them suck, but readers buy them anyway.
For example, rich famous writer James Patterson published more than ten novels last year, most of which had a co-author. Tom Clancy is still publishing books and he died a few years ago. I think even Ron L. Hubbard still comes out with a new book every once in a while. It’s bad enough we independent writers have to compete with authors who use co-authors, but now we have to compete with dead authors too? That’s downright demoralizing.
I know that if famous authors (and dead authors) stopped writing multiple books a year, it wouldn’t change the writer-reader ratio enough to increase my chances of being successful. I know that. But every controversial issue needs a scapegoat. And I have no problem scapegoating a rich, famous guy who is completely unaffected by my scapegoating. Therefore, if I’m going to blame any one person for the lack of money being paid to writers, it’s James Patterson!!!
*****
My prospects of making money from writing might be dim, but I’m not filled with gloom and doom. Ten years ago, I could have pounded the keyboards indefinitely and still nobody would have read my stories, except maybe for Mom. Now, between blogs and ebooks and unlimited opportunities for shameless self-promotion, anybody can build an audience. And that’s f*cking gr… uh… that’s pretty great.
(image via wikimedia)
The dorm elevators always scared me a little bit. They were slow, they were noisy, and they moved in herky-jerky motions that didn’t feel natural when you were stuck inside. On Friday and Saturday nights, drunk students would stomp up and down to rock the elevator even more. I’m not sure what the drunks hoped to accomplish. If they had managed to break the elevator, they would have plunged to their likely deaths, but at least they were having a good time.
Early in the first semester, some drunk guy puked in one of the elevators on a Saturday night, and custodians didn’t work the dorms on Sunday, so the vomit stayed in the elevator for about 36 hours. This caused a chain reaction of events that I don’t want to describe because it’s disgusting and I’m not that kind of storyteller. The point is that even after the puke was eventually cleaned, the scent stayed around, especially when you were enclosed inside the elevator.
One afternoon (days or weeks after the puking incident, I ‘m not sure because this happened 30 years ago) my roommate Kirk and I were heading out to class. Sometimes I would rather take the stairs than stand in the elevator, but Kirk always razzed me about that, so inside the elevator I went.
“This sucks,” I said at the faint scent of lingering puke.
“It’s in your mind,” Kirk said.
“The mind doesn’t just make up smells,” I said. “It’s still pukey in here.”
Kirk breathed in deeply with a wide smile. “Nope. It’s perfectly fresh air.”
“You’ve lost your sense of smell,” I said.
“I’m perfectly normal,” Kirk said.
“I know where your face has been,” I said. “At the very least, you have smell tolerance.”
“Good point,” Kirk said. “But it’s still in your mind.”
We were still arguing when the elevator stopped at the 6th floor and two girls stepped in. One girl had caked way too much makeup on, and the other girl was tall with spiky hair. They stopped in mid-conversation when they saw us. I was used to being ignored whenever I was in an elevator, but I wasn’t normally a conversation-stopper, so I wondered if my fly was down or if I had anything dangling from my nose.
When the elevator doors shut, the girl with the caked makeup said with authority:
“You’re an asshole.”
When I looked up, I could tell from the way the girl was eyeballing Kirk what was going on, and I felt an awkward moment coming.
“You said you’d call me,” the girl said. “Why didn’t you call me?”
Kirk actually blushed. I’d never seen him turn red before. I didn’t need an explanation. This was a girl that Kirk had brought back to our room, and I guess they’d both been drunk, and then after they were done, Kirk had said he’d call her but Kirk rarely went back to the same girl twice.
The elevator doors finally closed, but the elevator hadn’t started moving.
Kirk shrugged. “I changed my mind.”
“You’re an asshole.”
“Then why would you want me to call you back?”
This confrontation wouldn’t have been so bad out in the open area, like a lobby or the commons where both Kirk and the girl could pass each other by. Instead, we were trapped in a rickety elevator. I held my breath and hoped that the elevator wouldn’t get stuck, but we finally moved.
“So Friday night didn’t mean anything to you,” the girl said.
Kirk didn’t say anything. C’mon elevator, I thought, hurry up.
“You just thought I’d be another girl for you to use,” she continued.
I almost told her to get herself checked out at the clinic, but I didn’t want to become part of the scene.
While the girl kept badgering Kirk about not calling her, the spikey girl made eye contact with me and grinned, but I looked away.
Don’t get me wrong. Under normal circumstances, I’d appreciate a public confrontation as much as anyone, but I didn’t want to be in the middle of one. It’s only funny if you’re not involved, and I had to live with Kirk. Any public confrontation he was involved with could have ramifications for me, and I was already struggling in college.
“If you weren’t going to call me back, then don’t tell me you’re going to call me back,” the girl said.
“I’m not going to call you, alright?” Kirk said. “You happy now?”
That was it. I could see the girl’s eyes twitch, her lips slowly purse, and I knew exactly what she was going to say before she said it.
“Ugh! You are such an asshole!”
That wasn’t quite what I thought she was going to say (I thought she was going to say the f-word), but it was close enough.
The elevator door opened, and Kirk and I burst out. We were usually gentleman, but we wanted no part of any post-one-night-stand argument and the puke smell was getting to me. The makeup girl almost followed Kirk out, but the spiky girl, still grinning, linked her arm to her friend and eased her out of the elevator.
“C’mon,” she kept saying. “Class starts in seven minutes.”
Once they had cleared the lobby, Kirk turned toward them and said, “Thanks, Spike.”
The spiky girl opened her mouth, then closed it and shook her head, nudging her friend forward. The makeup girl cast one final glance at Kirk, and then allowed herself to be dragged away. The spiky girl said something in the other girl’s ear, and they both laughed loudly enough for us to hear it.
“She really thought you were going to call her,” I said. I almost felt bad for her, and I rarely felt bad for Kirk’s one-nighters. They were always drunk and usually obnoxious when I met them, so it was puzzling to see this other side of the situation.
“Yeah, I lied to her,” he said. “It’s better than telling her ‘it’s been fun, now get out’.”
Kirk and I took a different exit from the lobby, even though we seemed to be heading in the same direction as the two girls. We were just giving them a head start and would walk slowly enough not to catch up with them.
At the time, this seemed like just a really awkward moment in an elevator, but I realized later (I’m not sure how much later) that it wasn’t. When that strange thing happened to me at the University Library later on that semester, this elevator incident came back to…
Well, I’ll eventually get to that.
*****
To be continued in University Library: Going Incognito .
Or you can read University Library from the beginning at University Library: State School.
(image via wikimedia)
Boys have a bad reputation when it comes to reading. Conventional wisdom says that boys don’t read as well as girls, and even when boys are capable enough to read as well, boys tend to skim more material and skip pages.
At least, according to this study, boys don’t read as closely. I don’t always trust studies like this. Too many things can go wrong or be done incorrectly, but I don’t necessarily disagree with the conclusion of the study. I haven’t done any costly, time-consuming research. I’m just using my own personal experiences and anecdotal evidence.
Full disclosure: I’m a male who is supposedly a pretty good reader, and I know exactly what this study is talking about. I skip pages (every once in a while), and I skim. I’ve even taken credit for reading books which I’ve never even opened (but I don’t do that anymore).
Instead of complaining about boys’ poor reading habits, I want to explain why it happens. To do this, I have to use some stereotypes and generalities. When I say “boys,” I don’t mean all boys, and when I say “girls,” I don’t mean all girls. If you don’t fit the gender role that I’m talking about, you don’t need to bash me for it. I’ve already been pre-bashed.
Enough people complain about boys not reading well, and I don’t want to pile on, but it’s pretty simple. Boys don’t read closely because there are other things to do. It’s not practical to read everything. To us, reading is often more like a task to complete than an activity to enjoy.
While growing up, I knew a bunch of boys who didn’t like reading and weren’t that good at it, so I understand the mentality. They saw reading as a waste of time when there was so much living to do. They knew how to read. They were capable of reading. Reading was what they might do if there was nothing else to do.
Boys read less carefully because we/they have other things we want to think about. We tend to be more task-oriented, so we see reading as a goal that must be completed. Even if I’m reading a book for fun, I’ll still have a goal of when I want to finish it. The subconscious goal then becomes more important than the enjoyment of reading the book. Sometimes I’m not even aware of it.
It’s not laziness, as some parents and teachers might imply. Boys don’t pay as close attention because it’s not as important to them. In high school, my best friend couldn’t focus on a textbook, but he could read and memorize a TV Guide. That’s where his priorities were. Since TV Guides aren’t relevant anymore, the kid today who struggles reading history can probably memorize lineups for fantasy football.
Girls, on the other hand, are more likely to become more immersed in the experience of reading a book. Females can get emotionally caught up in a book more than most males do. That’s why women cry more at movies than men do. Part of it is empathy, but a lot of it is that while something emotional is happening in the movie, the woman is caught up in the emotion and the man is calculating how much time is left in the movie.
This applies to our adult conversations as well. When women (such as girlfriends or wives) claim we men are not paying attention, it’s not that we’re ignoring our girlfriends/wives. When women think we men aren’t paying attention, our minds aren’t wandering; we’re just thinking ahead. We’re thinking of other stuff, some of which might be really important. Hopefully that other stuff isn’t other women (but that’s a separate issue).
If anything, we men don’t get enough credit for how much we think. If all that thinking ahead means that boys don’t read as closely as girls, then so be it.
So instead of criticizing boys for not reading as well as girls, we should be encouraging them. Good job, boys! Keep on thinking ahead about other stuff!
*****
It doesn’t matter if you’re male or female. If you like reading, you’ll probably like my ebook, though you might not read it as closely if you’re a guy.
If it’s good enough for the United States Army, it should be good enough for the rest of us. (image via Wikimedia)
Saying “Shut up!” used to be simple. Decades ago, if you told somebody to shut up, the other person would either quiet down, cuss you out, or start throwing punches. Today, you might get told that saying “Shut up” is wrong, that it’s somehow inappropriate or mean or offensive. Somebody might even tell you that shut up is a bad word.
Maybe there’s something to that. I’d never say “Shut up” to a stranger. “Shut up” is something you say only to somebody you know. If you say “Shut up” to a stranger, you should be ready to get into a fight. I punch like a girl, so I never say “Shut up” to strangers.
Shut up might technically be a phrase instead of a word, but that’s a technicality most people don’t care about. If you add other words to shut up, however, then it becomes a phrase. Shut the f*** up is a phrase. Shut your mouth is a phrase. Shut your pie hole is a phrase. But shut up is considered a word, even if it really isn’t.
Shut up is not a cuss word like sh*t or f*ck. You can’t say sh*t or f*ck without offending somebody. Shut up involves more context. You can say “shut up” in a friendly way and people won’t care. Even if you say “sh*t” in a friendly way, somebody will be offended.
Shut up can escalate a conflict more quickly than profanity. Shut up often causes the person talking to get louder, to proclaim that he/she will NOT be silenced. Saying “Shut up” can cause another person to use profanity in response. Saying “shut up” can often backfire. Because of this, I don’t recommend saying “Shut up” in most situations.
In some ways, shut up might be the gateway word to profanity. A child who says “Shut up” may also learn to rely on profanity later in life because that person never developed the language and interpersonal skills to control emotions and use appropriate vocabulary. I have no proof to back that up, but I’m pretty sure it’s true.
My daughter has a teacher who tells her students to shut up a lot. At the beginning of the school year, the teacher started off as polite, but now she goes straight to “Shut up!” I had teachers who said “Shut up.” We knew at that point something bad would happen to us if we didn’t quiet down. After the teacher said “Shut up,” we’d get something like a detention or a zero on the assignment if we didn’t settle down. That “Shut up!” was a warning that the teacher had reached his/her breaking point.
I’d rather have a teacher tell me to shut up than have a teacher who gives detentions all the time. Maybe a teacher shouldn’t allow the class to get to the point of shut up, but ideally doesn’t work in reality. Kids need a warning, and “Shut up!” is as clear as it gets.
If a teacher says “Shut the f*ck up” as a warning, then there might be some issues.
Maybe teachers and parents shouldn’t say “Shut up,” but if you’re going to say “Shut up,” say it to a kid. Kids need to be taught that their opinions don’t mean as much as an adult’s opinion (It’s legally true because they can’t vote until they’re 18). Plus, kids talk too much and don’t usually respond to “Please be quiet” or “Maybe this isn’t the appropriate time to discuss this.” Some kids don’t respond to politeness and subtlety. Some kids need to be told to shut up.
Saying “shut up” is nothing new. The dictionary claims that the first known usage was in 1814. The dictionary didn’t say what the result of the first usage was though. I’d like to know if the person being told to shut up understood what he/she was being told to do. And once the person being told to shut up understood what was being said, how did that person respond? I guess I’ll never know. I can’t find a video of this conversation on YouTube, so maybe it didn’t really happen.
I’ve heard people say that telling somebody to shut up is mean and wrong, but telling somebody NOT to say “Shut up” is almost as bad as saying “Shut up.” I try to be careful when I use my shut ups, but I’d never tell somebody not to say shut up. It’s not my place in society to do that.
But if you’re the type of person who says “Shut up” and somebody ever tells you NOT to say “Shut up” because it’s mean or inappropriate, you have the perfect immediate built-in response:
“Shut up.”
*****
After more than ten years of blogging, I’ve finally written a novel.
A dishonest, grammar-obsessed English teacher falls in ‘luuuvvv’ with a woman who lies even more than he does.
The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy is now available on Amazon and from the trunk of my car at various local bookstores… until parking lot security kicks me out. Buy it now while supplies last!
(image via wikimedia)
Finding a good book to read can be difficult, but ruining a good book for somebody else is easy. It’s so easy that excited readers usually don’t realize they’re destroying somebody else’s pleasant experience. There are probably dozens of ways to ruin a good book for somebody else, but here are (the top?) five:
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Spoiling the Ending
When I was reading The Iliad in junior high (by choice… 30+ years ago), some wiseacre tried spoiling it by telling me the Greeks won the war. I smugly replied that I already knew that. Then the spoiling wisacre revealed to me that The Iliad doesn’t go all the way to the end of the war. I couldn’t believe it! I cheated and read the final chapter where Achilles returns Hector’s body to Peleus, and I was shattered. I was really looking forward to reading about the Trojan Horse.
Maybe The Iliad isn’t the best example of a novel (or epic poem) that can be ruined by a spoiler. I could have used a more recent novel (like maybe Gone Girl or The Girl on the Train), but readers could have potentially gotten mad at me (and I try to avoid conflict whenever possible). At least The Iliad is Greek mythology. It’s (almost) impossible to spoil Greek mythology anymore.
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Assigning it as Required Reading
Most people aren’t going to read a classic unless it’s assigned reading for school. But a book doesn’t have to be a classic to be hated when assigned. I probably would have liked Fahrenheit 451 if it hadn’t been assigned. I probably would have liked Lord of the Flies as well.
There are only two exceptions. I liked To Kill a Mockingbird even though it was assigned, and I’m pretty sure I’d have disliked Moby Dick even if it hadn’t been.
Assigning a novel is a great way to make kids hate (even what they think is) a good book. If you’re tired of The Hunger Games or Harry Potter or The Fault in our Stars, just get some teachers to make these books required reading. If a few teachers could overanalyze these books, the popularity of these YA novels would drop instantly.
Any teen craze can be destroyed by making it compulsory. If you’re sick of One Direction or Fall Out Boy, have some music teachers require their classes to perform their songs. It’s an incredible power that teachers have to ruin teenage fads; they should use it more frequently.
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Building up High Expectations
I probably would have liked The Catcher in the Rye if my friends in high school (about 30 years ago) hadn’t told me how awesome it was. The Catcher in the Rye was okay, but my friends had set my expectations too high. Holden Caulfield struck me as a whiner instead of a rebel. Now when I recommend a book, I just say something like “You might think this is good,” and not, “THIS BOOK CHANGED MY LIFE FOREVER!!!”
After my high school friends recommended The Catcher in the Rye, (“You HAVE to read it! It’s awesome. You won’t believe how great it is!”), I handed them a copy of Different Seasons by Stephen King and said (probably in a monotone voice), “I think you’ll like this.”
That was it. No hyperbole. Very little emotion. And everybody likes Different Seasons.
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Sneezing on it
Sneezing on a book will always ruin it for me. I don’t want to touch any book after it’s been sneezed on, no matter how much I had originally wanted to read it. It’s not just the nose debris I’m worried about either. Any type of fluid (body or not), and I won’t read the book. The moist spots might be water, but I can’t take that chance.
The only books I check out from the library are the new ones because they’re relatively undamaged. All of the older books have warped areas, or discolored sections, or green/brown spots that can’t be sanitary whatever they are. The older books can be checked out for extended periods of time, but I wouldn’t want them infecting my house, not even for a day or two.
The possibility that somebody has sneezed on (or done worse to) a book will keep me from reading it. This narrows my selection at the library a little, but that also keeps me from wandering the shelves, and my kids appreciate how quickly I can choose a book from the library.
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Making a Bad Movie out of It.
This one is out of the control of most casual readers. It takes money and power to pull enough strings to make a bad movie out of a good book. I’m not sure anybody intentionally makes a bad movie out of a good book, but it seems to happen a lot. When the Jack Nicholson version of The Shining (“Heeeere’s Johnny!”) came out in the early 1980s, it was panned by most critics. Even I didn’t like it, and I wasn’t as hyper-critical of stuff as I am now. Today, a lot of people see that version of The Shining as a classic, but I think that’s just because everybody loves Jack Nicholson.
It’s not the book’s fault if a bad movie is made out of it. Sometimes a bad movie might inspire readers to see why that movie was made in the first place. I’ve never seen a good movie version of The Great Gatsby, but Hollywood will keep trying, and people will keep reading it.
*****
When I lend out books and get them back, they’re almost always in worse condition than any library book I’ve ever seen. Pages are folded, notes are scribbled inside, and the binding is shriveled. I’m often tempted to stop offering up the books I like.
That’s the final way to ruin a good book: make your literary peers buy their own copies.
*****
I’ve written two books, and nobody has ruined them yet.
Now only 99 cents each on the Amazon Kindle!
(image via wikimedia)
When my daughter announced that she had a research paper for school, I was expecting an ordeal. I braced myself for hours of whining and complaining and procrastinating. Instead, my daughter pulled out her phone, looked up a bunch of stuff, and was done in 15 minutes.
15 minutes? When I was a student, I was lucky if the trip to the library to get started on my research paper was only 15 minutes.
I’ll give my daughter’s school district credit. They have an online database with a bunch of approved sites, so kids aren’t supposed to just go to Google or Bing and hope for the best. I usually don’t have a problem with Google or Bing (though I know manipulation of key words can be an issue), but I’m an adult and know how to use these tools. I’m glad the school teaches our kids to use other resources.
Still, my daughter doesn’t have have to do any real work for research except read. She doesn’t have to drive 30 miles to a decent library. She doesn’t have to figure out the Dewey Decimal System. She doesn’t have to wait in a line for a librarian to find an old magazine. Even worse, my daughter has never had to deal with microfiche.
Parents are supposed to be happy when their children’s lives are easier than their own, but my daughters should appreciate how stressful research used to be. It was work.
Back when I was a kid (decades ago), we had Encyclopedia Britannicas, but teachers told us not to use them because it was too easy and the information was too vague. Using the local library was okay for basic research like biographies, history, or outdated science stuff, but anything current was nearly impossible to look up.
The library had newspapers, but you had to ask the front desk for the older issues and then wait while they went to the back. The recent periodicals/magazine in the stacks were disorganized and dog-eared with pages torn out. All the good information had already been borrowed/stolen. If you needed specific information that was more than a few years old, you had to use microfiche.
“Microfiche” was a word that was rarely spoken by itself. There was usually a colorful adjective spoken before “microfiche.” It might have been “f*cking microfiche” or “g*dd*mn microfiche” or “piece of sh*t motherf*cking microfiche,” but it was never just “microfiche.”
If you don’t know what microfiche are/is, this might help explain it .
Anyway, something always went wrong with microfiche. The microfiche boxes were more disorganized than the periodicals. The articles in the microfiche wouldn’t have the information that the summaries promised. The microfiche was unreadable. I’m sure there were other problems, but I’ve blocked them out. The experience was borderline traumatic.
People who never have had to research using microfiche don’t understand the frustration. If you told the teacher that you tried to research the topic but the microfiche didn’t help, the teacher always acted skeptical. Looking back, I’m guessing that the teachers enjoyed putting us through the experiences because they’d had to go through it too. Either that, or they had never used microfiche and couldn’t comprehend the pitfalls.
I’m convinced there was a hidden camera in the library watching students meltdown at the microfiche machine. There had to be. If I had been working at the library, it’s what I would have done. The footage from that hidden camera probably made being a librarian worth it.
The citations at the end of the essays weren’t the worst part of writing research papers, but they were inconvenient. Titles, authors, dates of publication, all went in different orders depending on whether the source was a book, a newspaper, a magazine article, a speech, or an interview. It was a pain keeping up with all the guidelines, especially since you did the citations last when you were already exhausted from all the research and writing. The citations had to be precise because even if the teachers didn’t read the essays closely, they’d check the citations. Nowadays, the citations are done online.
That’s right. Citations are done online. Almost all information is online. There’s no need for microfiche. I swear, kids today don’t understand how easy they have it.
*****
When the first Star Wars movie came out in the 1970s, a friend of mine thought R2D2 and C3PO were real robots. I told him they weren’t, and we argued back-and-forth for about six weeks. Back then, there was no way to just look it up, so we kept arguing. At some point, we even made a $20 bet (and back then $20 was worth a fortune to a ten-year-old). Finally, some sci-fi magazine came out that interviewed the actors who played R2D2 and C3PO. My friend might argue with me, but he couldn’t argue with a sci-fi magazine.
Before technology made instant research possible, people used to have stupid arguments about simple facts. With technology and instant research, people argue about opinions instead. That should mean we are evolving, but I’m not sure about that. Most opinion arguments now are pretty stupid too.
*****
To find more “Old Things That Are Tough To Explain,” go to Old Things That Are Tough To Explain: The Home Page.
*****
An English teacher obsessed with grammar meets a woman who pretends to read classic literature. And thus begins the whirlwind romance of the 1990s!
The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy is now available on Amazon and from the trunk of my car at various local bookstores… until parking lot security kicks me out. Buy it now while supplies last!
(image via wikimedia)
When I was a freshman, I expected my college life to be a raunchy sex comedy, but it turned out that my roommate was having all the raunchy sex. To make it worse, he was having all that raunchy sex in our dorm room, so that meant I spent a lot of time in the University Library.
Most of the lack of sex was my fault. As a freshman in college, I was aloof about a lot of social stuff. I spent my money on comic books instead of nice clothes. Even when I bought clothes, my wardrobe was jeans, a few sweaters, and lots of comic book t-shirts. College women thought I was harmless, which meant there was no raunchy sex for me. My mind wandered a lot when I walked across campus, and I was rarely aware of my surroundings. That changed when I got conked on the head, but that happened later.
Anyway, my wardrobe was a low priority. Besides keeping my clothes clean, I wasn’t concerned about them. Since clothes didn’t matter, I didn’t think anything was wrong when I put on one of my usual outfits before going to class one morning.
As I headed out the dorm room, my roommate Kirk stopped me with a “Hey!”
“What’s wrong?” I said.
Kirk looked concerned. He was dragging himself to breakfast before the cafeteria shut down for the morning, but something had gotten his attention.
“It’s ‘Wear Jeans If You’re Gay Day’,” he said.
I knew I was wearing jeans. I hadn’t been aware of this social awareness day, but my college wardrobe was limited. I had jeans for cold days and shorts for warm days. It was late October, and though it wasn’t freezing out, it was still chilly, and there was no way I was wearing shorts instead of jeans.
“I’m going to have to risk it,” I said.
“It would be different if you had a girlfriend,” Kirk said.
Or if I screwed a different drunk chick every night like Kirk did, I thought, but I kept that to myself. Kirk seemed comfortable with his heterosexuality, but he was heading out in shorts and a sweater.
“You know they’re laughing at you,” I said to Kirk. “They just pressured you to wear shorts on a 40 degree day.”
“They probably want to stare at my legs,” he muttered.
This was back in the mid-1980s, and Seinfeld’s “Not that there’s anything wrong with it” episode hadn’t come out yet, and a lot of people thought there was something incredibly wrong with being homosexual. There was a guy on our floor who was reputed to be gay, and his ROTC roommate was trying to get a room switch. There was supposedly a significant gay community in our college town, but you didn’t really see it too much in the dorms.
“My friends think you’re gay,” Kirk said.
That kind of pissed me off.
“Do you tell them I’m not?” I asked. I thought of how the ROTC guy ostracized his roommate, and I didn’t want anything like that to happen to me.
“I know you’re not,” he said. “You hit on my sister, you filthy degenerate.”
That was true. It had happened the day I’d first moved into the dorms when I didn’t know she was his sister. She was just a cute, well-built girl in a skimpy outfit hanging around our hallway brushing her hair back and talking to me every time I brought a box into my room. The way she looked at me, I thought all those stories about college being a raunchy sex comedy were about to come true.
Then I found out she was Kirk’s sister.
And she was only 15.
And that Kirk would beat the shit out of me if I ever touched her (which might be considered ironic when you consider his own behavior with women).
Looking back, she would have been better off with me than some of the guys she ended up with, but we would have had to wait a few years, and it’s not something that I lost sleep over, I promise.
As Kirk and I walked down the dorm hallway, the ROTC guy wandered out from the showers with a towel wrapped around his waist. The guy was ripped (though ripped wasn’t a term back then). He was well-defined. I’ve always wanted a muscular, well-defined body, but I was skinny, and working out only made me skinnier. I admired what I could not be.
“Good morning,” I said to him really loudly. I startled him, and he gave me an angry look as Kirk and I strolled past him.
When we got to the elevators, Kirk said, “He’s gonna think you’re gay now.”
“He’s not that stupid,” I said.
“Yeah, he is. You don’t talk to guys coming out of the shower.”
“Really?” I had never heard that social rule before. I have startling gaps in my knowledge.
“It’s like talking to the guy next to you when you’re taking a piss in public.”
“Really?” I paused. “I do that all the time.”
I get stage fright in public bathrooms, and talking to the guy next to me relaxes me. If two guys are standing side by side in the public urinals, and nothing’s happening, the silence is awkward.
“Someone’s gonna kick your ass if you keep doing it.”
I was dumbfounded. “So it’s better to have stage fright and take up time in the urinal then talk and get everything over with.”
“Yeah,” Kirk said. “How do you do that? What do you say when you’re taking a piss next to somebody?”
I paused and chose my best conversation starter in a public bathroom: “It always smells like shit in here.”
Kirk shook his head. “I just don’t want you to get your ass kicked. There’s a lot you don’t understand.” After we got out of the elevator, we went our separate ways for the day.
Nothing happened to me when I wore jeans on Wear Jeans If You’re Gay Day. Nobody ostracized me. At least, if anybody did, I was too aloof to notice it. Most guys outside were wearing sweaters/sweatshirts with shorts, which was funny because it was cold and windy outside. There were a couple times I saw other guys wearing jeans, and I wondered if they were gay or if they just didn’t know like I hadn’t known, or if they did know but it was just too cold to wear shorts in order to celebrate their own straightness.
Other than that, I was just a college student wearing jeans to class. But later on when that weird thing happened to me at the University Library, I would think back to Wear Jeans If You’re Gay Day and some of what happened would start to make sense to me.
*****
To be continued in University Library: Elevator Rage!
Sports and politics don’t mix. (image via wikimedia)
I decided to quit watching the NFL for a while. I like watching football, so this was a tough decision to make. A few years ago, I wrote a blog post titled 6 Reasons Why Football Is The Best Sport Ever, so by quitting football, I’ll be depriving myself of the best sport ever. I don’t want to deprive myself, but the NFL has ticked me off.
Me quitting the NFL might be like my wife quitting Facebook. My wife could last only a few weeks. That’s why I hesitate making a grand announcement. I’ve quit smoking, drinking, and reading comic books, but giving up on the NFL might be the toughest addiction to overcome.
One thing I love about football is that it was the great unifier at work. The office environment is a diverse place, but everybody has a good-natured opinion about our local football team. It’s better than talking about the weather. Whenever the office has been rocked by a divisive political disagreement, I (and a couple coworkers) have always been able to use football to bring everybody back together.
But a while ago I noticed too many sports shows were talking politics instead of football. There have been several issues going on recently that I don’t want to get into because I’m not that kind of blogger, but a bunch of sports broadcasters have been expressing their political opinions on their sports shows. That was no big deal. I just stopped watching those sports shows.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t like it when political shows talk about football either. Everything has its proper time and place. But now the politics has seeped into the football games themselves and the game broadcasts. I don’t care about players’ political opinions (they don’t care about mine, so we’re even), and I don’t care what the broadcasters think about politics either. I just wanted to watch football, and too much of the time they’re not talking about football.
This isn’t just sports. I don’t watch entertainment or awards shows either because half the time they get political. Celebrities sometimes believe that since they have access to more people that they have a responsibility to use their voice to promote their political causes. I disagree. I believe celebrities have a responsibility to NOT use their voices for their political purposes.
I see it as an abuse of goodwill. Since we normal people pay money to see/watch them perform, they should be gracious enough to keep their mouths shut about political stuff while they’re doing their jobs. If anything, they should be forced to listen to our political views since we pay them money (but that might be logistically difficult). Even if I agree with the cause (which I sometimes do), I don’t want to hear about it during a sports or entertainment show.
I try to be consistent about this. I’m not going to tell you what I think about political issues because you probably don’t care what I really think. And if you care what I think and disagree with me, then you might get mad and stop reading my blog.
I like it when people read my blog, so I’m not going to piss them off by spouting off about something that isn’t a normal topic for my blog. If somebody stops reading my blog because I make fun of James Patterson, then that’s a risk I’m willing to take. If somebody stops reading my blog because I discuss the etymology of profane words, then I’m okay with that. If people stop reading my blog because they think my writing is crap, that’s the price I pay for writing crap.
But I don’t want to drive people away with political stuff. People take political stuff seriously, and everybody thinks they’re on the correct side. If I want to discuss politics, I go to political websites. I don’t watch sports channels to hear politics, and I’m guessing you don’t want to read political commentary from a guy like me who makes Moby Dick jokes.
*****
It was tough not paying attention to football today. It’s easy to not watch football when it’s not on, but when you know a bunch of games are on, it’s almost impossible not to check for scores. When my wife noticed that I wasn’t watching any games (I was reading with the television off), I told her there weren’t any good match-ups today, except for our local team, and they’re okay but very flawed. The networks kill games with commercials anyway, so it was easy to say I wasn’t feeling it.
Then my wife piled some chores on me and wanted me to go with her and my daughters to a movie that I didn’t want to see. I got out of seeing the movie, but it was tough to do without my family feeling like I didn’t want to spend time with them. I explained that they don’t want to spend time with me while I’m watching football, and I don’t take that personally.
Plus, I found a couple good books to read. At least, I think they’re good. I don’t know for sure because I haven’t finished reading them yet. But so far nobody in these books has interrupted my reading to force their political views on me.
If you’re easily offended, I apologize for what you are about to read. (image via wikimedia)
It should be obvious why fuck is a bad word. In fact, fuck is such a bad word that I don’t want to write about it. I feel a bit uncomfortable writing about fuck because I usually try to keep profanity off my blog. Every once in a while, though, I write about mature topics, and fuck is about as mature as it gets. Besides, I’m writing about fuck from the perspective of etymology, so that makes it okay.
First of all, fuck is a one-syllable word that refers to a sensitive subject matter. Most one syllable words that refer to sensitive topics or body functions are considered bad words. It’s not polite to talk about sexual acts, so when doing so, you must use delicate language, like carnal relations, adult situation, romantic interlude, fornication, mating, or coupling. Fuck, at the very least, is blunt and impolite.
Plus, fuck ends with –uck. Every one-syllable word that ends with -uck should be profane (even if it isn’t). Muck, suck, cuck, Huck, Chuck all should be put on the banned words list just because of their sounds. Anything that ends with –uck just sounds wrong. Add f- to the mix, and you have the perfect bad word.
The word fuck goes back a long time. That makes sense because the action goes back a long time too. According to the dictionary, the Dutch in the 1500s had the word fokken which meant “to breed cattle.”
Example- “The cattle are fokken in the fields again.”
The Swedes at that time also had a word fokka, which meant “to copulate.” Even though “to copulate” makes fokka verb, it sounds like a noun to me.
Example- “Quit looking at me funny, you fokka.”
Somewhere along the way, the fokkens and the fokkas became fuck.
The word fuck is flexible and can be used as several parts of speech. Fuck is technically meant to be a verb (Fuck you!), but it can be used a noun (You fucker), an adjective (That’s fucked up), an adverb (That’s fucking awesome!), or merely as an exclamation (Fuck!).
Adding the word mother to fucker can also make the word even more insulting. Adding the word mother makes any insult more effective because it’s impolite to ever mention another person’s mother.
Fuck is considered to be the worst of the bad words, with maybe a couple exceptions. Fuck is worse than shit because shit is just poop and everybody poops so it’s not a big deal. Damn isn’t so bad (unless you put God in front of it) because, depending on what religion you belong to, you’re either damned or you’re not. Bitch isn’t so bad because it just means “female dog,” and everybody loves dogs so being called a bitch might be sexist but otherwise it’s not so bad.
Cunt is a close call because it refers to a female body part, so that makes it sexist and it ends with –unt which is almost as bad as –uck. Even though dick is also a body part, it’s a male body part, and a lot of women think you can’t be sexist against men because men have been the power holders in the patriarchy for so long and Dick is a guy’s name, so dick is funny while cunt is sexist and vulgar.
If anybody wrote a sequel to Moby Dick called Moby Cunt, it would probably get banned. Moby Fuck could be the third book in the Moby Trilogy, but it might get banned too.
Some people claim that words are just words and that no words should be considered bad. I understand that, but if words didn’t have meaning, then words would have no point. I don’t want to live in a world where words have no meaning. Therefore, there has to be a word which is the most profane, and the worst word might just might be fuck.
