Incentives to Create Weapons of Mass Destruction

Today I am reminded of Colin Powel presenting the evidence of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. By now, we all know that this evidence was incorrect. Malcolm Gladwell wrote a really cool article about it in the New Yorker that you can read in What the Dog Saw and I encourage anyone who cares to peruse through it. Today, the British Prime Minister said he will not support a U.S. led attack after we are presenting evidence of the use of chemical weapons. This time, there is actual evidence. There are pictures of dead birds instead of satellite pictures of mobile WMD manufacturing labs that could also be fire trucks. I remember watching Colin Powel make his case to the U.N. Security council and I couldn’t understand how they knew it was WMD’s in the truck and not Coca Cola or something? Can we really be surprised that England is skeptical of the evidence we are presenting now?

Nevertheless we went ahead with the shock and awe preemptive strike in Iraq. This sent a message to all other countries. Many people put bumper stickers on their cars that said these colors don’t run. Flags were flown out of windows. Everyone was on board. Mess with the best die like the rest. These are the messages we thought we were sending. The real message we sent was we will attack you if we suspect that you have weapons of mass destruction. It doesn’t really matter if you have them or not, we won’t rely on the preponderance of evidence, but on the fear of terrorism instead. The unintended consequence of this is that we gave rouge countries an even greater incentive to make weapons of mass destruction. This is the game theory optimal decision because if you actually have WMD, than you also have the protection of MAD, Mutually Assured Destruction. MAD is the greatest deterrence to preemptive strikes. This is why we were in a cold war with the U.S.S.R. for so long. It is also why the invasion of Iraq has given these countries an incentive to create as many weapons of mass destruction as they can.

This time we are dealing with a country that probably does have chemical weapons. They killed 1300 people with them. We are now talking about attacking them. This will undoubtedly kill more than 1300 people. IF we accidently hit a stockpile of chemical weapons we might even spread more of it around, essentially killing even more civilians with chemical weapons. This will give an incentive for the radical Islam crowd to kill more Americans. To make matters worse, Iran and North Korea have been developing nuclear weapons. Iran is one of Syria’s biggest allies. They’ve probably been working on them for about ten years because they know it doesn’t matter if they don’t have them the U.S. will be willing to strike anyway. So they may as well have them. It’s the game theory optimal strategy against a country willing to use preemptive strikes.

This is a really bad situation and there are no good solutions. If we go to war with Syria over this, we might actually have to destroy them. We might have to destroy other countries too. It’s not so bad when you beat up on a country that doesn’t really have scary shit, but when they do have scary shit they might be willing to use it. I’m not sure if Iran has nukes, but they sure have had incentives to make them these past ten years or so. Chemical weapons in a subway are pretty scary too. Have you seen Breaking Bad? Apparently you can make ricin out of apple seeds. I don’t know if it’s true, but it’s probably not that difficult to make chemical weapons. If we attack them, it’s just a matter of time before they strike back.

Freedom Isn't Free

I have come to the conclusion that I am annoying. I’m okay with that. I’m annoying because I am opinionated. When someone tells me about the Long Island Medium, I tell them she’s a cold reader and Houdini debunked assholes like that almost 100 years ago. Everyone thinks card tricks are cool or it’s nice to transport a coin or two, but when you tell them that psychics are bullshit they get offended because it turns their world view upside down. They want to believe that spirits still communicate with the dead, that their grandmother who’s named started with R because Ruth was popular name for women born around your grandmother’s demographic. Heart disease is the number one cause of death, so when someone picks up an audience member’s reaction to the letter R he or she will say something like “I’m getting the feeling that she had something wrong in this area” pointing to the chest. If the answer is no, then they say I don’t mean heart trouble, maybe she had cancer or something—The second cause leading cause of death. Once the connection is made you get the ahhaaa moment. This dude or dudette correctly picked up on a letter of a name and a disease that the person died from the rest is a cakewalk. The audience member assumes if these things are true then everything else the medium says must also be true. Ruth now says you are going to find love or come into a lot of money, maybe you should be a UPS driver or whatever the hell you tell him or her what your dreams are.

I piss people off because of the Glen Greenwald story about Edward Snowden. Nearly everyone I talk to thinks he’s a traitor or they don’t care. Everyone likes stories about kids coming up to servicemen and thanking them for fighting for their freedom. “Thank a Vet for your freedom,” and you’ll get 20 likes on Facebook.

“United States Armed Forces : Answering the Call to Defend Freedom.” 35 likes

“Freedom isn’t free, Thank you Veterans” 50 likes

“Support our troops,” 75 likes.

“For the freedoms that we enjoy our thanks go to the young men and women serving in all branches of the military. We Salute you!” 100 likes. Day, or Veteran’s Day. Edward Snowden is like Houdini telling people Psychics are bullshit, or hokum as he would have said back then. The United States of America is synonymous with freedom. Our soldiers are getting killed to defend that freedom. When Snowden says the NSA is spying on you what happens to that concept of freedom? Even if you’re not well versed in the bill of rights or the fourth amendment, it sounds like shit the USSR would pull. That doesn’t live up to our expectations of freedom. When we hear about soldiers defending our freedom, it makes us feel good inside.

When a physic tells you that she is receiving a message from your dear dead grandmother that she thinks you should accomplish your dreams of being a UPS driver, you also feel good.

When someone like Snowden tells you that the government that your soldiers are dying for is taking away your freedom, most people don’t know how to process that. It turns their whole world view upside down. They make excuses. “Well…I’m not doing anything wrong.” Glad to hear it, maybe you should petition the government to take away your fifth amendment rights too. Miranda rights are only for criminals. If you don’t like what someone is saying, the first amendment shouldn’t be for those people. We should only have freedom of speech for the people who agree with us. We should only have freedom of religion for people who choose the right religion. While we’re at it, why don’t we start putting military personnel in people’s homes. You support our troops right? Why do we need the third amendment? Who needs speedy trials, we have a military that is defending our freedoms. Let’s lock up people as enemy combatants forever. They’re only alleged terrorists, the government tells me so— They don’t deserve freedom .

We have been so conditioned to love, respect, and honor freedom that we don’t even remember what it is anymore. We just want to feel good about our military defending it. We feel that if we criticize anything about the government than we are trivializing what the military is doing. I don’t feel that way and I bet a lot of people in the military don’t feel that way either. They are sworn to protect the constitution. Many of them even read it.

This is why I am so proud of Edward Snowden, why I consider him a hero. He made sure not to release any secrets that would get anyone killed. He didn’t release this information to terrorists. He released it to a Brittish newspaper, because the first amendment that protects the freedom of the press doesn’t seem so strong either. Edward Snowden is fighting for freedom. He has risked his life, lost his job, and even lost his country to fight for that freedom.

Thank you Edward Snowden for defending our freedom. 0 likes

Pressing the Issues

I have not yet read the article entitled The Bomber: How A Promising Student Was Failed By His Family, Fell Into Radical Islam and Became a Monster. I will go out and get it as soon as possible though. There is a picture going around on Facebook of someone burning a copy of the magazine. Because I am a full fledged supporter of the first amendment, I see nothing wrong with someone expressing their anger by burning the magazine. As a U.S. citizen everyone has the right to burn whatever book or magazine they want. You can burn the Koran, the Bible, or Charlotte’s Web for all I care. You can even burn the American Flag without going to jail. The freedom of speech is one of the greatest rights we have. You can say whatever you want and will not have to go to jail for it. Socially, of course, you can’t say whatever you want, but that’s another story for another day.

The first amendment also guarantees freedom of the press. Dan Carlin said the press is one of the checks and balances of the government. The press is the public check and balance, or at least it was intended to be. We need controversial information out there. We need stories on evil men to see if there is anything we can do to prevent them from doing evil things. This isn’t about giving glory to an asshole. It is about providing high content information to the public.

Article I Section 9, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution: “No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States: and no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.”

We have a constitution that specifically states that we do not grant titles of nobility yet the biggest news story of the week has been the new royal baby. This is the information that the public wants to hear. This is what CNN and Fox News make the most money from. This is a bigger story than the government spying on you in a country that isn’t supposed to respect or recognize nobility. This is a government of the people, by the people and for the people. Our fundamental governing principle is that God does not bestow governmental powers to people, but the people govern themselves.

We aren’t doing a great job of governing ourselves anymore. The government is spying on us and asshole can still bomb the Boston Marathon. I’m a runner I have ran a couple marathons. I am not good enough to qualify for the Boston Marathon, but I want to. I still think the media needs to write the story that the Rolling Stone wrote. We need the press to freely exercise their freedom of speech and come up with more important content and less unimportant baby bump stories.

Top Ramen, Love, and Salad Dressing

I had this epiphany while making breakfast today. I remebered a certain TED Talk and I wanted to watch it again. I Googled "Talks choice." The first video that came up was this Barry Schwarz Ted Talk about the Paradox of Choice.. I have seen the speech before, but I never paid much attention. I just thought it was some wacky guy complaining about how many salad dressings they sell at his local grocery store. I usually shop at Trader Joe’s and they don’t have as many salad dressings because the store is structured towards different clientele and they have less items than the average chain grocery store. I failed to see the bigger point of this video because I am a firm believer in the official dogma. It is so ingrained into my brain, I accept it without question even when presented with evidence to the contrary.

The official dogma was taught to me in grammar school at a time when the Communists were still the enemy. I didn’t know anything about Communism back then other than they did not have freedom and we did. I was told that we had the freedom to choose what career we want to go into and the freedom to buy whatever we want. Communists did not have that same freedom. If someone had the potential to be a gymnastic gold medalist he or she would be forced to be a gymnast. The lack of choice seemed to be the definition of oppression. I never heard the term capitalism until I reached high school. It’s as if freedom (eg. freedom of choice) became a euphemism for capitalism.

I also like capitalism, especially laissez-faire. This is the form of economics I have come to love and admire the most because of the philosophy I read and just because it makes the most sense to me. I don’t want to digress and get into a big socio-economic debate, but I see these choices as a quick fix for a lot of things. This is not to say I do not recognize the problems of crony capitalism, et cetera, but I think I am primed to love choice. In a way freedom is about choice. Some people want the freedom to smoke marijuana and others want the freedom to their own bodies. They want to be able to make a choice. This is the essence of freedom.

I also like the fact that there are a lot of salad dressings and so many different varieties of mustard. An article that Malcolm Gladwell wrote for the New Yorker tells a story about the man who is responsible for all of this choice Americans have. He makes the case that we are happier because of this one man. HE even has his own Ted Talk about him. His name is Howard Moskowitz. You can watch Malcolm Gladwell’s TED Talk if you don’t have a handy copy of What the Dog Saw handy. The TED Talk is entitled Choice, happiness and spaghetti sauce. Moskowitz is essentially responsible for all of the choice you have at the grocery store. He is famous for making different varieties of diet soda and spaghetti sauce and according to the official dogma this makes us happy. Malcolm Gladwell is one of my favorite authors so I have an innate bias towards him. I tend to believe anything he says although there has been some notable exceptions. The Korean airplane crash that happened a few weeks ago, Malcolm Gladwell wrote about the reasons why Korean pilots are more likely to crash than American pilots in his book Outliers. Sometimes you can look at his writing and almost believe he is a prophet—That’s how good Gladwell is. Malcom Gladwell makes a case for the official Dogma. “The way to maximize freedom is the way to maximize choice.” Since Malcolm Gladwell writes closest thing I have to religious text since sliced bread with images of the Virgin Mary burned into it as it toasted, I obviously had a proclivity to believe Gladwell and the official dogma that he reinforced. In other words I totally bought into the idea that the abundance of choice is the key to happiness. I don’t think that’s really the case anymore. The choice between salad dressings, spaghetti sauce, and “Pepsis” is a rather minor one. I’m the type of person who usually makes a quick decision and once I like something I stick with it. I believe that there is a best decision and I am confident that I can make that decision. This probably has a lot to do with playing poker and choosing one line over another. There is always the most optimal line. If I decide check raising the turn is better than check raising the flop is better because one of my opponents is more likely to fold to the bigger bet on the turn than he would be to fold to the smaller raise on the flop—I check raise the turn. If he calls and sucks out on me, then I just go ahead and lose my chips. I don’t second guess myself. I think in terms of percentages. That play would have worked 85% of the time so I never mind what happens the other 15% of the time. When I go to the grocery store and Pepsi products are on sale I always get Diet Mountain Dew because I like it. I don’t ever think…Maybe I would rather have Cherry/Grape/Strawberry/Pepto Bismol flavored Sierra Mist instead.

The abundance of choice, according to Barry Schwartz “… produces paralysis rather than liberation. With so many options to choose from, people find it very difficult to choose at all.” Maybe I don’t have this problem with salad dressing or Pepsi products, but at some point everyone is faced with this dilemma. The great thing about salad dressing is that It’s cheap. If you don’t like one, you can just buy another. Over along enough time span virtually everyone can afford to try every single salad dressing at the grocery store. You can afford to try every Pepsi and Coke product at some point in your life. The decisions get more difficult when you buy a car. Let’s say you have always had a dream to buy a certain car. Assuming this car is the Nissan Versa, which it may not be you go to the dealership and buy a shiny new black Nissan Versa with tinted windows. You’re ecstatic for about a week. You drive around town and notice all the cool people who bought cool new Nissan Versas. You even notice the old Nissan Versas that don’t have all the cool new features that your Versa has, but then one day you drive passed another Nissan Versa. It’s brand new too, you can tell because it still doesn’t have the license plates. This is a White Nissan Versa with tinted windows. Now you think…hmmm…maybe I should have bought that color instead. You’re less satisfied with your decision even though it is your dream car.

Of course we finally must make a choice at some point. You have to choose black or white, orange or gray. Barry says “We end up less satisfied with the choice than we would be if we had fewer options to choose from.” This anecdote about the cars is an excellent example of this. Even though the Nissan Versa is the cheapest car money can buy, it’s not like salad dressing. Most people can’t afford to buy all the colors of the car their hearts desire. Even if they could, it really wouldn’t matter much. Is the person really going to be that much happier with the white car vs. the black car?

The reason I bring this up is because I had an epiphany while I made my breakfast this morning. I’ve been trying to eat really healthy lately. I have egg whites or oatmeal for breakfast most mornings. I eat a chicken sandwich with no cheese for lunch and I’ve been cutting out the chips and try to eat carrots instead. Then try to eat a kale or romaine lettuce chicken salad for dinner. After a while, I get sick of it and I went to the grocery store hungry and bought Cheetos and Top Ramen. I know Top Ramen is like the Nissan Versa of food, but I really like it. I think my body craves the sodium because every so often I am compelled to buy the MSG salty goodness of ramen noodles. This tends to happen more during the summer and probably has something to do with me running in 100 degree weather. A healthier option would probably be to drink Gatorade or pick up some salt tablets at the local running store, but don’t judge me. I like three flavors of Top Ramen: beef, chicken, and oriental. For some reason today I pulled roast beef flavored Top Ramen out of my cupboard. The Stater Brothers on Colton in Redlands just had a grand re-opening because of their remodel. I don’t know if I grabbed the roast beef because it was in the wrong spot or just because I was so discombobulated I just wasn’t paying attention. Anyway, it’s just Top Ramen it’s not as if I went to some fancy steak house and ordered filet mignon and got a salad instead. I noticed two things. First of all, beef is better than roast beef. Secondly, roast beef isn’t that bad. I could live with it. I didn’t have to go rinse my mouth out with Listerine to get rid of the taste. That’s when I had an epiphany. This isn’t about Top Ramen. This isn’t about consumerism. Barry Schwartz’s TED Talk isn’t about 175 fucking salad dressings. A times B times C equals X as Chuck Palahniuk would say. When my parents were on the prowl, they had to go to a bar and my dad had to drink enough liquid courage to overcome his apprehension anxiety just to say hi to my mom. Now dating is much different. Most relationships start online now. You can find anything you want online. There are websites dedicated to people who have balloon popping and ball breaking fetishes. It’s very unlikely that these people will find their soul mate at the average bar. You can come up with a check list of common interests and send an email to thousands of women. Nearly every single person under 45 is on an online dating site. Actually they’re on several. Not only do you have to choose when you want to get married, but you have to choose where you want to meet someone. Match, E-harmony, OkCupid, Plenty of Fish, Zoosk, Farmersonly.com, Christian Mingle, J-date, Athiestpersonals.net, Fetlife, Yahoo Personals…The list goes on and on. I wouldn’t be able to list ever single one.

This is the new normal. With the magic of online dating, you get to search for all of the qualities you want in a partner and you are much more likely to find the needle in the haystack you have been looking for your whole life. There’s just one problem. There are a lot of needles and the haystack doesn’t seem so big anymore. My friend Raph says true love lasts ‘till next Thursday. I don’t really like this cynical evaluation of true love. I don’t even really like the concept of true love. It makes it seem like it’s some mystic supernatural being outside of the earthly realm. One day cupid bestows this mystic magical feeling on an unsuspecting victim. There’s something funny about loves mystical power. So often, that love fades away. As my friend would say, it lasts ‘till next Thursday. As much as I’d hate to admit it, he’s right. “True Love” lasts till next Thursday in the same way you start to doubt the color of car you chose. This true love that everyone thinks is something mystical power outside of them, that doesn’t last. That’s just some increased dopamine and some oxytocin. The NRE (new relationship energy) quickly decapitates. As I was eating my Roast beef Top Ramen, I realized that love is a choice. You can choose to love someone and you can choose to stop loving that person just the same. I’m not saying this is true love, but it is romantic love. You can choose to fall in love with anyone and you can choose to fall out of love with anyone. The problem we are faced with now is that there are too many choices. These choices have an opportunity cost. At the tip of my fingers, I can date someone who looks like Marilyn Monroe or I can choose to date someone who looks like Bettie Page. I could choose to fall in love with both of them, but I must make a decision. Maybe I’ll choose Bettie and then start to regret that decision because the girl who looks like Marilyn Monroe is really hot and I’ll start to think I should have developed a relationship with her. Then maybe Bettie Page will start to realize that I’m not perfect just like everyone else and she’ll want to date someone who looks like James Dean. She’ll start to think what the hell am I doing with this guy? He looks like Ricky Martin. I’m using shallow examples, but really there are really much heavier things to base decisions on. Does Marilyn Monroe want to have kids? What are her religious beliefs? Does she snowboard? Can she get into an argument without throwing dishes?

If love is a choice, one must choose wisely if the goal is to have a long term committed relationship. The odds of a marriage lasting till death do us part are a coin flip at best. A second marriage has about a 40% success rate. These odds make the choices that much more difficult. Not only are you risking heartbreak, but you can also potentially risk financial ruin. People are always telling me how they don’t gamble and they don’t understand how I can play poker so much. Putting a couple hundred dollars on a poker table is gambling to them. Getting married isn’t. At some point you have to learn to recognize that they are both forms of gambling. You need to put your money in when you have the best of it and protect it when you don’t. The trick is to look at it rationally and realize that you have millions of choices. Make that choice to the best of your ability. The grass is always greener on the other side, but now we can see everyone’s lawn on Google maps and there are always at least 50 shades of green nearby. It’s really easy to be disillusioned, but the first step is to realize it. Once you realize this, you can make your choice wisely and you won’t have to regret your eventual decision.

Barry Schwartz TED Talk:

Malcolm Gladwell TED Talk:

Droning On

I'm not a fan of Rand Paul for a lot of reasons, but I agree with him on the issue of drones. It’s something that needs to be talked about. I'm necessarily against the use of drones of any kind however. Like it or not, drones exist and they are here to stay. The way that our executive branch of government uses this technology will set the precedence for future presidents to use the technology. When McCain for instance says it is crazy to think the government will use it to kill unarmed citizens (I'm paraphrasing) well it may be for now, but who's to say that will be the case in 50 years?

If we use the drones to collect information, we have to be comfortable with other countries eventually collecting information on us. I am okay with that trade off and it may be an acceptable use of drones. IF we use them for surveillance on someone after a warrant has been issued—I’m okay with that as well. Just naming someone an enemy combatant however, just circumvents the constitution and that is the bigger issue that needs to be addressed regarding American citizens. Perhaps an American citizen should not ever be allowed to be declared an enemy combatant without a trial. That would solve a lot of drone problems, as well as future problems that may arise with ever increasing technology.

If we use drones to kill unarmed people in other countries, we have to be prepared for other countries using drones to kill unarmed people in this country within the next 10-15 years. You can be against the police actions the U.S. has taken, but the fact remains that we do have enemies. If drones can be made by the U.S. then they can certainly and clandestinely be made by countries like Saudi Arabia or North Korea. These drones may not be as sophisticated as our drones, but they still will make the perfect suicide bomber. The short term view taken by our government is what bothers me the most. Today I saw that North Korea wants to make a "preemptive" nuclear attack on the United States. It is unlikely that the country has the technology to do this now, but they clearly will have it within the next five to ten years. Like it or not, we are the example for the world to follow.

What bothered me most about the Iraq war was that making preemptive strikes against a country for allegedly having WMD will set a precedent for another country to execute preemptive strikes. It also gave a strong incentive for countries without weapons of mass destruction to get them as fast as possible because we essentially sent the message that you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t.

We have created a situation where mutually assured destruction is the only viable way of preventing invasion—a proverbial monster.

If we use drones to kill terrorists in other countries, drones will become the next terrorists. It’s only a matter of time. If we use drones to kill U.S. Citizens without regard to the fourth, fifth, sixth, or eighth amendments… then they already are terrorists.

Unconventional Wisdom

There is a lot of talk these days about gun control. I won’t reiterate them because I’m sure you’ve all heard them. I want to make it perfectly clear that the mass shootings of 2012 were tragic and to I was depressed for about two days after the Sandy Hook shooting. Evil is the only way to describe these diabolical individuals. I do not wish to make light of these tragedies or offend anyone by what I am about to say. I could not imagine losing my own child in such a despicable way and could not even begin to understand what those parents and the loved ones of the adults are going through. I can not say with certainty that I know how to stop people like that, and if there is a way to keep mentally deranged people from obtaining even zip guns, I’m all for it. So when I say this, please do not think of me as a heartless bastard. I'm just pointing out alot of the things that never get mentioned after incidents like these, unconventional wisdom: 44 people were murdered as a result of the four mass murders in 2012.(I subtracted the suicides) It would take at least 7 seven round magazines to accomplish this, two thirty round magazines or one with 50 or more magazines. I looked at the FBI stats, something called the Unified Crime Reports a.ka.a. UCR The stats are not available for 2012 yet, but in 2011 there were a total of 12664 homicides in the united states. 393 of those were classified as justifiable homicides. 8583 of those were committed with firearms. This means that 32.3% of all of those murders were commit ed without firearms. (4081 homicides) about 93 times the amount of homicides caused by the mass shootings in 2012. 869 were committed with personal weapons. The FBI describes this as hands, fists, feet, etc. The next time you see someone get in a fight, remember that about 20 times more people died from that reason then were killed by the heartless bastard motherfucking mass shooters of 2012 in the previous year. There is a problem with violence in this country. A lot of it is caused by our cultural norms. We need to instill the idea in people that it is not okay to initiate force when you get in an argument. It is not okay to kill your wife or husband if you find her fucking someone else, or punch someone if he calls you an asshole. These problems have much more difficult answers then limiting rounds in magazines or banning “ assault rifles.” http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded-offense-data

Book report

Lately I’ve been reading a lot of poker books, but in high school I read a lot of literature. I didn’t read things like the Great Gatsby or Sense and Sensibility. I preferred Tropic of Cancer. Tropic of Cancer is an awesomely filthy book. Who wants to read about the 50 shades of Gray when you can read about Henry Miller’s escapades with one legged hookers or how his Indian friend took a shit in the bidet of a whorehouse? It’s racist, it’s sexist—he calls one of the characters, Tania, an international cunt. I used to tell people this was my favorite book and hardly anyone ever heard of it. “What’s it about?” They would invariably ask. I used to say I don’t know. This guy goes to Paris…he’s an ex patriot and he wrote a book that changed the censorship laws in America. That’s not what it’s about though. It’s about sex mostly, but it’s more than that. It’s a book about a working class man trying to become a writer. Actually he is a writer. Trying isn’t the right word. “A year ago, six months ago, I thought I was an artist. I no longer think about it. I am.” Over the summer I read the book again. It’s amazing how much stuff I missed before because I wasn’t literate enough to understand it. I’ve had that line memorized for years, but I don’t think I fully understood it until recently. The book is chock full of vocabulary candy. The first time I read it, I had no idea what half the words meant. I didn’t know what a valise was. I didn’t know the meaning of “polysyllabic” or “indefatigable.” No one uses the word “quim” anymore either. Back then I had to have the dictionary besides me just to translate the book so I missed a lot of the subtle nuances. Reading a book like this when you are older is such a different experience. My vocabulary is more extensive and even if I come across a word I don’t understand all I have to do is touch it and the definition instantaneously appears like magic. I now know that “I am” is the shortest sentence in the English language. It is also the English translation of the name of god. Yahweh is I am. His Indian friend takes a bath every Sunday so he can please the great I am. I’m paraphrasing because I don’t feel like going back and finding the passage, but it’s things like that that really stick out when you read it again with a 34 or 35 year old brain as opposed to the brain of a horny virgin teenager. One of my favorite parts of the book is a monologue by Van Norden. It’s a rant about sex and poverty. It’s so different from the way I remember it. I thought it was a great ode to manliness. I admired the way this guy had such a way with women. I was wrong. “I had a married woman the other day who told me she hadn’t had a lay for six months. Can you imagine that? Jesus, she was hot! I thought she’d tear the cock off me. And groaning all the time. “Do you? Do you?” She kept saying that all the time, like she was nuts. And do you know what that bitch wanted to do? She wanted to move in here. Imagine that! Asking me if I loved her. I didn’t even know her name. I never know their names… I don’t want to. The married ones! Christ, if you saw all the married cunts I bring up here you’d never have any more illusions. They’re worse than the virgins, the married ones. They don’t wait for you to start things – they fish it out for you themselves. And then they talk about love afterwards. It’s disgusting. I tell you, I’m actually beginning to hate cunt!” I have a different perspective. There is another line where Van Norden says he would rather read a book than have sex(more colorfully of course) When I was young I thought that was hilarious. Now, from the perspective of this age, it is one of the most melancholy stories I have ever heard. Sex is something I used to think of as a wonderful expression of love between a man and a woman. It was supposed to be the joining of souls, not in any supernatural sense. The soul I am referring to is the soul of consciousness. The soul is between your ears. Everything I value, everything I am meeting in the middle with a woman who shares the same values.—the romantic ideal. This was real easy to think before I ever had sex, especially as the proverbial late bloomer. Now it just seems like a biological need. It’s lost the romance. I’ve become so cynical. You say what you need to say, do what you need to do to cum. You always hear how everybody doesn’t like to play games, but when you don’t play the game and are genuinely honest—it makes you look needy or desperate. The same thing happened to me when I re-read The love song of Alfred J. Prufrock. In High School I remember it reminding me of my favorite nostalgic memory of going to Philippe’s after the Dodger game because it says something about sawdust on the floor. Now another couple lines stick out: I grow old…I grow old… I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. I don’t feel that old, but I understand the poem a lot more now. He’s a dude that is afraid of rejection, has trouble with women and is a little down on himself because his hair is graying and he has a bald spot. I put a lot of water based pomade in my hair and it’s starting to get thin. I cuff my jeans. I have always been out of fashion, mostly on purpose. It sucks getting older. The problem with Prufrock is that he gives a fuck. I used to give a fuck, now I don’t—this is what I keep telling myself. People are always asking me for advice about women. I don’t know if I’m qualified to give any advice. I guess my advice comes down to this: You don’t want to be afraid of rejection like Prufrock. Yes you should dare goddamn it! What you don’t want to do is become misogynistic cynic like Van Norden, fucking away all the meaning out of life. Reading that book again really affected me. It changed my perspective, again.