teh Mexigogue

My favorite scene from “The Big Lebowski” was when The Dude’s longtime friend died and was cremated. The low end vase for the remains was $200 and The Dude was seen remarking how expensive that was. The next scene shows him preparing to scatter the ashes in the ocean, saying a short eulogy and holding his friend’s remains in a Folgers can. Seeing this movie is just one more benefit I got from my Texas trip as I’m one of those people who keeping saying I’m going to watch something but never get around to it. No more BS, Phelps put the DVD in and said “watch!”

As I mentioned before when I was in San Angelo I found the copy of the San Angelo Standard Times where my 10th grade essay was printed in 1987. Getting a copy of that was a high priority for me because I wanted to see how much my ideas and writing styles have changed since then. The gravamen of my argument was that when a person or entity attains power unchecked it becomes a threat to freedom.

If you notice socialists hate Hitler because he is a threat to their security (he’s gonna take our shit and interrupt our business which is taking other people’s shit). Individualists hate Hitler because he is a threat to freedom and property rights. Socialists aren’t really mad at Hitler on those accounts. If they valued freedom and property rights they wouldn’t be socialists. Their whole idea is, after all, the will of the many overriding the rights of the few.

I’ve often wondered how much my political ideas have changed from back then and how many ideas I have held from the start. On May 14, 1987 on my criticism of Hitler I specifically cited the threat to freedom. I can’t prove it because I promptly lost my copy of the article but trust me because if you don’t I’m going to BURY A HATCHET IN YOUR SKULL!!!

If my cousin gets the article for me again I’ll post the text on the blog. It’s kind of embarassing however as it was a first draft. I didn’t edit at all back then, not even for a semester final (or whatever they called that at Central High School.)

I would write more but I think that last paragraph was enough bait. I’m just going to sit here now with the string connected to the stick that’s holding the box up and see if anybody bites. I’ve got nothing better to do.

Rice wine. We know you can’t see it but it was there. . .

Nachos and Shiner Beer (that was a different restaurant and a different meal obviously). Eat your heart out HMT!!! MUHUHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAAA!!

And this was cool. At some point I’m going to have to start writing about it. But right now these pics will have to do.

Too much to possibly write about right now but I will say this: I didn’t get any pu$$y but I think my reaction timing is just off. Hung out with Phelps and his brother at a Japanese place where we got the sake in (will post that at a later date) afterwhich we hung out at this nightspot that is more upscale than I am used to which is refreshing as I didn’t have to watch out for the hoboes coming at me with broken bottles . Anyway after the innumerable glasses of sake we got the beers in at this other place and eventually called it a night. They dropped me back off at the hotel and as soon as I got to my room I was suddenly un-drunk which is amazing considering how much I had drank. I checked my eyes in the mirror just to be sure and I was ok so I immediately called a cab and went straight out to the same place.

Back at the bar I grabbed another Shiner (Texas beer of invented by German immigrants more than a hundred years ago for those of y’all who don’t know.) As I sat there at the bar this table of well dressed 20-something people were all abuzz about something. I turned to look and this nice looking chick was holding the bottom of her shirt like she was going to flash her tits but she kept looking around. She was about to do it but each time she saw me looking she changed her mind. I heard her say “I can’t that guy will see.” I smiled and shouted out “It’s all right, I’m from Michigan, you’ll never see me again!” She was like “No waay, where from in Michigan!?” I say “Lansing!” She says “Oh my God, I’m from Flint!!!”

This hot chick comes over and immediately gives me a hug like we go years back. I talk to her for about five minutes but suddenly her party is departing and I totally forget to hit on her. Actually I did remember but it was only as their vehicle was pulling away. I thought to chase the car down the street like a dog until they would lose sight of me but I think no that would be too forward. I order another Shiner.

I can’t begin to describe hanging out with teh Phelps. That’s for another post. Dallas/Fort Worth was even more fun than I thought it would be.

I’ll also have to post about my adventures ordering breakfast at a place where no one spoke English. That also is for another day.

By fools, I’m on my last day in the Lone Star State. WOOT!!!

They’re everywhere. . . People who are dumb but do not know it. People who are exceptionally bad at something and keep right on plugging along, oblivious to the fact that that other people are jamming fingers in their ears at their singing, cringing at their jokes, or shaking their heads at their pool shots. I don’t mean just kind of bad. I mean people who fall into the bottom 15th percentile of something and bop around like they’re good enough to be consultants at their particular area of “skill.”

I saw some jackass pool nonplayer giving Ramiro Sanchez advice on a shot last night. For those who don’t know, last I checked Ramiro had either the highest or the second highest BCA league average in Lansing. This guy will play nine ball and rape his opponent of thousands, sending his opponent home with nothing but lint in his pockets. So some guy was giving him advice on a shot last night and I saw Ramiro poitely “listening”. If I was him I would have been like “Look, I’m Ramiro Sanchez. if I need advice on how to sit there and be an incompetent jackass, I’ll come to you. Now get away from me so I can shoot.”

This brought to mind a study that Phelps hipped me to about the quandry of the incompenent. The gist of the article is that people who are incompetent tend to overestimate themselves because the skills they lack are the very ones they would need to correctly judge their level of competence. While this concept is funny in and of itself, it also goes a long way to explaining why people who are incredibly bad at something tend to not know it. But not only do the incompetent tend to be unaware of it, people who excel at a given skill tend to understimate their ability, partially due to a false consensus effect, which is to say they believe since the skill is so easy for them that many others must find the skill similarly easy.

The big question posed by this study was why people who are grossly inept do not realize it from repeated failures in real life situations. The questions is addressed as follows:

One puzzling aspect of our results is how the incompetent fail, through life experience, to learn that they are unskilled. This is not a new puzzle. Sullivan, in 1953 , marveled at “the failure of learning which has left their capacity for fantastic, self-centered delusions so utterly unaffected by a life-long history of educative events” (p. 80). With that observation in mind, it is striking that our student participants overestimated their standing on academically oriented tests as familiar to them as grammar and logical reasoning. Although our analysis suggests that incompetent individuals are unable to spot their poor performances themselves, one would have thought negative feedback would have been inevitable at some point in their academic career. So why had they not learned?

One reason is that people seldom receive negative feedback about their skills and abilities from others in everyday life ( Blumberg, 1972 ; Darley & Fazio, 1980 ; Goffman, 1955 ; Matlin & Stang, 1978 ; Tesser & Rosen, 1975 ). Even young children are familiar with the notion that “if you do not have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” Second, the bungled robbery attempt of McArthur Wheeler not withstanding, some tasks and settings preclude people from receiving self-correcting information that would reveal the suboptimal nature of their decisions ( Einhorn, 1982 ). Third, even if people receive negative feedback, they still must come to an accurate understanding of why that failure has occurred. The problem with failure is that it is subject to more attributional ambiguity than success. For success to occur, many things must go right: The person must be skilled, apply effort, and perhaps be a bit lucky. For failure to occur, the lack of any one of these components is sufficient. Because of this, even if people receive feedback that points to a lack of skill, they may attribute it to some other factor ( Snyder, Higgins, & Stucky, 1983 ; Snyder, Shenkel, & Lowery, 1977 ).

This is the most revealing part of the whole study. People who are terrible are more apt to cite extraneous factors than blame their actual ability. I didn’t throw a bad pass. It was “the wind.” Okay. Shut up.

That last part is why I tend to take responsibility for all my weaknesses and not blame oustide causes. I think that’s why when people say “good luck” before a pool game, I’ll either answer that I don’t believe in luck or I’ll say luck is a superstition. If I am the cause, then I have no one else to blame for the effect. I take credit for my wins and if you beat me I’ll take responsibility for the loss and I’ll say good game. Then I’ll go home and make a voodoo doll of you and stab the shit out of it! But deep down inside, I’ll know I messed up.

Here is an update picture after one month of beginning an excercise routine. Out of like 12 pictures snapped this is the best one so that means in my other ones I’m even uglier than this. Note, this is not a correct fighting stance, I was fighting against a crippled kid and I was trying to lure him into an attack so I could counter. As you can see I haven’t gotten thin yet (metabolism takes a couple weeks of steady cardio to kick in) but I’m getting muscles. I’m a wrecking machine!!! LOOK OUT HANDICAPS!!!!

insurgent#1: I don’t have the heart for this anymore. This isn’t working, we’re spinning our wheels for no reason, all is lost. I’m going to quit.

insurgent#2: If you quit now you’ll dissapoint all your loyal fans.

insurgent#1: What fans? We’ve been killing our own civilians. The regular Iraqis hate us.

insurgent #2: I’m not talking about the Iraqis. I’m talking about the Americans.

insurgent #1: The Americans??

insurgent #2: We have many fans on the American left. Militarily we have had our asses handed to us. Our conventional war machine has been dismantled, our dictator has been taken down, and our government has been replaced all with a minimum of American losses. George Bush has proven to a be a formidible foe and the American military is mighty. But all the while our fans on the American left have championed our cause, they have disparaged every American victory and exaggerated every one of ours. They call their President a n00b and they tell their administration they are p@wn3d. All because the candidate they preferred was not elected President. They would rather lose the war than to see George Bush succeed.

insurgent #1: (stunned silence) . . . . . .They want to lose?? Are they fucking RETARDS??

insurgent #2: Yes (nodding solemnly), they are.

insurgent #1: How do you know these things?

insurgent #2: I’ve seen their websites.

insurgent #1: This is inexplicable

insurgent #2: Not quite. Remember how the Qur’an says that in the battle of Badr Allah sent down angels to assist the Muslims and they were victorious over an overwhelming force? Well it seems this time that Allah has sent down not Angels but Shayateen (Devils). Only He’s sent them to the other side.

insurgent #1: OMFG! Unbelievable

insurgent #2: Yes, the greatest military machine the world has ever known is going to fail and it’s going to be because of our cheerleaders. A nagging wife can destroy even the will of a champion.

insurgent #1: This news gladdens my heart and strengthens my resolve. Give my regards to our American fans. I’m going to kill some Americans!

Aiden commented that it is evident that Dubya is stupid and that the US has become the laughingstock of the world. But is Dubya really stupid? Think about it:

I quote UNLV from half a year ago when we were debating prisoner of war ethics:

This war is being fought for the same reasons all American wars since the revolutionary war have been about, American financial and economic interests.

With this in mind, let us go from the presumption that the President was looking to take out Sadaam from the moment he stepped into office, not to avenge his daddy, not to make his friends rich, but because he thought it was in the best interests of the US to take out a middle eastern regime that would not play ball (so to speak) with the US. 9/11 happens providing a convenient pretext for getting the nation riled up and all set to fight. Why not take that opportunity to take out Sadaam?

Sure, the weapons of mass destruction angle was deceitful, but if that’s the case that doesn’t make Dubya stupid, it makes him Machiavellian, more shrewd than Bill Clinton ever was. The prevailing wisdom here is that if you put the smack down on the worst problem child in the class, the rest of the class falls into line. President Reagan did precisely this when Ghadaffi tried to jump bad. If the Libyan dictator would have shown he could defy the US and get away with it then other regimes might have gotten ideas. Reagan was like I got one for your ass, I’ll bomb your house! How you like me now? Ghadaffi chilled the fuck out after that. Reagan kept a lid on things because of the threat of force.

Although I’m not a fan of American intervention into predominately Muslim countries, neither am I a fan of either Ghaddafi or Saddam so I can gloat at these things and I can see the wisdom of the occasional pimp slap. If you slap one ho and the other ten fall into line, is that not the mark of a wise man? So why do people keep insisting that Dubya is dumb? Call him any other name but he is succeeding in his aims. He has won a second term in a divided country, he is accomplishing his foreign policy goals, and he has done so without having to capitulate to either Europe or the UN. These are not easy tasks and his ability to do so is not the mark of a dumb man.

He’s also lied about the motives of the Iraqi resistance. “They hate our freedom.” No, that’s not the case and he knows it. They are fighting because they don’t want to be occupied, no more than we here in the US would want to be occupied by an outside force. But he says they hate our freedom precisely because he knows that the general population here is just dumb enough to buy that argument. Again, that is not the mark of dumb man. Evil perhaps, if you value truth above all else, or good if you view US interests as trumping anything else, but in the end anything but dumb.

“He’s not good at public speaking!” Well neither am I. And on top of that I will tell you that UNLV cannot spell worth a lick. But it’s not because he’s dumb. It’s because he doesn’t care about spelling or it’s the manifestation of repressed sexual issues. But he knows his shit. Believe that.

The real question now is whether Bush is going to spend the next four years consolidating these gains or is he going to get liebenstraum happy and invade Czechloslovakia and Poland next. What happens next will either solidify his legacy as one of the great movers and shakers of the modern era or will expose him as the loose cannon cowboy that the rest of the world thinks he is. We’ll all be watching.

Michigan has had record heat this year so I’m pretty much acclimated and not bothered by the Texas heat. Played tennis at high noon yesterday under the burning West Texas sun. I didn’t die. I’ve made sure to stay hydrated with Gatorade and bottled water. I can’t drink this West Texas water. Too nasty. I made a point to go to Whatburger yesterday for the first time in about 25 years. Good stuff. I was about to hit on the girl behind the counter but then her boyfriend came in so I didn’t. Thuggish looking baldheaded guy. I hate those types (me excepted of course).

My cousins have been awesome. We’ve been to approximately a billion different bars. I even had some ugly chick take my picture in one of them. I took her picture as well. She was much nicer looking when I was drinking beer.

I’m going to see if I can find on microfilm the edition of the San Angelo Standard Times where they printed the essay which won the contest for 10th graders in the city of San Angelo. The subject was the use and abuse of power. Speaking of which Leroy’s I’m not through with you yet. I’m taking my Leroy’s shirt to Dallas so Phelps can murder it with his arsenal. This is perhaps the most important part of my mission, due to arrive in Dallas on Wednesday.

I wish I could have brought my children. My cousin Ismael’s children remind me of them. I think they would get along famously. God willing I will bring mine next summer. San Angelo is becoming more diverse and cosmopolitan (or at least Red Book). In a couple years this place will even be liveable.

Most post and edit this, I’m running out of time at this public library terminal. Out.

This is an old story but nobody knows about it but me and perhaps Sir Courvoisier so it’s new to the rest of y’all. Here goes:

Back in 1996 when I was new to the internet, I used to use my roomate’s AOL account and jump on the Islam Beliefs chatroom all the time and have theological tussles of all kinds, usually arguing with Jewish or Christian trolls who came into the chat room to start debates. This was all good and fun and I got to know pretty well how best to debate with each group. I used to think the born again Christians were the most annoying to debate until I came upon a sect calling themselves Nuwaubians.
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