Big Game Hunters

We've recently begun this new theory. Or rather, just a comparison. We like comparisons.

You can define a guy's dating style by assigned them animals. I probably don't need to explain further but I will. For example, we know a friend who has the (girl-)hunting style of a cheetah. Once he sees something he likes, he takes off running; tirelessly chasing (obsessing) until she exhausts herself. Then he catches up to her and suffocates her to death -- or into a relationship -- with a clench to the throat. The suffocation is necessary because the cheetah's jaws aren't strong enough to break the neck of the prey it hunts. That's one style.

Another one is the pack hunter, like a wolf or a killer whale. This guy needs his group to surround and envelope the "kill." Working in concert with a bunch of friends (often unknowingly), this hunter can strike from the blind-side and get dates by exclusively working with teammates.

Then we have the tiger. Designed for camouflage, powerful weapons of destruction, and always works alone. Hum, I wonder who that could be? The possibilities here are endless.

Of course, we also have the flip side. If men are animals -- instinctive dumb ones at that -- then what are females? Vegetation! Beautiful flowering plants if you prefer. Since most women are generally the chasee, it makes total illogical sense to assign them the stationary plant role. But it can get so much more complicated since plants are really predators too.

We all know about the cactus girl who's initially hard to get close to but then opens up after exposing her soft underbelly. Or the woman who charms by dazzlingly displaying her wares for all the world to see. Then there's the meantime girl, who can best be assigned the plant value of moss, hanging ivy, or weeds. Often it comes down to not "Why" in these cases but "Why not?"

Comparisons for roses, palm trees, and poppies are easily made for the females I know. And don't even get me started on venus fly traps, pitcher plants, and things of that ilk. "Girls are smart, don't throw yourselves at them!"

While this can't be the most original comparison point of all time, it sure is amusing when applied to your friends. Well, at least it's amusing to me.

Alternately, we had used the plant cycle of life to describe how a certain person patterns their dating life. Some people are evergreens, constantly dating; some are seasonal, blooming only spring or summer. And oh those perennials: live and die by the sword of love but always coming back for more. Some people date so rarely -- seemingly every three thousand years like the mythical udumbara -- or so quickly that it seems like whole relationships blossom and falter in just a few days (a corpse flower relationship).

?uestlove

Here's a list of questions a friend recently asked me:

a. Do you feel successful?
b. Do you feel fulfilled?
c. Do you feel bored?
d. Do you feel influential?
e. "In life, one must choose between boredom and suffering." Do you agree with this?
f. How do you measure success?

She requested "Yes/No" answers because she's traveling in Peru or something. Which leads me to believe that she's pondering these same questions herself. Keep in mind that she's hardly on a quarter-life crisis expedition. She's well on her way to graduating from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton. Her first week on campus, she saw John Nash shuffling around. Yeah, he of the Beautiful Mind.

By many standards of traditional success, this particular friend is well on her way to a fulfilling and important life. This is after meandering her way from a liberal arts degree to a possible fine arts career, to hosting a NPR-style radio show in Taiwan. Life pushes you in funny directions but it always comes back to the same questions doesn't it?

Most of my conversations with Mary revolve around defining and finding happiness. I'm a puzzle to her because I'm consistently happy while also consistently achieving nothing. She's a go-getter who consistently achieves but is never consistently satisfied -- forcing her to reflect every step of the way.

Now that we're both "doing something," it seems like we're coming ever closer to achieving the Five Points of Success (Career, Friendship, Relationship, Health, General Happiness). But it hardly seems much different than before.

Many times, people assume you're doing well because your paper life is doing well. Great job, fulfilling relationship, wonderful friends, happy, etc. But many times, despite outward appearances, nothing's right at all.

Here's my question: Which would you rather have? Help or self-help?

The Funnies

Went to the Ice House to watch Brian perform last night. First things first, it's not easy to be a stand-up comedian. Think about it. You're in front of an audience trying to convince them that you're worth their time. Looking at the modes of persuasion blog from a few days ago, a stand-up comedian rarely has any of those three factors going for him off the bat. In fact, the crowd is more likely to be against you than be neutral.

If ever there was a measure of a man (or woman), stand-up must be one of them. Having said that, Brian did a very good job. He's funny. Yes folks, he's funny. Having only seen three of the other nine comedians performing, it's unfair for me to say that he was the funniest but he definitely wasn't the unfunniest. I mean, he didn't move all this way out here to pursue comedy and not be funny. Here's the video of his set, he easily got the most laughs per minute from the night.

I'd imagine it's hard to even aspire to be a comedian. I mean, the sheer mystery of how the comedy scene works and how to succeed in it would be a huge hurdle for me. What are the steps that turn one into a success? What does a successful comedian look like? I mean, it's that way with any artistic pursuit you're trying to turn into a vocation. You start to wonder what it takes to make X amount of money. It's no longer about the art but how to monetize that art.

You can write, dance, sing, stand-up, gyrate, or paint all day and be the best at it but you'll be nowhere without an audience. Like Brian mentioned as we ate tacos after the show, he didn't realize how much self-promotion it takes to get ahead. And it's true. You're not selling your talent, you're selling yourself to people. Big difference.

The general public is hardly capable of judging an artist based on artistic merit. People could care less if someone is original or not; they just want to be entertained. Getting booked for gigs mainly comes down to how many butts you can get in seats. Who cares if you suck? If you can get a thousand people to watch you suck, you're a success! It's not even about selling out; it's about trying to eat and pay rent.

I, myself, can't wait to sell out. It's one thing to appreciate art but quite another to capably create it. Cream rises to the top but (other people's) money stays put unless you go grab it.

10 Things I Hate About You

1. No instant messenger
2. The basic phone plans come with only 200 SMS; upgrade to 1500 costs $9.99
3. Headphone jack is recessed making many third party earphones useless
4. You can't flip the keyboard horizontal except while using Safari
5. Unable to send one text to multiple people
6. It's too pretty to carry around without worrying about it getting dirty (or stolen)
7. No 3G network access; although WiFi is nice
8. Email program isn't well designed; hard to delete multiple emails
9. You can only moblog one picture at a time
10. No copy/cut/paste function, like at all

Of course I opened it, of course.

Athos Porthos Aramis

If you have any experience with AD&D, there was always one trait that seemed out of place: Charisma. Defined in AD&D terms as "An ability score representing a character's persuasiveness, personal magnetism, and
ability to lead." Doesn't seem that useful right? Wouldn't you rather have some crazy strength, amazing constitution, or outstanding intelligence? Charisma was the least useful attribute to have. Or so I thought.

Switch over to the real world -- and out of geekville. Charisma is just about the most important trait to have in life. Contrary to many of our every day encounters, it's hard to be an asshole in life. I mean, people who have no charisma have a rough go of it finding friends, dating, and heck, securing jobs. Okay, none of that is true. You can be totally charisma-less and do just fine in life.

However, if you do have excess amounts of charisma, you can certainly ascend to heights higher and faster than if you were left to your own paltry devices.

If people like you they'll be more likely to do, well, everything for you. Isn't that right? One of the main benefits of having charisma in the D&D world is to be able to generate extra "followers." This means that people like you so much they'll go the extra step and put their necks on the line for you. In roleplaying terms, it's a literal neck, since following somebody around means fighting alongside them, with a high chance of getting maimed or destroyed.

All the recent medieval guy movies like Braveheart, Gladiator, Troy, and 300 have that one moment when the hero steps in front of his men and gives them a rousing speech. People cheer, the enemy gets slaughtered, the movie gets panned. It's fabulous -- and highly memorable.

Now, for those of us without William Wallace-like presence, it helps to be able to persuade people through other means. Manipulating as it were. Men of action do; men of no-action, talk. Here's Aristotle's three ways to persuade people through the use of spoken (or written) language:

1. Ethos is an appeal to authority. It is how well the speaker convinces the audience that he or she is qualified to speak on the particular subject.
2. Pathos is an appeal to the audience's emotions. It can be in the form of metaphor, simile, a passionate delivery, or even a simple claim that a matter is unjust.
3. Logos is logical appeal. It is normally used to describe facts and figures that support the speaker's topic. Since data is difficult to manipulate, especially if from a trusted source, logos may sway cynical listeners.

All three, used to complement each other, can be destructive in wearing down people's inhibitions or disbelief. Take, for example, Al Gore's recent Hollywood hit "An Inconvenient Truth." Gore has the charisma of a rock. Yet, there is no doubting that he's passionate and knowlegeable about global warming. Adding an extra bit of pathos in the form of cute polar bears running out of real estate was also pretty effective.

So, once you've established your authority, your knowledge, and your passion about something, people tend to listen. Add in a touch of charm and people will line up to tune in. (Isn't that sort of like blogging?) That's how all the great leaders/orators of our time have convinced people to follow them -- Hitler and Co. down the line. Whether you use this persuasion power for good or evil is up to you, but Aristotle told us twenty-four hundred years ago how to do it. What will you use your words for?

Lightning Strikes (Twice)

I'm going to try not to jinx myself here but it looks like I have another book to write. I've been working on a new book proposal for the last few weeks (maybe months) and it's been a lot of back and forth but this week, we accepted a final offer from the publisher. I'm deathly excited and I feel like a real writer now. One book could be a stroke of blind luck -- which, in my case, it most likely was. Two books? I must be doing something okay, right?

Aside from feeling like the luckiest guy alive and having a literary agency that's turned two (thin) proposals into two book deals, I feel like this whole writing thing could work out for me. In fact, Full Circle Literary is so good at their job that they got me a two book deal. Yeah, two. So if things go well, I'll be writing two books for this publisher.

What's this book about? It's a fiction book for teen girls. You heard correctly. That's right, I'll be leveraging my years of being an effeminate guy into writing a book for girls. I have to thank George here for opening my eyes to the addiction that is Babysitter's Club, Little House on the Prairie, Sweet Valley High, Anne of Green Gables, etc. It turns out I'm a chick-lit writer at heart.

I'm excited for this amazing opportunity because now I can have some literary (street) cred. Writing a non-fiction reference book was amazing but being able to branch out into fiction should make me that much more well-rounded. And, as I'm finding out, it's much easier to write fiction because it's all from your imagination. Your characters can do whatever you want them to do, the story is any story you wish to put to paper. It makes the writing more exciting and more personal.

If possible, I'll be name dropping friends and their unique personality/habit quirks (as inspiration of course) into the book. Should be fun. So if you didn't read the blogging book, you better read this one!

We haven't quite signed the contract yet so the whole thing's not exactly signed, sealed, and delivered but from what I'm told, the contract is on its way to passing go and we're collecting $200.

Thank you Stefanie and Lilly, thank you!

The Golden Compass

"I find out what I really want by seeing what I do. That's what we all do, if we're honest about it. We have our feelings, we make our decisions, but in the end we look back on our lives and see how sometimes we ignored our feelings, while most of our decisions were actually rationalizations because we had already decided in our secret hearts before we ever recognized it consciously."
-Children of the Mind, Orson Scott Card-

Here's the thing I've gathered from my own recent experiences and numerous talks with friends on both coasts. People are starting to find themselves, people are starting to, as cliche as it sounds, "Follow their heart." Most people I know pride themselves on being very rational beings. Decisions are made based on "What's right for me and what makes the most sense." That's how I approached things anyway. I mean, Rand says "Be rational," so I've tried to be. But being rational has turned into "rational(ize) everything."

Lately, the pendulum is definitely swinging the other way. We know what we want to do, we know what our "secret heart" tells us to do, and we're finally doing it -- or at least I'm trying to do it. I used to question why I'm attracted to one activity over another, one type of movie/book over another, one type of person versus another. I've been trying to figure out good reasons for why I like things. I tried to rationalize it all out. Sadly, it doesn't quite work that way. In the end, I like it because I like it; no (logical) reasons have to exist.

This insight goes against everything I previously thought. I mean, to a certain extent, I've been very aware that I always end up only doing what I want to do -- Rand also says "Be selfish." But I've often done these things under the guise of helping others, of doing it in the interests of other people. But keep it real, I do things because I want to do them. As Joey proved to Phoebe (paraphrased), "You can't help anyone without helping yourself."

This is all fine. We're old enough to not live under the delusion that there are entirely selfless acts. It may sound cynical and world-weary but every action -- given the proper context and a broad enough viewpoint -- is selfish and that's how it should be. On that point I'm still fully on-board with Rand.

What I'm done doing is rationalizing. I want to remain rational but stop using excuses to make it seem like I'm doing something other than what I'm doing. I think I've always known what I was doing while I'm doing it; what I haven't always done is communicate to people (or fully admit to myself) exactly why I do something. I mean, once you start doing that, you open up ugly sides of yourself right? Oh well, live and let live.

In a way, I feel like I'm regressing. I read once about how our brains are really human brains layered over animal brains. Animals are programmed to react naturally. The advantage humans have is that we can choose logic over instinct. We are able to choose courses of action that don't coincide with what we feel. Everyone has natural emotions and reflexes that are bred into us over millions of years but humans can override that because... well, we're humans. Mind over matter as it were.

Well, now I'm all about heart over mind. I'm not sure if this is the best way to go, to attempt to swing from one extreme to the other, but so far, it's working out nicely -- with a few bumps here and there. It's only been a test phase but I feel good about following my instincts and not bothering to rationalize things out. I'll keep you posted when disaster (inevitably) strikes.