Love or Fear, You Can't Have Both, You Won't Get Either

An invariable question posed during a job interview is the one about the "team player." Are you a team player? How do you feel about being on a team? You realize that your actions will affect the team, don't you? After the employment, there are team-building exercises, there are team leaders barking orders, there are friendly team competitions, and there are team organizers who keep the teams in order. Jobs nowadays are simply teeming with teams. Get excited! Come on, we're a team, we're excited! Let's get out there and push that merchandise and make this the best fiscal year our company's ever had, huh? Guys? Why aren't you excited?

The reason it's so hard to get excited at team events is that the employee is being reminded that he is no longer the master of his destiny. He forfeited that title when he signed his W4. His sense of identity has been surrendered to simpering bureaucrats who will gladly throttle it until it falls silent.

Not long ago, I hosted a small soiree at my place with some workmates of mine. We chatted, we sang, we drank lots of wine. Perhaps too much, as my friends left quite a mess behind them. When I awoke the following morning, I surveyed the damage and decided that I would have to miss work so I could clean my home before the vermin set in. Upon hearing this, my manager phoned me multiple times, leaving messages that it was imperative that I call him. I was busy washing my carpet, so I refused to drop what I was doing just to talk to him. When I finally did call him back, he explained that none of the people I'd had over the previous night showed up to work either. He told me that he was very disappointed in me because so much of the team called in due to my gathering. He asked me what I felt about that. My honest opinion would have involved the term "rat's ass," but out of sensitivity I told him that I wasn't sure what to feel, and then I asked if he could provide a suggestion. He threatened my job after that. Disgusted, I hung up the phone. The manager has since transferred to some backwater to throw his flabby, tattooed weight around in, while I quit and moved to a more profitable position.

This sad little manager, pompous and laughable though he was, nevertheless impressed me. He helped me to realize just how small and powerless the men of this era really are. Like that picture-perfect caricature of authority, Michael Scott from The Office, today's men are desperate, petty creatures who rationalize their weakness by pushing their responsibilities on others, hiding pain and truth behind raucous humor and foul language, and using abstract paperwork to trick others into a sense of inferiority. It's the same as the "team" idea. It's about fooling you into thinking you're smaller than someone who's just as small as you. It's ageless, alpha male behavior, only diluted, demoralized, and soft.

The only true alphas in this world are the ones no one can see or touch. There are lots of fakers out there; lots of men who want you to think they are the big fish, but the vehemence they argue with exposes them. Small men who are ashamed of their lot are always the ones who will fight and fight and fight to prove they are special, even if proof is lacking, and all they can attain is the maintenance of a fantasy. Like a free Middle East.

So it's no great shock to me that women these days are shunning men as we know traditionally know them, and concentrating instead on scrawny, scraggly, mop-topped waifs such as Justin Timberlake and John Krasinki. Women nowadays don't look for barrel-chests, they want flat abs. They don't want savage, they want svelte. They don't want macho, they want metro. They want men to be more like they are. They want women.

My puissant town is full of these hideous, wrinkly, overly tan women with long, greasy-looking hair and sagging flaps of flesh, but you know what? They all have great nails. Their fingers are crested with cute little flowers, their toes are ribbed with pink and purple stripes. Now although there are men who enjoy looking at women's toes, most women are revolted by that idea. So who are these women trying to impress?

EACH OTHER.

Men don't care about jewelry. Men don't care about braids. Men don't care about brand name fashion. Women buy those things to outdo each other in battles of grace, femininity, and cash flow. Women want to feel assured that they are prettier, stronger, and richer than the other females in their clans. Women are turning into men. In an ideal world, women would find mates who share their fascination with conquering others of their own sex, and yet who are invulnerable to the battle themselves. This is why women get on with gay men so well.

But all the other men are angry, conservative beasts who aren't about to change, so they continue to pound their heads against the stone wall as hard as they can, hoarding what little power and influence they can reach, until they exhaust themselves and burn out to tiny piles of broken hopes, with naught of their bodies left but crooked mouths so they may continue pouring forth rationalizations for their failures.

It seems that we are all on the path to ruin. Where, o where, then, is the true will to power?

It is in the abandonment of ambition. It is in contentment with the present, and with the self. It is in the appreciation of one's capabilities, minute though they might be. It is in the understanding that all achievement is judged, and eventually forgotten, by other men, and thus it matters little. Power is in being grateful no matter what your lot is, how much money you have, or what women love you. If you attain that acceptance, there are none who can topple you.

Can You Tase the Rest of the Frat While You're at It?

Everyone genuflect before the glorious police force of Gainesville, Florida, what performed an act so very long overdue: they swept one of those shiftless, pretentious, single-celled, addle-pated, semi-pubescent, inarticulate, low-frequency, undeserving, self-celebrating, Bumfights-watching, shot-sucking, Abercrombie-wearing, XBox-playing, liquor-bottle collecting, rich and white children of privilege into the brutal currents of reality. I now hope that this fool's parents will separate from their denial that the fees they pay for their delightful progeny's education are being perceived by him as less of a tuition and more of a cover charge. Getting wasted and being ridiculous indeed. Quite a family legacy. A son to be proud of.

"Don't tase me, bro," he cried. An electrical jolt is but one of the punishments that this representative of our gene pool deserves. I suggest that he be sent to aid a unit bound and seized among the deathtrap of Iraq, not so that he can die or be maimed, and not so he can gather support for his pointless points of view on the matter. I make this suggestion so that he might witness and recognize youth of a species he obviously has never been peer to. Youth of sacrifice and strength who consider others before themselves, who toil and suffer with no expectation of personal glory or gain, who place their bodies beneath tremendous, crushing weights even with the understanding that they may break before their destiny is met, or even known.

I want this war to end, too. I hate knowing that so many people are being killed for some nebulous political purpose that no one really comprehends. But getting drunk, pulling moronic pranks, glorifying yourself, and then yelling and screaming like a douchebag that others are not serving you properly is the approach of the immature and the impotent. You don't deserve to be taken seriously, Mr. Meyers, and you have incurred the due consequence for your impertinence, your ineptitude, and your impetuosity. If you want to change the world, you need to give more of yourself than your bloated ego, healthy servings of it though there be.

Asphalt Groovin'

A fellow from a northern state yesterday told me that we Californians are horrible drivers. Like any good statesman, I was initially affronted by this declaration, and I made to defend my Western brethren with equally general soothsaying, but then I dropped into a window of thought, and found myself coaxed towards agreement.

I have ridden the roads of other states and nations, sometimes without choice, and I must here concede: the people of California drive like idiots. They become thoughtless, heartless monsters with hides of steel when they drive, as though they physically assume the forms and apparent brain sizes of the vehicles they pilot. We're really quite crazy behind the wheel, and our insanity does not fluctuate with relation to the business of our region. The smallest Schwarzeneggerin hamlet is just as likely to play home to an aspiring NASCAR entrant as the mad and cruel Los Angeles cloverleafs.

Racing for the winner's circle is not even our greatest goof, as in my experience, the opposite offense is the more common. I couldn't report what these folks are in search of, but I can say that they rarely seem to find it, as they crawl along demanding thoroughfares at speeds far below those recommended, before they make their abrupt choices without any concern for informing those surrounding about it.

No one likes to use turn signals in California. Tilting that plastic dowel, which juts but inches from their driving hands, a trifle upwards or downwards has become too great an effort for today's busy travelers, whose tunnels of attention are probably already filled by some demanding conversation taking place on their Chocolates, or else by the Venti Caramel Frappucinos they are balancing on their lips. I can predict with no small amount of confidence that my commute this evening will see me face death by uncommunicated lane change at least twice.

That defensive slice of me that was prickled when my friend made his first attack wants to put forth that the discourteous driving habits of the common Californian are actually indicative of a sensible, statewide philosophy, one which celebrates assertiveness, multitasking, and punctuality. When faced with the results of these teachings myself, however, my argument tends to deflate, as any idea that the SUV who just cut me off is helmed by a determined captain of industry is replaced by the image of a self-righteous, demanding dotard, whose expectations of entitlement have climbed to grossly high levels.

Well! It's time to go to work. I'll see you on the road, and though I cannot make a promise of it, I shall try not to present you with a rude, inflammatory gesture.