Another zenidiot photo

This one's a little different in that it was taken today, after I put zenidiot on hiatus.

I put my iPhone on a little snap-on tripod, set it up on a table at the Red Cup, turned on the timer, and leaned back with my coffee.

This picture isn't a half day old yet.

But it doesn't look anything like me.

If you gave this picture to a private detective and told him to track me down, he'd never find me. Because I don't look like this.

I look like this.

Well, like this, but with longer hair.

One thing I'm not is a narcissist. Even so, I have an extraordinary knack for taking misleadingly flattering iPhone pictures of myself.

That guy in the first picture is who I wish I were. But it's an act. A pose. I know that picture is misleading because when other people take pictures of me, I always look like the guy in the second picture.

Draw long hair on the second picture, give it to the P.I., and he'll find me in no time.

That's enough negative energy for today. I'm going to try to find something positive to do.

zenidiot and me

The name I used on OK Cupid and the other dating sites was 'zenidiot'. I chose that name because of my continuing interest in Zen and Taoism, and because of the Zen tenet that once you begin to think of yourself as being knowledgeable or experienced in Zen, you are headed for trouble.

'zenidiot' started out as a mostly accurate depiction of the real me. But then I made an edit here, a copy and paste there, and zenidiot morphed from being who I am to who I wish I was.

If someone had assigned me the task of making a list of things I would change about myself, I would probably have written that I would like to be thinner, tidier and better organized, and that would be it.

Zenidiot, having crept out of my subconscious a sentence at a time, is a more complete portrait than I would ever have been able to write deliberately.

Even though we were the same guy, zenidiot even looked different. Compare some of the pictures I used on my dating profiles with the 'real' me.

Finally, I realized that if I ever met face-to-face any of the dozen or so women with whom I had been in contact, they would see the man on the right, not the one on the left, and there was no way to smile or pose my way out of that.

zenidiot was not a Marlboro man or a rock star or a sophisticated playboy. He was still sarcastic, maybe less cynical, and he smiled more. He still wore berets, even though he was in Oklahoma. He was still a Zen and Taoist dabbler, and he still quoted Alan Watts.

I am almost, but not quite, him. I am him without the charisma.

I am simply who I am.

And he does not exist.

No, I didn't lie

I want to be a little more clear about what happened with these dating web sites.

I did not post twenty-year-old photos of myself, or use pictures of some other person. I didn't pose in front of an expensive car or home that wasn't mine. I didn't write anything about myself that was untrue.

I did exactly what every other member does – I accentuated my positive aspects and minimized the negative. The problem was with the extent to which I did it. The description I wrote was so idealized that had any of my friends seen it without the photos, they wouldn't have recognized it as me.

It wasn't a lie, but it was dishonest.

OK Cupid update

Someone pointed out to me this evening, quite inadvertently, that I had used these dating profiles to rather seriously mislead people about what kind of person I am. I had, in fact, used them to also mislead myself. It might even be accurate to say that the target of my deception was really me, and everyone else got pulled along for the ride.

Confronted with the reality versus the image I had created, I realized I couldn't, with any sense of fairness or honesty, continue to pretend to be this person I had invented.

I pulled all the accounts. (I say 'pulled' – in fact, as I discovered, some of these free sites have literally no way to cancel an account. You can 'disable' an account, which I did, but you can't delete it. That's why they're able to claim umpteen million members. Many or most of the members have been gone for years.)

The meetings I had tentatively set up are off. I had actually arranged for those women to meet a man who doesn't exist, and whom I could never pretend to be without the camouflage of the Internet to protect me.

This was the right thing to do – in fact, it was the only thing to do. The truth would have been evident eventually, no matter what.

Olivia and Carol, I know you will likely never see this, but I'm sorry I misled you. I played a game with you and myself, driven by loneliness, desire and selfishness. No one deserves to be treated the way I treated you. I don't think I would be morally outraged if someone had done this to me, but I would be annoyed, and you have every right to be annoyed as well.

(Would a direct apology to these women be appropriate? Yes, it would, but I didn't think about that until after I had suspended the accounts. Now I have no way to email them without reactivating, and I'm not going to do that. I have Olivia's phone number, and she has mine. If she calls, I guess I'll tell her directly. Otherwise, I think our ships have passed in the night.)

If the rest of you think you know the details of what this is about, let me assure you that you don't, nor am I going to discuss it here. I will only say that it has nothing to do with anything that has been previously posted here, either by myself or by anyone in comments.

But let's see if I can get back to seeing things clearly and honestly, instead of through the filters of my own desires, preferences and aversions.

I really feel pretty stupid about this whole thing.

Surely it's not really this bad.

This is the 'dating persona' test paying OKCupid members can take.

Which isn't to say that they should.

Your results are in! mcarp, you are...
The Last Man on Earth

Random Brutal Sex Dreamer (RBSD)

FACT: The apocalypse has come. All are dead. You never should’ve asked her out.

Shit, rejected again. You are The Last Man on Earth.

Sorry, but most women would rather see the human species wither to an end—and therefore deny the most fundamental instinct that living creatures have—than sleep with you.

We’ve learned the following: you don’t think things through. You’re haphazard. You’re dangerous. You’re somewhat inexperienced. It’s totally obvious that you’re a horny bugger, as well. Everybody knows that and steers clear.

To top things off, when you do find your way into a relationship, you tend to be a dick somewhere down the line and fuck it all up.

There’s a small, but negligible, chance we’re wrong. In any case, your friends find your shit hilarious. There’s nothing cooler than a dude reducing himself to human rubble.

Random notes for Thanksgiving Day, 2011

Back in August, I wrote this post about some changes I felt like I was experiencing. Although I can't find it now, I recall that I wrote in a later post that my libido had suddenly kicked into high gear, back to where it was in my twenties and thirties.

Here are some random notes about what's happened since then:

- I dropped by the willowy, ethereal Buddhist woman's house a few weeks ago, and visited for a couple of hours. It seems as if the last glowing coals of lust there have finally died for me. I suppose they could reignite later, but it really seemed as if there was just nothing there that day.

- As I wrote previously, I joined three online dating sites. Match.com has proven to be a complete bust for me this time around, but I'm getting a lot of responses on Plenty of Fish and OK Cupid, especially since writing my 'nothing but bad news' profiles.

Plenty of Fish has connected me with a lot of marginally literate women posing on their Harleys, but I've found some truly interesting women on OK Cupid. I've tentatively set up face-to-face meetings with two of them after Thanksgiving. One of them is six feet tall! I can't tell you how long I've wanted to date someone as tall as I am. I've seen a lot of women's scalps in my life, and most of the women I've dated have come up to somewhere between my elbow and my shoulder.

- And yet, as I develop all these contacts, I find my libido is decreasing again, and my desire for solitude is once again on the rise. I suspect that one of my blood pressure medications is partly responsible.

Another probable contributor is the stress involved in making myself 'date worthy.' I haven't dated or had the desire to date for about five years, and because of that, I've let a lot of stuff go. The house is a mess, and not particularly suited to entertaining even one person. My cars are both full of junk. There's laundry everywhere, as usual. And there are probably many other things I haven't even thought about.

- Another random note: I blacked out at the doctor's office Tuesday. They had just taken blood for tests, and I had gone to the counter to pay for the visit. I suddenly became nauseated and dizzy. The receptionist asked me if I was all right, and I mustered enough focus to reply, 'No, I'm not.'

She had me go sit in a chair in the lobby. I had been there a minute or two, with my head down, when I heard someone ask, 'How long was he unconscious?' Another voice replied, 'Just a second or two, but he convulsed before he blacked out.'

I, of course, had not even been aware I had lost consciousness. The nurse put me in a wheelchair and rolled me into an examining room, where they put me on a table. I think they took my blood pressure while I was in the lobby, but I wasn't aware of it at the time. They took it again in the examining room, where it was 85 over 20-something.

They kept me about a half hour while my BP slowly elevated to normal. My doctor told me this was a normal response to having blood drawn, and that about three patients a week experience the same thing.

I mentioned to him that I had undergone several blood tests over the years without this happening. But I forgot to mention that it was similar to the time I blacked out in my own back yard about three years ago.

Another OKCupid update

This email arrived this evening:

We just detected that you're now among the most attractive people on OkCupid.

We learned this from clicks to your profile and reactions to you in Quickmatch and Quiver. Did you get a new haircut or something?

Well, it's working!

To celebrate, we've adjusted your OkCupid experience:

You'll see more attractive people in your match results.

This won't affect your match percentages, which are still based purely on your answers and desired match's answers. But we'll recommend more attractive people to you. You'll also appear more often to other attractive people.

Sign in to see your newly-shuffled matches. Have fun, and don't let this go to your head.

And of course, I won't.

Another OKCupid story

I wrote a fairly straightforward profile for match.com, which I then copied over to plentyoffish and OKCupid.

It began something like:

I'm a retired journalist/artist. I'm something of an introvert. I do well in small groups of a half-dozen or so, but I'm not comfortable in large crowds or big gatherings.

My spiritual beliefs are centered around Buddhism and Taoism, and I'm influenced by teachers such as Huang Po, Seung Sahn and Thich Nhat Hanh. I also am influenced by Taoist masters such Chuangtze, Wentze and the Huinan Masters.

And something and something and something. I've already forgotten the details.

That stayed up for about ten days. No one contacted me, nor did anyone respond to my contacts. Finally, last Saturday, I changed my OKCupid profile to begin as follows:

Let me try a different tack here: I am probably bad news for you.

I am marginally motivated, profoundly non-Christian, eccentric, slightly (or more than slightly) perverted, and not particularly ambitious, at least by any conventional Bible belt definition of the word.

Check my pics. Do I look to you like anybody's "Outstanding Young Professional" - of any year?

I'm a liberal, fiscally and socially. I am neither a homophobe nor a racist.

Now, for the one or two percent of you who are still reading:

And I went on from there.

Three women emailed within 45 minutes. And two more over the next 24 hours.

I changed my plentyoffish profile to begin with

To tell the truth, I am probably nothing but trouble for you.

And sure enough, women began contacting me. I can't even keep track now of who I've answered and who I haven't.

And I just modified my match.com profile to begin with:

Hi... it's me. You remember: the man your mother warned you about?

How have you been?

We'll see how that goes over.

I just found out...

I've been mispronouncing outré all these years. It's oo-TRAY.

Pictures

I shouldn't presume to speak for all men, I suppose, but I don't think any of us are doing these online dating sites because we want to go out with a woman's dog or cat, or her Harley, or her Hummel figurines, or the hotel where she stayed when she went to Miami in 2009.

So why do women put pictures of all these things on their profiles? My profile(s) just has pictures of me - the guy who's less interesting than a thumb. But I don't think I'll make or break it with a woman based on what my cat looks like.

108 Days of Gratitude - Day 18

I cannot take credit for the following. It was posted on a Facebook account. But it's certainly appropriate for me:

I am thankful for forgiveness. I can't imagine a world where all of my bad choices, decisions and actions piled up like stones and stayed with me—I would have been crushed a long time ago. And I am grateful that I can forgive, not only tossing away another potential stone from my pile, but also removing it from someone else's altogether.

 Thank you, Timothy Brister, for the inspiration and guidance.

Photo test redux

I emailed a couple of women who voted for my pictures in the A/B comparison test, basically to say thanks.

They told me the same thing happened to them when they took the test. Their pictures were rejected in favor of random shots of feet, furniture, the sky, etc. And let me tell you, they were both drop dead gorgeous.

So I feel a little better about it now.

But this is all still pretty damn bleak. I feel exhausted by it.

A random thought about looks

Several years ago, I had a brief conversation with the woman I have referred to here as Ms. Home Rehab Person about being good-looking. Ms. HRP was a very attractive and sexy blonde. She never had to worry about getting dates or about whether men would like her, because they always did.

It was difficult for her to fathom a life in which a person felt anxiety about meeting new people because his or her looks were always an impediment rather than an asset.

Conversely, I – and, I think, most people – have a difficult time imagining a life in which you can always count on being liked, rely on having people buy you meals and gifts, and never ponder having to be alone.

That was also how my father lived most of his life, until the drinking ruined his looks. He always had trouble relating to me and my issues because he simply couldn't imagine what it was like for me to not be able to rely on my looks to get what I wanted.

Things did not end well between Ms. HRP and me, and I haven't talked to her in about a year and a half. Some people have asked me why I put up with that situation as long as I did.

I think part of it was that whatever else she may or may not have done, Ms. HRP never treated me with contempt or disdain simply because I'm not as good-looking a man as she is a woman.

I think I'm done with the online dating thing

They have this deal on OKCupid where users rate your photos against the randomly selected photos of other users. This is supposed to give you as a member an idea of how effective your photos are.

Given a choice of my best photos versus the photos of other users, I lost to, among others:

• a guy wearing a gas mask
• the Statue of Liberty
• a guy who put his hand over the camera
• a morbidly obese guy who cropped his photo so that only his nose, mouth and neck showed
• an empty hammock
• a closeup of a thumb with a cartoon face drawn on it

The respondents – all women – were identified by affinity groups. My photos scored fairly well among self-identified introverts. I did badly among self-identified Christians, conservatives, athletes and 'divas'. Remember, they were simply reacting to the photos with no other information about me.

The photo that got the best response was the one that I thought was least effective. It's a somewhat dark wide shot of me leaning against my Volkswagen. That picture did well among self-identified artists, but all the other pictures did badly with artists.

Across the board, only about a third of those who responded thought I was good-looking enough (or that my photos were good-looking enough) that they'd be interested in meeting me.

However, I'm grateful for the opportunity to have honest feedback.

108 Days of Gratitude - Day 17

Well, the search for love is not yielding any results. But I am grateful for the opportunity to at least try.

That sounds like I'm just trying to put a positive spin on an unpleasant situation, but I mean it.

The search continues; OKCupid

Now I'm giving OKCupid a spin. This is an interesting service in that the 'matching' questionnaire is apparently endless. Users can suggest their own questions. I've answered literally more than one thousand questions over the span of three days, and skipped some others.

Many of them are useless, from my point of view. For example, "Have you ever judged a person standing behind you in a grocery store checkout line based on the items in their cart?"

I would guess the origin of that question is someone who recently ended a relationship, and was annoyed by the ex-partner's habit of doing exactly that. But what bearing does that have on my search? I wouldn't rule someone out on an issue like that, and I don't think most other people would, either.

On the other hand, I was posed some questions that made me think about things I had never considered before. For example, "Do you want your partner to be kinkier than you are?"

I can say I had never considered that before, and faced with the question, I realized the answer was 'yes.'

I will spare you details of my personal kinks, but I'll admit I have some. I am at the point in my life where I no longer need fear the approbation of Sunday school teachers, parents, friends, employers, employers' consultants or anyone else, really, and I'm willing to consider my fetishes/kinks more openly than I once did.

So here's OKCupid asking me some rather touchy questions about bondage, master/slave roleplaying, rough sex and similar matters, and I find myself surprised by the answers I'm giving.

There were also a lot of questions about social issues like gay marriage and interracial dating. I was astonished, frankly, by the number of women with whom I was rated incompatible because they're racists or homophobes. Also some who rated monetary wealth above love, compassion and everything else. I guess, living where I live, I should not be surprised by this, but nevertheless, I am.

The lonely search continues...

Anonymous wrote the following in a comment to a previous post.

Match.com is for entertainment purposes only. It bears no relationship whatsoever to reality, relationships, sex, dating or real life social interaction. 

Go look at the profiles of men with whom you "compete" for the attention of the women on Match and remember there are dozens or hundreds of males for each woman. Just as all the women are beautiful (in their profiles), all the men are superheroes who love walks on the beach or some such. 

I was on Match for awhile and even met a few women, but there is a REASON why people are there. Often that reason is that no one who meets them in person wants anything to do with the horrible, crazy person behind the profile. Since I was on Match (in 2002-3, sometime in there), my most recent look convinces me it's become a morass. I would switch to Plenty of Fish, OK Cupid or e-Harmony.

What I noticed that seemed different about match.com this go-round, versus five years ago, is that there seem to be far fewer people now, both men and women.

I did look at the other men, and in my age bracket, at least, I ended up feeling pretty good about myself. There was one guy on there who makes a 20 million dollars a year, is proficient in three martial arts, speaks seven languages, advises the Dalai Lama, amateur atom splitter, etc., but the rest of them were pretty much Jed Clampett wannabes.

Based on a couple of recommendations, I tried Plenty of Fish. Far more women there with names like HarleyBabe4Christ and so on.

This is definitely where all the biker chicks and Aunt Bee types hang out.

I received one email within an hour of my joining from a woman who described herself as a 'conservative Christian' who was alarmed by my Buddhist beliefs. She wants to meet me for the 'intellectual challenge.'

What's a lonely Buddhist to do?

Checking my mail

I looked at my email today, and noticed the last time I had looked at it was October 28. It was entirely spam, so I didn't miss anything. But I find it's harder and harder for me to take in outside data. I also went got mail out of my mailbox today for the first time in maybe three weeks. Again, it's 90% catalogs and crap, but I probably should check it more frequently.

It could be worse.

A friend of mine walked into his place of business yesterday – the company he'd spent 16 years building from the ground up – only to be ousted in a coup d'etat orchestrated by his partners of about three months, who seem to be intent on using my friend's good reputation as a boutique supplier of a quality, high-end product to sell their own cheap commodity version at marked-up prices.

So, relatively speaking, my life doesn't look bad at all.

Bleah.

I think I have mentioned before that my depression is worse at night than it is during the day. It was certainly worse last night.

I'm not taking back what I said. I do believe that in our culture, romance and the emotions that go with it are more properly the domain of the bold and the beautiful, and not so much old lumpy dudes like me. I feel silly and embarrassed having to cope with these feelings. I feel like I am behaving inappropriately.

Browsing through match.com, I found hardly anyone that looked like someone I could get along with. I have seriously marginalized myself.

But I wouldn't change that. I am mostly comfortable being who I am. I wouldn't sit through a season of OU games to please any of the large number of women who listed OU football as part of their profile. I wouldn't buy a Harley Davidson to please any of the two or three women who included, 'must have motorcycle' as part of their profile. And I'm certainly not changing my religion to accommodate the overwhelming majority of women who want a Jesus-y boyfriend.

But I came across one woman whose profile certainly intrigued me. It was almost what I would have written myself if I could write a prospective date's profile. And she was about my age. So, I sent her an email, outlining all our similar interests - art, philosophy, quiet evenings. We even go to the same coffee shop. I even pointed out that our interests are so closely aligned, we probably have mutual friends. I suggested we meet for coffee.

But... she's really attractive. Not an Aunt Bee type at all.

She didn't answer.

In retrospect, it occurs to me that she may already know me, even though I don't know her. If she knows me, she knows me by reputation, which means what she knows is, 'weird, dumpy-looking, boring, depressed nose spray addict.' (That last part is not true, by the way.)

I'll tell ya this about match.com. When you put what you think is your absolute best foot forward, and you are greeted with absolute and utter indifference, it's kind of a letdown. Even to someone approaching it with expectations as low as mine. Winks ignored, emails ignored... it's pretty much what I expected, but even so, it's hard on the ego.

Which, from a zen perspective, is exactly what I deserve for having an ego.

More flummoxed

I feel embarrassed. This is so fucking stupid.

I wish I had a switch to turn this off. The whole thing is just pathetic, and I would give anything to not feel this.

Flummoxed

This whole thing has me flummoxed. It's been years since I've felt this noticeably alone. I used to babble on about the willowy, ethereal Buddhist woman and Stevie Nicks and so on, but those were mostly idle wanderings of the mind.

Now, it's as if I almost desperately want someone to be with me, to touch me, to let me put my arms around her, to feel her head on my shoulder.

And there's nothing sweet or charming or touching about some lumpy sack of potatoes like me feeling this way. This is the stuff pretty people do, and it feels wildly inappropriate for me to have these same desires.

Speaking of Alan Watts, he had a great suggestion for meditation. He said one should observe one's own thoughts as if they are sounds coming from the street outside. What a perfect way of describing that process of seeing one's own thinking.

And that's what I've tried to do today. I've tried to see this crazy longing as if it were something coming in from outside. What's it about?

Well, it's harder to deal with than some other things because part of it is tied to basic biological wiring. I was born with it, as we all are.

There is no fundamental right or wrong here. Things are just as they are. But I am swimming against the tide of conventional wisdom and cultural sentiment, and I don't see how this can end well.

108 Days of Gratitude - Day 16

Today I am grateful for the writings and lectures of Alan Watts.

His real gift was peeling the veneer of mysticism off eastern philosophies and explaining them in ways westerners could understand without devoting their lives to gurus of possibly dubious quality and intentions.

So, thanks again, Alan. I wish I could have known you.

What does a 'wink' mean, anyway?

This match.com thing – if I send a 'wink', I assume that means I wait for her to send a 'wink' back, and then I follow up with an email. Is that right?

I'm winking, but no one is winking back. I'm not surprised, of course, but maybe I'm not doing it right.

I've noticed a few recurring themes in profiles I've viewed. Lots of Jesus (I'm in the Bible belt, of course), lots of "I want life to be an adventure," and lots of "I like to par-tay." I've seen a couple of profiles encompassing all three – Christ-centered adventurous par-taying.

None of those, of course, describe me, but I can't even get a wink back from the women who say they enjoy quiet evenings and philosophical discussions.

Negativism

You may have noticed something about my posts: many of them, even if they have a generally positive tone, include at least a few negative asides or parenthetical statements.

In my previous post about my fifth grade teacher, for example, I make a passing reference to how poorly my other teachers thought of me, because of my grades and my general family reputation.

Yes, I am a very negative person. I didn't become persuaded of this myself until I was about fifty years old, even though people had been telling me so since high school.

Up until that point, I thought to myself, 'Well, hell, yes, I'm negative. You treat me like I'm a pariah because I'm smarter than you, or because I didn't come from as good a family as yours, or because I'm clumsy and near-sighted, or because you think I'm goofy-looking. What am I supposed to do, motherfuckers, smile and pretend I like being treated this way?'

Possibly an early
ancestor. Maybe I
should use this as
my Facebook profile
picture.

(Oh, and thank you, Johnny Hart, for introducing a clumsy, near-sighted caveman in "BC" and naming him 'Clumsy Carp.' Yeah, thanks a fucking lot.)

Plus, negativism was consistent with the way both my parents viewed the world, especially my mother. I picked up a lot of it from them.

Eventually, late in life, I came to see that way of thinking as just a dead end.  I wasn't wrong, but carrying all that negative energy poisoned me nonetheless, and made an unpleasant situation even worse.

But after an entire life of negativism, getting rid of it has been difficult. It's habitual with me.

When I read other people's posts that are continually cheery and positive, I find myself thinking, 'WTF is the matter with you? You sound like Pollyanna.'

Yet one of the most persistently positive people I know was one of the last victims of childhood polio in this country. She spent most of her life on crutches, and now, in her sixties, is in a wheelchair. She has far more reason to be negative than I do. But she stays more positive and upbeat than I ever am.

108 Days of Gratitude - Day 15

Today I am grateful for my fifth grade teacher. His name was Ben Matthews. He saw something in me my other teachers didn't.

As a child, I had a hard time understanding my teachers' attitude toward me - I knew they didn't think highly of me, but I didn't know why. I can speculate on it now from an adult perspective, but I don't know the reason.

Ben Matthews was the first male teacher I ever had, and the first that seemed to believe in my potential. In spite of my bad grades and general 'poor white trash kid' image, he got me into an accelerated learning program in the school district. Two days a week, I went to classes at another school, where we learned things that they didn't think an average fifth-grader would understand.

And I flourished in those classes. Mr. Matthews realized I would do better with a more challenging curriculum, and surrounded by other students who were as bright as I was.

I remember studying archaeology and the Cretan civilization. To this day, I have an amateur's interest in archaeology and ancient civilizations that began with that class.

I guess that was when I realized I wasn't the worst damn kid in the school.

Adventures in Depression

Hyperbole and a Half: Adventures in Depression

If you don't experience clinical depression, this may help you understand what it's like for those of us who do.

108 Days of Gratitude - Day 14

But first, this:

I sort of know what I want to write here, and yet I don't.

As I think I mentioned several days ago, I have been feeling a little more 'aware', for lack of a better word, over the past few months than I previously had.

It's as if I had been lightly drugged for perhaps two or three years, and suddenly the drug wore off.

When there's a full moon, I always stop and look at it. And I look at it alone. It's been that way for years and years. I can't tell you the last time I sat and looked at the moon with a companion or partner.

During the time that I seemed as if I was lightly drugged, I had eventually reached a state of equanimity regarding that. I had settled into my place in the universe, found the flow of the Tao, and saw that whether I understand or don't understand, things are just as they are.

Now, suddenly, that answer seems inadequate. It's still the correct answer – I remain convinced of that. But it's an answer that, at the moment, doesn't satisfy.

Yes, this is craving. This is attachment. It's a spiritual shortcoming to be experiencing this. At the moment, I don't care.

I am at a crossroads. In one direction, I can turn the flute and singing bowl music back on. I can meditate, sit quietly, and lull myself back into that sense of being mildly drugged. The craving and attachment will not disappear, but they will subside to a point I won't  be continually distracted by them.

Or I can forge ahead on the other path, down which I have gone before. I have no reason to believe this trip will end any differently than the others did – with either someone overcommitting to me and suffocating me, or me overcommitting to someone else, and receiving yet another patient explanation about how I'm a nice guy, but I don't offer drrrrama, passion, glamor and intrigue! and blah and blah blurp snort fart grunt.

I said I wasn't going to talk about this for a year, because I talk and talk about it and nothing ever changes. But it seems as if something has changed. It hasn't changed enough to produce a different outcome. I'm no thinner, younger, better-looking or more outgoing than I was before.

But I'm sort of slogging ahead into that emotional quagmire, doing the same I do over and over, hoping against all common sense for different results.

108 Days - Day 14

I'll toss this in while I'm at the computer. I'm grateful for my home and neighborhood. I own my home free and clear. No bank can take it from me.

My neighborhood is on a seesaw. It could go either way. A block to the north, they're rehabbing and gentrifying along NW 16th. A block to the west, they've busted meth labs and crack houses.

But my little corner of the neighborhood is doing well. A new family has moved in across the street, and following the lead of the previous owners, sunk thousands of dollars into upgrades and improvements. When I first moved here ten years ago, the owner at the time was in the process of evicting a heavy metal wannabe band. The sheriff had to forcibly remove them, and crews in contamination suits had to come in and make the place bearable for remodeling contractors. They pulled about twenty big lawn bags full of garbage and trash out of the house. It has come a long way since then.

My newest neighbor on the east is a young woman who is executive director of a nearby neighborhood commercial district that is enjoying a revival after decades of neglect and deterioration. She's been very active in working to improve the neighborhood. She has a lot of energy and drive, which we need around here. She's also an artist, and it's pleasant to have another creative person nearby. I'm grateful for her presence and her commitment to the neighborhood.

Apple Face Time

I guess this product has been around a few years now, but I had not used it until yesterday.

I was able to video chat from Full Circle Books, using my iPhone, with someone on a Mac laptop in Edmond. The sound was just as good as you'd hear in a regular phone conversation, although there was a little static as I walked around the book store.

Frankly, the thing is just amazing to me.

So, I'm running a little behind

It's not that I've quit being grateful. I have a list of pending gratitude items, and Blogblah! helped me focus my thoughts in this regard over the weekend.

108 Days of Gratitude – Day 13

It may sound like a reach to say I'm grateful to be able to walk. But I have had one friend and three acquaintances lose that ability. All of them spent the rest of their lives in wheelchairs. I've lost track of one of them, but the others all died young.

You've probably seen me post here from time to time that I would like to disassociate my consciousness from my body and just float free like a cloud. I'm kind of a sedentary egghead anyway, so I would get along without a physical form better than some people.

But every time I wrote that, I was aware that if I didn't want my physical body, there were a few people I knew who would have been glad to have it.

Revisiting match.com

I am going to slightly bend my ban on love life-related posting here. I feel OK doing it, because this is more like a consumer report than another 'forever alone' post.

I decided to rejoin match.com this week. I had been a member for a few years, and cancelled the account about four and half years ago.

A lot appears to have changed since then, and not for the better.

During the first 24 hours my account was active, I received about ten winks and a couple of emails. That was certainly better than the results I had gotten the first time.

None of them lived anywhere close to me, but they all seemed genuine – no sultry 'Russian beauties' with garbled English pleasing to be making the contact of me. One of them even commented on specific things I had written in my profile.

But within 72 hours, all but one of those contacts had disappeared. They were all fake, possibly the same person or group of people, probably planning to phish me for credit card data or lure me to a malware site.

Doing a little Googling today, I see that match.com has been the target of a few lawsuits over the past few years, alleging that perhaps more than half of its user accounts are fake.

This did not seem to be the case the last time I was a member.

They deserve credit for aggressively tracking and deleting the bogus accounts, but it is a little disconcerting to see ten winks at eight pm, and all of them gone by the next morning.

The user interface is also different. It almost seems designed to force users to click around all over the place, trying to figure out how to respond to an email or look at winks.

Twenty bucks a month seems like a lot to spend for this kind of service, and I suspect I will keep it maybe ninety days and then let go of it again.

108 Days of Gratitude - Day 12

Today I am grateful for solitude.

Not to rehash old material, but I spent 25 years as a reporter – a job that allows scant time for alone time and reflection. I was married during 10 years of that time, so my alone time at home was limited as well.

But everything about the way my synapses are wired encourages me to solitude. It's part of what keeps my mental state steady.

I'm glad to have the opportunity to finally spend plenty of time with my own company.

108 Days of Gratitude - Day 11

Today I am grateful for my friend blogblah!, aka John R. Long.

I see John about once every two weeks, usually at Beverly's 24/7 Restaurant near Baptist Hospital. Like me, he keeps irregular hours, so I'm likely to see him there at some odd hour when most decent people are tucked into bed.

Sometimes we head over to Penn Square and watch a movie – generally, the crappier the better.

But what I value most about visiting with John is that I don't have to measure my words around him. He's not offended by my politics, or my skepticism and/or cynicism, or my lack of a 'proper attitude' (whatever that is) about women, sex and love.

I'm also fond of his sister Mary (aka mindovermary), who deserves her own Day of Gratitude in the near future.

108 Days of Gratitude - Day 10

Today I'm grateful for the teaching of the ancient Zen masters and Taoist sages.

I am not immersed in Zen like I was even a year ago, but the basic understanding I gained from my study is still with me, and will be, I believe, for the rest of my life.

The Buddha said his teachings were like a raft one uses to cross the river. After reaching the other shore, the traveler continues on his journey, but leaves the raft for another to use.

I feel as if I am that traveler. I don't think I will ever again walk around with dharma talks playing in my headphones, but I have not forgotten:

"If you understand, things are just as they are. If you do not understand, things are just as they are."

108 Days of Gratitude - Day 9

I am so fucking grateful I don't have to work.

I work best in near-complete seclusion, with maybe one or two other people around to provide some conversation and occasional distraction.

But I am not a team player, and of course, team players are what corporate America cherishes most.

I was in a restaurant for breakfast the other day, and there were quite a few suits in there. Guys with moussed cubicle haircuts, heavily-starched oxford cloth shirts, cordovan tasseled wing tip slip-ons, and suits that were a little tight around the waist.

That used to be me.

Perhaps those guys thought I was some kind of bum in my black linen peasant shirt, hardware store jeans and shoulder-length hair. But I bet they'd like to be me a lot more than I'd like to be them.

I worked for thirty years, so I feel like I did my share. It's just dumb luck that I got to retire maybe ten years early. But I'm grateful it happened.

108 Days of Gratitude - Day 8

I am grateful for my ex-wife.

We get along better than most divorced couples. In fact, except that we don't live together and we see each other only every few months, we get along about the way we do when we were married.

Even though I was in my mid-thirties when we married, I still wasn't mature enough to be married, and I wasn't responsible enough to be a husband. I'm still not, probably.

I was more like a big kid than a husband to her. As I've said before, she deserved better than she got out of the ten years she spent with me. Don't get me wrong – I don't think we should still be married.

But I'm grateful she's still in my life in a small way.

108 Days of Gratitude - Day 7

Today I am grateful for Kat Parker.

Kat has been my occasional housekeeper for about five years now. Being my housekeeper is no easy chore, because I'm a slob. You remember Oscar Madison in The Odd Couple? That's nothing.

Most of my slovenly housekeeping is just the way my brain functions, or malfunctions. In addition, though, I have a lower back problem that doesn't bother me much when I lift heavy objects, but does cause pain when I do things like sweep or mop or push a lawn mower. (Yeah, I know: how conveeeeenient!)

About two or three times a year, Kat, sometimes accompanied by her fellow housekeeping ninja Annie, sweep through this house and do in a day what I could not accomplish in six months.

When you don't see me at the coffee shop for weeks or months at a time, it's because Kat has made my house livable.

I am also grateful for Kat's mom, Rena, who occasionally goes through my mountain of unopened mail and sorts out the crap from the real stuff for me.

108 Days of Gratitude - Day 6

Today I am grateful for freedom of religion.

Religious intolerance is at a higher level in this country now than at any time in my adult life.

I didn't think much about this when I was a fundamentalist Christian years ago, or when I was a passive atheist. But when I became interested in Taoism and Buddhism, I realized how easily I could be targeted because of my beliefs. There are countries where people practice their religions in secret for fear of persecution or even death, and I'm glad that the USA is (so far) not one of them.

Why I support Occupy Wall Street

I support Occupy Wall Street because I believe the financial sector - not the manufacturing sector, not the retail sector, nor the small business sector - has acquired power and influence completely out of proportion to its role in our society. America is not a couple of huge banks and brokerages with 300 million people just sort of milling around outside of them.

I also believe, and have believed since I was a teenager, that Congress responds reliably to two things. The first, and most efficient, is big wads of cash. The way big businessmen resolve their legislative differences is to hire lobbyists, have the lobbyists throw money at the legislators, and whoever throws the most money wins. Very elegant, very polite, very businesslike.

But the other thing to which Congress responds reliably is external irritants, usually in the form of people marching in the streets, screaming obscenities and hurling bags of shit at them. So, if you don't have millions of dollars to spend, you go with the number two choice.

I recognize that some of the people in this loosely-organized protest are far to the left of even me, and some have a personal axe to grind that has little or nothing to do with Wall Street.

In the late sixties and early seventies. we had all kinds of people protesting the war in Vietnam. Some were Marxists and Maoists. Some were peacniks. Some were just John Lennon fans. But if they had not all gotten in the streets, regardless of their particular motivations or causes, I guarantee you we'd still be fighting the Vietnam War right this minute, always throwing just enough ordnance to keep the thing chugging along and keep the cash flowing to the people who hire the people who throw wads of cash at Congress.

The people who are 'way out on the fringe, the anarchists and such, are the ones who push the envelope to the left, making it 'safe' for pundits and legislators to move into the space between them and the so-called 'center'.

Even if you don't agree with them, you have to credit them for creating that space for those who will probably actually get the job done, but not until it's politically safe for them to undertake it.

Remember, Big Polite Money hated Franklin D. Roosevelt, but they feared Huey Long.

That's why we need a Huey Long.

I'm going to the mall now.

108 Days of Gratitude - Day 5

Today I am grateful for talent.

I know a lot of people who are more gifted artists than I am. But my talent has been sufficient for me to live on twice.

I had two jobs, spaced 27 years apart, that were dependent upon my design and graphics skills. During those 27 years, literally everything changed in the design, layout and prepress world. There was not one gadget in my 1970's toolbox full of rubber cement, burnishers, X-acto knives and Rapidograph pens that was of any use to me in the Photoshop/Illustrator world of 2001.

Fortunately, I had kept my skills mostly up-to-date. It still took me a couple of months to get up to speed, but the basics – composition, design, typography, etc. – had not changed much.

I was able to create that '108 Days of Gratitude' graphic in about 20 minutes. (And if I'd let it sit overnight, and come back to it the next day with fresh eyes, there are things I would have changed.) I tend to take it for granted that anybody can do this, and I forget that most people can't.

Apple updates

Apple released a series of updates yesterday that allow iPhones, iPads and Macs to work with the company's new iCloud feature. The upgrades were frustrating for me, to say the least. I think the whole process took about 14 hours. I was up most of the night with it.

I'm not even sure this iCloud is something that will be of particular benefit to me, although I can see where other users may be quite happy with it.

108 Days of Gratitude - Day 4

I'm grateful for the Internet.

It created a job for me when I left television. It allows me to feel as if I'm in touch with the whole world from my desk.

There have been some stories in the media suggesting that the Internet causes people to withdraw from society and become brooding loners. I can't speak for anyone else, but I think I would have withdrawn from society and become a brooding loner with or without the Internet.

Rather than cause my isolation, I think the 'net has helped alleviate it.

108 Days of Gratitude - Day 3

I'm grateful for my VW Beetle. It's a 2009 model, chili pepper red, with a little less than 15 thousand miles on it.

It's fun to drive and easy to park.

And it's paid for.

I considered trading it in for one of these newer, sleeker 2012 Beetles, but the new ones don't look Beetle-ly enough for me.

And I've become attached to the one I've got.

Like a bowling ball

I know I've said this before, but it seems like everything I eat sits on my stomach like a bowling ball swallowed whole. It's been this way for a couple of years or more now.

I've just returned from Cattlemen's, where I ate about half of what I ordered, and I feel like – well, like I swallowed a bowling ball whole.

My father's appetite and weight both diminished when he got to be about the age I am now, so maybe it's genetic.

Lord knows it wouldn't kill me to lose some weight.

108 Days of Gratitude - Day 2

Today I am grateful for the Logitech Performance MX mouse.

I had been using its predecessor, the Revolution MX, for five or six years. The innards of the mouse had gotten loose and a little 'sloppy', so that if I even hit the leg of my desk with my foot, stuff would jump around on my monitor, being 'scrolled' by the mouse's wheel.

I didn't even know the Revolution MX had been supplanted by the Performance MX until I found it on Amazon. The Performance MX weighs less, has a replaceable battery, and unlike its predecessor, can be be recharged from a USB port, which frees up an outlet in my 80-year-old home's den.

As much time as I spend at the computer, these are all big improvements for me.

Another Google analytics note

Not surprisingly, most of the traffic that reaches this blog comes from inside the United States. But the second largest source of traffic is... Austria.


Hmmm.

108 Days of Gratitude - Day 1

Blogblah! has a meditation he does when he finds himself down, and I hope he doesn't mind my sharing it. He uses a Buddhist mala, which is a string of 108 beads similar to a rosary, to count 108 reasons to be thankful. By the time he's reached the 108th bead, he's reminded life isn't as bad as it seems when (like me) we tend to dwell only on the negative.

My plan, since I'm taking some time off from one of my regular space-fillers here, is spend 108 days recounting things for which I can be grateful. Some will be big things and some will be tiny things. Some may even strike you as silly. (Tomorrow, for example, I plan to be grateful for a computer mouse.)

But by the time I'm done, maybe we'll all see that my life isn't as awful as it sounds if you read this blog regularly.

So...

DAY 1

The death last week of Steve Jobs at age 56 reminds us that even with great wealth, power and prestige, health is not something to taken for granted. Jobs was two years younger than me.

I am afflicted with hypertension and an occasional attack of Howling Bowel Syndrome, but other than that, my health seems quite good. I've been hospitalized only twice, and one of those times was following a traffic accident when I was eight.

I am grateful for my good health.

Popular Keywords

I've had Google Analytics on this site the whole time it's been up, but I hardly ever look at it. The last time was probably two or three years ago.

I noticed this evening that over the past month, 15 people came to this blog by searching Google or Bing for the expression "catshit safari" — a term which I'm pretty sure I invented to describe the search for cat shit in hard-to-reach corners of the house.

But the search expression that brought the most people here over the past month was "nothing to live for", which brought 64 visitors.

Sounds like they might have heen depressed. But I'm sure they left here completely cheered up.

108 Days

This is a note to myself so I don't forget something.

Using the Dictionary

I used the word 'mawkish' in the preceding post. I realized as I wrote it that I wasn't sure what it meant.

I have a larger-than-average vocabulary, but it's full of words whose meanings I intuited from their context in a written passage, rather than by looking them up.

Like "intuited", for example.

Blogblah! used to frequently refer to himself as 'peckish'. Months went by with me thinking 'peckish' meant something like 'peeved', rather than 'hungry'. I think it was Lark who eventually straightened me out on that.

I remember using the word 'erstwhile' in a news story once. It was years – decades, in fact – before I discovered I had used it completely incorrectly. Of course, no one else in the alleged 'newsroom' caught it, either.

If you search the word 'physiognomy' on this blog, you'll find it somewhere, a few years back. I meant 'physiology', but it was again years before I discovered my mistake.

The Macintosh has a perfectly good built-in dictionary. There are several others available online. I have begun, at age 58, a habit I should have begun at eighteen, or even eight: looking up words when I am unsure of their meaning.

A One-Year Moratorium

This blog begins its seventh year next month – or is sixth? I'm never clear on these anniversary things.

When I began it, I didn't have a clear idea of what it would be about, except that it would be very personal and mostly about my daily life. I wasn't writing it with the intention that it become popular. but only that it give me an outlet for my own thoughts. I have kept very few secrets from this blog. It's almost like a personal journal available to everyone who finds it.

As it turned out, the blog's central topics pretty much found themselves, and I'm not entirely happy with them. The Taoism and Buddhist material is OK, but all the 'Diary of an Unloved Guy' stuff strikes even its author as tedious and self-pitying.

I once forced myself to take a one-year hiatus from writing about my non-love life. I came up a couple of weeks short, but I essentially reached my goal. I'm going to do it again. If you look at the entire six-year run of this blog, you'll see that nothing has changed in that regard.

In fact, if you could read the barrage of posts on this subject I wrote on The Well before this blog began, you'd see that the general stasis in my love life has been constant, with a few interruptions, since 1998.

I feel reasonably confident that when I resume my mawkish loneliness postings in October, 2012, nothing will have changed.

But trust me, during those twelve months, I'll still be feeling as sorry for myself as I always do.

I'll wrap up with a quote that came in e-mail the other day. The sender seemed quite angry with me at the time, so perhaps her tone was affected by that. Here's what she wrote:

"You think that women's initial repulsion of you is about your clothes and lack of hair combing. Trust me...it's about how you hate them and don't even know it."

If you want to comment on that quote, feel free. But I will let it stand as is, and will have nothing further to say about it.

Why I'm an atheist

If I had to explain why I'm an atheist, I think this little graphic circulating on Facebook could just about sum it up.

I really doubt that God, if he actually existed, would have meant me to be the person I am now. Or that he would have surrounded me with the people who were around me for most of my life, such as during my TV career.

God would have to have a pretty perverse sense of humor.

My front porch

I slept about half the night on the front porch, listening to the rain.

I bought a very expensive outdoor wicker sofa a couple of years ago, and it has been worth very penny I paid for it. It's long enough that I can stretch my entire six-foot frame out on it, and the cushions are soft enough to sleep on.

Every so often some loud manmade noise would intrude on my sleep - one of my neighbors pulling a car into the driveway, or a plane passing overhead. But mostly if I woke up all I heard was rain and occasional thunder.

M. Gastón jumped on the sofa and slept by my feet.

Eventually I got hot – even in the winter, I have to have a fan blowing on my head and shoulders when I sleep – and I came inside and finished the evening on my regular bed.

But it was nice to spend part of the evening at least a little closer to nature.

Should have knocked on wood, I guess

After having an August and September almost completely free of allergy problems, my sinuses have finally started reverting to their usual late summer/early autumn stuffiness. It's not as bad as years past, and it's six weeks late. An early frost will help, but my sense is that the first frost is going to come late this year.

Hemorrhoids

Still a damn pain in the ass. I hate 'em.

Last American Who Knew What The Fuck He Was Doing Dies

As usual, The Onion uses satire to get to the truth in this Steve Jobs obit:

Last American Who Knew What The Fuck He Was Doing Dies

On Death

“No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new." – Steve Jobs

-posted from my iPhone

Long-haired slugs vs short-haired slugs

In the comments to the preceding post, Blogblah! asks the question:

1. MCARP, does the length of your hair and/or beard impact in any way your struggle with the guy on the couch picture/self image?

I've thought about that myself, and I don't know the answer.

I like my hair longer, and as I mentioned, I get some favorable comments on it. But when I see other men with hair this long, especially if they're my age or close to it, they look to me like skid row bums. Of course, some of them are skid row bums, and maybe I'd view them more favorably if they were wearing something other than wife beaters and corduroy cutoffs.

As for the guy on the couch, well, that photo was a real eye-opener for me - the difference between the way I perceived myself and the way I look to others.

I might mention that the photo was taken by a woman to whom I once thought myself rather attracted, and who clearly felt no such attraction to me. We had a lot in common, or so I thought, but one thing we did not have in common was that she did not look like a beached whale when sitting on a sofa.

If I had applied my rule of thumb right from the start, I would have seen that instantly.

Did I answer your question? I don't think I did, but that's all I've got.

Internal narratives

When I was in love with the willowy, ethereal Buddhist, she chose another man instead of me. I came up with all kinds of rationalizations for this, which I won't enumerate here.

But the story I made up for myself about this ignored the obvious truths which now, having disconnected myself emotionally from her, are quite evident. Simply put, he's better-looking than me, more charismatic than me, younger than me and more interesting than me.

But for years – years! – I would not accept that plainly evident truth, even though one mutual friend told it to me outright. Instead, I clung to my own internal narrative, which had her mind clouded by the machinations of a meditation instructor, or cringing in fear from the affections of the one man who could truly bring her happiness, blah, blah, snort, berffle, grunt.

Even I can get hooked on internal narratives that substitute comforting falsehoods for truth. Those years of self-deception about her weren't fair to her, or to me.

Intelligence

I am, frankly, a fairly intelligent guy. When I was given an IQ test in grade school, I scored in the top five percent nationally. I'm probably smarter than the president, but not as smart as the actress Sharon Stone, who is a member of Mensa.

The only person I know personally who is in Mensa has loud, voluble arguments with himself and once showed up at the coffee shop dressed as Zorro. But he's almost certainly smarter than I am.

But what bothers me is the people who tell me that being intelligent is offensive. I've heard this several times over the past twenty years or so. During the last two years I was in television, I was scolded by management for making my coanchor 'feel stupid'. I did this by knowing answers to questions that she didn't.

If an intern asked me who Queen Noor was, for example, I would make my coanchor 'feel stupid' by knowing the answer. So, I was obliged towards the end of my career to protect my coanchor's ego by pretending to not know the answers to fairly straightforward questions about news and current events. My silence allowed inaccurate news stories to get on the air, but I didn't care, anymore, and I knew my coanchor and my supervisors didn't care, either.

In another workplace, I deeply offended and hurt the feelings of a coworker by using the word 'profligate' in a sentence. (Have I told this story before?) She didn't know what 'profligate' meant, and was pretty sure I knew she didn't know. She thought I had deliberately chosen that word to make her 'feel stupid'. After thinking about it a minute, she also began to suspect that 'profligate' was a profanity that I had chosen because I knew I could sneak it past her moral outrage radar.

That intelligence or awareness of the world is now considered a character flaw should come as no surprise to anyone watching the Republican presidential nominating process. Good god, what a bunch of dim bulbs (and bright candidates pretending to be dim bulbs to avoid offending the base).

This began, I guess, when someone asked then-candidate Ronald Reagan to name the leader of some foreign nation. "I don't know his name," Reagan replied, "but if I'm elected, I guarantee you he'll know mine." Thunderous applause erupted from the Republicans in the audience as Reagan offered swagger and bluster as a substitute for knowledge – a practice George W. Bush would make the basis of an entire political career.

Rick Perry may have pushed institutionalized dumbassery so far even the base can't accept it, but I'm not sure about that, yet.

Corollary to this uplifting and celebrating of fundamental ignorance is the notion that all opinions are the same and all opinions have equal weight and validity. Under this line of 'reasoning', your opinion, based on your knowledge of science and current events, is no more valid or valuable than my opinion based on Bible numerology or the teachings of a Melchizedek Cosmic Shaman or something I think I heard on Alex Jones's show.

Everyone is entitled to an opinion, but that doesn't mean opinions based on paranoia or superstition are just as worthy as opinions based on facts and sound reasoning.

Sorry if I made you feel stupid by posting this.

30 Days, More or Less

I have been almost completely secluded for the past 30 days. Sure, I get out for breakfast every morning, but I don't talk to anyone except the servers. It's been very quiet, very pleasant and very calm.

I've visited with Blogblah! a couple of times, had lunch or dinner with my friend Diane maybe three times, and dinner with my old Wednesday/Friday group one time.

I haven't been in my old coffee shop hangout at all.

What I have been doing is drawing – nothing worth showing, but at least releasing some creative energy nonetheless. I've struck up some casual acquaintances online with other digital artists, and I hope I can glean some helpful information from them.

I had to replace a tire on the VW. This is the third tire in six years that I've had to replace because of crap in the road, but the other two were on the minivan. In this case, it looked like a roofing nail, but it made a hole so big it couldn't be repaired. Tires for the VW cost from three times to six times as much as they do for the old minivan. Thank God there's a Firestone place within walking distance of my house.

Visited with my stock broker today. For the first time in my life, I've put money in a fund and not only lost the accumulated return, but part of the original investment as well. I'm not broke, but things aren't looking rosy.

I mentioned awhile back that I had a bout of gastrointestinal distress. That has mostly cleared up. I suspect, although I don't know, that I had a mild case of this listeria infection that's been going around the country. These problems began when I started eating cantaloupe at breakfast every morning, and I thought at the time that might be the culprit.

I did a little Googling and discovered that cantaloupe itself can indeed cause digestive upset, so I quit eating it. But nothing changed. Then, weeks later, I read about the listeria outbreak connected to cantaloupe from a single farm in eastern Colorado. I don't know for a fact that my cantaloupe, which I got in a restaurant, came from there. Nor did I have the fever, body aches and other symptoms associated with listeria. But the timing is suspicious.

Whatever the facts (TMI ALERT), my ass is no longer spraying like a fire hose.

I wrote previously that I had this sudden and inexplicable resurgence in my libido. I was so cranked up that for awhile I seriously considering getting a pro, which I have never in my life done, or even a couple of pros. Because the only threesome I've ever been in was me and both hands.

But then, suddenly, I was back to normal again. Thank god. Some sort of testosterone burst caused by sunspots, I guess.

I saw an interesting-looking redhead in a restaurant yesterday. I applied my rule of thumb: if I think she's attractive, that means she's too good-looking for me. I need to go to Catfish Cabin or Furr's Cafeteria and ogle the Aunt Bee types.

Oh, let's talk about this some more

Upon reading my previous post, mindovermary wrote:

I was reading MCARP'S blog today and as usual, he is talking about how unattractive and uninteresting he is. I don't happen to agree with him. I will say that with his hair long and his beard scraggly, he is not as good looking as he was with short hair and groomed beard. I think he is rather handsome when he grooms.

It doesn't matter what I think when he thinks differently. Whether someone is attractive or not is directly linked to how that person feels about themselves. I, and the women I know, are attracted to men who are secure and confident in
who they are.

First, on a practical note, response to my long hair has been mixed. Some people think it looks better long, and others prefer it short. I grew my hair very long between 1998 and 2000. I kept it in a ponytail while I was living in Texas, and I will say it seemed very popular with women there.

I cut it first to go on a job interview. Later, I cut it even shorter simply for the sake of convenience. For most of the past decade, I have worn it 3/32 of an inch long, and cut it myself with a Panasonic shower-friendly electric shaver. At right is a picture of how it looked this morning. Someone told me I'm starting to look like the Dude, and another said I resemble Meher Baba, either of which I'll be happy to take as a compliment.

On to this thing of self-confidence. I think I am secure and confident in who I am. If I wasn't, I would be spending a lot more time and effort managing my 'brand' or my image, and I simply don't.

I'm confident enough, in fact, that I've been called 'arrogant' more than once. My experience has been that women find arrogance attractive in certain men, but I'm not one of them.

The person I see in the mirror every morning while I'm brushing my teeth seems to me to be a lot better-looking than women generally seem to find me. As I've said before, I've had trouble figuring out where this face fits on the scale between Matt Damon and the guy who played Newman the letter carrier on Seinfeld. I seem to rate it more highly than the general population does.

Why in God's name do I keep posting about this? I guess because I don't have anything else to talk about, but I want to keep the blog going.

The unhappy truth

So... what's
your sign, babe?

I guess most guys figure out by the end of high school what kind of women are 'attainable' by them. i.e., not likely to laugh out loud if they flatter them or accuse them of stalking if they say 'good morning' to them.

But I had insufficient feedback in that area. I knew in high school I was nowhere near the top of the ladder, but I couldn't accurately estimate how far down I was.

I'm not an ugly guy, by any means. I am just extraordinarily ordinary-looking. Mine is a face that would disappear into a crowd, except for the fact that it's parked atop the 6-foot-tall slab of beef that is my body.

(I am overweight these days, but even when I'm not, I'm anything but thin. I sort of resemble Merlin Olsen, the late football player/actor, in body type.)

I entered college confident that I was somewhere in the broad middle region of looks and charisma. I was no Ryan O'Neal, who was the gold standard of hotness at the time, but no Ron "Horshack" Palillo, either.

Evidence began to mount that I had overrated myself. Women I approached inevitably rejected me and often took up with guys that I thought were a lot less interesting and attractive than me (although often wealthier or with a better supply line of drugs).

But then college ended, I entered the workplace, and I soon found myself on television reading (and hysterically hyperventilating over) the news. I was the least good-looking newscaster in town – that was obvious. But still, I had made the cut, hadn't I? That ought to count for something.

But it didn't.

I kept approaching women who were, frankly, much too hot for a shambling, beefy sloth like me, and I kept getting rejected. And then I started looking in that broad middle region of looks and charisma. What I saw were hundreds of women to whom I was not the least attracted.

I am aware that a lot of people end up married to people to whom they are not attracted. It's called "settling," and I eventually did it myself. It wasn't fair to me to have done that, but moreover, it wasn't fair to her, either. She loved me, but she would have been better off with a simple, slow-witted Baptist youth minister than she was with me.

Now, in my senior years, I am able to sort of comfortably say that which was evident from the late sixties to the present: I am really an unappealing, unattractive guy. I'm a lot lower on the ladder than I wanted to believe. That is mostly just the way the genetic cards were dealt – the Tao of mcarp, if you will.

But I'm still not going after the 'Aunt Bee' types, whether I'm 'supposed' to or not.

Some good news for a change

I have suffered from severe late summer allergies all my life. In my twenties, thirties and forties, my allergies were so severe between the last week of August and the first week of October that I would spend most of the time in bed, surrounded by tissues and sinus medicines. Some mornings when I woke up, my eyes would be badly swollen I couldn't open them.

But about ten years ago, the severity of my late summer allergies began tapering off, and they've been more bearable with each passing year.

This year, the August/September/October allergy season has passed almost unnoticed. I've had maybe three brief sneezing jags for the whole six weeks.

And now, an unsolicited testimonial

You may recall that earlier this year I was somewhat attracted to a woman much younger than myself. She sent me to the friend zone quickly, but that was what I expected in the first place, so I wasn't too broken-hearted about it.

She has since moved away with a boyfriend her own age. But today, she posted this comment on my Facebook wall in regard to my own posts about my daily activities.

" ...you remind me of the old man on Fraggle Rock mixed a bit with the Swedish Chef of the Muppets, with a hint of the man that Dennis menaces...lovin' the daily mcarp..."

Of course, she forgot to mention Dr. Johnny Fever.

But I think her description probably reflects the general feminine opinion of me in a much more succinct way than I ever could. I can sit at my computer and blather about the resurgence of my sexual prowess, but in the outside world most women look at me and are reminded of various cartoon characters from their childhoods.

T M Even More I

In addition to everything else, my stomach and GI tract have been giving me fits intermittently for about three weeks now. I've had this before, but it's been years ago. When I was in college, I took two doses of Pepto-Bismol every morning to just get through the day.

It went away by itself that time (after many months), and I assume it will this time, too.

I wonder if this and the renewed libido are somehow biochemically connected. Earlier in the summer, I also had the worst case of acne I've ever had in my life. It was minor – almost unnoticeable – but still worse than anything I experienced in my teens.

Of course, at my age, stuff like this has the potential to be more serious.

But, as I've said before, I've done everything I was 'supposed' to do. I don't have insurance, and I'd frankly rather die and leave what money I have to someone who will use it constructively than blow it all trying to keep my worthless ass alive longer than it needs to be.

T M I

I used to have a couple of female friends who talked candidly, and at length, about their sex lives. It wasn't 'sex chat,' in any way, shape or form, although the details were usually rather explicit. Even so, I wasn't offended, and I didn't mind listening.

On the other hand, I had another female friend whose stories of sexual exploits, although far less salacious, always had me fumbling on my iPod for Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, so I could turn it up full blast.

(In my own family, discussion of sex and sexuality was strictly off-limits, as you might expect in any family in the late fifties and early sixties – although you might also think my folks would be a little more open about it than most, given that both of them were willing to fuck pretty much anything that walked on its hind legs.)

Anyway, you might want to put the 1812 Overture on before reading further.

For about the past ninety days, my libido has been functioning at roughly the same level it did when I was thirty, and I am at a loss to explain why. It's fairly frustrating, since I am in fact not thirty, but fifty-eight, built more like a Kay County farmer than a sophisticated, urbane metrosexual, and I am profoundly exhausted with the company of other human beings – even willowy, ethereal ones. I am, in other words, a lousy candidate for random sexual encounters.

The longest I was ever 'master of my domain', to use the Seinfeldian euphemism, was close to two years. I was depressed, heavily into meditation and Buddhist philosophy, and, as the coup de grace, affected by some sex drive-killing blood pressure medication. Everything still worked, biologically speaking, but I just didn't care. If Milla Jovovich had landed in my back yard wearing nothing but a parachute, I would have called her a cab. ("Milla - you're a cab!")

Even though I was still in love with my willowy Buddhist friend, I was mostly interested in sitting on a hillside with her, watching the clouds. I wanted a relationship, but I wanted it to be mostly intellectual – someone on my own level or close to it with whom I could have interesting and stimulating conversation, or just quiet evenings saying and doing nothing, while she walked around in gauzy, floaty clothes.

My perfect woman,
people tell me. 

Now, suddenly, it's like some sort of fog lifted. Unfortunately, there's not much I can do about it. As I've said many times in the past, one can realize that he's attracted to people who are not 'appropriate' for him, but that doesn't change the fact that he's attracted to them.

I am attracted to women who are, to put it bluntly, too good-looking for me. They're out of my league.

As I've written before, I am apparently 'supposed' to be with a burly, stocky, angry but gregarious woman – an "Aunt Bee" type – who will whip my fat stockman's ass into shape. But even with a thirty-year-old's libido, that still doesn't appeal to me in the least.

Random notes

I bought a TV this week. It's the first new TV I've had in 15 years, I guess. I haven't had television at all in a long time.

Pulled the thing out of the box, and the only thing I recognized was the screen. All the connections – and there are many – were foreign to me. I had never seen a TV with USB ports and a LAN connection. I misplaced the manual almost immediately. I guess I'll go online and try to learn more about how this thing works. I doubt I'll watch any actual television with it. I'm thinking about getting Netflix, and I can watch movies right now from iTunes.

In other news, I'm sitting at home almost all day, and enjoying it. Haven't been to the coffee shop in a couple of weeks. Went to dinner with my old Wednesday/Friday group the other night. I don't do that often, but it's good to touch base with them occasionally.

I've thought lately that I would like to make some new friends. I don't know where to look. Most people bore me. They have to be extremely bright or extremely eccentric for me to enjoy their company.

The blower in the central air unit has gone out. I haven't had anything done with it because the weather's been so temperate I haven't needed it, and probably won't need heat until December. It has to get below freezing and stay that way for a couple of days for the house to get cold enough to be uncomfortable.

Autumn

Wow — maybe autumn really is here. It's cloudy and 54 right now, with rain in the forecast. This is very welcome after the hottest summer on record for my state.

This is also the kind of weather that makes a guy wish he had someone snuggled up under the covers with him. But I'm going to do the zen thing here, which is to note that I am experiencing that desire, and then move on.

I have been accused of not being in touch with my feelings. Actually, I'm quite aware of my feelings, and it's a very Buddhist thing to be aware of one's feelings. But it's not a Buddhist thing to be ruled by one's feelings.

Transitions

Another person and I have dissolved our friendship of six or seven years. Frankly, it feels like a relief.

She would have her own interpretation of the events leading up to this. My interpretation is that we had reached the point where she expected me to be on 24-hour hot standby to help her with emergencies, anxiety attacks and minor crises that were usually the direct result of her own negligence or lack of planning.

She had done this previously with a couple other of her male friends, and I knew it would eventually come to me.

My list of close friends is shrinking. But I am more comfortable with solitude than I have been in a long time. I guess I like myself better than I used to.

A few days went by during the past couple of weeks in which I did not think about the willowy and ethereal Buddhist woman. That's significant because they were the first days in probably six or seven years that I did not think of her even once. It used to be an every day occurrence.

A return to normalcy

It gets harder and harder for me to be around other people. I spend more time than ever alone, and I'm happy and grateful to have that time.

The flurry of angst I felt about women and relationships seems to have subsided, and I am almost back to my old comfortable indifference. The outburst of resentment shared here over the past few weeks harkened back to the late 1990s, when I carried on like that all the time.