I arrived at the Amtrak Station to visit my friend Clint down in Shaston. It was the first time I’d ever ridden an Amtrak train, so it was quite the experience. I had actually been under the impression that these trains ran mostly empty, but in this case it was almost full. So much so that I had to plop down an extra $13 because the only available tickets were Business Class.

I was somewhat impressed by the Business Class accomodations. I will definitely pay the extra $13 (or 33%) next time. The free voucher sort of helps with that, but the big thing is that you get your own power jack, plenty of leg room (which is important for someone with my dimensions), and the feeling of smug superiority that is much more expensive on airplanes. I sat in the regular accommodations for about ten minutes before I realized that I was in the wrong place. They weren’t bad, though they weren’t quite as nice as I had figured they would be. The seats were a lot better than plane seats, but not much better (if better at all) than bus seats.

Because I got Business Class tickets, I got a free voucher for $3 at the diner. I had visions of eating something while watching the landscape fly by. Wouldn’t you know it, after I buy the food and before I sit down, the train stops. Apparently the switch on the tracks are frozen and somebody has to get out to do something about it. After I finish my sandwich, the train is back on its way.

Screw it, I want my food-and-ride. I buy a bagel just so that I can eat something while I ride.

Train stops again. Someone has to get out again to clear off some switch or something.

Train stops a third time. They apologize for the inconvenience, but the snow and ice are creating problems for them. Even though we’re not far out of Shaston, I’m beginning to wonder if we’re actually going to make it.

I make it. Clint comes and picks me up. I’m safely in Shaston.

You know how some men complain about how difficult it is to find the right girl? They complain that all of the girls are spending their time going after “alpha males” or “outlaw bikers” or the like? Here’s what really happens:

The guy went through grade and middle schools in the lower social classes. They may have had friends, but they were mostly fellow outcasts or, at the least, were mostly devoid of popular people. This is important because it meant that that they lacked female friends. The upper castes tend to either have co-ed tribes or otherwise have corresponding pools of guys and girls similar to that of a fraternity and its sister sorority. This is important because it means that they had somewhat limited exposure to women. That girl who sits next to them who borrows pencils from him or even that girl that smiles back in the hall when he smiles at her doesn’t count. Nor does it count just because he got a girl to sign his yearbook. She probably just wrote “have a great summer” or “thanks for the pencil” or maybe “stay sweet” for lack of anything better to say.

What happened in late junior high or maybe high school is that he started asking girls out. He didn’t do a very good job of this. He asked out girls that were way out of his league. Girls that lead him on by smiling back at him in the halls, borrowing a pencil, or signing his yearbook. After failing at this, he may have asked out girls that were a lot less attractive than the ones that he asked out before. The problem is that he never really went to the trouble of getting to know these girls, getting them to sign his yearbook, or much of anything else. Why waste the effort? Just take shots in the dark. Suddenly, they’re hurt, too.

The exacts vary from individual to individual, but the important part of this is that it all put him on the wrong track. He fell further and further behind in his ability to deal with female-types. When he later made real live female friends, this was quite an advance and he figured that he was finally out of it all. So he started trying to inch up closer to them. Some were girls that tolerated him at best. Others may have said yes, but somewhere along the line he heard that it’s good to make friends with girls first and then ask him out and he mistook unloading his problems on her as friendship and the problems that he unloaded made him less attractive because nobody likes being around a whiner. In fact, he probably considers the fact that he listens to her whines as a debt accrued on her part to be repaid by later romance.

Again, the details vary somewhat, but the refrain is all the same. Over and over again, he puts himself in situations where he is not an attractive partner. When these situations blow up, he gets increasingly embittered. This results in his becoming less attractive because nobody wants to be with a downer. As he gets more desperate he may be willing to if it means being with somewhat that he is otherwise attracted to, but he comes up with the expectation that a woman should be willing to do the same for a man that she is not particularly attracted to.

Things descend further when he finds out that because someone else is down does not mean that they believe that being with another downer, or something that they are not attracted to, will alleviate their predicament. Some guys might take this as a sign that they should improve themselves to the point that they are not a downer or that they should be valuable in more respects than merely being a consolator. Some have amazing minds that help them figure this out. Some stumble on the answer. Others, though, do neither.

Instead, they come to the conclusion that the problem is that the girl that signed his yearbook doesn’t realize that her broken heart at the hands of somebody else means that she needs to find someone that would never break her heart. Not coincidentally, he means himself. So really, it’s their fault for not wanting to be with him. They’re the problem and he is not.

The embitterment becomes more entrenched in his psyche and the cycle perpetuates. He becomes increasingly misogynistic and his misogynism makes finding romance increasingly less likely, which makes him more misogynistic and so on. More and more of his interactions with women become about partnering up. Girls become ever more uncomfortable around him. The witches. And before they know it, they’re in their thirties, mostly devoid of serious relationships (except with people roughly as angry and generally screwed up as they are… I don’t need to tell you how successful those relationships are) and he ends up in the dark world of his own anger and proclaimed blamelessness.

And that is why so many men have trouble finding women.

It’s kind of a neat and tidy story, isn’t it? You see, it’s really the guys fault that he never found love. In fact, any guy that doesn’t find love is to blame becuase he spent all of his time pursuing the wrong women! If he stopped aiming too high and stopped being so mean, everything would work out. But he didn’t so they didn’t. Unfortunately, a whole bunch of nice girls out there end up without guys because so many guys are inflicted with this bitterness.

The problem is that the above strictly applies to relatively few men. A lot end up without partners for entirely different reasons. They reasonably chose women that they seemed well-suited for and things did not work out because of her own dark world of anger. Or he simply had an unconventional personality that made it difficult to find women that would appreciate it.

This is the problem I have with the whole meme that women end up alone because they are hung up with getting “alpha males” or because they are fixated with jerks. There are women to whom this applies, just as their are men to whom the above applies, but it’s dismissive of a lot of people’s loneliness on the basis of the worst archetypes. It assumes that people of the other that are in pain deserve it while your own comrades are victims.

The solution, to the extent that there is one, is to try to modify one’s own behavior. This is much more difficult than blaming the other gender, but in the end it’s what is most likely to produce results. I’m not huge into kharma, but it is my experience that what you bring into the dating market is what you get out of it. I don’t mean this strictly in the sense of bitterness but also in terms of how serious you are about finding a partner. I’ve found that people that are looking for serious relationships figure out what to look for and find, if not serious relationships, people that are looking for them (which greatly increases their likelihood of finding it). People that look for relationships for the sake of alleviating pain tend to find other people looking to alleviate pain. That rarely makes for good relationships or, for that matter, relationships at all.

My glasses are not so rose-colored as to suggest that happiness is purely an inside job. My wife’s presence in my life has made me happier in very real ways. Had I not found her, and had certain other prospects not worked out, it’s quite possible that I would be unhappy right now. The same goes for my wife. Where we succeeded and others failed, besides in simply finding the right person, was that we were both, when we met, prepared to be happy. We weren’t just hoping for it or pleading for it. We were ready for it. We knew it when we saw it. We were ready to work to preserve it when we found it.

They say that luck is merely preparation meeting opportunity. A lot of people spend all their time seeking out opportunity which usually leads to tragedy. Some people find preparation but never opportunity and that is inherently tragic. I wish I had more advice on the opportunity front but that was the part that I was always bad at. Fortunately, before I got really lucky with that, I avoided the above cycle and got a handle on the preparation part.

I saw an advertisement for AARP Life Insurance Program that grabbed my attention. Why? Because it was a kitchen-table conversation in which the guy was not only not clueless, but actually knew what he was doing*. The woman was skeptical, but the guy was right. He even got to say “I told you so.” How often does any of this happen in commercials.

They couldn’t leave it at that, of course. Then the hinges fell off the cabinet and he was reminded that he had some chores around the house that he needed to get done. The slacker. He looked sheepish.

* – Within the framework of the advertisement, of course – I have no idea whether AARP Life Insurance is “right” for anybody.

I have begun Scott Turow’s Kindle County series for my audio pleasure during my commute. The first book in that series is Presumed Innocent. Even if you’re not expressly familiar with Turow, that title may sound familiar because there was a movie starring Harrison Ford by that name. Maybe you’ve seen it.

I have, it would seem.

Actually, I’ve seen the last 20-30 minutes of it. Just enough to know who did what, why, and how things end. When I realized it was the book of the movie I’d seen, I said to myself “Oh, well, I don’t know anything about how it got there.”

Thankfully, they gave a summary of the plot in the introduction! So now I am relieved of the suspense of knowing what lead up to who, doing what, and how it ends.

Actually, I’m enjoying it regardless. I can only imagine how much I would be enjoying it if I didn’t already know how so many of the pieces fell together in the end.

The subject of Parental Notification and Parental Consent laws came up on the sadly defunct Bobvis blog. I don’t want to get into the wisdom of such laws in this post, but for context purposes let me just say that I am conflicted on the matter.

As readers of Hit Coffee know, I am morally uncomfortable with the vast majority of abortions performed. It’s not my desire to defend that position here, but it’s important to note that for the sake of this post. This isn’t about what the law should be (either in regards to abortion or more specifically parental notification/consent laws), rather how I approach the issue morally and more importantly how I would respond should I have a daughter that becomes pregnant. If you think I am wrong to be morally uncomfortable with it, please don’t waste your time or mine trying to convince me that I am wrong in this venue just as I will not try to convince you that you are wrong. It’s a value judgment.

In the comment section of the Bobvis post, I said:

As a future parent, I would of course prefer that any daughter (or son, of course) not engage in risky sexual behavior. However, even independent of that I would not want my daughter having an abortion simply to cover up the fact that she had done so. I’m conflicted on parental notification laws, but I don’t think that it’s entirely based on the motives {of wanting to control my daughter’s sexual behavior}.

The thing is, if I had a daughter that was pregnant and intended to have an abortion, I don’t think that I would want to be notified. A part of me thinks that if I could convince her not to, I would want that opportunity. I would want to be able to tell her that we would work with her so that she could go to college and establish herself. We’d (informally or formally) adopt the kid as our own if that would change her mind or help her place the child for adoption with an agency. I would want her to know that while I may be disappointed in what led up to the pregnancy that I understand that things happen and how we respond to the consequences of our mistakes says as much about us as the mistakes themselves.

The other part of me, however, fears that it would tear our family apart if she declined to go along. If the law were notification, it would be excruciating to try to talk her into having the baby and not being able to do so. She would know how vehemently I disapprove of her decision and I would know that she did something that I have strong moral objections to. It gets more difficult with parental consent laws because I would have a lot of difficulty consenting to it. If her mental health were obviously on the line, I would probably not drag her to court over the issue and so would consent. But such things are extremely difficult to judge. She may overestimate the mental health effects of having the baby or I might underestimate it. If I did not provide consent and she got a judicial bypass (most of which are granted, from what I understand), it could cause a permanent cut that’s never entirely sewn up.

In this case, I have to wonder if ignorance is bliss. If I found out five years later that she’d had an abortion five years before, I think that it might be easier for me to handle. This is perhaps a very selfish approach if it relies too much on the notion of how clean or dirty my hands are, though also a factor (I’d like to think a bigger one) would be that five years down the line she would be a different person and it would all be in the past. It’s sort of analogous to the fact that I hate losing in sports and games a lot more than I mind having lost. I can deal with bad things having happened than watching them unfold right before me.

It’s only somewhat likely that I would be a part of this decision anyway. Our daughter would have two parents. She will know what my views are on abortion and though my wife’s views are almost the same, I still suspect that it would be easier for her to talk to her mother than me. I’m tempted to tell Clancy that should the day ever come when our daughter comes to her seeking help with an abortion that she not even tell me about it until it’s all in the past (if then). I’m not sold on the idea because I feel that’s unfairly placing too much burden on her, letting her deal with the muck so that I can steer my conscience clear of the tough decisions that she had to make.

Statistically, our daughter is not likely to get pregnant in any event. We will promote safe sex, for one thing, and she will get the lecture well before its time. We don’t intend to make discussions of sex too taboo, though obviously we will not want any salacious details. It’s also the case that neither Clancy nor I are particularly sexually adventurous. Promiscuity doesn’t run deeply in either of our families. It’s not in our nature. Neither, for that matter, is having access to a lot of sexual partners. The biggest threat would likely be a long-term relationship like the one that I had with Julie wherein contraception is not applied consistently or it fails when applied as it sometimes does. But risks are risks and it’s not at all unforseeable that the above won’t be an issue. If we do have a child that does become pregnant, they are probably more likely to be of the “pro-choice” mindset than the “pro-life” one regardless of the ideals that we profess to. I’m not sure about Clancy, but I was myself pretty strongly pro-choice when I was young. They will likely be college-minded and at least somewhat career-minded (they will have their mother to look up to, after all). So if a pregnancy does occur, we are more likely than the average family to have a lot of conflict over it.

In any event, I really hope that it never does come up. Failing that, at least a part of me hopes that I don’t know about it until it’s old news.

There are some things that you don’t quite realize how much you use until you don’t have it anymore.

That would be my sideview mirror, which apparently broke last night. Probably had something to do with the snow and ice that accumulated last night.

The mirror is stuck looking down at the street. I tried pushing it up but I couldn’t get it to look anywhere but down. It was in a weird, not-obvious way, too. It didn’t look like it was looking down except when I was looking at it from the driver’s seat. But I’d push it up and it’d look right back down. Further complicating things was the fact that my window was also stuck in the upward pose. So each time I wanted to manually push the mirror, I had to either reach around it or get out of the car.

I figured that there was some ice in there that was preventing the window from going down and the mirror from looking up. A little movement and I figured that it would both would be mobile again. Unfortunately, the window didn’t budge, which meant that I couldn’t push the mirror around while driving. As luck would have it, according to my GPS I spent about an hour of my commute not moving, which provided me ample opportunity to tinker with it.

I heard a crunch sound when I pushed the mirror around, so I doubt it’s ever going to look upwards again. I would say that the mirror wouldn’t move no matter how hard I tried, but after the crunchy mirror I decided that I would just let it be. Better it be stuck up than down. Besides, not like there are a whole lot of days right now where I want the wind blowing through my hair as I cruise in the sun.

That mirror, though, has turned into a real pain in the posterior.

The window on the driver’s side is also stuck in the Up position.

I hate it when I spend an hour and a half writing a response to a newspaper article only to discover as I’m wrapping it up that the article I read was a cropped version of a longer article that addressed all of my complaints.
(more…)

I think that the term “patriotic” has been twisted into something unuseful, but I guess I would consider myself somewhat patriotic. I love my country and want it to prosper. I hate it when people use July 4th as an excuse to bash America. I defend America in arguments with arrogant foreigners who think that they know more about America than Americans do. This extends somewhat into international business where I want Boeing to beat Airbus, WM and iPhone to beat Symbian, and so on. But this all has its limitations. I sometimes root against our team in international competition when its obvious that the other country cares a lot more. I don’t buy “Made in America” products solely because they’re Made in America.

Errr, on that last one,it would seem that there is an exception.

Ever since I was young, my family has purchased American cars. It used to be Dodge but now everything’s a Ford. Part of that is attributable to my father’s general conservatism about major purchases with a strong bias towards going with what you know. He kept buying Dodge Colts until they stopped making them. Then he bought Ford Escorts and he would continue if they hadn’t stopped making those. I think part of it is that he knows his preferred car people can fix Fords and Dodges and though with a simple question he could find out if they would work on Toyotas too, why ask when he can just keep getting Fords?

I’m not sure how much life my current car has in it. Most likely enough to get us off to wherever we move to in the next year. But at some point I’m going to need to buy a car. I noted that Nissans have a near looking car that boasts a good amount of interior room but with a small footprint, which I like. It would also be convenient if Clancy and I both drove the same brand of car.

At the same time… I have such difficulty imagining buying a non-American car. I would myopically look at whatever follows the Ford Escort (Ford Focus?) and maybe it’s competitors put out by Chevy and Dodge. And I have no idea why this is the case. I can think of things that I might think are reasons. I think that Americans cars are less likely to have rigged up dashboards making it difficult to put in aftermarket players. I think that American cars cost mildly less to get fixed because there are more people that can do it. But if any commenters here tell me that I’m wrong about these things, I’m not sure that it would change my feelings on the matter.

I also can’t cite support for the American worker. I could get a Toyota made in Texas or a Nissan made in Tennessee easily enough. At least one of the Dodge Colts we got was full of parts made in Japan. It’s not outrage that the plants in the south aren’t unionized since I hold no strong belief that the UAW is a particularly positive influence as the Big 3 struggle for air and the foreign auto-makers do not. And the more I think about the different models, the less I want to buy American. Union issues aside, there are numerous other things that the Big 3 did to get themselves in their current mess and a part of me is extremely resistant to the idea that “Even though you did these things, I want to support you with my dollars anyway.”

But nonetheless here I remain, befuddled at the notion of buying a Toyota or a Nissan.

Maybe it’s partly an image thing. The same thing that drives some to buy the loudest environmentally correct car that they can without any honest assessment about what they can really do to lower their carbon footprint or whatever. Maybe I don’t want to be one of those people that buy foreign cars. Except that I don’t think less at all of Clancy for her Toyota nor did I Julie for her Honda or Kyle and his Mazda. Maybe there is a little redneck in me that wants the eternal struggle be between Ford and Chevy. Or I like the simplicity of choosing between three companies rather than between 11. Maybe I have a subconscious view that foreign cars are less genuine even though there’s really no solid basis and besides it’s more possible that the foreign car was built by a (distant) relative or friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend than the American car since I have roots throughout the south and none in Michigan.

None of these possibilities are things that I can stand behind, but they’re really all I got. Maybe I’m just my father’s son, going with what I know until I can’t anymore. Which may be sooner rather than later, it would seem.

-{Note: This post says nothing about Republicans or Democrats or lobbyists. I’d like the comments to steer clear of that as well.}-