my sister and i dancing, approx age 6 or 7

I quit facebook again. I feel like i’m throwing a fit, and maybe I am. But it’s not against Facebook or all of the people there. It’s me.

Here’s a few reasons why:

• Not helpful in any social way that I can tell. Send me an email or call me if you wanna talk.
• Need less personal and professional distractions.
• Am trying to de-stimulate my life. Notice how boring it is when you actually hang out in in real life with people these days? It’s because of how easy it is to get information and stimulation via your computer or mobile phone. I want to disconnect a little and reconnect with normal life. The web has become so boring to me lately.
• Facebook is for young people. I am not so young anymore.
• The idea that you’re sharing your thoughts and activities and musings— what it means to be you—- to your group of friends is a little wrong. You don’t announce and make exclamations to your friends, you generally try to create some sort of dialogue. If you are going to announce something important, do it in person or over the phone, not over Facebook. Ever get a Happy Birthday wish on Facebook? It feels a little like nothing, and requires only a little bit more
• I miss writing stuff here
• I can always join back in later should I want or need to. Hopefully I wont need or want to.

(kicking & screaming)

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten is $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

• The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
• The fifth would pay $1.
• The sixth would pay $3.
• The seventh would pay $7.
• The eighth would pay $12.
• The ninth would pay $18.
• The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that’s what they decided to do. The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. “Since you are all such good customers,” he said, “I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20.” Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.
And so:
And so:

• The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
• The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
• The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).
• The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
• The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings) .
• The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.

“I only got a dollar out of the $20,” declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man,” but he got $10!”

“Yeah, that’s right,” exclaimed the fifth man. “I only saved a dollar, too. It’s unfair that he got ten times more than I!”

“That’s true!!” shouted the seventh man. “Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!”

“Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison. “We didn’t get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!” The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill! And that, ladies and gentlemen, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D.

Professor of Economics

University of Georgia
For those who understand, no explanation is needed.
For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible.

I’ve always loved records. One time when I was a kid my parents had a party with wine and records (I now have similar parties). I was about 3 or 4. I came downstairs the next morning to watch cartoons and started drinking the wine from the leftover bottles. Then I started pulling out all the records from their sleeves and arranging them on the carpet around the room. Imagine a living room solid with black vinyl records all over the ground. Add to this that my Stepdad at the time was not only an avid record collector, but also a neat/organization freak; his records were in alphabetical order. 45′s were arranged similarly but by genre and then alphabetically.

At some point they came downstairs and I was drunk and walking around on his prized record collection.

My Mom said:

You were so fucked up on that wine and it was all over the floor. Your hair was sticky with it.

When I was a boy I had translucent blond hair so you can imagine it all purple and matted with wine and me swaying around.

Here is picture from approximately that time (my hands still look the same):

It’s funny that my living room after one of these types of parties looks the same with the wine bottles and records all over the floor. I treat my records, probably my most prized possessions, pretty badly.

So on Saturday I saw a post on craigslist that read:

$300–  i have about 600-700 vinyl records that’s sitting in 5 or 6 13″x13″x15″ boxes, it’s a mixed lot that i got from a buddy who got out of vinyl … the records are mostly rap (east coast), dancehall, r&b and the likes. all the records were in my office until a couple of days ago where i packed them up and put them in the garage as well.

I bought them for $250 and turned my  collection of 300 into a collection of 900-1,000. I looked through the first box and saw some pretty good ones (Aesop Rock, Kweli, some bizarre Dancehall looking sleeves) and then decided to buy them and look through the rest at home.

I have been planning to open a record e-shop as a hobby since it would give me an excuse to buy and listen to records and drink wine, and this was the impetus I needed. So I bought the domain “RecordStore.me” and started building the site and adding records. I have about 35 up now.

Today when I woke up, my hair was all sticky with wine and was matted. There were records everywhere.

I quit smoking a month ago today. I will skip all the talk about feeling great and get straight to how I did it.

me, smoking

Drugs

Nicotine is a powerful drug, and as such you’ll need to fight fire with fire. I took Zyban (Wellbutrin) for three weeks—one week prior and two weeks in.

Even though it was suggested to take it for 15 weeks this wasn’t necessary for me and probably won’t be for you either if you really do want to quit. The side effects of Zyban were strong enough that I slowly tested to see if i’d be ok without it to avoid enduring more side effects. I would simply live through the day and see how I felt, if I started to feel weak or tempted to smoke i’d pop a Zyban. After about 10 days of quitting I realized I hadn’t thought of smoking in 5 days. Now I surprise myself when I realize I haven’t thought about smoking in a few days.

Zyban will mess up your sleep schedule and your ability to digest food. If you’re overdosing you’ll hear ringing in your ears and will feel crazier than an outhouse rat. If this happens, lower your dose yourself. I took 150mg per day at the start and then switched to 75mg per day after a week or so. My body is sensitive to medicine of all kinds so YMMV.

You will still feel terrible the first 1-3 days so I suggest quitting on a Friday night so you can sleep it off but it will be nowhere as bad as the Jason Patric from the movie Rush detox you will endure going cold turkey.

Brain Washing

Nicotine use can brainwash you over the years. You will think that you are a smoker. That you were just born that way. You weren’t. After you quit you’ll feel pretty stupid about smoking for all of those years. You’ll also think that you need cigarettes for certain situations or that you’ll never be quite as happy without cigarettes. This is all bullshit that the drug makes you think so that you’ll keep smoking. All of this said, you will need to learn how to cope with sadness, frustration, boredom, and even happiness again. The first times you’ll really need a cigarette. After awhile you’ll just ride it out, or even better, actually address it.

To understand why you are reliant on cigarettes, alcohol, drugs or anything else you have to first agree that you don’t have an addictive personality, you just have a weak mental state. You are always looking to something external to solve or supplement things in your life rather than dealing with it internally.

I’ve known drug addicts who will have a drink, a cigarette, be high on drugs and go to light another cigarette— they’re never quite satisfied.

Read Allen Carr’s book “The Easy Way To Stop Smoking”. The very basic takeaway from the book is: cigarettes don’t relieve your need for nicotine, they cause it. The last cigarette you smoke is what makes you want the next one. If you simply don’t smoke another one that last cigarette becomes weaker and weaker and sooner or later you will be free. The Zyban mentioned above will really help you believe Allen Carr’s words whereas without it I’ve always just felt it was hopeless after awhile.

Some other stuff

I’ve started working out a lot. I’ve been pretty lazy from my year in China and lack of activity. I think to stop smoking you’ll really need to work out and the weird thing is you’ll start to need to work out the way you used to need to smoke.

At night time I will sometimes get weird headaches that I think are related to my body cleaning out all the smoking residue.

I work in Advertising and Marketing but I really feel like I belong to another era.

Advertising used to be so honest.

If I was a copywriter back in the old days I might write something like this:

have a beer, feel like yourself again

I’m going to Mike Doughty’s show at The Bootleg Theater tonight.

I’ve been a big fan of Mike Doughty’s music and blog for a long time.

I feel like Doughty is like a a slightly better looking, though similar looking, and way more musically talented version of me who also writes better and probably has a more happy life. Man, I’m starting to hate this Mike Doughty guy now.

Here are a few songs by him:

Mike Doughty – “The Only Answer”

And:

Mike Doughty (Soul Coughing, Actually) “Janine”