You have 30 minutes?

Penn and Teller: Bullshit! 12-Stepping. I quit AA 7 years ago after 7 years in the program. While I still believe that addiction is brain based, I don't believe that God can fix me. P & T pretty much frame why I quit. I got tired of the worn platitudes, the deification of Bill Wilson and Bob Smith, and the Big Book zombie-like transformation of people I considered friends. Did AA save my life? Yeah, I think it did. What does that mean? Fuck if I know, but I can't see myself going back.

via MeFi

Why "Nice Guys" are often such LOSERS

ou hear it all the time: "He was such a NICE Guy, and she's such a Heartless Bitch for dumping him."

I get letters from self-professed Nice Guys, complaining that women must WANT to be treated like shit, because THEY, the "Nice Guy" have failed repeatedly in relationships. This is akin to the false logic that "Whales are mammals. Whales live in the sea. Therefore, all mammals live in the sea."

If you have one bad relationship after another, the only common denominator is YOU. Think about it.

What's wrong with Nice Guys? The biggest problem is that most Nice Guys (tm) are hideously insecure. They are so anxious to be liked and loved that they do things for other people to gain acceptance and attention, rather than for the simply pleasure of giving. You never know if a Nice Guy really likes you for who you are, or if he has glommed onto you out of desperation because you actually paid some kind of attention to him.

Nice Guys exude insecurity -- a big red target for the predators of the world. There are women out there who are "users" -- just looking for a sucker to take advantage of. Users home-in on "Nice Guys", stroke their egos, take them for a ride, add a notch to their belts, and move on. It's no wonder so many Nice Guys complain about women being horrible, when the so often the kind of woman that gets attracted to them is the lowest form of life...

Self-confident, caring, decent-hearted women find "Nice Guys" to be too clingy, self-abasing, and insecure.

Nice Guys go overboard. They bring roses to a "lets get together for coffee" date. They try to buy her affections with presents and fancy things. They think they know about romance, but their timing is all wrong, and they either come-on too strong, too hard and too fast, OR, they are so shy and unassertive, that they hang around pretending to be "friends", in the hope that somehow, someway, they will get the courage up to ask her out for a "date".

They are so desperate to please that they put aside their own needs, and place the object of their desire on a pedestal. Instead of appreciating her, they worship her. We are only human, and pedestals are narrow, confining places to be -- not to mention the fact that we tend to fall off of them.

Read the rest at Heartless Bitches International

I've been there. Thank Goo, I don't have to date anymore. However, I do see signs of myself, in this article now, and it's a good reminder to not be such a pussy in my marriage. Be the equal, not the spineless jellyfish.

Back on the horse

Today I was laying in bed in an unusual state. I was taking a nap after getting up at 6:30, going to the bathroom and deciding to go back to bed. It was awsome.

And as I lay there and willed my muscles to relax, I thought..."Ok, pretend this is your death bed, you are going out as you would like, nice and relaxed, gestalt your life."

I'm sorry to say that it was a negative burst of frustration, anger, missed opportunites and pain. I didn't tense up, but continued to drift. I thought with some resignation, "Yeah...that's probably how it's gonna be."

But I realized there is no reason for it. I have a wonderful wife and a fantastic marriage. I may not be super great with my family, but I do love and care for them, there is no longer any hate.

However, I am walking around with a spiritual pain that closely resembles a physical pain. As thought there is a wall between me and the rest of the world. I looked into dealing with it this way, and I'm currently on Paxil, which further divorces me from my emotions. At this time I've decided to just live with it as a part of me. "Ok, I'm walking wounded, let's just move on to the next thing."

Which brings me back to Everyday Avatar. Having just looked at a goofy-ass Men's Movement, I'm rather down on the jargon-parroting, ritual-formulaic, culture-theiving aspect of it, but still believe there is some quality of Maleness that needs addressing, as well as the personhood aspect of giving of one's self to the community.

Since the end of March when I put EA on Hiatus, I've been resting my energies. It seems selfish to me on first glance, but on the hindsight deathbed, I'm still giving. I am training for the MS 150 and raising money for a worthy cause, and in doing so, I'm exercising on a regular basis. I give blood from time to time, more specifically I gave it on a day that was My Day. That says something, and I've been there for a friend who was inexplicably hospitalized and I've proven my loyalty and friendship with this vacation fiasco, and I only lose 1 vacation day so someone else can have a good time.

So I'm still in the personhood game, even if at times it doesn't feel like it, which is important because I realized today that I have everything I need at this time, and then some. It's a fucked up world and getting more fucked up everyday.

It's time to get back on that horse, pull on the god mask and get back to fucking work.

On Hiatus

Currently due to lack of postings from myself and others, Everyday Avatar has been put on hiatus while us Dudes go out and experience life as men.

Whether or not anyone of us ever comes back will not be promised, but since the Real Estate is cheap, I don't have to remove anything.

Feel Free to visit our respective sites.


Cap'n Marrrrk (God at Large)

Like Tree Feeling The Sap Flow

The smell comes from an increasingly distant past to a perpetually clogged nose.

Spring is in the air and I am a child running through the meadow behind my house, flashing around my 1/4 mile street, climbing trees hearing birds and smelling green.

The weight is lifted for the moment and I sigh. Down in by balls I feel the force of creation stir.

I feel the Earth on her orbit around the sun, whirling and spinning, vast universal forces moving me towards Awakening.

citizen duty

Two days ago was a bad day to be a citizen of this place. I mean, in a way, I felt pretty good about policing fellow humans, but in a bad way, it pointed out the way, in a way, I am equally as “bad.”

Morning – late for work and frustrated in so many other ways I shouldn’t be, and a car stops ahead of me at the red light on Hampton & Fyler. She rolls her old toyotasomethingerother-from-early-last-decade’s window down. The staggered window only opens long enough to expel a large-size Taco Bell® plastic bag full of trash.

Watching this, short-fused-appalled, I pulled the barking break on my 4runner, opened the door and slipped off the seatbelt in one motion, walked up past left-turn-lane-cars, picked up the bag, walked to her window, knocked sternly. Got a weary, timid look.

“You dropped this!” I demanded. You dropped this. Quick to anger, she frowned—her tired-of-working-too-many-hours eyes steamed at me. She wasn’t taking the bait rolling the window back down like other people have before…. They’ve said “Oh, I guess I dropped that,” innocently enough to sound convincing though their eyes they are embarrassed and growingly enraged that I am calling them out. I’ve had girls call me “peace hippy” and “fucking asshole” in the same breath; I’ve had guys threaten to pummel my face, and you can't forget the standard middle finger, here and there.

She just stared up at me, asking why but raging.

I placed the bag on her windshield and walked back to my car. I hear her yell at me-- I turned around to her, a car and a half-length away. “You don’t know me. You don’t know me! and someothermeanstuff.”

The first part was all that I heard.

I wanted to say, “I know you’re a fucking litterer,” but I stood there in the street, people around me gazing at the situation; an SUV window rolls down half way, near intervention. That was one step away from “I’m Woodsy the Owl and Give a hoot, don’t polute.” Yes, cliché might not have sold my efforts, but I just got in my car.

I didn’t know her. And out of all the hard knocks she’s living with in life, in her rusty mazdasomethingerother from sevensomething years ago, I just made it worse for her already shitty-ass day. She drove at the green light with everything the car had, exhaust billowing…but the plastic bag of taco bell trash slid gently off her windshield, floating lightly square onto Hampton like a bad American Beauty rip-off scene, where tens of morning commuters were waiting at their red, dully watching.

I could have stopped, but I would have blocked more traffic. But I should have picked it up out of the road. Not only would it have made me feel better overall, I might have justified the incident to the onlookers. Instead, the thoughts of others in secular traffic made me think I should move on and get out of the way—I caused enough hardship for some people, waiting ten seconds longer than they should have at the intersection….

I’m a jerk because it some respects, I litter in my own way on this planet. My car gets low gas mileage, I don’t recycle card board anymore because my recycling service doesn’t take it anymore. I could drive it up three blocks, but the gas expended in my 4Runner makes it hardly worth it. So she could have yelled at me in the same fashion-- knocked on my window, said “you drive that gas-guzzling suv, work for profit, and eat more than one person on this blue earth deserves! How dare you!”

I mean, yeah, even though I knew that I deserved it myself, I made a stand. Even though I would have been embarrassed because someone called me out on my human failings, I would have rolled down my window when she walked away and screamed, “You don’t know me! You don’t know me and something elseorother!”

a bit of kensho in sweat and music

I had a spark of satori tonight – just a tiny hint of that experience I had several years ago. I tried to ride it, but it was gone before I knew it—perhaps it could be better classified as kensho, but hardly that. No wave of ultimate awareness washed over me tonight, rather an almost incidental flash in the corner of my mind, giving me just enough information to recognize it for what is was.

I just got finished jogging—haven’t run in a while, so I was beat, probably more because I was feeling down-and-out as of late these days (which partially explains my hiatus from EA). I’ve got a lot of ugly things going on and haven’t been creative much at all, cept finding new ways of getting more angry about the struggle. Just finished watching Loose Change which incited more despair, had a string of corrupt files at deadline, all with my ongoing, run-down state of affairs looming like an ugly story arc. Still sorting out personal and work lives through all of this, but determined I was going to work out instead of pouring a whiskey tonight. So I pulled on my running shoes and the nano.

It was like needle-tipped fraction of light that hit near the end of “the W.A.N.D”, a new track from the Flaming Lips. I downloaded it earlier, but hadn’t really listened to it yet. Initially, the driving bass and distorted guitar grabbed my attention, but the whole meaning mixed with the song fit my angst and spirit soulfully. It’s a song about avatars. Us. The warriors—fighting the battle.

It gives me hope when I see others out there, making art in the shape of revolution and change, and I guess the song struck me and tapped me back to the spirit, sparking something. whatever happened, I am just excited to feel better and more positive about things right now. Damn.

Although I’m not even close to where I was when the original satori hit me years ago, it feels like—right now—tonight, it might have turned me around. Not sure yet past this day, but I feel pretty good. I thought I should post.

night.

(And just so you know, although I am confident of my experiences, I realize some people might not subscribe to them as stated, and some might call me naïve or nutjob. I’m always interpreting my experiences and am humbled by my personal pieces of illumination. I don’t know if I need that sort of disclaimer in this place, but I’ve found all too often, I’ve had to use it).

Here are the lyrics, but check out the song if you can.

THE W.A.N.D. by the Flaming Lips

(You've got the power in there,
waving your wand in the air..)

Time after time,
those fanatical minds
try to rule all the world
Tellin' us all it's them
who's in charge of it all
I got a trick, a
magic stick that will
make them all fall
We got the power now
This is where it belongs..

You got that RIGHT
(you got the power in there)
You know it IS
(waving your wand in the air)

They have their weapons
to solve all your questions,
they don't know what it's for
(they don't know what it's for)
Why can't they see it's our power
that streams in this wand
more and more?
(in this wand more and more..)

I got a plan, and it's
here in my hand-
the disarming device
We're the enforcers,
the sorceror's orphans
and we know how we fight
(and we know what we fight)

You've got that RIGHT
(you've got the power in there,
waving your wand in the air..)