Two Dads are Better than None

This is a funny but true exchange I received...I may sound like an ass...but I know how to use an apostrophe, so to be singled out by a random stranger was...well, insulting..

Start at the bottom and read up..


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On Tue, Dec 23, 2008 at 2:02 PM, Brent wrote:

Yep that is not me. He might be brentrjones@gmail.com but I have no idea how you got my email.

And for what it is worth, is it really your place to email people you don't know (especially the wrong one) telling them that their webpage is ungrammatical? I am sure you were trying to help, but I am very busy and do not really have time for this.

Pardon my tone...

Have a great day!

On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 5:02 PM, Margaret wrote:

Sorry! NO MORE BOTHERING!


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On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 5:02 PM, Brent wrote:

Hmm..which page are you referencing? I would never put Brent Jones's webpage so now I am curious.


On Tue, Dec 23, 2008 at 11:53 AM, Margaret wrote:

Hi Brent,


This is the where I retrieved the information and the g-mail address.


Margaret



http://www.classroom20.com/profile/BrentJones (disclaimer..that is NOT Brent's site...note the brilliant and correct use of that apostrophe!)
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On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 4:57 PM, Margaret wrote:

Hi Brent.
While searching for another Brent Jones in Chicago, I came across your Website.


Please note that there is no - 's - on Jones.... I'm sure that you know... just a slight miscue..

Margaret


Brent Jones's Page

I know I am getting old, I have proof now..I had trouble hearing above a 15. Take this test and see for yourself..kinda interesting. Just click on the link.

Add me on youtube, leave a comment, subscribe :-)

:-) too f'n cute eh

It has been a historical week in America. We have elected our first half black half white (read African-American I guess) president. It seems that both black and white America can embrace a guy that, well, is equal parts white and black. It will certainly mean a lot for race relations.

Obama was wise to pronounce himself the American mutt when he referenced selecting the nation's new First Pet. Those evolutionists know that as far as genetics and evolution is concerned, mutts are healthier and live longer. Simply evolution tells you that nature takes the best (and sometimes the worst) of a race's gene and throws it into the melting pot. I consider myself a mutt and think that blending the races makes for a better, more interesting world.

It is interesting to think, however, that this new blood will dominate as the nation's image. People all over the globe may see America in a whole new light. Maybe Americans are thinking that desperate times call for desperate measures? Financially the economy is taking a rest. She is tired of pumping out all that capital to feed so many countries. We are unsure of the future and we are also wise enough to say that we needed change. Especially after this election, the idea of the American family has changed for the better. We are a nation of mixed people that have all come together to create stories of our own future.

In fact, the most American of all stories told is the one that starts off about family coming to America somehow, in search of opportunity. You are seeing the results of how the very definition of the American "family" is changing.

He had an Asian childhood, African parentage, a Middle Eastern name and an American upbringing. He is a truly global president.

My sister is a way better blogger than I, so in an effort not to be lame, here are 7 random things about me:

1. I started my blog back way before it was *cool*. I tend to me 3-4 years ahead on the technology curve. Now there is so much info about people out there, it is mind boggling and somewhat overdone.

2. As a 6 year old, I was going to be a carpenter by day and a preacher by night. I am not sure where this redneck vision of happiness came from, but it is true.

3. I get annoyed with people who just talk about themselves in conversation and do not ask others questions. The don't understand the ping-pong concept...it has to go back and forth for the game to be fun.

4. I was raised Christian but do not really consider myself a Christian because I refuse to believe there there is only one God and the Christians are right. I fault this belief on education and travel. It is amazing what you learn when you open your eyes.

5. I wanted to be an architect when I was younger. I am still fascinated by designs, buildings and cool houses and living spaces.

6. I am not a huge believer in luck and I think people make their own luck in life. People who play the victim annoy me.

7. If money were no object, I would write short stories and paint all day. I have a weird attraction towards becoming a tormented artistic soul.

HOLY SHIT! Look at this baby freak out while going through a tunnel and the lighting changes. Then PRESTO! All is cool again.

I am going to play armchair economist here for a second, but does anyone else see the irony in the fact that lower and middle class America has brought the economy to its knees from trying to be like the upper class? After growing up in the shadow of 80s excess, internet millionaires and the notion of "entitlement" from being hard working Americans, I find it interesting that all of the "no document" loans made have essentially crippled the world economy and no really knows where the bottom is. I am no economist, but I now have survived the dot-com boom, 9/11 and worked for both Freddie Mac and Countrywide, so I have an idea of what is going on. I have also traded and day traded for years, so I have an idea of what fuels the economy and here is where I see this going:

- The Dow will hit 8000 before 2010. Cash will be king and the market will make an overdue "major correction". It is the natural economic cycle.
- Credit will dry up for the next 2 years and without credit to fuel ideas, growth will be minimal. Imagine a GDP of less than 2% for awhile and you get my drift
- As the baby boomers come into retirement the next few years, the rules will change and the concept of "safe retirement" will be a misnomer. As they have done previously, this segment will shape the economic growth of the future simply because they will have the capital.
- I predict unemployment will hit 10% in the USA as college grads and poor retirees may compete for some of the same low paying jobs. There will be resentment toward immigrants doing jobs that suddenly don't look so bad. Remember, a paycheck is all relative when there is no money in the bank.
- Our entire economy will be reshaped from this and no one knows how "safe" the end picture will be. 1 Trillion dollars is a drop in the bucket for America. The real fear will be that the confidence in America has erroded too far. Imagine if suddenly the world said "You are too much of a risk. Your reign has ended."This is the path we are going down. We could become the Wal-mart discount seller to the world because suddenly foreign cash could snatch us up during a "blue light special" my friends.

These are purely my thoughts but as a someone who understand concepts like the world economy, how shorting stocks is critical for balancing the market, how the human psychology of HELOCs works, and how keeping up with the Joneses under the guise of "endless growth" has led us down the wrong path, I have to say that future (ie the next four years) is not looking too bright.

I hope I am wrong, but ironically we got into this mess from sending the following message to all levels of American: Pimp your life, live beyond your means, don't save for the future and live in the now. Your 401K, home and income will rise no matter what. Guess what America..you may have been wrong and as they say, "payback is a bitch." I am not a religious person, but I say this - God Bless America....and please hurry-! We are in for a bumpy ride.



This wealth map shows which territories have the greatest wealth when Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is compared using currency exchange rates. This indicates international purchasing power - what someone’s money would be worth if they wanted to spend it in another territory. For some their money will gain value when they move - others’ money will lose value. This facilitates the movement of some people, whilst severely limiting that of others.

A lot of people only see John McCain’s fashionable, glamorous blond wife, Cindy.

You know, the one that buys him the $500 shoes and says that you just have to have a private plane to get around a state the size of Arizona.

They don’t see the woman McCain dumped to marry her.

You know, his first wife, Carol.

The one that waited for him while he was being held captive, the one that raised their children by herself during that time.

And the one that was severely injured in a terrible car accident in late 1969.

You can read all the sad details here.

Carol was no longer attractive enough for McCain, I guess. Personal loyalty doesn’t seem to be his strong suit. Not long after they were reunited, McCain began running around with other women. In 1979 he met Cindy, carrying on an adulterous affair with her. Cindy was young, beautiful, and part of a family that was super-rich.

I guess Carol didn’t stand a chance. McCain even applied for a marriage license to Cindy while still married to Carol. That’s low. McCain’s friends, including Ronald and Nancy Reagan, were shocked by McCain’s actions.

Once married to Cindy, John McCain was able to use her vast wealth to finance his rise to the top. Guess Carol wouldn’t have been very good at that.

Ross Perot, who paid Carol’s medical bills, put it best:

McCain is the classic opportunist. He’s always reaching for attention and glory,’

‘After he came home, Carol walked with a limp. So he threw her over for a poster girl with big money from Arizona. And the rest is history.’

Just thought you should know what kind of “honorable” man McCain really is.

I know that McCain married well and all, but GIVE ME A BREAK....he has enough shit already...don't give the whitehead the presidency too!!

When you look at this you have to wonder which candidate *REALLY* has more in common with the "Average American"...I mean REALLY!!!

I found a bunch of old pics from back in the day and had them developed. Some were pre-digital camera, so forgive the quality.

If you like one, leave a comment on it. Click Pics on the right to see my albums.

From SouthEast Asia 99

My mother loves telling this story and of course it always sounds funny to me, but the day I was born went something like this. August 1970 in Dallas was hot, my mother had planned ahead and put this very frilly night gown on layaway. Back in her day my aunt and mom were big into big hair. I mean huge hair with giant curlers in it. Fastened atop the mounds of hair was a wiglet, a little patch of fake flowing hair that only added to their demure as a woman in 70s. My mother had picked out a special wiglet and while she was talking to my Aunt on the phone trying to figure out if she was in labor or not, they decided she was. Off to the hospital she went with a suitcase in tow. Only my mother would have stopped by the beauty shop on the way to Baylor to pick up her prized wiglet.

In her 21 years of wisdom she had visions of herself as a glowing new mom dressed in a beautiful nighty with hair flowing down and holding her baby while receiving guests. The reality was quite different.

In my mind I can see her in labor in what I can only imagine as excrutiating pain. Probably about two hours into labor, she has had it. She was sweaty and no longer looked the demure 21 year old. The wiglet had fallen down and was a stringy mess. The way my mom tells the story, at some point she has just had it, so she pulls the blond wiglet off the top of her head, which looks more like a blond disco birds nest and hurls it across the delivery room muttering something like "Get this damn thing outta my hair!" I am sure. I am sure the doctors and nurses were taken aback.

A few hours later she awoke and asked the nurse what she had. She looked at my mom's bracelet and told her she had a boy. The nurse wheeled her down to the nursery and they held me up. I apparently had my entire fist in my mouth, and my mother thought, there he is, my son.

And that, my friends, is how I was brought into this world. At 38 I can say that it has been a wild ride filled with so many people I love and amazing experiences. So on this day I want to tell them all how much I love them and how much they mean to me!! And they know who they are, least of which the woman who hurled the wiglet across the delivery room at Baylor hospital :-)

Incredibly fascinating... The Mason/Dixon Pop/Soda Line

Greg and I feel a bit isolated in our little gay bubble. We no longer watch Desperate House Wives we read the CR Mom's Blogs instead.

The top ten list of things you learn from reading their blogs:

10. These woman drop the F bomb left and right and WE LOVE IT

9. They talk about "Golden Showers" and the word "dildo" will return multiple hits

8. They eat bon-bons and watch Ricky Lake all day while they kids cry (just kidding!)

7. They became such a powerful local threat, the had to be "spun off" from the multi-million dollar developer.

6. They are total MILFs (if I were straight)

5. They can show you how to save money and get you on lists so telemarketers call you

4. The commonly get drunk at each others houses

3. You pray that their mother's-in-law don't read their blogs

2. They are not helicopter moms but rather helicopter "pilots"

1. Gratuitous references to poop, poop and more poop

and we would love to share a drink with all of them..keep it up girls!

An honest review

- As an Apple fan for 23 years, the OS is awesome
-still awkward typing on this after having crackberry hands for years
- they have mostly done a great job of true mobile surfing.
- you can seperate work and play at work
- the touch screen and the way it functions are quite nice
-makes it too easy to get to work email
- I am sitting on a balcony and able to browse and listen to my iTunes
collection
-hands down one of the best products to effectively switch back and
forth between functions..most mobile OS's suck here.
-Voicemail is quite nice, in fact it will become the new standard I bet
- it is somewhat scary that you walk around and pretty much have
access to information about the entire human experience..think in
terms trillion of terabytes
-still weird to type on

Still funny after all these years....Deep Thoughts (by Jack Handey)

If you ever drop your keys into a river of molten lava, let'em go,
because, man, they're gone.
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If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them
down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason.
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To me, it's a good idea to always carry two sacks of something when
you walk around. That way, if anybody says, "Hey, can you give me a
hand?" You can say, "Sorry, got these sacks."
==========
One thing kids like is to be tricked. For instance, I was going
to take my nephew to Disneyland, but instead I drove him to an old
burned-out warehouse. "Oh no," I said, "Disneyland burned down."

He cried and cried, but I think that deep down he thought it was a
pretty good joke. I started to drive over to the real Disneyland, but
decided to go home instead.
==========
The face of a child can say it all, especially the mouth part of the face.
==========
If you lived in the Dark Ages and you were a catapult operator, I
bet the most common question people would ask is, "Can't you make it
shoot farther?" "No, I'm sorry. That's as far as it shoots."
==========
Is there anything more beautiful than a beautiful, beautiful flamingo,
flying across in front of a beautiful sunset? And he's carrying a
beautiful rose in his beak, and also he's carrying a very beautiful
painting with his feet. And also, you're drunk.
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I believe in making the world safe for our children, but not our
children's children, because I don't think children should be having sex.
==========
If a kid asks where rain comes from, I think a cute thing to tell
him is, "God is crying." And if he asks why God is crying, another cute
thing to tell him is, "Probably because of something you did."
==========
If you ever catch on fire, try to avoid seeing yourself in the
mirror, because I bet that's what REALLY throws you into a panic.
==========
Whenever I see an old lady slip and fall on a wet sidewalk, my first
instinct is to laugh. But then I think, what if I was an ant and she
fell on me. Then it wouldn't seem quite so funny.
==========
To me, boxing is like a ballet, except there's no music, no
choreography and the dancers hit each other.
==========
I hope if dogs ever take over the world and they choose a king, they
don't just go by size, because I bet there are some Chihuahuas with
some good ideas.
==========
If life deals you lemons, why not go kill someone with the lemons
(maybe by shoving them down his throat).
==========
Instead of having "answers" on a math test, they should just call
them "impressions," and if you got a different "impression," so what,
can't we all be brothers?
==========
Probably the earliest fly swatters were nothing more than some sort
of striking surface attached to the end of a long stick.
==========
I wish I would have a real tragic love affair and get so bummed out
that I'd just quit my job and become a bum for a few years, because
I was thinking about doing that anyway.
==========
I think a good gift for the President would be a chocolate revolver.
And since he's so busy, you'd probably have to run up to him real
quick and hand it to him.
==========
Maybe in order to understand mankind we have to look at that word
itself. MANKIND. Basically, it's made up of two separate words "mank" and
"ind." What do these words mean? It's a mystery and so is mankind.
==========
If you go flying back through time and you see somebody else flying
forward into the future, it's probably best to avoid eye contact.
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It's easy to sit there and say you'd like to have more money. And I
guess that's what I like about it. It's easy. Just sitting there,
rocking back and forth, wanting that money.
==========
If you ever reach total enlightenment while you're drinking a beer,
I bet it makes beer shoot out your nose.
==========
To me, clowns aren't funny. In fact, they're kinda scary. I've
wondered where this started and I think it goes back to the time I
went to the circus and a clown killed my dad.
==========
As the light changed from red to green to yellow and back to red
again, I sat there thinking about life. Was it nothing more than a
bunch of honking and yelling? Sometimes it seemed that way.
==========
I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate.
And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it.
==========
I hope some animal never bores a hole in my head and lays its eggs in
my brain, because later you might think you're having a good idea but
it's just eggs hatching.
==========
Whenever you read a good book, it's like the author is right there,
in the room talking to you, which is why I don't like to read good books.
==========
What is it about a beautiful sunny afternoon, with the birds singing
and the wind rustling through the leaves, that makes you want to get
drunk? And after you're real drunk, maybe go down to the public park
and stagger around and ask people for money, and then lay down and go
to sleep.
==========
Instead of a trap door, what about a trap window? The guy looks out
it, and if he leans too far, he falls out. Wait. I guess that's like
a regular window.
==========
During the Middle Ages, probably one of the biggest mistakes was not
putting on your armor because you were "just going down to the corner."
==========
If I ever get real rich, I hope I'm not real mean to poor people, like
I am now.
==========
When I found the skull in the woods, the first thing I did was call
the police. But then I got curious about it. I picked it up, and
started wondering who this person was, and why he had deer horns.
==========
I remember how my great-uncle Jerry would sit on the porch and
whittle all day long. Once he whittled me a toy boat out of a larger
toy boat I had. It was almost as good as the first one, except now it had
bumpy whittle marks all over it. And no paint, because he had whittled
off the paint.
==========
Here's a good thing to do if you go to a party and you don't know
anybody: First take out the garbage. Then go around and collect any
extra garbage that people might have, like a crumpled napkin, and
take that out too. Pretty soon people will want to meet the busy
garbage guy.
==========
Sometimes I think you have to march right in and demand your rights,
even if you don't know what your rights are, or who the person is you're
talking to. Then on the way out, slam the door.
==========
If you're a cowboy and you're dragging a guy behind your horse, I bet
it would really make you mad if you looked back and the guy was reading
a magazine.
==========
If your friend is already dead, and being eaten by vultures, I think
it's okay to feed some bits of your friend to one of the vultures, to
teach him to do some tricks. But only if you're serious about adopting
the vulture.
==========
Broken promises don't upset me. I just think, why did they believe me?
==========
If you ever crawl inside an old hollow log and go to sleep, and while
you're in there some guys come and seal up both ends and then put it on
a truck and take it to another city, boy, I don't know what to tell you.
==========
One thing vampire children have to be taught early on is, don't run
with a wooden stake.
==========
If you go to a costume party at your boss's house, wouldn't you think
a good costume would be to dress up like the boss's wife? Trust me,
it's not.
==========
Most of the time it was probably real bad being stuck down in a
dungeon. But some days, when there was a bad storm outside, you'd look
out your little window and think, "Boy, I'm glad I'm not out in that."
==========
Consider the daffodil. And while you're doing that, I'll be over
here, looking through your stuff.
==========
For mad scientists who keep brains in jars, here's a tip: why not add
a slice of lemon to each jar, for freshness?

After 6 days and almost 10 lbs I decided to go off the fast. Technically I am supposed to do OJ. I am easing slowly back onto solids and just had a delicious bowl of mabo tofu with spice...food tastes soooooooooo good now.

It was not half bad resetting my system like that. I am really going to watch my portions and really try to eat better. Now check back in a month and see how I am doing.

The right food in the right quantities certainly adds a lot to life. I missed you food!

I  am on day 3 of a master cleanse. I have done this before and Greg hates it since it means I consume nothing but lemon/syrup drinks and a morning salt water flush...which leaves him high and dry. It is TRULY one of the biggest tests of will power I have ever done, and I want to do this for 21 days..yeah right. If I can do 10 proper days plus come down from it PROPERLY (ie. slowly over three days) then I will be happy. Here are the things about doing this that I like for those who have never done it. This is my 3rd fast and while they are hard, I get something from it.

1. You lose weight quite quickly, but that should not be the main reason you do it.
2. You do cleanse your body, mind and spirit
3. It gives you a break from food and you have a chance to *really* think about what you eat and why
4. If you can survive three days you have lots of energy, clarity and you think you are superhuman (author's opinion)
5. You get to change you relationship with food (below you will see a list of rules I want to live by)
6. You save money (yeah I am cheap b1atch!! so what!)
7. Your sense of smell awakens
8. You realize how much phlegmy food we inhale
9. You get a chance to focus only on how you will eat in the future (and not in the next 10 minutes)
10. It really makes you want to eat healthier in the future

So along this vein, while I am all high and mighty like someone who has consumed no food in three days, I am composing the list below titled "HOW I HAVE CHANGED MY ATTITUDE TOWARDS FOOD AND WHAT I WILL DO IN THE FUTURE"

1.  Anytime you go out to restaurant, skip the appetizers and immediately cut your food in half to take home after you get it. If your dinner companion wants to share a meal, all the better.
2. Chew SLOWLY and many times and REALLY savor the flavor. Put your fork down after each bite.
3. One things we already do that helps is to eat off smaller plates. Big plates = big bellies
4. I promise to make a very concerted effort to eat breakfast and take snacks to work.
5. I will read more cookbooks and plan healthier light meals, even if it means going by the store on the way home.
6. Things gluttonous should be shared and taken in small quantities.
7. I will try to eat before 7pm and never after 7:30 (Greg, are you reading this????)
8. Other strategies I will use: fiber pills, Alli with fatty meals, MORE beans, lentils, veggies and fresh stuff
9. We are going to start experimenting and trying to make new foods. Once we perfect it we will have company.
10. Always stop and thing about food the same way you do when you are fasting.

Wish me luck. I am 15 pounds from my goal! Once I get there, I will stay there!!!

The following true story I am going to dedicate to my little niece Brooklynn, truly a chip off her uncle's block :-)
You can read about it on my sister's blog, but her little brother Brandt chopped her hair off today and the picture below is the end result after a specialist was called in to repair the damage! This truly made me laugh and her smile and funny haircut remind us all that "It's only hair. It will grow back!"




So in honor of the funny haircut, I dedicate this story to my niece to show her that we all screw up, and this is the true story of uncle brent and grandma doing the same thing in 1976... enjoy!

Big Hair, by Brent Jones written in New York


The blades spun precariously above my body, wobbling and groaning as if they were about to drop down and cut me up. I watched the ominous ceiling fan go round and round as the purple velvet comforter rested gently beneath my back, imaging the carnage if it were to fall. The whole time a soft tassle shook as the ceiling fan spun around, a bit out of balance. My legs were twitching and bored as they hung off the end of the large bed that seemed to swallow me up.

"Don't put your feet on the bed." my mother chimmed. "I paid good money for that and I don't want it all dirty."

"What? My feet aren't on the bed. Look." She didn't look but I could tell her eyes were shooting back at me in the mirror. I didn't even have to look up. I could feel them.

Monday mornings made me anxious. I was ready to go to school and get things started but my mother insisted on taking her time. She sat in front of the bathroom sink and applied her face. She was hunched over a small mirror, her face a few inches from it. "It takes women time to get ready.Now go watch TV."She said matter-of-factly.

"I don't want to. I am ready to go."I insisted.
"Just hold your horses." Her tone rose and I could tell I was pushing it. It is amazing how a six-year-old already knew which buttons to push.

"Besides, today is picture day for you at school. Sit up so I can see what you are wearing."I raised my body much the way a mummy would, with my arms straight out in front of me.

I looked down at what I was wearing; red corduroy pants and a brown and white stripped double-knit shirt. There was a Rolling Stones patch over my knee with big red lips and a pink tongue sticking out. I liked the way the lips and tongue looked. My mother looked at me in the mirror, inspecting me from head to toe.

"Go put something else on."My mother barked. "And comb that messy hair."

I looked at her as she applied a pencil to various parts of her face, moving quickly and with deft intent. She had done this many times before and I though her face had a soft pretty glow.

I stared observantly at the back of her head. The best part was watching her do her hair. Sometimes she had huge curlers and white hair seemed to be stacked on top of her head, piling higher and higher. I wondered if it ever fell. Other times it was filled with aluminum foil, jetting out in all directions. It made her look like some kind of alien. The worst was when she would fasten a plastic cap over her head and tufts of hair stuck out wildly. This look scared me.

It always seemed to me that my mother spent hours on her hair. If she was not washing it or curling it she was coloring it drying it. The sound of the hair dryer whining through the apartment and the pungent smell of peroxide filled the small apartment. She would never last a day at hide and seek I thought.

It seems now that this setting was where I was given instructions on how to live life, while sitting on her bed, waiting patiently with my legs flailing about. She usually asked me about the confines of my simple six-year-old life and I in turn would answer in short phrases. Here I received instructions on how to live and what to do if one such horrible thing or another befell me.

Once she told me that if I was ever lost in the store, I was to find a nice lady or a policeman and tell them I could not find my mommy. One day while in the packed aisles of the supermarket, my mother wandered off from me. With no policeman in sight, I walked to the front of the store and found a short round lady with red hair and heavy blue eyeliner. She had a friendly face and asked me what my mother looked like. I told her she had big white hair and she laughed. I didn't know my mom's name. It was "mommy" of course. I told her my name and she grabbed a CB microphone off the wall. She smacked her gum and had a sing-song sound in her voice as she bellowed the words:
"Will the mother of Brent, please come to the service counter. Will the mother of Brent, please come to the Piggy Wiggly service counter." My name echoed across the store and I liked the sound of “Brent"and "Piggly Wiggly" like that.

No sooner had she stopped then my mother appeared coming up out of the horizon, big hair and all. I pointed. I could tell by her face that she was annoyed.

"Your boy is so cute. He said his momma had big white hair."The lady said smiling and clicking her gum. "Course it looks more blond to me."My mother smiled politely as she thanked the lady and pulled me quickly behind her. When we were out of earshot, she told me not to tell people that, besides, "It was blond not white. You stay right beside me, do you hear?" I nodded.

The funny thing about it was that her hair really did stick out. As the years wore on I developed a strategy for finding her in crowds or when I needed to find her for begging purposes. I even shared this strategy with my little sister." If you ever get lost, just looked for the big white hair."I held my little sister's hand and spoke confidently as we crossed the hot parking lot. The easiest way to do this was to get in a high place and look for the stack of hair. I got so good at it that it took seconds, and once I zoned in on my target I was off. As the years wore on, the stacks of hair got shorter. There was even a period of a few years when I mistakenly yelled "Mom" at the wrong ladies. I would walk away embarrassed and usually then I would hear my name. "Brreeunnnt, over here."

I fell back on the bed again, trying to keep my legs straight. I grunted loudly as if it had actually hurt myself somehow. I stared at the ceiling fan again.

"Go change NOW." She yelled. I ran out of her room and into the small bathroom in the hall. After applying the big brush to my hair I decided that my bangs seemed awfully long. All the little boys in my class seemed to have these mushroom-shaped haircuts and I was not sure why. As I stood in front of the mirror I remembered always being told to "get your hair out of your eyes."Some scissors seemed in order. Out of the drawer I pulled out a pair of long steel scissors with a shiny black handle. They seemed heavy and made a clean crisp snip as I tried to get my fingers around them.

Back in the bathroom, the scissors wobbled in my hands as I tried to make a clean cut. Snip. A wad of brown hair floated gently down and landed in the sink. It looked better now I thought.

I gathered my things out of my room as I heard my mother shouting "Ready?" She ran through the house as she flung her purse around, digging through it while shutting off lights at the same time. As I walked in front of her towards the door as she shouted at me for not changing my clothes. I was waiting outside the front door as she made a last ditch effort to turn out the lights in the bathroom. After she saw the clumps of brown hair in the sink I heard a shrill voice. “Brent! Get in here." I walked obligingly back into the apartment. After one look at the horrified expression on her face, I knew I was in trouble.

"Did you cut your hair?"she demanded.
"Yeah, a little."

She bent down and looked at my hair. I had a 45-degree angle cut into my bangs. My mother only noticed how it slopped down as she stared in disbelief at the three-inch triangle cut out of the middle of my forehead.

"You are in big trouble!" She jerked me into the bathroom and picked up the clump of soft hair.
"Don't ever cut your hair. Do you hear me. Little boys are not supposed to cut their hair. Even I don't cut my hair. It's dangerous."

She picked up the scissors and started cutting at it, trying to make it look normal.

"Why did you have to do this on picture day?"
She whined. "Of all the days."She looked disappointed and angry. After a few more minutes of snipping and swaying her head from left to right, she sighed and said we had to go since we were late already.

"Oh well. That's the best we can do. If the other kids laugh at you, it is because of your funny hair."We headed out the door.

At school it was not that bad at all. No one really noticed my hair it seemed. Six-year-olds weren't preoccupied with such matters. The teachers had surprised looks on their faces. "Wow Brent. Did you get a new haircut for picture day?"
I smiled back and exposed the black spot in my mouth where a tooth had recently fallen out.
“Yeah." I said. They smiled back.

A few days later I was outside the school and waiting to get picked up. A white 1974 Pinto with two doors and a brown vinyl roof pulled up. My mother reached across to open the door to let me in and I could hear Captain and Tenneil playing on the radio. I threw my bags and a brown envelope into the seat as I pulled the door closed. It took both hands to pull the door in and a bit of effort. Before I could even turn around, my mother had opened the envelope and was looking at something. The look on her face told me that it was not good. She held up a huge picture of a toothy smile but somehow the only thing you noticed was the patch of missing hair and how crooked my forehead looked.

"Oh Brent. These look horrible." Was all she said. "Now we don't have any pictures to give to Grandma."She was mad and stared at the road as we pulled away.

"I like them." I said, trying to make light of the situation.

"Well, then you can have them." She said as she threw the envelope at me. I stared out the window silently on the way home for fear of getting in more trouble.

That night in my room I tool markers and drew on the pictures. On one I drew a moustache and on another I drew a black eye. On the other, smaller ones I drew a beard or some stitches on my face. I wanted to cut them up but the scissors were no where to be found, hidden I was sure. I decided that the moustache looked nice and that I would have a long curly one when I grew up. When I asked my mother which one she preferred, she did not answer. She was not amused when I showed her the pictures.

She beamed at me through the mirror as I held up the picture.

"If you ever cut your hair again mister, you are going to get a spanking." I watched as she applied waves of colorful purple eyeshadow in the mirror and pushed up on the mound of white hair towering high above her.

"And if you think I am joking, just try it and see."

I jumped butt-first on the bed and fell back into the soft velvet comforter. I lied on the bed and smiled to myself, quite pleased with my new haircut and happy that she could not see me in the mirror. I stared at the ceiling fan wobbling above me, its blades cutting silently through the air.

I want to bite the Apple so bad...I am contemplating an iPhone or a MacAir. As a major techno geek, I want the Macair so I can partion the HDD and put on a windows OS. I want ONE machine that is light, fully wifi-ed out and runs ANYTHING. For someone like me who was raised on Macs and went to PC for business, in a weird geeky way, the merging of 2 OSs on one machine is mind boggling and kinda makes me hard..weird huh. If it only ran 24 hours on a charge.

Instead, we are thinking of the iPhone route and wifi/3G combo. Contemplating toys is what I do when I sit around the house...am I a dork or what?

We will be anxious to see how gay marriage unfolds in California. Hopefully some smart gay couple from Texas will get married there and challenge Texas' constitutional amendment against same sex marriage and win.

They are estimating the windfall of money it will inject into their economy and how, much to the right wing's chagrin, the fabric of society will not be ripped apart by this momentous occasion.

All said, gay couples may finally start to be on equal footing with straight couples. As much as I love my partner, the term "boyfriend" just does not capture how I feel about him.

Go California!

These two sites are must reads. One is all about people not doing ANYTHING at work and the other is of people's hook up confessions.

If you think you waste a lot of time at work, check this out. People are hard core mean at work too..

http://trueofficeconfessions.com


Also, this site is all about people hooking up and telling you their confessions. There is something of a weird voyeuristic thing happening when you read what you assume is the real dirt on people confessing this stuff..


http://truehookupconfessions.com

Enjoy!

click the title for a very interesting read on gay culture

e have HUGE news to tell everyone. We wanted to share some big news with our friends and family first. Click on the title to learn more.

This is from my sister's blog...rock on Rhonda!! You will LOL reading it...

Funny things heard

Some pretty funny things have come out of my daughter's mouth in the past 24 hours. She seems to be really into observing her brother's body parts lately. And since he manages to take off his diaper any chance he gets, she has plenty opportunities to make her own observations of his body.

So today after his nap, he came downstairs to where we were sitting together, and his diaper was off of course. He started to climb on her, and they were playing nicely until she turned to me and said "ewww Mommy, Brandt's penis stinks!"

So a couple minutes later, my phone rang, and I was on the phone for a few minutes. It was a customer placing an order, and the kids chose that exact moment to start wrestling. I am listening to the lady tell me exactly what she wants on her shirt, and Brooklynn yells at the top of her lungs "STOP PUTTING YOUR PENIS ON MY FACE!!!!".

Oh shit. Did she realy just say that? I know for sure that the poor lady on the phone heard her, and I was mortified!

I continued the conversation trying not to laugh at what was going on, and I managed to finish taking her order a couple of minutes later. This lady probably thought I am a lunatic, but I probably am now that I think about it.

Can't wait to see what comes out of her mouth tomorrow. Night night!

I am sending this offer to my friends and family interested in making an easy $25 for signing up and $10 for everyone they refer. And no this is not some scam that gets you a million bucks from Microsoft or pays some poor dying kid 10 cents for every forward, this is legit. C'mon..would I forward something like that?? I did my homework on this offer, and this one is for real.

Steve Case from AOL started this to compete with Paypal, the only difference is that Money Revolution Exchange is actually a bank and therefore regulated and insured by the FDIC. It is another way to send and receive money electronically for free and I figure Paypal needs the competition since they have been getting pushy on their commissions. You can read more about it here: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/techinvestor/corporatenews/2007-11-06-ted-leonis-steve-case_N.htm

Click the link below to sign up under me to get $25. After you have signed up you can refer people and everyone who signs up under you means $10 you get. It is an easy and LEGITIMATE way to get some cash by passing this on to people you know.



By the way, just like a bank, you will be required to use your social to sign up. They are FDIC Insured, so that is the reason for the SSN.

Free (for now):
# FREE to register for an account
# FREE to add money to your bank account
# FREE to send money
# FREE to receive money
# FREE to request money
# FREE to transfer money to your bank account

Happy Friday and enjoy the extra $25!

Brent

This is how advertisers see me, LOL....does anyone else find the phrase "Get Laid Today" weird?

Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force. If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or force me to do your bidding under threat of force. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception. Reason or force, that's it.
In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some.

When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force. The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gang banger, and a single gay g uy on equal footing with a carload of drunken guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.

There are plenty of people who consider the gun as the source of bad force equations. These are the people who think that we'd be more civilized if all Guns were removed from society, because a firearm makes it easier for a [armed] mugger to do his job. That, of course, is only true if the muggers potential victims are mostly disarmed either by choice or by legislative fiat--it has no validity when most of a mugger's potential marks are armed.

When I carry a gun, I don't do so because I am looking for a fight, but because I'm looking to be left alone. The gun at my side means that I cannot be forced, only persuaded. I don't c arry it because I'm afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid. It doesn't limit the actions of those who would interact with me through reason, only the actions of those who would do so by force. It removes force from the equation...and that's why carrying a gun is a civilized act.

Credited to: Maj. L. Caudill USMC (Ret) Hoo-Rah!

The most time and cost efficient way of gaining a white person’s trust and friendship is to talk to them about their time in high school.

Virtually every white person you meet was a nerd in a high school-it it is how they were able to get into a good arts program and law school. As such, their memories of high school are painful, but not tragic since they were able to eventually find success in the real world. Exploiting this information is your one way to ticket into the heart of a white person.

Your first priority must be to steer the conversation to the topic of high school, which is not very difficult. If you are talking about music, mention the music you think they would have liked in high school and how you were taunted for liking those bands. If you cannot properly gauge the type of music a white person liked in high school, you should always say that you were really into The Cure. All white people know that liking The Cure in high school is an invitation to be tortured by the cool kids. This will bring about instant sympathy and respect.

It is also acceptable to discuss how you were in love with a cool kid who never loved you back. For added effect, you can mention how said cool kid is now doing very poorly and that you are excited for the upcoming reunion.

I find this funny even though I am technically not 100% white.. read on

However, it is important to be aware of the fact that regions outside of San Francisco feature many people who are not white, gay or Asian. They are greatly appreciated during the census, but white people are generally very happy that they stay in places like Oakland and Richmond. This enables white people to feel good about living near people of diverse backgrounds without having to directly deal with troublesome issues like income gaps or schooling.

Still, the presence of other minorities are welcomed by white people for so many more reasons than just statistics! Much in the way that white people in Brooklyn feel a strong and unfounded connection with The Notorious BIG, white people in San Francisco feel the need to identify with rappers from the East Bay. Interestingly enough, the further they venture from San Francisco, the stronger their need to represent their region.

“Oh man, I went to the Too Short show last night. So hyphy man, so hyphy. You should come by some time and we’ll ghost ride the Prius.”

Stuff Mentioned

1. Nonprofit organizations
2. Arts Degrees
3. Manhattan
4. Public Radio
5. Knowing what’s best for poor people
6. Indie Music
7. Film Festivals
8. Hating Corporations

If white people could draft friends the way that the NFL drafts prospects it would go like this: black friends, gay friends, and then all other minorities would be drafted based on need and rarity to the region.

When choosing gay friends, white people like to base their decision on their own needs and requirements. Younger white people tend to prefer young, social gay people-this is their all important ticket into nightclubs and parties.

When a straight person goes to a gay night club, they are reminded of how progressive and tolerant they are. If they are hit on by a member of the same sex, it provides them with a valuable story that they can use to prove to their other friends that they are more progressive and tolerant. “This guy/girl hit on me, I said I was ’straight but not narrow,’ and it was totally chill. Oh, you went to an Irish bar this weekend? That’s cool, I guess. “


Stuff Mentioned:

1. Sushi
2. Apple Products
3. Whole Foods
4. Microbreweries (implied)
5. Living by the Water

You laugh because it is TRUE??!!..

“Each picture in Armed America could be a pro-gun advertisement - or an anti-gun poster. That’s what makes the book so riveting.”

very cool

http://informationarchitects.jp/web-trend-map-2008-beta/

This is funny too

http://www.cracked.com/article_15683_10-creepiest-craigslist-casual-encounters.html

One of the more interesting experiments on the web these days is the whole confessional aspect of it. People can anonymously post whatever they want to get off their chest and the whole world can see it. While there is certainly a dark side to this, reading these confessions is rather interesting and evokes sympathy, sadness, disgust and a laugh or two. Here is a collection of confessional links you may find hard to stop reading.

http://postsecret.blogspot.com/

http://www.confessionpost.com/

http://beta.grouphug.us/

http://www.lovehappens.com/confessions.html

http://www.truebrideconfessions.com/

http://www.truedadconfessions.com/

This is from my sister and is SOOO wrong. My apologies to all camel-toe gals!

My life is an open book, so for the betterment of all "metro-sexual" kind everywhere, here are some tips of performing a chemical peel for guys everywhere that want to look better.

Here is how guys can perform a simple chemical peel. It helps even out skin color and has long been used to freshen up your skin. I AM NOT A DOCTOR so you use this at your own risk. I am merely posting the results of my own experiment.

YOU MUST PLAN FOR 5-7 DAYS OF NOT REALLY GOING OUT IN PUBLIC, AT LEAST NOT THE FIRST 4-5 DAYS OR SO.

Being curious how the results would be, I purchased a home kit on ebay that came with instructions and 100% strength acid. The two big kinds are Glycol and TCA. You need to dilute them to at least 30%. I did 50% and it burned like hell. I could only last with it on my face for a minute and a half. You also have to watch out because rinsing it off over the sink may cause some to get in your eye. If that happens, start flushing it out and get help. This is not child's play. Remember, you are putting acid on your face and it should "frost" after applying it. In hind site, do a weaker solution instead of what I did. Trust me. Apply it carefully using a q-tip or cotton pad. I preferred to wipe it on with a pad, but it quickly started burning.
After you have neutralized the acid, wash you face with a gentle cleanser. Do it gently. You have just burned off a few layers of skin. Apply the ointment, aloe, vaseline, whatever you have that will not irritate the skin and will add moisture and protect the skin. You may want to fan your face since it will burn and hurt somewhat. Ice packs wrapped in towels are ok too.

The next 24 hours will feel like you have a really bad sunburn. Keep it moist and in a protective healing state. By the next couple of days your face will scab into dark brown skin patches. This is normal. For days it will feel like you have a very tight mud mask on your face.
Give your face a few days to heal and you can and wait for it to begin cracking after it has crusted over. Sounds gross I know, but soon you will have pieces of your skin falling off.
I let mine dry out some by putting a warn cloth on my face. Moisturize and use Advil if it gives you comfort. You should let it do its own thing and TRY HARD not to pick it off. That exposes unhealed skin and can leave scars. Do not even think of going out without SPF 30 on and a ball cap. You face does NOT need sun now, so block it well.

As your skin peels/falls off you will see smooth red skin below it.
Don't rush it and let your face flake off slowly and you will have brighter more even skin beneath it. Remember that you should NOT do this if you have important places to be at least 5 days after applying it I think. You will scare people.

I have included some picture of what I looked like during the process starting at day 1 through day 6 or 7. At the risk of embarrassing myself for the advancement of metros everywhere you can see them here, so don't make fun!

Let me know if you have any questions!

This guys is dead on correct with his advice. I have had more than 15 jobs and these bits of wisdom truly reveal the "art" of the job search.

>You know you wanna see..pretty funny really >

Here is a story that will be passed down for generations in my family..As I try to type this up I will have to stop from laughing so hard..

A couple of years ago my mom and Dawson came from Canada to Dallas for the weekend. Through a friend of hers who had a private residence at the very swanky Hotel Zaza, she was able to secure a very nice private apartment next to it with a view that overlooked the Dallas skyline.

They were staying there for the weekend and invited the family over for some wine and cheese so we could act like big shot high rollers. When I asked my mom about the set up, she mentioned that another friend of this friend also had a key to this place, but she was *likely* not stopping by. I thought it would be funny if *she* did.

Being the sneaky son I am, we had some friends coming over that my mom knew, but one friend, Val, who she had never met. You see, my mom had no idea what this woman looked like who supposedly had rights to the place too.

So my mom was having wine and feeling oh so cool in the Hotel ZaZa when I executed my plan. I got Dawson in on it since he also knew my mom was a bit afraid of this stranger showing up, who had a key and potentially more rights to the apartment than she did.

Before all my friends came up to check the swanky digs, I gave Val the key and told her to come in the apartment a few minutes later and just unlock it like she owned the place.

This is where it gets good... so friends come in and are ohhing and ahhing at the nice place and the view of the skyline when Val walks in like she owns the place. My mom has a rather shocked look on her face as this woman she has never met comes walking in as she is in the midst of entertaining as though it were HER place. My mom smiles politely and says some name, and then Val says that she was supposed to have the place this weekend. So Dawson chimes in about packing and moving to a Holiday Inn when I start to get "mad". "Oh great mom, you have no place to stay tonight. We have to leave." And bless my mom's heart, the whole time she just smiled at Val and when I could not stand it anymore we yelled out "April Foools!" and told her Val was in on the joke.

The entire place erupted in laughter and I think a few of us laughed so hard that we cried. It was truly one of the funniest sickest jokes I ever played on my mom. The look on her face was priceless and we still talk about it to this day!

I have decided to become a more active blogger. If nothing else, then to practice better writing. I am going to TRY to update this thing weekly, but if I do not, well..you know the story.

1. Techcrunch.com - I have become an avid reader of Michael Arrington's blog. If nothing else, it helps me stay on top of who is doing what on the internet. This site is an essential read for any internet start up. He gives the scoop and tells you what is going on in the conference rooms of silicon valley as soon as it happens.

2. 23andme.com - This WILL be the wave of the future I predict. With backing by Google and several others, you can now spit in a tube and get your genome mapped. For about a grand, you can see your ancestry mapped out find out what your propensity is for Alzheimer's and a slew of other genetic/hereditary based diseases. It was in Wire (which I am also an avid reader of) and these guys go IPO, I would certainly like to get some.

3. Alternative Energy - I know this is a dead horse, but solar power seems to be the wave of the future. Also, wind power would be a great place to look. When we were on the trains in Europe, I was amazed to see so may wind farms. The US has barely tapped into this. Some companies sell consumers wind power only to have it put back into the main grid. If I could pay them for my power and the price was comparable, I would do it. I was also looking at some ETF funds and this might be a smart place to look for opportunities since $100 oil is inevitable in 2008 I think.

4, Vacationoperations.com - (Shameless plug follows) I still think medical tourism has a long ways to climb. People are still hesitant to go abroad for surgery, but if prices do not come down, I think Americans without insurance will have no choice. I am still trying to sell my business on ebay, but I think that long term people will be hopping on planes for facelifts and new hips all the time. See the Michael Moore movie "Sicko" and tell me what you think. Unless our medical system is fixed soon, we will all be screwed. Why not outsource your heart to a Harvard trained doctor in India for 70% less?

5. Buy what you know - Recently I have been watching the US economy balance on the brink of a recession and this makes for scary investing. Nintendo was HUGE this past holiday and after we played it some, I see huge upside for this company. The only problem is that it is traded as a pinksheet (an over the counter security) which means you have less visibility into it. NTDOY.PK would be SO much more attractive if it were NOT a pinksheet. In other interesting areas of investing, I believe McDonalds will do well in 08. In Europe I noticed that the Europeans had no problem lining up at the McCafe for their lattes and I like their business model. There is nothing sexy or attractive about the golden arches, but it is smart to buy what you know and SEE. What I saw did not lie, and I may get into McD's soon too.MCD

Those are the thoughts in my head for this Tuesday. I will try better to update this again soon. On an interesting side note, I am also attempting a chemical peel. I will let you know how that turns out. Also, along the start-up front, I got a linked in invite from a character in Ft Worth. They seem to embody the true essence of a start up and loved their wit. Poke around their site and watch the video on one bag packing. I love it! Starrtincup.com

Brent: What follows is an interesting read if you have seen both Into the Wild and American Psycho; one fact one fiction. I am not sure who wrote it, but here is the link:http://classweb.gmu.edu/WAC/EnglishGuide/Critical/Sample/alexbateman.html

The author’s note for the travel essay/biography Into the Wild begins with the following passage: “In April 1992, a young man [Chris McCandless] from a well-to-do East Coast family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley.” Similarly, the book jacket for Bret Easton Ellis’s fictional work American Psycho reads that “Patrick Bateman is handsome, well educated, and intelligent,” working by day on Wall Street while his nights are spent “in ways we cannot begin to fathom.” Although one text centered on a fictional character and the other on a real person, both books present the same social criticism. Each of these high-achieving, intelligent, and charming men sought escape—through an alter ego – from mainstream society because they had difficulty forging a satisfying sense of self in modern America. However, neither could form a genuine identity due to the lingering influence of capitalist society. Thus, these texts criticize American society for disenchanting its most promising individuals and stifling the establishment of “identity." [note]

Both “protagonists” of these works began their journeys as promisingly handsome, athletic, and intelligent young men. Chris McCandless had “grown up in an affluent suburb of Washington, D.C., where he’d excelled academically and had been an elite athlete” (A1). He was a college graduate of a school where he had been editor of the student newspaper and achieved a 3.72 grade-point average. Furthermore, Chris had inherited his mother’s “angelic features, most notably her eyes, the black depths of which betrayed his every emotion” (110). In sum, McCandless was by all appearances the quintessential American youth. [note]

Ellis’s fictional protagonist Patrick Bateman had much in common with McCandless. [note] Bateman was a graduate of an Ivy League school and was a privileged twenty-six year old working in his father’s Wall Street business that he would one day inherit. Furthermore, men and women alike were attracted to Bateman, and he was constantly being asked if he was a model: “What in god’s name are you dong with a stud like Bateman?” (26). His fiancé summarized his seeming normality as she frequently referred to him as “the boy next door” (11). Bateman was like McCandless in his well-adjusted appearance.

However, Bateman and McCandless wanted to be anything but “the boy next door.” [note] McCandless displayed a “fervent condemnation of capitalist society” (44). His friends and acquaintances recalled that he would grow angry whenever discussing politicians or mainstream American life. According to his mother, Chris “believed that wealth was shameful, corrupting, inherently evil” (115). [note] These beliefs stemmed from intensive readings of wilderness authors such as Thoreau and London who believed that man was most himself when battling the wild. Furthermore, [note] Chris’s disheartening experience with his successful capitalist father further discouraged him from accepting mainstream society. Walt McCandless had fathered a child by his former wife while still with Chris’s mother, and Chris only stumbled upon the truth when he was in his early twenties. Thus, McCandless’s entrepreneurial father who epitomized capitalism had deceived Chris while the wild, on the other hand, beckoned him.

Meanwhile, Ellis’s protagonist Patrick Bateman was a perfect example of what Chris despised. Bateman was well-educated, handsome, increasingly rich, and devoid of feeling. Bateman had been raised in the yuppie image and had become so engrossed in his pursuit of the American Dream that he had no moral grounding or sense of self. Furthermore, his yuppie role only reinforced his emptiness. Bateman perfected the yuppie façade so well that he was constantly mistaken for his interchangeable peers. “Paul Owen has called me Marcus four times….Anyway, no one has corrected Owen and it’s unlikely anyone will” (143). Furthermore, the only names Bateman and his friends did remember were the brand names they wore. Consequently, Bateman found that “everything failed to subdue me. Soon everything seemed dull: another sunrise, the lives of heroes, falling in love, war, the discoveries people made about each other” (282). In brief, Bateman could not erect an identity under the upper class conditions he was born into. In his boredom Bateman was as disengaged with middle/upper class life as McCandless and also sought an alternative. [note]

Of interesting contrast were the two men’s views on the homeless and lower-class citizens of capitalist America; both took an abnormal interest in this demographic of the American population. During the opening chapter of American Psycho, Bateman’s companion eloquently discussed the confusion felt by an educated man when looking upon a homeless person. Bateman’s companion was intrigued by the homeless, and “his eyes fixed on a beggar at the corner of Second and Fifth,’ that’s the twenty-fourth one I’ve seen today. I’ve kept count” (4). He elaborated on his feelings about the homeless in-between nonchalant rants about bars, socialites, disease, sex and blue blazers:

When you’ve just come to the point when your reaction to the times is one of total and sheer acceptance, when your body has become somehow tuned into the insanity and you reach that point where it all makes sense, when it clicks, we get some crazy fucking homeless nigger who actually wants those streets…and we have a mayor who won’t let the bitch have her way-Holy Christ-let the fucking bitch freeze to death, put her out of her own goddamn self-made misery, and look, you’re back where you started, confused, fucked (6). [note]

Clearly, it is difficult to understand such a dramatically varying lifestyle from one’s own, or to know how to address such persons.

Patrick Bateman also had a strange fascination with the homeless who bombarded the Manhattan streets. “I wave to a beggar on the corner of Forty-ninth and Eighth, then give him the finger” (94). Bateman frequently engaged in such antisocial behavior with the homeless. In another instance, Bateman brushed past a crying homeless man of middle age. “He’s blind and I step on his foot, which is actually a stump, causing him to drop his cup, scattering change all over the sidewalk. Did I do this on purpose? What do you think? Or did I do this accidentally?” (82). Throughout the text Bateman mocks, physically assaults and verbally taunts the homeless.

Meanwhile, Chris McCandless had an utterly divergent response to the homeless. While other high school students were attending keggers, McCandless chose a different pastime. He would instead “wander the seedier quarters of Washington, chatting with prostitutes and homeless people, buying them meals, earnestly suggesting ways they might improve their lives” (113). Chris’s admiration for this existence was apparent when he abandoned all of his belongings and wandered the United States as a vagabond with next to nothing. Chris found the less fortunate compelling and wanted to explore their lifestyle before becoming locked in the ennui of middle class existence.

One can speculate that the generous upbringings of these young men fostered these unusually strong reactions to the homeless. As mentioned earlier, McCandless and Bateman were both highly educated, successful youths whose boredom with the norm reflected a high level of intelligence. This combination left these men with ambiguous feelings about their own upbringings and consequently that of others. The homeless population represented for both McCandless and Bateman the unexplored components of their own personalities. Both men had been raised under capitalist expectations to win at the expense of others, and seek wealth, fame and stability etc. However, these values had left Bateman and McCandless unsatisfied. The homeless meanwhile, took little part in climbing the American ladder to success or pulling themselves up-by-their bootstraps. Thus, their lifestyle was so contradictory to that of Bateman and McCandless that it was a source of confusion. McCandless on the one hand, embraced the lifestyle of the homeless; while Bateman was enraged and revolted by it. Thus the immense disparity between “the haves” and “the have-nots” of America contributed to Bateman and McCandless’s confusion and their ensuing inability to find peace of mind in mainstream American life. [note]

Bateman and McCandless viewed the world through the same opposing lenses that each saw the homeless. On the one hand, McCandless believed that his small contributions to the world and interactions with others were worthwhile even if they didn’t change everything at once. Many of the people who encountered McCandless were struck by his convictions and were persuaded to change their lives. Of prime example was Ron Franz, who had been living a secluded retirement in his trailer. McCandless encouraged him to “move around, be nomadic, make each day a new horizon” (57). Franz did indeed move, and was among a number of people deeply devastated by Chris’s death. Although Chris was on a personal, spiritual quest, he nonetheless managed to touch the lives of countless people along his journey through his concern for the welfare of others. Chris saw the world in the same way that he saw the homeless: all could be changed for the better, even if only one at a time.

Conversely, Bateman knew that the world was plagued with problems and felt uncompelled to act. He rambled on for an awkwardly long time at a dinner party about the “pressing problems at hand. Well, we have to end apartheid for one. And slow down the nuclear arms race, stop terrorism and world hunger” (15). His diatribe further included domestic problems, care for the elderly, a cure for AIDS, environmental protection, and education standards to name a few. His final statement was the most ironic considering the level of personal hypocrisy: “Most importantly we have to promote general social concern and less materialism in young people” (16). Bateman’s intent in this passage is unclear; it is easy to assume he was being humorous, but he spoke of these problems with an obvious understanding of them, leaving his irony to be questioned. Bateman was painfully aware of the ills of the world, and was so overwhelmed by them that he was rendered incompetent to address them. Bateman was the epitome of capitalist values: consumed in his quest to become as rich, handsome and well-known as possible with complete disregard to the welfare of others. This lifestyle however, did not succeed in subduing his angst, just as it hadn’t satisfied McCandless. [note]

Bateman and McCandless sought escape from the society that bred their confusion by building a new identity. “To symbolize the complete severance from his previous life, [McCandless] adopted a new name, Alexander Supertramp and was now 'master of his own destiny'"(23). McCandless shed his former identity by abandoning his beloved Dotson in the Mojave Desert along with other belongings of “Chris McCandless,” such as a much-played guitar and other personal items. However, McCandless’s attempted escape from the suffocating mainstream American life was ineffective. Nick Jans, a former DC resident who lives in the Arctic Circle wrote the following about McCandless:

McCandless’s contrived asceticism and a pseudo literary stance…postcards, notes and journals…read like the work of an above average, somewhat histrionic high school kid (72).

Jans eloquently noted the trite escapism and lack of novelty that was McCandless’s attempt at being original. McCandless was just one of innumerable men seduced by writings that glorified man battling nature. McCandless “escaped” American society by diving head first into a classic and trite form of American escapism.

Patrick Bateman also tried a different persona in the hopes that it could lead to a more satisfying existence. After his yuppie identity failed to fulfill him, Bateman created an identity as a serial killer in an attempt to connect with something beyond brand names. This extreme choice in character was useful for fictional writing choices. Under Bateman’s yuppie persona, he was a charming and empathetic youth and the most dramatic opposite of this was a killer. Bateman simply could not stand the ennui of his yuppie status: “”Patrick…He’s the boy next door, aren’t you honey?’ ‘No I’m not,’ I whisper to myself. ‘I’m a fucking evil psychopath’” (20). However, Bateman again only reinforced the emptiness he sought exodus from. The violence Bateman committed was cliché and reminiscent of porn and horror films. In one scene entitled “Texas Chainsaw Massacre II” Bateman committed a murder identical to those of its namesake. Bateman, in fact, recognized his inclination to viewing life through a Hollywood lens:

I am so used to imagining everything happening the way it occurs in movies, visualizing it somehow into the shape of events on a screen…hallucinate the camera panning low around us…the 70 mm image of her lips parting and the subsequent murmur of ‘I want you’ in Dolby sound (265). [note]

Bateman’s perception and interaction with the world in his new serial persona was still a mere manifestation of pop-culture consumerism. Bateman, like McCandless, was still heavily influenced by American culture despite his attempt to build something apart from it.

A comment of Professor Anderson’s about McCandless applied equally well to Bateman and McCandless. Both were trying to address “a tension between the ego and the urge for anonymity.” Although McCandless made himself unfamiliar with those who had known him as Chris McCandless, he nonetheless wanted recognition under his assumed name. Alexander Supertramp was not exactly a humble name. Furthermore, “Alex” frequently left brief messages indicating his presence. Thus McCandless was clearly unsure as to what level of obscurity or distinction he wanted. Bateman’s behavior also reflected uncertainty. Bateman was trying to separate himself from his equally boring and rich peers by becoming a serial killer. However, his lack of effort in setting himself apart under normal circumstances indicated a level of ambivalence toward establishing a sense of self apart from the majority. In fact, in some instances, Bateman appreciated such anonymity. For example, Bateman used the fact that people often mistook him for someone else to abuse their privileges i.e. leaving a party in someone else’s limo) [note] and behave badly (i.e. renting prostitutes and abusing them under the names of friends). Both McCandless and Bateman were not only having difficulty understanding their role in American society and thus their identities, but also in deciding how unique and renown an identity to forge.

Chris McCandless and Patrick Bateman both represented America’s increasing fascination with the horror of the normal. Bateman’s yuppie self was the personification of the evil of banality: the insidiously insipid and indistinctive countenance of capitalist consumer culture. Bateman and McCandless attempted to escape this horrific existence by adopting new identities: one as a serial killer, and the other as a vagabond. Both however, failed to develop a satisfying sense of self independent of mainstream America’s influence. According to American Psycho and Into the Wild, American values and society are not conducive to intelligent people seeking self-exploration and understanding of the world, in sum people seeking an identity. [note]

Works Cited
Ellis, Bret E. American Psycho. New York: Vintage Books of Random House, 1991.

Krakauer, Jon. Into the Wild. New York: Random House Books, 1996.