How To Lose Friends & Alienate People

Disclaimer: As a response to the public outcry for more of my personal life on this blog, I will try to distance myself from my standard format of "virtual scrapbook" and involve you my dear readers into the interesting happenings of my daily life. But be warned, my life if an endless stream of personal growth and has all the elements of a really good porno movie without any actual intercourse going on, so I hope you can keep up with a life in the fast lane.

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Children are different from adults simply because they lack the experience that adults draw there behaviour upon. A large part of the growing up process involves the gradual accumulation of knowledge, learning how to use that knowledge and the social context in which to apply it, as a result the child gains insight into what is deemed as socially appropriate behaviour and what is not.

Although a continious life long process, there is usually a point when you start to understand the driving forces behind this process of socialization, which also gives you the oppurtunity to stop being passive and get involved, this of course gives you some choices..

For a long time I was under the impression that there is an easy identifiable divider for people, usually taking place between the ages of ten to fifteen, when you start to tone down or hide stuff you like that is generally considered to be (in) bad taste and learn the difference between thinking something and saying it out loud, i.e. you start functioning as a productive member of society..

On the opposite side of the spectra, you of course have the route of fully embracing all of your bad habits, going all-out Larry David style on people, airing your grievancies with all and any people you meet, never letting anything slip, and generally being (perceived) as moody and sometimes full on sociopathic..

Having always looked upon myself as a person pretty well adapted to society, lately I have started to notices cracks in the facade, letting things slip that would have been unthinkable a couple of years ago and generally getting into pretty awkward situations in my daily dealings with people. Perhaps this can be credited to old age (this is probably the most realistic explanation as senior citizens without exception always seem to have opted for the second route), premature dementia or just to get some kind of weird subconscious kick, I dare not even fathom to think about the underlying psychological workings of this..

But, since this is the web and I'm hiding under a wet cloth of semi anonymity, off the top off my head, here are some things I've said, done and thought during the last days that might be considered in poor taste and/or general despicable behavoir..

1# humor backfire
Asked one of the teachers at the daycare center if it was safe for my son to play with "robocop", referring to a kid with two large metal hearing devices glued onto his head, did not go down very well as we apparenly were not very 'humour compatible'.

2# fighting the corporate bigwigs of greenpeace
There was some heavy campaigning by greenpeace going on all last week at my local subway station, taking signatures, recruiting new members and whathaveyounot. The campaigning involved two guys, one looking like the stereotypical greenpeace person, deadlocks, hemp(?) clothing and general unpleasant appearance, and a second guy sporting extremely short hair and shortsleeve shirts, looking like your typical cult person. These are my daily dealings with these persons:
Day 1. approcahed by dirty dreadlock guy, lied about already being a paying member and left.
Day 2. Approached by cult guy, said i supported them in spirit but had to excuse myself as I was super hungry and already late to pick up my takeaway tuna/cod sashimi.
Day 3. Was approached by cult guy again, was somewhat annoyed, promised to join up the day they release Jacques Costeau from his shackles below deck on the Rainbow Warrior II. Cult guy asked what i meant, i left.
Day 4. Approcahed by dreadlock person, gave him a familiar nod of the head and speaking in a very low tone of woice, asked him how much the hashish was.
Day 5. Dreadlock guy in attendance, did not approach.
As a little meta-revenge, I've also been drinking three glasses of milk religiously every day, which from any resource/eco substainability/production perspective must be considered the liquid equivalent of taking a really big shit on the planet.

3# Being a man of poor taste
Told a bad joke about Josef Fritlz and the basement kids, just to get the anticipated reaction and have the oppurtunity to adopt the facial expression of a stupid cocker spaniel and say "TOO SOON"?

#4 Bestiality
Watched the new Mariah Carey Video several times over and got somewhat aroused.

#5 More poor taste
Found myself really liking the Mariah Carey song.

#6 Poor negotiating skills
Got into a very heated argument that borderlined fighting with a 80-year old lady over a handicap seat on the bus..

#7 Being bill o'reilly
Refused to back down in an argument about how Tibet should be grateful being occupied by China although I don't really know anything about tibet/have any substatial stuff to back up my point of view.. But hey, I was right in principle, if Tibet had been an animal, it would most likely have been some kind of a freak animal like a manbearpig, long ago extinct. I mean, how can you take a state seriously who elects their leader for life when he's 2 years old based on the notion that he is some kind of reincarnated Lama? And considering 99% of the people are munks, how does any new tibetians come about, are they imported, it baffles the mind? And finally, when the biggest supporter of your religion is Richard Gere, you know it's time to move on..

#8 The OZ incident
went for lunch with work at a church which doubles as a halfway house thing for ex-cons, cooking and working in the kitchen to get re-acclimated into society. Was served my broccoli soup by a huge guy with tattoos all over his forearms and neck, asked if he still abided by prison rules and if, wouldn't cooking and serving me officially make him my "bitch"? Actually, this isn't compeltely true, as I just thought it and never spoke it, self preservation seems to sometimes override the lust for social akwardness.

..Anyway, these are just some personal reflections, but they miracously ties in nicely to what I actually was gonna write about, The news of how Tony Youngs fantastic "memoirs" "How to Lose Friends & Alienate People" is being developed into a movie, and the not so fantastic news of the casting of the movie. Simon Pegg as Toby, not very fucking likely, the whole premise of the book starts and ends with Toby being a BALD MAN!! Say it with me, Toby = Bald, Simon = Not Bald. Plus everything Pegg's done after Shaun of the dead, especially that latest movie where he ran a marathon has been really shitty. The only good casting news would be Jeff bridges, who im sure will make an excellent Graydon Carter and a return of Gillian Anderson - boom, an instant 20 million in revenues from jerkoff deprived x-files fans!