Perpetual Shorty

It’s been a while since I’ve said this, but this blog is about me. My thoughts, my ideas.

I hate the word “workaholic”. I try not to ever use it. The same with “guesstimate”; a word made up to replace a word meaning the exact same thing is just useless. With that said, the -holic suffix denotes an addiction to its prefix. Most people would call me a workaholic. On the contrary, I am not addicted to “work”. I hate “work” and having to do so. However, I’ve held multiple jobs since New Years Eve of 2006 when I started bouncing in addition to my retail jobs. At one point I held four jobs, just because.

It gives me pleasure to be able to immerse myself in something and be able to perform it proficiently. When I know my products, I’m a great salesman. I’m a good bouncer. I don’t know if it was how I was raised or if it’s just something in my genetic make-up, but whatever I do I tend to analyze it and become good at whatever it is I’m doing. I was a great drummer. I’m a great fighter, considering the complete lack of consistant practice. I can take one formal training block and revisit it numerous times on my own, identify and faults I’m seeing, and refine them. I routinely slam and toss men much bigger than I- which isn’t really saying a whole lot- with ease due entirely to my personal focus on proper technique.

I’m easily discouraged, though. The owner of the store I’ve worked at now for the last year and a half is very wealthy and has a very successful branch of the same business in another city. That store is his main focus and he routinely neglects ours. No matter how much time I’ve put into organizing, redesigning, restocking, and maintaining this location I find us continually fucked over on an almost daily basis. The job is great, mind you. Good bonuses, two weeks of vacation, paid holidays and sicktime, and complete insurance payments on their part. It is very, very discouraging to be continually out of stock of something you’ve been asking to order for two months though. Knowing that you are losing thousands of dollars in sales and have the ability to remedy that problem, it is incredibly frustrating to be told no time after time. After so long you begin to tell yourself that he must be making so much money from his other store than he doesn’t care if you’re not pulling the same margin. No matter what your work ethic, when you have no other option but that job available, you begin to see the futility in trying to put in extra effort.

People like my work ethic though. I’m always 10-15 minutes late, but once I’m there I’m 100% there. When it’s dead and nobody’s in the store, I’m restocking the floor while my co-worker is taking smoke breaks. When the club is empty, I’m not posted up on the bar shooting the shit with a bartender. When it’s dead, there’s absolutely no excuse why there should be any mess, any disorder, or any problems to deal with because you have nothing to divide your attention. I have no excuse to slack when there’s not much to do. This isn’t a trait that’s common to see anymore. I have worked with too many dishonest, lazy, manipulative, and apathetic people to think otherwise.

I’m arrogant as well. I know my qualities and my capabilities. More importantly, I know my limitations. With all that said, I’m not a bragger. If I tell a story about something I did it’s because I think it’s interesting, funny, or outrageous and think it’s worth sharing. I don’t toot my own horn, so to speak. It really bothers me, then, when I check our security schedules for upcoming shows and see the lazy, always-taking-handouts, lightly-employed bouncers scheduled before me when it’s a low-turnout show just because “they need the hours”. Fuck that.

I sit and suck the shit end of this though, because I can’t find it in me to walk in the office and say “I should be working those shows because I’M the one busting my ass every night taking out the trash the other guys are walking past over-flowing cans and bottles on the ground. I’M the one who has to be at work in four hours but is staying after close so the others can go home to their kids white the bands can finish showering. I’M the one who never bitches or slacks off when I’m put at a shitty post by the bathroom, when I know I’m assigned there because I’m the one who won’t bitch or slack off.” I should, but I won’t.

I’m an asshole. I have a lot of hate in my heart. That comes from being a really nice guy on the inside, though. I’m jaded and cynical from years of being fucked over. So I’m mean, and spiteful, and degrading because I tell myself the minute I let up something will soften me up just in time to be kicked in the balls again. I’ve good at telling people to fuck off. I have more people than I would imagine tell me that it’s a trait they wished they had, but why? It comes from allowing yourself to be fucked with to the point that you’re capable of complete emotional detachment. That’s not healthy. You get to the point like I am now, where I’m mean and spiteful so nobody will want to get close enough for that to happen.

And now, I’m absolutely positive that I’ve fucked up something good. I was too nice of a guy to take advantage of someone who I’m almost certain put me into the position to take advantage of her months ago. Looking back on it, I think it’s what she wanted. We’d known each other two years or so, and had casually hung out a few times. She needed- wanted- to leave the guy but couldn’t justify it herself. She had nothing to go on by herself and maybe I was that smooth transition that would have made it easy. So when you call me at 2am and tell me that “Wayne just hit me…I need a place to stay tonight”, you’ll find my bed warm and comforting. I really do enjoy helping people who need it. I’ve been that way since I was a child and I’ll always be that way. However, if you come to me for help, expecting me to fuck you for my troubles is going to leave you wanting. A lot. I’m not the sneaky, manipulative guy who has to exploit your weakness to get you in bed. If that’s what you want then get the fuck out. I don’t do that. I can’t do that. So maybe it was seen as a sign of weakness. Disinterest, perhaps. Now, with petty excuse after excuse keeping a simple movie date with other friends from happening, I’m again to the point of complete emotional detachment.

I’m going to be a prick and talk to her like the waste of time she is the next time I see her. I don’t know when that will be because I’ve already cleared her contacts from my phone. And here I am again- not angry, just jaded- because I opened myself up to something I damn well should have known better. And here I’ll stay, hateful, jaded, and full of spite.

That’s Me.

Pol Pot’s Marxists ever stopped to think that the real barriers to entry into the middle class never really existed until a police officer stood ready to kill them for reading books? The Khmer Rouge is the logical conclusion of Marxism. Mass starvation and a diseased populace is the inevitable result of murdering anyone with any formal agricultural and medicinal education.

What has been made apparent over, and over, and over, and over, and over again for the last eighty years or so is that Marxists/ Fascists/ Socialists/Liberals have absolutely no capacity for the Law of Unintended Consequences. When you are dealing with a person whose psychologies give them no motivation to improve their lives, why would you expect them to bust their ass finding a job that will only pay them a marginal percentage more than they’re already receiving from Welfare for free? This is an Indifference Curve in action. Such as with Affirmative Action or the “War” on Drugs. When you grow up believing that the police will shake you down with or without any reasonable suspicion- and they will, then simply make it up in a report later- then what incentive do those people have to attempt any semblance of life within the confines of law? Give a man worth a million dollars a choice between staying here and having 40% of his income seized or moving a hundred miles and having 10% seized and it’s immediately clear why people are leaving California and New York for better work environments. What incentive, other than apparently antiquated notions of honor and integrity, do Mexican immigrants have to apply, study, and work for American citizenship when it is advertised that if they can make it to Los Angeles then not only will they not be deported, but will have people in the US Congress pushing to give them free medical care?

Not only does the Law of Unintended Consequences never enter their trains of thought but I have strong doubts that their trains ever left the station, instead sitting Engineerless with empty coal chambers. Take gun control legislation as an example.

Crime + Guns = Crime With Guns. Right? Right. However, that equation does not present itself in the minds of liberals. It looks more like this: Crime= Crime With Guns. This is a significant difference. If one were to remove Guns from the first equation, i.e. reality, we see that Crime still exists. In the fantasy world of liberals, take away Guns, add in Welfare to provide poor people with food and *poof* all crimes disappears. Guns no longer exist to give people the means to shoot people and Welfare means people will no longer need to rob people for food money. Right? Wrong.

Liberals ignore logic, history, sociology, and psychology at every given opportunity. Some people just have something to prove and will jack you from behind with a slapjack to express it. They’re not doing it because they’re broke, or need food, or on drugs. They’re doing it because they’re fucked up in the head and there’s not enough high school counselors in the world to talk them into joining the Peace Corp. You don’t have to like it. You just have to accept it.

I’m looking through the Sunglass Hut online catalog right now searching for a Christmas gift for my brother. I use the search wizards because I usually have no clue what I’m looking for. I wear a G-Shock on my wrist, 5.11 Pants, Under Armour polo Shirts, and Converse boots most days. Fashionable I am not.

I would just like to point out that there is not a single pair of glasses specifically categorized for Men on their entire online catalog priced over $400, because Women and Guidos are the only people stupid enough to spend $400 on a pair of sunglasses.

Why are the people espousing ideologies involving sustainable development, social and economic equality, saving the environment for the good of the whole world, and other egalitarian fantasies some of the most arrogant, inconsiderate people I have ever met?

I’m usually quite good and reading peoples’ intentions and psychologies, but these people have baffled me as of late. Working a handful of techno DJ and jam-band performances in the last six weeks and dealing with the bullshit from a thousand dancing hippies who smell like dog shit a night has given me a unique insight into their thought processes:

There don’t seem to be any.

More liberal stupidity.

It’s impossible to call this country the land of the free when our own citizens are imposing such regulatory nonsense on itself.

There’s a reason that, while “extremists” like myself and others who think like me are unbelievably outraged by acts like the murders of Sammy and Vickie Weaver by Federal Agents, the significant portion of the population has no sympathy whatsoever. They say things like, “They shouldn’t have been hanging out with the Aryan Nation, they shouldn’t have been manufacturing firearms, they should have gone to court when they were told, shouldn’t have fired on the Marshals,” etc etc etc, when a true believer in freedom wants to know why the Weavers had any obligation to do any of the above.

The problem with that is a populace who has no desire to be free. Hence, in just the last year alone, the election of an admitted Marxist to one of the most powerful positions in the entire world.

About two years ago- one random Wednesday night when I was working the door at the Cowboy- two of the guys working inside kicked out this black dude who was completely insane. Like, no-shit, John Nash seeing secret agents type of delusional.

A bartender, who we called Mama because she was both 38 years old and the mother of one of the other bartenders and one of the ex-barbacks, flashed one of the floormen over and told him what was going on. Homie- Mantonio was his name- goes to the bar and orders a drink. Instead of paying, she says, Mantonio handed her his driver’s license. “Just run my social!” he yelled, referring to his social security number. “I can’t do that honey, I need money.” “Naw just run my social. You’ll get all the money you need. Give yourself a hundred dollars.”

So Mantonio is escorted to the front door where he descends into hysterics, eventually reaching into his pants (right at his crotchal area), and yanks them out with his empty fists displayed in front of him screaming something about him having “a million dollars right here” and that he “don’t give a fuck about your club”. He then spits on my buddy’s motorcycle, gets beaten up and has his shirt used to wipe off the spit, recovers, and literally knocks out his friend who is trying to get him to leave.

This is as close of a metaphor as I can think of to describing egalitarian philosophy.

did Americans give up their rights to property ownership because they broke some arbitrary law?

There is absolutely no reason why the different levels of government should be confiscating property like that. There is absolutely no reason why resources should still be wasted on this asinine “war” on drugs, but taking someone’s decorative jewelry- even something as stupid as a gold, studded grill- and selling it for state benefit is outright theft. Actions that would put normal citizens into handcuffs are now used by the state in the name of the “public good”, proving once again that the only “public good” is what those in the government’s seats say it as at this very moment.

Private property and individual liberty are on the verge of dying at the hands of the liberals who insist on redistributing wealth to those who haven’t earned it and the conservatives who consider city police departments as extensions of their church. It will take force to make them stop.

Kill this kid now before he rapes and kills someone. A 33-cent bullet to the back of the head tomorrow morning will save years and years and years of prison costs, legal fees, and possibly funeral arrangements for his victims.

This kid serves no purpose to humankind. This is something that I think a rational society would want to end quickly before someone’s daughter ends up kidnapped, raped, and left in a dumpster, but far be it for the liberals in this society to hold anyone responsible for their own actions.

Some people need to lose their jobs over this mental retardation.

A Delaware first-grader who faced a lengthy punishment for bringing his favorite utensil to school — a combination folding knife, fork and spoon — has gotten a reprieve.
…
Zachary Christie, 6, had faced 45 days in an alternative school for troublemakers after he brought the utensil to school with the intent of using it to eat his lunch.

Just stupid. Why intelligent, freedom-loving parents are still sending their children to schools ran by such imbeciles, I’ll never know. A six-year old kid with a camping kit? Unreal. It’s hard to believe this is really happening.

A $50 box of Golden Sabres would be a more appropriate investment in those kids’ futures than the hundreds of thousands of dollars it’s costing to pay those idiots to babysit them.

Difster comments:

Other thoughts:

Walk with a purpose. Keep your head up and appear confident and alert.

Don’t put yourself in a situation you’re not prepared to handle. Don’t walk downtown late at night or through an alley unless you’re fully prepared to deal with a thug or a gang of them. The same alley during the day might pose little to no threat. As the old saying goes, “If you think you’ll need a gun where you’re going, don’t go.” Keep such a thing for when you’re not expecting it, don’t be dumb enough to insert yourself in to a situation where there is a high likelihood you’ll require it.

Oh, one more thing. Don’t expect the police to protect you. They only show up after the fact. Sometimes, long after the fact.

True. All good points. And as I commented back, sometimes “long after the fact” can be as little as 20-30 seconds. One good hit or a solid sucker-punch will knock you silly in under a second. I’ve seen guys not stop hitting until we got there to break it up. Thirty seconds is an eternity when you’re on the verge of being beaten into a coma.

However, that’s not to the point of the post. Dif’s comment highlights a completely separate aspect of self-protection: mindset.

Mindset and situational awareness are two completely separate animals and are not in any way mutually inclusive. The biggest pussy on earth can have the best situational awareness on the block and the most badass guy you know could have absolutely no situational awareness. I’ve noticed the latter to be true more than it’s not, actually. The type of person who gains a false sense of confidence because he managed to landf a solid right-hook on someone six beers into the night is more likely to stop paying attention to the real threats around him than someone who is fearful of both.

Mindset, as Difster talks of, is a preplanned or prepared mental state of being. An ingrained fight-or-flight response, if you will. How will you approach a given situation? How will you physically prepare yourself? How will you arm or equip yourself?

That’s a total package. Half-ass does not make the cut. I’ve met several people who had the guns but a complete lack of sense to go with it. This serves no one and could get them killed. I’ve met gun-store owners who only fired their carry weapon enough to get familiar with it then put it on their hips to stay. There are professional criminals who have more trigger time than some of us. When you are already hardened to the sounds of bullets zinging by you, you are already ahead of the game. Punching holes in a paper target does not mean shit when you are being shot at and starting to piss in your pants.

When you can mentally harden yourself to that, you have changed your mindset.

In the last three years of bouncing, my mindset has evolved into “Take no shit”. If you happen to watch me sit and take shit from someone it’s because I’ve decided it’s not worth pursuing. I can start a fight as easy as I can take a breath. Is it worth it? Usually not. I’ve been punched, slapped, scratched, clawed, had some guy try and break a pinky finger once, sprayed with mace, hyperextended my wrist palm-striking some big redneck, hurt my knees several times tackling people, and had more abrasions that I can count. I work with people who have been hit with bottles, stabbed, and shot at. Moreso than the greener bouncers- or those who simply just lack good judgement- I’m capable of saying “this is not worth the trouble” and passing off the problem to someone with a more reckless attitude. However, when I have to act- when I decide physical violence is my only option, or at least the preferable option- I have one mindset: you are about to get fucked up. I will generally always make the first move. I am 5′6 and 190lbs. If I have to put hands on you it will be on my terms, and those terms are not easy. You are either getting slammed onto your forehead or you’ll be good enough to reverse it and slam me, in which case I’m transitioning to my spray and going from there. I’ve been accused of being too rough. I will not dispute that. I am very rough when I have to be. It’s all about the mindset. You have brought me to this point, this mental state, and I will not be put in danger over your stupidity. I will and have slammed someone in a heartbeat when I felt that my personal safety was on the line.

Now, contrast this with the concepts of situational awareness.

Who is this person in front of me? What is his demeanor? Is he drunk? High? Tweaking on meth, crack, or cocaine? Are any of the people around him his friends ready to jump in from the side? What’s in his pockets? Can you see any outlines that look like pocketknives or other weapons? Are there any knife clips visible from the pockets? If you’re about to fight on a sidewalk, are the any cars driving towards you? You could possible push an attacker into traffic, or you may need to know so you don’t end up fighting in front of a moving vehicle. Are you in an area where people may not appreciate being in the middle of a fight or where the crowd would be hostile to you?

That is the basis of situational awareness.

Both are necessary, both are important. One without the other will get you just as hurt or killed. Keep this in mind during your daily processes.