"Todd Versus Dr. Phil!!!"

Life is a chess game.

The only problem? No one knows the rules.

I often find the more manipulative part of my personality hard to suppress sometimes.

Does that make me a bad person? Knowing how to play on people’s inner weaknesses has always been a profoundly strange part of my observational skills.

For instance, I was looking at what my roommate Joe was checking out on the Internet (a MySpace profile of some Asian chick… Joe likes Asian chicks). I found that by looking at the photos on her profile, that this chick was incredibly vain, self-centered and was an obvious exhibitionist. Every photo she was in, she was obviously upstaging her own friends, and had many pictures of herself, stating that her nymph-like frame was, “riddled with cellulite.”

I knew everything that I didn’t want to know about her without even meeting her, and it caused me to wonder, “Am I fuckin’ weird? Can anyone else see this shit but me, or am I going nuts?”

So, like all guys, I called my Feminist Mom, who agreed with my opinion of the situation. And, unlike most Mom’s, mine doesn’t lie to me out of convenience of pulls her punches to spare my ego. It’s the main reason that we get along so well… that, and the facts that she raised me, allowed me to gestate in her womb for nine months and put up with all my shit for nearly 30 years.

In other words, I respect and love my Mom. More than anyone else… so it she agrees with me, than typically I’m right.

Okay, okay… back to the weird Asian chick… the problem with online profiles is that they’re never honest, as telling someone about all the things that make you you are rarely flattering.

Take Match.Com, for instance, a haven of Dr. Phil-fueled bullshit all in the guise of telling it like it is when that’s never the case. I recently put up a profile for myself on that site, and I found that most people apparently find what I have to say grating and unnecessary, hence why none of the lonely chicks on that site find me appealing. Or, and this is a long shot, but maybe it has to do with me being a Liberal and an Atheist (which I fell that I defended my beliefs, or lack thereof, fairly intelligently), which is probably unappetizing to the Conservative and Ultra-Conservative ladies on the site.

“Holy shit! This guy’s a Liberal?! If that’s true, then when he’s not performing late-term abortions and sodomy on his apartment balcony while playing Judas Priest at obscene volume, he can intelligently defend his opinions with facts and evidence instead of faith and a random belief structure based on Judeo-Christian ideology?! He’s definitely not the guy for me, then… I like my men stupid, clutching a Bible and afraid of rubbers!”

Sorry, I just had to let that out… it’s been seething for a whole week.

But I do know how Dr. Phil would respond to my tirade… ahem… hold on while I shave my head and gain sixty pounds so that dull, housewives can find me credible.

Bzzzzt!!! Bzzzzt!!! Bzzzzzz-“Ah, crap! This damn thing nicked me!”-zzzzt!!! “Oh man, is that Blood?! This better be fuckin’ funny, or I’m gonna be pissed! AT ME!”

If I weren’t a bleeder, this would be hysterical… but alas, I have a variant factor XI deficiency… if only this were a joke.

Okay, now all I need is a tacky 1980’s Tom Selleck mustache and the ensemble will come together beautifully… Ah! Perfect! I forgot about that old Burt Reynolds Smoky and the Bandit costume I had! Now, if only I had the Dom Delloise fat suit to go with it… fuck it! I’ll make it work!

Ahem…. Now all I need is to adopt a ridiculous Southern accent… where’s my I.Q. Point-vacuum?! Damn, it was here yesterday! Okay, time to improvise… where’s that copy of “The Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy”? Ah, here it is… page one… blah, blah, blah… the Clintons are the devil… blah, blah, blah… Keith Olbermann is the Anti-Christ and Air America radio is a portal to Hell… okay, I’m ready!

“Y’know Todd, you’re problem is with your inner-self, which is like a doped-up Mongoose finding out that his roommate is a Rattlesnake… attacking itself from the inside and causing you to be cynical to the accepting people around you. All you need to do is let go of your reservations and take a walk into a new way of life away from the pain that drives you and let it go…”

And my response?

“Well, Dr. Phil, my response will be multi-layered, so please try to keep up. All people struggle against the more primal and primitive instincts that drive us… that’s what it means to be a human being, after all. Now, taking that into account, any adult that thinks that elements of the human psyche like can be reduced to mindless drivel like the stupid shit that you just said demeans my intellect. And by the way, the whole ‘straight-shooter’ thing only works on the sheep amongst us, buddy.

People that are incredibly accepting like that have something known as an ‘Authoritative Personality Complex’; lacking the higher forms of critical thought that are necessary to survive in a violent or unpredictable environment, and tend to let other people make their decisions for them. Personally, I wish I was more like that from time to time, until I realize that in order to achieve that Zen-like level of bliss I’d have to submit myself to a frontal lobotomy.

Trauma and pain has informed all of my views, and has contributed to me being hardened at a young age due to the tough parts of life early on… and at the same time, it is also the source of my sense of humor; an exhaust valve, if you will, for my frustrations and irritations. If I were to abandon my way of thinking, I would be rendered a crippled, hollow husk, unworthy of the people that I care about.

To many, my life and experiences would only be fuel for continued suicide attempts and drug addiction, but for me, it is my sustenance; validation that my pain can help others deal with theirs. I would gladly trade my difficulties in life for a ‘normal’ existence, but if I did, I wouldn’t be me, now would I? I wouldn’t even warrant your notice or pathetic attempt at ‘advice’. I would be a mindless consumer-drone, shuffling though the world, having children that I don’t want, working at a job that I loath and getting tax breaks that I don’t deserve.

Now, oh wise Doctor, prove that Oprah’s feeble attempt at reading books that she doesn’t truly understand has given you more intellectual weight than I personally grant you and tell me, should I become the part of society that you have envisioned? Or, rather, do I truly represent the generation that yours spawned; a directionless, flailing legion of children, utilizing the technology of today to educate themselves in an era of failed public educational systems. I am not an advocate of a dystopic future in which children rule the world. Instead, I acknowledge life for what it is: a long, prolapsed series of traumatic events; shaping the thoughts, hopes and dreams of an abandoned generation of kids that never grew up with both parents truly involved in the lives of their children.

We are the future, Doctor… but the real question is: Are you ready for it? All of the education in the world can never prepare you for the difficulties of life. Only life can do that, and hiding behind the apron-straps of a Mother or psychological version of a nanny serves nothing other than a selfish desire to have one’s own progeny to turn out exactly like you.

What were you expecting, Phil? My undying affection and appreciation for advice that I already know?!”


Hope you guys liked it, and I’ll post again later on the week.


Todd

"Ads... What Are They Good For?"

Absolutely nothing.... Say It Again!!! Whooooaaaa!!! ADS!

I was watching TV with my roommate Joe the other day, and he asked me a question that I have wondered myself for a long time, "Hey Todd, have you ever noticed that American car companies advertise on Patriotism?" I responded with, "Yeah, instead of what the Asian and European car companies do, when they tell you what the car can do, and how reliable they are versus their American competition."

I also noticed that in these ads, they tend to depict a form of American life that is quickly fading into obscurity: The Upper-Middle Class family of a Mom, Dad, 2.5 kids, Dog and a white-picket fence.

I've lived in suburban communites in my life, but they rarely looked anything like that.

Here's the way I saw it: Mom is a working professional that commutes three hours a day, Dad has a pseudo-management job that he hates, the kids go to a shitty school full of violent soon-to-be-convicts, and, due to their parents' working schedules, they likely are spending most of their time alone; raising each other due to the high cost of living, but the lack of any local jobs has every parent driving way too far away from home just to get paid.

On top of all that fun, the kids can't call their parents when they're sick at school so they can go home due to their parent's job location's distance from their neighborhood.

It's often the case in these kind of communities that the adults are utterly clueless of the shitty neighborhood they live in, since they spend all their time away from it, at work. Also, their parents don't contribute to the improvement of the neighborhood, since they shop in other local cities, since, "That mall is fucking filthy!"

Most of the time, this stems from a deep-seated racism that the parents don't address to their kids until one day, Dad comes home from work with a dent on his front bumper, gets drunk on cheap American beer and starts complaining about, "Those damn dirty Wetbacks..." and how they're responsible for the decline of the nostalgia-ridden America from his childhood that he had in Mayberry, Nowhere in the midwest in the late 1960's.

Most of the most "normal" families that I knew as a kid had the most quitely-seething racist parents, and often spawned ignorant clones of themselves that would later carry on the mission of spreading the same, clueless, flailing stupidity that ther parents used to validate their own existence on a daily basis.

And I didn't even grow up in the South! I grew up in California, the supposed "Liberal Haven" of this country!

If anyone would like to throw their own rants into my comments section, I'd love to hear it.