Accidental Historian

In Which Geds Tries Speed Dating. Hilarity Does Not Ensue.

There are various parts of the Chicagoland area that I refer to as “black holes.”  They’re places I know of and could probably place adjacent to other parts of Chicagoland if forced, but they’re also places I know fuck-all about.

I decided I was going to attempt the whole speed dating thing in one of those black holes.  Basically, I heard that it was happening and I realized, “Hey, this is gonna be happening two days before Valentine’s Day.  That’s a Dancing Monkey Project post waiting to happen!”  So I signed up.  I didn’t actually really want to do it, but that’s kind of the point of the Dancing Monkey Project, right?  I’m supposed to “get out of my comfort zone” and all that bullshit.  Also, it was apparently a thing for charity, so I could do the Dancing Monkey thing and help children or homeless people or something.  I wasn’t entirely clear on the end goal of that one.

So, yes.  Speed dating.  Dancing Monkey Project.  Black hole.  This is not a good combination of things.

This particular black hole was a big north of the area I jokingly refer to as “my old stomping grounds,” which is the Brookfield/La Grange area, where I lived before I moved to Dallas.  I’d driven up in to the area, but from there and not the west.  Still, I thought I knew where I was going, so I was all, “Who needs a GPS or Google Maps, really?”

This was my second mistake, my first being, y’know, signing up in the first place.

Fun fact:  there’s a town called Northlake right around where North Avenue and Lake Street intersect.  I’d always thought Northlake was, like, up north somewhere, probably around Northbrook or North Haverbrook.  I did not know it was where North and Lake met, but that totally made sense.  Also, there’s a town called Stone Park just east of Northlake.  I’d never heard of Stone Park before.  This whole bit about discovering the existence of heretofore unknown (to me) towns whilst not using any navigational aids, by the way, might be at clue as to what’s going to happen.

I got lost.  There was a traffic accident-aided traffic detour involved that really didn’t help.  Because I did totally know the route I was supposed to take.  I got a little thrown when I couldn’t take said route.

This lovely combination of events gave me plenty of time to think, however.  If you want the short version now, I’m calling off the Dancing Monkey Project.  If you want the long version, well, it’ll be in the next paragraph.  So you might as well stick around.

The Dancing Monkey Project is a hilarious idea for someone who isn’t me to do.  It’s really that simple.  Alternately, it would be a hilarious idea for me to turn in to a book of some sort at some point in the future.  It’s not a good idea for me to be, like, doing as a thing.

Basically, if the goal of going out and meeting people is to, y’know, meet people, then I need to be going out and meeting people without, “Hey, I’m going to blog about this shit as soon as I’m done.”  That changes my behaviors and my end goals.  And, really, at this point my goal shouldn’t be to have a bunch of stupid experiences, as that’s a giant waste of time for me.  And since the Dancing Monkey Project was supposed to get me out and away from the stupid experiences and meeting people…

Um, this is getting really confusing.  Perhaps I need a bulleted list.  Or, at least, I should start from another direction.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.  The goal of the Dancing Monkey Project was to get me out doing different things and, therefore, getting different results.  But intentionally picking dumb things for the purposes about going out and doing dumb things and then writing funny shit about them actually means that I’m looking to do different things that create the same results as before, which means that eventually the Dancing Monkey Project will just be doing the same things over and over again and getting the same results over and over again.

So I’m not doing it any more.

And I don't feel like I've cheated anyone out of anything, either, since nobody's bothered to drop anything in the tip jar, anyway.  And, y'know, my goddamn blog, my goddamn rules.

I'm going to leave it up, though.  The picture amuses me to no end and it's not like anyone's using it.

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Also, it occurred to me that if, by some random miracle of life, the Dancing Monkey Project resulted in me meeting someone, I’d then feel compelled to write about that.  I’m not sure that’s the key to a good, stable, long-term relationship.

So, basically, the Dancing Monkey Project was a form of self-sabotage.

This realization does not surprise me, actually.

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Meanwhile, it's not like I have a shortage of social opportunities in my life.  By my count, I have crap scheduled at least 17 of the 40-odd days between now and April 1st.  And I'm still trying to hold down time on the ever reducing chance I'll be buying a house by the end of February.

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Oh, so, on the subject of self-sabotage:

A couple posts ago I told the story of my grandmother’s attempt to get me to hook up with some random Norwegian chick.  That part of the story ended with my grandmother convincing (by which I mean browbeating ) me to at least talk on the phone with the girl.  So that happened.

The conversation started out in a predictably awkward fashion.  To wit, the girl had no fucking clue who I was.  My grandmother has been trying to sell me on her for, like, five years.  Apparently her parents mentioned me to her, like, once in passing relatively recently.

This was actually a good thing, since I knew she had absolutely zero investment in this cockamamie scheme from the get-go.  As such, I explained to her that my grandmother had been trying to get me to hook up with her for five years and wasn’t taking no for an answer and, yeah, the whole situation was super awkward for me.

I did not tell her that my grandmother had described her as “kinda homely looking” and “not the skinniest girl in the world” or whatever.  I did mention that her main selling points were “nice to old people” and “Norwegian.”  Because that’s funny, I don’t care who you are.

We actually did end up having a very pleasant conversation.  She spoke in a regionally-Evangelical dialect of Christianese and told me about her overseas missions trips.  I dropped the occasional casual curse word.  It wasn’t going to go anywhere.

But at least it’s over now.  So now you know the rest of the story.

Well, until my grandmother tries to browbeat me into round 2.  Or disowns me.  Whichever.

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Also, apropos of absolutely nothing, one big thing on the list of things that annoy the fuck out of me about the iPhone is the lack of truly useful repeating calendar events.  I have a lot of stuff I do that happens on, say, the fourth Tuesday of every month.  My old HTC Tilt did that just fine.  The iPhone?  Not so much.

Does anyone have any idea why the hell Apple doesn't have that functionality?

The Dancing Monkey Needs a Road Trip

Over at the Washington Monthly's "Political Animal," Ed Kilgore -- who earlier today gave me my band name of the day: "Declining Honkitude" -- put this little gem at the end of his report on the CPAC agenda:

Even at a deadly serious conference aimed at taking back America from secular-socialists, there has to be some socializing. Fortunately, for the single set, TheTeaParty.net is hosting a presentation on “Conservative Dating.” Check out this description:

Ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod, that would be amazing.  Especially in light of the actual description.

Learn everything from how to avoid scaring away your own personal Dagny Taggart in the first five minutes of the conversation, to whether Tea Partiers and Occupiers can share something more than a dislike for bailouts.

For those who are wondering, Dagny Taggart is the protagonist (in the strictest sense of the world) and author insert of Atlas Shrugged.

Note, too, the implication that it will be a workshop for men, since the goal is to "avoid scaring away" and the object in question is a female.  I so wish I was in Washington, DC RIGHT NOW.

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Actually, when I think about it, the implications of that little description are utterly terrifying.

I have never actually read Atlas Shrugged.  I have, however, been involved in discussion of the book and read snippets of a couple of the sex scenes.  They are not so much "sex scenes" as "rape scenes."  And they're a special variety of rape wherein getting completely sexually dominated in a not-particularly-consensual sort of way by a great captain of industry causes Dagny Taggart to respect and/or fall in love with said man.

So, yeah, I'm kind of hoping that the first tip to "avoid scaring away your own personal Dagny Taggart" is, "Don't be the sort of guy who says he's looking for a Dagny Taggart."

Otherwise...ugh.

Fixation

Go to the corner of Clark and Washington in Chicago[1] on pretty much any given weekday and you’ll see this guy.  He stands there holding up a sign that indicates he’s on a hunger strike.  He wears a vest that says he’s been on said hunger strike since 2006.  The vest also says he’s an outlaw wanted by the FBI.  That part always makes me giggle, since I’m sure that the FBI wishes all of their wanted outlaws stood on busy street corners holding up signs to the effect whilst weakening themselves through not eating.[2]  Really, criminal underclass, that’s just polite behavior.

The guy’s reason for his wanted-outlaw-on-hunger-strike status is that he hasn’t been given any visitation rights whatsoever for his child since, apparently, 2006.  Every time I see him I can’t help but think that there’s probably some sort of correlation between him being the sort of guy who can stand on the street corner in downtown Chicago day after day after day after day engaging in silent histrionics about his lot in life and being the sort of guy who’s not allowed to be around his children.  This is obviously armchair psychoanalysis of someone I’ve never once talked to, but there has to be something in that story about how the dude is creepily obsessive about things and has no sense of proportion and is also not allowed around his children.  He could also be some sort of pathological liar or something.  Again, I don’t know.  I tend to ignore the dude.

The last time I walked past him I found myself thinking about another guy I know.[3]  I met him several years ago and ended up talking to him a lot, because he’s the sort of guy who will stop you and make you talk to him for ten minutes.  The subject is always, always the same.  It’s about how his ex-wife is an emotionally abusive bitch who took his kid from him and won’t let him have visitation rights.  One time he even pulled me aside and told me the statistics about child abuse.  They apparently skewed pretty strongly to the direction of men = gentle, loving, and unfailingly kind, while women = emotionally, mentally, and physically abusive crazy people who probably shouldn’t be around children at all.

Eventually I learned that there’s a term for that particular guy: Men’s Rights Activist.  He would color my interactions, such as they’ve been, with MRAs since then, especially after I learned that the stats he threw at me weren’t even an example of lying through statistics so much as they were an example of flat-out lying.

Other people I know also know that second guy.  Through them I recently found out he wrote a book.  I briefly handled the book, what was extremely obviously self-published, but I didn’t read it and don’t want to.  I was told, however, that he refers to himself time and again in said book as a nice person and a kind person and a patient person.

I was also told by someone that knows me and that other person that his stories of his crazy ex-wife reminded them of me and my beloved stories about crazy girls.  A year or so ago that sort of comparison would have bugged the shit out of me.  I’d rather not be compared to that guy, since he’s obviously an angry, overly fixated individual who wants the world to know that his problems aren’t his fault and everyone else is out to get him.  I’m not like that at all, since I’m, y’know, me.  And I’m different.  Because I said so, that’s why.

Since I’m being introspective about things these days I took that comparison in stride and I actually thought about it.  The fact is that there are things I have in common with that guy.  There are things I have in common with the crazy dude who thinks the FBI is out to get him due to his child custody issues.[4]  There are things I have in common with the MRAs and the Nice Guys of the world.  It’s important to recognize what those things are and how to not be that person.

Before I go on, however, it’s important to bracket off a thought.  There are actually people who have a raw deal.  There are men out there who have gotten screwed by the justice system in custody hearings.  There are women out there who have taken the kids and run for the border.  There are guys who have been screwed over by genuine bitches.  It happens.  Life sucks like that sometimes.  My intention here is not to minimize that.  My intention is to point out, though, that I don’t think that it happens nearly as often as those poor victims of abuse at the hands of crazy bitches would have you believe.

I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s a, for lack of a better term, matrix of beliefs/attitudes/qualities that go in to creating one of these guys.  In no particular order:

Self-absorption/narcissism
Self-deception/cognitive dissonance
Passivity
Obsessiveness/fixation
Helplessness
Black-and-white categorization
Externalization of blame and responsibility

Basically, it works thusly: guy meets girl.  Guy decides that girl is the greatest thing in the world.  Guy hopes that girl sees the same thing about him.  Guy sits around and waits for girl to realize it.  Eventually guy decides girl won’t realize it and decides that means that girl, like all girls, is a total bitch.

I also genuinely believe there is a certain type of woman who recognizes this personality type and takes advantage of it.  I think some are actually calculating bitches who use men, but others just kind of do it due to their own particular set of emotional issues and/or damages.  As such, I think there is a germ of truth to the passive guy’s whole, “Women are just bitches who want to take advantage of me,” thing, because they’re more likely to find themselves in the thrall of bitches who want to take advantage of them.  It’s a bit of a tautology, but I don’t think I’m just making that up.

That’s where the Pick-Up Artist/Nice Guy dichotomy comes in to play.  Take a Nice Guy and let him stew in his own juices of failure and lack of sex long enough and he’ll be ready and willing to flip that switch from “passive” to “aggressive” (or, really, “passive/aggressive”) and that “helpless” switch to “asshole.”  That black-and-white categorization means that they’ll think there are two types of men in the world: Nice Guys Who Never Get Any and Jerks Who Get All the Poon.

You stay in that place through self-absorption and self-deception.  You are right and don’t need to change and everyone else is wrong unless they disagree with you.  The only way to fix that is through honest self-assessment and realization that the world is a lot bigger and more complicated than you want to think it is.  That’s a tough thing to do.  It’s also a lot less satisfying than just saying, “Women iz bitches who be out to get me.  Fuck them.  Literally, if possible.”

Anyway…yeah.  Those are some thoughts that I think are important to put on paper.  Or, um, computer screen.  They also lead directly in to a bunch of honest self-assessment I’ve been doing for the past few weeks that I kind of want to articulate in the near future, especially since a lot of it then transfers over to the Dancing Monkey Project and my increasing realization that said project might actually be a really, really bad idea as conceived.

In short, I think it was meant to solve one problem in a way that actually probably creates and/or reinforces another problem/series of problems.  The problem it solves is more of a symptom than an actual disease.  So, uh, yeah.  Hopefully I’ll be able to explain this in a way that makes sense.

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[1]For the non-Chicagans out there, Clark and Washington marks one of the sides of Daley Plaza, also known as “across the street from City Hall” and “that big public plaza what has the Picasso statue.”

[2]I just got a brilliant idea for the next season of Burn Notice!  Are you reading, Matt Nix?  Also, if you are, I’m sorry about that whole thing with The Good Guys, dude.  The show had major flaws, but it was deeply enjoyable, sometimes in spite of itself.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go listen to some Foghat.

[3]I am going to be as circumspect as possible in this description, so be warned.

[4]Y’know, the more I think about that, the weirder it seems.  Unless his child custody stuff actually stems from a federal indictment I have no fucking clue what the FBI has to do with anything.

Bits and Pieces

So I made it back from San Antonio in one piece.  My complicated feelings about Texas are now even more complicated due to the fact that my feelings about San Antonio are extremely not complicated.  That’s one hell of a city.  I love the place.

There’s an interesting thing about Texas for those who don’t know Texas.  There’s no such thing as a single, monolithic Texas.  The place is just too big and too spread out for that.  Dallas/Fort Worth is like a crappy attempt at a big Midwestern city with a lot of overcompensation in the form of Texas state flags and pickup trucks.  Austin is a college town.  Galveston is a low-rent New Orleans or Mobile, Alabama[1].  Houston is a big traffic jam built in the path of hurricanes.[2]  San Antonio is a lot more on the Mex side of that Tex-Mex equation.  It just had a totally different vibe than the other Texas places I experienced in Texas and it had a vibe I really, really liked.

The Alamo is totally disappointing, though.  I was much more impressed with the Menger Bar, due to the fact that it’s where Teddy Roosevelt recruited many of the Rough Riders.  I raised a bourbon in honor of TR.  Because if I didn’t I’m pretty sure his ghost would have haunted my ass and I did not want.

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Anyway, now that I’m back and recovered, I’ll be returning to some form of regular blogging.  I’m also working on a couple of other projects that I’ll hopefully announce in the near future.  So there’s that.

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On the subject of projects, you might have noticed that the Dancing Monkey Project has, thus far, been naught but sound and fury, signifying nothing.  So far I’ve done one thing that ended up being completely and totally not worth writing about.  Then I spent a week out of commission.  And I can’t believe January’s not over yet, since I feel like it should be March by now.  Life’s like that sometimes, though.

I’ve realized a few things over the past couple weeks, however.

First, the absolute best thing you can do for yourself in a dating context is to simply put yourself out there.  It’s a pretty obvious conclusion, but one that I seem to have missed.  I did, however, recently find myself in a situation where there were a bunch of guys and a few women.  Most of the guys clumped up, put their heads down, and just kind of interacted with each other.  Two of us, however, talked to women.  Nothing came of it, but two of us had opportunity and the other guys didn’t.  So, y’know, duh.

Second, it’s deeply important to work on yourself.  I am the sort who would be referred to as his own worst critic in most situations.  This is problematic.

Due to a large number of factors I felt like I returned from Texas with my tail between my legs and have been, for all intents and purposes, damaged goods since my return.  That’s not really the case at all, but it’s been my self-perception[3].  It’s also the sort of self-perception that really gets in the way of getting anything accomplished or feeling really comfortable professionally.  I’ve gotten a lot accomplished since my return and everyone is glad to have me back, but I haven’t felt like I’ve really been bringing anything to the table.

While I was in San Antonio I admitted that was how I felt.  This is the first step towards fixing the problem.

That same night I had a dream.  In that dream I ran in to Her because she had started working in my industry.  We started dating.  Then I woke up thinking, “Srsly, WTF?”  It bugged me and when a dream really bugs me I figure it’s my brain trying to tell me something, so I picked at it for a while.  Eventually I realized that I had that dream at the same time I’d admitted to the damaged goods thing and I realized that no one has ever made me feel like damaged goods quite like she did.

When you feel that way you just kind of get locked in to a pattern of bad behavior.  Even if you leave a bad situation behind you tend to fall back in to the attitudes and patterns that put you there in the first place.

So…yeah.  Take that for whatever it’s worth.

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[1]I liked Galveston.  I liked New Orleans and Mobile a whole hell of a lot more.

[2]I did not much like Houston.

[3]Have you noticed that I’ve been doing a lot of writing about perception of late?

Official Dancing Monkey Project Sticky

I decided I should put up some sort of explanatory sticky for the Dancing Monkey Project.  Why?  I don’t know, man.  It just seemed like a good idea…

The 2012 State of the Blog: Dance, Monkey, Dance!

Single ladies, look at your nonexistent man.




Now look at me.



Now look back at your nonexistent man.




Now look back at me.*




Would you go on a date with me?  Would you go on a date with me if we met in an incongruous place and I agreed to take you to that place you like?  Would you go on a date with me if I asked you while riding a horse?

Would you go on a date with me if you knew it was going to get written about in an extremely low circulation blog at some point in the following week?  Bear in mind that you could have the option of becoming nearly as internet famous as me.  So, y’know, your mother will never, ever find out.

Wait, what’s that?  You don’t want to go on a date with me, anyway?  Man, I really suck at this, what with the fact that I can’t even get a theoretical date from a pretend woman I made up to blatantly steal from a national ad campaign.  Maybe I should re-think this one…

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Okay, I’m back.  And I have a brilliant plan.  I’ve also decided to ditch the whole ridiculous asking questions of people who aren’t here conceit, since that’s all stupid and shit.

Here it goes:

I’m going to spend 2012 as a dancing monkey for your amusement.  Also mine.  Mostly mine.

Here’s the plan: I go out and do social things that single people do, then I write about my experiences.  Pretty simple, right?  Potentially hilarious, too, I’d hope.  If you’ve been here for any of my online dating stuff I’d hope you can agree that I’m both completely ill-equipped for this and completely equipped to then relate the stories to others.

If I do this right I might be able to parlay some sort of dating advice column and a book deal out of it.  We all know, though, that “do this right” probably isn’t in the cards.

On that note, I’d like to point out that I have a minor problem going in to this.  Part of the reason I don’t date much is because I don’t get out much.  This means I don’t have a freaking clue where to go or why I’d want to be there in the first place.  My assumption is that my fish-out-of-water experiences will make this even better, but first I have to figure out how to launch myself up on to land so that I may flop about, gasping for air for your amusement.[1]

So you, my intrepid readers, get to participate.  It’s an experiment in democracy or something.  Tell me where you think I should go and I’ll see about doing it.  No reasonable offers will be turned down and some unreasonable offers will undoubtedly be gleefully accepted if they’re really fucking funny.

Let me know what kind of crazy-ass shit you’d like to see me do.  Do you want to hear stories from a guy who doesn’t know how to make small talk at a singles mixer in a strange place with a strange theme?  Would you like a guy with no rhythm to speak of to go take dance lessons?  Do you want to hear about speed dating from a guy who’s only been on, like, four dates in the last year and would, therefore, double or even triple his output in ONE NIGHT?  Do you want me to go clubbing?[2]

It’s at least partially up to you, since if left to my own devices I’ll probably not do much of anything interesting, since I kinda suck at life.  Still, even if no one gives me a single idea I’ll try, because I think this is potentially terrible and, therefore, awesome.

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As I said, though, no reasonable offer will be turned down.  This is my life, after all.  So it will have to be something I can do in the Chicagoland area (unless some generous benefactor wants to pay me to go on a singles cruise or something).  Still, let’s make a few rules:

1.  It can’t be too expensive.  Seriously.  I’m not made of money.

2.  I reserve the right to veto any and all suggestions for any reason, but if the idea is inherently good it would mostly come down to money, distance, and time.  So at that point a reasonable substitution would be a good idea.

3.  If everything goes according to plan I’ll be closing on a house at the end of January (note: absolutely nothing has gone according to plan).  So, y’know, I might be busy moving for a stretch in the near future.  But no one does anything in February in Chicago, anyway.

4.  Nothing internet exclusive, since, y’know, we’ve already learned that’s a waste of time.

5.  No gay stuff.  Mostly because I’m not gay.  But also because I’m not interested in men.

6.  I reserve the right to declare this little project null and void if I actually meet someone.  Even if it’s tomorrow.  Fear not, though, I not exactly holding my breath.

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Also, something has occurred to me.  Since money is a factor, I can run an experiment.  Perhaps I shall add a tip jar and give y’all an option to donate money to help me offset the costs of dancing like a monkey for your amusement.

Hmm….

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And so but anyway, welcome to 2012, the Year of the Dancing Monkey.

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[1]So I’ve gone from “dancing monkey” to “dying fish” as metaphor.  I should watch myself.

[2]Please, for the love of god, don’t make me go clubbing.  ANYTHING BUT THAT.

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*Yes, it's a mirror pic.  No, I don't often have an excuse to wear a suit.  I figured it needed to be documented.