The Facts of Life
February 18th, 2009Learn From Other People’s Pain
I am skimming a story about the Stanford fraud scandal. Looks like Mr. Stanford is a student of Bernie Madoff. The claim: he took money from investors, paid too-big returns to the first ones in, and in doing so, spent the money invested by those who came along later.
Hey, is he the guy who designed Social Security?
It’s a remarkable business model. It’s even better than taking millions of dollars and paying yourself a huge salary to publish a group blog no one reads.
Not that anyone has ever done that.
The thing that struck me about this was that it confirmed what I suspected when the Madoff scandal popped up. I was talking to my dad about it, and I said I wondered how many other Madoffs were out there waiting to be flushed into the open. I knew the odds were against Bernie Madoff being the only Ponzi broker on Wall Street. And sure enough, here’s a new one.
Does this mean I’m a genius? Yes. Well, no. I wish it did. It means that in middle age, I have finally begun to understand human nature, and to profit by my understanding.
Whenever I have a moment like this, I think of an old Saturday Night Live character, the superhero “Middleagedman.” He ran around with his sidekick, Beer Buddy, solving life’s problems by applying wisdom obtained via sitting around and watching the world. You know the kind of thing I mean. Example: never get an aisle seat on an airplane unless you like being bumped by drink carts. And when you make a reservation, make sure you ask if they’re trying to stick you in one of those seats that don’t recline. Old people know this stuff. In fact, that’s pretty close to Middleagedman’s theme song, which went, “MIDDLEAGEDMAN….he knows a lot of stuff!”
There’s a company called Bottom Line that sells this kind of wisdom. My dad bought a book from them. It’s full of tips other people came up with after lots of misery. It’s sort of like the book of Proverbs, without the religious aspect.
Let’s see. Never give a friend a big loan. Up to maybe three hundred bucks, you’re cool. Above that, you will never see it again, and you will lose the friendship. Never date a woman with children unless their father is dead or in an iron lung. Never date a fat woman who just lost a hundred pounds, unless you wouldn’t mind if she gained it back. Roughly 95% of people who loudly proclaim that they will never desert you in a crisis…will desert you.
This is good material. Save it.
Avoid preachers who talk about God helping you because you give them money, but who rarely mention God helping you for helping the poor. Never, ever leave your kids with a male babysitter or day care attendant unless you want them to be molested; men who love being around kids are generally not normal. If you’re a woman and your boyfriend likes to dance more than you do, ask a male friend if he seems gay. Men generally dance only because they have to, and women have absolutely no gaydar. You might spare yourself an STD later on. If he ever talks about your shoes and seems to know what brand they are, run.
This is gold, I’m telling you.
Shun fantastic deals on used stuff, unless the sellers are clearly idiots or in financial trouble AND they are willing to produce ID and sign receipts. Never wait until Friday afternoon to go to any place where you will have to wait in line; the post office and banks are the worst. Do not EVER let an attractive woman stay with you and your wife for more than one night, especially if it’s a friend of your wife’s and she just had a painful breakup. If you’re a man and your girlfriend flirts with your friends, dump her. Women use men they’re not crazy about to help them meet better men.
Never date anyone who carries a dog everywhere. Never date anyone who tells you everything her friends and relatives have told her in confidence. She does the same thing to you, in spades. If you’re already in such a relationship and you want to find out the most embarrassing thing she has told her friends, pick a fight with one of them and see what she says.
Don’t buy a Chrysler product. Just don’t. They have been crap since about 1972. You can make an exception for a Viper.
Men: never wear a wig. Some of the newer hair transplant surgery methods are pretty good, but there is no such thing as a good toupee. Look at Burt Reynolds and William Shatner. Is that how you want to be remembered? Ladies: do whatever it takes to remove your facial hair, even if the results aren’t that great. Remember this rule: the worst wax job in history was more attractive than the prettiest beard.
If you have gas in public, go stand near the fattest, ugliest person you can find. Everyone will think he or she did it.
If your girlfriend asks you annoying, prying questions and says you should have no secrets from each other, ask yourself whether she tells you as much about herself as you tell her about yourself. Women like to collect information to use against you later. If your boyfriend likes to tell you what to do, it may not be because he feels protective; he may be an Ike Turner in the making.
Never date a man who drives a black car with the windows tinted black, especially if he himself wears black. In his mind, he is about 12 years old, and he will make you suffer. Never date ANYONE who wears black all the time. It’s not chic, and it’s not indicative of depth or intelligence or sophistication. It’s pretentious and creepy. People who wear black all the time crave admiration. Or they’re in the Viet Cong, which is even worse.
A man who is nasty and brutal to other people will treat you the same way sooner or later. Generally, people who mistreat others will eventually give the same treatment to people who trust them.
Never date someone because you feel sorry for them and think you can help them. There is no such thing as a fixer-upper or mechanic’s special.
Man, I wish someone had told me all this stuff years ago.
When you start a charcoal grill, use tons of fluid, assuming you’re a fluid guy and not an electric-starter guy. Get it done the first time; don’t play around so you have to keep adding fluid later. Don’t buy a time share. Don’t buy a boat in partnership with your best friend whom you would trust with your life. Never even think about buying a new boat. Always used.
Never buy small tools; I think I may have mentioned that once or twice in the past. Make them at least two sizes bigger than you think you need. And when it comes to expensive tools, try to buy used. Let someone else eat the depreciation.
In the summer, heavy wool socks are cooler and dryer than thin cotton socks. Some of the best meat is the cheapest; you just need to know how to cook it. When you’re out of mosquito repellant but oddly, you have fresh basil, rub the basil on your skin. Mosquitoes hate it.
Don’t date a person you find physically unattractive. It won’t work.
For digging shallow holes, a sharp hoe is about ten times as fast as a shovel. Never cut down a tree with an axe. It’s not the right tool. Use a saw. Do you think lumberjacks cut trees down with axes? Maybe the stupid ones do. The ones that accept sandwiches from strange, plastic-faced kings who pop up beside them in bed.
I’m not really sure what axes are for. Saws cut much, much better, and axes are useless for splitting wood. A long time ago, I worked for a guy who ran a tree service. He had all sorts of tools in his truck. But if memory serves, he didn’t have an axe. We never had a use for one.
You know, I think I may start a self-help cult. I wonder if I could hire Tom Cruise away from the Scientologists. It’s amazing that I know all these great things, yet somehow fail to apply most of them.
Anyway, the Wall Street scandals probably won’t end with Madoff and Stanford. Middleagedman knows all.
February 18th, 2009 at 11:17 AM
” Never cut down a tree with an axe. It’s not the right tool. Use a saw. Do you think lumberjacks cut trees down with axes?”
They certainly do on those lumberjack contest shows.
February 18th, 2009 at 11:19 AM
New rule: never do anything a motorized machine can do for you.
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Those guys probably eat all sorts of diseased sandwiches.
February 18th, 2009 at 11:38 AM
Wearing black – wasn’t there a Johnny Cash exception?
February 18th, 2009 at 11:48 AM
I’m a woman with pretty good gaydar, but I’m not desperate for a husband. Here are a few examples of things that shout GAY! or at least bisexual!: if he was into dressing up in bow ties and suspenders as a child (not pressed into it by his mother, he chose such a costume himself), if as a child he liked singers like Madonna, if his dorm room is decorated in pink and tinfoil and has huge posters of Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe, and so on (true story — I met a girl whose “boyfriend” had his place decorated up like that; he was also soft and fat and effeminate; later on she confessed they’d broken up because he told her he was gay — she’d had “no idea!”); if he wants to go to one of those performing arts high schools and write musicals; if he tells you he idolizes Republican politicians and other related public figures and has their pictures on his walls even though he is politically to the left of Castro (another true story — I knew a closeted gay — as in “no way am I gay!” — who had a crush on Oliver North; finally he couldn’t stand it any more and admitted he was in fact gay as Oscar Wilde). There are other indications but these are the major ones I’ve encountered in my life.
February 18th, 2009 at 11:52 AM
If you don’t get a husband, you’ll have to do all the important jobs a husband would ordinarily do. I.e. pee on the bathroom floor and fart for an entire household.
February 18th, 2009 at 11:54 AM
I forgot to add: most women dating gays are either 1) just looking for a guy to dance with (for some reason some women like to dance — I’ve never figured this out), or otherwise want male companionship without all that pesky masculinity. And they wouldn’t mind marrying a gay guy, because they think it would be the “best of both worlds” — like having a girlfriend without lesbian sex, which most women find gross (sorry guys, but it’s true — the pr0n films lied), and also they think “he won’t bother me for sex,” because though women aren’t total sex haters we like it about 90% less than men do. Of course, there is that ten percent… and when women who marry gay men find out they’re not even going to get that…
What a lot of women don’t want is masculinity. They’ve been raised to think real men are bossy and brutal and crude, and will mess up their nice clean feminine lives with farts and demands for sandwiches. Of course, these same women date untrustworthy “bad boys” and wonder why they can’t find a husband.
February 18th, 2009 at 11:55 AM
“If you don’t get a husband, you’ll have to do all the important jobs a husband would ordinarily do. I.e. pee on the bathroom floor and fart for an entire household.”
I have a cat for the pee, and I fart enough for ten husbands.
February 18th, 2009 at 11:56 AM
Andrea, are you completely sure you’re a real person? Are you positive you’re not a sock puppet I made up to make it look like there was a woman somewhere who agreed with me?
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Alternatively, have you invented a device which allows you to read my thoughts?
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Thing like that wouldn’t be worth much.
February 18th, 2009 at 12:30 PM
“I have a cat for the pee, and I fart enough for ten husbands.”
But who leaves the toilet seat up, and who rearranges the TP roll in the proper orientation?
February 18th, 2009 at 1:40 PM
Those are all words of wisdom, but when I was younger I wasn’t smart enough to have listened to them anyways. It wasn’t until middle age that I was smart enough to listen and learn.
Andrea, you are welcome to fart in my stinky abode any time.
February 18th, 2009 at 2:05 PM
Sorry, had to run out and pay my electric bill. I thought President Sparklepony O’Unicorn was supposed to pay my bills for me, but I guess the check hasn’t cleared yet.
“Andrea, are you completely sure you’re a real person?”
I often wonder that myself.
But who leaves the toilet seat up, and who rearranges the TP roll in the proper orientation?
True story: once when I cleaned out my toilet I left the seat up to dry. Then I forgot about it. Later that night I woke up with a need, and stumbled into the bathroom, sat down, and promptly fell in the bowl. Of course I couldn’t do that now — my butt has, er, grown a bit.
I always hang toilet paper the correct way. Which is the way I hang it.
February 18th, 2009 at 2:06 PM
Oops, forgot to put the second comment I quoted in quote marks. I blame George Bush.
February 18th, 2009 at 2:06 PM
True story. My 11 month old son and I were playing on the floor. He farted and I laughed. He then laughed really hard. The next time he farted, he laughed.
My wife looked at me and said, “It really IS genetic!”
February 18th, 2009 at 2:47 PM
you use an axe for bumping logs (removing small branches) of a tree felled with a chainsaw. you can also use an axe to clear certain kinds of brush and to ring trees. an axe is efficient for many small jobs but most people dont know how to use one without killing themselves. Chainsaws are intrinsically safer than axes in many ways. Also few better cardio/upper body workouts better than splitting with an axe (or maul)
February 18th, 2009 at 3:18 PM
an absolute sure-fire way to discern that you are talking to a person who is totally full of shit is when they constantly refer to “My friend who….went to harvard but partied all the time….is a navy seal….banged heidi Klum….drinks a six pack after work every night but still has a rewarding sex life…..is building a house in the Caymans”
the “friend” is never named and the anecdote always is short of details such as facts.
Its not that from time to time we all dont add something to a story or gild the lily as it were, its that this sort of person falls for everything, all the time, and is incapable of discerning it.
February 18th, 2009 at 3:24 PM
Never buy a computer from a big company unless you can live without it for 2 weeks as you send it in to be repaired.
February 18th, 2009 at 3:43 PM
I would add this: never buy an extended service plan. Unless it’s for a LAPTOP.
February 18th, 2009 at 3:49 PM
An axe? That’s what you use when the chainsaw bar gets pinched and you can’t get it free. Never leave home without it.
February 18th, 2009 at 4:00 PM
Or you could just be crazy and use a pry bar or a maul and wedge.
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Once again, the axe is second best.
February 18th, 2009 at 4:07 PM
I second the service plan for laptops. The only ones I have are old ones from work, the few that make it to replacement time that is.
My sister called me one day while she was shopping for a computer and asked lots of questions, the only advice I had was to never buy a laptop for a teenager, but if you do, buy the warranty. She has thanked me several times for that.
February 18th, 2009 at 4:10 PM
An axe may be second best to a chainsaw, but it is not second best to a one-man manual saw.
An axe is a tool that requires some skill and practice to use efficiently, but a skilled axe-man can take a down a tree (even a surprisingly large one) in an incredibly short time. Just go to a logging festival and watch a wood-chopping competition.
An axe is MUCH more efficient for limbing a felled tree (if you keep it sharp), it never runs out of fuel, always starts, and is much lighter and compact than a chainsaw.
My $0.02, YMMV
February 18th, 2009 at 4:10 PM
Darned fine rant dude…
I could of almost wrote that one myself.
February 18th, 2009 at 4:26 PM
Dude…be serious. You can buy a $3000 handsaw made by Swedish elves, buy freakish safety gear to keep you from cutting your own feet off, train every day of your life, spend an hour a day sharpening the saw, and be considered the neighborhood goof. Or you can buy a Homelite, eat nothing but Ding Dongs, never exercise, smoke 14 packs of Kools per day, and slice through wood like Velveeta in August. Come on. It’s not a hard choice.
February 18th, 2009 at 4:29 PM
By the way, if you check the records for this kind of thing, you’ll find that a chainsaw cuts much more wood in six seconds than a hand saw does in fifteen.
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http://www.lumberjackworldchampionships.com/competitions/
February 18th, 2009 at 5:35 PM
An accredited college humanities degree costing more than $1000 is a rip-off. Go to Project Gutenberg, download the free classics. Read them. THEN buy the Cliff’s Notes, used, on EBAY and review those. Find an online forum to discuss them with people smarter and wiser than the 19-year-old sophomores whose parents were suckered by high school guidance counselors into paying obscene tuitions. Hire a really good writing teacher, a logic instructor, turn off the TV for 2 years. (You can rent DVDs or take them out of the library.) Go to museums and take the tours with the docents and ask questions. Master pre-algebra, home accounting basics and learn how to use a spreadsheet.
Have a friend who is close enough to know and tell you when you’re full of crap or walking a bit too close to a moral boundary you shouldn’t cross.
Chemistry is the least important aspect in a marriage, despite what TV and movies tell us. If you don’t have shared goals for 5, 10, 20, 50 years down the road, you’re drifting apart from the get-go. If you don’t have shared values, you’ll end up disrespecting each other. Find out early in a prospective relationship what each other’s goals and values are. If compatible, then proceed to see if there’s chemistry. Sex is epoxy and being stuck to someone who doesn’t have compatible goals or views/beliefs is torture.
Dropping a prospective partner because they cheat on their taxes is smart. Dropping a prospective partner who shares your goals and values because they smoke is stupid.
Don’t quickly rule out the briefly-married-now-divorced who don’t have children, especially if they were married and divorced young. Divorce isn’t an STD. Investigate what happened and whether there was spiritual/emotional growth as a result.
February 18th, 2009 at 6:01 PM
Apparently the part about a MANUAL saw passed unnoticed. And I’m certainly not saying that an axe (or a MANUAL) saw is better that a chainsaw. Believe me- if you decide to fell a tree of any size with a MANUAL saw you’ll wish you had an axe.
Even before chainsaws, trees were felled with TWO-man saws (and axes).
Hell, yeah- a chainsaw is the cat’s meow for cutting wood, but comparing it to an axe is as unfair as comparing a horse to a Ferrari!
February 18th, 2009 at 6:37 PM
Some trees are such that, they would merely scoff at your prybar, maul, and wedge. But had I an axe, I would never have to abandon my chainsaw.
February 18th, 2009 at 6:43 PM
You could leave it in there, so the person who succeeded in pulling it out could become the next king of England. And then he could say, “Today I are the king.”
February 18th, 2009 at 8:44 PM
I took your advice about buying tools two sizes larger. That damn 9/16″ wrench won’t tighten my 1/4″ bolts worth a darn!
Oh wait, did you mean I should have bought a 7/16″ wrench that was twice as long?
February 18th, 2009 at 9:41 PM
Two things.
1. An axe is useful for retrieving your maul when your stupid, ding dong eating helper slams it down into a knarly old piece of osage orange. Better then a chainsaw since after trying to cut into osage orange you’ll have to stop and resharpen the chain.
2. I make bleach for a living. Chemsitry is very important in my family.
Remember though, neither one would be particularily choice for killing zombies since you should be mindful of spatters which could infect yourself.
February 18th, 2009 at 10:01 PM
I must object to the comment about Chrysler products. My Dodge Dakota has 270k on it and still doesn’t burn (much) oil. I do like their trucks, cars not so much.
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Ponzi schemes only work if they are Gov. sponsored or you can find greedy morons . Bilking someone without the greed motive is very difficult. Ask a Nigerian. ( Hey, that might make a good idea for a book. Think about that Steve. )
February 18th, 2009 at 10:22 PM
This post was your best bit of writing in a long while.
It kind of works with one of my maxims in life: Car insurance rates drop at the age of 25 because it’s about that time in life when most of us realize our parents were right.
February 18th, 2009 at 10:28 PM
That should be:Remember though, neither axe nor chainsaw would be particularily choice for killing zombies since you should be mindful of spatters which could infect yourself.
Sorry for any confusion.
February 18th, 2009 at 10:40 PM
That’s why I call it Excalibur. I left home without my axe-once.
February 18th, 2009 at 10:43 PM
Harrumph. I didn’t quite cut my finger off with a little electric chainsaw, but then I am a girlie. No trouble with axes. They don’t bounce so much.
February 18th, 2009 at 10:45 PM
Oh, and never marry an Irishman who writes novels and drinks. You’ll spend the next 35 years with someone with two personalities who can’t remember what he said when he was the other one if that makes sense. An Irishman is always right you know.
February 19th, 2009 at 9:50 AM
“I would add this: never buy an extended service plan. Unless it’s for a LAPTOP.”
Or things that might break in general. I bought my son a Nintendo DS Lite. I got the plan on it. $10 for a replacement because he’s got all the grace of a ten-year-old is well worth it.
February 19th, 2009 at 4:08 PM
“Today I are the king.”
“We are not amused.” – Queen Victoria