CleverDonkey.com …Musings, Commentary, Opinions, and Drivel

4/6/2006

Today is the first day of our quest to install HardiPlank siding on our house. We aren’t going to actually do the installation, but we will be identifying local contractors, putting out for bid, hiring someone, managing the process, and posting the progress here along the way. Currently I’m looking for recommendations for a local HardiPlank contractor in Houston, so if you’ve had some work done by somebody you’d like to recommend, please drop me a line at [email protected]!

Our current siding is in sad disrepair. There are several rotten places and several places with loose boards, and it just looks crappy in general. We’ve wavered at the cost of HardiPlank, but have determined that it’s a worthwhile investment. We don’t want to simply replace with wood siding, as we’d still have all the potential rot/termite problems of wood, and vinyl is just…well…vinyl. It seems like the high-end vinyl isn’t bad, but it’s still just…vinyl siding.

Today marks the first day of our quest because we have made all the necessary decisions and lined up the means to do so. We have been pondering it for quite some time, but today is the day we really start the process of getting new siding. Keep tuned here for updates!

6/12/2006

We’ve narrowed down the potential contractors and this week they’re coming out to measure and provide estimates. We’re looking at the following potential contractors:

• All-Tex Exteriors
• Allied Siding and Windows
• Houston Siding

These seem to be the most well-recommended in the Houston area. Several years ago we got a quote from All-Tex but at the time it was cost-prohibitive, we’re hoping for better pricing this time around!

6/20/2006

Well, we’ve made our choice, and it’s Allied Siding and Windows. The price was very competitive, and we also asked them to quote alternatives of vinyl or wood, both of which were cheaper but not by much. We also asked Allied to provide a quote for replacing all of our existing windows, which are older insulated glass models that have leaked and so have a smokey or mildewy appearance between the sheets of glass, some to the point where you can’t see through them.

The bottom line for the whole project came in within our budget, so we’re having Allied do everything, as follows:

• Remove and haul away the old siding and trim (which is wood and is basically disintegrating at this point)
• Replace any bad/rotten studs (their quote includes up to 32 feet of stud replacement)
• Wrap the house in Tyvek
• Install Hardiplank siding and trim
• Replace all the windows with new Simonton Reflections vinyl windows
• Paint the Hardiplank, trim, existing cedar scallops, and miscellaneous remaining wood with two coats of Sherwin-Williams Superpaint

6/23/2006

We signed the paperwork and put down a deposit. Allied did not specifically require a deposit but we put one down anyway for a variety of reasons, namely that we had it available and also that if a business has some of your money it’s easier to get their attention, if needed. We don’t anticipate any issues but we do want to be in the position of approaching any issues from the standpoint of having paid for some of the work already.

7/2/2006

We haven’t heard from Allied about start dates, but we’re still within the two week start window explained to us, and it’s been a bit rainy lately.

7/4/2006

Today Julio came out to do the final measuring (note that he’s out on the fourth of July). He let us know that Allied was running behind due to the weather but that they’d be starting this week.

7/5/2006

Today the distributor delivered the Hardplank and Harditrim, in the pouring rain. It’s now sitting in our driveway. We’re getting closer!

7/7/2006

Here we go! The crew is here today getting started, and siding is coming down, baby! They’re starting on the south wall (no windows) and after removing the wood siding found there was a layer of sheetrock beneath the siding. Very strange. Studs look good even though the siding was mostly rotten, good news.

7/9/2006

Progress continues, siding is up on the south wall, siding is down on the east wall and Tyvek is up, crew went home mid-day due to torrential rains (also it’s Sunday).

7/11/2006

Crew continues to make good progress, back wall and both side walls planked, from has been stripped and Tyvek’ed. Also time for some pictures:

The Before Picture (house on the right)

7/11/2006 View of Front

7/11/2006 Old Front vs New Side

Note that the front was completely Tyveked before they left for the day, but pulling into the driveway to a bald house front was shocking (and exciting)!

We’re also narrowing down the paint color choices, and right now we’re leaning towards a terra cotta color with white trim and a green door, as shown in this mock-up from the Sherwin-Williams site:

Possible House Colors

We’re not absolutely positive on the colors, but we’re pretty sure that’s the way we’re going to go.

7/15/2006

Well, no crew today. I’m not complaining about them taking the day off, but knowing they wouldn’t be here today would have been convenient as we made plans to stay home to let them in to the house for window replacement. However, they have really been working hard and we have no complaints about the progress or quality of the work. The last of the hardiplank and trim is up, the seams and nails have been caulked, and they finished up last night by power washing the unpainted outside of the house.

Here are some pictures of the current state:

Sided But Not Painted Front and Side

Windows Delivered and Also Unreplaced Window in Front

Now we’re waiting for the window replacement and the painting!

7/16/2006

No crew again today (Sunday). Again, not working Sunday is a-okay with me, but we’d sure appreciate a little proactive communication from the crew about when they’re going to be working, particularly now that we’re approaching the window replacement phase and we’ll need to do a lot of pet management, including our rottie cross that really doesn’t like all this hubbub going on around her domain.

7/17/2006

Contacted Allied today to get an update on when the crews would be back as we were planning an out of town trip. The person at Allied called back and said they’d be out tomorrow, but we asked that they not come back until Thursday, as we were going out of town and need to be here to unlock the gates, corral the dogs, etc. The person at Allied said she’d have the crew chief call me to coordinate. He did not call.

7/18/2006

Well, we didn’t hear back from Allied so went out of town. I hope they didn’t show up and find out they were unable to make progress.

7/19/2006

We returned from out of town last night (a day early) and this morning the crew showed up to paint, even though today is Wednesday and we had requested they not return until Thursday. Again, not a huge deal but we sure would love to see better communication about the crew schedule. That’s still our only real complaint, so overall we’re very happy with Allied.

And by the end of today the crew had the first coat of paint on the house. Here are a couple of pictures:

First Coat on Siding, Trim Not Yet Painted

So far we’re very happy with the way the paint looks, and can’t wait for the second coat and the trim work. After that comes the replacement of the windows, and that’ll be it.

The Last Few Miles

Well, the house is finally done. The windows have been replaced, the trim up and painted, and the punch list complete for the most part. There was the inevitable chasing things down with Allied to get things finished, but nothing too difficult or unexpected. Overall we are very satisfied with the job that they did and the price that we paid. I’ve gotten that question a lot – how much did it cost? Well, I don’t want to put Allied in a difficult position of having to match our price, but I also want to let you all know the rough cost of a job like this. I’ll put it this way, Allied did all of this:

• Remove and haul away the old siding and trim (which is wood and is basically disintegrating at this point)
• Replace any bad/rotten studs (their quote includes up to 32 feet of stud replacement)
• Wrap the house in Tyvek
• Install Hardiplank siding and trim
• Replace all the windows with new Simonton Reflections lowE, argon filled vinyl windows
• Paint the Hardiplank, trim, existing cedar scallops, and miscellaneous remaining wood with two coats of Sherwin-Williams Superpaint

For roughly $20,000. Our house is two stories and approximately 1900 square feet. And here’s the finished product:

All Finished!

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There is a class of people whom I’ve come to refer to as “Socialopaths”. These people appear to have no empathy, compassion, or sense of right or wrong when it comes to dealing with others. The male Socialopath is more commonly known as a “prick”, while the female is more commonly known as a “selfish bitch”. These people go through life with an apparent sole focus on their own selfish needs and near complete disregard for everyone else. The Socialopath differs from the true sociopath merely as a matter of degree. Whereas a sociopath may see no distinction between disliking someone and killing them, a Socialopath usually stops short of killing or injuring someone, not because they don’t want to but because they know that the potential repercussions are too large.

A Socialopath:

• Rarely uses blinker when turning or changing lanes.
• Blathers loudly on cell phone regardless of surroundings (elevator, airplane cabin, movie theater, restaurant, public transportation, grocery store, etc.).
• Wants to know the price of everything.
• Blames others when things don’t go their way.
• Drives a BMW.
• Steps in front of others if there is any question who was in line first.
• Takes two parking spaces.
• Lets breast size impact love life (him).
• Lets diamond size impact love life (her).
• Smokes cigars (him AND her).
• Takes the handicapped spot (because nobody uses it and/or they’ll just be a couple of minutes).
• Never thinks twice about making others wait.
• Is bothered by children and pets.
• Isn’t bothered by cruelty to children and pets.
• Is only happy with the latest and greatest, even if they don’t really know the difference.
• Has zero sense of humor about themselves.
• Undertips when nobody will know, overtips when everybody will know.
• Eats sushi because it’s cool, but secretly despises it.
• Insinuates themselves onto the side that is winning.
• Grabs credit for things they really had nothing to do with.
• Passes blame for things they really had everything to do with.
• Respects lawyers (from an income and personality perspective).
• Sees spending time with family as an annoying chore.
• Does the right thing only out of fear of consequences.
• Collects (art-watches-baseball cards-wine-comic books-etc) not out of love but as an investment and/or as an affectation.
• Regularly plans and throws their own birthday party.
• Litters.
• Puts others in danger for their own selfish reasons (drives like a maniac, leaves kids in the car to run into the store, shoots off firecrackers, etc).

Driving Us Crazy

The key element in most of these is a complete lack of thought paid to other people. A more complex example involves a pharmacy that we regularly frequent that is in a free-standing building with its own parking lot. There are plenty of spaces all around for everyone. However, there is a certain class of person who presumes to pull up to the curb right by the door, hop out, and run in to do their shopping. Their car is obviously not in a parking space, and it has obviously reduced the available driving space from two lanes down to one, meaning that all the through traffic must now alternate and creep around this creep’s vehicle. It’s not necessarily causing a total blockage, but it is quite an annoying impediment.

I can only presume that these Socialopath drivers thinks that since people can manage to get by them then there’s nothing wrong with it. However, the problem with that “logic” is two-fold. First, the sheer ego of thinking that it’s okay to inconvenience all other shoppers for one’s own convenience demonstrates a complete lack of social morality. Secondly, if all shoppers decided to park for their own convenience then we would have anarchy. So this Socialopath presumes to flaunt the conventions of a workable society because they know that the rest of us will not follow suit, allowing them to take advantage of our more mature social skills.

This scenario is played out over and over again. At the pharmacy, at the grocery store, dropping off or picking up riders downtown (stopping in moving traffic lanes to let people in or out, oblivious to their outrageous impertinence and selfishness!), all so they don’t have to be inconvenienced to find a parking space or garage.
In fact, I think that driving is one of the primary areas where Socialopathy manifests itself. The participants are fairly anonymous, most of the players follow the rules, and nobody wants to crash their car even if they have the right of way. This is the perfect milieu for a Socialopath to demonstrate their complete selfishness and lack of empathy. Cutting people off, gunning through red lights, not letting people out of parking lots, pulling up past slow traffic in a different lane only to cut into the head of line (a Sneaky Pete, described more fully here), yapping on cell phones, ignoring school zones, etc, etc, etc, etc. Maddening.

Particularly maddening because there is little that can be done, and the Socialopaths know it. If someone cuts in front of the head of a line of traffic, most of us will not hunt them down and confront them. If we see a car taking two spots (usually some over-priced, Euro-trash car that they don’t want “dinged” by the hoi polloi), most of us will not “key” the car (although even I, who attempts to always be a gentleman, have been sorely tempted).

The Socialopathic Boss

The second most common manifestation of Socialopathy, after driving, is as an authority figure, usually a boss or manager of some kind. Socialopaths gravitate towards positions where they can manage others, as their egos do not allow them to think of themselves as workers, only as bosses. They are usually successful in becoming managers because they are driven by an absolutely compulsive need to be seen as being in charge, so they are willing to do anything and everything to move up the ladder, including sacrificing their personal lives in order to achieve power. For a company that is always trying to become more profitable, a driven Socialopath can appear to be the perfect employee, willing to do anything, no matter how morally questionable or just downright wrong, to prove their worth to the higher-ups and so move into a more powerful position.

The problem with this model, however, is that it is not sustainable. Oh, sure, a Socialopath can sometimes produce amazing results, in the short-term, but over time their entire construct falls apart because it is not based in any way on doing the right thing for the company, the customers, or the employees, and is solely based on doing whatever it takes to please the higher-ups and to move up. The Socialopathic Boss (SB) burns through employees like a marathon runner grabbing Gatorade…snatch it up, drain all the usefulness from it, then crumple the empty cup and cast it aside. At first this purging process can be defended as house-cleaning by the SB, telling the higher ups that he has to clear out the slackers and the deadwood in order to produce results.

But eventually the SB starts cutting into known good people, people who are known and respected in the organization, and this can cause the higher ups to take a second look what is going on. Usually at this same point the results being delivered by the Socialopathic boss start to level off or decline, as the people who work for him start to flee his servitude, and this definitely caused the higher-ups to take a closer look. Also at around this point the SB starts looking for a new job, either in another department or outside the company. The SB is usually smart enough to make the move before the whole house of cards can crumble, and so can trumpet his initial, short-term success and use it as leverage in moving to something new. The SB gets out just in time, then looks back on the mess he left behind and might even convince himself that it is failing simply because he’s gone now, instead of seeing that it was destined to fail from the start and all he did was flee like a rat from a sinking ship (that HE sank).

Some of These Apply to Me, But I’m NOT a Socialopath!

Yes, you are. Trust me. You may not have all the characteristics of a Socialopath, but it’s a sliding scale, and you’re definitely on it. And really, you know that you are, don’t you? All your life you’ve had people tell you all these same things, but you’ve always brushed them off as being the other person’s problem, right? And you never accepted the fact that the one common element in all of the belly-aching by these losers is…you. You and your behaviors. It can’t be that everybody else is wrong and that you’re right. The truth is that you are a Socialopath. And here’s a secret for you…having a distorted and unrealistic (to the positive side) view of one’s self is a key characteristic of a Socialopath.

Here’s an exercise for you to demonstrate in a very literal sense just what we’re talking about. For one week, just one week out of your selfish and self-centered life, obey all the traffic laws and also drive and park with consideration for others. Just one week. Don’t blast through yellow lights. Don’t cut people off. Don’t cut in the front of backed up traffic lanes. Signal for every turn and lane change. Let people out of parking lots and into traffic with a friendly wave. Drive no faster than 20MPH in school zones (not 25 or 27 or 28 or 29 MPH, because staying below 30 is NOT the same as driving 20), slow down to let people merge onto the freeway, don’t race the train to the crossing, always park in a designated parking spot, etc.

And what you will notice after a couple of days is just how infuriating it is to see how the few Socialopaths take advantage of the rest of us good folks to selfishly drive however they effing please with no concern or care for the safety of others or for the fact that we all also have just as much of a need to get where we’re going as quickly as we can, but that we don’t sacrifice the smooth operation of the machinery of society simply for our own selfishness.

And, trust me on this one, these same Socialopaths take this same uncaring, unthinking, unfeeling, unkind attitude into every other aspect of their lives. If you have any doubts about the right and/or friendly thing to do, do the thing that you least want to do, because as a Socialopath, that makes it the right thing. You are unable to assess yourself fairly, just as you are unable to comprehend that as a member of a society you must treat others fairly, too, even if there’s no upside for doing it and no downside if you don’t. Do it because it’s right. Follow the slogan of the name brand that I’m sure is on at least some of your possessions…Just Do It.

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When I was 12 or 13 years old, I woke up one night in my bed, fully awake, fully aware of everything, clearly not asleep, and absolutely unable to move a muscle, other than my eyes. Even my breathing was involuntary, because I eventually wanted to yell or scream, but could not. It felt as if someone had encased me in Lucite, or poured clear concrete over me (while still allowing me to breathe). I felt that there was a malevolent presence in the room. I had no sense of up or down and felt like I was slowly falling and spinning. The two windows beyond the foot of my bed were backlit by ambient moonlight, and took on, to me, the appearance of evil glowing eyes floating at the foot of my bed. I was terrified beyond explanation, even now at 43, when I have a much richer vocabulary. My entire body sweated in terror, even though it was a cool evening. I was so terrified and the feeling of an evil presence was so unequivocal that I assumed that I had either died or was about to die, and not in any good way, with no warm comforting light at the end of the tunnel with loving relatives waiting for me. No, I was going to die, and die horribly. I knew it.

Eventually my repeated attempts to scream started to generate small movements in my throat. Through countless repeated attempts I was finally able to squawk out a tiny sound…this was the beginning of the end of the paralysis, and with each new breath I was able to make louder and louder sounds until I was screaming with all my might (or so I thought). I slowly regained the ability to move my limbs, and eventually sat up, waiting for one or more of my family members to come and see why I had been shrieking my head off. But they didn’t. It was then that I realized that what I perceived as screaming had actually been muffled squeaks, but they had been enough to snap me out of it. I didn’t wake my family up, because I didn’t know what I would tell them. When I laid back down the feeling started to come back, so I spent the rest of the night awake and alert (to say the least).

This event lasted for what seemed like hours, but I really don’t know how long it lasted. I had trouble sleeping for several years after this episode, because I would feel it starting to happen again and would force myself to stay awake.

Over the years I have only told a few people about this event, as it just seemed so strange, and since it occurred in the fringes of sleep, could easily be explained away (by someone who hasn’t experienced it) as “just a bad dream”. I knew it wasn’t a dream, but other than that I had no understanding of what had occurred to me.

Flash forward to a few weeks ago, when Peter Jennings hosted an ABC special called “UFO: Seeing Is Believing” in prime time. Being an aficionado, but not a “believer”, in UFOs and aliens I TiVo’d it and watched it. As the show progressed, somewhere in the latter third, they interviewed alien abduction survivors, many of whom talked about being abducted from their beds in the middle of night, stricken by a strange paralysis and fear.

ABC, in the spirit of exploring all sides of the issue, also interviewed sleep specialists, who said that what these people were actually experiencing was something called “sleep paralysis”. The symptoms are the inability to move, the feeling of a malevolent presence, a skewed perception of the passage of time, and tremendous feelings of fear and/or impending death. It turns out that the phenomenon of sleep paralysis is fairly well known, and occurs when the body is partially awakened from REM sleep. According to what I have read, during REM sleep the body immobilizes the skeletal muscles to prevent the dreamer from “acting out” their dreams.

What happens during sleep paralysis is that the dreamer actually wakens from a consciousness point of view, but the skeletal muscles remained in their self-paralyzed state, rendering the person awake and immobile. Since the person is hovering between sleep and wakefulness, the mind is also open to suggestions (where the fear and feeling of malevolence comes from), and has a skewed sense of the passage of time.

As I heard this explanation my jaw literally hung open. Here, after 30 years, was the completely plausible explanation for what had happened to me all those years ago! It was quite an epiphany, and a relief, and the banality of the whole thing greatly appealed to my logical nature.

This was something I had lived with for 30 years, and I had always questioned myself about it. What had happened? Why had it happened? Did it actually happen? Was I sublimating some other horrific memory and putting this one in its place? For 30 years I had these questions. They didn’t haunt me, or anything, but they certainly hung there as a great, big, fat, direct personal experience for which I could concoct no logical explanation. It was my one truly great “paranormal” experience. And come to find out, it was just “normal”.

I can easily see how “UFO abductees” sought therapists and hypnotists to help them “unlock” what happened during their episodes, and given the suggestible state I was in, I can easily see where someone could “remember” an alien abduction during the episode, whether or not it happened. I’m not saying that UFO abductees are or aren’t being abducted, just that I’m pretty sure now that some of them are experiencing sleep paralysis, and then through hypnosis and/or false memory implantation are remembering things that never really occurred.

I’m writing this article in the hopes that others may read this and experience the same relief that I do now. Particularly young people (like I was when it happened to me) who may be living in fear of a malevolent presence stalking them in their dreams. Take a look around the web and you’ll find that sleep paralysis, while certainly not something fun to experience, is simply a strange state of your body and mind that has no evil intent.

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There are people who really enjoy socializing, there are people who merely tolerate it, and there are those who dislike it. I am in the latter category. It’s not that I dislike people, particularly, it’s just that it takes tremendous effort for me to make small talk and be “sociable”. I’m not socially awkward, or anything, and am pretty personable when I put my mind to it. But that’s the issue…I spend my workdays with my professional face on, and the last thing I want to do with my leisure time is put on my sociable face. I want to relax and be myself. And there is a very small circle of people around whom I’m comfortable doing that, and (more importantly) whom are comfortable around me in that mode.

You see, my basic nature is that I’m a surly, sarcastic curmudgeon. I feel that being myself in “socializing” situations is not appropriate, so I have to sort of tone it down and be a bit more sociable, and this takes effort and concentration, so socializing is not relaxing for me in any way. Now, my family knows me and understands that with them I’m all bark and no bite, and don’t take any of my curmudgeonliness seriously (because it’s not meant seriously).

Alone <> Lonely

Also, when I’m not with my close circle of friends/family, I’m very comfortable with my own company. I *like* solitude. In fact, when I’m not with my inner circle, I prefer to be by myself. I know that there are people who are energized and recharged by spending time with people, but I am the opposite. I find time alone to be soothing and rejuvenating, and time spent with non-close friends and acquaintances to be a draining chore. That’s not a reflection in any way on people in general, and does not indicate that I find the individuals themselves to be draining chores. It’s just that I will invariably prefer to spend my time with my inner circle or alone rather than with someone with whom I am not close.

You see, I have come to the conclusion that my available time is divided between four primary categories – Career, Life Maintenance, Family/Leisure Time, and Social Obligations.

Career – I spend a lot of time on my career, but I am fortunate in that I can bring a fair portion of it home and do not have to be chained to my desk to be effective. And in our house there is a routine that the time after work is sort of unstructured, but most evenings includes the whole family at the dining table working on stuff at a sort of a low-intensity, while also interacting and playing things by ear. So, the work at home doesn’t consist of being locked away working intensely and hoping to not be “disturbed”. After-work time is a bouillabaisse of working, talking, watching TV, cleaning, playing with the dogs, kanoodling, kibbitzing, knoshing, etc. So, the nice thing about my career is that I can work hard at it without abandoning my family life.

Life Maintenance – Life Maintenance is stuff like cleaning, cooking, home repairs, paying bills, haircuts, yard work, renewing driver’s licenses, getting the car inspected, grocery shopping, doctor/dentist visits, etc. Trust me when I tell you that I expend the minimum amount of time on these activities as is humanly possible while still *having* a life to maintain.

Family/Leisure time – This is the category that I try to maximize, while still having a career and a life that’s organized enough to be livable. However, I *have* to do the first two (Career, Life Maintenance) to be able to have Family/Leisure time. We don’t have a lavish lifestyle, but neither are we independently wealthy. we have to earn our own money, and we can’t afford to pay others to organize our life.

Social Obligations – So, after all of the above, the “Social Obligation” category gets the short shrift from me. The combination of being low on my priority list plus being something that I do not enjoy means that I spend as little time as possible on Social Obligations. Now, Mynagirl and TheGIRL are both more social than I am, so we compromise on a mutually acceptable amount of socializing, but it’s not something that I seek to do on my own.

We Are Family

Most importantly, I love every moment I spend with my wife and daughter, and prefer spending time with them over just about anything else in this world. And that is not a canned platitude for this column, that’s the literal truth. I like playing golf, but not enough to give up 1/4 of my precious weekend time away from my family on a regular basis. I like going to the movies, but it’s only worth it to me if it’s a family activity. In fact, I can’t comprehend people who feel the need to “get away” from their families, for some reason. How sad that must be. Nothing makes me happier than having unstructured, footloose time at home.

For example, over Christmas we spent hours playing poker, which Mynagirl and The G-I-R-L are just learning, and we had a blast. We played for chips, not money, and spent the whole time talking and laughing and joking and just being together. I cannot think of any way to spend my time that I would enjoy more than just being with them playing cards (or doing whatever).

My Blind Spot

I know it’s not a zero-sum game where you either spend time solely with your inner circle or you are a social butterfly. I’m sure there are people who feel exactly like I do about their close friends and family, but then also enjoy socializing with semi-strangers (for lack of a better term). And that’s something I just cannot comprehend. I mean, I know people who like sushi, which I loathe, but I can understand them liking it, because it’s fresh and clean and healthy and interesting.

But I cannot fathom the desire to spend time with semi-strangers. If I could interview a social butterfly, I’d have so many questions. How can you possibly care about the stories or problems or opinions of semi-strangers? You socialize with them for the most random of reasons, such as they work in your office, or hang out at the same bar, or belong to the same gym, or live in your neighborhood. Are you so desperate for companionship or attention that the company of Random Person Number #37 is fulfilling? Are you so non-selective that these random people seem like good friend-candidates simply because they are right there in front of you?

”You know, Bob sits in the cube right next to mine. Gosh, I hope he’ll be best man at my wedding!”insert names of people whose names you won’t even remember in five years

“Hey, Mary gets her nails done at the same shop as me. I should tell her all the true feelings that I keep inside and don’t tell my husband or family!”

“Well, I know that I’ve been working late all week, and haven’t seen my family, but I think I’d like to spend Saturday golfing with .”

“My wife is feeling a little self-conscious about her weight lately. I think I’ll respond to that by sneaking off to a strip club with my Neanderthal friends.”

“Jane lives in the same building as me. That fills me with such strong feelings of sisterhood that I know we’ll be friends forever!”

Now, those are slightly over-simplified exaggerations, but only slightly. To me, the actions of social butterflies basically look like the above. Suffice it to say that I don’t understand what drives social butterflies, and I’m old enough and set enough in my thoughts and ways that I never will.

Caveat Rantor

All of the above being said, I do have one point of clarification – if you are new in your town or single or just looking for a new set of friends, I totally understand wanting to socialize and mingle and try new folks on for size. The things I am talking about here don’t apply to people in that situation. What I don’t understand is people who HAVE close friends and HAVE a family and a full life but STILL willfully choose to make the time to regularly socialize with semi-strangers.

Sanctum Sanctorum

What it comes down to for me is that I find peace, rejuvenation, and joy from being with a small circle of close friends and family. My inner-circle is my sanctuary, where everybody knows my name (and my game), and where I feel completely safe, completely fulfilled, and completely happy. Anything else (less) is simply in the way of me having my life. Socializing with semi-strangers is a chore to be dispensed with as quickly as possible so that I can get back to my real life with my close friends and family. I’ll never be a politician, a cruise director, a game show host, or a party planner, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

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Yesterday there were various news reports about a 40 foot long gelatinous sea creature that washed ashore in Chile. The story can be found many places, including CNN (which has a picture):

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/americas/07/02/chile.science.reut/index.html

Reading this story got me thinking, because it’s not every day that 40 foot long creatures washes ashore that nobody can identify. And then I thought about another unidentified water creature, the Loch Ness monster. The legend of Nessie has persisted for a long time, but nobody has been able to find her. Sophisticated motion detectors, sonar, radar, etc have been used to try to spot Nessie, to no avail.

However, what if Nessie was a giant jellyfish of the same type that washed ashore in Chile? Jellyfish have a density that is very close to that of water, and don’t have any hard parts, like bones or shells. That means that it would be very difficult to use sonar/radar to distinguish her from normal fluctuations of water temperature, density, and pressure. A giant jellyfish might be quite stealthy in the deep, cold waters of Loch Ness.

I’m not a “true believer” in Nessie, and am not looking to justify my beliefs. However, I did find that this creature in Chile offered a plausible explanation for the phenomenon of the Loch Ness monster. Time will tell if it’s an accurate explanation or not.

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I am not a freak.  I am not picky.  I am not hard to please, inflexible, or timid.  I am…a supertaster.  The scientific validation of what I have always known has set me free.  Foods like coffee and mustard literally make me gag.  Raw tomato tastes like acidic dirt (or what I imagine acidic dirt would taste like) to me.  Almost all beans, with the exception of green beans, are un-choke-down-able.  Peanuts are disgusting.

I am not a timid or picky eater.  I am always willing to try new foods, and I eat all sorts of strange things (snails, calamari, oysters, pop tarts, kipper snacks).  I love different ethnic foods (Chinese, Italian, Lebanese, Greece-y) and am not a restaurant snob.  However, there have always been certain foods that I cannot eat.  Not ‘will not’ eat…cannot eat, at least not without having to control the gag reflex.  And all my life I have been referred to as picky and/or inflexible with regards to food, when I knew that I wasn’t.  I didn’t know what I was, but I knew that I wasn’t picky.  I didn’t have a choice.  I was born this way.

Supertasters
I was born a supertaster.  Supertasters (25% of the population) have a higher concentration of taste buds on their tongue, and experience tastes at three to five times the level of normal tasters.  The scientists involved say that supertasters live in a neon taste world, while normal tasters (50% of the population) live in a pastel world.  The remaining 25% are the non-tasters, who are nearly impervious to bitter and spicy foods.  The non-tasters are the folks who eat any and everything, regardless of taste, texture, bitterness, or spiciness.  Supertasters, on the other hand, are particularly sensitive to bitter tastes, which are prevalent in things like coffee and vegetables.

When I first read about the concept of supertasters, I immediately knew they were describing me.  As a kid my mother adapted our household meals so that there was always stuff I could eat.  I know that it was probably difficult for her, and troublesome, and she did always try to get me to eat my vegetables and to try new things.  As a kid I was horrified at the thought of new foods, because I knew that a) it was impolite to not eat the food on one’s plate and b) everyone figured that a child who resisted a certain food was ‘just being picky’, and they pressured the child to ‘just try it without thinking you’ll hate it’ and it would be okay.  So I avoided, to the extent a child can, any circumstances where I would be forced (FORCED) to choke down food that was making me gag.  Not by evil people, but by people who just did not understand.

As I got older I got much more open to new foods, because everyone respects the food choices made by adults, and if I didn’t want to eat something I didn’t eat it.  This opened up a whole gastronomic world to me that I had avoided because of the minefield of forced ingestion.  I love trying new foods, and I will willingly try anything once.  But there is a list of foods that I cannot eat.  I regularly revisit this list, just to see if things have changed, and they never do.

Coffee Clash
Example number one is coffee.  I *love* the smell of coffee brewing.  It smells like heaven.  But I cannot drink coffee in any form.  I don’t care how much sugar, cream, foam, or flavoring you put in it, it still tastes horrible to me.  HORRIBLE.  I don’t care if you chill it, decaffeinate it, latte it, french press it, freeze dry it, or slow roast it.  I hate it.  I love my wife, but I won’t even kiss her after she drinks it.  DisGUSTing.  And I *want* to like coffee.  Not drinking coffee puts one in a very strange social no-man’s-land that not many people know about.  I don’t “go out for coffee”.  I don’t “take it black or with cream”.  At least Starbucks serves some pretty delicious hot chocolate, so I don’t end up sitting there like a dope with a coke in the coffee shop.  When people learn that I don’t drink coffee, it brings them up short, as if I said I didn’t really believe in gravity.  Not that they don’t understand what I’m saying, but it’s just the whole concept is foreign…I mean, gravity is a natural law, and one’s beliefs have nothing to do with it.  Believe me, in American society today there is a natural law that all socialization must eventually revolve around coffee.

Yellow Journalism
Did you know that many, many menus do not specify the presence of mustard on hamburgers and hot dogs? “A delicious, 1/3 pound burger, cooked to order, with lettuce, tomato, onion, and pickles…” says the menu.  And you order it, you get it, and guess what’s smeared on the bread? Clotted yellow crap, that’s what.  Mustard.  You can pick off the pickles and onions, if you like, but you can’t unabsorb the nasty  mustardiness from the bread.  If you ask about it, the waitron will look confused, because “well….hamburgers just come with mustard….it’s assumed, you know?” If I don’t know the condiment standards of a particular establishment, I now always order “and NO mustard”, regardless of what the menu says.  That ensures that I (usually) don’t get mustard, but many times it also generates a condescending reference to how their burgers don’t come with mustard, and a feigned look at the menu to verify that I, as the consumer, was just too stupid to have read that for myself.

The One Reason I Like Lawyers
Thankfully (for me) there are many, many people who are seriously allergic to peanuts.  As in life-threatening.  This means that if you order something with no peanuts, people usually take you seriously, as a potential opponent in civil litigation.  Nothing prompts a restaurant to get an order right like the threat of a lawsuit.  They also always know which dishes have peanuts in them, specifically to service their allergic clientele.  I gleefully and unashamedly take advantage of this situation, because I love many foods that traditionally come with peanuts, but I HATE PEANUTS, IN ALL FORMS.  Even if “there’s just a little bit” and “you can’t even taste it”, trust me, I can.  I’m actually shuddering with repulsion thinking of the times I’ve accidentally eaten things that were peanut-ridden.

Parents, Please Listen to Your Children
I know that there are bratty little kids who claim to hate every single food.  They are just being ornery.  But parents, you KNOW if that’s what your child is like, because they do it with other stuff, too.  If you have a kid who will sit without television for hours while you wait for them to choke down a dozen peas, you may have a supertaster for a child.  You may also just have a stubborn brat, but, as a parent, I know that you’ll know the difference, at least eventually.  If you have always been able to eat everything that was put in front of you, then bully for you.  But don’t bully your kid once you’ve realized that they really do HATE what they’re eating, and it does TASTE LIKE DIRT, and it is MAKING THEM GAG.

There have to be realistic limits, but please don’t automatically assume that your child is faking.  I was that child once, and although we did have some conflict over it, my Mom really did a remarkable job of putting food on the table that the whole family could eat, including me.  And supertasters really don’t like vegetables.  That’s a sad fact, but as a kid virtually all vegetables tasted like dirt to me…and nasty dirt, at that.  And if you force your kids to eat foods that are, quite literally, disgusting to them, you may be laying the groundwork for future eating disorders.

Also, this is not junk science.  Go to your favorite web/news sources and search for ‘supertaster’.  This is very real.  It’s also very real vindication for all of the others like me who have been persecuted over the years.  And it turns out that,  not only were we not picky, the actual issue is that only we were able to  experience all the flavor of foods, and that some of them are just disgusting.  Everyone thinks they have taste.  But only the few, the proud, the supertasters, have been scientifically proven to have three to five times the taste of rest of  you.

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