Author: Dean Brooks

Novelist.

“I’ve Been in Therapy Since I Was Six”

On By Dean BrooksLeave a comment

The sad trend of becoming a weepy widget in the feelings factories of Big Therapy, Inc.

Me dismissing my therapist due to his total lack of physique.

Lately, YouTube has become stricter with accounts that use Adblock, preventing some videos from being played, or even slowing down performance. This happens sometimes even after you’ve disabled Adblock for a video and refreshed the screen, as for some reason Adblock will still default back to its ON setting.

It’s maddening, frustrating, and makes watching YouTube a painful process, as you’re forced to constantly reload videos. It’s a human rights violation as far as I’m concerned. Now I may end up having to subscribe to YouTube Premium, which is likely the ulterior intent of all this technical trip wiring.

In the meanwhile, I’m getting smacked around by tons of ads, including one for a therapy company called BetterHelp that really stuck out to me. It shows a young woman doing an amateur vlog-style video where she starts off saying, “I’ve been in therapy since I was six.”

I found this shocking and ridiculous. Why the hell would someone need to be in therapy at that young an age? I can barely remember when I was six. The only things I needed in life then were cartoons, frozen push-pops, my stuffed animals, hanging out with my friends and girlfriend (yes, I actually had one at that tender age and our first date was watching Pinocchio together at her house), and going to the video rental store to pick out a new movie every week. I don’t remember ever feeling the need to discuss my feelings with some v-sweatered stranger in a room with potted plants, and looking back on myself at that age as a mature adult, I’m glad I didn’t.

However, the young woman (whom I’ll call Therapy Lady) in the ad seems quite overjoyed to say she’s been in therapy for decades, and gives off a programmed happy vibe. She looks to be in her mid-twenties, probably college-educated, very conversant, almost certainly Westernized. White or possibly mixed, not that it matters. Likely from the middle-class. No visible handicaps or disabilities.

Therapy Lady doesn’t mention legit trauma, or some justifiable and/or understandable reason for why she’s been in counseling sessions since before smartphones existed. It’s not like she survived the Rwandan genocide as a little kid. She goes on to say how she’s always wanted to be “emotionally intelligent,” or something, because I guess that’s totally something a six-year-old would think. I was always telling my mom, whilst sipping my chocolate milk and reading the business section in the morning paper about how I wanted to be emotionally intelligent. I didn’t want to be like those other six-year-olds in the neighborhood, who were all uncivilized emotional ignoramuses. How embarrassing.

Me explaining to my therapist the subtle differences between “buff,” “ripped,” and jacked.”

What does “emotionally intelligent” even mean? It sounds like one of those stupid sciency buzz words that’s meant to come acrss as more sophisticated than it actually is. I take it to mean, “The ability to blather on about my feelings all the time,” given the enthusiasm with which Therapy Lady was mugging for the camera in her vlog.

(Sidenote: The “TikTok Face” and “TikTok Voice” trends need to die also. TikTok Face is when someone, usually an obnoxious female, but plenty of guys do this, too, bobs and weaves her face all over into the camera in a contrived and melodramatic way to make her points about whatever. TikTok Voice is when they use a spoiled brat tone so every statement sounds like a big deal. It makes me feel like I’m being talked to by a crazy person on the street as opposed to being calmly informed.)

What TikTok chicks actually look like when they’re being “profound.” Source: The Dark Knight, Warner Bros. Pictures

When did therapy go mainstream? When did it become something people seem thrilled to admit they need? When did openly sharing one’s perceived mental health issues in public as though they were discussing the weather become the norm?

Years ago when I was in college we were doing introductions in class, and some young woman just started blabbing about her struggles with depression. Excuse me lady, but nobody cares. This isn’t a Thursday night group therapy session, it’s fucking Literary Analysis. Save your navel-gazing for the dorm room, please.

Looking back, Depression Chick was fat and always sipping on giant Starbucks milkshakes in class. She was loaded up on sugar and caffeine, out of shape, sedentary, and almost certainly glued to her smartphone all day. Gee, no wonder she was “depressed.” She didn’t need therapy. She needed to hit the gym and improve her diet.

To make matters worse, Tom Brady partnered with BetterHelp for a promotion of one month of free therapy sessions for new customers. Brady says he’s been in therapy for 25 years, which would precede his time in the NFL.

Yeah, this guy clearly needs mental help. Source: Tom Brady’s Instagram.

Putting aside the fact that if a celebrity is touting something it’s almost always bullshit (I call this rule the Paltrow Constant), I just have to ask why in hell would someone like Tom Brady need to continue therapy for that long? I can see maybe using counseling at the early stages of his career, when he was just a fledgling athlete hoping for a shot at the draft and under all that pressure to perform. But why now still?

“Oh, God, I’ve won seven Super Bowls, made hundreds of millions, can date any supermodel I want, am in perfect health, am admired by millions, and am also extremely good looking, please someone help me!”

— Tom Brady (probably)

We’ll ignore the fact that Brady was probably paid north of $10 million for this promotional scheme, and ask this question: What exactly would someone like Brady need therapy for exactly? The guy is as close to being Superman as anyone could possibly get.

But let’s NOT ignore the elephant in the room. If you’ve been in therapy since you were a little kid like Therapy Lady, then clearly therapy is not working for you. That doesn’t even sound like therapy. It sounds like dependency. It sounds like you’re stuck in the subscription model of a business. Like Netflix. Only instead of shitty movies generated by an algorithm, you subscribe to a rent-a-friend who lets you verbally masturbate about your problems for a monthly fee. That’s not something to be proud of. That’s not something to make a TikTok video about praising yourself for doing. That’s like proudly announcing you have an STI. Not everything needs to be broadcast. Some things should be kept private.

On the surface therapy sounds like a positive trend. But I think it’s indicative of a decline in society. People may be more accessible due to social media and smartphones, but they are not truly connected. More and more people tend to have fewer and fewer friends and tend to live alone. Marriage rates have declined. Many families are atomized or broken due to divorce. People are having fewer children, who have them at all. More and more people are having to work more and more to make less and less. All the while the cost of living explodes higher everwhere. Less people are religious or live their life according to any meaningful doctrine outside of the “eat, sleep, consume media” cycle. Socialization is being substituted with screen time. On and on.

And while this observation is purely anecdotal, I couldn’t help but notice while browsing Better Help’s website of testimonials, that it seems to mainly be women who are all about this therapy thing. So it’s no suprise that Better Help recruited someone like Brady to be its spokesman. To give the impression that therapy is for guys, too, and that it’s not, you know, just for ladies to whine about their lives.

Therapy is clearly filling a void for some people. Therapy simulates what close friendships, religion, and the genuine connections of family used to freely provide. It’s become like a secular confessional.

But therapy has also become a social contagion, convincing otherwise normal people that they “need” it, with little reasoning other than nebulous terms like “emotional intelligence.” Or “trauma.” That’s another one. Everything and everyone has trauma these days.

Therapy may help some people. But it will always have an ick factor for me. If people have to remain in it for decades, how productive and useful can it really be? At a certain point a person has to accept that it’s up to them to deal with the world and fix themselves. You can’t outsource personal development. That can only come from within after overcoming struggle. What many people think they need therapy for is really just the natural process of maturity and aging. It’s just being an adult. It’s not supposed to be an easy or fun process. But that’s life.

“Why Don’t Men Attend Singles Events?”

On By Dean Brooks1 Comment

Or, why speed dating blows.

Back in the late 2000s, early teens, when I cared about going to such things, I attended three speed dating events in Philadelphia.

I was in my late 20s, working full-time, lived in an apartment on my own, had my own (beater) car, and made a slightly below-average but above-median income for the time. I hadn’t finished college yet, having only around 72 credits towards a bachelor’s. I’m of mixed heritage, part White, part Hispanic. From the lower-middle class. Unremarkable looks. Thin, non-athletic. Six feet tall, though. I was just an average guy living in Philly.

Speed dating, if you’re unaware, is like playing Russian Roulette. But instead of a 1/6 chance you paint the walls with your brain matter, you have a near 100% chance of disappointment, frustration, awkwardness, some anger, relief when it’s over, maybe a few laughs, and a piercing sense of humiliation. And also dehydration.

I went through some outfit called Speed Dating Philly, which was/is I think a subsidiary of Speed Dating USA. I don’t know if they still operate.

Basically, you have a room filled with a bunch of guys and gals. The way Speed Dating Philly did it, the gals would sit in one spot, and the guys would get up and move. You’d get five minutes to talk to someone before moving onto the next. At the end of the night, you went home and filled out an anonymous survey filled with just the first names of each attendee. If you clicked on someone’s name and they clicked on yours, it was a match, and you’d get each other’s email addresses or phone numbers.

I went to three of these events over a two-year span or so. Enough to learn that speed dating blows. Lately, I’ve seen Tiktok videos reposted on YouTube of women bemoaning why men don’t attend singles events, and only women show up or guys who already have girlfriends.

So, I thought I’d share some brutally honest reasons from the perspective of a man about why men generally avoid these events. These are solely based on my experiences as a single average guy living in a major city.

1. It’s Not Fun. It’s a Pain in the Ass Just to Go and It Costs Money

At the time I went to these events, I wasn’t making much money. I worked from 4 PM to 12 AM Sunday through Thursdays. Speed Dating Philly only held events on Thursday nights, of course. Which meant if I wanted to go, I had to take the day off from work. I only had two weeks (ten days) of vacation a year.

The event organizer also charged around $40 to attend. I later found out that only the men paid. Women got to attend for free or at a severe discount if Speed Dating couldn’t fill enough slots (which they never could). That didn’t seem fair, but whatever. Chivalry and all.

These speed dating events were held downtown in the city, which meant I had to drive across town, and then look for a place to hide my scrap heap. Luckily, I was usually able to at least find free parking spots.

Thus far, I’m down one day off and out forty bucks, which was a lot to me then. But hey, that’s a small price to pay for the potential to find true love, right?

The events were always held in the cramped private upstairs room of some hot, stuffy bar, with loud music playing. Speed Dating Philly comped one free “drink.” I mean, it was liquid, yes, with a whole lot of ice, and hardly any flavor.

So, I’ve no sooner entered than I’m already sweating, dehydrated, can hardly hear anyone talk due to the shitty loud music playing, and having to crunch ice from my “drink” the whole night to keep my thirst at bay. Things that would make anyone annoyed and irritable. Not exactly a pleasant atmosphere for socializing.

2. The Boy/Girl Ratio is Out of Whack

I don’t know where some of these modern ladies are getting the idea that only women go to these singles events. Maybe that’s the case now. But back then, it was quite the opposite.

Speed Dating Philly tried to set up events with 15 men and 15 women in a similar age group. Well, there were ALWAYS 15 dudes there. But there were NEVER also 15 chicks. Often, there’d be just twelve. So, from the getgo the gender ratio is at a disadvantage for men.

From a customer perspective, I’m seeing this and getting even further annoyed, demoralized even. Granted, these kinds of public events are tricky to pull off. An equal number of women is not guaranteed. But I’ve paid money and taken the night off to come here. I at least want a shot at the maximum number of women possible.

It’s not a total dealbreaker, though. I’m here, so I might as well make the best of things. But mentally I’m already kind of checking out, and the night’s barely started. Not good.

3. Few if Any Viable Prospects

Okay, here’s where things get spicy. Sorry, not sorry.

After taking in the hot, sweaty, noisy ambiance, of course the next thing I do is scan the room to check out the potential partners who didn’t flake out. You know how in The Terminator when we see things from Arnold’s Terminator POV? It’s like that with the male gaze. I’m running calculations, checking odds, trying to determine realistic probabilities of an actual match.

Race, of course, plays a factor. These speed dating things were often White-dominant. But typically there’d be at least three, maybe four Black ladies. Let me be more specific. Black ladies from the city. Ladies whom for damn certain were not interested in a racially ambiguous guy like me, and whom I was likewise not interested in whatsoever. I’m not attracted to Black women in general, and in the case of these ladies from the city, there was also a clear difference in culture and background. In every five-minute chat session I had with them over the three events I attended, it was a waste of time for both sides. It is what it is.

As for others, there were maybe a few Asian or Hispanic women there once in a while. Maybe one woman who was mixed or biracial. Other than that, it was mostly White/Black.

Look, race matters in mate selection whether you agree or not. The majority of people marry within their own race. Something like 80% of White women marry White men. People can say whatever they want about being color-blind. But when it comes to making major life decisions — who they marry, where they live, where they work, and who they tend to freely associate with — they often stick with their own kind.

So, now we’re down to eight or nine potential prospects. Except, not really.

Typically, you could count on around 4–5 women at these events who knew each other, and were only there on a girl’s night out, and/or for their own amusement. You might have two besties yucking it up the whole time, and then a group of three being professionally ironic for the evening. Well, you could always write these fine ladies off, because they weren’t there to be serious. They were just there to pregame for a party.

So, what are we down to now on this awful reality show? Five prospects? That’s five remaining women that I now have to hope I find attractive, and for whom I’m potentially competing against fourteen other guys. We’re not quite in Hail Mary territory yet. But you know how in Super Bowl XLII, right after David Tyree caught the ball on his helmet, when he got the Giants on the Patriots’ 24-yard line and in position for the go-ahead score? That’s where we are now. The game’s not lost yet, but getting dangerously close.

With the five left, I could often count on at least one being a professional career woman with some advanced degree who was looking for her Mr. Big from Sex and the City. As I was not a doctor, lawyer, accountant, or some Ivy League grad with a hotshot job, I was not in her class.

That leaves four candidates left. Not matches, because remember I have to also find them attractive myself, and then hope they think likewise of me. These are just four in the maybe pile.

Well, now Plaxico Burress has scored and the Giants are up 17–14 with 35 seconds left. We are officially in Hail Mary territory.

4. Rudeness/Poor Attitudes

The last two reasons for why speed dating sucks have been centered around diminished numerical odds.

This reason has more to do with the sometimes poor, sarcastic, and rude attitudes many women had that I encountered. Some of these women were in the “not viable candidate” list anyway. Some were in the maybes, and so disqualified themselves on behavioral grounds.

For the most part, people were nice and polite at these things. But there was often this palpable awkward sense of sad resignation, resentment, and mild despair that I sensed from many of the women there. And if I’m being honest, from myself as well. A weird veil of hopelessness. An anxious sense that things went horribly wrong somewhere in life and that they should not be here. I can’t imagine these singles events are any less stressful for women than they are for men.

Then there were the rude and/or weird assholes. I had one lady who started complaining to me because some guy was there that she’d gone out with on a date before who’d ghosted her afterward. When it became clear I wasn’t going to serve as her temp therapist, she took her phone out and started texting while I was still sitting there. Disappointingly, she’d been in the maybe pile. Then there was the party girl who, between giggles with her bestie, asked me what my fetishes were.

Thankfully, the vast majority of my interactions at these events were forgettable. For the first two I clicked on a few names I liked in the follow-up survey. For the third and final, I clicked on all of them just as an experiment. I never got one match in any.

In short, speed dating, and singles events in general, hold no real advantage over any other form of “throw everything against the wall and see what sticks” style mate seeking. It’s no better than using dating apps, or going to a bar. So why bother paying extra or going out of your way for some “special” event, when there is no real statistical upside? Men are (at least they try to be) logical creatures. I suspect many men share my experiences, and so they’ve determined it’s just not worth their time or effort.

Speaking to the business model of speed dating, however, it’s just short the border of a scam or grift. You pay good money to get shafted with fewer women than advertised, in a crappy bar, with a piss poor free “drink,” music blasting, in front of a meager few candidates who look like they’d sooner step on your face than talk to you. Yeah, that sounds like a great evening.

Final Thoughts

I don’t think ALL singles events are a waste of time. Speed dating is a very specific kind of singles activity, and my experiences are limited to the mere three I attended. That’s not a large sample size, for sure.

However, I don’t think these types of contrived social situations are ideal if you’re looking for a potential mate. You should try to be in a relaxed, enjoyable, and healthy atmosphere. Some hot, stuffy bar with loud music, crammed in with 25 or so people is not that.

This is why college is often the best place for meeting someone. You’re around your peers and age group, you naturally group together based on common interests, and there is a diverse and ample variety of potential partners. Especially at big universities. Churches are also good, although hardly anyone goes to church anymore.

After that, the list of good meet market places starts to drop off pretty hard. The workplace? Hmmm, risky with today’s HR. Dating apps? If you’re a masochist. Grocery stores? Get real. Bars and nightclubs? Maybe if you’re a fuckboy (which I’m not).

I’m not even against going to singles events in the future, if solely for the entertainment value.

My experiences were not a total loss, either. They (and many others) were part of what inspired me to write my novel The Lek, a dystopian-set thriller set in a world where men have to compete for women in a deadly tournament. It’s a satirical X-Rated Hunger Games. Check it out.

But here’s another cold hard truth about why men don’t go to these things, and I suspect likely why many women don’t go either. If you’re at a singles event, especially post age 25, then most likely you missed your best chance to meet someone and find love. It probably wasn’t your fault. That’s just how it went. But you’re leftovers. You’re the weird-looking piece of chicken on the buffet no one wanted to eat. You’re not high value, because if you were, you wouldn’t be there. You know it. Everyone knows it. And everyone’s sour about it, even if unconciously. That kind of poisons the air. Who the hell wants to breath that in for two hours?

I Participated in the Reddit IPO. Here’s How I Did

On By Dean BrooksLeave a comment

Did my investment get an upvote?

Source: The Reddit logo: https://www.redditinc.com/brand

Let’s face it, virtually every website nowdadays amounts to a doom scrolling time suck meant to extract your soul one qubit at a time.

(Qubit is a “basic unit of information” in quantum computing. You’re very welcome for a great Scrabble world.)

Of course, I know about random trivia things like quantum computing because I am an avid Redditor, and therefore am very smart.

Actually, that’s what Reddit should have called itself — “random trivia things.” What is a “Reddit” anyway? And why is an alien involved somehow? I’ve never been able to figure that out.

But speaking of quantum computers, I’d need one to calculate how many hours I’ve wasted on that website over the years. If you were to rank sites according to their “time suckage,” Reddit would have to be up there pretty high, right behind InstaGlam, Musk’s Madhouse (aka X aka Twitter), and Zuckerberg’s Personal Data Clearinghouse (aka Facebook aka Meta).

Midjourney’s awful take on the Reddit logo.

So, when I suddenly received an email one day from Reddit telling me that I, as a member, had the unique opportunity to participate in the site’s upcoming IPO, I of course jumped at the chance. Finally, a shot to claim some compensation for all the years I’ve blown on such subreddits as r/interestingasfuck, r/wallstreetbets, and r/explainlikeimfive. I’ve been on Reddit since the old days, when it was the nerdier Digg alternative, back in the late 2000s.

This was exciting.

What, you mean I get to buy a stock BEFORE the dirty unwashed masses do? I get to be an insider? I get to be treated like the elite intellectual artistocrat I am thanks to your website’s guidance? Sign me up, Reddit. It’s about time my contributions were richly rewarded.

Screenshot of my IPO offer from Reddit.

Feeling like Warren Buffet, I took the first step. I won’t bore you with all the details about IPOs and the DSPs or the RMBs (that stands for Redditors Making Bank). But there were a few steps I had to follow after winning the golden ticket.

First, I had to pre-register for the IPO with Reddit by the March 5th deadline, and then wait to see if I was confirmed as a participant. As if I wouldn’t be. I expected to receive my confirmation in the form of a telegram or a gilded letter delivered by an owl at my window. Instead, on March 11th I received just a simple email stating that I was confirmed.

Screenshot of my confrmation letter rom Reddit.

Next, I had to set up a separate brokerage account just for the IPO. I’ve been with Morgan Stanley/E-trade for almost ten years now so this was an easy process. After getting a new account going, Morgan Stanley emailed asking me to confirm my order and deposit the necessary funds. Again, just an email. No complementary top hat or secret invite to an Eyes Wide Shut sex party in Bohemian Grove. So much for feeling like an elite.

Screenshot of my confirmation letter.

$34.00 seemed cheap but reasonable. Facebook debuted at $38. Uber at $45. Tesla started at $17. I generally only invest in index funds or ETFs like SPY, VTI, VOO, and QQQ, so I was used to stocks costing in the hundreds. Generally, for my individual brokerage account, I deposit $1000+ into my investments at a time. But this was an exciting albeit risky tech IPO based on a website famous mainly for fostering neckbeard outrage and degenerate Wall Street gambling. I decided to buy just 10 shares, and put in $350 to ensure the whole cost was covered should there be some small additional fee.

So, how’d I do? Right after Reddit launched on the NYSE on March 21 the stock nearly doubled to about $65 a share. It dipped to around $39 in mid-April before rising back up to $62 just last week. And as of now, at close on May 24th, 2024, it’s $54.72.

When Reddit’s stock (RDDT) hit around $56 earlier this week I sold five shares for about $280. The reason for that was I wanted to pull out nearly my initial investment ($340). That way going forward what I have left at stake is almost all profit. If Reddit continues to move up, I capture the upside. If it crashes down and ends up floundering, at least I’ll have just about broken even and not really lost anything.

In summary, participating in Reddit’s IPO was a fun and thus far profitable experience. Do I wish I had invested more into the IPO? In retrospect, of course. Dropping $10k in there would have put me up almost $16,000 before selling half my shares. But a big part of investing is risk mitigation, not just seeking out a high return. Reddit’s IPO could have been a big fat flop to start off. And who’s to say Reddit won’t get downvoted by investors eventually?

I don’t know how long I’ll hold onto my five remaining shares. Facebook went up 5x in the first six years after its IPO. It’s now up 12x. But then Uber is barely up 50% from its IPO price in 2019. You’d have done better just holding the S&P 500 than Uber over that same time span. Will Reddit even still be popular in ten years? That’s difficult to say. The internet is a fickle place. I know I’ll (probably) still be there.

What the Hell is Suze Orman Smoking?

On By Dean BrooksLeave a comment

Two million dollars is “pennies” according to the finance guru.

“Suze Orman.” Created by author with Midjourney.

Did you know you need anywhere from $5 million to $10 million to comfortably retire early? That’s according to Suze Orman, who spoke on the “Afford Anything” podcast.

She goes on to say:

“If you have $20 [million], $40 [million], $50 [million] or $100 million, be like me, okay. If you have that kind of money and you want to retire, fine.”

To which I have to politely ask of the lady with the ultimate “Can I speak to the manager?” haircut, what the hell is she smoking?

$20 million to retire early???

Are we retiring in a downtown Manhattan loft with a personal limo chauffeur service and a live-in butler named Yeevis? Are we settling down for the golden years in a gated mansion in Beverly Hills, with a private helicopter pad to avoid downtown rush hour traffic?

You have to be in the top 1% of wealth to buy a cheap condo in Tampa, FL and play shuffleboard in a pair of loafers? What kind of unexpected expenses might a senior citizen run into that they’d NEED $20 million plus for? A full T-Rex skeleton that’s suddenly become available on the black market? A Blue Origin trip to the moon? A cybernetic sex robot? A 24K gold toilet?

“A retirement necessity.” Made with Midjourney by the author.

Statistically, the bottom 99% cannot achieve $10 million or more by retirement. So Orman is basically saying to work until you die.

My issue here is not about working hard to become wealthy. Nor is this about hating the rich. I’m all about grinding to become Mr. Monopoly.

What I’m not about though is what I’d call toxic wealth accumulation due to uncertainty paranoia. A mindset rooted in chronic anxiety. Making money and building wealth should be an empowering process. Not one you do out of fear the sky is going to fall on you if you don’t have “enough.”

Interestingly, some in the finance community agree with Orman. The Yahoo Finance articles states:

This idea resonates with a segment of the financial community that sees the wisdom in ensuring a substantial financial buffer to address uncertainties in retirement, especially given potential long-term trends such as increasing health care costs and ongoing economic fluctuations.

I get it. Twenty-plus years of retirement is a long time. Anything could happen. A civil war. Meteor strike. Or just a good old-fashioned $58,000 heart surgery.

But how much calamity can one reasonably prepare for that justifies sacrificing your entire life working? Wealthy Cubans were turned into paupers overnight when Castro took over the country. All of John Jacob Astor IV’s millions couldn’t save him from the sinking on the Titanic.

Say you do get to $10 million or $20 million by the time you’re 85, and you’re finally ready for an Orman-approved retirement. So what? You’re fucking old. How much life do you even have left? What are you going to do then, climb Mount Everest? Yeah, right. You’re going to sit at home, watch TV, and bitch about politics like everyone else. You know how much that costs to do? Well, NOT $10 million, that’s for sure.

These kinds of click-baity pronouncements by Orman and others are meant to be “helpful.” Except they really come across more like hyperbolic sales talk from people trying to sell a pyramid scheme.

I’m all about chasing the money dragon to a reasonable extent. If you’re someone with a worthwhile career that’s put you on the path to the top percentile, great. CEO, Instagram influencer, entrepreneur, elite assassin, by all means keep riding that carousel. But if you’re like most, and slaving away at Dipshit, Inc., dont think you’ve got work till you drop just because Suze “Karen Hair” Orman says so. Go live your life.

I Recently Canceled Netflix, and I Don’t Miss It

On By Dean BrooksLeave a comment

Selectivity over saturation is the future.

Source: Made by the author in Midjouney

I’m no longer chilling with Netflix.

Up until last month I’d had an account for almost 15 years, starting with the DVD by mail thing that made the company famous. Giving it up was hard, even though I barely watched it anymore.

I found that increasingly there was less and less stuff on there that appealed to me. The tenth season of Stranger Things? GTFO. How old are those “kids” now anyway, like 30? Good lord, will they just get fucking eaten by a monster already and be done with it?

Netflix had its moments. Back in the day, I enjoyed Orange is the New Black. A show not exactly made for me, but one I looked forward to every year. But even then it became clear that the streaming model was built not on worthwhile storytelling, but on filling up space with “content” meant mainly to mildly appeal to different audiences. But it “appeals” only in the sense of a corny corporate joke that you laugh at out of politeness, not enjoyment.

The last straw might have been Rebel Moon, which is like the quintessential douchebag dudebro film, making 300 look like a Ken Burns documentary by comparison. Zack Snyder’s cringy Star Wars ripoff, following his 2021 Aliens ripoff Army of the Dead. Who the fuck thought that film merited a two-part release? What algo called for that? And for what audience? Lobotomy patients? Was it made for headless torsos stored in a medical school morgue waiting to be dissected? Or maybe Rebel Moon wasn’t even made for humans. Maybe it was actually meant for AI bots roaming the dead internet, to placate them from wiping out humanity.

I’m so done with some computer algo dictating how and when I watch something. Here are words that come to mind that describe what it feels like getting puppet stringed by some Silicon Valley dork’s coding: Unnatural, weird, uncomfortable, disappointing, unsettling, uncanny, unsatisfying, creepy, skeevy, and just plain wrong.

“Attention by algorithm” is such a strange thing. Letting some impersonal random code feed you “content” (hate that word) on some digital liminal space just feels bizarre. Dystopian, almost.

It’s not even how I’ve found some of the best movies I’ve watched over the years. Recently I discovered two solid thrillers, Eden Lake and Triangle, from reading posts of people I follow on X. That’s also how I found the trailers for the upcoming horror flicks Cuckoo and Longlegs, two releases I’m looking forward to seeing this year. X is where I first heard about Late Night with the Devil and last year’s Talk to Me.

I follow filmmakers I like, such as Sean Baker, and usually get the latest trailers or updates directly from the source when they post them.

I kept hearing positive things about Das Boot and Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World on Reddit before finally checking them out years ago.

It was coming across all the “Think, Mark!’ memes everywhere that got me into my new favorite show, Invincible.

Source: Invincible TV Show https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/think-mark

There have been exceptions. Netflix spotlighted Dragged Across Concrete last year. A great, gruesome little thriller starring Mel Gibson and Vince Vaughn as crooked cops trying to procure some ill-gotten gold. I would probably have never discovered that one had it not gone to the streaming afterlife. 

But for every Concrete or Spectral there’s a whole mess of uncanny valley-esque stuff that doesn’t even look like it was made for humans or by humans. Stuff like I Care A Lot or The Perfection. Or just unwatchable garbage in general, like Adam Sandler’s Netflix deal “comedies.”

Nearly every great movie I’ve ever seen I had reccomended to me from a friend or family member, or I sat down to watch it with them. In the past you might have stumbled across something on cable. But those days are mainly gone, replaced by whatever Netflix feels like throwing at you.

Lately, I’ve become a lot more selective about what I watch. It could be from getting older and becoming more conscious of the trickling sands in the hourglass. Maybe it’s due to getting tired of the endless inundation of “content” from the streaming factories. Or maybe the high junk-to-jewel ratio the streamers keep spitting out has just made it not worthwhile to sift through the silt.

Entertainment should feel more sociable, organic, and communal. Not programmable. It should feel like a fun process of discovery, not like having your head dunked in a bargain bin DVD pile at Wal-Mart.

Will James Patterson Be Remembered in 50 Years?

On By Dean BrooksLeave a comment

Or will his ghost writer cartel keep his name on the bestsellers lists until the sun explodes?

“James Patterson.” Made by the author with MidJourney.

If you’ve somehow never heard of prolific best-selling author James Patterson, head on down to your local library and just look for the Patterson Section. It’ll usually be its own wing, maybe a garage, or even a seperate building altogether.

My local library used to be a video store, and they actually keep all of Patterson’s books back in what was once the adult video section. Complete with privacy curtain and sticky carpet. I always forget when I visit in my trench coat and sunglasses that this is no longer the place where I can rent my well-used copy of Spirit of Seventy Sex, but instead a respectable section offering cheap and sometimes titillating disposable literary entertainment. Certainly not porn.

‘Spirit of Seventy Sex.’ A ’70s classic. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_of_Seventy_Sex

In the Patterson Section you’ll find sophisticated, thought-provoking titles. Titles like Cat & Mouse, Jack & Jill, Pop Goes the Weasel, Roses are Red, Violets are Blue, Four Blind Mice, Mary Mary, and Rock-A-Bye Baby. Okay I made the last one up, but basically think of any nursery rhyme you can and it’s likely Patterson’s written a door-stop-sized thriller with it as the title. And that’s just in the Alex Cross series. That is Alex Cross, the cool black detective who bangs hot white women, written by Patterson, a white dude born during the Truman administration. They say to write what you know, but I guess there are exceptions.

The Alex Cross series also has numerous and very clever “cross”-themed titles. Such as Double Cross, Cross Country, I, Alex Cross, Cross Fire, Cross My Heart, Deadly Cross, and Triple Cross. Man that detective has some bad luck. He’s getting double-crossed AND triple-crossed. At least he has all those hot white women to compensate.

Source: 5 Black guys 1 blonde meme generator: https://imgflip.com/memegenerator/201802640/5-Black-guys-1-blonde

Patterson has a veritable smorgasbord of literature beyond the Alex Cross series. So much that it’s practically impossible to keep track of it all. He’s got The Women’s Murder Club, Maximum Ride, The Shadow Thrillers, NYPD Red, and a mess of standalone thrillers. His most famous work is Along Came a Spider, the 1993 bestseller made into the 2001 film starring Morgan Freeman and some lady who looks like Sharon Stone if you squint hard enough.

Along Came a Spider is actually a decent book, though it pales in comparison to what was obviously its inspiration — The Silence of the Lambs, the classic 1988 thriller by Thomas Harris. That and probably Basic Instinct (1992). I read Spider years ago when I suddenly became vexed by the question of when exactly James Patterson threw in the towel on being a real author and decided instead to become the book factory equivalent of Sysco, pumping out infantile titles with fill-in-the-blank plots and characters plucked out of ’80s soap operas. I gave up trying to find out, but I think it was somewhere between Kiss the Girls (2000) and Double Cross (2007).

James Patterson is, of course, known for more than just his obsession with killing the Amazon rainforest to print his books. He’s famous for, or perhaps infamous for, his massive cartel of co-authors and ghostwriters. Not to mention his diverse breadth of literature. The man will literally write about anything. He’s got a book he just released in March, 2023 titled Elephant Goes Potty, which “captures the struggle — and delight! — of potty training.”

Source: https://www.jamespatterson.com/titles/james-patterson/elephant-goes-potty/9780759555617/

Elephant Goes Potty aside, nowadays it’s rare you ever see a title on the shelves with only his name on the cover. He’s teamed up with former president Bill Clinton to write not one, but two political thrillers. The President’s Daughter and The President is Missing. Also look for The Blue Dress Caper coming this fall, though I hear the plot for that one blows.

He’s written a book called Run, Rose, Run with Dolly Parton. Not to be confused with Rose Madder, by Stephen King, or Rabbit, Run, by John Updike. or Run Lola Run, the 1998 German film about some chick with red hair.

This June Patterson’s got a book coming out called Eruption, which he co-wrote with Michael Crichton. Which is amazing considering the Jurassic Park author died in 2008. But why stop there? Why doesn’t Patterson team up with H.P. Lovecraft next? Maybe write a title like Cthulu Joins Black Lives Matter. Or maybe a self-help motivational book with Ernest Hemingway, Life is Worth Living. Or maybe a fun family adventure about siblings with George Orwell. Big Brother and I, or something. The possibilities for collabs are endless.

There’s no question James Patterson knows how to pump out content. I don’t begrudge the man for having the same fevered enthusiasm for writing as a pervert lurking outside a sorority house and whacking it in the bushes. I don’t care that the guy writes like A.I. before A.I. writing was a thing. Good for him.

I do wonder, though, that for all his output, if he’ll be remembered in 50 years in the same manner as Charles Dickens, Ernest Hemingway, or F. Scott Fitzgerald. You may chuckle at such comparisons, but Dickens was dismissed in his day for churning out simplistic melodramas. Most commerically successful authors are looked at askew by the literary etablishment. And what about contemporaries of Patterson’s like Stephen King or J.K. Rowling? Both locks, I’d say, for standing the test of time. Patterson may have built an empire out of the literary equivalent of hot air, but will anything that he’s done be worth revisiting in half a century? Will his mountain of books add up to a molehill of memory?

Patterson’s prolificacy also brings up the age old struggle many artists have over quality versus quantity. Thomas Harris has only written six novels, but he’ll always be remembered for introducing the world to Dr. Hannibal “The Cannibal” Lecter. Ira Levin wrote only a handful of books mainly before middle-age, but he introduced the term “The Stepford Wife,” and Rosemary’s Baby will probably always be a timeless classic. Patterson has done nothing close to that. Will anyone be thinking about Alex Cross in even ten years?

Perhaps it doesn’t matter. Patterson is reviving Crichton himself, who died over 15 years ago. Perhaps someone else will come along and “co-write” a book with Patterson in 50 years, reintroducing him to future masses. Maybe the New York Times Bestseller’s List of 2074 will bear the illustrious title of Elephant Goes Potty, Again. One can only wish.

This Chart Taught Me Some Mindblowing Lessons About Wealth

On By Dean BrooksLeave a comment

Stocks and mutual funds won’t make you rich. Starting your own business will.

Source: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/chart-assets-make-wealth/

So, I discovered this chart by a post from James Camp, a guy I follow on X, who specializes in “nanoflips.” Check out his bio for info on those.

The graph comes from Visual Capitalist, a clever website that takes complex information and distills it into to easy to understand (and colorful) charts.

The chart displayed above is based on a Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances from 2016, and it contains some illuminating aspects about how people in different net worth tiers manage their wealth.

Like many, I’ve always been under the impression that stocks and mutual funds are the best ways to build and maintain wealth for the average person. Over the last few years, I’ve diligently maxed out my 401(k) and IRA funds. I contribute regularly into a personal brokerage account. Even through the Covid Crash and the 2022 drawdown, I kept plugging away, dollar-cost averaging into the market like you “should.”

The returns have been solid, for sure. While I’m not close to retirement anytime soon, I’ve built up a decent net worth. I like to think I’ve “secured the bag.” Meaning that even if I never contributied another dime to my investment accounts from now until age 65, compound growth alone would get me to a comfortable retirement. And that’s NOT taking into account potential Social Security payments.

I say “potential” because who knows if Social Security will exist by then, or pay out what it’s supposed to. It’s never a good idea to bank your life on a government program, especially when the government is over 30 trillion dollars in debt.

However, the above chart has made me completely reevaluate my relationship with invesing and money in general.

Source: https://unsplash.com/photos/woman-in-gray-shirt-holding-fan-of-us-dollar-bills-OyDZRZOlENw

For starters, the chart shows that the higher a person’s net worth the more they have invested in “business interests.” These are businesses someone owns personally. They could be anything from a franchise, a laundromat, a service company, all the way up to a controlling stake in a Fortune 500 company.

Elon Musk has a 20.5% stake in Tesla, for example.

What’s surprising, however, is how little percentage-wise wealthy people are invested in stocks and mutual funds relative to their net worth. The chart combines net worths together and works out an average. So in the row where it says $10K, it’s grouping all the people with $10K through $100K together. Then in the $100K row, it’s everyone with a net worth between $100K and a million. So on and so forth.

People in the $1 million to $10 million range look to have close to 40% of their net worth in retirement accounts, stocks, and mutual funds. This makes sense give that most people in that range are retirees who spent years contributing to company 401(k) plans, pensions, and their own IRAs. About 30% of their net worth is in their primary residence.

However, going further up in net worth on the chart shows that the wealthy have increasingly less in stocks and personal homes, and vastly more locked up in their own businesses.

For those in the $10M+ group, stocks are no more than about 30% of their net worth, and their personal homes aren’t even 15%. Their wealth is mainly all in their own businesses.

This may seem obvious. But almost everywhere you turn, you only ever hear about the importance of investing in a diversified portfolio of mutual funds and ETFs.

Dave Ramsey touts mutual funds like a religion to his millions of listeners.

But are index funds and mutual funds really the best ways to build wealth?

If you were to ask most people how they think they can get rich through investing, most would probably say by getting lucky on a stock or cryptocurrency.

This is not impossible, of course. A mere $10K in Apple stock 20 years ago would be worth almost $5 million today. Buying Bitcoin or Ethereum just five years ago would have given you substantial returns.

People may remember the “meme stock” craze from just a few years ago with Gamestop and AMC. The whole internet was gripped with trying to ride the next big thing “to the moon.”

Let’s not even talk about the NFT nonsense.

Point is, everyone thinks stock investing = getting rich, except people who actually are rich. They know stocks and mutual funds won’t make you rich. They can make you financially secure. But if you want to become truly wealthy, you’re best bet is by starting your own business.

Think about it. Stock picking is unreliable unless you know what you’re doing. If you decide on the safer, diversified route of index funds, ETFs, or mutual funds, it could take decades to build anything substantial. It’s also highly unlikely you’ll break into the top 1%.

To get to $5 million, for example, you’d have to invest $18,000 a year every year for 40 years at an average annual return of 8%.

Wait, only $18,000 a year? That doesn’t sound too bad.

Well, according to the National Board of Labor Statistics as reported by USA Today, the average salary in the United States in Q4 of 2023 was less than $60,000. So, the typical person would have to stock away almost 1/3 of their income for basically their entire working life to get to that $5 million. That’s a pretty tall order considering they still have taxes and bills to pay.

—

This information may sound sobering, or even despairing. Especially to 401(k) and IRA maxers like myself, stock market junkies, or those in the FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) camp.

It’s important to keep some perspective. A $1 million net worth is still a lot more than most people will ever have. I’d argue you probably don’t even need half of that to retire, provided you manage your money well and are prepared to live modestly. And those are certainly attainable amounts for those who prefer the more traditional route of diversified index fund investing. Investing $3600 a year over 40 years at 8% gets you to a million.

But why cap your financial potential with just mutual funds?

What I’ve taken from this chart is that to become wealthy you’ve got to get creative and entrepreneurial. While I’m going to keep investing in stocks and my retirement accounts, of course, moving forward, I’d like to start thinking beyond them. I’m going to start allocating some of my income toward experimentation with businesses. This will prove a tough adjustment for me, as someone who’s never had his own business or been much of a risk taker. No doubt there will be some failures and surprises along the way. But I think it will be good mindset shift in the end, and hopefully a lucrative one, too.

Angry Single Man Rejected by ‘30 Million Women’ Goes on Shooting Rampage, Killing Three

On By Dean BrooksLeave a comment

Remembering the 2009 Bridgeville LA Fitness shooting committed by George Alfred Sodini.

Sodini. Source: https://murderpedia.org/male.S/s/sodini-george-photos.htm

It’s awful to say, but there have been so many shootings over the last twenty-some years that it’s hard to keep track of them. They all seem to sadly blend together into one tragic ongoing blur.

There have been what I’d call “milestone shootings,” at least to me. Ones that really stand out. The Columbine High School Massacre on April 20, 1999, is the most memorable, and arguably one of the most impactful. I was in high school myself at the time, so naturally it hit home. In fact, earlier that year, a friend of mine had brought in his bow and arrows (minus the arrow heads) for a class presentation where we had to talk about our hobbies. Something he likely would have been arrested for doing just a few weeks later.

Then there’s the 2009 Collier Township shooting that took place at a Pittsburgh-area LA Fitness. Committed by lone nutjob George Sodini, who shot up a workout class filled with mainly middle-aged women, shooting nine, killing three, before putting a bullet in his head.

I remember this shooting particularly because of Sodini’s bizarre and disturbing online ramblings about his frustrations with women as the apparent source of his rage that led to his murderous actions. Here’s what he said in his blog from a December 24, 2008 posting, as sourced by ABC News:

Moving into Christmas again. No girlfriend since 1984, last Christmas with Pam was in 1983. Who knows why. I am not ugly or too weird. No sex since July 1990 either (I was 29). No — — ! Over eighteen years ago. And did it maybe only 50–75 times in my life.

Later on December 29th, he writes:

I actually look good. I dress good, am clean-shaven, bathe, touch of cologne — yet 30 million women rejected me — over an 18 or 25-year period. That is how I see it. Thirty million is my rough guesstimate of how many desirable single women there are. A man needs a woman for confidence.

At the time, Sodini was a systems analyst working at a law firm, with a net worth of about $225,000. An amount which in today’s dollars would be around $325,000. He had a lot of spare time to travel. He mentions in his blog about taking a trip to Los Angeles, and having several weeks off a year. He had by all accounts a successful career and a decent amount of money for his age (48). He lived in a densely populated area. This was a year after the 2008 Wall Street crash, when the tech industry was beginning its parabolic growth trajectory that would see companies like Apple reach trillion dollar valuations. He was in a high-end sector with lots of opportunities for meeting people.

Made with Midjourney by the author.

So why all the questionable failures with women? Why the isolation and loneliness? How could a guy go almost 25 years without a girlfriend? Almost twenty years without sex? I remember being equally disturbed and perplexed by this case. And thinking to myself, had this guy never heard of the brothels in Nevada? Had he not heard of escorts? Or places like Bangkok or Amsterdam? For a guy who’s hard up there’s all kinds of ways of finding release. Sex is easy to find. It’s love and quality relationships that are the needles in a haystack. For a guy with money like him there’s always sugar daddying, too. And there’s the traditional routes for meeting people. Churches and bars.

Of course, being married or in a long-term cohabitation doesn’t equal having a good relationship. Most marriages are teetering on collapse, while half ultimately do. Divorce court is filled with the bitter ends of what might have started as a fairy tale. Only the rarest couples seem destined for each other and stick it out for a lifetime. And good for them. The dark reality is the majority of relationships are business decisions with an unknown ticking clock until the unraveling.

I remember this shooting later being used as one of the first examples of “incel” rage and violence. Retroactively used as some kind of harbinger that was to come. A precurser to the much-needed “reckoning” during #MeToo, and the growing chasm between men and women seen now during this Red Pill phase. But is it really? As tempting as it is to accept the incel angle, I’ve never really bought it. A guy might go crazy and go on a rampage over being rejected by a particular woman, sure. Especially if it’s to a hated rival. People have done all kinds of insane things over jealousy. But to go on a rampage over not being married or accepted by women in general just seems a stretch. Especially in recent times, with marriage itself increasingly falling out of favor. This guy was not some knight in the Middle Ages owed a fair maiden for slaying a dragon. He was a computer dude in 2009, a time when you could ring up a blowjob for $150 off Backpage.com.

Sodini adds this in another entry dated December 31, 2008:

My dad never (not once) talked to me or asked about my life’s details and tell me what he knew. He was just a useless sperm doner. Don’t know why, find it fun talking to young kids when I visit someone.

As someone who did not have the opportunity to know his real father while growing up, I can understand the frustration, the anger, the sense of loss, and the humiliation. It’s very demoralizing, and can lead to a catastrophic loss of personal confidence and sense of identity during crucial developmental years. I don’t think modern society really gets that. I think society views men as interchangeable cogs. Widgets without feeling that need to be inserted into place to keep the machinery going. Cannon fodder. It’s even worse the farther down you go on the socioeconomic scale. Most people don’t even realize that most mass shootings take place in the inner city, and are committed by black teens shooting other black teens. Mass shootings committed by white gunmen, while obviously tragic, are actually rare, statistically speaking.

Is that to say that if Sodini had had a better relationship with daddy he would not have turned psycho and brutally gunned down three innocent women? I don’t think it’s that simple. But Sodini was certainly someone who felt disconnected and estranged from society. Caught in a feedback loop of negativity and failure with relationships. Lacking guidance. Point is, Sodini was likely damaged goods from youth, who was set adrift on a river of loneliness and never changed course. For most people they try different things until something swings their way. They try speed dating, hit the dating app lottery, go overseas, or give up altogether on love and just start a hobby or get a pet. They don’t kill. But then for some the frustration builds up with interest over a lifetime, until something snaps. And they do kill.

The LA Fitness shooting is a haunting one because on the surface it feels like Sodini had options. He had good money, a decent job, was physically fit, and seemed self-aware enough to understand his needs. But Sodini felt entitled to a life he did not have, and felt he never could. Who goes around thinking “30 million women” rejected them? That’s a hell of a lot of baggage to be carrying on your shoulders. It’s also ridiculous. Everyone has admirers. Even the Elephant Man.

But ultimately, Sodini hated women, and he hated himself. And unfortunately, there’s not really a cure for that kind of sickness and self-loathing.

Lowering the Drunk Driving Limit to 0.05 Percent is Unreasonable and Insane

On By Dean BrooksLeave a comment

It should be 0.00 percent. Anyone who disagrees is a potential homocidal maniac whose driver’s license should be permanently revoked.

Your average drunk driver. Made with Midjourney by the author.

According to Newsweek, the Hawaii state senate has just passed a bill that would lower the legal blood alcohol limit from 0.08 percent to 0.05 percent. The bill now moves to the state’s lower house for consideration.

Meanwhile, there’s a similar bill in committee in Washington State. Utah lowered the limit back in 2018, and remains the only state having done so. If the Hawaii and Washington bills pass, it could become a trend that spreads to other states.

To which I have to ask: Won’t someone please think of the poor drunk drivers?

Have Hawaii, Washington, and especially Utah no compassion? What are their state troopers called, the No Fun Police?

Do we need to hold a telethon for our inebriated driving brethren?

“For less than the price of one pint of Guinness, you can help these poor souls get intoxicated and behind the wheel of a giant automobile.”

Imagine if these bills were to pass. There’d be hardly any wiggle room whatsoever for those planning on “just having a few drinks” and then jetting down the road at 100 M.P.H.

Where is the humanity, I ask?

Look, it’s not like you need to be totally focused while controlling a 2,000 pound machine whizzing across the highway. People have shown that they are fully capable of checking their smart phones, jamming to tunes, arguing with a partner, being sleep-deprived, and eating and drinking, all while operating their vehicles, with no problems whatsoever. What’s a few martinis at lunch? You say that’s distracted driving. No, that’s multitasking, baby. We live in a hip new world where humans have adapted to splitting their attention toward fifty different things at the same time.

At best, driving is something you really only need to be paying attention to, oh, maybe 30% of the time. Have you even driven a newer Tesla? They practically drive themselves anyway. If anything, that’s an excuse to increase the blood alcohol content level.

Years ago, I had to go to traffic court in a little town called Gloucester City in New Jersey for a speeding ticket. Gloucester City, those not in the know, sits right by the Walt Whitman Bridge, which spans over the Delaware River from NJ into Philadelphia. The speed limit on the Walt Whitman is 45 M.P.H. Except NOBODY ever goes 45 M.P.H. More like anywhere from 55–75 M.P.H. Which means the Walt Whitman Bridge is a nice income generator for Gloucester City, as police pull people over all the time and hand them huge tickets. Mine was just under $300 for going 20 over. It’s basically a giant speed trap for the shitty little town of Gloucester City.

Anyway, putting aside my opinions of Gloucester City’s revenue collection schemes, while standing in line at traffic court so I could ask them to drop the points from my license, I got to witness a master beat the pants off some yuppie doofus wearing dress suspenders like Paul Allen from American Psycho. “Paul Allen’s” crime? Driving under the influence. Suspender Boy lost his license for a year, and got hit with a $10,000 fine, all while having to suffer the indignity of pleading his case in front of a hundred spectators. Afterward, I saw him standing outside the courthouse waiting for the bus, sleeves rolled up, smoking a cigarette, gel-soaked hair swept to one side. Paul Allen may have been some big shot business dude (he worked in sales, is all I remember him saying), but he’d be taking public trans for at least a year. It almost made me feel better about driving the shitbox I had at the time — a 1990 Toyota Corolla. Hey, at least I didn’t have to wait for the bus.

(BTW, I did get them to drop the points on my license, and I didn’t even have to ask. They did it almost automatically, but kept the fine intact, which just goes to prove the Walt Whitman is that crappy little town’s sugar daddy).

Not too long after my Gloucester City experience, a coworker of mine lost a family member due to a drunk driver. Not just any drunk driver, too. a police sergeant. While off duty, the cop was leaving some town fair drunk off his ass, where he proceeded to crash into a young kid on the side of the road. Last I heard, he wasn’t even charged with manslaughter. My coworker, a nice older lady, was obviously distraught and apoplectic. I remember feeling physically sick after hearing the news, and in shock over the fact that some asshole who had killed a kid was probably going to get away with a slap on the wrist.

Excuse me, but does drinking alcohol before you get behind the wheel of a car imbue you with some kind of magic power to avoid justice?

Does it make the loss of that child any less tragic for the family? Does it make the driver any less responsible because he had a few too many Bud Lights? People have known for THOUSANDS of years that alcohol impairs basic motor skills. I bet you there were chariot riders in ancient Rome that crashed because they were drunk on Caesar’s Finest Merlot, aged XIII years. Nowadays we have all the scientific research in the world that explicity shows you what alcohol does to the brain and body that make driving a car while sloshed dangerous as hell. This is old news.

Another coworker of mine years ago got a DUI during a vacation. He got fired over it because our company had a strict driving policy and he was no longer insurable. So he lost a $100k+ job because he had a few too many sips before driving from his hotel to a grocery store down the street. That’s got to be the most expensive bottle of beer anyone’s ever drank. Moron.

Lastly, my youngest half-brother was killed because of alcohol. He got into an argument with his girlfriend, got drunk, and then decided to go for a walk on the highway. A semi truck came along and crashed into him.

Fuck alcohol and fuck drunk drivers.

But despite the thousands of booze-related accidents and deaths every year in the United States, people seem disturbingly okay with keeping the BAC limit right where it is. Even though, according to the Hawaii Alcohol Policy Alliance, quoting a study from 2000:

Drivers with a blood alcohol level between 0.05 and 0.079 percent are around seven times more likely to be killed in a crash than if they had not had any alcohol.

That means they’re also seven times more likely to kill someone else in an accident they cause due to alcohol.

Would you go on a date with someone if they were seven times more likely to kill you than the average person? Would you invest in something that was seven times more likely to crash and go to zero (Bitcoiners don’t answer this)? Would you walk into a room if the chances of a trap door opening underneath you into a spike pit was seven times higher than your own cozy bedroom? Of course not.

Well guess what? You drive on the road everyday with drivers who are SEVEN times more likely to crash and/or kill you because of their socially “acceptable” and legal level of intoxication.

So imagine my surprise when, despite that 2000 study, this was the result of a poll posted in that Newsweek article:

Screenshot of survey from Newsweek article.

::shocked Pikachu::

The point of my Gloucester City speed ticket story is to show that no driver is perfect. I’ve had my share of tickets, like most people. But I’ve never gotten behind the wheel of a vehicle intoxicated on anything. Personally, I don’t drink anymore, except very rarely, as I wrote about in my article, “Why I Don’t Drink Alcohol.” Check it out. The last time I drank alcohol was the day after the Eagles won the Super Bowl in February 2018. I had one beer downtown to celebrate the accomplishment, and I wasn’t the one driving. My football team has to win the big one to get me consider to imbibe. That’s how rarely I drink.

No one’s perfect on the road. But when you drink even a little bit you exponentially increase your chances of causing a wreck. Why do that?

We live in an age where there’s this thing called a smartphone. And on this smartphone are buttons you can push that will summon a thing called Uber. Then bam! Some middle-aged dude will show up in front of you in a black Toyota playing reggae music to drive you wherever you want to go. You can save health and lives by simply gesturing with your fingers on a touch screen in fewer moves than a wizard conjuring a magic spell. It’s that easy. Or you can ride with a sober friend. Or walk. Or fucking crawl home on the sidewalk.

There’s really no excuse for getting hammered and turning your Honda CRV into a 90 M.P.H. death machine on the highway.

Going back to Mr. Paul Allen. His sentence for the DUI was severe. But in my book it didn’t go far enough. I think everyone convicted of a DUI or DWI should be forced to ride a tricycle for transportation. As in those little kid’s Hot Wheels tricycles. Like the one Danny rode around on in The Shining. I’m totally okay with my tax dollars going toward building separate roads or pathways for them to ride on, too. Because I’m not okay with these goddamn psychopaths staying on the road while I’m on it, even if they only had “a couple of drinks.”

Five Awesome Fiction Books I Read in 2023

On By Dean BrooksLeave a comment
Made with Midjourney by the author.

One thing I’ve found recently is that it’s getting harder to find fiction that appeals to me as a middle-aged man. This seems to apply to most mediums, though it’s most prominant in film. Rarely are films geared toward those male and older than 35. If it isn’t a superhero fantasy four-quadrant epic, it’s the latest mopey romance, or it’s a movie about a toy of some kind. I think this is why films like Top Gun: Maverick, Avatar: The Way of Water, and Oppenheimer did so well. They were actually able to pull in guys like me, who normally just bypass the theater because we know there’s rarely anything there for us.

The same holds true for the book publishing industry. During a stroll down my library aisles recently hardly anything caught my eye. The romance section is so massive it needs its own wing. Filled with iconic names like Danielle Steel and Nora Roberts. I’ve read Roberts in the past, and while she’s great, romance just isn’t my thing. What, you don’t expect me to read something like Fifty Shades, do you?

There’s your brand name male authors like David Baldacci, Dean Koontz, good ol’ King, John Grisham, James Patterson, and your high-concept thriller guys from the past — Michael Crichton and Tom Clancy. I’ve read most of Crichton’s stuff already, and hit a lot of Clancy’s highlights. And if I’m being honest, a lot of the murder mystery thriller stuff starts to sound repetitive. How many detectives investigating a conspiracy “bigger than they imagined” does one really need in life?

It’s understandable why studios and book publishers don’t care about us. Afterall, your typical 35+ dude is working all the time and/or married with kids, dealing with family stuff. Hey, we’re too busy trying to run the world here. We don’t have time to be wasting in fantasyland.

This is alarming as a novelist myself. Even though ironically many novelists don’t read themselves. Koontz can’t. There’s no way at the rate he pumps out his books. I’m pretty sure he wrote another Odd Thomas during the time I took to write this overly long intro.

Anyway, it sure wasn’t easy, but with some hard work I actually found a few books that appealed to me in 2023.

The Penal Colony by Richard Herley

Book cover for ‘The Penal Colony’ by Richard Herley

This book is sort of dystopian future adjacent. In the near future, criminals are sentenced to an island penal colony near the British Isles called Sert that is divided between two warring factions. One side lives in relative peace and order, while the other has reverted to primitive barbarism. A wrongfully convicted man sentenced to Sert tries to survive and earn his place within the peaceful side under a wise ruling Father. But first he must try and survive in the wilderness to prove himself. If he can succeed, he may just find a promise of escape.

This was an interesting concept. Sort of like an adult Lord of the Flies. Stylistically it was rather dry. Very gray and British, if that makes sense. The Penal Colony was made into the 1994 film No Escape starring Ray Liotta. An adaptation which is currently on Amazon Prime, and one which I was able to endure watching for all of five minutes or so. So just stick with the book, which is ultimately well worth the time.

Unwind by Neal Shusterman

Book cover for ‘Unwind’ by Neal Shusterman

YA dystopian. Dark YA dystopian, mind you. I heard about this one on Reddit, and it has the most bonkers concept ever. In the future, adults can have their delinquent teenaged children “Unwound,” which involves harvesting not just their organs but every fiber of their body. One kid must try to escape government agents trying to capture him before his 18th birthday, the final deadline before he becomes an adult and is independent from his parent’s whims. Bizarrely, the whole unwind deal is done as a tradeoff to making abortion illegal.

The premise of this series felt both odd and familiar, sounding like a concept from the ’80s. Like something David Cronenberg or Paul Verhoeven would have dreamt up in their heyday. Say what you will about YA novels being superficial or silly, but that genre has some of the most creative, if not outlandish plots you’ll find in all of popular literature. No ditzy navel-gazing box wine sipping bored housewives here whatsoever.

Unwind is part of a series. While I found the first book satisfying enough, I don’t know that I’ll return to finish the saga. So many of these YA writers need to just wrap things up in a single book. Not everything is meant to become a Netflix series or become another Hunger Games. I mean, David and Goliath is arguably the first “YA novel,” and it was all of half a page in the Bible.

Farhenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Book cover for ‘Fahrenheit 451’ by Ray Bradbury

The classic novel about book burning, screen and media addiction, and censorship. Relevant, refined, though unsatisfyingly truncated. The endpoint feels more like a midpoint.

451 was unsurprisingly inspired by George Orwell’s 1984. It started off as a shorter story simply called The Fireman. Another point of trivia: the beginning originally featured Guy Montag having a dream where he’s captured for being in possession of books. Bradbury wisely scrapped this opening to instead start right in the middle of the action, with Guy burning a set of books, letting us see him in his element up close. It starkly marks his arc, which will ultimately take him into exile, where he will learn to become a “living book” in the woods.

If you were never assigned to read 451 in school like many are, you should absolutely add this one to your literary bucket list. I love reading books that have made a powerful cultural impact. Bradbury’s classic is referenced practically every day.

The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells

By Unknown author — https://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=30289720550, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=73629082

This was simply a pure delight. Every once in a while, it’s nice to go back and read an author who pioneered a genre, which Wells did in science fiction. In a pleasant surprise, there was ample dark humor to be found in this classic work of a mad scientist run amok. As was there also in the 1933 adaptation starring Claude Rains.

First Blood by David Morrell

Book cover for ‘First Blood’ by David Morrell

First Blood is basically The Godfather of action novels/films. The DNA of Die Hard, The Terminator, Jack Reacher, and Predator are rooted in Rambo’s inaugural adventure. The book also contains a moving and meaningful theme concerning our nation’s Vietnam War veterans. My dad served two tours in Vietnam doing recon in the Army, so this book felt personal to me, even as someone who was never in the military.

First Blood is about how sometimes conflicts don’t end on the battlefield, and what can happen when they’re taken home. A great read you won’t want to miss.

Hopefully 2024 will provide more great reading opportunities. Finding something that appeals to me sometimes feels like performing alchemy. But I have faith.