“Who said money couldn’t buy happiness? Some dumb bastard who bought discount, probably.” -- Ken Bruen and Jason Starr, "Bust"

Recently, my Internet service provider’s home page linked to a feature offering bad advice from the old: Don’t worry so much while you’re younger.[1]

Advice like that is why no one listens to them.[2] In my experience, that specific advice is wrong. “Don’t worry, be happy” – then your life turns crappy.[3] Note that one of the actors in the music video to the song I quoted killed himself, and another died a quadriplegic after an equestrian accident.[4] Perhaps they’d still be alive if they worried more.

When you stop worrying, that’s when you’re more likely to be knocked sideways by circumstances. For example, Ray Benson, a local performer of some note, recalls in his new memoir when “…times were good – sales up, debts down, everything copacetic. Which could only mean that it was, once again, time for the whole mess to come crashing down around my ears.”[5]

If that doesn’t happen, other people will begin worrying that you’re not worrying enough. Then you’ll be both worried and irritated. The solutions? Never relax and never tell people what’s happening in your life. Think of it as proactive worrying versus reactive worrying.[6] As a corollary, if you are worrying enough, it means you can’t enjoy your good fortune to the fullest.[7] Moreover, this approach won’t prevent some circumstances from being as bad – if not worse – than you anticipated.

And why should you be so worried and irritated all the time? Because you have to depend on other people. Coincidentally, the Oct. 30 Business Journal cover story looks back at the dot-com bust 15 years ago.[8] I knew a lot of co-workers who should’ve been more suspicious of the good times and insisted on a higher proportion of compensation in cash instead of stock options.

Nowadays, local salaries are stagnant while the cost of living keeps going up.[9] Most of my problems can be solved with money, if only other people were smart enough to give it to me. (Incidentally, if I e-mailed you about this issue, you’re exempt from that category. Just enjoy the story.) Otherwise, I'm thwarted in every aspect of life – and not just quantifiable matters.[10] Dallas Nite Club closed for good in August.[11] I attended the last salsa social, surveying what remained of a once-vital component of my social life in a place I patronized for 11 years. As I was about to leave, the long-absent “Jacqueline Ferrera” sidled up to me and began chatting. At the start of a mid-tempo salsa dura, we clasped hands, sauntered to the dance floor, and without recent rehearsal, practice or even much social dancing, smoothly executed a series of patterns that concluded in clave as I gave her a seductive look synchronously with a fancy flourish. But finances constrain me from investigating her girlfriend potential further than that.

I asked around and a couple of experienced recruiters confirmed that human resources departments have insinuated themselves into the hiring process, to everyone else's detriment.[12] Blogger Aaron Clarey writes:

Let us be clear what "Human Resources" (HR) really is. It is nothing more than an affirmative action program designed to get more women employed in the corporate world without putting them in genuine positions of power. They can't do accounting. They can't do math. They can't do computer programming, but they can ask you some mean questions about where you see yourself in three years or whether you've ever had a disagreement with your boss and "how did you solve it and why?"

The real threat, however, of HR is not that they are idiots put in charge of vetting labor, but they are now the primary vehicle by which the government is infecting socialism and leftism in the corporate sector. "Diversity," "affirmative action," "going green." None of these things have anything to do with the sole purpose of a corporation – profit. They are merely psychological viruses designed to co-opt and corrupt the private sector into becoming another arm to advance the aims of politicians and socialists, not to mention provide talentless women with a "job" or "career."[13]

Clarey’s is one of the milder criticisms.

Furthermore, while thinking of how to neutralize HR to return to my near-perfect record of getting a job offer after an in-person interview – sometimes even without an interview – my insurer canceled everybody’s exorbitant, mandatory medical insurance policies.[14] The local agency called to warn me as a courtesy. “Does this mean I get a refund?” I asked.

No, but we were able to find a replacement “bronze” plan that let me keep my doctor. “Are you sure you don’t have a plan in a cheaper material, like cardboard or wax paper?”

At a cost of $6,882.10 and counting as of this writing, ain’t nothing affordable about the “Affordable” Care Act, Barry. Or to put in terms even he can understand, moochers’ greed forms a creed that ruins the world in deed.[15] My one solace is that ObamaCare has so many internal problems, acknowledged even by its supporters, that it could yet collapse sooner rather than later.[16]

Meanwhile, the majority of articles I’ve read about Windows 10 are negative, beyond the usual grumbling about Microsoft into some significant reasons of security and performance.[17] The latest iteration of the operating system seems to be that company’s example of designers and engineers tinkering with a good product (v. 7.0) and somehow unable to surpass it. This issue also affects automobiles,[18] firearms,[19] stereo components, and even office supplies[20] and cleaning products,[21] where something near perfect is succeeded by newer, lesser versions in performance, or discontinued.

Coupled with change of management and departure of Microsoft’s founding leadership,[22] that raises the fundamental questions of whether I should eventually switch to another OS and applications for my next home computer – and if so, what?

The last two purchases, some people I consulted gave me static about choosing Windows and Office. They didn’t understand that recruiting agencies and prospective clients are all Microsoft-based (e.g., “We need you to send a Word-version resume.”), hence another concern, about continued employability in a world where the majority of them are likely to remain that way for the foreseeable future.[23]

Despite all that, someone at a Sep. 26 salsa social remarked that I didn’t look like I’d aged in the 10 years she’d known me. “What’s your secret?” She was sober and the lights were up when she asked, so she didn’t see what I see when I examine my reflection in the bathroom mirror. She’s also not privy to the amount of crap I’ve endured the past three years.

I parried her query with a wisecrack, but she looked skeptical of my answer. My real guess, too heavy for a casual acquaintance, is that remaining a single, childless renter – in the American context, a social failure – has retarded the aging process because I lack the stress of significant adult financial obligations while scrambling for work.[24] I doubt my relatively youthful appearance derives from serenity, exercise, diet,[25] or even accomplishment: When my age, John Updike was earning money from another literary masterpiece.[26]

Moreover, ignoring medical professionals’ advice, within reason, might be a cause. The other day, the dental technician praised the quality of my home care. But as with all the others, she insisted I should use a soft-bristled toothbrush. I’ve tried that and my teeth never feel clean. So I use a medium brush, but the technicians insist that’s bad for my teeth and gums – the same teeth and gums they praise each visit. I suspect they’re recommending inadequate tools for home care so they can discover problems at regular appointments that require further expensive professional treatment.[27] When I bare my teeth while growling like a starved dog over my plight delineated above, they’ll at least be brighter.

Requiem for a Retard

My life could be worse. At least I can think clearly. By contrast, a longtime reader, last seen in Austin Dispatches failing to comprehend a critique of science fiction, presumably his topic of expertise, has proclaimed himself a socialist and supporter both of ObamaCare and of Hilary Clinton for president. [28]

So before I consign him to the midden, some background: I met him 14 years ago. Early on I assessed he wasn’t the libertarian he thought he was. Even discounting for his pinko proclivities, he didn’t know enough to derive satisfaction from the intellectual jousts he tried to engage in. What he did know of libertarianism, he learned wrongly from the wrong people. He’d strenuously object to my categorization, but he qualifies as a “type” I’ve encountered who fares so poorly during their involvement in the movement. They drift in, attracted by an erroneous notion that it’s a social club for “freethinkers” and they can accrue status and influence spouting their grab bag of opinions. A lot of them never quite wise up as to how there’s an orthodoxy you’re supposed to figure out and expected to master, or at least abide by. If you’re going to change the orthodoxy you have to be really smart, really persuasive, and really versed in the literature.[29] This type, who then leaves in a huff while denouncing the rest of us as “ideologues” or some such – it’s a political philosophy, the fuck did they think we’re about, growing orchids? – is of average intelligence (at best), low persuasion, and low sociability – contrary to how they rate themselves. In many ways this type is an adult version of that kid in the park who insisted the English alphabet’s sequence wasn’t ABCD etc.[30]

But even I didn’t figure he’d drift into identifying with such a discredited worldview.[31] This … this surpasses the caustic assessments of him by two of the smartest women I know, and surpasses even the dumbest utterances of the pseudo-libertoid buffoon who introduced us.[32] In fairness, he may mentally drift into self-identification as something else, in between bouts of playing video games while collecting welfare payments.[33] Meanwhile, his current views demonstrate he has his head so far up his ass, his eyebrows align with the xyphoid process. If he’s what socialism has for contemporary advocates, we don’t have to worry much about its rigor or vigor.

Cultural Canapés

I thought the dollar stores were antsy with Halloween displays in late August, but a Chronicle calendar listed a Halloween park in Smithville from Sep. 18 to Nov. 1.[34] The Oct. 30 Chronicle’s cover doubled as its annual Halloween mask. This year the cover was a uterus.[35] To put it another way, you could be sure anyone you saw wearing it was a cunt, just like some of the drivers in this town.

For Halloween proper, a dance studio hosted a “Step Back in Time” salsa costume party focused on classical antiquity, such as attending as a Greek god.[36] I planned to show up as a modern Greek – black silk shirt unbuttoned to the sternum to feature my hairy chest, half a bottle of strong cologne, and retrograde social manners – brazenly flirting with attractive women in the most sleazily reprehensible yet somehow charming manner, complete with extravagant come-ons delivered in a fake accent with the sincerity of a finance minister about repaying international loans. I figured I could exude a charisma worthy of Zorba, or at least Telly Savalas.[37]

But as soon as I emerged from my apartment, sprinkles fell from the sky. Water’s bad for silk and leather soles, especially on the dance floor. Thus the weather rendered Oct. 31 my dullest Halloween in more than 20 years. It may also be the first time ever that I encountered rain on that holiday. I told you I was thwarted in everything.

The CW Austin affiliate will host a local late-night comedy talk show, years after a different, short-lived attempt I was involved with.[38] A filmmaker has created a documentary on the “golden age” of Austin’s public access television, some of which I saw during my first visit in 1994.[39]

You only thought I was mean toward Obama. A new Hong Kong-Taiwan sex comedy gives his surname to a pet piglet owned by a mincing stereotype.[40] Another new, domestic release dispenses with Boomers to make the antagonist a 13er, who sneers at “Millennial angst” – a first in my viewing experience.[41]

One rush hour I idled on Loop 360 behind a vanity plate, STR TRK, affixed to a late-model Chevy Malibu. But the driver was cautiously going where many men had gone before, and would again, five to six days a week, until their jobs were outsourced to India by some Carly Fiorina-type boss lady.[42]

Marvel Comics hired overrated, pompous essayist Ta-Nehisi Coates to write for a revived Black Panther series. The superhero will apprehend criminals by boring them with speeches. Luke Cage was too irked to comment.[43]

Hollywood celebrity Shia LaBeouf, whose very existence rouses the ire of readers, found himself behind bars courtesy of the APD, who arrested him for acting like a drunken asshole on Sixth Street.[44] However, he was not charged for his movie roles, nor with possessing a name that sounds like a French colonial sexual perversion.[45]

Video game dweebs infected with identity politics dented South by Southwest’s reputation with some infighting that canceled some real-world panel discussions.[46] An article in The Society Diaries: Texas fails to persuade readers of a ‘90s nostalgia craze, because the writer prefers to swoon over Los Angeles used-clothing stores than make her case.[47] The Paramount Theatre celebrated its centenary. Funny, it doesn’t look a day over 75.[48]

Neighborhood News

Four people died early Aug. 30 when a speeding car crashed through the barrier marking the Loop 360-MoPac Expressway intersection, into a building at the Shops at Arbor Walk, and burst into flame.[49] On Aug. 27, I witnessed the aftermath of a rear end collision on Stonehollow Drive. KHFI-FM reported a collision at the Highway 183 frontage road and Metric Boulevard on Aug. 31 and at Parmer Lane and Metric on Sep. 3. The Statesman’s Traffic Web page reported a collision at The Domain between Amy Donovan Plaza and Kramer Lane on Sep. 4, on Metric between Stonehollow and Gracy Farms Lane on Sep. 22, at Little Pebble Drive and Mearns Meadow Boulevard on Sep. 23, at MoPac and Duval Road on Sep. 29, at Metric and Stonehollow and at Burnet and Duval roads on Oct. 5, at Rutland Drive at Burnet on Oct. 6, at MoPac and Braker Lane on Oct. 14, at Burnet and Gault Lane on Oct. 22, at Parmer and Metric on Oct. 28, at Burnet and Brockton Drive on Nov. 2, at Metric and Centimeter Circle on Nov. 3, on Rutland between McKalla Place and Burnet on Nov. 9, and at Burnet and Esperanza Crossing on Nov. 13.

The landlord’s office reported a break-in at the complex on Nov. 2.[50] My refrigerator conked out again, after only four years. The previous model at least lasted 11 years.

The traffic cops glimpsed me ostentatiously glancing at my watch and drumming my fingers on the steering wheel, and looked embarrassed to be holding me up at Burnet and Esperanza for a bunch of costumed fat freaks conducting the CASA Superhero Run the morning of Sep. 13 who didn’t even have the courtesy to warn us motorists in advance with lawn signs.[51] If they’re superheroes, let them leap with a single bound to the finish line.[52]

Resident redesigns and lawsuits have added to delays on the North Walnut Creek Trail Project. Obviously, this is one more thing the Obama administration should never have attempted.[53]

Pat Dixon invited people to shave off his hair at a brewery off Rutland on Oct. 28. Not, as I would’ve expected, in the manner of the liberated French toward a Vichy collaborator, but for charity, or at the very least to cease resemblance to the hirsute Tom Davis the Pagan.[54] Sandinista apologist Bill Kelsey attended.[55]

Szechuan House, a Chinese restaurant in the nondescript Kramer Center strip mall at Burnet and Kramer, is under new ownership.[56] Amazon has opened a corporate office at The Domain. It joins a burger joint and a land developer’s office.[57] Another restaurant has opened at the Austin Commons plaza.[58] Houghton Mifflin Harcourt plans to move from the Braker Pointe offices to La Frontera in Round Rock next year.[59] The Business Journal reports a big brewpub is planned off Metric between Denton and Energy drives.[60]

Bevo and Butt-Heads

The University of Texas removed a statue of Woodrow Wilson, the vile national socialist who even now ties for worst U.S. president.[61] Similarly, the trustees of the Austin Independent School District, statists all, are split by race and at each other’s throats over removing the Confederate names of local schools in Orwellian fashion.[62]

A professor emeritus announced he’ll stop teaching at UT, fearful of students carrying concealed weapons on campus next year.[63] Amusingly, his surname, Hamermesh, sounds like a handgun component.[64] Of course, his emeritus status means he’s semi-retired anyway. In 2016, he plans to teach in Australia – where the crime rate’s increased after the government outlawed private firearms ownership.[65]

The prof still retains slightly more dignity than the students, who plan to protest concealed weapons by brandishing dildos on campus. But only at the start of fall semester next year, which suggests timing is not the organizers’ strongest trait.[66] Also, the protestors won’t have a snappy comeback when someone suggests they go fuck themselves.[67]

The Sep. 20 Statesman reports three basketballers allegedly cheated classes at UT, buried amid a shapeless feature on academic cheating in general.[68] Tom Wolfe was pithier on the topic.[69]

The UT police department continues to investigate the Sep. 23 vandalism of the Malcolm X Lounge, although the details in the Oct. 12 Daily Texan make me suspect the vandalism is a hoax.[70] That, or the vandal failed to wreck the place by any means necessary.[71]

Texas took a step toward true liberty Sep. 1, as the state repealed the law making truancy a crime.[72] The next step, of course, is repealing compulsory attendance.[73] In a related matter, the Chronicle came this close to criticizing the notion of sharing with the less fortunate as it lamented the AISD having to give some of its revenue to other, poorer districts under Texas school finance law.[74]

On Oct. 22, The Daily Texan became the first other entity I’ve encountered to join me in questioning the number of study hours teachers recommend.[75] From grade school on, they said one hour of homework for every one-hour class, which translated to another six hours’ work when I escaped school – none of which I was paid for. By college, I’d learned to do the assigned reading from one class in the back of the lecture hall of another. None of the teachers ever noticed or cared.

Austin Death Watch

The local power elite was in a bewildered snit after losing a costly Nov. 3 bond measure proposal to build a new county courthouse.[76] You’d think they could show more savoir-faire about one loss amid the rest of their damage.

Mayor Steve Adler admitted the City’s suit against the Travis Central Appraisal District, commercial property owners, and the Texas comptroller isn’t really about residential affordability. As many of us suspected, the municipal government is incensed that assessed commercial property values are – get this – too low.[77] The Nov. 6 Chronicle reports rising property tax appraisals threaten the Mueller neighborhood’s affordable housing program.[78] And not just there, as Austin Dispatches has been pointing out for years. Fortunately, a judge dismissed the suit Nov. 6.[79]

To environmentalists’ consternation, a post-bag ban study revealed people are using the recyclable bags just once and throwing them away. However, the study is mostly flawed: It maintains that the bag ban is convenient – the hell it is! Before the ban, I used to be able to request paper bags after buying exactly how much I needed and recycle the paper bags as receptacles for paper trash – like the Chronicle. Once again, environmentalists are posing solutions most of us don’t need to non-existent problems.[80]

Local papers report the latest flare-up between statists who favor government intervention for technological development – in this case, toll roads – and statists who favor government intervention to prevent said development, a.k.a., environmentalists.[81] Too bad they can’t all become part of some freeway. On the other hand, two newly discovered caves under MoPac Expressway near Enfield Road stalled construction while TxDOT examined them for “endangered species.”[82]

The Sep. 25 Business Journal reports City zoning and licensing rules are hobbling an artisans’ studio in East Austin. In other words, these rules are doing what they were intended for, only the victim in this case is the sort of artsy-craftsy boho the people who presume to speak for Austin also supposedly favor. But when it comes to a choice, the people who presume to speak for Austin side with the rules every time.[83]

Incidentally, the Sep. 30 “South Park” episode neatly summarizes 15 years’ analysis of what’s wrong with Austin in about 22 minutes.[84] The head of a nonprofit laments in an Oct. 9 Business Journal editorial that Austin is “exporting” its poor to surrounding regions, something Austin Dispatches has pointed out before.[85]

An Austin police detective “has filed a lawsuit against the city, alleging that the department was guilty of sex discrimination by failing to act when he informed Internal Affairs that he was being sexually harassed” by a chick detective, who’s complained to IA that the first detective and their colleagues in the Organized Crime Division were sexually harassing her.[86] Perhaps the department will assign them to cover the students-with-dildos protest.

The Oct. 30 storm flooded the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport’s control tower, disrupting air traffic for a week.[87] The storm also damaged the Circuit of the Americas structures, delayed the Formula 1 racing, and left spectators’ cars stuck in the mud.[88] Regardless of the weather, the local F1 may be in trouble because the Texas government is reducing its subsidies.[89]

Business Roundup

I finally tried soup from The Original Soup Man, a.k.a. “The Soup Nazi” from “Seinfeld.”[90] It’s actually pretty good –  soups with meat don’t stint on meat – but I doubt I’d wait in line for … soup. For that matter, I only bought it at H-E-B because it was on sale.

The Art of the Squeal

John McAfee, last seen in Austin Dispatches fleeing a murder charge in Belize like a Donald Westlake character,[91] declared his candidacy for president on the Cyber Party ticket.[92] But given the clown show put on by the majors, that may be a feature, not a bug.[93]

In September, I received notice of the new Texas Millennial Institute, “...a nonprofit transpartisan organization, whose mission is to represent the voice of Millennials in the Lone Star State and provide infrastructure that empowers them to seek and promote ideas that lead us toward a freer Texas and ultimately a freer world.”[94] If this voice matches the Millennial stereotype, I’ll short my portfolio.[95]

Tentacles of Empire

The Sep. 4 Chronicle reports municipal and state police use software that monitors local social media remarks.[96]

Media Indigest

Whilst perusing the coverage of society soirées in the latest issues of Tribeza and The Society Diaries: Texas, I marveled yet again how the photographs manage to make nearly every attendee look fat and greasy, even if they know how to dress. I may not be able to afford the scratch for a shindig, but at least I avoid the mortification of seeing myself in the mags resembling a hog slathered in shortening.[97]

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

NOTES