Lately, I’ve had a couple of conversations with friends working with highly narcissistic people. My friends are shocked that someone could be so self-absorbed, and they’re finding it’s almost unbearable to work with them. That’s understandable because narcissists, people with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, are irrational, annoying, and can often be abusive.
Get Out While You Can
However, narcissists are hard to spot at first. They are often highly charismatic and successful, and can be a lot of fun, the life of the party. But, stand in the way of something they want, shift attention away from them, or accuse them of something, and watch out.
Dr. Sam Vaknin has this to say about them:
The narcissist is a micro-manager. He exerts control over the minutest details and behaviors. He punishes severely and abuses with holders of information and those who fail to conform to his wishes and goals.
Read the rest of this entry »
It’s Friday here on JB.com, and what do we do on Friday’s? EXCLUDE! Let’s get after it.
In high school I had a little phase where I was really into ska music. You know ska, punk music but with trumpets, trombones, saxaphones, and such. At least, that’s what 3rd wave ska is like, but that’s a whole new topic. Anyway, it was sophomore year and my friends Kyle, Courtney, and I were sitting against a wall at lunch talking about ska, and Kyle says,
“We should start a ska / bowling club.”
For some reason ska musicians really like to wear bowling shirts. Thus, we asumed, they also liked to bowl.
I got really excited by the idea and jumped on it right away. I got a club form from the administration office, filled it out and turned it in. We had three co-presidents, and I thought I was really clever because I called Kyle the “Pres,” mysel the “id,” and Courtney the “ent.” What does that spell?! PRESIDENT!
All the while I was talking our sweet new club up to my friends. “Yeah, it’s gonna be awesome! We’re gonna listen to ska music and go BOWLING!” Don’t judge me. I was a sophomore in high school.
Soon, we were called in to see the Vice Principle about our club who told us how excited she was about it.
And that’s when we got taken advantage of.
You see, at the same time we were talking about starting our Ska / Bowling Club, the local bowling alley was talking about starting a regular bowling club at my high school. They would generously offer free bowling to the club, and all we would have to do was show up. Oh yeah, and change our name to The DP Bowling Club.
“Well, we don’t really want to start a club about bowling. We want to start a club about ska music,” we said, but Vice Principles can be very persuasive, not to mention tall and intimidating. We started the DP Bowling Club.
We were going to be really sneaky. We had no plans on actually being the DP bowling club. We were just going to call ourselves that to go bowling for free.
The Physic teacher, the drummer in a local ska band, volunteered his classroom and we met there. It was pretty sweet. Five people showed up and we talked about ska. We advertised ourselves as the Ska / Bowling Club. We even went bowling once. It was awesome! Like true punks (who also play brass insturments), we had beaten the system.
Then, we lost our vision.
We started to feel guilty about calling ourselves The DP Bowling Club. We thought we could compromise and became a little more about bowling.
Eventually, we lost our focus and found ourselves wondering, “What the heck are we doing bowling? We don’t even like bowling!” We had been co-opted by tall, intimidating Vice Principals with their own agendas.
The club fell apart. We stopped seeing much of Courtney. Eventually, Kyle and I lost touch too. I learned an important lesson though, never let someone else’s agenda distract you from your true purposes. You might think you’re getting something for nothing, but you’ll eventually find yourself in a situation you didn’t want with no motivation left to continue.
The question is, who’s fault was it? Was it the principals? Was it ska music’s fault? Nope, it was mine. So get out you stupid co-optification. You don’t belong here. We have our own plans!
When you’re tired of writing, burnt out, just type.
That’s right. Type don’t write. Don’t worry about what you’re saying. Don’t worry about spelling. In fact, don’t even look at the screen. Just stare out the window and type or write longhand.
Sometimes the simple act of writing gets you in the mood to actually say something. Even if it doesn’t, if you spout enough crap you might be able to delete 90% of it and have 10% that’s halfway decent.
Describe what you’re seeing.
Describe the homeless woman outside, her stained, canary shirt and floral dress. Tell a story about the homeless men who flirt with her, despite her weight and odor. Talk about the child she gave birth to on the streets and had to give up because schizophrenic women rarely make good mothers. Who knows, maybe that kid became a doctor.
Just write. Write whatever comes to your mind. Write about the fact that nothing’s coming to your mind. Write the same word over and over and over and over and over and over.
It’s about the rhythm.
The words flowing from your fingers, nothing else matters. Think about the flow. Think about the sound of the keys. The crackle they make like popcorn in a microwave.
Get your thoughts on the page like a big oozing brain beating away. Worry about dissecting it later. Just get it out!
Maybe you’ll wind up saying something profound. Maybe you’ll get an idea for a novel. Maybe you’ll waste 15 minutes, but at least you’ll be writing.
It helps. Trust me.
I’m doing some blog logistics today. For my blogging friends, here’s what I’ve been reading to improve my blog today:
- Men with Pens. In their series Drive by Shooting Sundays they ruthlessly ripping into people’s blog design. If you only have time to read one, read this one, it’s my favorite.
- Seth Godin’s blog has very crisp clean design and is what I looked at when I first started blogging 87 posts ago. Go to his blog and click on his head. What a tripper.
- I thought long and hard about Darren’s idea about writing “pillar” articles that can attract a variety of readers. He defines pillar articles as long tutorials, but I think they can be any longer article (500+ words) that can be useful to a large audience. What do you think about them? Darren’s article might take a little time for you to sift through, but I found it helpful. You can find it here.
- If you’re just starting or want to do a few things to improve your blog, check out the guide, Blogging for Beginners by Problogger. Some good stuff, but it’s hard to know how to apply their tips to every blog.
While reading these things, especially the Drive by Shooting Sundays series, I finally decided to make the switch from Blogger to Wordpress. Blogger has some annoying features, especially the lack of trackback and the unfriendly comment section. I tried to get around it with Haloscan, but I haven’t been very impressed with that either. Blogger has been good to me. I wouldn’t have gotten into blogging without it, but it’s time to upgrade though. I’ll be moving to www.joebunting.com soon.
I hate doing this stuff. All the research, making changes, the logistics. It wears me out. I’d much rather delegate it to someone else, but right now, it’s falling on my shoulders.
I do like talking about it and helping people with their blogs. If you have a question or want my advice just leave a comment and make sure to type your email in the form. I’ll get back to you quick.
I recently watched Ben Stein’s documentary, Expelled. Like most documentaries, it is manipulative, lacks much information, and makes up for it with spin. However, through it I was introduced to the magazine,
The Skeptic, founded by the perpetual agnostic and science watchdog, Michael Shermer. I was exploring their site when I stumbled on this statement:
Two of the most important questions in the culture wars today — Is Religion a Force for Good or Evil? and Can you be Good without God?
I was shocked. These are two of the most important questions for our society?! I thought. Then why haven’t I been thinking about them? asking them? attending lectures on them? hearing them in college, in art? If these are two of the most important questions in the culture wars, I must have never been drafted into either army.
Of course, I have been drafted, or volunteered rather. I’m a spy, deep undercover, setting plastiques on enemy bridges and gathering information about weapon stockpiles. You don’t know which side I’m fighting for. Not yet anyway.
Back to the point, I want to justify myself for not getting involved this crucial culture question earlier by making this claim (thanks to Brett for getting to the bottom of this with me): “Is religion a force of evil or good?” is a stupid question.
Because what does “good” mean? And what does “evil” mean? And what does “religion” mean? There are many different “religions,” but they all claim very different things. Even professors in World Religions have a tough time defining the word “religion.” What makes, for example, Sikhism part of the same category as Mormonism? Who’s the authority that says Sikhism is to Mormonism, what Coke is to Pepsi? Same type, different brand?
On the surface, the word “evil” seems pretty simple. I think Michael might say “evil” is aggressive violence, the opposite of good, which is peace (by the way, what does “peace” mean?) and freedom (freedom?). It’s not simple though. The Spartans–revived by the movie 300–had a different idea of what was “good.” They valued aggressive violence and thrived. Another example, for the past 50 years, aggressive violence has been viewed as “good” by many if it spreads Democracy (or Communism), and who is the authority to say they are wrong?
“Science!” says Michael Shermer. No, Michael, down boy! Pursuit of science has done much to hurt people, too. Ben Stein says it has blood on its hands. “God is the authority!” says the religious right. Richard Dawkins replies that God is guilty of infanticide, genocide, and many other “cides,” not to mention being very unpleasant. Who’s to say Richard is wrong?
It’s a mess. It’s a disaster. It’s a very stupid question.
But Michael and The Skeptic is right about one thing, it is a WAR.
Check out Michael’s magazine, The Skeptic. For those of you listening at home, I’m making a postmodern argument. Don’t ask me why its postmodern (I like to call it pomo), just file it away in that little brain of yours for use later. Also FYI, Dawkins is a modernist, and Michael is a little bit postmodernist and a lot modernist. This is my own interpretation and is therefore worthless (another postmodern conclusion… aren’t you learning so much!).
I recently changed my categories to better reflect the content on this site. I know they’re a little narcissistic. I do care about more people than myself, but at least for now, this blog is about me and my identity. For the confused, here the definitions of each category.
- Joe Bunting the Musician contains posts about songwriting, singing, playing shows, and music marketing.
- The Monk. I’m not a monk (obviously), but this category explores the metaphysical aspect of my music and my life.
- The Jerk is where the Please Leave if… series resides. This is a silly category for a silly series. I hope those of you apt to judge will realize this before you leave.
- In The Teacher, I have placed anything that resembles pedantry (def: ostentatious or insulting display of learning…). It’s where this will go because I’m teaching you about my blog. Aren’t I condescending.
- The Strange is where I put everything that is silly, weird, or uncatogorizable. So far, this post is behaving very sillily so it might show up there, too.
- The Artist delves into the transcendent plane of existence of the artist, art, and the question of whether I am really an artist or just a crappy musician.
- The Curator is where I post things that I like.
- I put news and thoughts about my friends in The Amigo.
- The Road Rager deserves a post of it’s own because it has to do both with driving and what “the road” means to me in my music and my life, a complicated symbol and metaphor that we won’t go into here.
- I talk about money in The Guy Who Has to Pay Rent or Get Sent to Jail.
- The Poet is home to some of my hacks at poetry.
- The Sinner is my public confession booth.
Clear? Questions?
PS I decided to put this post in every category since it talks about each one. But Blogger wouldn’t let me. Sad.
There was a fun little story on NPR this morning about a rodeo put on by Angola, a maximum security prison in Louisiana. Click HERE and take a gander (this is a print version of the radio story).
At the end of the story, one of the organizers of the event said after Katrina, she was worried that all of Louisiana’s culture was going to be lost to that tragic hurricane, but only two months later, there was Bayou Culture again in the rodeo. We’ll never lose our culture, she said, because a good portion of it is locked away in a maximum security prison.
I couldn’t figure out whether to laugh or cry at that statement.
Laugh: Haha, well, at least you don’t have to worry about it running out on you.
Cry: Wow, are those really the people that are your best representations of culture? rapists? murderers?
Here’s a question: what is culture? Is it just the combination of entertainments and cooking style of a group? If so, Angola’s rodeo has that in spades.
But what responsibility does the culture have in getting them in prison in the first place?
