Remembering M

I will call her M because I'm pretty sure her last name started with M. I do not remember her first name and this is really bothering me. I was 18. I met M at Mclean Hospital in their behavioral disorder unit, Upham 1. Mclean is a famous mental hospital. Sylvia Plath wrote about it in The Bell Jar. Susanna Kaysen wrote about it in Girl, Interrupted. I never knew why they put me in this unit. I suffered from depression, not a behavioral disorder. Most of the people in the unit were young women with eating disorders. Most had bulimia. M had anorexia. She was around my age, weighed around 50 or 60 pounds. She was very short. She was emaciated and a horrible sight, but one of the nicest persons I remember knowing.

I saw very little of M. I think she spent a lot of time off the unit, I don't know where. When she was on the unit she seemed to spend most of the time in the Quiet Room. It is a lot scarier than it sounds, at least for the behavioral disorder unit. There were no doors to the Quiet Room. No staff were posted to watch her. The behavioral unit itself was unlocked. Any patient could have walked out the door at any time. Nobody was forced to do anything in this unit, but there was sort of a subtle form of coercion that went on. I remember that she was supposed to eat ice cream. I'm sure that the arrangement was that if she didn't eat what they wanted her to eat, they didn't give her any privileges and made her hang out in Quiet Rooms all day. She took hours eating the ice cream. It just became a drippy mess. I don't know if she ever finished it. And whatever calories she consumed from the ice cream were probably burnt off from the exercising she did, which I'm sure she was not supposed to be doing. M had a tube surgically implanted in her stomach. I'm not sure exactly how it worked. Maybe when she left the unit they fed her through the tube. I never asked any details and I had no real interest in knowing.

M had contempt for the eating disorder specialist because she was unusually thin. She viewed this as hypocrisy. M didn't see why she should follow the advice of this woman when she looked anorexic herself. M did have a point. The eating disorders specialist (who I actually personally liked) was very thin -- and I agree with M that she was too thin. The eating disorders specialist probably suffered from eating disorders herself. Personally, I think that it's good to have a person who suffers from the same problem that you have helping you, but I completely understand how M didn't see things this way, and I admired M's "bad attitude." I also have a bad attitude. I don't feel comfortable with people with good attitudes.

When I left the unit after my stay of about two months, M hugged me. It was horrible. It was like hugging a skeleton. I bumped into M's parent's about six months later. They were actually very nice people but extremely deluded. I asked about M. They told me she was still battling anorexia. And I thought to myself, that battle was lost a long time ago, if it was ever even started.

A few years later I received word from someone who knew M that she had died. I had already written M off as dead. I didn't feel grief, only anger at M for being weak and not trying hard enough.

Recently I have been thinking about M, and now I realized that I passed judgment on her. I blame others all the time for passing judgment on me. Nadia asserted that there was nothing wrong with me, and only laziness was preventing me from getting a real job. It is only an illusion that there is me the "human being," and I am separate from the others -- the "proto-humans" who judge. We're all passing judgment. We're all assholes.

Now I understand that M's disease was too powerful for M to overcome or even acknowledge. M's death was not caused by her weakness or her lack of motivation. M was just a victim of a Godless, imperfect universe. That's all, and nothing more.

M was an adult woman. If I had been M's father now, I would have asked her what she wanted. If she didn't want treatment, I would have had the fucking tube taken out of her stomach and tried to spend as much time as possible with her for the rest of her days. I'm probably passing judgment on M's parents right now. It's so easy to do this.

Driven to drink by dating

Okay, had my date with the English prof. Couldn't get any work done. Spent the time before the date at 4:30 trying to move my bowels on account of my IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome).

It was treacherous walking to the train. I thought I was going to break my neck twice. At one one point I was so terrified of slipping on the ice that I squatted down and walked with my ass about a foot off the ground. But I survived. I made it to the date.

She was a very nice person, very attractive, yet utterly alien to me. I am not a member of the bourgeoisie. Even if I was, I have nothing in common with these people beyond growing up in the same places. The whole experience of trying to pass myself off as one of them is disconserting and unnerving.

I somehow survived walking home from the train without breaking any bones or getting hit by any cars, as I try to walk in the street to avoid slipping on the ice of the sidewalk. I could have tried to get a few hours of work done, yet I had two more dates to do over the weekend. There was no way I could concieve of going on these dates while sober. So when I got back I took a drive to the liquor store. I could have bought the the 40 ounce bottle of Budweiser for $3.50, but in true alcoholic fashion I opted to buy the 40 ounce Miller for $1.75 instead. Had they had some cheaper malt liquor I probably would have bought that. Thank God they didn't have 64 ounce bottles. At least I filled my belly with my standard supper of 4 eggs and 4 strips of bacon before drinking.

I won't get any work at all done this weekend with all the fucking dating smack in the middle of the day. This is nothing less than torture and it's just not working.

Very few things in life drive me to drink. It's time for me to rethink the way I'm going about dating. I've decided on a temporary measure of minimizing my dating to only once a week. More than this is going to jeopardize my sanity.

I hate it

I keep forgetting that I'm no longer a Fast Cupid blogger. I'm my own man now and I can say whatever I please. I no longer have an image to maintain.

The truth is I only have dread and loathing about today's date, 3 hours and 14 minutes away. I cannot honestly say that for one second I thought this woman could provide me with a family. I'm out of my mind to think this, and she is completely naive to think that available men at my age, who aren't ugly, who aren't stupid aren't broken.

I dread tomorrow's date too. I didn't realize this until later, but she put down in her selection of races: Caucasian, Hispanic, Native American. Why not Asians and blacks? What the fuck is with her? If Denzel Washington was willing to have sex with her, what would she say to him, I don't have sex with blacks? I don't understand this racial preference stuff. It makes me nervous.

And I dread Sunday's date. Her photos are blurred. She is trying to go incognito. She wears big glasses like Yoko Ono. She looks like she could be Japenese. Hell, maybe she is Yoko Ono.

Oh fuck me. I hate dating. I am seriously thinking about posting a personal ad on one of those "poly" websites. I will have to "share" my woman without about ten other goddmaned freaks but at least I might get sex and wouldn't have to put up with all this goddamned bullshit and the fucking questions that I really have no good answers for. I feel like an imposter. I am just a poor shmuck on disability.

The English Prof

I have three dates lined up starting with Friday. Women would have nothing to do with me in my youth, but now I am in demand and like a kid in a candy store. Almost all of these women are professionals, some, like Jenn, my Friday date have PhDs. Jen is an English professor. She probably works for the prestigious college in the Boston area that I'm meeting her at in Starbucks. Jen is a FastCupid date. She seems very interested in me, but I get the sense that she is expecting me to be a well-to-do person because I live in a well-to-do town and even went on vacation recently in one of the richest places in the country. Jen is 37. I would not say that she is beautiful, but you can see dimples when she smiles, and I cannot resist the dimple. I have no doubt that she is vastly intelligent. PhDs are very difficult to obtain. I like smart women.

I think in the final analysis she is a long-shot. But let me let you in on my fantasy, and it's really not sexual or even terribly romantic, but bourgeois. I fantasize that perhaps she will see something about me emotionally or intellectually that she cannot resist, and she will accept my economic failings, or at least believe in me, as I do. (I have never given up on myself.) I fantasize about her being my wife and her baring me a baby girl, hopefully with cute dimples like her.

No more courtesy for you!

On some dating sites like OkayCupid you have little to no ability to block people soliciting you who are outside of your mileage range. I don't like to date people more than 20 miles away. Why?

1.) I get so anxious driving on the highway that after about 20 miles you must pry my cold dead hands from the steering wheel with crow bar in order to get me out of the car.

2.) I make too little money to afford four dollar gas again and can't afford another car. I can't afford my own car. My mother gave me hers.

Women who I would ordinarily date but are too far away I try to honestly tell them that I would date them, but they are too far. They never believe me. They always think I am bullshitting them. There was this totally beautiful hot blonde in New Hampshire that thought I was trying to bullshit her. I honestly told her that I wasn't trying to bullshit her, that if she lived nearer to me I would be out of my mind not to be interested in meeting her. I even told her that driving made me anxious, though I didn't tell her about my poverty.

After this recent exchange on JDate (the armpit of the dating universe), I decided to stop responding to women as a courtesy, when they lived too far away. Let them fuck themselves.

To Rhode Island Woman:

Hi,

I think you're the first woman on Jdate who has written me who actually interests me. You look really hot too!

I do not date women who are more than 20 miles from me home. It's just too hard for me, and there are a number of reasons.

I've just set the mileage in the my Jdate preferences to 20 miles. It should have been set properly when I obtained a membership. This is my error. I apologize.


-Ed

From Rhode Island Woman:


I guess I misunderstood what you meant by "low mileage". I do appreciate your reply, although I find it hard to understand since I had a Berlin-SF relationship for a number of years and you don't even need a visa/passport to enter RI!

That reference to 'low-mileage" was from my profile which was intended as an obvious metaphore. It was very snippy. I don't understand why anyone would get so snippy. Even if I was rejecting her (and I wasn't), you just come across as such a loser if you react like a pissy asshole when you are rejected. I didn't respond to her any further. She wasn't worthy of a response.

I am a loser but at least I try not to act like one. Losers disgust me.

Last Poem

This is the last love poem I wrote for Nancy. Never got to read it to her. I don't think she would've given a shit anyway. She was only concerned with the material world. Never even said good bye. I really need to delete her contact info. The only thing that keeps me from doing it is that I know women like her, and I know that sometimes they come back before leaving you again. They come back because they can't find what they're looking for, because it does not exist.

Dream

You came into my life like a fever dream.
If the fever comes back I hope it will make the world go away.
And put you in my arms
And let me taste your lips.

Please God Let Me Have the Good Witch

I have been trying to arrange a date with Michelle for about a month. Another OkayCupid woman. She was very courteous in her messages, seemed interested in me, and did not bust my balls by making me do a screening phone call (which I refuse to do anymore).

Our first attempt at a date I canceled because I felt sick. Then she went on a cruise for a few weeks. And then we set another date but she canceled because she was sick. Yesterday we arranged another date. And there was a fucking minor blizzard. I laid a fallback plan on her. I would not drive -- I would run to a train and meet her in an alternate location in Cambridge near where she was. She would take a taxi. It worked. I made the train -- we finally met. And thank God, because I am going away too.

I liked Michelle right away. She knew I was uncomfortable in the Starbucks just by looking at me. (I sort of fucking hate Starbucks -- and I was a little nauseous, and the rancid odor of their coffee was getting to me). We walked in the mall in search of another location. The first thing she said as we were walking was "I'm from New Jersey, so if you need to make any jokes about New Jersey you should get them out of your system now." And I knew I liked this woman. I told her that "after watching 'The Sopranos,' I no longer make jokes about New Jersey."

Her eyes were almost black, black hair -- she wore black -- a real witch -- my kinda woman! Short. Nice chubby cheeks. Big breasts. Chubby body. (That doesn't bother me at all.) She designated in her profile that she didn't want children, yet she's young enough. It continues to baffle me why people don't want children.

Oh, did I mention that we went to the same school and had the same major too!

I made a few errors on the date, but I don't think any of them were show-stoppers. I put 3 to 1 odds on getting a second date with her. But today when I called her on the phone, too late -- 8:45 p.m., she said it wasn't a good time to talk, had to go to sleep. Said she'd call me tomorrow. There was something about the tone of her voice that seemed not right -- I decided to change the odds of my getting a second date with her to 2 to 1 against. I hope that if she's not interested she'll save me a little humiliation and not call.

Michelle is one of those rare women who interests me. I hope Michelle is interested in me, but I will try not to beat myself up if she isn't.

I was right

I was right to remove my blog on Fast Cupid. I was overexposed. A 37 year old English prof with a Ph.D recently winked me -- and she has cute dimples -- (How could you resist a woman with dimples? It's just not possible.)

When I was telling the gory details of my screwed up prostate on the Fast Cupid blog I couldn't find a woman with a GED, let alone a Ph.D. I got no winks at all!

I so made the right decision to delete that blog from existence.

The preemptive post date e-mail rejection

I went out on a date on Thursday evening. Met her on OkayCupid. I had low expectations going into the date. She seemed ... well ... a little too waspy and too straight for me. Also, she was 7 years younger than me, beautiful, and had no children. This is the type of woman that had a huge pool of men available to her who make a lot more money than I do. I was probably just a curiosity to her.

I knew within about the first two minutes of meeting her that it probably wasn't going to work out between us, but I always play the hand, hoping to find some connection. In this case she chose a noisy bar to meet and communication was somewhat of a challenge. At the end of the date she extended her hand. I asked her for a hug even though I knew I wasn't ever going to meet her again. I always do this. It is the politician inside me. Also, I think it is sort of a nicer way of ending things.

As soon as I get home I find this letter in my inbox from her:

Hi Ed,

Hope you got home ok.
It was nice to meet you this evening ... always cool to meet new people.

All the best to you in your pursuits.
Katha

All the best to you in your pursuits? This is the first preemptive rejection e-mail I've ever gotten. Is she out of her goddamn mind? I wasn't interested in her. I have had younger women than her, who were vastly more intelligent and beautiful than her interested in me. And the reason is, I am a smart guy and a rebel and women find this sexy. I don't know what the fuck she take me for? It's really insulting. Was it the hug? What the fuck was with this woman?

I wrote her back saying I was "very happy to have met you." This would have been true had she not turned out to be such an asshole.

Apology to Pacdaddy

I haven't been blogging here for some time, and the reason why is because I have been at Fast Cupid blogging. Recently I decided to stop blogging at Fast Cupid. Many people at Fast Cupid have sent me communications asking why, and they always start with "did you stop blogging because of Pacdaddy?" Pacdaddy is another blogger at Fast Cupid who became very upset with me when I questioned his belief that Cultural Anthropology used experimental research. In response, Pacdaddy started a counter blog to my blog, accusing me of Nazism, sexism, bestiality, all sorts of ugly things.

I have always denied that I stopped blogging at Fast Cupid because of Pacdaddy. But that's not the complete truth. A very large man who looked a lot like Salvatore 'Big Pussy' Bonpensiero from "The Sopranos," barged into my apartment one day, attempted to flush my head down my toilet, and told me that very bad things could happen to me if I continue to disrespect The Pacdaddy. I later learned that Pacdaddy is a member of one of the largest organized crime families in New Jersey.

Upon further examination of the field of Cultural Anthropology, I learned that Pacdaddy was completely correct, that I was completely wrong, and that the disrespect he showed towards Maggie Meade was completely warranted. Furthermore, I am a Nazi, a sexist, and my girlfriend is a sheep.

This is the full story of what happened, and a formal apology to Pacdaddy.

The Fastcupid.com Porno Connection

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Suck mine, leaches

I've decided to remove all the images attached to my blog posts off my site. I don't see why I should support the thousands and thousands of people leaching my bandwidth. Fuck all of you.

If I could get away with it I would've replaced the images you were leaching with disgusting and garish pornographic images just to get back at you. Consider yourself lucky. Next time, make a copy of the image you want, and put it on your own fucking server. Leach scum.

X Files: Don't Believe Anymore

I consider myself a pretty big fan of the X files, and I just want to say that "The X Files: I Want to Believe" sucked pretty badly and that you should just save your money and get it on Netflix or whatever. Trust me, it sucked.

I think there was a good chance they were using doubles for Scully and Moulder during the kissing scene towards the end. That would explain why they used such awkwardly weird camera angles during the kiss, where you couldn't really make out their faces while they kissing. I DON'T BELIEVE it was them really kissing. Like the kiss, this whole movie felt fake and bullshit.

Tila Tequila Rejected, No Way!

Okay, I admit it, I'm a banal idiot and I enjoy "A Shot Of Love With Tila Tequila". Getting that out out of the way, What the fuck kind of shit is this show trying to pull? Are you really expecting me to believe that Kristy, after winning the key to Tila's heart is gonna just turn down her shot of love due to emotional shit or whatever...

I think it's time for us to use a little critical thinking here. This is what I think is going on. I think it was in the script for Kristy to reject Tila. The reason being, if Tila and Kristy live happily forever after then there wouldn't be a Shot of Love 3 now would there?

Watching the reunion show I was surprised to see that Chad was not serving time in prison for Assault and Battery against Bo. This is why I think Chad never went to prison: Because Chad's assault on Bo was not real. It was staged. Remember when some unknown person out of nowhere in the back row said to Bo something like, "Are you going to let Chad insult your mother like that?" This was a deliberate plant in order to stage a Jerry Springer movement. There was even a chair thrown: A Geraldo moment.

Let's assume the show is real form a moment. I always wondered why anyone would desire Tila. Such skinny chicken-legs on her and what does this woman actually possess in terms of charm or intelligence or humor or anything else that would make one fight like hell for this very ambiguous prize of obtaining the key to her heart. I always wonder if the cast is being paid for this. Probably the union mandates that they get the minimum. Perhaps there is more to Tila that I don't see on TV, but she seems like a very shallow person to me.

My favorite scene in this series was the shots they did of various things that you don't normally drink, like Tabasco sauce and lemon juice, and everyone started puking. It was like a surreal nightmare. I thought that was a riot. The producers of the show also seemed to have this grotesque fascination with pig-vagina eating contests. I thought it was a riot when Jay ("Jersey") had a wig-out when he got rejected.

Most likable of this year's cast? That's a no-brainer: George. I think George's Buddie, Scotty looked like a nice guy too. At first I thought that Glitter was a primadona, but then I started to think she was pretty cool, despite how the show tried to portray her as an emotional train wreck. The identical twins, Dominic and Greg seemed pretty cool too. Unfortunately they got axed early. Tila has a pattern of getting rid of the blacks fast.

Hottest looking woman? I think Lili is sexy as hell, but there were a number of beautiful women on the cast. Too bad Lili got the boot early.

Okay, Tila Tequila, you keep churning out the drek, and I will loyally keep eating it up, real or not.

Top Werner Herzog Picks

I have become a huge fan of director Werner Herzog since gaining access to most of his films through Netflix. Herzog movies are art that can be enjoyed by anyone. There is never any big esoteric shit that someone like me who was deprived of oxygen at birth can not understand or at least grasp to some degree. Herzog movies are art for people who don't enjoy art. Some of his movies are both action/adventure and art. See "Aguirre, Wrath of God" and "Rescue Dawn" below.

My Herzog top picks are below. Note that I have not yet seen all his documentaries. Some day I will be rich and be able to afford the Boxed Set.

"Aguirre, Wrath of God" 1972 Feature Film

"The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner" 1976 Documentary

"Stroszek" 1977 Feature Film

"Little Dieter Needs to Fly" 1997 Documentary

"Grizzly Man" 2005 Documentary

"Rescue Dawn" 2006 Documentary

"Rescue Dawn" is a fictionalized account of Dieter Dengler's experience of being captured by the NVA during the American war with Vietnam. "Little Dieter Needs to Fly" is a documentary about Dengler's experience. Both are fucking great! There are scenes in both of these films which I will never forget. I read in a book about Herzog that Herzog complained that he was being labeled as some kind of pro-Vietnam war person because of the Dengler documentary. I think both Dengler films are anti-war war, even if they deal with a pilot who volunteered. Neither of these films are really about war, they are about pathos and loneliness. I consider myself very fortunate to have been able to see "Rescue Dawn" on the big screen. It was probably the best hour and a half of 2006 for me.

Some Herzog movies I really don't like. Sometimes I believe he really misses his mark. Some are not easy viewing and aren't in English and don't have English dubbing like "Even Dwarfs Started Small". I don't dislike foreign films, but it is sometimes so much work for me to read the subtitles fast enough and watch the movie that it becomes an annoyance. What I really need to do is learn German.

Vikas Kapoor, Vampire

Vikas Kapoor, President and CEO of the Allied Interstate collection agency, a.k.a IQOR, a.k.a Intellirisk Management Corp. is really a vampire. One of Vikas' fangs has been circled in red.

Allied Interstate

I have been traumatized lately by faulty data that Trans Union reported to one of my creditors. This has left me frazzled and has hurt me financially. Trans Union asserts that they are still conducting their "investigation."

This has left me on edge and frazzled. Recently this company who says they are Allied Interstate has been calling me. They ask if I am Dickie Richards. I ask what this is about. They insist on me stating that I am Dickie Richards in order for them to divulge any information about why they are calling. There is no way I'm going to do that. After a long struggle I managed to obtain a number that I can call them at:

1-866-207-8333

Call this number. I hope that you will call it often in fact. The first thing they do is ask for a Capital One credit card number. I called Capital One. They say they are not affiliated with Allied Interstate and know nothing about this number. I asked Allied Interstate to give me the number of a human being at Capital One that I can speak to to verify that they are who they are. They simply refuse to do that but they do not refuse to stop calling me.

Allied Interstate has a seriously bad attitude as well. The most recent person who called me claimed that I was being "evasive." Funny hearing that from people who won't even tell you why they're calling. They have left me so frazzled and crazy after these confrontational phone calls that I have had to take anti-anxiety medication. I have found myself screaming at them at the top of my lungs and yelling profanities at them. This is not me. I haven't wigged like this in a good decade.

There are numerous posts on the Internet about this company being a collection agency. I read in cardreport.com that collection agents can't talk to you about the debt unless you acknowledge that you are the person they're requesting. This would be consistent with Allied Interstate's behavior. However their snarkiness calls their legitimacy into serious question. I asked them for their address. After what felt like pulling teeth, they coughed this up:

Allied Interstate
3000 Corporate Exchange Dr
Columbus, Ohio 43231-7689

I cannot find this in the business directories that I looked. When I asked them who the president was they said that they don't give out that information, that I should obtain it from the Internet. When I asked what their website was, they said they had none. Why is the president of the company a secret? The president of a company should be public information. Why don't they have a website? And most importantly, why do they say they are affiliated with Capital One when Capital One categorically denies this?

I reported Allied Interstate to the FTC and will be reporting them to the Massachusetts Attorney General. I don't really think that Federal and State Government gives a flying fuck about consumers, so I don't expect much.

I have made the decision that I am not going to risk jeopardizing myself by volunteering any personal information at all to these motherfuckers. I'm just going to have to put up with them calling me and annoying me, and perhaps they will fuck me later down the road and report some faulty credit info. It's the price you pay for this lovely system of unregulated capitalism. You can't win, even if you're the kind of person like me who always pays his bills on time. I am not even going to pick up the phone. For now on I screen all calls.

If anyone has any experience with Allied Interstate please post a comment.

Dickie Richards: Go Hill

Dickie supports Hillary Clinton.

Listen

Dickie Richards: Goldwater Girl

Dickie supports The Goldwater Girl.

Listen

Dickie Richards on McDonald's put to video

The Dickie Richards McDonald's thing has been put to video by Shawn Lennon. I think he did a good job:

http://www.youtube.com/user/lennonvideo