Naming a homeless cat (humor) (this is true)

I live in a small apartment complex, and one of my missions in life is to take care of (and hopefully rescue) homeless animals, especially cats. 

A gorgeous tuxedo kitten (well, young cat) showed up at my back door several weeks ago. But…

This cat has the personality of a rabid cactus.

Twice I’ve been attacked by its razors and my roommate’s been assaulted by its claws once. 

What to name this terror on four paws?

Me: I’m going to name her Eva.

Roommate: Eva? No. Eva is a nice name, a sweet name, and this cat is anything but nice and sweet.

Me: I’m naming her Eva, after Eva Braun. Hitler’s wife.

Roommate: Perfect.

Last chapter excerpt from “Get Real, Dr. Phil” book

This is the fifth of five chapters I said I would post from the new book called “Get Real, Dr. Phil.” 

http://www.amazon.com/Get-Real-Dr-Phil-ebook/dp/B00EZGMCA6 (also available on Nook and for the iPad)

While this chapter is slapstick comedy, and while the book has an extensive amount of humor in it, the book is not just humor. There’s real-life, real-world, practical advice that Dr. Phil refuses to provide his audience and readers. 

It’s really worth a read, and I hope the first five chapters I’ve posted here will encourage people to read more. Enjoy.

 

CHAPTER 5

HE REALLY SAID THAT? PART ONE

 

It seems that every famous person has been quoted, and Dr. Phil is no exception. With the number of books he’s written, the hundreds of television episodes produced and the untold number of interviews given, the man is quoted about as often as Jesus Christ. But unlike Jesus, Dr. Phil rarely makes any sense. I take him to task by turning his logic upside down.

 

Dr. Phil: “You’re only lonely if you’re not there for you.”

Katherine Black: I have a multiple personality disorder and I’m schizophrenic, so I wouldn’t know. Isn’t that right? Yes, it is. See? I told you.

 

Dr. Phil: “A year from now, you’re gonna weigh more or less than what you do right now.”

Katherine Black: A year ago I started to read Dr. Phil’s weight loss books and weighed 158.7 pounds, and a year later I weighed 158.6 pounds.

 

Dr. Phil: “You need to listen to your body because your body is listening to you.”

Katherine Black: I do listen to my body, and I don’t like the noises it makes, especially the back end and usually in crowded elevators. There are only so many times I can blame it on poor ventilation. And I tell my body to stop making those noises, but my body doesn’t listen, especially after Mexican night. If I have to take Dr. Phil’s parenting advice and use a cork, I will. 

 

Dr. Phil: “Food is a coping mechanism; people are afraid of giving it up because then they’ll feel confused and lost.”

Katherine Black: Confused, lost, hungry, tired, weak, famished, malnourished, coma, death. 

 

Dr. Phil: “I think you’re running into a lot of trouble if your idea of foreplay is, ‘Brace yourself, honey, here I come!’”

Katherine Black: If he’s already come, then it’s not foreplay, is it?

 

Dr. Phil: “Don’t wait until you’re in a crisis to come up with a crisis plan.”

Katherine Black: Way ahead of you, Dr. Phil. When I’m in a rowboat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean surrounded by great white sharks while an underground volcano is erupting below me, I’ve got it covered.

 

Dr. Phil: “It’s hard to see your own face without a mirror.”

Katherine Black: Not really. Haven’t you ever visited a lake?

 

Dr. Phil: “I think I’ve got the best staff in television.”

Katherine Black: I think I have the firmest breasts in my neighborhood, but I don’t go around bragging about them, so if you stop talking about your meat missile I’ll stop talking about my hooters. 

 

Dr. Phil: “Now, my body fat runs around 18 percent, which is normal and, you know, kind of in the middle of normal, actually.

Katherine Black: Yeah, but what about the other leg? And your arms? And your belly? Combined, that would be, what, about 70 percent?

 

Dr. Phil: “I do not believe, even remotely, that you have to have a partner in your life in order to be whole, in order to be complete, in order to be fulfilled. You just don’t have to.”

Katherine Black: You heard it from Dr. Phil: Masturbation is fulfilling. Everybody masturbate.

 

Dr. Phil: “I have some wonderful friends from the Midwest that are as red, white and blue as anybody you know, that have been harassed, and I think it’s a terrible, terrible thing.”

Katherine Black: If they’re red, white and blue, that sounds like a dangerous skin condition and I can understand the harassment. I’m sure they’re wonderful people, but they really should see a doctor. A real doctor, not a fake-advice television doctor.

 

Dr. Phil: “We teach people how to treat us.”

Katherine Black: You’re in Wal-Mart and you have a basketful of groceries, waiting to checkout. You’re hot, you’re tired, you’re hungry, and all you want to do is go home and watch Fox News tell you the horrible things President Obama and Senate Democrats have done today, and a pimply, snot-nosed teenaged cashier treats you like dogshit just because he has to work late making minimum wage without benefits. How exactly did I teach that asshole to treat me like that? 

 

Dr. Phil: “You don’t need a pack of wild horses to learn how to make a sandwich.”

Katherine Black: When the sun comes up in the morning, I put my underwear on backwards.

 

Dr. Phil: “You can’t put feathers on a dog and call it a chicken!” 

Katherine Black: That’s not what happened when I visited Beijing.

 

Dr. Phil: “You don’t need a rope to pinch a stranger’s butt.”

Katherine Black: The first sign of mad cow disease is saying shit like this. 

 

Dr. Phil: “My dad used to say, ‘You wouldn’t worry so much about what people thought if you knew they seldom did.’”

Katherine Black: And those unthinking people are now Dr. Phil’s audience.

 

Dr. Phil: “It’s better to be healthy alone, than sick with someone else.”

Katherine Black: People are sick of you, yet they keep watching.

 

Dr. Phil: “I’m embarrassed every time I look a teacher in the eye, because we ask them to do so much for so little.”

Katherine Black: Was this embarrassment before or after you asked them to bow down and kiss your feet?

 

Dr. Phil: “Sometimes you just got to give yourself what you wish someone else would give you.”

Katherine Black: I’ve always wished I could pee standing up. Where would I find a penis, and can I get it in black?

 

Dr. Phil: “If you’re trying to get out of debt, you have to be willing to treat everything as expendable.”

Katherine Black: That’s what got me into debt in the first place.

 

Dr. Phil: “Successful weight loss takes programming, not willpower.”

Katherine Black: And with an electronic scale, it took very little willpower to program it to display five fewer pounds.

 

Dr. Phil: “There are some sick people in this world.”

Katherine Black: Yes, many people say that about my humor.

 

Dr. Phil: “A lot of people do have tragic childhoods. But you know what? Get over it.”

Katherine Black: You heard him, Stephen Hawking: Get your butt out of that wheelchair.

 

Dr. Phil: “There is nothing wrong with your marriage if you’re dealing with bills and kids and the broken garbage disposal and the in-laws and work demands. That’s a normal marriage.”

Katherine Black: So yours would be an abnormal marriage?

 

Dr. Phil: “I grew up in athletics, where people keep score.”

Katherine Black: I read books with words that have more than two syllables and it makes more sense than these quotes.

 

Dr. Phil: “Everyone faces the challenge of finding meaning to their suffering.”

Katherine Black: It was a challenge, and then I bought some Preparation H and that’s when the suffering had meaning: eat more fiber. 

 

Dr. Phil: “Sometimes you have to make the right decision, and sometimes you have to make the decision right.”

Katherine Black: I almost called this book “Get Real, Dr. Phil: You’re An Idiot” which was the right decision, but then I changed it to what it is and made the decision right. But I still think you’re an idiot, Dr. Phil.

Chapter 4 excerpt from “Get Real, Dr. Phil” (some satire)

This is chapter 4 from my latest book, “Get Real, Dr. Phil: Discrediting Television’s Most Overrated Psychologist” and this chapter starts to get into the guts of the book by picking apart Dr. Phil’s useless wisdom. 

Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Get-Real-Dr-Phil-ebook/dp/B00EZGMCA6

There’s a good amount of humor in this chapter, and I compare Dr. Phil’s advice to what one would read in a fortune cookie by quoting Dr. Phil and quoting popular fortune cookie sayings. Readers will see there’s little difference between the two, which should make us wonder why we listen to such a man for guidance.

 

CHAPTER 4

MARRIAGE RETREATS AND DR. FORTUNE COOKIE

 

Dr. Phil advocates men and women in troubled marriages try a “couples retreat” or “marriage retreat” instead of traditional marriage counseling. He’s not the only television psychotherapist who recommends that men and women who believe their marriage may be on the rocks should get away from it all to rediscover their love for each other.

What Dr. Phil and others of his class don’t understand is that such retreats are prohibitively expensive for most people, and when the economy is in the crapper and getting worse (Joe Everyday knows this, despite the media force-feeding us nonsense about things getting better), only the upper echelons of society can afford such opulence. There are marriages that would benefit greatly from couples retreats, but those marriages will never know how beneficial a retreat can be, because paying rent and eating take priority over private counseling. Perspective should be a requirement for psychologists, but Dr. Phil only understands what his wife barks at him.

For the sake of disclosure, I should mention that I was married at one point in my life. Like every other couple, my husband and I developed marital problems and we tried traditional counseling, but when that failed we attended a retreat for a few days. The advice helped for a while, but in the end we just weren’t compatible as partners and the marriage ended badly. The police never found his body.

What is a marriage retreat? The program is a personalized vacation-like hideaway for couples that need intensive marriage counseling, but who are not good candidates for traditional sit-down counseling in which sharp objects are often in close proximity (pens, pencils, corners of picture frames, hunting knives strapped to inner thighs, etc.). Marriage retreats can be the result of the scumbag husband having sex with a petite secretary while his wife sits at home on their anniversary waiting for flowers, champagne, a dinner of lobster and steak, followed by passionate and romantic sex. I told him if he ever did that to me no one would ever find his body, but he just wouldn’t listen.

Instead of getting a divorce, the couple seeking a different type of treatment will meet with two trained specialists, usually one man and one woman, so the husband and wife will each have a confidant during the process. In traditional counseling, the couple would meet with one counselor for an hour and just as the husband is sobbing about his various infidelities and the hidden bank account in the Cayman Islands, the counselor says, “Time’s up, see you next week,” and any chance for rehabilitation and trust goes out the window. Marriage retreats allow both parties comfort to open up and explore their true feelings and insecurities, and to take as much time as it allows for the purge of negative feelings, so beneficial information and techniques can heal the emotional wounds. 

For example, a typical three-day marriage retreat will partake in this schedule:

 

Preparation:

Questionnaires from each person will be filled out and submitted so the therapists understand just how screwed up the marriage is. The couple will then arrive at the retreat, usually by commercial airliner, private jet, or chauffeured limousine. 

 

Day One:

The troubled couple will meet with the therapists/counselors and discuss background information: familial origins, the current family environment, how the relationship began and the type of romance involved that kindled the passions of each person, etc. The husband and wife will then go to separate rooms where each will meet with his or her specific therapist to tailor his or her specific needs for the relationship to get back on the right path. These skills are then practiced throughout the remainder of the day between the troubled pair. By evening, the couple should be on the way to understanding each other on a deeper level about how the relationship began, why the marriage grew apart, and how to rekindle old flames. If that doesn’t stir any passions, it is suggested the couple think like teenagers and screw like rabbits all night.

 

Day Two:

This is more of an intensive session because it will deal with hot button subjects, such as infidelity, dishonor, past secrets – it all needs to come out in the wash, because if people cannot be honest about themselves then they can’t be honest with a partner. This is where the therapists will earn their money, because really skilled counselors can get people to bare their souls and shine a light on that which the individual thought he or she had buried forever. It’s only after a cathartic release of emotion to gain understanding that the couple can begin to heal wounds and experience a better marriage. Sex is assured that night, and with the Kama Sutra provided, it will be very interesting sex.

 

Day Three:

This will be a summary of what has been accomplished. The therapists will review the past sessions and encourage the couple to work on new communication skills. If there is an airplane trip back home, it is recommended all sex occur in one of the lavatories, though doggie-style is probably out of the question due to lack of space.

 

Some marriage retreats will provide aftercare, which are a series of follow-up questionnaires and additional communication work for when there are disagreements so the couple doesn’t fall back into harmful ways of miscommunicating. 

As I said before, my husband and I attended a marriage retreat and we had a similar experience. Well, I shouldn’t say it was a “similar” experience, because the facility was in Brazil and my ex ended up running off with Consuela, one of the maids, and after an exhaustive hunt by search and rescue, my emotionally drained husband was located on the banks of the Tietê River, but Consuela had apparently been eaten by piranha. How I wish it had been the other way around.

But whether it’s a marriage retreat or the couple tries to work things out on their own, it’s still going to come down to whether the two people are compatible in the long-term, along with trust, honesty and a willingness to sacrifice for the sake of the other person. While my first book was a relationship parody, there were a few lines that had true insight into how successful relationships should work:

 

• “The key to developing relationships and preserving existing ones is the ability to laugh at each other and ourselves, while continually being mindful that no one is perfect and no one has all the answers.”
• “We have to…truly appreciate each other. Live and laugh together, share your warmth and your knowledge, mutually rise to face challenges and strive to achieve common goals. That is the ultimate key to understanding each other and enjoying better relationships.”

 

John Gray’s advice, which is what I was parodying, is that women should be deferential to men in all aspects of marriage or a relationship – terrible advice for men and women living in the twentieth century and beyond. Dr. Phil does not subscribe to such a religiously fundamentalist approach, though he does often satisfy the religious crowd by alluding that couples should rely on faith instead of communication, but his advice is just as useless as John Gray’s because Dr. Phil is not consistent. One moment a couple needs to work on their relationship problems together, and the next moment the husband is the one who needs to put more effort into the relationship while the wife stands by with a rolling pin in one hand and the television remote in the other, gleaning what Dr. Phil suggests next for hardline feminists. While such advice satisfies the entertainment aspect that Dr. Phil’s producers require for people to continue watching his television program, he’s just wasting everyone’s time. 

Let’s face it – if a successful relationship was easy and only required advice from simpletons, everyone would have a successful relationship. But a lasting and satisfying relationship is difficult to achieve and even more difficult to maintain, which is why so few people experience real enjoyment and success.

Is my advice a panacea for relationship problems? It depends on how much effort people wish to put into it, and the willingness of both partners to listen and work toward the same goal. People could have all the desire in the world to foster a perfect relationship, but if both partners don’t have the same level of commitment, the chance for lasting love and happiness doesn’t seem realistic.

One does not need a doctorate in psychology to understand why a relationship has problems and how to fix it. All one needs is basic common sense, but there is a profound lack thereof among our dumbed down society. I blame the proliferation of garbage television shows like Dr. Phil, and The Doctors, and The View. We were not born imbeciles, but that’s how we have evolved and certainly how we are treated. If someone can’t figure out that the lack of respect and communication in his or her relationship is the reason why the relationship is failing, then he or she needs to turn off the television and read a book. But not a book by Dr. Phil. He’s had his moment to shine, and instead of using his fame and position to educate, his advice belongs in a fortune cookie. 

Without using Google as an assist, which four of these sentences are advice from Dr. Phil and which are popular sayings found in fortune cookies?

 

• Conquer your fears, or they will conquer you.
• You can’t change what’s happened in your life, but you can change how you respond to it.
• The world may be your oyster, but that doesn’t mean you’ll get its pearl.
• It’s better to be healthy alone, than sick with someone else.
• Winners do what losers don’t want to do.
• We can’t help everyone, but everyone can help someone.
• The only person you need to control to get happy, healthy and whole is you.
• Your happiness is connected with your outlook on life.

 

Whether or not you’re successful in choosing Dr. Phil’s four, just look at the list in totality and ask yourselves why you’re still reading or listening to such an idiot. If the best advice we can get is from a fortune cookie, why does anyone still watch Dr. Phil or daytime television at all?

The more television one watches, the stupider one becomes. That is a documented fact. Not only does the television have a hypnotic effect on the human brain after just ten seconds of viewing, but from the endless commercial manipulation, to the subliminal messages, to the violence we have come to accept as part of our society, to constantly having to tell people that they’re not smart and they need to watch more programs to improve their lives, we are getting dumber by the day. Just look into the dead cow eyes of the average American television viewer, waiting to be told how to think, what to buy, what to wear, what to drive, how to vote, what to drink and eat, and you’ll see the zombies we have become. No wonder Dr. Phil can make tens of millions each year peddling basic fortune cookie-like common sense – it’s because the rest of us have lost our common sense, thanks to staring at the idiot box day and night.

The cornerstone of any successful relationship is communication. One person acquiescing to the demands of the other is a recipe for failure, not success. There is equality, mutual understanding and commonality, or there is relationship dysfunction. I don’t know any family that doesn’t call itself dysfunctional anymore, because the type of cheap advice we’ve been raised on over the last forty years has no meaningful or practical application in our lives. 

I like to use a Band-Aid analogy for very serious problems. If we cut our arm and put a Band-Aid on it, by the time the wound has healed it’s going to hurt a little to pull the Band-Aid off because it’s stuck to the skin and we may have some hair around it, but we do it anyway. We suck it up, stuff a rag into our mouths, have someone hold us down by the shoulders, rip it off, and then scream like a banshee. That’s what I do; maybe you’re different.

Imagine for a moment if we put a Band-Aid over our wound and then refused to remove it? “It’s going to hurt,” we reason with ourselves, “so I’ll just leave it on a little while longer.” Within a week, the adhesive is now firmly stuck to the skin and we know it’s really going to hurt if we pull it off, so we keep ignoring it. Within a month new hair is covering the Band-Aid and even though it’s an embarrassment and an inconvenience, that new hair and the fact it’s stuck fast to the skin makes removing it an unbearable thought, so we continue to ignore it. Within six months, new skin has grown over the Band-Aid, and if it’s not surgically removed, we’re going to develop an infection, sepsis and gangrene, and possibly die. We’re now looking at time off work, unnecessary expenses, medication, surgery, etc., just because we didn’t want to endure a moment of pain. 

For anyone who suggests such a ridiculous way of handling a Band-Aid, he or she would be keelhauled and never taken seriously again. Enter Dr. Phil. The type of “get real” advice Dr. Phil’s viewers and readers expect of the man just doesn’t exist, and because he has dropped the proverbial ball by offering fortune-cookie advice, I have waded into waters in which he does not wish to swim.

Is anyone else watching less YouTube?

Last year, I relied on YouTube for a good portion of my entertainment, mainly because I refuse to watch TV. Not only do I dislike the messages of fear, disinformation, and “hate thy neighbor” from television, but the relentless commercialism is so mind-numbingly repetitive that I feel as though I may go crazy after just an hour of watching TV.

I do not need to work at jobs I hate to buy shit I don’t need, just to keep pace with my neighbor!

YouTube was the salvation for those of us seeking to watch something entertaining without the constant bombardment of commercials and the messages of hate and fear.

No more.

Each time I try to watch YouTube, it feels like I’m back to watching TV: Buy this, read that, try this, watch that (to hate and fear, or is so stupid I’d need a lobotomy to sit through it), and that’s if I just want to listen to music by watching a video.

Watching a YouTube clip from a news broadcast is the same as watching 1970s Soviet-style disinformation.

Thanks VEVO, thanks YouTube — thank you very much for reinforcing the idea that if it needs to be watched it needs to be over-commercialized, so thank you for driving me away from YouTube because I don’t need that negativity in my life.

Used car salesman (actual discussion, kind of funny)

My roommate is looking to purchase a used car so he can work. It’s a classic catch-22 situation for him: He needs a car to work, but can’t get a car until he has work and can prove an income to qualify for a loan for a reliable vehicle.

So he’s looking to buy used and cheap.

Enter used car salesmen.

We went to a small lot today (and by small I mean about 12 cars), and the used car salesman was a classic used car salesman:

Salesman: What’s your budget?

My roommate: About $2,000, maybe $2,500.

Salesman: Oh, that’s a problem. But hey, I got a 1998 Honda Civic in the shop right now. You know, we detail them before we put them on the lot. Runs great, no problems.

Me: Can we take it to a mechanic?

Salesman (long pause): Hey, it’s a two-thousand, twenty-five-hundred dollar car!

Me (raised voice): CAN WE TAKE IT TO A MECHANIC?

Salesman: Okay, yeah, if that’s what you want to do, but it runs great. What’s your number?

We gave him a wrong number.

+++++++++++++

Yeah, the car is being detailed because it runs great, but whatever you do don’t take it to a mechanic to tell you it’s a worthless piece of shit.

And used car salesmen wonder why they have a poor reputation!!

Chapter 3 excerpt from “Get Real, Dr. Phil”

This is long overdue and I apologize for the delay in posting chapter 3, but events have spiraled out of control since my mother was injured by a third party and the insurance companies are jacking her around. Most of my free time has been spent assisting her and her quest for justice.

 

Chapter 3 is a really great chapter that explains why Dr. Phil should not be on the air and providing “advice” to anyone. I will eventually post the first 5 chapters (out of 19) in the book. Link to the book on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Get-Real-Dr-Phil-Discrediting/dp/1492324531/

Cancer survivors are likely going to disagree with my belief that one cannot simultaneously be both a victim and a survivor, but people who have read my thoughts below believe that I am correct with my belief.

 

CHAPTER 3

WHY DOES DR. PHIL ENCOURAGE VICTIMISM?

 

Dr. Phil believes that by probing past abuse and hanging onto that abuse and pain is the key to winning a person’s heart. I remember a show of his where a woman with four kids was afraid to touch her children because she thought that touching them was the same as molesting them. She had been “touched” when she was younger, by whom we were never told, but clearly her molestation experience affected her ability to be a mother to her children. Her kids were completely out of control from lack of human contact and discipline. 

Dr. Phil pandered to her, telling her she was a victim and a survivor. She was crying and nodding, acknowledging she was in fact a victim, but had endured it and is now a survivor. 

Bullshit.

Being a victim is surviving a Nazi concentration camp. Being a victim is having third-degree burns over most of your body because of an arsonist. Being a victim is convicted of a crime never committed and surviving prison only to see your reputation forever ruined because you’re now known only as a felon. Being a victim is having an abusive spouse who also abuses your children and a court won’t step in to help because the abuser is a convincing liar to authorities. Being a victim is working all your life, saving for retirement, and having a Wall Street banker gamble your entire savings away without facing any penalty because he works for a bank that’s “too big to fail.”

Being molested and not being able to move on is being an idiot. Here’s an interesting fact: A neighbor molested me when I was six years old. Am I crying about it? Am I wallowing in fear and seeking pity because someone touched me when I was very young? No, I am not. 

I’ve accepted it, and have moved on. I haven’t forgotten, but I have forgiven. The event stays in my past, where it belongs. For me to continue to relive it and mentally travel back to the crime to “understand” what happened to me is to embrace victimism and I don’t want to be a victim. It happened, the person who did it was sick, and that’s life. Move on. Worse things have happened to other people, and they’ve been able to move on. It’s not as though I was strapped to a chair and had my fingernails pulled out with pliers. That would be something worth crying about twenty years later, but someone touching my privates for her own sick enjoyment isn’t worth reliving day and night.

If Dr. Phil wanted to impart his wisdom to that woman on his television show with the four out-of-control kids and correct her life and lifestyle, he would have told her to stop thinking like a victim and take back control in her life. Victims don’t have control; those who molest, rape, rob, beat, deny, and steal from the victim hold all the power, but only if we let them. So why would anyone who has been victimized want to continue to feel and think like a victim? 

Dr. Phil should have taken that woman by the shoulders, and shaken her until her head flopped around like a rag doll, and said:

“You are NOT a victim, do you understand? What happened in the past stays in the past, where it belongs. Forgive and move on. The only way to move beyond the person who did this to you is to STOP believing you are still a victim, and be strong in that you are going to proceed through life as a liberated adult. You can’t drive a car forward if you’re looking in the rearview mirror, and looking forward is looking toward the future. Looking backward is reliving the past.”

Dr. Phil’s “get real” talk is as phony as a three-dollar-bill when he talks to victims of past abuse and codifies them into believing they are still helpless victims. 

A survivor is someone who has been victimized and has been able to forgive and move forward. A victim is someone who is stuck in the past, to relive the past and never move forward.

 

One cannot simultaneously be both a victim and a survivor.

 

Relationship problems and abusive relationships are no different from past physical or sexual trauma. If a woman is in an abusive relationship and seeks competent professional help, would she be told that she’s a victim and a survivor, and to stay in the relationship? Of course not! She would be told that she’s being victimized, and that if she wants to have a normal life and relationship then she must get out of the abusive relationship. When she severs the cord to the past is when she stops being a victim and becomes a survivor. She’s no longer living in or looking at the past; her focus is on the future. 

At that point, victimism has been replaced with survivorship, and we can proceed with our lives when we become a survivor. We cannot move forward when we perceive ourselves to be victims, and the point of life is to move forward.

This is basic common sense and this is getting real with real-life problems. Living in Dr. Phil’s fantasy world is the farthest thing from what victims should be told if they expect to have any type of normalcy in their lives.

Common sense does not require a college degree, but it’s becoming a rare commodity when people like Dr. Phil are poisoning minds with victimism. However, Dr. Phil isn’t the only one – the United States has become a country of victims, where we all expect to be rewarded for difficult times in the past, to be coddled and told it’s going to be okay. Gone are the days when children had to compete against each other for prizes and trophies. Today, your kid shows up for soccer practice and is handed a medal. He or she runs the hundred-yard-dash and comes in dead last and receives a good sportsmanship trophy. The United States calls itself the greatest country on Earth, while creating wimps who think like victims. 

There are winners and losers in life, and winning doesn’t “just happen.” Winning takes hard work, skill, and determination, but anyone can be a loser, especially if he or she doesn’t put forth any effort. Rewarding people who lose or who put no effort into something sounds like communism, where everyone is equal and no matter what one accomplishes, all are treated the same. Victimism rewards losers and puts them on the same plane of existence as winners when the two are not even in the same hemisphere. 

News flash: Just because you get the short end of the stick now and then doesn’t make you a loser. It’s called life, and you’re supposed to be able to figure out for yourself that putting pain and loss behind you is the key to moving on and experiencing success. Many years ago I remember reading the difference between a winner and a loser. “Winners listen; losers wait for their turn to talk.” That axiom for today should be: “Winners accept and forgive, thereby overcoming the obstacles that stand in their path. Losers whine about pain and seek pity.”

If you want to be a victim, nothing is going to stop you from believing it. But to be told you’re a victim, and to have victimism reinforced and to believe it, is a disservice to the victim. 

Metaphorically, a victim would fall off a horse, wait for help, ask for a shoulder to cry on, relive the pain of falling off, tell others of the horrible experience, never come near a horse again, and be very afraid.

A survivor would fall off a horse, dust him or herself off, and climb back on. The horse isn’t going to get the better of the rider – not a chance.

You have to ask yourself, which are you? Victim or survivor? More importantly, which do you want to be? Shockingly, Dr. Phil wants people to be both, but both are yin and yang; oil and water. They are not compatible because they are opposites.

Only you can decide whether to be a victim or a survivor. Consider the related concepts for each word:

 

Victim:

Pessimism

Negativity

Betrayal

Hopelessness

Target

Loser

Suffer

Death

 

 

Survivor:

Optimism

Positivity

Enlightenment

Trust

Winner

Endure

Persevere

Life

 

One cannot be both a victim and a survivor at the same time, as Dr. Phil believes.

Example: According to Dr. Phil’s advice, the woman with the four out-of-control children who was once molested is a victim and is now a survivor. Both are present tense, which is not possible. From the examples listed above, can one be both dead and alive concurrently? Can it be light and dark at the same time? Noon and midnight in the same place? Figuratively, yes. Realistically, no. Can one be pessimistic and optimistic at the same time about the same thing? Impossible. So how can someone be both a victim and a survivor at the same time? 

A survivor can believe she was a victim and is now a survivor. “Was” a victim is past tense; “is now” a survivor is present tense. That’s the correct thinking if one wishes to move forward. Dr. Phil’s advice is to live in both the past and present simultaneously, which cannot be accomplished. People listening to and taking this type of advice from Dr. Phil will be dissatisfied with the direction of their lives because such advice will leave them exactly where they began before reaching out for help.

The following is a true story and it happened to my good friend John, who is also a writing partner. It epitomizes victimism and survivorship, and the perception of both on the human mind. 

In 1993 he was a young man, and on Sunday, March 28, at 5:45 a.m. he was on his way to a friend’s house to help him with his Sunday morning paper-route. Unknown to John, in close proximity to him was a nineteen-year-old man who was just waking up from a drunken stupor after a night of heavy partying and drinking with friends. 

The nineteen-year-old drunk driver climbed into his truck, a Ford-150 XLT pickup truck that had been jacked up for off-road fun, and started off down the road toward his home. John happened to be a little ways in front of him, driving his Geo Storm, which we would classify as a subcompact car today. As John was stopped at a red light at what was normally a busy intersection but was deserted at that time of the morning, the drunken teenager was passing out at the wheel with a blood alcohol content of .145, with his foot still on the accelerator. 

The next thing John knew, he was looking at an empty field. He was still seated in his car, but his glasses were not on his face; they turned out to be in the passenger footwell. When a Ford-150 XLT pickup truck, traveling at approximately 55 mph, hits a car from behind that is standing still, some very bad things happen to the person in the car. Not only were John’s glasses destroyed, but he also suffered a concussion (knocked unconscious for thirteen minutes), a hairline fracture of his skull, whiplash, a strained and sprained neck, a strained and sprained back, a broken tailbone, and a broken right foot.

Had he not been wearing his seat belt, the state patrol later remarked that John would have been killed instantly by decapitation. It was also lucky the truck had been jacked up because such a collision by a truck lower to the ground sometimes results in a ruptured gas tank and a fire, meaning John, having survived the collision but being unconscious, could have burned to death. 

What happened to the drunk driver? Nothing. And by “nothing,” I mean physically or legally nothing. His parents were quite wealthy and literally bought his way out of trouble. He never even spent a night in jail, thanks to deferred prosecution. Deferred prosecution is a free pass when one has money and commits a crime. “Too big to fail” banks that commit serious felonies receive deferred prosecution from the United States Department of Justice, meaning the criminals are free to commit the same crimes over and over without consequence. The teenage drunk driver’s license was suspended for six months, and upon the successful completion of Alcoholics Anonymous counseling, his driver’s license was reinstated and his record wiped clean. No one would ever know he almost killed another person while driving drunk as a teenager. 

John was not so lucky. He required the Jaws of Life to extract his unconscious body from his vehicle, and when he reached the hospital, the attending emergency room doctor, who was about to go off duty after having worked for twenty-four hours, got John mixed up with the reports of a fender-bender that occurred across town at the same time. He was taken for X-rays (which were misread), given a neck collar, and told to go home. 

The next day, after the shock had worn off and the real pain had set in, John returned to the hospital in agony. The hospital, realizing it had made several mistakes the previous day but fearing a malpractice lawsuit, simply told him that the diagnosis made in the emergency room was correct and refused to treat his injuries. His insurance company, basing its opinion solely on the ER report, refused to pay for him to see orthopedists and specialists to treat his serious injuries. By the time he could raise the funds on his own to pay doctors who might be able to help him, his injuries had set and were permanent.

While he was in writhing pain and frantically seeking doctors who would accept delayed payment, the drunk driver’s insurance company, Safeco Insurance, called him every day to settle for his wrecked car and eventually John, without attorney representation at the time, received a check for $1,000 as compensation for his totaled vehicle. If he’d had an attorney, he would have received enough compensation to purchase a new vehicle, but insurance companies don’t make money for their shareholders by paying people what they are entitled.

One personal injury attorney after another told him his case wasn’t worth much because his medical records, diagnoses and injuries were in conflict, but when John located a real attorney (“real” meaning one who will fight for a client), he did receive a small settlement in 1995. Not that the money did him any good by then. He was fired from his job because it was physical labor and his injuries precluded any possibility of physical labor again, and it also cost him his active extrovert lifestyle. He was in constant pain and told me he seriously considered suicide when he developed migraine headaches (stemming from the head injury) that would last up to six weeks without relief. He was depressed, felt hopeless, had a negative outlook on life, and was almost homicidally enraged at the drunk driver and the system that had betrayed him.

That’s a victim. 

The question is, would he choose to stay a victim?

One day in late 1995, John was more angry than usual and told me he was literally in a blind rage. He was so angry at the world that he wanted to destroy it. He kept two handguns in his bedroom, and said he walked very fast into his room, not sure of his intentions. He got about five feet in when he said he hit an invisible wall – it was like walking face-first into a brick wall, is how he described it. He stumbled backward, his shoulders relaxed, he took a deep breath, and said out loud, “I forgive him.” 

Stunned at what had just happened, he said he shook his head as if to clear it, and then mentally asked himself if he did, in fact, forgive the drunk driver who had nearly killed him. He said the driver’s name out loud. There was no anger, no resentment, no hate. 

John let his victimism go: He went from thinking like a victim to becoming a survivor. 

He doesn’t know if it was the hand of God or the face of reason he walked into in his bedroom, but whatever it was, he released victimism and embraced survivorship. 

Since that cathartic awakening, John is one of the most optimistic people I’ve ever known. The odds don’t matter to him; he will prevail through positive thinking and positive actions. The injuries he suffered in that 1993 car accident never improved; they’ve only worsened. He has an autoimmune disease that has resulted in a form of arthritis affecting all his major joints and can usually be seen limping and in obvious pain. He cannot stand for more than thirty minutes or sit for more than an hour before pain relief is necessary. Some days he cannot walk at all due to pain. He’s developed ankylosing spondylitis in his lower back that will eventually fuse his lower spine, and has been considered by every doctor he has seen to be totally physically disabled since 2001. Despite medical records more than a foot high, the Social Security Administration refuses to grant him disability benefits, stating he has no disabilities whatsoever. Sometimes being a white American male has its disadvantages. 

A victim would get angry, depressed, and despondent. A victim would appear on Dr. Phil’s show and be told he’s a victim and learn to whine about it. 

A survivor would take a deep breath and find a way to move on. John continues to move on, his head held high, a smile on his face, and bringing optimism to those he meets. 

Can John be both a victim and a survivor at the same time, as Dr. Phil believes is possible and as Dr. Phil preaches? No, he cannot. 

We cannot be victims and survivors at the same time. We must choose which we would like to be, and the way to graduate from being a victim to becoming a survivor is forgiveness. We must forgive those or that which has done us harm, or we cannot move forward. If you are a victim and you would like to forgive, you must mean it – you can’t just say to yourself, “I forgive him or her who has done this or that to me,” and expect to be released from your pain and suffering. True forgiveness comes from within. 

This is a process that can take a long time to achieve. If you have been bitter and would like to experience the satisfaction that comes from absolution, think of it this way: Imagine changing your political affiliation in a day. If you’re a Republican, you’re now a die-hard Democrat. If you’re a Democrat, you’re now a traditional Republican. If you’re an Independent, I don’t know – now you’ve regressed and you’re one of “them.” It’s unthinkable, isn’t it? Yet it’s the same process for someone who will not forgive and let go: it requires a complete reversal in the way one thinks, believes and behaves. The process of change is not to be taken lightly. It requires motivation and commitment, because that change is going to stay with you for the rest of your life, and you will be a better person because of it.  

Many people believe in God and understand that to be forgiven from a sin they must ask for forgiveness and truly mean it for the sin to be forgiven. I know many very arrogant people who call themselves Christians, who steal from others and treat people with disdain, yet each week they’ll attend church, ask for forgiveness, refuse to change their ways and believe in all sincerity they’re going to Heaven when they die. But Christianity teaches us we must truly forgive and change sinful ways, or moving on is not possible. It’s just lip service if we continue to abuse and inflict pain and misery on others. I don’t see how we can expect to be forgiven and receive enlightenment upon death if we will not change our evil ways here on Earth. 

Dr. Phil does not seem to understand the concept of forgiveness. If he did, he would not encourage people to think of themselves simultaneously as both victims and survivors.

Regardless of what Dr. Phil believes and what he tells his audience, you were a victim and you are a survivor, or you are still a victim.

Why the Fed didn’t taper its bond-buying program

Yesterday, the Fed surprised most economists by not tapering its $85 billion a month bond buying program.

For people who understand economics, and for those who follow Austrian economic theory, those people knew the Fed could not taper its program.

The stock market *is* the economy. The Fed pumping liquidity of more than $1 trillion a year into government and banks *is* the economy. We consume; we no longer produce. 

There is no economic recovery and the Fed understands this. Remove any part of the cheap money that keeps this country afloat, and the economy crashes. The elites who rule us and have too much riding on the illusion of growth and prosperity that pulling the curtain aside and revealing all has been lost for many years would be catastrophic, so our puppet masters keep spinning lies.

And we’re dumb enough to keep believing the lies by reelecting the fools who got us here in the first place.

Don’t vote Democrat. Don’t vote Republican. Don’t vote Independent. Just vote all the bastards out so we can start over.

Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing is like the quote from The Terminator (humor)

“Listen, and understand. That (computer) is out there. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are (exasperated to the point you’re ready to give up your writing career).”

Seriously, Amazon, I appreciate the fact that automation is required to run your business, but tossing a human into the mix now and then wouldn’t be a bad thing when it comes to decision-making.

Mac vs. Windows, part 1

Windows is to Mac as black and white is to color TV.

My roommate has Windows 8, the joke of an operating system Ballmersoft has forced on consumers. When he arrived he extolled the virtues of Windows 8 and how much he loved it.

I use an iMac, and that meant I had to open his eyes.

Once he got to see keychain (instant password storage and retrieval), Time Machine (instant file backup and retrieval), spotlight (search for keywords within all files, not just titles), the speed of using browsers not programmed to slow my system down if I use something else (as Internet Explorer is programmed to do with Windows), etc., he isn’t much of a fan of Windows 8, or even Microshit, anymore.

Once you have Mac you don’t go back.

Chapter 2 excerpt from “Get Real, Dr. Phil”

I will eventually post the first 5 chapters (out of 19) to my new book called “Get Real, Dr. Phil,” which is about discrediting Dr. Phil using humor and common sense advice. Link to Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Get-Real-Dr-Phil-Discrediting/dp/1492324531/

++++++++++

CHAPTER 2

WHY SHOULD I DISCREDIT DR. PHIL?

 

Phillip Calvin McGraw, better known as Dr. Phil, published his megahit book, Self Matters, in 2001. In his photograph on the cover, he looks like he’s holding back massive gas, or just let some go and is enjoying the photographers’ shifty eyes in deciding who among them curled the studio wallpaper. 

Apparently, both Jay and Jordan, his two boys, were at Dr. Phil’s side each day he wrote Self Matters, proving that handcuffs and straitjackets can work wonders. And neither boy said a word to interrupt their father’s thought process, thanks to the benefits of Thorazine and duct tape. 

Dr. Phil began that book by describing the life of a middle-aged man who had it all but was miserable. This man went to school for many years to become a doctor, to oblige his old man, to make a lot of money, to please his wife, to give his children everything they could possibly want, and the entire time he was greatly dissatisfied. He was making choices of his own free will – the only person pressuring him was himself – but he was so weak-willed that he continued doing what he hated until he broke down in front of his wife and confessed that he was unfulfilled with the mansions, the best cars, world-class vacations, the finest food, and an extravagant life.

Sounds rough, doesn’t it?

Of course, Dr. Phil was describing himself in those first few pages and we get to see the man Dr. Phil was and the man he became. He was making his own choices yet he was unhappy; he felt powerless over his decision-making and had no personal gratification; his big break came when Oprah introduced him to her legion of fans; he went from making a couple of million dollars a year to making tens of millions and now that he’s superrich he’s satisfied.

Dr. Phil believes we do not have the ability to choose our own paths, and that things just happen and we must go along for the ride because we’re all victims of life, until such time as we’re making more money than we can possibly spend. 

I believe that heartfelt story in the beginning of his book was overdramatized for the benefit of the reader. It may very well be true, but in reality we have the power to make our own choices in life and we are not consigned to fate. Dr. Phil believes in fate and not free will, and by admitting such he announces that he is a follower and a victim. Taking advice from a follower and victim will create more followers and more victims, and we have enough of those already. 

Society should follow leaders and survivors. Victims convince others to believe in their own victimism. I find it difficult to believe that after forty-plus years of thinking like a victim that Dr. Phil is qualified to help others overcome their insecurities. It’s possible the man experienced a sea change when he confessed the misery of his opulent and wildly successful life to his wife Robin, but a sea change hardly qualifies one to lead, especially when that person preaches independence and uses “get real” talk to convince people they’re helpless victims as he once was, and that they’re also survivors.

One cannot simultaneously be both a victim and a survivor. While this is the predominant thinking among society, especially American society, it is not possible. Part One of this book will dispel this myth, which is what Dr. Phil preaches. For Dr. Phil and his wife to have created an industry around victimism and survivorship – convincing millions of people they had no control over choices they made in their lives – is beyond idiotic. It is dangerous thinking because it implies that fate is in control of our lives, which means we have no control over our personal choices. 

Yet, if that’s the case – if everything has been predetermined and we’re just along for the ride – then why offer advice on how to change our lives and thought processes? Fate dictates we have no control. Listening to advice on how to become a better person or make better choices is a fallacy if one believes in fate.

What Dr. Phil and other intellectually-challenged people lack is basic common sense. They lack logic. They do not possess rationality. I don’t know where Dr. Phil graduated in his class, but I am reminded of an old joke about doctors:

Question: What do you call a doctor who graduates last in his or her class?

Answer: Doctor.

Taking advice from a man who can only offer senseless contradictions without any beneficial guidance is about as useful as a glass hammer. 

While Dr. Phil probably didn’t graduate last in his class, his uninspired advice (especially pertaining to relationships) is preposterous. I do not believe that a man can provide a woman practical relationship advice, unless that man has been a woman, and nothing from what I have read of Dr. Phil suggests a sex change in his past. While he does seem to allow his wife to carry his gooseberries around in her purse, emasculation still does not qualify Dr. Phil to provide advice to women about relationships and how he believes they’re supposed to feel and act.

The field of psychology is common sense with suggestions of practical implementation. While Dr. Phil has degrees in psychology, he claimed in January 2008 that his current work does not involve the practice of psychology and that he has “retired from psychology.” If that’s the case, why is Dr. Phil still providing psychological advice to the morons who appear on his show?

I say morons in the most considerate manner possible, because the people who appear in front of Dr. Phil are one step away from being on the cover of National Geographic as a new species that lacks any ability to think for itself. No one needs a degree in psychology, or communications, or the theory of football, to advise a woman that if her boyfriend is beating her up to get the hell out of the relationship! That’s just basic common sense. But not to Dr. Phil and his type. His solution is to work through the problem. No, if you’re on fire, the solution isn’t to discover a way to cope with the pain of third-degree burns. The solution is to extinguish the fire.

Being a purveyor of basic common sense isn’t a bad thing, but Dr. Phil is the sort of person who would bring a pregnant woman on his show and tell her that he knows the pain of childbirth because he once had hemorrhoids the size of grapefruits while constipated. I can assure you Dr. Phil has no idea of the pain of childbirth and can therefore not empathize with those who are pregnant and about to deliver. Women occasionally die from the pain and complications of childbirth. No one has ever died from hemorrhoids. The raw, intense shock of childbirth pain is but one of the issues many women must deal with at some point in their lives, and I promise Dr. Phil that whatever emotional pain he has experienced in his life was not the same as childbirth. The alarm of being sexually active and being “late” is not the same type of jolt as a young man’s first wet dream, or putting a small ding in dad’s car when showing it off in front of friends.

Dr. Phil may try to empathize with women’s emotions, but he doesn’t succeed. Whatever his wife screams into his ear before Dr. Phil goes on live television is nothing compared to what many women experience in their lives, especially those who abandon dignity and appear on his television show. Relationships – and the meaning thereof – for women are completely different from what relationships mean to men. A successful relationship is one based on equality and understanding, and while this should be the basis for all relationships, it is often not the case. The pedestrian advice provided on daytime television is not given because it has any chance of working – it is given to boost ratings, and to do that the program requires freaks. 

Speaking of the freakish, as long as we’re talking about daytime television, we should talk about nighttime television, as well. Talk show host Jimmy Kimmel does a segment in which he has celebrities read very mean tweets about them on air. Dr. Phil’s Twitter account is @DrPhil, and someone with the username @212mseol wrote to him, “Why don’t you shut the fuck up you bald-headed, big-mouthed hillbilly.” To his credit, Dr. Phil took the slam in stride. But I know some very warm and compassionate bald-headed, big-mouthed hillbillies, and to lump them together with Dr. Phil is just plain cruel.

I hold no animosity toward Dr. Phil. I think his heart may be in the right place because at one time he wanted to help those who may have once been like him. But the suggestions he offers are hazardous and wrong, and the reason I know they are wrong is because they are contrary to common sense. If he would step back for a moment and see the world as it exists – not one that exists in textbooks, but the real world – he would understand that the people who truly need positive intervention and guidance in their sad lives are not benefiting from his instruction. It goes back to how we think of and view ourselves: Are we victims, or are we survivors? Knowing that we cannot simultaneously be both, which are we? 

Dr. Phil believes he was and is both, and he’s mistaken. My next chapter will prove my belief while dispelling his.

Now that’s honest “get real” talk.