24. Why I married her

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Every once in a while, my wife comes out with a random remark to strangers that takes everyone for surprise. I just adore her.

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176. Bubble Trouble.

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Well, by now most of you know the drill. Information has changed and we are all a bit screwed because of it. Our choices change our news in ways that have never happened before. The news are bottled up and served as a product to people. You are drinking Coke and your neighbor is drinking Mr. Pibb; a bizarre, dubious and objectively wrong choice. I know I can't claim to be right, I mostly jest. I am extremely biased when it comes to immigration, women's choice and LGBQT rights. I will favor those over stock market increases and regulation reductions, even though I am an avid stock market investor. I click on articles that show how immigrants are less prone to commit crimes, while my neighbor may click on articles talking about the hive of scum and villainy that files up to ask for asylum. Just like rashes, the amount of biased news you get grows the more you pick them.If you still are not clear how this works, there's an accessible documentary on Netflix: The Social Dilemma.…
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132. Warning: Adult Situations

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Nobody tells you about the awkwardness. When your messy personal life collides with your orderly adult life, sparks can be generated that ripple through your existence. Like the time nudity escaped the censors at YouTube in the video playlist I was displaying in my wedding. Or when kids swear like a sailor after perhaps 2 minutes with my wife and me.  
Having condo meetings, being in a board, having a trust, paying off my student loans. These are incredibly adulty things that feel alien to me. And yet, we are doing these things. The me from 5 years ago would be like “what? no, stop!” 
I couldn’t be more proud of us though. We are doing the things. We are continuously confused, but we are doing the things.  
Is privilege a big (huge) part of where I am right now? You betcha. And I do feel guilt. Only by giving back, my time and money, do I feel a little bit less guilt. In a perfect world, everybody should be allowed the freedom of choice and the support I had throughout my life. In a perf…
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115. Murder, She Heard

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My wife took me to a live recording of  “My Favorite Murder” in Houston this year. It was a great show, but it was also very eye-opening. First of all, the crowd was 90% female. The hosts, too, are female and hilarious about this dreary subject. Not until recently had I noticed the connection between these kinds of shows and gender.

It dawned on me during this show that this is about female survival. By far, the victims in the murders discussed in the show are female and the perpetrators are male. It is something that I barely register in my daily life but is probably at the top of women’s minds frequently. There was a good episode about this in Aziz Ansari's show "Master of None" in season 1. Going home alone is a completely different experience for boys and girls and it sucks a lot. "My Favorite Murder" works with that and evolves it. There’s useful tips embedded in the show, like “f#!k politeness”,  a lot of the murders happen to people that felt something …
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175. A Little Perspective

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Have I been nauseating enough about our Coronapups? I’m gonna go with no. We’ve had our dobergoblins (Conan and Xena) for the last four months and all I can say is that they’ve changed us. Roxanne and I look at each other and wince at what we have become.  There’s not an hour of the day in which these dogs aren’t an extension of our bodies. Furry, needy, whiny extensions. And what do we do with this dependent behavior? We encourage the hell out of it.Over the last month we’ve done incredibly disgusting things like: Bought them little tiny sweaters Put them in pouches attached to our sweatersSmuggled them into restaurantsHandcrafted some masks for themHiked with them on our backpackOnly one of those is a lie. We are so screwed. Extra Panel: They are our world.
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92. Never Google Your Doppleganger

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In my lifetime I have been told that I look exactly like some people that I would consider to be not perfect replicas of me. Maybe I have a better self esteem than I project, but I feel like I don’t look like “The Critic”; as was earnestly expressed by a girl on a (first and only) date.

Other twinsies I’ve been professed to have:

Steven Wright

Tony Hale

Stephen Miller (Aaaaargh)

Dr. Katz

I don’t know. Maybe I’m vain, but I always pictured me as more of a Luke-Perry-with-a-really-bad-hair-day type. It’s funny how I have a pretty sturdy love and acceptance of my own physique, and yet my self esteem about other things (like being a functional adult in this crazy world) is pretty dismal.





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173. Empathy

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Empathy towards strangers is learnable. So why are some of us so uneducated?  I'm not always empathetic towards strangers. During the Paris terrorist attack I wondered why Muslims weren’t decrying this heinous attack. Spoiler alert: They WERE decrying it (I was just too angry to see it) and they didn’t have to. You don’t expect Christians to apologize for every insane Christian. They'd spend every Sunday apologizing half the time. My mind changed after a single act: meeting Muslim people. We helped a family from Syria as they were welcomed in our community. The “them” became “us.” Their amazing cooking skills and easy laughter will always stay with me.How do we get this to happen to people? There's value in learning that we are all extremely similar. We all worry about COVID, we all want to protect our own, we all occasionally leave skid marks in our underwear and never really talk about it.I’m the most introverted person I know, and I still have been able to meet Jewish p…
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135. Anxiety All The Way Down

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Anxiety comes at me in waves. Sometimes I am perfectly satisfied with this hard wrought life I’ve made for myself, complete with a wife, home and community. The next second I am obsessing about having to meet people and how am I going to find and wear the proper pants for said meeting (and I only have like two pairs of pants). 

One time, I had so much anxiety about my choices in the board game Pandemic Legacy that I ruined that game forever. I still think about all those diseased millions we left uncured in Shanghai.
There’s objective reasons for my current bout with anxiety. I have a new job, a new commute, a new culture to shape and change. Anxiety is attacking me routinely. The self talk is obsessive and the feeling in my chest is pervasive. Some days are better than others, but last week it was off the charts. I daydream of an incompetent personified anxiety.
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151. Plagued

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Generations before us had widespread worldly wars, warm and cold.  Today feels like the anxious times we were told we were fortunate not to have. And there is some beauty to it.

My friends and family are losing their jobs. My job has become incredibly stressful and demanding (I work in healthcare).  Our parents and grandparents are at risk. This is some scary stuff. So it feels bad to make light of this situation. I am going to, but only because I am an idiot who doesn’t know how to cope with things.

There is something about this current ambiance that I am responding well to. There’s something to knowing everyone is going through anxiety together that I find comfortable. I always feel guilty for feeling anxious with such a privileged life. I have met the love of my life, I’ve achieved some economic success, and I get to do the things I enjoy. Guilt about anxiety, begets anxiety, begets guilt, begets anxiety. Today, though, I can feel that we are all vibing similarly. And we are hooki…
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