Banal Hemorrhage

Trigger Warning for Some: Contains references to hugging.  I am an introvert, and I am a hugger. I don’t know why these things coexist in me, but they are not the only cacophonic elements of my psyche. Is it from my cultural upbringing in Venezuela? Is it in my genes? I don’t know, but  I love hugging the few people I can call friends in these strange times. I don’t hug everyone. I gauge the situation very carefully, often saying things like : “are you a hugger?” or watching for open armedness. Sometimes I am wrong (mostly with people bearing the XY chromosome). I can tell when I screw up, it feels like hugging a dead tree. Many times I never see the huggee ever again. I imagine that they decided to avoid me for the rest of their lives, lest they be held in in my (very arguably) comforting arms ever again. Sometimes, I turn non-huggers into huggers. Sometimes. Extra Panel: Leaving a wake of petrified people behind. 

I used to have epic dreams. Metallic sharks following me in an infinite pool of geometric impossibilities. Multi-night adventures that had a cohesive plot. I even had a dream diary to document my recollections from the world's best cinema, my giant head. Then came college. My dreams started to be taken over by earthly worries. Dreams of being unprepared for exams persist until this day. Dreams of  rejection and ridicule proliferated. Every once in a while I'd dream about high adventures on the seas of Orpheus, but less and less. Cut to adulthood. I dream of going to the DMV. I dream about forgetting to pay my license registration fee on time (and I still forget). I dream about buying necessary things, not even exotic things like a domesticated snow leopard or an ebony moog machine. This dream about buying razors was the last straw. My brain wants to be boring and I need to fight it. I'm going to read fantasy, watch adventure movies and play video games until bed t

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

I wouldn’t give anyone a bj in an alley for access to a smartphone. Using this slim, utilitarian and utterly disrespectful definition of addiction, I am not addicted to my smartphone. In almost all other definitions, I probably am (scratches neck). These days I’m frequently using twitter for political news, instagram for art and facebook for friends and family. For my wife’s birthday I left my smartphone delights behind as we travelled up to Michigan’s north (not north north, but north enough for a weekend trip). We had a great time consuming and sight-seeing all this beautiful state has to offer. We touched alpacas, drank some wine, got soaked in a pier and I was able to show her the part where Johnny Depp gets sucked by a bed in Nightmare on Elm Street. A win in every conceivable way. I am definitely a technofile and a techno-apologist, I believe my life in particular has been enhanced and improved exponentially due to consumer electronics. I enjoy nature somewhat, but

Nobody tells you about the hair. I have been bald or balding for over twenty years. My drains have never clogged. Since moving in with the love of my life about one year ago, I’ve collected enough strands of hair from my bathroom drain to refurbish a couch. I don’t mind using the slithery yellow bathroom snakes, they make me feel useful. It’s one of the few things in cohabitating life that is simple. You push that thing in, you wiggle it in and out and you solve a problem. It’s no mistake that it sounds coital, you do this every once in a while and you achieve harmony. I wish I could snake my psyche the way I can snake some hair from my drain. I would snake those repressed high school memories and flush them down the toilet. Those awkward memories that make you flinch when they light your hippocampus? Wiggle them out. I would write a pseudopsychology book called “Snake the Brain” and make millions. This comic is evidence that I have no editing room. A thought pops in my brai

Dear readers, politics in the United States are a mess. The right, in particular, has become meaningless. The right was the party of law and order, at one time. Under Trump, however, they are anti-FBI. They were for economic conservatism, but now they support the largest budget ever. They say they have an issue only with illegal immigration, and yet they cheer Donald Trump when he curtails legal immigration . The right under Trump only makes sense if you really see them as (poorly written) evil characters. The Hidden Brain podcast has an interesting episode called “ More Divided than Ever ”. It was really interesting, especially the part with John Hibbing, who talks about the biological nature of our political views. For instance, people who lean conservative tend to also dislike spicy food [duh, says my anecdotal experience]. I feel like understanding there’s a biological component to our stances does help me empathize more with an opposing political position. The thing is

When I went to grad school I had a great advisor. However, he once said something that I wasn’t able to understand at the time. He said that 90% of my success at work will be determined by my sociability, rather than the abilities I was learning in grad school. He went as far as making us read Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People” . I was appalled. I’m paying this guy like $1000* a minute for him to tell me that it will all come down to social skills?  He was absolutely, completely, entirely, and annoyingly right.  The tools and reasoning skills I learned in college have served me well, but they have paled in comparison to how my social skills have served me. Being able to make connections, humbling myself, expressing interest in others, those skills have allowed me to be a catalyst for change more often than the statistical and organizational tools I’ve learned.  So, Dr. Malott, you were right. And I appreciate the push you gave me early on to hone those

My wife truly is as close to perfect for me as I can even imagine. That’s why I relish on the few, beautiful flaws she has. The way she says “Jewlery” instead of “Jewelry”, her creative pronunciation of “Realtor”, her terrible choice in a husband; all this makes her even more magnificent to me. I never liked Superman. Not even Alan Moore, one of my favorite writers, could make this boyscout interesting. After a lifetime of mistakes, I discovered the reason why. He’s too dang perfect. I like my fictional heroes to have huge gaping flaws. Perhaps this says more about me than a real critique towards the god archetype. At work, one of the things I fight against the most is perfectionism . We are often so worried about getting a mythical perfect product that often times we drop improvements. “Don’t let perfect get in the way of better” ranks right up there with “make it a double” and “Sorry, I’m foreign” among my most uttered phrases. So that’s my bias against perfection. If I waite

Yes, dear readers. I found a new job. I am an extremely lucky individual. I am lucky to have found a job doing pretty much what I was doing before (whatever that was), locally, and with a great group of people. Even during the occasional depression, anxiety and existential malaise I've experienced in my life, I've always known how lucky I am. I have a one in a million mom, a one in a million wife, a one in a million cat (Khaleesi), and one in a million friends. I also have to contractually acknowledge that I have another cat (Eris) and an immediate sibling. When this unemployment journey started, man, I had a plan. I spent a portion of the day learning, a portion of the day exercising, a portion of the day applying for jobs and interviewing. That lasted maybe a week. As certainty about my new job increased, I began to regress to a twenty year old version of myself. By now, I'm close to buying cases of Lebatt Blue and sending drunk ICQ messages. (Ask your grandpa if y

Recently, I was hanging out  in the job market . It's a market I hadn't visited in 16 years. It looks and feels like a lot has changed! One of the most interesting things is that people seem to be able to make up their own job titles with no repercussions: you can be a sensei, master, guru (basically anything Bruce Lee would have been called)  expert, commander, chief and many more! I don't know exactly the amount of self esteem one needs to unironically and seriously call themselves something as superlative as a "thought leader", I only know it's at least twice as much as I currently have. I actually don't have a problem with being called any of that, it's just that calling yourself those things seems a bit presumptuous. I've been called a guru before, but I would never, ever, call me that. In my profession, one of the biggest tenets is to "lead with humility". You quickly become an oxymoron if you title yourself a guru. Ther