Books I wished I read when I was younger, Part 1 - How To Pickup Chicks

The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists

Alright, not everyone is going to like this book.   But it’s a book on understanding the female psyche that the vast majority of men won’t just learn through osmosis.  Women think much differently from men, and in winning their favor, the mental approach of most young men is far off balance.

The Game follows a nytimes writer as he is immersed among a bunch of pick up artists trying to pick up girls and improve their “game”.  A lot of lessons are learned, and he eventually becomes very good at picking up women.  There was/is

This book will only work for certain types of men.  For the easily tempted and bittered men who already have a grudge against people, or women in general - the never ending quest for the favor of beautiful women can tear their life apart, leaving them a hallow shell.

For the weak of will and faint of heart, this book will do nothing, except maybe remind them of problems that haunt them when they are trying to go to bed at night.  Some men suffer from pride, and this is the greatest vice.  Pride prevents men from admitting they are wrong and seeking help.

For the men who are neither grudge-holders or too prideful, this book will serve as a wonderful step forward in understanding what attracts women.  The amount of knowledge in this book is worth that of 10 or more similarly sized books.

Some women will look at this book and think that they would never want a man who enjoyed reading about such things - fearing maybe, the objectification of women lies between the silky binding.  If I were a woman, the last thing I would want would be a guy that secretly think that deep down he has failed in a large part of what most consider success in the art of being a heterosexual male - attracting women. Better he comes to terms with that half of himself.  This book is written by a kind man who recognizes that all men and women are seeking happiness, and his perspective presents an honest approach to dealing with the challenge’s of manhood.

Passion of the Miest(er)

My  dad calls/called me the Miester all the time.  As in Scott-miester.   Hey, if you have a better title, we’re taking patches.

I saw Julie and Julia the other night and it got me thinking about passion.  Some time in the movie was spent not only talking about the two character’s passion for cooking, but also most interestingly, the time before they embraced their passion for cooking.   Julia Child’s time was especially titillating, as she spent these scenes in France, where I’d personally love to get a little lost, if only in terms of personal identity.

The time before great people realize what they are meant to achieve is always interesting to me because I’d like to duplicate their success, personally.  All right, I’m pretty sure I don’t want to write a book on cooking…but MealsZen is a cooking website.

Anyways let’s get down to brass tax.  What is passion?  How do you know when you have passion? and so on and so forth?  Well, here’s my theory.  Passion is when is the result of your creation is such ridiculous bad-assery that any amount of pain in the creation process becomes worth it.

Practicing isn’t fun.   Creating stuff sucks, especially if it’s time consuming.  Learning how to cook 524 recipes like Julie did sound’s  lot more fun then say, training for a triathlon, but it probably still starts to suck a bit after like number 5 and more so after say number 500.   I think that eventually your mind and body gets so habituated to practicing that you start to expect it and therefore, cease to dread it.  The fact is, we can get addicted to anything…good or bad. Seriously.  People get addicted to work all the time and EVERYONE knows how much work sucks…but they just get used to it.

Creating ceases to suck at the moment that you are done creating. At that point you are generally revelling in two things: first, that you are done creating and now you can go watch Adult Swim (sweet), and second, that you just created this THING.  Now, the being done part is always pretty much the same but this THING is always different.  In my opinion, how much you get excited about this THING is directly porportional to how passionate you are about this particular creation art.

So look at all the end results around you.   Does Beef Bourguigon sound like something ridiculously awesome?  How about Stairway to Heaven?

Is the Kindle too fragile?

I love my kindle.    If I had to choose between the iPhone and the Kindle…I would probably choose the kindle?

Why?

1. Because I love learning.
2. Because there is no monthly fee.
3. Because it helps me in my career as a software engineer.

However, in the past few months, I’ve seen my Xbox 360 get the Red Rings of Death, 2 kindles get broken, and my iPhone screen get seriously cracked.

This makes me wonder: am I relying too much on inherently fragile devices?