This recent underwear bomber incident was in the WSJ, with this paragraph:

The newest plot appears to provide a chilling illustration of al Qaeda’s determination to learn from its mistakes: The bomb that was recovered has two detonators, providing a crucial backup in the event one failed, a U.S. official said Tuesday.

CHILLING! AIEEEE! THEY WANT OUR WIMMEN! God look at all the power scare language in there. Chilling determination to use a crucial backup, official said. In total, giving the impression of a massive al Qaeda industrial complex, prototyping, refining, building; machinery of Death inexorably chewing its way through the Earth to devour everything we hold dear.

I mean yes, the facts are true, there are people who want to blow up shit. But my reaction to this was: well of course they’re going to try to improve the design, right? That’s what happens. That’s what you do. Last guy couldn’t get the thing to go, so let’s put on a backup. Let’s rewrite that paragraph as:

The newest plot demonstrates the terrorists are improving on their designs: the bomb that was recovered has two detonators, providing a backup in the event one failed, a U.S. official said Tuesday.

Yeah, sucks. But expected and predictable, and given we’re reading about it and shit wasn’t actually blown up, I guess security was better than that, right? But stuff like “chilling determination” makes me think of The Onion’s spoofs of early 20th century news, where they would report on the depraved and evil X, where X is America’s enemy du jour (Spaniards, the Hun, North Koreans, hippies, etc., etc.)

—

I got in a sort-of argument with my coworkers recently. We’d just been in a seminar called Influencing Without Authority (which describes at least 2/3rds of my job), during which the guy running the thing said something to the effect of: in a recent study on communication, where you consider words, tone, and body language, the latter is actually 50 to 70% of the message. Tone is 30%. Words are only about 7% of the message. He wrote these on the board.

“But what do we mean by ‘message’ here?” I’d asked.

“Well! I will show you. Here are five words, okay, simple message. Greg – please – shut – the – door. Okay? Now I will deliver that message in three different ways…” etc. etc. Follows is a fairly predictable scene — he says it pleasantly, then weirdly, then angrily. Then he asks everyone, what happened in each case? What message did we get from each presentation? And he’s an admitted salesman, right. He’s animated, expressive; everyone nods along, dutifully providing the answers he’s leading them to give, and he continues on, his point proven.

This just pisses me off.

So later I got in a sort-of argument about this with my co-workers. “He just made everyone agree with the point he was making, by making very specific anecdotal examples that were easy to agree with.”

“But it made sense,” coworker said. “The first time, he said it pleasantly, but the last time, he was angry–”

“No! No, because that wasn’t the message. The message was, close the door. How he said it was additional information, but it wasn’t the message. That’s why I asked what we mean by ‘message’. But he didn’t even answer that. He just rolled right over my question, like a salesman, so he could make the point that he knows what he’s talking about. And then everyone nodded their heads like he actually answered me. I watch politicians on TV get away with this all the time and it drives me nuts.”

“But tone and body language are a part of conveying what you say.”

“I’m not arguing that. Of course I agree with that. I’m talking about the meta-point here…or, well really, that ‘words are 7% of the message’ is bullshit. Look, I could just as easily — okay. Pretend I’m the one giving this seminar. I write words, tone, body language on the board. And I give you this example:

“Imagine you’re giving a presentation for work. You have your powerpoint, your projector, your notes, the meeting begins, and you’re about to speak. But suddenly: all the words are gone! There are no words in your powerpoint, no words on your notes, suddenly you’ve forgotten everything. But you deliver your presentation anyway. All you can say is ‘Blah blah BLAH, blah blah blah BLAH.’ You can kind of convey a tone of voice, and you can gesture and move your body. But none of the words are there. Are the people in the meeting going to know what you’re talking about? Of course not!

“So then I write the obvious percentages on the board:

“Because all the people in the room will be able to tell is ‘he’s happy’ or ‘he’s angry’. But will they get your message? No. They’ll have no idea what your presentation is actually about, so words are 70% of your message.”

“It can’t be that much.”

“Yeah that’s not my point. My point is the salesman took a load of numbers and made them feel right, and everyone fell right into it. Why didn’t anyone even ask about ’7%’? What the fuck, seven? That’s a highly specific number to start with, and all the sudden the last one is a wide range from 50 to 70? What that said to me was, this message is screwed up. But what it said to everyone else was, yes sir, that makes perfect sense sir, tell me where to sign, sir. And I just find that highly irritating.”

The second isn’t fit for publication. It’s something I’m working, but…well, my approach to some things is that I minimize my risk as much as possible, but to the outside viewer it’d just make me look kind of stalkery. Always the risk of it blowing up in my face and making me look completely creepy. Whatever. But that’s going. But not really all that well.

The third is going to different get togethers/meetups/whathaveyou and just trying to meet people. You know, like lame-ass self-help books on making friends.

Q: But how do I meet people?
A: Join a book club! Look into knitting circles in your area. Ask your local butcher!

Et cetera. Feels kind of artificial and pathetic, but 42 years later it’s pretty clear this isn’t gonna work for me organically, so fine.

I tried a few groups but nothing was really clicking. There was a Mensa game night thing, a different random person game thing, an MST3K-viewing thing…I mean all nerdy to be sure, and I figure these are My People, so. But I guess I forgot I don’t really have a tolerance for nerds.

Finally I found a list of open mic comedy nights around the city, started going to those, and felt like this might be my In. Of course Debb spotted this long before I did — she figured I’d get along better with people in a comedy-based situation. And last night, talking it out with her, I realized of course that would be true. I’d prefer to be around a bunch of funny geeks, but if I had to choose, I’d much rather be around funny non-geeks than non-funny geeks. Just picture a stereotype for each group, and you’ll probably agree it’s an obvious choice. Well, maybe you won’t, but I guess I’m picturing my own stereotype of the people who are likely to be reading this at all.

When I say “going to” I mean just watching. Partly because, hey, free comedy. But partly because I was getting to see people, and in fact in much tighter situations than I’m used to. Well, stuff like the game nights was a lot more direct interaction, yeah. But still, it’s hard to fade to invisible when you’re one of 12 people in the back room of a bar. And really, despite what I said about preferring funny over geek, the truth is I identify a lot closer to geeks than non-, so being in tight quarters with several Normals is actually more outside my comfort zone. Especially since “tight quarters” is usually a bar, and bars are foreign places to me as well.

But over the course of a month I saw enough mediocre sets that I started getting the urge. Pretty much, I’m convinced that anything I want to do, anything I spend some time on, I will be above average at it. (corrolary: I won’t be really great at a thing. Or I’ll never meet my standards for where I would want to be.) Not to say I’d be better than half of those I’ve seen performing, but I was pretty sure that if you took 50 random people off the street, I’d be better at stand-up than at least 25 of them.

And then: blah blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah blah. Here’s the problem: I write so much that I can easily outpace my upset while I’m writing. End effect is that, before I get my full screed done, I’m already over it.

So the quick version is: I did some standup, the first time went pretty well, but the second time really failed to come up to my expectations, and I spent half a week being really upset about it. But the big problem in my head wasn’t really that I didn’t get reaction to comedy; the big problem was that I was feeling like I was being rejected from a community. It’s not rational that I jumped to that conclusion, but that’s the thing, all this emotional stuff wasn’t rational.

I’m working through it, but certainly not so panty-bunched as I had been. If you haven’t taken enough punishment reading through all this, you can get the full story in Keep Being Awesome #11, but that’ll be a tough slog to haul through, so good luck.

So I kind of…well I’m not gonna go as far as to say “I made a plan”. I guess I could say I made myself more open to possibilities, which then kind of coalesced into three separate approaches. In increasing order of my expectations, they were these.

The first is going out to nightclubs or whathaveyou. By myself. At first I felt weird about it. Actually — yeah, the first night I went out, I drove to the bar/club that I had picked, parked within sight of the door, and looked at it for 90 minutes, trying to get my nerve up to go in. I felt dumb about it, but stuck with it, trying not to let myself get overwhelmed with feeling like a loser, just understanding this is difficult for me and I just need some time to get my courage up.

As is my wont, I spent much of that hour and a half analyzing myself and my reaction. I came to realize I was locked up by two opposite fears: I was afraid people would talk to me, and I was afraid people would not talk to me. So I was stuck by indecision and couldn’t get myself out of the car. But in the end I decided: well, whenever I go to something in public, what really happens? No one talks to me. So why fear that? And in fact why feel stupid about being there by myself at all. If I’m the creepy weirdo standing on the wall in the club then so be it. At this stage I just want to be around people, and if they look at me oddly, fuck it. Resolving one half of that conflict was enough to get me out of the car. That night I coined a different mantra: Embrace the Weirdo.

I knew there was some other thing blocking me, but I didn’t figure it out until the next day. There were generally people standing outside smoking, and going in would mean I’d have to walk past them. So it was high school flashbacks — having to walk past the cool kids to go to the dance floor, and of course they’re going to sneer as you go past — poindexter, what do you think you’re doing here? It’s just difficult to get past that value judgment right up front.

But that worked out okay, and so far I’ve settled on this one gothy nightclub, just to indulge my inner goth. And last week I went and it was pretty good. Not for the nightclub itself, but because it’s on a strip where there are some bars, so I walk out on the street a bit, and it’s drunk weirdo me walking past drunk normal them and some of them fascinated with drunk weirdo me. I mean I was in my full goth armor — black coat down to my ankles, black pants, black shirt, black vest, black gloves, red tie. Embrace the Weirdo. But people were happy to see me! Here I was, I mean, full-on weirdo, even more weirdo than I’m comfortable with, and I’m not getting my lunch money stolen or anything. Someone even stopped to get a picture with me. I mean, in a sense they’re amused by the goth clown, I know. But I didn’t get the sense people were laughing at me. Some of them, it was clear, were just delighted by the variety of the city, of which I was a part.

Thing was, that was kinda fun, but I don’t really expect any real interaction to come from it. I mean it’s good for me to have living proof that not everyone is negatively judgmental. But given my target is to make some connections with people, this whole club thing is probably going to be the least productive.

mmm. Now I’m at the point of the post where, if it was somebody else’s, I’d be saying “christ, I’m not gonna read all this.” Well, that’s the end of Act One. More later if I am still feeling like shit.

So I posted an ad on Craigslist:

iPad 16G + Wifi + AT&T 3G with bonus leather case – $400

With pictures and descriptions and trying to put together a good reason why people should give me $400, et cetera. A surprising number of people contacted me almost immediately, and a surprising number of people somehow assumed a “2″ after “iPad”, including the guy who actually met me at a Starbucks and suddenly came to the realization that it’s not what he thought it was. That was embarrassing for both of us, but at least he had the comfort of walking away with four hundred dollars.

After that, I added an image next to the ipad images:

But it didn’t prevent this text conversation with a prospective buyer an hour after I posted it. Bold is his, italics mine:

: Ipad?

Yeah, just that. So:

: Ipad.

: Is to be reading image in ad which clearly answers that question

Somehow that was the conversation killer.

But I expect stupid; what really surprised me were the number of scam attempts I got. I mean, Craigslist warns about this plenty, but I was never exposed to it, possibly because I’d never tried selling anything on Craiglist over $200. One guy was, I dunno, he actually lives in Wisconsin! But he’s here until tomorrow morning and flying back from O’hare! And he really wants to see it right now but I need to bring it down to his friend’s house near the intersection of Shady and Scary in the next hour! If I don’t have a car he’d be glad to pay cab fare!

Another one, well…

: U still have the ipad forsale??

: Can u call or ...cause i am trying to make purchase right now.

I know it’s Christmas Eve and someone might be in a hurry for present reasons, but. I learned a long time ago that being pressured into fast money transactions doesn’t generally go well for me.

: On a phone call, can't right now, sorry

: Ok well ill jus buy someone elses thanx

I figure a guy in so much of a hurry that he has to go on to the next ad RIGHT NOW probably doesn’t really need to take the time to text a snarky reply, so. He probably was hoping I’d return with Sorry! I’ll bring it over right now if you’ll pay for my cab fare to the intersection of Creepy and Stabby! I mentally wished him well, since I didn’t want to spend a dime on the text message to do so directly.

But the most interesting was this one:

: iPad 16G + Wifi + AT&T 3G with bonus leather case - $400 What is your best offer?

: Good to read from you and i believe we can continue on this transaction because i don't like to beat around the bush and am not here for games, I am buying this item for my spouse located Colorado but on association and institution drive oversea i will be responsible for the shipping and handling cost, meanwhile i will offer you $640 USD, let me know if you are okay with my offer. Regards

Whoa, what? I mean, okay, obviously something scammy. Not only does Craigslist go through a lot of trouble telling you that a request to ship stuff is probably a scam, but I can’t imagine what Google Translate knockoff gave them “on association and institution drive oversea”. (Best I could guess, he meant he was on an overseas business retreat, maybe?) But the part I was really curious about…

: You're offering 640 for something I listed at 400?

: Yeah....just cover up the shipping and handling fees including tax and insurance if you think it's too much as i am not familiar with the USPS/EMS shipping issue you can just make the calculation your self let me know if you would be able to do that please get back to me

Okay, so the $640 is just the hook to make me greedy enough to not think about it too much. Greedy enough not to wonder why a guy overseas just for a business trip would think shipping an iPad costs over two hundred dollars.

Craigslist also says quite a lot about not trusting anyone who says they’ll send a money order or wire money or whatever. So I was curious further.

: And how would you send payment?

: Okay...Am gonna make the payment upfront kindly get back to me with your paypal verified email address so that i can arrange for the payment

Huh, Paypal. Interesting angle. I bet people probably inherently trust that receiving Paypal money is as good as getting money in the bank, but I’ve heard some stories about Paypal being really irritating lately.

I did a little research around the web, and came to the conclusion that what these scammers do is actually transfer the money, but after you send the item, they complain to Paypal that they never received it. It seems like Paypal generally just refunds the money, takes it back from the seller, ignores all seller protests to the contrary, and calls it a day. So if I were to actually fall into this, I’d get the $640, send the ipad, and then probably be forced into giving the $640 back in a week (either through my Paypal balance or my required-to-be-linked bank account).

Okay, so. I’m curious again…but this time I’m wondering how far I can push this.

: It turns out the USPS/EMS issue to Colorado is higher due to interstate shipping tarriffs, I need $980 USD (only)

He doesn’t reply until the next day. It was late, though I don’t know what time zone he was in. The texts were coming from a 213 number, but who knows where he actually was. Anyway, I got up the next morning, and there’s this message waiting:

: No.. you are shipping it to my friend in Africa and i will pay you that amount just get back to me with your paypal verified email address so that i can make payment asap

Man, this was less than 12 hours later and he already got his stories mixed up. Sloppy.

: Congrats on your wife's recent trip to africa. Owing to export tarriffs to africa that means it'll cost $1328.95

: Okay kindly get back to me with your paypal money request to my email at victormeires@gmaill.com

sk0re! Over three times my asking price! Okay, let’s seal the deal.

: Okay I will do that directly thank you for not beating around bushes and happy holidays to you and your wives in africa and colorado

Then I wait a half hour, ostensibly setting that up, but wouldn’t you know I hit a snag.

: Oh no... Owing to Paypal tarriffs and fees, the price for the 16G/3G ipad 1 would be $1548.63 USD only. Do you accept (Y/N)

: ok...keep me posted

Heh, much shorter response, this time. Maybe he’s all “Come on, you stupid fat American, send money already.”

At this point I’m almost actually wondering. What if I sent him a money request? Not that I would plan to keep the money, obviously — I’m just curious if I’d actually get a $1548.63 deposit in my Paypal account. But 1) I don’t know if Paypal sucks so hard that even if I returned the money right away, they’d have some way of making it unpleasant for me, and 2) for all I know the scam’s somewhere I can’t see, like maybe just the fact that he gets my Paypal-verified email address gives him something.

Still. I’d pretty much run out the escalating price path. If he said okay to $1500, he’d say okay to $650,000, so there’s no point taking that further. What else could I do?

At some point while all this was going on, I thought, hm this is costing me a couple bucks in texting fees, but it’s worth it for the entertainment. And as I was trying to work out next steps, I thought, how could you reverse a scam? Not like I’m Oceans 11 over here, but just a guy with a cellphone, in what way could I scam a scammer?

Then, oh, both thoughts at once gave me an idea.

: Thank you I have spent $3 in texting charges organizing this transaction, if you are agreeable I would like to send you a request for that amount as a sign of good faith that you are a trustworthy person, thank you and god bless

: Okay...let me know as soon as you send it

So that would be pretty awesome if that worked. Not only would I recoup my costs, but $3 would likely be under Paypal’s resource threshhold, and I’d have a great story. But I was worried…like I said, maybe the scam’s somewhere out of my view, and just the act of engaging him via Paypal at all puts me in harm’s way.

So I sleep on it, and the next morning I decide I gotta see this through. I go to Paypal and write up a carefully worded money request. Not “carefully worded” in any sense like protecting me from legal/TOU issues, but…well, with the assumption that if some grumpy Paypal agent is reading the transaction in the near future, I want it as clear as possible that I’m not receiving money for something that I was supposed to do in the future, I’m collecting money for something that happened in the past.

Even so, I stared at that and worried for ten minutes. No matter how well I worded it, some angry, indifferent Paypal dude could still zap me somehow. And I still might have been missing something. But I decided to wing it anyway. Just to be safe, I changed my password to a crazy-hard 19-character digital mess, and sent it off.

No response for much of the day, but finally about 8 hours later (hey, maybe I just figured out what timezone he’s in, come to think of it), I got this somewhat agitated response.

: WHAT THE HELL DID YOU SEND ME TO PAY FOR YOUR TEXTING AM GETTING CRAZY IT SEEMS YOU MAD OKAY

Whew. Okay that’s worlds better than “ha ha, fat Yankee dog, I now empty your bank account”. Or my bank sending me a letter saying “Dear Mr. Yankee Dog, you are now legally required to ship your house to Chechnya.”

I replied back saying “hey, you agreed, please owing to transaction and etc., god bless and regards” but that was the last I heard from him. I guess I was lucky enough to exactly hit his $1548.63 limit for my $400 ipad, but I got greedy. That extra three bucks was just too much of a risk for him and I was so close.

Had his subconscious been correct, he would’ve joined it in its mild irritation.

That form of bluster rarely seemed appropriate — “hey, do this RIGHT NOW, Citywe’rein!” — especially as now, when the command was issued from the front window of a storefront gymlet, down a side street of a side street, hardly able to make its demands known by people a hundred yards away, let alone the entire population of a major metropolitan city. As it was, however, the experience just left him amused at what effect reading a good book will have on the way he thinks. 

I appreciate the concern and appreciation of those of you who had written things here. Thanks. I’ve spent a fair amount of time in the last few months thinking about…oh, the point of it all, I guess. Creatively I think I’ve historically been driven by a need to be heard, to be appreciated, and to get an audience; but I’m coming around to the question, do I really need to? And I’m kinda thinking no. Which for me, in terms of the typical turmoil in my head, is a good thing, because the turmoil’s been pretty calm lately, and I’m thinking of my life less as stresses I create to force myself in certain directions, and more as taking myself in directions because I feel like it.

So I really feel like I let myself down, as far as SpinnWebe is concerned — for a while I had a pretty good audience, and if I had more tenacity I probably could’ve held on to it. So when I think about A1AAA or AV1D or any other number of projects I half-started or barely started or didn’t start, it generally makes me feel guilty, but I still don’t get it done. So I’m trying to shift to not feeling guilty about it anymore. Kinda sucks for those of you who want to see those things happen, but really this is a major step towards happiness for me.

Though having said that, I drew about five Scribs tonight so I can try to get that last arc finished, at least. And I’ve been thinking more frequently about getting back to the podcast, though I’m requiring myself to think of a way to make it actually interesting first. But I’m letting that come to me on its own terms, no pressure.

And the memory. Always the memory. I’d like to write more but my brain can’t support it. I was in a mood to write a week ago, but as I’m walking from the bathroom to the kitchen, five different ideas fly through my head, with no warning or notice and no tracks left in their passing. Maybe I have to learn how to write things down quickly in outline or something…but by the time I think of that it’s probably too late.

So, Scribs, yeah. I need to get something together that creates an interactive audience. I hoped Scribs would do that, but it didn’t, at least not at the level of effort I’m willing to sustain. I think i have more chance with that with a podcast, but my first attempt had a fairly predictable downward spiral into navel gazing. But the benefit of talking my thoughts is that I can nearly talk at the speed of my thoughts, so there’s a more fulfilling feeling that what you hear is roughly what’s actually happening in my head. I think I had to do ten right next to each other to get out a lot of daily this-n-that that clogs up my skull. Either I’m taking a rest and I’ll do more of that, or I’m taking a rest and I’ll work out a more interesting format, or I’m taking a rest and won’t do a goddamn thing. Not sure yet.

In any case the point is, Scribs is done for now, again. Except for this last arc I have to finish and put up. But I’m going to let the domain name expire at the end of the month and move the archive to SpinnWebe. Not even sure if the templates will work properly in that context; hopefully the archive will still be available without needing too much work.

Fun detail, though — doc said my bronchitis could be caused by two different types of bacteria: one that tends to affect younger people, and one that tends to affect older people. He said each has its own treatment, and he gave me the old guy meds. I’m kinda of split mind on whether I want them to work.

So I got the prescription and took it to the drugstore, and they had to look a bit for my account details — because apparently I haven’t been there in the last five years, and they had old address and phone number info that I had to dig around in my brain for. (Seriously, I just don’t need doctors much.) Got those, taking them, hopefully getting better.

But it reminds me why I don’t like taking medicine. It’s just the way it changes you. That kind of powerful chemistry gets in your body and it has to knock some shit over. Like, I took a nap earlier and suddenly woke up with serious stomach acid. I tend towards acidity, but if the inside of my stomach was painted, it’d be peeling. And I feel like my heart flutters a bit every now and then.

Also, the rancid farting.

I have a pretty good sense of how my body acts, and feels, and is. So when it’s off like this, it makes me uncomfortable. Probably a good thing that I haven’t done drugs, because I’d be endlessly paranoid about the aftereffects. Ach! But right now I’d probably take the uncertainty and weirdness if this goddamn cough would finally go away.

For years and years I’ve had this idea of a comic set up in a grid format, such that you can start from the top left, and go either right or down from each panel, with the strip still making sense in whichever order you choose. I never really took a shot at it because my thought process generally went:

1) hey, that grid idea
2) whoo, tough
3) lunch

But I decided “hey, let’s stop assuming things are too hard to do before I even try them,” and then I tried it, and I came up with three of them. The first one’s okay; it was my first shot, and nothing special. But I like the next two. I have a bit of an advantage that Scribs are a bit non-sequiturish anyway, but that’s fine, I think they’re still neat.