“The sound of a kiss is not so loud as that of cannon but its echo lasts a great deal longer.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes

The filmmaker, Tatia Pilieva, just released a short film that’s as spectacular to watch as butterfly wings. It’s equally delicate and beautiful, and just as likely to leave you grinning. It’s super-short, it’s like, three minutes and some change. The film brings together twenty strangers and asks them to kiss for the first time … as they’re recorded on camera.

First Kiss  is possibly one of the coolest things you’ll watch this year.

You can trust it’s got its bona fides, as far as romance goes. My girl, the French singer/actress/model/badass, SoKo, is one of the strangers asked to kiss on camera. And one of her coolest, most tender-hearted songs, “We Might Be Dead By Tomorrow”  provides the film’s soundtrack. As you watch Pilieva’s work it feels like you’re eating dessert in the middle of a dream.

First Kiss is vaguely reminiscent of two other recent art projects centered on what’s revealed when an artist pushes strangers into moments of intimacy, and how our invisible walls fall away when we touch each other.

The photographer Richard Renaldi created a series of photos called, Touching Strangers, in 2007. He asked complete strangers to pose as if they were close friends or lovers. Their body language often looks as natural as if they were truly intimate, which raises so many cool questions for the viewer to consider.

A few years later, in 2011, the photographer, Jamie Diamond, began a series called Constructed Family Portraits. In his series, he arranged to meet strangers in hotel rooms, where he’d pose them together to capture a “picture perfect” holiday card, one that absolutely no family would take. His series was more humorous but also revealed how touch can signal so much to both the viewer and the subject.

What gives Tatia Pilieva’s piece slightly more of a psychic jolt than those two prior photo series is how she captures the sexual tension that exists before a first kiss between strangers (or even, new lovers). It’s touch taken to a far more intimate place. Also, she’s not limited to one picture of a single frozen moment, instead her camera lingers in the succeeding moments of awkwardness leading up to the instant when the subjects’ shyness and nerves give way to saliva-swapping intimacy.

Of course, it doesn’t hurt that she picked 20 attractive strangers and asked them to kiss. The brilliance that keeps her project from becoming a beautiful trifle, something like a fashion film, is how she trains the viewer’s focus on the play between our inhibitions and erotic curiosity. Rather than show us their sexy surfaces, she shows us the currents just beneath the skin.

We get to peer into the strangers’ intimate moment, as they prepare to mash faces together. We are them, as they wait unsure when exactly they should start kissing. We easily imagine how amazing the first press of flesh to flesh must feel as we watch them finally kiss. Everyone involved, viewer and subject, is reminded of the simple power of a first kiss.

And the reactions to the kisses, how long the subjects linger and what they do after they kiss … well, I’ll leave that for you to enjoy.

(photo by NinfeAde) 

    I remember exactly when all the trouble began. It was right after I thought: she’s so sexy she makes my clothes feel like a prison. That’s when I knew I had to feel her. Like, I had to know her from the inside. I just had to. But I still wasn’t sure if she felt the same about me. Which raised a question that has plagued (straight) men since the dawn of time: How do you know when a woman wants to have sex? You could wait for her to say something, or do something explicit, or anything that makes it obvious. But I think we all know women won’t always make it obvious. They’re often harder to read than a bio-chem textbook. Whenever I’m alone with a woman and I think sex is in the air, I keep a weather eye out for any signs of her desire or indications I should make a move. Signs were still mixed. Sometimes a woman will electrify the air by doing something rather overt like, say, start talking about sex. It’s almost always a good sign if sex is on her mind when you’re around. That’s what happened with me and this Hollywood executive I’d been chasing for weeks.

We were alone in her bedroom, on her bed, just inches apart, a few buttons and zippers away from slipping into something more comfortable. She wasn’t teasing me. She wasn’t the type to rely on innuendo. Not her. She was a grown woman with grown woman rhythms and rhymes. She was nothing like the girls my age (twenty-two): she was in her mid-thirties and she spoke her mind. At the moment what was on her mind was sex with a black man. Only, dear readers, it wasn’t this black man. You see, she decided in this bedroom moment that this was the perfect time to tell me her story of taking a “huge black guy” home from a club. She painted the picture with bold strokes and great detail. She told me all about how it felt as he fucked her on top of the washing machine in the laundry room of her very expensive apartment building. I hoped this wasn’t her idea of foreplay.

I gave her the benefit of the doubt and thought, maybe this is her way of telling me she kinda has a thing for black guys. Which if you are one, it’s something you get used to hearing. People are quick to fetishize each other. We love to fuck foreigners. I only hoped she didn’t limit her fetish to “huge black guys,” because I stood a finger of whisky under six feet and weighed a buck-sixty with my boots on. But then again, I also thought, maybe it wasn’t about the black guy. Maybe she just wanted me to know she’s really turned on by washing machines. Maybe that’s her real kink. The story clearly had some meaning. It bubbled up out of her subconscious for a reason. What kept me on the edge of laughter was the way she talked about sex; it was so blatantly vulgar that it seemed like she either didn’t give a fuck, or had lost all sense of how she might sound to another human being. She was that senile old man talking dirty to the poor attendant who has to give him a sponge bath. And in this analogy I was the one holding the soapy sponge.

I’ve found there’s an occupational hazard for those who make movies for Americans. They often become vulgar. Despite her coarse approach to sexual bragging, I liked her story. Well, to say I liked it may be an exaggeration. It was entertaining. Making conversation with this horny Hollywood executive was nothing like talking with some nice, turned-on girl from Minneapolis.

We sat on her bed and I waited for the right moment to make a move. But then, just as she finished her story, she changed gears so quickly I could barely keep up. There’s a saying that Washington D.C. is just Hollywood for ugly people. Well, it works both ways. With a sudden profusion of political charm, she grinned like she wanted my vote. Her hazel eyes went beyond staring and dove into my dark brown soul-holes. And then, for what seemed like a slow southern moment, she swam around in my eyes. We played at a staring contest. I reminded myself not to speak first. In her eyes, I spied the reflection of the red digital display of her alarm clock. 11:14 crouched in the lower left arc of her iris. As I read the time off the wet hazel of her eyes, she looked at me like she was busy imagining a new way for us to have fun on her bed. I only guessed this because she smiled with a dirty grin. That was a good sign. Or so I thought. Cracking open her smile so she could speak, she said, as if it were the most normal question to follow a story about an anonymous laundry room fuck, “Has anyone ever read your tarot?” I didn’t see that one coming. I was really hoping for something more in the line of, “Do you have to work early tomorrow?” Or maybe she might ask something more direct like, “Do you wanna go take a shower … together?” But tarot? No, didn’t see that coming. I didn’t know shit about tarot cards. I told her as much. Nothing against her question but I felt like a man meeting his first used car salesman, instinctively wary. Still, I was horny and thus, ready to hear her spiel. I asked, “You really wanna read my fortune?” She could’ve said dominoes. I wasn’t really thinking that much about the tarot cards or the fact she wanted to peer into my future. I was mostly thinking about time. Tarot cards? Sure. How long could that take? I calculated the minutes added until we could get horizontal and start taking our clothes off. At that point in my life tarot cards meant two things: buzzing neon and teenage girls. There were the neon signs in the windows of storefronts for the palm readers. And there was that thing teenage girls did at sleepovers with Ouija boards and tarot cards and Light As A Feather, Stiff As A Board. In college, tarot cards popped up at stoners’ houses on coffee tables and bookshelves, or they were something New Agers did as they sat around drinking wine on a weekday night. Until that moment, tarot cards had always remained on the periphery of my life. And they would’ve stayed that way if it weren’t for the Hollywood exec. She and I had fought and flirted for weeks. But that’s how she was. She was so smart she was angry about it. Even her hair was churlish. She had this undomesticated mane of dirty blonde curls that preferred to crowd around her face, tickle her cheeks and ears. She sat up with the suddenness of a mid-afternoon Florida rainstorm. No warning. Raised her hands to her head and smoothed back her curls. With well-practiced efficiency, she tied her hair up, then nodded at me and promised, “This will be so cool!” I didn’t argue. She spun around to retrieve her tarot cards from a drawer in her bedside table. I heard it open. I remember thinking: Whoa, she keeps them close. When she turned back to face me, she asked what I knew about the tarot. I mentioned the goth teen girls in my hometown; the ones who smoked cigarettes and listened to dark European music before anyone else. They thought the tarot had mystical properties. They also thought Robert Smith was sexy so I considered their judgment a little questionable. They introduced me to the tarot. But they’d never done a reading for me. With a smirk, the Hollywood exec said, “Oh, fun! You’re a tarot virgin.” She handed me the deck. The skin of our fingers slowly rubbed past each other. For a brief moment it felt like all my attention rushed down to the spot on my hand where we touched and all of me was pressing out from inside my skin wanting to feel as much of her as I possibly could. She told me to shuffle the cards and to imagine putting my energy into the deck. I know innuendo when I hear it, so I grinned and did as I was told. I moved the cards around, slowly, folding and shuffling them, sliding one stack into another. As I handled them, she told me a short history of the cards. I’ll give you an even shorter one. The tarot makes its first official appearance in the world’s memory in the 1400s, in Italy. Some insist the cards are a product of Jewish mysticism and the Kaballah, and they date them back to the Temple of Solomon. Others say they’re even older and we inherited them from Egyptian mystics and that the cards crossed the Red Sea with Moses and his followers. This is all speculation. What we do know is the first recorded deck appeared sometime between 1430 and 1450. As best we can tell, the tarot was created as an adaptation of the standard deck of playing cards (or as some insist, it was vice versa). Both decks have 52 cards broken up into four suits with cards numbering 1-10 and a “court” of four face cards and toss in a joker (renamed the Fool in tarot). The chief distinction is that a deck of tarot cards (traditionally) has 78 cards. The additional cards are called the major arcana (and the traditional 52-cards are called the minor arcana). In Europe, primarily in rural areas or urban centers where old school ways still hold sway, people use tarot cards to play card games. But dating back to some time in the nineteenth century, gypsies and other folks living in English-speaking parts of the world started using the cards to tell the future. This history of divination is what gives the cards their cultural cache. Naturally, once they got a hold of tarot cards, psychologists, just like palm readers, grew fascinated with the hidden meaning in the tarot. Never one to miss out on a symbolic language he could use to seek communion with the Collective Unconscious, renowned psychotherapist Carl Jung was particularly drawn to the tarot. The following is taken from a lecture he gave at a seminar: “These cards are really the origin of our pack of cards, in which the red and the black symbolize the opposites, and the division of four—clubs, spades, diamonds, and hearts—also belongs to the individuation symbolism. They are psychological images, symbols with which one plays, as the unconscious seems to play with its contents.” (photo by NinfeAde)   After she’d impressed me with the history and secret mystery of tarot, she asked me, “What’s your question?” She may not know shit about foreplay but she knew how to play witchy games. I said, “I want to know … about my immediate romantic future.” That seemed like the most sophisticated way I could ask if we’re gonna fuck tonight. She smiled at my question and asked if it was cool if she used a Celtic Cross layout. I said sure, since I had no idea what that was but figured it’d make my Irish ancestors happy. She laid my first card. Her face scrunched up a bit. That didn’t seem like a good sign. My second card was worse. She actually flinched. From there, it sorta snowballed. After she flipped over the third card, she laughed out loud. It was like the punch line from a joke I didn’t get. I mostly stared at the images. They reminded me of renaissance era art. The fourth card she dropped on her bed was The Fool. It’s a card from the major arcana — the ones depicting a person or situation — he is the zero card. To a true reader of the tarot, The Fool represents the beginning of the soul’s journey. At that moment, he was me, and I was him. Based on her reactions, the best card I got had to be the fifth. The sixth one was another good card. When she flipped over the card, she smiled. I thought — that’s two in a row —hold on a sec — looks like sex might be back on the menu. With the first six cards she’d laid a central cross and surrounded it with the next four cards arranged like they marked the cardinal directions. Together, they formed the Celtic Cross. But she wasn’t done. We still had to climb the staff. Next to the circular cross, usually to the right, the staff looks like a tarot totem pole. And my pattern of fucked-up cards held true. The seventh card, of course, was a bad one. Occasionally, she’d asked me questions about how I interpreted the cards, and with this one it seemed key. She told me the general meaning, and then I agreed that I was chasing after pleasure, first and foremost. That was the gist of the card and I applied it to my life. This was my way of saying “I’m down for whatever … let’s go find that washing machine.” But she didn’t seem to want to hear that. Her eyebrows huddled together — deep in thought. She said the seventh card was kinda a bad sign. If I were looking for romance it suggested I was lying to myself; it appeared all I was really after in that moment was cheap thrills. I’d stepped in shit interpreting that card. But damn if it wasn’t honest. On the outside, I remained nonchalant. On the inside, I was thinking: WTF, tarot, why you gotta be such a fucking cock block? As much as I was attracted to this woman, as much as I liked to argue with her, I never imagined us getting married. And I hope she didn’t either. All I imagined us doing was fucking all over her apartment until the sun came up. But when I agreed with what the cards were telling her, I confirmed her suspicions. With more experience, I learned thirty-something women hate when their suspicions about the man in their life are confirmed. They hate to be right about that shit. Like, hate it. She wanted more than a laundry room fuck and I was so young I was quick to let her know that’s exactly what I wanted. Oops. The next card up the staff was the eighth card. She said it represented the people you’re dealing with, the folks who affect or are affected by your situation.Since I was asking the tarot about my immediate romantic prospects, we both knew, that meant her. Once again, I got a shitty card. I had to stifle a laugh. I was starting to think the tarot should buy me dinner and some wine since it was fucking me like a cheap date. By the ninth card, I fully regretted ever saying a tarot reading would be a cool thing for us to do. When the last card was laid, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be. I don’t think you could pull a worse card. For the tenth card, I got Death. She was sweet about it. She was quick to assure me this didn’t mean my literal death. I didn’t have to worry about driving home. It was just my symbolic death. It was the death of my immediate romantic future. The worse part was how cool she was with it. Like that shit did not bother her one iota. She’d done that romantic math and said, yep, checks out. With the last card laid, she was done with my reading. I kinda felt like I was naked. But not in the good way. More like in the we-just-played-strip-poker-with-the-tarot-cards-and-I-lost-every-hand sorta way. Which if you think about it, is also terribly ironic since getting naked was my whole original goal. I stared down at the spread and saw my one-night stand intentions spelled out on her bed. Now, I should tell you plain, I make no claims about the mysticism of the tarot. I don’t think that it can be proven or disproven, at least not in any substantial way that would satisfy both believers and critics. However, like Jung, I learned the cards are a symbolical system you can use to draw out your unconscious desires, subconscious opinions, and unexpressed hopes, fears and dreams. And she and I had done just that. I don’t know if she truly believed in them or if she sorta subconsciously knew she could use them like a tool to crack me open. If so, it worked. I broke open easy like a breakfast egg smashed against the metal of a hot griddle. These days, you can do online tarot readings. Find an app you like, download it to your phone and in moments of debate, you can circumvent your worrying rational mind, as you interpret your cards and “make sense” of your reading. While your conscious mind is distracted, your subconscious emerges like those purple rays of dawn, poking out over the edge of the horizon from some unseen place. As clear as the breaking day in the desert, and yet illusory as a mirage, you can spy glimpses of your future dance before you. If you haven’t noticed, your subconscious draws up most of the plans for your future. And it tells you almost nothing about those plans. Even though it works in the dark recesses of your mind, it has far more influence on your behavior than the part of you that’s reading this sentence. In case you were still wondering, the horny Hollywood exec and I didn’t have sex that night. The cards killed all that momentum. As I walked my candy ass home, unsexed and hornier than a busload of teenage nerds, I tried to figure out how it all went wrong and just how exactly the tarot gave such an accurate reading — because we didn’t fuck the next night, or any day or night after that. The tarot was right. You could say it was a self-fulfilling prophecy, and I would argue that all of your life is. And I’d add, working off that same principle, tarot cards offer you a way to see what you’ll be moving toward in your future, what you’re moving away from and what you’re chasing. Since the deck is symbolic you must project the meaning onto the cards. They have no intrinsic value without your interpretation; as the observer you make sense of the nonsense. In many ways, it’s like experiencing a waking dream. Lacking the linear nature of printed text, having no sentences to follow, no words to insist on a meaning, tarot cards are purely associative, they are an invitation to your unconscious to come out and play before your conscious eyes. The tarot may or may not be some secret tool of the universe. I don’t know. And, like astrology, frankly, I don’t care. I like them. They’re fun. Don’t piss in my pool. Now, despite the sad fact that I never got to feel that vulgar Hollywood exec from the inside like I wanted, she ended up giving me a way to feel myself, which is way cooler than some of the other options, such as telling me to go fuck myself. Instead of an orgasm, she was the first woman who blew my mind with the tarot. If you’re a tarot virgin, I strongly recommend finding someone to blow your mind. ⊗

 (this essay originally appeared on @Medium/HumanParts)

If you know anything about Bill Murray you know he’s not like the rest of us. A special zone of irreverence surrounds him. He sorta floats through the world like a shimmering soap bubble. If anyone is, he’s living the dream. He’s the smiling and cussing spirit of freedom. He’s practically a living saint, or at the very least, a holy fool.

You may or may not have heard Bill Murray has a new movie coming out called St. Vincent de Van Nuys. And you may have heard he was just in Japan, promoting the movie. And you may have heard that while he was there, cruising through Tokyo, in his inimitable Bill Murray style, he stopped a bank robbery … by accident. Only Bill Murray.

According to reports, the bank robber was making his getaway on foot when he spotted the star of Caddyshack. Of course, he ran over to speak with him. Wouldn’t you? Even if you were robbing bank. Okay, maybe not then, but otherwise … totally!

Referring to the character he played in the movie Lost In Translation, the robber asked the international movie star, “Are you Bob Harris?”

Bill Murray replied, “Yeah, sure, why not.”

The bank robber wasted so much time confessing how much he loved the movie and how great he thinks Bill Murray is, the Tokyo Metropolitan police were able to run up, tackle the bank robber and subdue him. This story was reported by conservative news organization, NationalReport.net.

And oh by the way … that story is entirely made-up. That source I just quoted, the National Report, it’s a satirical twist on the National Review, a real leading conservative publication. Always best to check your sources. Especially these days. But lots and lots of folks read that story and shared it on social media because — who has time to check stories anymore? And especially when they’re so damn rad like this one.

Bill Murray stopped a bank robbery … by accident? Yeah, sure, why not.

But yeah, no. Way too good to be true. However, this internet hoax does have an awesome silver lining. This fake story is more evidence of the brilliance of Bill Murray. If we can so easily believe he’s an accidental crime-fighter, a reluctant super hero, more than ask what does that say about us, we should ask: what does it say about him?

Who needs life hacks? Forget life lessons. We have Bill Murray.

If you wanna get better at life, if you need something for those times when you feel tense, if you wish you had a mantra for all those sudden awkward moments like say farting on a first date, and especially if you sometimes feel angrier than a table-flipping Real Housewife, just remember this simple acronym to regain your cool: WWBMD?

Let’s celebrate the fact we have a holy fool like Bill Murray, wandering the earth, showing us how to not take everything sooo seriously. In celebration of all things Bill Murray, here are …

the Top 20 LIFE LESSONS YOU CAN LEARN FROM Bill Murray

1. Caddyshack: “Playing Through” scene

Billy Murray and Chevy Chase kinda hated each other. Some say it’s because Bill replaced Chevy when the actor left Saturday Night Live for Hollywood. Others say it’s just because Chevy Chase is an asshole. A lot of people say that. But we may never know the truth. What we do know is: this is their only scene together in a movie, and despite their feud, they created one hell of a funny scene. It wasn’t in the original script. The director, Harold Ramis, realized he was missing out on a chance to mine some comedy gold; so he met with his two feuding stars and together, over lunch, the three comedy kings wrote this scene. They shot it that afternoon. Harold Ramis had amazing comedic instincts, and he was correct yet again. This scene is a motherlode of classic quotes. The whole movie is highly quotable. Like, if you get high, you probably quote it or you know someone who does.

Life Lesson: Things are generally way better with a big Bob Marley joint … and a cannonball. Also, if they have a pond and a pool, the pond would be good for you.

2. Coffee & Cigarettes

The film Coffee & Cigarettes is a collection of b/w vignettes stitched together by indie auteur, Jim Jarmusch (a super-talented filmmaker — you should check out all of his films). Over the course of two decades, Jarmusch asked two or more celebrities to sit down and improv a conversation about the titular subjects. In what’s possibly the best vignette, Bill Murray plays Bill Murray. He’s working on the down-low at a New York City diner, between gigs, trying to avoid attention. He’s biding his time, freshening coffee for the unassuming patrons. Well, until RZA and GZA of the Wu-Tang Clan come up in for a mug. The oddly-paired celebrities discuss coffee and cigarettes, and also, Eastern medicine, the nature of dreams, delirium, and coffee popsicles. Meanwhile Bill Murray drinks coffee from the pot.

Life Lesson: Always listen to your doctor if he makes dope beats and cyphers about nicotine and Taoist medicine with equal ease.

3. Bill Murray’s Reddit AMA

His is popularly known as the Best AMA Ever. In. The. History. Of. The. World. Kanye. West. When Bill Murray sat down to a keyboard and opened up to his fans on Reddit, no one knew exactly what to expect or how forthcoming he’d be. Instead of being vague, pompous or aloof, Bill Murray was unsurprisingly candid, honest, frank, and of course, funny. Reading it feels like you’re having a beer, enjoying a chat with him at a Cubs game. If Bill Murray ever becomes a saint, as I think he rightly deserves, Wrigley Field is his church.

Life Lesson: Life’s way more fun if you’re not a douchebag. Got it? Cool.

4. Zombieland

Once again, he plays the role of Bill Murray, but when he showed up inZombieland, Bill transformed a fun and funny film into a verified comedy classic. That’s the power of the Murray. In one of the best death scenes in cinema history (hyperbolic, I know, but also mostly true), Bill Murray faces his inevitable demise with the calm irreverence of a Taoist monk. One of the funny monks. You can learn a lot about life by watching Bill Murray die.

Life Lesson: If you make a terrible decision, like starring in “Garfield,” it’s always best if you own that shit. Makes you cooler if you do.

5. Lost In Translation

Bill Murray called Lost In Translation his favorite film he’s made. The part of Bob Harris was written specifically for him. Sophia Coppola said if Bill hadn’t agreed to take the part she wouldn’t have made the movie. This one’s a double because it’s Bill’s favorite.

Life Lesson: Lying on a hotel bed with an interesting stranger is sometimes a life-changing way to spend a few hours. Other times, it’s the last thing you ever do. Pick good strangers to share your hotel beds.

4. Ghostbusters

If you read the script, you’ll notice Ghostbusters isn’t nearly as funny on the page as it is on the screen. That’s not usually the case. The rule is: if it’s not funny on the page, it’s not gonna be funny on the stage. It’s easier to take good writing and screw up the performance than it is to take bad writing and save it with a performance. Not that the writing is bad, it’s just not super-funny on the page. The hub that makes the whole Ghostbusters comic ensemble spin is the irreverence of Bill Murray. And oddly enough, what makes us believe in the ghosts is his skepticism. We can’t wait to see Bill get slimed or find his date levitating six feet above her bed. He’s not interested in all this ghost shit. And yet, there he is in the middle of it all. Bill Murray reminds us why it’s important to stand your ground and question authority, especially dickless bureaucrats and inter-dimensional beings who are primed and eager to destroy New York City.

Life Lesson: Question authority like you’d question green meat

5. The Bill Murray fashion collection

The man’s genius is not limited to his movie roles, or his past appearances on television, or all the memes and hoaxes on the Internet. The man’s genius is evident when he performs on the theater of his body. He approaches his personal brand of fashion with all the necessary levels of absurdity. Would you expect any less of the Bill Murray fashion collection? Honestly, the man is one of my fashion icons.

 Life Lesson: If clothes make the man, pick clothes that signal who you are. Loudly.

6. Stripes

When the movie Stripes opens Bill Murray is hate-driving a taxi. This is hisFalling Down moment. He’s done, with the cab, with the traffic, with his dead-end life. And so, when a pain-in-his-ass customer hops in his cab, the disapproving rich bitch is that straw that breaks his camel back. He takes the old biddy on whatever the opposite of a joyride is. That’s how you open a comedy about a loser who needs to change his life. When you feel like you wanna chuck it all and start fresh, no one’s saying go join the Army, instead, live vicariously through Bill Murray. Let him fucks with the Army and you be the one on your couch, laughing away your anger.

Life Lesson: Songs from the ’50s usually make work way more fun. And so do tanks.

6. Billy Murray: ‘70s crooner

He played a ton of hilarious characters during his run on Saturday Night Live. But his times behind the mic, when he was playing a lounge singer, those are some of his best. Little known fact: Bill Murray had a high school band called The Dutch Masters. He was the lead singer. In this skit, he plays Nick the crooner, the feature entertainment and owner of Trader Nick’s, an easy-cheesy ’70s tiki bar. The highlight of the skit has to be when Bill Murray starts belting out Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.” And he kills it. At first it’s bad, then it’s good, then it’s really bad again, and then it’s just pure awesome-sauce with fresh whip cream.

Life Lesson: Have no fear, sing your song like if Bill were there.

7. What About Bob?

I love watching Bill Murray turn Richard Dreyfuss into the World’s Angriest White Man, after, of course, Harrison Ford (“Get off my plane!”). In this lost ’90s comedy, Bill Murray plays Bob Wiley, a psychiatric patient; a man who’s so bizarrely abnormal he does things like fake Tourette’s syndrome, because if he can fake it then he knows he doesn’t have it. You see? In this clip, the shut-in who can barely leave his apartment goes sailing with his therapist’s daughter. It’s not as dirty as it sounds.

Life Lesson:You never know when you’re gonna have a break-through. So break shit.

8. Groundhog’s Day: “I’m A God Scene”

You probably know this film. Bill plays a weatherman who’s cursed to relive the same day over and over again in the tiny town of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. And eventually, our hero, Phil the egotistical weatherman, begins to crack-up. The director of Ghostbusters, Ivan Reitman, once said Bill Murray is funniest when he’s physically uncomfortable, which is why his backpack in Ghostbusters was secretly 40 lbs heavier than every one else’s. Obviously, Ivan Reitman is a cruel genius, but in Groundhog’s Day, directed by Harold Ramis, there was no way to make Bill physically uncomfortable in every scene. I don’t know if I’d say the secret is to make Bill Murray uncomfortable. But I’d certainly agree that, being a living saint and all, Bill shows us you have to find the funny in life – especially, when you’re about to lose it. In this scene, fraying at the edges, bound together by the weakest threads, he tells Andy Macdowell’s character that he is a god. Perhaps not the God, but he’s pretty sure he’s a god.

Life Lesson: You’re not a god; but it’s best to laugh in the face of life like you are a god.

9. Where The Buffalo Roam

Did you know Bill Murray played Hunter S Thompson in a movie — a decade and a half before Johnny Depp played our favorite outlaw writer? Y’wanna talk great casting — Bill Murray as Hunter S is unadulterated genius. I prefer his performance to Johnny Depp’s take on Dr. Gonzo. That said, I really liked Johnny Depp’s version. He was rad. But somehow, Bill Murray seems to be at his most Bill Murray when he’s playing Hunter S Thompson.  Weird, I know.

In this scene, Hunter is covering the ’72 presidential election for Rolling Stone magazine. In a men’s room, the outlaw writer confronts President Nixon. It’s just the two of men, alone in the quiet of their tiled solitude. The journalist asks the politician about the generation of doomed Americans. Nixon tell him, “Fuck the doomed!” It’s a great moment in presidential bathroom history; it’s up there with Taft getting stuck in his bathtub. To get to the Nixon bit, skip ahead to 1:57

Life Lesson: The right suit will take you places, but be sure to have something to say once you get there.

11. Kingpin

Bill Murray and bowling. Need I say more? And oh yeah, rubber-handed Woody Harrelson and soft-headed Randy Quaid are also in the movie.Kingpin makes me laugh hard. The running gag about hot coffee burning people is hilarious. But then they spill coffee on a baby and now I want to put a ring on it. I love this movie! It’s just so wrong. And this part is easily one of Bill’s funniest roles. This was just before he became the understated actor we now see in his modern indie film work. As you’ll soon see, his hairpiece really deserves its own super-cut of highlights. (No pun intended). There is such a wicked glee to be found in watching Bill Murray act like an unapologetic asshole and generally float through life with that lackadaisical swagger of a pro athlete. But he’s a pro bowler.

Life Lesson: Life’s more fun if you adopt the policy that it’s better to apologize than ask permission.

12. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

Riffing on that same idea of arrogance personified, this is the more contained, indie version; Steve Zissou is the sort of pompous man that populates a Wes Anderson film. To fill-out Steve’s wetsuit, Bill Murray is one part cult leader, one part curious explorer, one part unchecked bruised ego; they all swirl together with narcissism and are best served chilled. Plus, in this film, you get to watch Bill Murray battle Jeff Goldblum to see who can be the bigger ham onscreen. Always fun. Rather than pick a scene of him being a dick, I thought we could dive down into the deep and let Bill Murray pilot us all through the strange wonders we find there. It’s like seeing the world through Bill Murray’s eyes.

Life Lesson: Life is better in a wetsuit … especially, if you have a killer soundtrack.

13. Playing Kickball with Strangers, Crashing Karaoke Bars, Drinking with Strange Hipsters in Brooklyn House-parties … Where Will Bill Murray Show Up Next?

There are numerous reports of Bill Murray hanging out with fans in the strangest places. There are stories of him showing up at kickball games, crashing karaoke, and stranger still, slumming it at Brooklyn house parties. These are all documented with pictures, or at least firsthand accounts from somewhat credible sources. And there are countless rumors of Bill Murray sightings. At the center of all this great weirdness is Bill Murray. To make matters worse, he knows that he’s basically Bigfoot in the city, and so he reportedly whispers something in the ear of the people he plays with, “no one will ever believe you.” This gives him license to make the story even stranger. The common theme for all the stories is that they often end with Bill disappearing in a way that almost sounds magical. But we expect such things from our saints.

Life Lesson: Always, always give ‘em a great story to tell when you’re gone.

14. Charlie Rose interview

Many call this one of America’s best interview shows. I think Charlie Rose is kinda an ass. But he usually does manage to have a substantial conversation with a public person and do so in a way that feels private and intimate. I give more credit to his giant oak table than to him. I think the table makes people want to talk. It probably smells like childhood. In this interview Charlie Rose and Bill Murray do indeed get personal. Not Barbara Walters, “is my mascara running?” sorta personal but it’s deep for two men of their generation.

Life Lesson: No life follows a straight line, so don’t expect yours to fly arrow-straight.

15. Tootsie

In Tootsie, Bill Murray isn’t the star. He plays the friend; and thus, he isn’t in many of the scenes. But he sure slays the ones he’s in. Dustin Hoffman and Bill Murray play real nice together. You’ll notice this is important to Bill. He likes to play, and he generally plays well with others. The same can not be said about Dustin Hoffman. He has a reputation for being prickly and a perfectionist. Nothing against the man in the dress, but in this scene keep your eyes on St. Bill Murray.

Tootsie was a difficult film to get made and to make. Dustin Hoffman and Sydney Pollack, who was the director and played Dustin’s agent in the film, fought a great deal throughout filming. In the GQ video interview below, Bill Murray describes his approach to dealing with the quick-tempered star, who was basically an insecure man terrified he looked ugly and stupid in a dress. Bill saw quite a different picture.

Everyone else was afraid of Dustin Hoffman. Or they were the director and they were fighting with him. Irreverent as ever, Bill Murray saw all the tension as a great impetus to play. In this appropriately titled interview series with Bill, he tells a behind-the-scenes tale of Tootsie and how one learns to play with a man in a dress.

Bonus: There’s a whole series of vids on YouTube called the Tao of Bill. You should check them out. He hands out life lessons on fashion, recalls his days on SNL, talks personal style, muses on Lost in Translation; and there are tons of others ones.

16. Letterman Interview

Bill Murray and Dave Letterman have a special relationship. They’re both Midwest guys. They’re roughly similar in age and disposition. Both suffer from the comedian’s lament, what you might call the sad clown syndrome. For two men who are rather peerless talents, you can totally see the fun they have when they’re together. Like, for instance, Bill usually gets dressed up for Dave. Little known fact: Bill Murray was the first guest on Letterman’s late night show.

In this trip to the couch, Bill Murray shows up dressed as Liberace and makes a grand entrance. He tells stories of being at Wrigley Field the night they first turned the lights on and since there was a rain delay, he and the Cubs announcer, Harry Caray, had a beer in the broadcast booth live on tv. And then, Bill tears apart Letterman’s set with a box-cutter, pick, and a jackhammer.  Remember he’s dressed as Liberace. If that wasn’t enough, he serenades Letterman, singing the Dolly Parton/Whitney Houston song “I Will Always Love You.” I told you, they have a special relationship. It’s one of the great modern bromances.

Life Lesson: When you find that special someone in your life, let them know you love them. Not just with words but with actions and do it every time you see them.

17. GQ Interview

Unlike his time with Letterman, Bill is not known to happily sit for many interviews. He’s notoriously difficult to reach. He has no agent or manager. If you want to get a hold of him you have to call a 1-800 number and leave a message. When GQ wrangled Bill Murray into an interview, it was kinda a big deal. And equally, they’re kinda known for conducting really solid interviews. This one was a score for GQ.

Life Lesson: You don’t ever have to answer the phone. It’s your phone.

18. 12 Insane Things That Happened On My Night Out With Bill Murray

I don’t know if this hilarious story by Thought Catalog’s own, Alex Mann, is true or not. I wasn’t there. I like to believe it is true because it’s a damn good story and well-told. It could be like the hoax, further proof that the stranger the story is, the more likely we are to believe a person really met Bill Murray. Which if you think about it is such a compliment to how he floats through the world. I like to live in a world where these sorts of things happen. I like to believe it’s Bill Murray’s world and we just live in it.

Life Lesson: Always keep beer in your pocket. Because you never know what comes next and you might want a beer.

19. Rushmore: Helicopter Scene

I know, you were probably expecting at some point to see the “…Ned?! Ned Ryerson?!” scenes from Groundhog’s Day. And if you really wanna watch it, then go ahead and click here. But, frankly, there were a lot of fucking scenes and great moments that didn’t make this list. Like, for instance, in Quick Change where he dresses like a clown and robs a bank with help from Geena Davis. And there are sooo many more. We could make a Top 20 list of scenes/moments that were left out. But I had to make difficult decisions. And all those other scenes, great as they are, they didn’t make the cut when they were compared to this one.

Oddly though, this scene captures the magic of Bill Murray better than all the other ones and he’s not in it. It’s the play scene from the end ofRushmore. The reason I picked it is because Bill paid for it. You see, there wasn’t enough money in the budget. The financiers said no. So, Bill Murray said yes. He wrote a personal check for $25,000 and then they filmed the scene. Keep in mind, Bill Murray was paid $9,000 to be in Rushmore. I hate math, but even I can do this one; in essence, Bill Murray gave Wes Anderson $16 grand to see the movie get made. He paid to be in Rushmore. Or you could say, less cynically, he paid to have a place to play for awhile and he happily paid for something he believed in, he supported a vision he wanted to see. WWBMD?

20.  …and speaking of Rushmore

To close our appreciation, to seal the deal of this humble campaign to canonize him, as the final evidence that he should one day be known as Saint Bill Murray, here are his words of advice to the impressionable young minds of Rushmore Academy.

Life Lesson: Know your enemy better than they know you.

The greatest lesson we can learn from Bill Murray is his constant reminder not to take things too seriously. Don’t know about you but I need that reminder from time to time. The message to flow, relax, chill the fuck out and have a laugh, especially if it’s at authority — this message of unflappable cool is his life’s work. And it’s safe to say no one enjoys life quite like Bill Murray.

When your back is against the wall and you got nowhere to go, when the world is crashing in and you can’t hold it back any longer, when you get tense as a long-tailed cat in a roomful of rocking chairs, be sure to take a moment, inhale a slow breath and ask yourself:

What Would Bill Murray Do?

And do that. That’s about as close as we mortals can get to “total consciousness.”

(this article originally appeared on ThoughtCatalog)

There are observations any outsider can make about Los Angeles, such as: every waiter or waitress you meet is secretly an actor or actress waiting for their big break. True. And there are the things New Yorkers like to say to spit in the eye of Los Angeles. They tease us for our conversations about what route we took to avoid traffic. Well, you won’t hear us say anything about how New Yorkers love to talk, text and tweet about their crappy weather. We just feel bad for them. When and if we ever think about New York. And honestly, we can’t help it that our weather is always awesome. Unlike New Yorkers, all we really have to complain about is our traffic.

You could say Los Angeles is a lot like our aging celebrities with their Botoxed faces and bad plastic surgery smiles. You know who I mean: those stars best known for things they did back in the ‘80s or ‘90s. Just like those stars of a bygone era, Los Angeles earned its reputation in the past. That’s what most folks know — the reputation.

When you’re here, you see how the city is always changing, always chasing the Next Big Thing. No matter what, the tourists keep coming. They usually miss the cool stuff the city offers because they’re too busy paying to chase ghosts of Old Hollywood. Of course, we don’t care if the tourists miss out. Take Boston, those folks want you to know how great Boston is. (Which tells you something right away about Boston. Apparently, like a laxative or a floor polish, Boston needs a little advertising.)

We don’t care if you like Los Angeles. We don’t care if you hate L.A. We don’t care that strongly about anything. Like I said, the weather’s too nice. We have stuff to do.

Here are 35 things you learn when you call Los Angeles your home:

1. Anyone with an USC sticker on the back of their car is a shitty driver. Anyone with an UCLA sticker on the back of their car is probably driving a Honda.

2. The best way to get to LAX never involves the 405. If someone tells you a route that does, don’t listen to them. That person is an idiot and not to be trusted.

3. Sometimes it feels like Los Angeles, and specifically Venice Beach, is the lowest point of the United States. That’s why all the loose freaks eventually roll downhill and end up here. Los Angeles is a city comprised of people who were too freaky for their hometowns or too ambitious for their home country. That’s why we wave our freak flag so high.

5. We measure our romantic partners by traffic:“Yeah, she’s super cool. She’s smart, funny and she’s great in bed, but I’ll never see her again. She lives on the Westside.”

Everything else, we measure by parking:

Our friendships are measured by parking: “I would come to your screening, bro, but I got a really good parking space … and tomorrow is the street cleaner so … y’know.”

Nightlife is measured by parking: “Ohmygod! I love the food there more than I love my husband. Oh, but we can’t go there. We’ll never find parking.”

Even sex is measured by parking: “He’s not the best in bed, his bedroom smells like an aquarium but he’s the perfect midnight shag because he lives two blocks away, so I never have to look for parking.”

6. Oh! And we also measure distances by time not by miles like most other Americans. You see, none of us knows how many miles it is to anywhere. But we can tell you the time it’ll take you get there within three minutes.

7.  There is never a good reason to go the Valley. …Unless you live in the Valley, or you need to go to Fry’s or the Burbank airport.

8. We popularized eating gourmet food off of a truck. If you come to L.A. we will prove it to you by talking about food trucks incessantly. Some of us follow our favorites on Twitter. Like, a first date might take you to a food truck festival. True story.

9. You don’t go to Runyon Canyon for the hiking. You go for the flirting. Same for just about every dog park in the city.

10. Don’t date an actor or an actress. They spend their lives working out, getting rejected and pretending to be other people. No one has time for that nonsense. If you like that Hollywood life, date a make-up artist or a stuntman. They’re cool and they have way better stories.

11. We call it “unrequited hate.” We all love San Francisco. And we find it hilarious that everyone in San Francisco hates L.A. We get to enjoy both cities, while they’re stuck in the fog.

12. Your favorite taco spot probably has a blue “B” in the window. If you really love it, the restaurant may have a “C.” But you don’t care about grades from L.A. County Dept. of Public Health because every time you have the carnitas an angel gets its wings.

13. We don’t read. We work-out. We see movies. We hike. We bike. We surf. We binge-watch tv. We spin. We do yoga. We paint. We brunch. We rap. We act. We get tan. But we don’t read. If you ask an Angeleno for a book recommendation you will likely hear something along the lines of,“Um, hmm … Have you seen the Hunger Games? I didn’t read the books but the movies were good.”    

14. Depending on how you count them, some say we have three seasons: Winter/Spring, Summer/Fall and Awards season. Others say we have: Fire season, Mudslide season and Summer.

15. Secretly, a lot of us dream about getting married, having kids and moving to San Diego. But we would rather sell our future children on the black market than move to Orange County.

16. New York City considers itself the center of the world. And they like to make fun of L.A. as a shallow sprawling horizontal wasteland of tans and bad plastic surgery. Well, we don’t give a fuck what New York thinks about us, about culture, politics, plastic surgery, pretty much anything. To us, New York, specifically Manhattan and Brooklyn are just backdrops for Scorsese movies and tv shows like Girls. They’re not real places.

17. Our freeways are more important than yours. You take Interstate 80. You give directions to I-95. Our freeways require the definite article. We take The 5 to The 10 to The 405 to The 101.

18. Some people will tell you Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf has the best coffee drinks. Other people will tell you Peet’s makes the best drinks. But everyone agrees: Starbucks is the best place to meet an unemployed screenwriter.

19. Someone you know has a Westside Rentals password you can use. Just ask around.

20. You don’t move to L.A. for the pizza. We all kid ourselves and like to think we know at least one good place but every real Angeleno knows there’s no great pizza in L.A. But we have Korean food, Thai, Mexican, Ethiopian, even Kosher places that’ll bring a tear to your eye. It’s just that our pizza sucks.

21. We steal all of our sports teams from other cities. So we only root for them when they’re winning. The rest of the time we’re working on our screenplays.

22. A cemetery named Hollywood Forever is a really romantic place to watch a movie under the stars on a summer night. If you get extra lucky, you might snap a picture that’s perfect for Instagram of a wine-drunk bro pissing on a gravestone (#drunkpisscemetery).

23. Our roads are plagued with two great dangers: potholes and Prius drivers. No! Three great dangers! A minivan, a pothole, or a Prius, are three great way to ruin an afternoon commute. If you drive enough, Priusbecomes a new cussword. You might say things like, ‘Oh, what the Prius are you doing now?” Same goes for minivans.

24. Although some drivers are frustrating, no one really yells or says anything, because in L.A. there’s no such thing as a bad driver. It’s understood that everyone is a bad driver. And thus, no one is. The whole city is just a cluster-fuck of people from different driving cultures, sprinkled liberally with young assholes in BMWs. Despite this recipe for fistfights at every red light, surprisingly, road rage is rare.

25. When cars are lined-up, waiting to turn left at a stoplight, as it changes from yellow to red, if two cars don’t make the left turn this is one of the few times drivers will honk. We follow two-to-a-red like it’s the law.

26. We all have celebrity-sighting stories. Ones we‘ll never tell you. (I ran into one at the bank this morning. No bullshit). Unless, we totally love that particular celebrity we don’t bother them. We don’t care if Jay Leno is at the same gas station. We just assume Jay needs gas, too.

27. However, most of us have a fondness for the Voice of the Dodgers, Vin Scully. Like a golden-throated god among men, he’s more popular than our star athletes. We would get excited if we saw Vin Scully at the gas station.

28. Being an Angeleno is like a religion.

a) Real Angelenos move here and convert.

b) True Angelenos were born here and don’t accept the converts.

c) Most Angelenos would never be caught dead calling themselves an Angeleno.

29. The city doesn’t stay open late. Good luck finding a restaurant that’s open after eleven o’clock that sells something other than burgers, burritos or pizza.

30. Pink’s hot dogs are wildly overrated and rarely eaten by Angelenos. But, Astroburger is another story. I’d fight a radioactive bear for one of their buffalo burgers.

31. Everyone says they love Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles. But the real reason to go there is not the food but the Sunday fashion show that takes place as everyone arrives after church.

32. You would rather drink a glass of hot sand than be caught on the PCH during a holiday weekend.

33. For most of us, earthquakes aren’t scary. Some of us even look forward to them. Of course, like anywhere, some of us are idiots.

34. In-N-Out Burger.

35. You know, without hesitation, there is no other city in the world that’s a better place to call your home. Despite its flaws, our city of Los Angeles is a smog-covered, traffic-obstructed, pay-to-play, sun-baked, sprawling little piece of heaven on Earth.

(this post originally appeared on ThoughtCatalog)

Do I want you to lie to me? Do I want you to tell me fabulistic fantasies that we can step inside and inhabit like the imaginary homes of children playing “House?” In a sense, yes, I do.

You could say we lie to each other all the time. We have a vain tendency to love lies — the ones that can’t hurt us but instead flatter us. These are what I would ask you to tell me. Don’t tell me the Truth. Just tell me “your truth.” Lie pretty to me.

The easiest way to draw the distinction between the Truth and the pretty little lies of “your truth,” is to seize upon meaning from something we all know, understand and hold deep in our hearts: a song.

Any song you love will do the trick. But it has to be a song you’ve heard more than one person sing. Imagine the song you love, and listen to it for a moment as it plays in your mind.

I picked Elvis Presley’s “Viva Las Vegas.” Have fun with it.

Okay. Now, switch the singers. Imagine the second singer making the song theirs. Again, listen for a moment to the song.

I picked the Dead Kennedys doing their version of “Viva Las Vegas.” It’s a totally different song with Jello Biafra than when Elvis rocks it out.

If you imagined two different singers, I bet you noticed:

It’s not the song … it’s the singer.

The Truth of a song, or let’s call it the emotional Truth of a song, would only be True for the person who wrote it. The lyrics and melody are an expression of them.

But then, along comes Nat King Cole and he sings the song and it’s achingly beautiful.

Is it still True? Well, if there is only one Truth, and since it’s not his song to begin with, then that song can only be True for the original songwriter. However, when Nat King Cole put his heart and soul into a song he gave it “his truth” and that’s why we connect to it. That’s what makes it a pretty little lie. We’re happy to hear it because Nat sang it so pretty. It’s a harmless little trifle of a lie — a pop love song. And we happily accept his lie as flattery, because Nat sang his song to us. His lie makes us feel better because it brings a sly and sweet joy when you hear him sing.

This same understanding of pretty lies holds true in our real life exchanges just the same as when we listen to Nat croon a love song. We like pretty little lies. For instance, you know that a body spray advertisement is a lie. But so is a greeting card. You did not write it. Yet, you give it to someone and pretend as if somehow the words and emotions they represent are yours. Perhaps, you add something, you write a small message, mingling the card’s words and yours. This pretty little lie offers a form of flattery. The recipient feels like this is “your truth.” Of course, they can’t know if it is or isn’t but it feels true.

A mixtape, an old sonnet you send, a meme you share, these are all pretty little lies you use to convey to someone that you care. You use someone else’s expression to convey your heart and soul. Just like with Nat King Cole, it’s not the song … it’s the singer.

As you likely quickly surmised, the language we use to express ourselves comes in countless forms. You can use sheet music to seduce a woman. You might send a recipe to tell a man you love him. You could take a picture of clouds bouncing along in the sky over a field of spring flowers; and this picture, sent and reassembled on a smartphone’s screen, this pretty little lie, tells the receiver you miss them and are thinking of them while you’re camping at your work retreat. Everyday, in a million ways, we use all sorts of things as symbols, as language, and we lie to people that we love and care about.

To make matters worse, not all our lies are pretty. You see how some folks walk the earth spewing verbal manure, fertilizing the fields of opportunity in their favor, controlling the perception of reality by lying to others. This makes it difficult to date or buy a refrigerator. It’s exceedingly frustrating to tell who is lying to us, unless we have sufficient time to spot a pattern of ill behavior or catch an obvious contradiction.

Despite the fact we must endure the damage done by malicious liars, keep in mind that there isn’t just one type of lie. There are as many types of lies as there are stars in the sky. There are good lies and there are bad lies and every lie in between. The falsehoods of a spy, the fabrications that save the lives of millions, are good lies, right? Any novel or a film is just a collection of beautiful and moving lies. As any seven-year-old can tell you, there is a spectrum of lies. To make sense of them all, I like to imagine a rainbow of symbolic falsehoods, with music at one end and mind-control at the other.

We should abhor the dirty, thieving, malicious lies of corruption; and happily defend the pretty little lies of artists and lovers and greeting card-makers. They are very different. The lies of corruption are designed to replace or distort  facts, while the pretty lies of lovers and artists are designed to create feeling and provide understanding. Sometimes a lie is a fiction that reveals facts of life.

Now, for some of you, this must sound like moral relativism. I guess, if you’re into labels, call it what you will. But it’s inarguable that many of the best parts of our world are predicated on pretty little lies. We need them.

A friend of mine likes to pose this question: Would you rather be right or happy?

At first, I thought the question was bullshit and the worst use of moral relativism. I thought he was suggesting we act selfishly since there’s no objective right or wrong. But my friend and Shakespeare agree. As the Bard penned it and Hamlet reminds us, “there is nothing good or bad, only thinking makes it so.” I found that both my friend and Bill Shakespeare were on to something. I saw why his question was far wiser than I’d given my friend credit.

Usually, to be right implies that you know the Truth and the other person is denying it, or arguing against it. To be right also assumes the Truth is knowable. I would caution you against such hubris. Facts are knowable and can be proven. But the Truth seems to evade human detection like silence avoids the Super Bowl.

To be happy suggests your satisfaction is at hand, your mind/body are cooperating, and “you” are in a place of joy, reverence or dedicated labor. Happiness flourishes when your relationship to your inner world and outer world are in a pleasing balance, when your sense of self is unchallenged by fear or negativity.

When we draw it out like that it’s easy to see why we prefer to be happy more than right. Our pretty little lies are like ball bearings beneath the weight of our happiness. They ease its burden and help it roll easily forward into the future.

Make no mistake. I’m not suggesting you lie maliciously to others. Nor am I suggesting you change the details of a story, switch names or dates. Those are lies of omission, fabrication and worse yet, corruption. They are attempts at mind control. You are fertilizing the fields of opportunity in your favor.

Instead, learn to let pretty little lies pass easily over your lips. Learn to tell lies that make the world better not for you, primarily, but for both you and for others. Learn to say, “You know what? You’re right.” Learn to be happy, instead of right.

Art is a lie. Language is a lie. Every sensation you experience is a lie your mind filters, processes and creates for you to “feel.” Like, whatever you see is basically run through 137 Instagram filters before you “feel” so moved by the visual poetry of a sunset. But the fact our lives are shaped by lies should not be depressing. These lies are liberating. All the pretty little lies of life are no different than any sensation, such as that moment when you tug a cashmere sweater over your head and you “feel” comfy inside its warmth.

If it’s not the song but the singer, if it’s not what you say but how you say it, and if we all struggle with the Truth: How do you best express yourself?

Just lie pretty to me. (We can always look up facts.) Lie to set me free. Tell me “your truth.” And be brave about it. As long as it’s not a crime, let’s forget who was right and who was wrong. Instead, think of what you intend to say, reflect on how I’m likely to hear it, frame it like a photo so I’ll focus on what you wish me to concentrate on, and gift-wrap “your truth” in a pleasing package like the lyrics of a love song. If you tell me you know the Truth, I probably won’t believe you. Lie pretty to me and we’ll all be happy.

When news broke that a NBA team owner was recorded saying something racist, I turned to a friend and told him to take a picture of me. I wanted to see what I looked like when I’m shocked. No, wait. I didn’t do that … because I wasn’t shocked. Not in the least. The fact that a rich white man we all refer to as “an owner” said something racist is pretty much par for the course. Yet, thanks to an angry mistress, his ugly thoughts are now one of the best distillations of the effects of race and racism in America that a public figure has ever candidly uttered into a recording device.

We shouldn’t be so surprised, because this man’s well practiced at racism. He’s been saying crazy racist stuff for years. But this time we really ought to listen to him. Like, really listen to what he’s saying because there’s so much more there. It’s all there. In fact, this story isn’t about race at all.

Don’t worry. I’m an American black man. You can trust that I’ve thought about what it means when I say: Don’t waste your time getting offended at his racism.

Now is not the time for Black America to collectively clutch our pearls. Yes, of course, from a moral standpoint Sterling’s mean, offensive and wrong. But that’s the whole point. Donald Sterling has slipped the bonds of your morality. He does not care about right or wrong. He’s made a career out  of taking advantage of how our world works and seizing on what we value.

Donald Tokowitz (later changed to Donald Sterling), the son of poor immigrants, was elected his high school class president, and went on to become a divorce and personal injury lawyer, then a self-made millionaire from real estate, and eventually, became the currently longest-tenured owner in the NBA. Let’s consider these exhibits A, B, C and D. Pulled from his life story and entered as evidence that the man knows how to benefit from his selfish savage insights into power and his lawyer’s understanding of the dynamics of our world. The power of appearances is particularly important to Sterling (remember that’s the name he picked. Silvery clean. British money).

Donald Sterling calls himself an owner. That’s who he is. It’s what he does. It’s how he thinks. To him, the world needs to be owned and operated. Like the fictional man, Daniel Plainview, he primarily deals with the world as he finds it. He doesn’t change the rules of the world. He applies them vigorously. He owns and operates it. He curries power.

The big trouble for Sterling is that even the most powerful creatures can be felled by the tiniest thing. The mouse to his elephant was his half-black, half-Mexican mistress.  Ms. V. Stiviano. It’s odd that a divorce lawyer would overlook the probability that a mistress would feel threatened when a man’s wife sues her to get rid of the girlfriend and take back whatever things the philandering husband gave to his mistress. That sort of aggression tends to make a mistress nervous. Then they might often do something to protect themselves. Or get back at the husband, or wife, or both. You remember Lisa Nowak, right? The NASA astronaut who drove 900 miles, crossed five states, wearing diapers so she didn’t have to stop to got to the bathroom. Where she was headed to in such a hurry? To an airport parking lot in Florida to attack her romantic rival Air Force officer Colleen Shipman. When a human is frightened they will do mean and sometimes partially planned acts of revenge that are sometimes radically effective. Such as this recording of Donald Sterling. I’m neither a divorce lawyer nor am I married, but you’d think he’d smell a trap. It’s a basic soap opera plot. And that’s what this threatens to become: a racist soap opera plotline. All tears and noise and then a commercial.

Thus far a number of people have already responded to the controversy. Some people like President Obama were asked to respond. Others, like Snoop Lion offered their response just because they muthafuckin’ felt like it needed to be said. And of course, NBA stars like LeBron James had a professional response. Also, a man who was central to the fight between Sterling and his mistress, former NBA great,  Magic Johnson, himself a part-owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, has responded. As well, Michael Jordan had a response as the only black majority owner of a NBA franchise. There were countless more.

I gotta say this isn’t just about black people. It’s not even about the racist former divorce lawyer turned NBA owner. This is a torn curtain look behind the institutional racism of America. Why can’t his mistress be seen onInstagram with a Hall-of-Fame basketball player and part-owner of a sports franchise in the same city as Sterling. Who is he trying to appeal to that is sooo against his side chick being seen with Matt Kemp? This man was afraid of what social messages her pictures on Instagram would send to hisfriends? What is he fifteen? He owns the LA Clippers. WTF? Meanwhile, no one says much of anything about this married man who is so declasse he brings his mistress to games to sit with him court-side.

This is a story of the amoral perceptions of white power. And I don’t mean KKK sort of white power. This is the white power that guides the hand that holds the pen that writes American history and draws road maps to the future. The white zeitgeist of real power.

Throughout the now-famously recorded conversation, Sterling relies on a crude form of “diversity awareness” that can best be described as: How can I be racist — my mistress is black? His lazy, pleading tone is difficult to hear. I don’t want to be in that room with them. At times he sounds like a boy refusing a nap, then at others he sounds like a boy who no longer wants to make a fort with you and he’s taking his toys and going home.

As you listen to, or read the highlights below from, their recorded conversation, the most crucial point is not to discern if the Clippers’ owner is a racist. (Spoiler alert: He is!) Pay attention to how well this son of Jewish immigrants, understands and can explain the nature of white power in America. He’s analyzed the signifying language and speaks it fluently, as both outsider and insider, this new money owner of a sports team knows what flies and what doesn’t fly with his “friends.” He knows how white power creates and sustains itself with American racism (which btw has now gone global). Enjoy your peer through the torn curtain.

This section of the recording is the second-half and it begins mid-conversation. Sterling opens the show already halfway done telling Stiviano what his problem is with black people showing up on her Instagram feed.

We don’t know who Dennis is. He could be a friend, a business associate, an underling. Apparently, it was Dennis that made Sterling aware of all the black people on Stiviano’s Instagram.

My question: Why was Dennis checking out the Instagram pics of Sterling’s mistress? What’s up with that, Dennis?

After some back-and-forth with the house-help, Stiviano promises Sterling that she’ll take action and rid her IG feed of black people.

(Hey, SNL! You need to get on that parody commercial: Negro-B-Gone the new app for erasing blacks from all your social media feeds)

Stiviano makes an interesting rhetorical turn and tries to loosely define what a black person is by using Matt Kemp as the crossover point.

That statement says so much in so few words. He was okay … because he’s mixed … “just like me.” Y’know, the half-black girl you share a bed with, you imitation Strom Thurmond? I guess, unlike John Mayer and his David Duke dick, our Mr. Sterling doesn’t have a racist penis, he wants to be with a brown/black woman, but he still cares a lot about what other people think. Why? Who are these people? All of his friends? One of his friends? Is it just Dennis? If so, fuck Dennis. All I get is that Donald likes to have a white lady in the streets (his wife) and a brown/black freak in the sheets. That’s like super old school, he’s getting Thomas Jefferson with it.

Meanwhile, V. Stiviano tries to define the virtue of mixed-blood by way of Matt Kemp’s mother.

I gotta say, I like how these two soul-less manipulators both toss around these tiny bits of empty poetry at each other in their pathetic lover’s tiff. Like, I did not expect phrases such as “evil heart” and “poison mind.”

Now, Sterling tries to school Stiviano on the ways of the world.

I can’t speak for Stiviano, but I understand what Sterling is saying. My mother is white. My father is black. That makes me the Israel of his analogy. And you know what? I’ll defend Sterling on this point. He’s right. For lots of people there exists a creature called a black Jew. Whereas, to me, there’s just Jews and non-Jews. But what Sterling reminds us, because he understands the nature of the world more effectively than most, he sees that there is an operational racism on Earth. And he’s pointing out that it has a more powerful influence than G-d does on his Chosen People. In Israel, race separates Jews faster than G-d brings them together. That’s some powerful racism. That shit sells itself.

Elgin Baylor, the general manager for the LA Clippers said in a lawsuit that he filed against the franchise, that the team’s owner, Donald Sterling expressed to him a desire to create a “plantation culture.” Perhaps, it’s not the word slave, we should be focusing on, but instead we should focus on the effects of the one holding the whip.

The singed scars of slavery are worn by Black America and Black Africa alike. The legacy of slavery gave the world a diminished respect for black people all around the globe. Those who see the world through the lens of white power might see: black people like silly, monkey-men or like warring guerrillas living and dying in the corrupt, broken former colonies of Africa. And they might see the sexualized and violent, under-educated, and criminally-prone descendants of the diaspora, the sons and daughters of the Caribbean, South America and North America. This is of course not reality, but what someone might interpret as being a general condition. And a general assumption made of all black persons is they are the descendant of former slaves. This is true of someone like the President who has no bloodline that courses through his body that was ever in bondage. No slaves in his family tree. Yet still for lots of people around the world, they tend to think of slavery as part of the black character. In the simplest shorthand possible. Black = slave

At this point, like a warrior of social justice, Stiviano pushes Sterling to confront his racist views.

Aside from her small confusion about where to take a stand, Stiviano raises the question of a classic debate of social change. It’s the same fight that pitted Malcom X against Martin Luther King Jr. In sports, it’s the difference between former Dodger, Jackie Robinson’s approach to being a pioneer versus Muhammad Ali’s approach to making headlines.

Do you endure the way things are, hoping to make them better?

Or do you take up arms, speak out, and risk violence to gain what you lack?

The mistake is to assume that only one course of action gets you where you want to go. Rather than pick one, they are two ends of one spectrum of responses. Love and respect.

Love speaks to our higher calling, our loftier impulses and inspires us to be better.

Respect counters our lower urges, our jungle instincts and commands better behavior.

neither one will always work. Both are required.

Bumper-sticker Gandhi* would be so proud of her usage of that cliche. Okay! We’ve reached the warm gushy center of the beating heart of American racism. Before we push into this bloody mess, it’s important you understand why American blacks and Latinos are viewed the way they are through the lens of white supremacy.

I don’t know if anyone has ever put it to you this way before but blacks and Latinos are the two created peoples of the New World. Without Columbus there would be no Lebron James. Without Cortez, there would be no Salma Hayek. Trans-Atlantic migration, centuries of slavery, mixing of African, European and Indigenous bloodlines created these two new peoples. In a brutally simplified way of saying it, for generations they were made and born to work. And far too often life started with a rape. That’s a whole hell of a lot of trauma to bear. As products of the New World, they were, of course, primarily laborers: most often slaves or field workers, craftsmen or artisans. They were born to be less. They were to know their place. Slavery and the mission came first. Racism was invented to explain why things were the way they were and why they’d stay away for the foreseeable future. Often God was called in to say it was all his idea and he put it in book so they would know that was their lot in life, but when they died he’d let them come up and hang out with him in the big house in the sky. And they could eat pie and talk about God’s awesome collection of atheist jokes.

Because that was the story. Sorry, God wants you to be a slave, for now, but later it’ll be cool. This worked for centuries. One could argue that blacks, Latinos and poor whites all still use the church for that same purpose as times remained tough for all three groups over those multiple centuries in America. And yet, they’ve never gotten over their differences and remain at odds often at the bottom rungs of America’s pay-to-play society.

Racism is a story we tell ourselves to explain the cruelty of capitalism.

If you doubt this recorded exchange is really all about power, and not race, remember that economic colonial powers, businessmen, created “race.”

Just notice Sterling’s response when Stiviano reminds him that he can change himself and his way of thinking, thus changing the world.

That’s a hell of a display of … racist, sexist, capitalistic, patriarchal power. He got ‘em all. He just won the Whack-a-Mole of privilege.

Each one of those words is equally important. But notice that they are all adjectives for the last word power. All of them equally modify what the story is really about: power. (Or money, if you prefer it broken up into bloody little bits of disposable power).

Sterling makes it clear what he intends to do. There is only one way. His way.

This thought scares white men. “I don’t see your views.” It’s like their world view is going blind. Fast. And it’s their own damn fault. They stopped teaching history. They left it to Hollywood as source material for movies. These days, as something like the Confederate flag loses more and more of its iconic value (plus, we have to wait for Kanye to give it back), as more and more young people have a hard time imagining or believing slavery could have ever happened to someone who looks like LeBron James, as fewer and fewer students understand the cruelty of the ranches and missions and presidios, the plantations and the slave ship, we will see the social stigma of slavery fade away like the losing the signal as you drive out of range of a radio station, or better yet you cross over and hear a better station. on that same channel. But the signal is surely fading. Old school racism has about a bright a future as AM radio.

The other great threat to white supremacy, other than the loss of history, is how much we all like to fuck each other. Every year there are fewer and fewer mono-racial people being born because every day there are more and more people like Stiviano brought into this world.

It is poetic in a way, I suppose, that the woman that brought the hellstorm down on Sterling is half-Mexican and half-black. In her, the two peoples of the New World united to bring a hurting on Sterling. And it looks like she hurt him real bad. But we shall see.

Stiviano finally asks him the one question we’ve all been wondering.

Like, seriously, if you don’t want to be around black people … why basketball, man? That makes about as much sense as a Hindu opening a hamburger stand.

Now, Sterling hems and haws for a moment. Then, he offers his view on his relationship with his black players.

Oh man! I didn’t know you could really think like that. He thinks like a master. Just like with the sloppy language of fantasy football, and how it often leads to a discussion of owning black men on your team, it seems like the word “owner” has really confused Donald Sterling. He thinks he owns his team. Like, owns them. But slaves never made million dollar contracts. That should be an obvious difference. The fact that he can consciously treat grown men who are millionaires like they are his slaves shows you how little money means to him and how much this guy likes to play power games. And he’s good at them.

In 2006, Sterling was ordered by the Dept of Justice to pay out the largest settlement in federal history for a housing discrimination case. And yet, somehow that same man who had to pay 2.73 million for discrimination against black and Latino renters was about to be given a lifetime achievement award from the LA chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Yes, the NAACP. Wait, what? How is that possible? What was he going to get the award for: hiring black basketball players?

Donald Sterling has been called a racist and a slumlord for years and years and years and yet somehow it never sticks to him. But I mean, come on, NAACP! Are we out of black people to give a lifetime achievement award? Seriously, someone from the NAACP could step outside the office and pick the first black person they saw and it would be a better choice than Donald Sterling. Maybe I’m cynical, but I’m guessing that Sterling must be a donor to the NAACP. Or perhaps, you get the award first and then you donate later. The point is, the man has been somewhat active philanthropist, at least he makes sure you see him doing it, he is after all a lazy master of manipulating impressions by turning on the money hose and washing away his criticism. And sometimes he finds willing allies like the NAACP. I bet they’re thanking their stars this all came out in the weeks just prior to his award instead of after. That would’ve been awkward.  

It seems soon talk will shift to questions of the woman, the mistress, V. Stiviano. Did she trick him? Is it what she did felony wire-tapping? Is it admissible? Does she care since the damage is done? Maybe she just did it all to “get back” at him (as some from the Clippers organization have intimated).

What would be a shame is, we once again stopped talking about the power plays of a racist owner of an American sports franchise and instead focused on the twitterstorm of publicity surrounding Stephen Colbert and not focus on Dan Snyder… Oops! I mean the conniving traps and money-grubbing tricks of the owner’s gold-digging mistress. What was her name, again?

It would be a damn shame if we treated him like Dre … and we forget about Donald Sterling. Again.

(this post originally appeared on ThoughtCatalog)

Standing with feet in sun-warmed sand, my eyes follow an old couple walking hand-in-hand at the waterline as crumbling waves wash over the tops of their bare feet. They smile. I wonder what their secret is. Will we ever walk hand-in-hand, you and I, barefoot by the sea?

I want an ocean kind of love … that burns like Sufi poetry.

Paused at the water’s edge, I stand witness to the ocean rolling constant as the calendar. On some days it might darken and storm like the eyes of angry lovers. But today, the skin of its water warms from the sun like the faces of the children building sandcastles at high noon just past the ocean’s reach.

I’ve been reading Rumi again. The Sufi poets know the hunger of a man’s passion. They can express the dry-throated thirst of a man who wants to sip on kisses. When I read Rumi … I think of you.

I understand the moon. It is easy to understand. Like the children in sagging swimsuits running into the water up to their knees – splashing each other, laughing with squeals of delight. I pause again. With feet sinking into wet sand, where the water meets the land, I imagine our children, running gleefully back to us from the splashing surf, and with sandy hands they tell us of all the fun they had in the waves. I want an ocean kind of love.

In the rainbow spray blown from the lip of a breaking wave, I can see the wind. As I face the horizon, eyes cast across the sea, I feel the breeze kiss against my cheek. I think of you, and in the movement of the air around me, I listen for your heartbeat and make secret fevered wishes that you hear mine like a kiss blown to you by the breeze between us. I want an ocean kind of love.

Further down the beach, where the sandy bottom organizes the incoming swells into shapely waves that stand-up straight before they roll over themselves, I watch the surfers time the sets. They rise and fall in the troughs of the waves that pass underneath them. And I imagine how we might time life’s steady roll, its rhythmic ups and downs. I want an ocean kind of love.

I have a hunger to know you, a thirst to kiss you, my lips burn with dry impatience.

In my hour by the sea, thoughts of you keep me company.

I want ours to be an ocean kind of love.

(this post originally appeared on ThoughtCatalog.com)

Nigger. There it is. You just read it.

It’s such a magical word. Speak its name and it makes all common sense disappear.

I know some of you hate that word. Some of you are hurt by it. (I apologize for causing you any pain. But why are you clicking on articles you know will upset you?) Some of you see it as just another collection of letters. Some of you thought it was unnecessary. I could’ve just used “the n-word.” You would’ve known what I meant. But it’s to you that this essay is dedicated. This one goes out to those of you who prefer “the n-word.” You don’t have to use substitute words like poo-poo or pee-pee or “the n-word.” You’re a grown-up. You can say what you mean. Besides, whenever you say “the n-word,” it‘s totally pointless — in my head, I still think nigger.

Louis CK once joked, “It’s bullshit ‘cause when you say ‘the n-word’ you put the word nigger in the listener’s head. That’s what saying a word is. You say ‘the n-word’ and I go, ‘Oh, she means nigger.’ You’re making me say it in my head. Why don’t you say it instead and take responsibility … for the shitty words you want to say?”

No two ways about it, Louis CK nailed it. The “n-word” is like a tasteful raincoat that a flasher wears. A London Fog trench coat may look nice, but it doesn’t change the pervert inside.

You could argue that nigger is the most powerful word in the world, other than “love” or “money.” It has equal power to divide, as well as to bond people. It can soothe as well as enflame. Nigger covers the full spectrum of human emotions.

And I want you to know, it’s yours to use. Yes, yours. Take it. Do with it what you will.

No one owns a word (unless you invent it and patent it). American laws are based on the idea that in order to own something you must exercise control. If you can’t control it – well, then you don’t own it. Thus, we can’t control words, we can only use them. We own words the same way we own the wind. You can harness the wind, direct it, make it do work for you, but you can’t control it, and thus, you can’t own the wind.

If no one owns the word nigger, then no one can tell you who can or cannot say it. Yes, you read that correctly, black people don’t own nigger. Sorry, black folks. I’m not taking it away or giving it away. It was never ours; not even after it was “reclaimed.”

Words are approximations of feelings. They are representatives for our thoughts. They are symbols we use to reference concepts, to convey abstractions, to capture experiences and describe physical objects, and to talk a stranger into getting naked; but never forget words are sloppy, inexact things. They are arrows pointing to something else. They lack intrinsic value. We give them their meaning.

Take the word: gift. In English, a gift is a present, a consideration, an extravagance. In German, the word gift means poison. What must a German with a shaky understanding of our language think when she hears an English-speaker offer her a gift?

I like to think of words as notes of mental music. They are sound/pictures we use to express the song of ourselves to others. Some notes are more pleasing to the ear. Other notes are more jarring to the listener. But, when you think of your words as notes, it makes it far easier to understand the impact of a word.

Should non-black people say nigger?

Depends on how they like to treat people and how they like to be treated. If one wishes to blow foul notes in the ears of their listeners, then go for it. Say nigger to your heart’s content. But understand, it’s a two-way street. Some folks will lose all respect for you. Some folks will find you cold, mean, small-minded, insensitive, callous, fearful, vindictive, shallow, childish, embarrassing and I could go on. Like fast food there are trade-offs. If you want to say “my nigga” to a friend to emphasize your friendship – knock yourself out. And keep in mind that if you use the word nigger, others might save you the trouble and they’ll knock you out. There are a lot of people, and not just black people, who would be happy to beat your ass if you say nigger at the wrong time or place.

Should black people say nigger?

Same answer. Depends on how you want to be treated and to treat others. When black people say nigger, or more accurately, the more affectionate, nigga, it often creates a bond, or reinforces an existing one. Nigga is a fun word. It’s not even out-of-place in love poems. Black people understand why others want to use it. If you want to use nigga, again, go crazy with it. But remember that you’re one hard “r” sound away from sounding like a complete racist asshole. Saying nigger is offensive, even when it comes from another black person.

Tyler the Creator was at Buzzfeed recently, and true to his style, hip-hop’s enfant terrible rushed their offices, spread mayhem and eagerly offended people who were busy trying to work. A lot of them took to Twitter to vent. One of the staff at Buzzfeed tweeted about how it felt when Tyler the Creator called her a nigger.

In case you were wondering, being called a nigger by Tyler, The Creator feels pretty much the same as a white dude saying it.

— Ashley Ford (@iSmashFizzle) May 14, 2014

Nigger can be insulting no matter who says it. That’s the thing about words: they are cooperation of meaning. You bring one half and I bring one half and together we communicate.

Let’s say you use the word: blue. I picture the color. But what if you were speaking with a person who was born blind? How the hell do you explain a color? The word blue has no (or almost no) meaning for a blind listener.

What about: antidisestablishmentarianism? Be honest. That word probably doesn’t mean anything to you. It’s functionally useless. In both cases, personal experience determines the meaning of the words. For language to work, two people must come to an informal agreement about what the words mean. Otherwise, we’re just adding to the noise of life. There’s the rub when it comes to the word nigger. We can only agree on its meaning in a context.

If my father says nigger, it means one thing. My father is an American black man and thus, to most people, that means he gets to say nigger whenever he wants.

If my mother say nigger, it means something else. My mother is an American white woman, and thus, to most people, she doesn’t get to say nigger whenever she wants.

As their mixed child, I get to say nigger whenever I want, according to the inane logic of American race.

To anyone who suggests my father can say nigger and my mother can’t, you’re incorrect. My mother can say nigger as often and as loudly as she wants. She chooses not to because she hates the word. But she could say it and no one could stop her. This is a line of argument that obscures the nigger debate. Obviously, anyone can say the word!

What people really mean when they say someone can or can not say nigger, they mean the person doesn’t have the right to say it. But who gives you the right to say anything?

That’s right. You. When you exercise your right of free speech, you are exercising control of your expression – you own your freedom to express yourself. In the States, to ensure this right, we protected it in the Bill of Rights. But that’s just paper. More words. Freedom of speech is a right you give yourself, or it’s God-given, if you prefer that language. But no human gives you the right to express yourself. Others can take it away, but they can’t give it to you.

The freedom of speech (and self-expression) seems to be what makes so many people mad whenever they think someone would dare tell them they can or can’t say a word – even if the word is nigger. Well, like a black lawyer defending the KKK, I will gladly protect anyone’s right of free speech. I do that so that not one of us is deprived of the right. What you choose to do with your freedom of speech is up to you.

The other day I was in a Rite-Aid drugstore. A man behind me in line was using his right to express himself.

“Dumb nigger … fucking dumb nigger try and look at me … you go on and best not look at me you dumb motherfucking nigger…”

I could feel his foul, hateful breath on my neck. Being a dude who isn’t afraid to call a stranger out, I turned around, ready to tell that limp-dick pigfucker what I thought about his choice of language. That’s when I saw him. The dude was a mentally-damaged homeless man. He’d clearly lost his grip on reality. There was no grimace, no mean or taunting smile. Nothing. Did he have the right to say nigger at me in a public store? You bet he did. And I had the right to leave, to confront him, or choose to not to be offended.

As it always is, the meaning of the word nigger was determined by the context. In this context, I didn’t get offended because the dude was clearly batshit insane. Saying nigger made people pay attention to him. This is pure speculation on my part, but it seemed like the man felt utterly ignored, and he was using the most powerful word he could to make people pay attention to him. Some say “hurt people hurt people.” That dude was a perfect example of that saying.

If you call me a nigger, I’m likely to let it go. I’ll still get angry or hurt, but I’ve heard it far too many times for it to devastate or shock me. When I hear the word I don’t only think about the victims of racism. Instead, I also think of the ignorance of the person saying it. Rather than let any ignorant person hurt me with something as ephemeral as a word, I treat it the same as if they spat in my face. When someone spits in your face, you can get violent if you want. I just wipe the spit off and move on like a kung fu badass. You can’t let ignorant people play with your emotions. Am I suggesting you be like me? That you react the way I do? No. I’m suggesting you decide for yourself.

Once you understand that the word nigger is hurtful to lots of people, not just black people, but white people like my mother who’s been called a nigger-lover more than I can count, then go for it, hurt people to your heart’s content. No one can stop you.

Since words can’t be owned by anyone, none of us need to spend our valuable time telling people who can or can not say words like nigger. Or, really, any word for that matter. The only person you rightfully control is you. You can determine what you say. And you can say whatever words you want. Just be prepared for the consequences. Besides, the trouble isn’t who is or isn’t saying nigger, the trouble comes from those who are thinking it. Our thoughts become the gifts one gives – either a present, or a poison.

Good luck, niggas!

(this post originally appeared at ThoughtCatalog.com)

Almost all of us are wondering: how the hell do you do this dance called love?

It sure ain’t easy. I’m not here to bullshit you. Looking around, other than grandparents or perhaps even your friends’ grandparents, the ones who’ve been together for forty, fifty years, we have few great role models of a life of loving a partner. You and I both know the celebrities we pay so much attention to don’t know any more about love than you do, and in many cases, they probably know less. The great loves of literature and myth seem quaint when compared to modern twists of fate like Tinder. All of our relationship experts and sexperts offer heaps of conflicting advice — they’re basically a confusing mirror reflection of the diet industry. And of course, there are the billion dollar industries built on helping you find love. And let’s say you do find it — we’re all still embarrassingly bad at keeping it alive and kicking, based on rates of divorce, Facebook data, and all the sad tales of woe I read online penned by confused men and women.

Some say love is all around. The Beatles promised us all you need is love. I like to think love is the glue holding this whole crazy parade of humanity together; otherwise, without it, we’d wander far from each other and spread out like a useless coating of people covering the skin of the planet. There is no physical sensation that compares. Love feels crazier than skydiving high on a cocktail of hardcore dugs. That swell of love, that feeling whether it’s orgasmic, romantic or platonic, that’s the best it gets here on planet earth. Lucky for us love is everywhere like air or Canadian tourists. You can feel and share love with anyone.

Obviously, most all of us want to hold out for that write your lover’s name on the sky sorta love affair, what cynics would call an idealized partner. But some of us find them. I’ve met husbands and wives I couldn’t believe were real people. I’m serious. I was like this is a joke, right? No one finds a wife like her – do they? And even then, when it seems like their love story is made of fairytale dust, love can get lost in the shuffle of setting suns. Love is free, love is everywhere, love is everything and love is all you need, but it still ain’t easy to do the love thang with an upright walking ape. And it seems like all the pop love songs in the world aren’t getting the message across. Sometimes it feels like, WTF, love? Why you gotta be like that?

Now, I’ve never had kids so I can’t speak for myself, but parents I know tell me about the love they have for their child. The strongest feeling they’ve ever experienced is to love someone more than themselves. I have to take them at their word. I mean, I know they might lie about their kids but I doubt they’d lie about the feeling. Not all of them, not all in the same way. So there’s the love of a parent for a child. And let’s not leave out the fact some pet-lovers would argue their love is no less than that of mother for child. I recommend we just take ‘em at their word. (I have no time to answer angry emails from incensed dog-lovers.)

So for the moment, setting parents and pet-lovers aside, I’d argue that romantic love, the bond between partners almost deserves its own word. It is different. We all know you love your father different than your dog and different than your cousin and different than your housecat and different than your partner. Yet, for the English speakers of the world we have but this one word. Well, I’m not so full of myself that I’m going to offer any suitable replacement. I’d never mistake myself for Shakespeare. Which means, for now, let’s keep to tradition and we’ll call all of these various expressions: love.

The handy thing about doing that is, if we look at them all as variations on love, they all become analogous, and you can learn to better love your boyfriend by paying attention to how you love your sister or your housecat. If we’re using the one word for all these expressions of that bonded feeling, it makes loving one just like loving another. And using our pseudo-scientific deconstruction of this analogous nature of love, we can zoom in and focus on the common process of love. Boom! Shit just got real, son.

So, what can you learn from loving Miss Champers that’ll help your better love Eduardo? You ready? This is the simplest love lesson you will ever hear:

Love is a constant negotiation based on learning how to love your partner while at the same time showing them how to love you.

You are both saying to each other: Teach me how to love … and I will teach you how to love me. This must be done every day.

With the coming of each new dawn we awake from the mini-death of sleep, and are reborn, if you will, as a new person. Not like brand new. You know what I mean. Like, if you’ve ever had a really shitty day and you tell yourself: if I can just get through this and get my head to my pillow… and then you finally do and when you wake up and you feel like a whole new person – yeah, like that. Reborn and refreshed.

Every day you wake up washed clean of the mental grime of the previous day as well as most any good or bad feelings of the day before. Sometimes, just as your first movements of muscles occur, even before your foot finds floor, you might already be in a foul mood because of a nightmare you had. Other times you might wake-up cheery because you’re greeted by the smell of your partner on your pillow and coffee in the air. And then, as you well know, the rest of your day continues to influence who you are in that window of 24 hours.

Maybe you hear good news and it launches you into a place where you seemingly rain down positivity onto most everyone you meet that day, sprinkling everyone with some of that good feeling one gets when you meet a genuinely life-stoked person. Or perhaps, you get fired, your girlfriend breaks up with you on the way to school, who knows, and your day is a persistent shit storm that threatens to wipe some stink on everyone who comes in contact with you. As any toddler can tell you, some days are just better than others.

This see-saw effect of our days doesn’t usually alternate day-after-day, one day up, the next day down. Instead, we have days that measure all over the spectrum. And this creates patterns. And that’s for both you and your loved one, your life partner, your other half. This constant daily cycle of ups and downs for both of you paired with each night’s sleep making each of you into a new person at the start of each new day, makes it very hard to love another human being.

You may be thinking. Wait, I thought you said this was good news. Yes! It’s also simple.

We usually forget all about that sleep-new day-new person-life cycle craziness and instead, we tend to think of our partner like they were a fixed creature, more like a tree. Just like how the tree was there yesterday, it should be there tomorrow. And you love the tree. You give to the tree, you care for the tree and the tree gives back to you. Of course, you know at some point it will lose its leaves and then it will grow them back again, you expect things to change for the tree. But in this metaphor, the tree is seasonal. In real life, a human is daily.

I know you might be thinking:  Well, Zaron, how the hell do I do that? That sounds like a whole lot more work than I wanna do every day. I don’t want a relationship that’s harder to maintain than a British car.

I know. No one does. No one needs that sorta aggravation. And I’d never toss that monkey wrench into your love engine anyway. To love your partner newly each day just means that you pay attention to how to love them, you ask and observe, and you do the same by showing them how to love you. You keep playing that game of growing together, lest you grow apart.

This doesn’t need to be done with words. You can love someone entirely in gestures and behavior. Love is a language of actions, attention, anticipation, caring, sharing and joy.

You pay attention to them because you like to, you want to and you love to. Also, it means you can be a better partner if you know where they are, what matters to them and what concerns them. You anticipate them by thinking about what is coming next for them. You care for them by following the thread of their life from what you know of their past through the moment you share with them in the present towards where they want to be in the future. And you share with them the time, resources, intelligence and warmth that will get them there. And their joy is your joy. This is how you love someone (or your pet).

As you do that, you also reciprocate by helping them love you, too. Now these lessons you provide aren’t a matter of a curriculum, or any heavy-lifting of emotions, or time spent in lots of conversations. Save those fun little chats for when you have real troubles. In the day-to-day, all you have to do is be open, honest and present. Let them know what you like, appreciate, and be confident to express what you don’t like and what you don’t appreciate. That’s about it. If your partner is worth your time, they can learn to better love you by remembering and using that information you willingly share.

Yes, to be so present, open and honest takes bravery. But not much. You’ll find your honesty breeds confidence. If you’re willing to confront an ugliness, to speak about something your fear to look at it or bring up in conversation, you’ll find you’re also strong enough to deal with it. And to be present means you must show up and be there where your body is. Don’t always bring work home on your mind and let it silence your dinner. Don’t be so quick to hop on your phone when you’re traveling together. Be able to sit together and talk freely, or just enjoy stillness together. But it’s the together that important. Be where you are. It’s so simple it sounds funny when you put it like that.

If you can find someone and do these few things, if you promise to teach them to love you and that you will constantly learn to love them, daily, that’s about a good a recipe for success in love that you’ll ever find. That’s it in a teacup.

And hey, if you’re like me and you don’t have a partner in your life, you can always practice this with your dog. If you pay attention to your four-legged partner and you know Roscoe likes turkey bacon better than other doggie treats – well, that’s a tiny act of love. I swear. That’s what I mean. That’s how it works. Love should be fun. And you’ll know you’re doing it right if thinking about them makes you feel just a tiny bit better than thinking about yourself.

(this post originally appeared on ThoughtCatalog.com)

If I’m being honest, it’s still weird to think of you as a mother. I know how that sounds but … you’re my sister. And now, you’re someone’s mother. How can you be a mother?

You’re nothing like our mother. Or so we’ve always said. And yet, as you keep finding out, you’re just like our mother. Ha! When the hell did you become Mom?

Shopping for Mother’s Day cards, each year I marvel for a moment at the fact you take care of little ones — children that you made. I clearly remember when you were the little one, and how I had to care for you. Most of the time, you’d try to steal away from me and go do your favorite thing — eat handfuls of potting soil. Now, you have little dirt-eaters of your own. Do you see why I marvel at the mother you’ve become? We couldn’t trust you with a houseplant. Now you have a house full of kids.

Do you remember when we used to imagine what it would be like when we were the grown-ups and had kids of our own? We gave names to our future partners, future kids, even our future pets. Like tiny architects we talked about the floor plans of our future homes. To see you make your childhood fantasies and games of make-believe turn into a real family and a home is possibly the greatest magic trick I’ve ever seen.

When your sister becomes a mother … you see your sister differently.

You tell me you’ve never been so tired. That you think you’re always messing up, failing someone, forgetting something, and you’re perpetually worried you’re making memories that will shape your children’s futures. It’s true I’ve never seen you as confused, as worried, as stressed, as flat-out fearful; but I’ve also never seen you smile like the way you do at your children. Your eyes shine. What I also notice is that you’ve developed what can only be called a mother’s resilience. Where you might have once given up and walked away, now you stand up, you push through, and you endure, all those wearying hours of doing what needs to be done. You outlast yet another sleeplessness night. We both know you’ve always been strong. But now you have that mom strength.

When your sister becomes a mother … you see your mother differently.

As adults, we both figured out our mom isn’t perfect. No mother is. One day your kids will discover your secret, too. But until that day comes, you’ll raise them the best you can, the same as how our mom raised us. That’s all any mother can do. That’s why you hear yourself repeat things Mom said. I bet that’s super weird to hear Mom’s words come out of your mouth.

When your sister becomes a mother … you see yourself differently.

I smile with my soul every time I hear you give your kids one of the lessons of our family. I see how you strive not to repeat any ill patterns. I see how you attempt to hand forward lessons of love and hold back any learned fear. And I see how, every day, in a million ways, you’re reshaping the dynamics of our family. You’re convinced that you’re not perfect and thus you’re a bad mother. I see you’ve become what I always knew you’d be … one badass mother.

(this post originally appeared on ThoughtCatalog.com)

I’m done with Spotify. You can keep Pandora. I want no more iPod shufflin’. I don’t need ‘em anymore! I had a come-to-Jesus and I’ve returned home … to college radio.

Like, seriously, who do you think will make a better playlist for you: some nineteen-year-old sleep-deprived rap-god cypher king or a computer algorithm? Can Spotify ever develop better taste in new music than an internet-obsessed bubble goth kawaii queen?

Exactly. No. Nuh uh. So yeah, I switched back … to college radio. You can stream it online. There are tons of great stations across the nation. And it feels like falling in love with music … erryday!

How could I have forgotten about you, college radio?

For two years, I worked as a DJ on a college station. To hear mention of the call letters, KDVS, triggers memories like acid flashbacks. I instantly begin to recall all those days and nights spent in the bowels of a university building, in a listening room, going through stacks of records, parsing towers of CD jewel cases, sorting through a whole pile of cassette tapes, whatever-you-got, to craft the perfect playlist for a weekly three-hour show.

You’ll find college radio DJs take their music super-seriously. Like, I once played a beautiful Ella Fitzgerald song on my morning jazz show. I repeat, this was a Monday morning jazz show, in the a.m. drive-time slot. After my show, I was told, “never do that ever again.” The station’s general manager informed me, using what I would call brisk language, “listeners can hear Ella everywhere.” I thought, but did not say, “What? Are you drunk? Where can you hear Ella … anywhere?” If I were him I would’ve said you can hear her at Starbucks and I would’ve won. But he said nothing. He relied on his authority as the station’s general manager to end the conversation. A risky move with me since I don’t cotton to authority as a replacement for logic, but I ceded the point. I liked the guy, and so, I promised him my show would henceforth be an Ella Fitzgerald-free jazz show. Strange as it sounds, this made him happy.

The general manager’s attitude is right and a good thing. That fanatical, zealous attitude forces college radio DJs to seek out artists that you, the listener, have likely never heard. How deep is your music knowledge? How musically curious are you? These are the two measures of your worth as a DJ, the x and y-vectors of your coolness. As hipster as that may sound, it’s a damn good thing … for the audience.

If you have a college radio station near you, I strongly recommend, you go volunteer/work there. You will not regret it. If you aren’t so lucky as to have a nearby college radio station, well, you folks can do the next best thing, you can listen to one.

If you are lucky enough to become a college radio DJ, or if you were one, you’ll likely agree, the most important advice one can give you is: don’t say fuck on the air. Just like in life, there is a time and place for everything. On radio they call the it safe harbor, it’s the hours from 10 pm to 6 am, the time when cussing and lewd language is permissible. This is why Loveline is on so late. But you might be surprised how hard it actually is to never cuss when you’re speaking on a hot mic. Or maybe that’s just sugar-mouths like me. Either way, it’s a valuable lesson to learn. Respect the space you find yourself in.

Second most important thing: no dead air time. You gotta always feed the beast. It needs sound – either music, or you talking, or a station identification you have queued-up, a PSA, something, anything… just no dead air. Learn to anticipate. Improv with breezy confidence. But for god’s sake, man, feed the beast some sounds.

And last but not least, as far as ground rules go:don’t have sex on the air. Friends, well, more like people I knew, they did that, and apparently, that’s like a jail-able offense. The DJ who let the fornicating couple come down to the station and have sex on-air lost his show. (opinions were mixed if this was art or perversion, I said, it was punk as fuck). Turns out, the FCC is not cool with American citizens live broadcasting radio porn. And they call this freedom.

Now, here are…

1. You know the secret joy that comes from making a trucker’s night (and you can do it with your pants on)

When you get a phone call from a long-haul trucker who’s passing by on the interstate, a man driving empty freeways, and he just wanted to call in to tell you the song you just played made his night, well, unless you’re Ayn Rand, you feel those invisible ripples of your daily little choices. You hear how the tiniest things you do reverberate throughout the world and connect you to others. And sometimes the person at the end of the connection is a lonely trucker. You get to see how the simple act of picking your playlist changed that same lonely man’s night. A college radio DJ feels how their smallest choices profoundly affect others in the world. Music is emotion is power. Handle wisely.

2. A bunch of college radio DJs = if Comic-Con geeks were given an open bar

If you ever wanna see firsthand the true face of life-long obsession — go and spend any weeknight with a roomful of wine-drunk college radio DJs. Their wine-stained smiles and passionate red-eyes will make you think those vinyl-lovers are somehow distinguished, at least more so than your common comic book store nerd. And that’s where you’d be wrong. Those college radio folks are zealots’ zealot. They’ll argue about music the way Latin revolutionaries once argued about the future of Communism. Don’t be surprised to see someone break furniture, throw a drink, punch a child or storm out vowing never to return. Shit gets hectic when you’re arguingKool Keith vs. MF Doom.

3. You might meet a Nobel Laureate or former President in the lobby

The VIPs of the world often make appearances at college campuses. This isn’t strange at all. What is strange is reminding yourself not to think about the president’s penis, or cigars in warm wet places, or blue dresses, because you’re a journalist, damnit. You’re there to get the story – to cover a speech. Of course, this doesn’t work. You cover the speech by the former president (penis) and you think about what you’ll say (blue dresses) and you try to think of a fresh angle to analyze the president’s words (cigars in warm places) and you realize this is what journalism is all about. Thank you, college radio!

4. You’ve played, and won, the always-fun-game of “What The Hell Is That Smell?”

At the station I worked at, there were three-hour long shows through the night and into the early morning hours. That’s where you started. Your first show always seemed to be a 3am – 6am date with the Devil. Nevermind the pale moonlight. Because you have to show you mean it. Not everyone belongs on the air, cramming their way into listeners’ earbuds.

Now, if you give a full-grown human being three hours to fill a room with their personal musk, you will find most folks will be up to the task. They will fill the room with their personal fragrance. Some folks more so than others. There was one DJ, I swear to cheeses christ, the DJ booth after his show … the air smelled like he ate nothing but barbecued skunk nachos and refried pork butt sandwiches.

For the first fifteen minutes of our show, my co-host and I would guess. He was particularly good. He’d usually isolate each aroma in that mélange of stink. He’d pick out the scent of Doritos. And sure enough — in the trash — there’d be an empty bag. He’d detect the fragrant mustiness of mammalian sweat stains, imagine something like the ape house at the zoo. And we’d sniff one of the leather chairs and boom – we find the ape house. It’s a fun game. What the Hell Is That Hell Smell?

5. You’ve actually listened to Captain Beefheart,Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and Dr. John

These names aren’t just funny or strange names. You might’ve heard someone say them, once, or maybe you’ve seen referenced on The Simpsons or on Tumblr, or maybe you’re kinda worldly and you know all three, but in the orbit of college radio, if you stick around awhile, you will end up listening to Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. You will hear Lord Buckley lay his patter. And you will hear Daniel Johnston get emotionally bent with a piano. And Odetta scold New Orleans. Someone will play these geniuses for you. And other ones, too. They will insist you hear them. Or they will suggest an album, like Freddie Hubbard’s Red Clay, and if you like that one, they will recommend an album by a man you’ve never heard named Manitas de Plata. If your Spanish is worse than mine, it means Silver Hands. A great name for a great artist.

You will listen to these artists because they are all unbelievably good and this is what makes you a college radio DJ. In a matter of months your musical palate will expand like you had chefs for friends and they were constantly inviting you over for dinner parties, only these chefs are DJs. And now you’re becoming one, too.

6. You can get addicted to music but don’t worry because there’s no rehab

Just ask Amy Winehouse. What? Too soon? Okay, fine. All apologies. Come on, that one was fine. Whatever. My point is, after thousands and thousands of hours of listening to music, songs from all genres, music from around the globe, and particularly time spent feasting on whole catalogs of your “new favorite” bands, when you say that ghastly phrase, “I prefer their early stuff,” you really fucking mean it. You’ve actually heard all of the band’s albums. You’ve even heard most of their good bootlegs.

Working in college radio isn’t like work at all. It’s more like you are a heroin addict. You hang out mostly in-doors with other sunlight-deficient people, you mumble in a language few outsiders understand, you sell your old stuff to feed your new addiction, you get excited about “new shit that just hit town,” and you’ll likely drift away from old friends and spend strange nights with other music junkies; and when you’re not listening to music, or playing music for your audience those invisible people out there in radioland, you’re sprawled on couches telling stories about the best shit you’ve come across recently, last week, last month, and of course the best ever. If you become a college radio DJ, you will most likely become addicted to music. This is a good thing. It’s costly; as all addictions are, but nevertheless, it is a good and fine thing. (It just makes moving difficult.)

7. You meet the strangest, most delightful people

And I totally mean that. You meet the strangest, most delightful people in college radio. Like, there was a guy who was this totally punk rock transfer student from Japan. In that order. His name was Hiro. And he slept at the radio station, on a couch, and everyone was cool with it. Late at night the station was pretty empty. There’d be whatever DJ was on the air, plus, maybe some scattered DJs in listening rooms; and there, on one of the couches, would be Hiro, sleeping like a drunken sailor. No one knew where he went on the days when he didn’t sleep in the station. But he had a show. So he was one of us. And thus, he could do no wrong. College radio basically follows the Pirate code. And in person, Hiro was a charming dude. He played classical music on his show, and it was the coolest classical show I’ve ever heard. So, y’know … who knows? You might get lucky and meet someone like Hiro.

8. You can play dress-up like a five-year old and you don’t have to change your clothes!

There was a DJ and her show was, like, one of our station’s flagship shows. She was a legend-in-her-own-time. She was also one of the coolest, nicest people you’d ever have the pleasure of meeting. I loved her show. I loved her. But not that way. More like the way someone loves Nutella. She was wicked good. She called herself, Miss Marnie Hotpants. Her show was a floating dance party that you could find on your car radio or listen to online. Each week, I imagined her in the craziest outfits, hosting her radio dance party. Then one day, I was in the station and I saw her doing her a show in, basically, a hoody and pajama bottoms … and I don’t think I could’ve loved her any more. She was a one-woman dance party and she played dress-up in your mind. Tres genial!

If you’re looking for commercial-free music that you can stream online, rad new music you can listen to at work, in your car, wherever the hell you are, pause your Pandora and check out college radio. If you have the musical blahs, college radio just might be the antidote to the symptoms of Spotify syndrome.

Here’s a Top 15 list (in no particular order) of the best college stations around the nation.

Happy listening!

1. Loyola Marymount University — KXLU 88.9 FM
2. Evergreen State College — KAOS 89.3 FM: Known for the best call letters in the country … KAOS is a legend.
3. UC Davis — KDVS 90.3 FM
4. University of Oregon — KWVA 88.1 FM
5. UC Berkeley – KALX 90.7 FM
6. Texas A&M — KANM 1580 AM: Find ‘em on the AM dial … and they’re more eclectic than you would suspect. They have damn good music taste down there in Texas.
7. Concordia University — CJLO 1690 AM
8. The College of Wooster — WCWS 90.9 FM
9. Ithaca College — WICB 91.7 FM
10. University of Puget Sound — KUPS 90.1 FM
11. Emerson College — WERS 88.9 FM
12. Rochester Institute of Technology — WITR 89.7 FM
13. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute — WRPI 91.5
14. New York University — WNYU 89.1
15. This last one is not college radio, but it’s one of the best stations in the world. And if you don’t already, you should know about …WFMU 90.1/ 91.1 FM

College radio is the healthiest addiction you’ll ever have. You’ll love how it ruins your life. Happy listening!

(this post originally appeared on ThoughtCatalog.com)

I spend a lot of time thinking about toilet paper. I’d forgotten how much toilet paper women can go through in a single day. I live with two women and I often ask my housemates why they hate trees. They flush through toilet paper like trees did something bad to their mama.

One of the guys I live with doesn’t find it all as funny as I do. He prefers to complain about the times when there was not toilet paper on the roller and he had to waddle spread-leg to reach for a roll in the cabinet. (I try not to laugh).

One of the women does her part to scheme ways to make sure there’salways an extra roll handy and within arm’s reach. This means she leaves two and three rolls on the edge of the bathtub.

The other woman is quick to apologize whenever she hears that there wasn’t any toilet paper on the roll for you. She’s ready with an apology (whether it was her fault or not).

Then there’s me who just accepts the struggle of our little toilet drama and finds our difficulty at keeping toilet paper on the roll almost amusing. Almost.

Admittedly, not having toilet paper in that critical moment doesn’t really qualify as a crisis. But I’ve found that whenever you have a group of four (or more) people and shit goes down … individuals tend to react in four basic ways:

Schemers … Saviors … Strugglers … Sufferers

1. Schemer – runs the angles, sees strengths & weaknesses, has an action plan, selfish

2. Savior – thinks of others first, martyrs themselves, carries others when they fall

3. Struggler – pushes through, energized by crisis, loves that work needs to be done

4. Sufferer – a songbird of complaints, first to be offended, the voice of rebellion

If those thumbnail descriptions didn’t make it easy for you to see the distinctions, here are the four ways of reacting to a problem as applied to a familiar quartet, one that you may know and love.

Starting to see how it plays out?

Let’s be real, what else is a writer but a public sufferer? Carrie Bradshaw is a classic sufferer. What problem has she ever met that she couldn’t kvetch about? It’s what she does. Eventually, though, she reacts to her problem, possibly with the help of the schemes of Samantha, the saving grace of Charlotte, or she could manage to muddle through with the help from the well-practiced advice of the classic struggler, Miranda.

Maybe you didn’t do Sex and the City. Fair enough. Not really my handbag either. How about the lads from Liverpool?

You would likely think that John would be the savior — what with his Bed-Ins and flower power dreams of a better tomorrow. But nope, it’s George. He’s the one on the real Jesus kick; he didn’t try to theoretically save the whole world like John, (although he did write that song “Save the World”) he recorded an album and actually tried to save one country, Bangladesh. George is the savior. John Lennon would be the struggler. A problem energizes him. The crisis pushes him to work (even if that means labor through pain). He needs the deadline and the tension with Paul to get the song done. Which is all well and fine for Paul because he’s busy scheming his way at getting one of his solo songs on the album. Paul sees the angles. Which Beatle is the billionaire? Exactly. Meanwhile, Ringo, who was always quick to complain in Hard Day’s Night and has continued ever since; he’s the true rebel in The Beatles. Remember, he’s the one who quit and had to be talked back into the band by John and Paul.

Want a different group of contentious badass music legends? How about…

NWA is kind of an easy one to sort once you understand that Eazy-E is the sufferer. Eazy may have schemed tough, but the whiny-voiced one was always looking for respect and complaining about the shit he had to do to stack his paper. He liked angles but he paid a lawyer to scheme for him. Cube was the one with the most political mind; he was down for the struggle of the people (and this was more evident on his first solo album when he had Chuck D from Public Enemy show up on a track ). Dr. Dre was the one running angles in his rhymes and in his mind. He wasn’t the first to bounce from the group as soon as he could get his own contract with a label. Dre waited. And then he started his own label. Soon he’ll be hip-hop’s first billionaire. Scheme on, Doctor. This leaves, the only one who stayed until the very end, MC Ren, the ruthless mic-killer that carried his partner, until Eazy was in the grave.

As you can see, one can use this model for all sorts of groups. Do you wanna try it with a few other groups. Okay! I have to admit, I know The Golden Girls better than South Park. I’m not proud of that fact. But it is what it is. If we apply the same four roles to those two groups, it looks like this:

You see how this basic dynamic seems to work for a four-person group? And how it can even create healthy group dynamics when it’s well-balanced and each person brings their skills and concerns to the table.

I’m no scientist. I don’t claim this is the least bit scientific; at best you could say I had a hypothesis, I tested it, I found repeatable success in predictive modeling and boom-zag-a-zow I figured wtf, I should name the four types of reactions I’d noticed.

Every time I tell a friend my little pet theory it seems to help them, so I thought I’d present it to you. If it helps, it helps. If it doesn’t help, forget I said anything. And I feel I shouldn’t have to say this, but just so we all remember: I am not a doctor and you’re taking advice from the internet.

The best way I’ve found to use the Schemer, Savior, Struggler and Sufferer model is to understand others and use it to empathize with how they’re seeing the problem. Then, once you do that, maybe it’ll help you keep your head if you know Steve from the Detroit office is a total sufferer and that means instead of him you need to be the one to update your client with a progress report. Or if your girlfriend’s mother is a savior type and will be the first to martyr herself when a family function goes off the rails, maybe you can anticipate her and you can offer to babysit all the nieces and nephews so she can go with everyone out to see a movie and enjoy some drinks in downtown (for a change).

Little acts of empathy and anticipation can make a huge difference in how a group dynamic plays out.

If you see that your new boss is a total schemer, you can present her with the information she wants to know, in the way she wants to know it, in the order she wants to know it, because you’re aware of how she processes a crisis.

Triage is a vital skill in a crisis or when dealing with a problem.

The better you are at handling a problem by assessing the talents and tendencies of those around you the better it is for you and everyone involved. And it doesn’t take much. Just ask yourself: Is this person a schemer, savior, struggler or sufferer? Then act accordingly.

Now, I should reiterate that no one is always a sufferer or a savior. These are just representative models of four different ways people respond to crisis. People have tendencies. But they’ll likely react differently to emotional problems than they respond to fiscal emergencies.

Let me say that again, I’m now suggesting you or anyone else always responds to every crisis or problem with the same reaction. Nuh uh. But you may notice that you and others tend to react with the same responses to certain problems over and over again.

Like when it comes to money, perhaps your boyfriend’s first idea is always to scheme his way out of trouble. Or perhaps, your roommate tends to be a complainer and will suffer her way through any money crisis she encounters. Or perhaps, you constantly loan her money to help get her by, never knowing when you might see that money again, but you can’t help but act as her savior. And secretly, or not so secretly, you wish she was more like your other roommate who struggles at her second job to make sure she has her bills covered.

Basically, I don’t suggest that you use these as labels to define yourself or others. They work best as handles – they are a way to grasp and understand a person’s troublesome behavior and give it a name. If you can name the dynamic it can help you deal with a person who’s in the grip of a crisis. If anything, this is meant as a tool of empathy and understanding. Also, no one response is better or worse than another. These aren’t judgments or qualitative assessments. Each has their benefits and drawbacks.

Sufferers may sound like complainers, but they also spark rebellions. Strugglers may seem diligent and industrious but Bukowski used to struggle through a bottle of booze a day. Anything can be work if you put your mind to it. Saviors may be quick to crawl up on the cross and die for everyone else, but they also hold groups together with their sacrifices. Schemers are not merely selfish operators always looking out for number one. Samantha Jones was loyal to her girls and that’s why she was fast to share a plan to get revenge, or help her friend bed a man, or get them all a better table for drinks.

Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses. There is no one better way to be, mostly, because we’re talking about people and personalities. But when you can figure out what type of behavior you’re dealing with, if you can determine if they’re: a schemer, savior, struggler or sufferer … it seems to oil the hinges of group dynamics.

(this article originally appeared on ThoughtCatalog)

If you are a man, you are part of rape culture. I know … that sounds rough. You’re not a rapist, necessarily. But you do perpetuate the attitudes and behaviors commonly referred to as rape culture.

You may be thinking, “Now, hold up, Zaron! You don’t know me, homey! I’ll be damned if I’m gonna let you say I’m some sorta fan of rape. That’s not me, man!”

I totally know how you feel. That was pretty much exactly my response when someone told me I was a part of rape culture. It sounds horrible. But just imagine moving through the world, always afraid you could be raped. That’s even worse! Rape culture sucks for everyone involved. But don’t get hung up on the terminology. Don’t concentrate on the words that offend you and ignore what they’re pointing to — the words “rape culture” aren’t the problem. The reality they describe is the problem.

Men are the primary agents and sustainers of rape culture.

Rape isn’t exclusively committed by men. Women aren’t the only victims — men rape men, women rape men — but what makes rape a men’s problem, our problem, is the fact that men commit 99% of reported rapes.

How are you part of rape culture? Well, I hate to say it, but it’s because you’re a man.

When I cross a parking lot at night and see a woman ahead of me, I do whatever I feel is appropriate to make her aware of me so that a) I don’t startle her b) she has time to make herself feel safe/comfortable and c) if it’s possible, I can approach in a way that’s clearly friendly, in order to let her know I’m not a threat. I do this because I’m a man.

Basically, I acknowledge every woman I meet on the street, or in an elevator, or in a stairway, or wherever, in a way that indicates she’s safe. I want her to feel just as comfortable as if I weren’t there. I accept that any woman I encounter in public doesn’t know me, and thus, all she sees is a man — one who is suddenly near her. I have to keep in mind her sense of space and that my presence might make her feel vulnerable. That’s the key factor — vulnerability.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t spend much of my life feeling vulnerable. I’ve come to learn that women spend most of their social lives with ever-present, unavoidable feelings of vulnerability. Stop and think about that. Imagine always feeling like you could be at risk, like you were living with glass skin.

As modern men we must seek out danger. We choose adventures and extreme sports in order to feel like we’re in jeopardy. We make games of our vulnerability. That’s how differently men see the world from women. (Obviously, stated with full acknowledgment that there’s a vibrant community of extreme athletes that are women, who regularly risk their safety as well. However, women don’t need to engage in adrenalin sports to feel at-risk.)

Now, I stand about a finger of tequila under six feet. I work out and would say I’m in decent shape, which means when I’m out alone at night, I rarely ever fear for my safety. Many men know exactly what I mean. Most women have no idea what that feels like — to go wherever you want in the world, at any time of day or night, and feel you won’t have a problem. In fact, many women have the exact opposite experience.

A woman must consider where she is going, what time of day it is, what time she will arrive at her destination and what time she will leave her destination, what day of the week is it, if she will be left alone at any point … the considerations go on and on because they are far more numerous than you or I can imagine. Honestly, I can’t conceive of having to think that much about what I need to do to protect myself at any given moment in my life. I relish the freedom of getting up and going, day or night, rain or shine, Westside or downtown. As men we can enjoy this particular extreme luxury of movement and freedom of choice. In order to understand rape culture, remember this is a freedom that at least half the population doesn’t enjoy.

That’s why I go out of my way to use clear body language and act in a way that helps minimize a woman’s fear and any related feelings. I recommend you do the same. It’s seriously, like, the least any man can do in public to make women feel more comfortable in the world we share. Just be considerate of her and her space.

You may think it’s unfair that we have to counteract and adjust ourselves for the ill behavior of other men. You know what? You’re right. It is unfair. Is that the fault of women? Or is it the fault of the men who act abysmally and make the rest of us look bad? If issues of fairness bother you, get mad at the men who make you and your actions appear questionable.

Because when it comes to assessing a man, whatever one man is capable of, a woman must presume you are capable of. Unfortunately, that means all men must be judged by our worst example. If you think that sort of stereotyping is bullshit, how do you treat a snake you come across in the wild?

…You treat it like a snake, right? Well, that’s not stereotyping, that’s acknowledging an animal for what it’s capable of doing and the harm it can inflict. Simple rules of the jungle, man. Since you are a man, women must treat you as such.

The completely reasonable and understandable fear of men is your responsibility. You didn’t create it. But you also didn’t build the freeways either. Some of the things you inherit from society are cool and some of them are rape culture.

Since no woman can accurately judge you or your intentions on sight, you are assumed to be like all other men. 73% of the time a woman knows her rapist. Now, if she can’t trust and accurately assess the intentions of men she knows, how can you expect her to ever feel that she can accurately assess you, a complete stranger? Rape prevention is not just about women teaching women how not to get raped — it’s about men not committing rape.

Rape prevention is about the fact that a man must understand that saying “no” doesn’t mean “yes,” that when a woman is too drunk/drugged to respond that doesn’t mean “yes,” that being in a relationship doesn’t mean “yes.” Rather than focus on how women can avoid rape, or how rape culture makes an innocent man feel suspect, our focus should be: how do we, as men, stop rapes from occurring, and how do we dismantle the structures that dismiss it and change the attitudes that tolerate it?

Since you are a part of it, you ought to know what rape culture is.

According to Marshall University’s Women’s Center website:

Rape Culture is an environment in which rape is prevalent and in which sexual violence against women is normalized and excused in the media and popular culture. Rape culture is perpetuated through the use of misogynistic language, the objectification of women’s bodies, and the glamorization of sexual violence, thereby creating a society that disregards women’s rights and safety.

When a woman first told me I was part of rape culture, I wanted to disagree for obvious reasons. Like many of you I wanted to say, “Whoa, that ain’t me.” Instead, I listened. Later, I approached a writer I respect. I asked her to write an article with me, wherein she’d explain rape culture to me and to male readers. She stopped returning my emails.

At first, I was annoyed. Then as it became clear she wasn’t going to respond at all, I actually got mad. Luckily, I’ve learned one shouldn’t immediately respond when they feel flashes of anger. Thunder is impressive but it’s the rain that nourishes life. So I let that storm pass and thought about it. I took a walk. They seem to jangle my best thoughts loose.

Blocks from my house, in front of a car wash it dawned on me. If rape culture is so important to me I needed to find out for my self what it is. No woman owes me her time just because I want to know about something she inherently understands. No woman should feel she has to explain rape culture to me just because I want to know what it is. No woman owes me shit. I saw how my desire for a woman to satisfy me ran deep. Even my curiosity, a trait that always made me proud, was marred with the same sort of male-centric presumption that fuels rape culture. I expected to be satisfied. That attitude is the problem. I started reading and kept reading until I understood rape culture and my part in it.

Here’s a bullet-point list of examples of rape culture.

· Blaming the victim (“She asked for it!”)

· Trivializing sexual assault (“Boys will be boys!”)

· Sexually explicit jokes

· Tolerance of sexual harassment

· Inflating false rape report statistics

· Publicly scrutinizing a victim’s dress, mental state, motives, and history

· Gratuitous gendered violence in movies and television

· Defining “manhood” as dominant and sexually aggressive

· Defining “womanhood” as submissive and sexually passive

· Pressure on men to “score”

· Pressure on women to not appear “cold”

· Assuming only promiscuous women get raped

· Assuming that men don’t get raped or that only “weak” men get raped

· Refusing to take rape accusations seriously

· Teaching women to avoid getting raped instead of teaching men not to rape

You’ll quickly find that rape culture plays a central role in all the social dynamics of our time. It’s at the heart of all our personal interactions. It’s part of all our social, societal and environmental struggles. Rape culture is not just about sex. It is the product of a generalized attitude of male supremacy. Sexual violence is one expression of that attitude. Again, don’t let the terminology spook you. Don’t get hung up on the term “male supremacy.” The term isn’t the problem. The problem is that rape culture hurts everyone involved. Antiquated patriarchal notions of society make it difficult for men to come forward as rape victims just as much as they foster a desire for a man to be seen as powerful and sexually aggressive. Men shouldn’t feel threatened or attacked when women point out rape culture — they’re telling us about our common enemy. We ought to listen.

Now that you know what it is, what can you do about rape culture?

· Avoid using language that objectifies or degrades women

· Speak out if you hear someone else making an offensive joke or trivializing rape

· If a friend says she has been raped, take her seriously and be supportive

· Think critically about the media’s messages about women, men, relationships, and violence

· Be respectful of others’ physical space even in casual situations

· Always communicate with sexual partners and do not assume consent

· Define your own manhood or womanhood. Do not let stereotypes shape your actions.

What else can you do about rape culture when you experience it IRL?

1. Men can confront men.

No one is suggesting violence. In fact, that’s what we’re looking to avoid. But sometimes, a man needs to confront another man or a group of men in a situation. When I’m out in public and I see a man hassling a woman, I stop for a moment. I make sure the woman sees me. I want her to know I’m fully aware of what’s happening. I wait for a moment for a clear indication from her of whether she needs help. Sometimes, the couple will continue right on fighting like I’m just a hickory tree. Other times, the woman will make it clear she’d like backup and I approach the situation. I’ve never had to get violent. Usually, my presence alone makes the guy leave if he’s a stranger, or explain himself if they’re familiar. It changes the dynamic. That’s why I always stop when I see a woman getting hassled in public. For any reason. I make sure any woman, in what could become a violent situation, one I may or may not be correctly assessing, feels that she has the opportunity to signal to me if she needs assistance. I’m a big brother to a sister so that response is practically instinctual.

But, I don’t limit this to women. I’ve also done this for two men who were clearly in a lovers’ spat. Whenever you see a situation spiraling out of control, and especially if someone is crying for help or being attacked, you should confront the situation. You don’t need to “break it up.” But engage, get involved, take down pertinent information, alert authorities, call the police. Do something.

2. Men can correct men.

If you hear a guy say some jacked-up slurs in front of you and there’s no one from that particular community around to be offended, you can still say something. This is also true when you hear misogynistic language. Speak up. Tell your friend or co-worker that rape jokes are bullshit and you won’t tolerate them.

Trust me you won’t lose your “man card.” If you’re older than nineteen and you’re still worried about your man card, you don’t understand what respectable masculinity is about, anyway. It’s not about cultish approval from others — it’s about being “your own man” and doing the right thing. You might be surprised by how many other men will respect you for doing what they wanted to but didn’t. I’ve heard it plenty. I’m not some social justice cop, but I have and will argue with whole roomfuls of men. Later on, some dudes will approach me and say how much they respected what I did. I always tell them it gets easier to speak up every time you do it. I promise you that’s true.

No one is suggesting you go around policing everybody. I don’t make it my business to make sure everyone live by my yardstick. No one needs you telling them what you think about every little thing they say and whether it meets your criteria for social awareness. But when some dude says some foul shit, and you know it — we all hear those jokes — you can let the dude know his rape joke or his “she’s a whore” analogy didn’t play.

3. Men can make other men STFU.

Let’s say, you’re in a group of men, and one of your friends starts hollering at a girl — tell him to knock it the fuck off. You won’t be a punk for speaking up for the woman. As long as you don’t try to score points with her for “defending her,” you won’t be white-knighting it either. You’re just doing the right thing. No one needs some sexist clown hollering at her because the dude popped a mental woody. Cat-calling is one of the worst advertisements for male sexuality there is. Those assholes make us all look like complete tools. You get that, right? We need to cut that shit out.

Working construction is when I learned to speak up to a group of men. You have to do it. Mostly, you do it because you want to respect yourself. Otherwise, you’re another pathetic man that allows a guy to mistreat a woman in your presence. When a guy cat-calls a woman and you don’t say something, he just treated her like a cheaply degraded sex object for his satisfaction and he turned you into the punk-ass that’s willing to allow him to mistreat a woman in your presence … while you say nothing.

What would your grandfather think if he saw you in that moment? Would he be proud of you? Are you proud of yourself? Male pride is good for something — use it to be your better self. Don’t be that silent punk that goes along with the crowd to get along with the crowd. Speak up when someone cat-calls a woman in front of you. Tell them to shut the fuck up. As a man, you have power. Use it. Men respect conviction.

4. It’s our job to have standards for ourselves, and thus, for all men.

You may think, “Zaron, man, lighten up, brother. Cat-calling is not that big a deal. Aren’t we making a mountain out of a molehill? Some women like it.” You may be right. Maybe some women do like it. That doesn’t matter. I like to speed. My cousin likes to smoke pot in public. Neither of us gets to do what we like. That’s just how it goes sometimes when you’re a member of a society. If you find that woman who likes to be cat-called, go for it, just do it behind closed doors. When you’re in public, respect the physical and mental space of others.

Don’t limit yourself to being a man. Be a mensch. Be a human being.

When something like #YesAllWomen occurs in our cultural conversation and women the world over are out there sharing their experiences, their trauma, their stories and their personal views, as men, we don’t need to enter that conversation. In that moment, all we need to do is listen, and reflect, and let their words change our perspective. Our job is to ask ourselves how we can do better.

(this article originally appeared on Medium/HumanParts)

Why do we need to talk about women writers as opposed to just writers?

First off, there are thestatistics, reports, and articlesthat all address the gender gap in publishing and marketing of women writers.

Secondly, it’s important because of the limitations and expectations a woman writer must combat when she brings her work to the market:

But hey, don’t jump to conclusions. This common marketplace sexism runs deep. It’s not exclusively a case of men-versus-women. This casual sexism is held as a sort of common wisdom for many professional women who wish to succeed in the current marketplace.

I don’t have such concerns. My reputation and sellability are of no consequence. Unaffected by the almighty dollar, I want to talk about this marketplace sexism because it’s some regressive bullshit. I want to talk about it for personal reasons, as well. It matters to me because both men and women think I’m kidding when I say Chelsea Fagan is a legit hero of mine. WTF? A dude can have a super femme writer as a hero. Have you read Chelsea’s stuff? She’s fucking hilarious… and consistent!

I may see the sexism and the market differently because punk rock taught me not to give a fuck about things like gender. If you were good, you were good. I don’t care if you stand or sit when you pee. But punk rebellion is ultimately adolescent. You have to deepen your worldview. You can’t always say: I don’t give a fuck.

It was women writers who taught me how to be brave when one day I started to give a fuck or two. They taught me how to be defiant, while in pursuit of what matters to me. They showed me how to seek community, and find a personal space in it. They showed me how to live on my terms, in balance with others. These are super valuable lessons that men don’t really discuss as much anymore. Sometimes it feels like men gave up all talk of a community with the death of the Western.

Are men writers and women writers different? No. And, yes, they are. Both answers are true and don’t invalidate the other. On some levels of analysis they’re both humans expressing themselves: identical and indistinguishable as writers. While on other planes of interpretation they’re as different as separate languages.

Sadly, it’s still necessary that we pay attention to “women writers” as such. We have further to go before it’s common knowledge that Arundhati Roy, Clarice Lispector, Alice Walker, and my homegurl, Joan Didion, wrote/write with the same fire, cogent analysis and sensual recollection as Joyce, Hemingway or Kundera.

Presently, we have Zadie Smith laying it down. She pens sentences with the same swagger as a young Norman Mailer. (Yeah, I said that.) Only her (cocksure) conviction comes from pain lived and considered, not from bluster and bluff, and pain craftily avoided.

Every day online, I read the work of women writers that makes me laugh so hard strangers worry about me. I pore over their thoughtful meditations that deepen my understanding of the world. I consider their impassioned rants and critical essays that offer me new insights into our culture and society. I’m often surprised by how their confessions can be so cathartic for me and others, or how their humorous admissions, often of things I will never do, build community from human foibles.

I’m thinking of seven women in particular. They write about whatever they want. The horizon is their border. Each day, they get up and prove the term blogger isn’t a pejorative but a cultural role.

These seven women writers of Thought Catalog are my everyday heroes.

In no particular order:

1. Kovie Biakolo

Known for her acrobatic mind, Kovie works at dizzying heights as she performs feats of mental daring. She dissects big ticket issues like: race, sexism, gender, power, class, social justice and their intersections, all with equal ease and aplomb. Imbued with the convictions of her faith, when you read Kovie’s work it’s impossible to walk away unchanged. Whether you agree with her or not, you will be better informed for having read her words. You’ll consider angles possibly unseen. You’ll be confronted with facts and stats as she deprives you any chance to say “I didn’t know that — no one ever told me that.” Kovie tells you. She’s concerned with life first and foremost. Although she’s academic, her interest in theory is how it affects hearts and minds, bodies and souls. She tries to deny it but Kovie cares, deeply. She cares about the world, about people, about strangers, about you, about herself and about the future we create. Her unifying factor is that she cares. Kovie’s work is that rare delight of great intelligence crafted with great heart.

“For Those Who Don’t Love Loudly” by Kovie Biakolo

2. Ella Cerón

Our resident badass in running shoes. The clean, mean, green juice-drinking machine. The only person I want as my Trivial Pursuit partner –whatever version you got, homies! Attuned to the rhythms of a life well-lived, shaped by challenges met and coffee consumed, health-conscious as your coolest friend, yet mindful that it’s important to pamper oneself and reward your body with “the little things in life,” those tiny pleasures that are often the best moments life offers, Ella is an artist of living. She’s joyful and fun, self-effacing and quick to laugh or joke, yet serious and loyal as gravity. To comprehend and share her experiences, in bold and vivid colors she paints word portraits of how “who we are” is always a matter of our own creation. Ella tells stories of love and friendship that show a life in relation to another, she tells tales of her adventures in having a human body, and she dreams and celebrates silliness in ways that inspire her reader, ironically, to choose commitments. She’s as fun as a one-woman Broadway show and proof that our boldest choices usually require the most vulnerability. And don’t sleep on the fact, my homegurl’s funnier than a loud fart at a funeral.

I Don’t Like My Thighs And Other Concerns Of Having A Body by Ella Cerón

3. Chelsea Fagan

Chelsea Fagan taught me to be brave. She showed me how to be a writer who publishes online. One thing that helps, keep a certain refrain quick and at the ready, it goes a little something like this, “Oh yeah, fuck you!” You never say this, or text it, email or tweet it. But you will say it to your screen when you read some of the comments from your new anonymous critics. I like to picture Chelsea, delicate and feminine as a porcelain doll, staring at her screen and cussing like a truck driver in a bar fight. Her writing is sharp, funny, socially-conscious and tickled by the vanities of pop culture. I naturally gravitate to the rhythms of her southern sentences. I recognize the punch and bite of her humor. I still marvel at the hate she takes on for being one of the funniest people on the internet. But she never quits being exactly who she wants to be. She’s impeccably defiant. For that, she’s a hero. She says what she’s come to say, no matter what. Chelsea’s got eggs! She didn’t come here to be sullied with any bullshit or sidetracked by nonsense. She’s got life to enjoy, love to share, friends to have fun with and experiences to savor. I celebrate the paradox that is Chelsea Fagan: a true southern lady, eternally graceful and wicked as sin on a Saturday night. Plus, you have to respect she’ll make a joke like this about cats:

They are shitty, shitty animals.

Not to mention the obvious, they shit IN BOXES IN YOUR HOUSE that linger for as long as you let them until you have to personally scoop them out and throw them away, a job that I thought would be the first we’d want to get rid of in a developed country.

Why Carrie Bradshaw Is The Worst Possible Person A Woman Could Idolize by Chelsea Fagan

4. Stephanie Georgopulos

She writes essays as earnest as a mobster’s deathbed confession. Her storytelling style is as nakedly exposed as a streaker at a ballgame. Her recollections are always lyrical. They might be as reminiscent and sentimental as a Billy Joel ballad, but they also hit heavy as a power chord and have all the soul ache of Kurt Cobain’s growl and wail. Gifted with a novelist’s eye for detail and turns of phrase, her writing is socially observant and wryly funny. Steph would be your favorite friend to travel with. Like, you really want to be the one who gets to sit next to her on a road trip. Reading her work has that same level of fun and intimacy. Just like the best road trips, her writing stays with you. Later on, you still recall her funny observations, her tender words of encouragement and insights, and the shared laughter at the sweet ridiculousness of it all.Life. Whatta ya gonna do?

What You Lose When A Generation Dies by Stephanie Georgopulos

5. Brianna Wiest

An imperfect collection of stardust dressed up as a barefoot hippie, a woman who takes counsel from the moon in empty fields at night. Brianna is a piece of the universe that’s considering what it means to be a piece of the universe. To her it’s a wondrous symphony of experience. This attitude informs the eloquence of Brianna’s work. Not all writers can juggle the grandest themes with such a deft touch. Her intelligence makes it look so easy and effortless. There are no obvious signs of strain, no telling mistakes of construction. Her sentences flow smooth as chilled almond milk down a sheet of silk. This is why you overlook the fact her writing does the hardest thing there is to do – it becomes invisible. You don’t read her work as much as you hear her voice between your ears like the sound of your better self. This is Brianna’s special talent – she lines a path for you with rose petals, and then leads you to a fountain and hands you a chalice, and warmly, she asks you to take a drink and imbibe the wisdom. Then let it work its magic. She’s a rare soul. People sneer at that word: soul; as if it’s now cliché or basic. Lucky for us, Brianna doesn’t bother too much with trends. She understands that hidden in basic things are timeless joys.

Artists Don’t Make Art With Other People In Mind by Brianna Wiest

6. Rachel Hodin

I got a soft-spot for Rachel Hodin. And it’s as big as Texas. She also gets more than her fair share of haters. The Internet is hard on a smart woman. But it’s because her anti-fans don’t really get her. Not everyone understands the appeal of the finer things in life. Snails, fattened goose liver and sturgeon eggs don’t sound like anything I wanna pop in my pie-hole. I’ll trust you if you say those are delicacies – that they’re the good shit. Well, trust me. Rachel Hodin’s the good shit. Sure, she can swerve nasty but her work is always a delicacy. Her mind is casually comprehensive. Her wit is sharp as broken glass. Her delivery is often as dry as your mouth after a meal of crackers and sand. Her attitude: pure NYC bitch. She knows it. And she don’t care. You wanna know what Hodin’s secret is? She knows that you don’t know her. She can talk modern art with a gallery owner. She can talk fashion with a CSM professor. She can cite Shakespeare just to prove a point. She’ll pull out Chief Keef lyrics because – you only know that shit if you know. That’s how genius like hers works, with a certain sort of causal arrogance. She’s up there on the world stage of the internet performing with a blitheness you can’t fake. Like a single rose that’s come to life: Rachel Hodin pulls herself apart and examines pieces, she considers why such a fragrant and beautiful flower is covered with sharp thorns and is standing in shit. Just like Billy Shakespeare once told us, you can call Rachel all the names you want: she’s still a rose.

I Wish Men Would Get Their Periods And Other Dilemmas I Face Daily by Rachel Hodin

7. Chrissy Stockton

If ever a person could be formed from the essence of one word, it’s Chrissy Stockton. The word that bears the mark of her soul is: Why? This one central question can send her spelunking into the darkest caverns of the internet, down k-holes most curious folk would likely turn back from after only a few clicks. But not Chrissy Stockton. Compelled by her need for answers, like a miner seized with gold fever, she digs deep for solutions to her essential question: Why? I like to imagine that raising young Chrissy involved a lot of explaining, until finally, one day, the task of providing information was turned over to her with the phrase, “Why don’t you go look it up?” Soon enough, no one ever needed to say that again. When confronted with a question that seizes hold of her mind: she looks it up. She happily rifles through Reddit stories, hunting through that online forest of first-person confessions, and she collects the anecdotes of others, capturing the Story. She’s gifted with an old school reporter’s sense. She knows salacious like a yellow journalist. But Chrissy’s far more than an aggregator. She can blow up a philosophical argument like a mad bomber. She seems to think in paragraphs. Debates excite her. Because of her strong opinions, she endures a ton of haters, too. Although, I’d never call her hip-hop, Chrissy takes the same approach as Nas as far as her critics, “You can hate me now, but I won’t stop now.” She embraces the hate boss bitch style. She believes open discussion, even heated confrontation, can lead to clarity. And occasionally, she cracks open her rib-cage and lets the world see what an amazing heart she has. I like those pieces best of all.

When Your Life Is Better Than You Expect It To Be by Christine Stockton

We’re lucky to read the work of these tremendous writers. It’s still a pity that sites like Wikipedia need to call them “women writers.” Once upon a time, we used that term because writers who were women were rare and the exception. That’s no longer the case. Qualitatively, women writers deliver the same hard-hitting impact. Growing up on Miller and Hunter S., Kerouac and Baldwin, Robbins and Hesse, men writers taught me to be a beautiful bastard, selfish, uncompromising and lonely. Women writers taught me a different sort of code of life: they taught me defiance as one seeks community. Most importantly, these seven boss bitches taught me to be brave as them.

(this article originally appeared on ThoughtCatalog)

I’m not sure if you’ve pissed off a large group of men recently, but I have, and I learned a very interesting lesson: a surprising number of modern men are really, really into the idea of “equality.” They even want to talk about it!

That’s a hell of a development in the history of humanity. Way to go, guys! Of course, being men, we’re primarily interested in how this “equality” affects us. Some of us don’t want to give an unnecessary inch — we want to make sure every other group, namely women, minorities, children, and the elderly, reciprocate any changes we make to our behavior. Otherwise, sorry, Grandma … that’s not equality! And we won’t have it. We only want “equality” from here on out.

I recently read an essay by a man complaining about how seeing Magic Mike in a theater was a sexist experience for him. No, he was serious. At least, I think he was. (In the past, the writer hasn’t shown that he has a sense of humor, so I have to assume he actually meant what he said.) His experience with sexism occurred when he was confronted by a theater full of women hooting and hollering at a naked man dancing up on the screen. He had to ask himself: if things were reversed and a roomful of men were hooting and hollering at a naked woman, would that be PC? [Side note: I think at this point the only people who still use the term PC are men who feel things aren’t “equal” for them. What a rich irony.]

Here’s the thing, guys. I see that we’re suddenly very interested in this whole notion of equality. That’s good. That’s cool. We should keep doing that. But I think sometimes we’re doing it wrong, or at least, not as well as we could. We should not use our new love of “equality” as an argument to suggest everything needs to be balanced and reversible like a chemistry equation: mathematically, logically, critically fair and equal. No. It doesn’t work like that. Equality refers to the idea of fairness in society; however, in this instance, it does not refer to the absolutist definition of the word as used by mathematicians and engineers. This equality refers to our efforts to correct societal imbalances.

Let me repeat for clarity: equality isn’t exactly fair and equal — it’s corrective, like how a pair of glasses helps a person see the world clearly.

For example, we build ramps for people who rely on wheels to get around. We provide scholarships to those who might not otherwise be able to afford higher education. Does anyone want to stand up and say ramps for the wheelchair-bound and granting college scholarships to the economically disadvantaged son of a West Virginia coal miner are bad ideas? Anyone? Is it fair that no tax dollars are spent making it easier for you to have access to a building? No, I don’t suppose it is fair, mathematically speaking. Is it fair in terms of the values of our society? Completely.

There are always “special cases.” Some people, for reasons I think the majority of folks would support, deserve extra corrective measures. A good example of this would be veterans. At present, we do a shameful job of attending to the physical and mental health of veterans. If one wishes to use a “waiting in line” analogy, veterans should move to the head of the line.

Now, of course, you can’t compare a car crash to PTSD and say one deserves medical treatment ahead of the other. We’re not doing that sort of triage. I’m saying, in the case of veterans, there needs to be an increased effort to reach out to them, to help transport them to services or bring services to them, to do everything we can to provide easy access to services, and to ensure “customer satisfaction” (I mean, seriously, WTF!). Those extra efforts to make sure our veterans get the care they need is an effort to equalize the field because veterans are often ignored by society to the point of neglect, they often feel isolated and depressed, and they need and deserve far more attention, both socially and with taxpayer dollars. They deserve it far more than me. I know that’s true. That’s how equality works in my book.

When I recently suggested that men hold themselves accountable for how many women and men feel fear in the presence of a stranger who is a man, I was told that wasn’t equality. Women need to learn to speak up for themselves … in bars, dark alleys and vacant parking lots. Some men argued that was the end game of equality: Women are now on their own — just like they wanted to be! (You’ll sense a punitive tone in some of the statements these men will make about women seeking equality. “They got what they wanted” is a common catchall response.)

I didn’t ask men to become drones serving a constantly rotating queen bee based on whichever woman happens to be standing closest to them. But that’s what some men heard: a call to subservience and submission. Not at all. What’s clear from listening to women (and men) is that a few corrective measures would help people feel safer in public spaces. Advocating for this got me a whole goodie bag of keepsakes, like emails telling me to castrate myself. Yes, I can see how that’s a totally rational response to suggesting we care about the people around us. “You should consider women and their sense of safety in a public space.” “Oh yeah, bro, and you should take a knife to your sack.”

Maybe these guys missed the memo, but women are rad! (And yes, if you need extra qualification — not all women are rad — there, you feel better?) Whether or not you agree with my assessment doesn’t matter — you don’t need to agree with that part. But you should agree to respect women, as well as other men, in public spaces. Why? Because they report that they don’t feel safe. So, we should do something about that. This is the process of equality in action. I feel safe, but my neighbor doesn’t. Just because we spend time, energy and maybe even money to make my neighbor feel safe, it doesn’t mean we need to spend the same amount of money on me to make things equal.

Suggesting that you, a man, accommodate the fears of strangers by being considerate in public is not a lot to ask. Just consider how our society accommodates the fear of military men. Look at how we constantly buy them expensive new war toys so they (you) feel safe. I’d call that accommodating their fear. It’s expensive and excessive. We do way more (costly things) to make men feel safe, if you really think about it. So maybe guys ought to be cool when someone asks a man to change his behavior in public. Especially if it’s so you might be more respectful of others — both women and men.

You’ll notice I also don’t feel the need to discuss how women ought to act in public spaces to make men feel safe. Why not? Because men are not banding together and using public platforms to make their collective voice heard, to tell the world how men don’t feel safe around women. (If you feel it’s necessary to tell women how to act to make men feel safe in a public space, you value your time on Earth differently than I do, but knock yourself out. You go right ahead and write that one up. Hell, I’ll even read it.)

So far, some knee-jerk responses to the current discussion of rape culture have called upon rhetorical devices like comparing the amount of rape on one continent with the amount of rape on another continent. This is not only insulting but, frankly, it’s astonishing that someone wants to take that position. It’s like, really? You really want to be the guy saying: “Look, we rape way fewer people over here, so I don’t really believe we have a problem.” Really? If I wrote that down on a t-shirt would you wear it to a family function? America: We rape less than Asia.

To hijack a conversation about something like #YesAllWomen and use it as an opportunity to speak in favor of “male equality” is insulting. Why do men need the mic right now? Lots of women said men have done horrible things to them. Some women say you sometimes scare them, that they can’t tell if you’re going to hurt them. Yes, you, a man. Any man. Why would any guy feel the need to speak up and insist he be heard saying that he’s not that sort of man? No one said you are.

Women said men, and yes, you are a man, but in this instance, rather than personalize it and speak about you, personalize it by listening to individual women’s stories. Imagine what that must feel like. Rather than feel incorrectly categorized by some glowing pixels on a screen that you have determined as a great affront to your sense of self, let your eyes focus on those same letters on the screen and read them again. Listen to the woman’s voice inside those glowing pixels.

Making arguments based on a man’s need for equality between men and women is, at this point in our social history, silly. Yes, men need better paternal custody rights. Yes, men need help preventing work-place accidents and violent deaths. These are very real and critical problems for men. But they don’t need to be compared to the problems of others. We need to do what we can to correct imbalances for everyone.

So I put it to you, guys, do we really care if a roomful of women are hooting and hollering at a naked Channing Tatum up on the movie screen? Are we jealous? No. He’s a fantasy. Are we mad that we can’t, in good conscience, hoot and holler at women in a movie theater? Is that what bothers us? The fact we can no longer treat women … the way we do at strip clubs on any given night of the week? Or cheerleaders on any given Sunday? Or how we treat the women who work at Hooters and the cocktail waitresses who work in Vegas?

Let’s face it, we still hoot and holler and sexualize women (while they’re at work, no less). Only now, like it was for the women in the movie theater, it’s in more appropriate places. You can whoop it up at the strip club and no one cares. That’s what it’s there for. Losing out on catcalling women is not the same thing. Losing out on sexually harassing a co-worker is not the same thing. Losing out on visually undressing a woman is not the same thing.

We must consider how we treat each other. If you think you are more important than faceless others, you are wrong. How many great novels need to be written, how many award-winning epic movies must be made, how many amazing speeches must be uttered, how many dying wishes must be heard, how many times must a great person die a senseless and violent death before we look at our neighbors and say, “You know what, I don’t agree with that asshole on politics, sports, fashion, culture, or just about anything, but I sure hope things are going well for him because he is me and I am him.”

I’m not kidding. That’s the message of every religion and work of art worth its space in the canon: I am my brother’s keeper. That’s not some beta-male shit to say. That’s a human thing to say. And my brother can be a woman, a child, an elder; it doesn’t matter. I am my brother’s keeper.

We live on a space-traveling rock covered with a beautiful murderous garden we call Nature. Like any ecosystem, when we all work together, we do great things. People are happy and life seems sweet. Yes, “equality” means that groups that lack social power will be empowered over time. This is a good and fine thing because the wellbeing of another person rewards you. Their happiness is your happiness. Their fear is your fear. Their poverty affects your wallet. Their success makes your world a better place. Now, if all that sounds like some hippie-dippy horseshit, try this one on for size:

You live on a planet of billions of people. You are not special. And yet, you are incredibly important and unique. If that gives you trouble, it’s because it’s a paradox. They do that. Paradoxes are trouble because we prefer it when a thing is a thing is a thing. We want it to always be that one thing. But Nature doesn’t give a fuck what we want. Nature says light is a waveand a particle. Deal with it! Look, you needed the help of all human history to get you here. Stop acting like you did it all yourself. We live in a society of millions on a planet of billions and most of us have never grown the food we eat … yet, we fancy ourselves independent. That’s a cute trick.

You live on a planet maintained by everyone, together, so stop pretending you can go somewhere to get away from it all. The air you breathe in the middle of nowhere is affected by pollution from across the ocean. We are all in this together.

In essence, when my neighbor does better it means I do better. Say, you go for a walk with your grandmother; do you make her walk at your pace, or do you move at the speed of her comfort? What about when you walk with a kid? We constantly change our behavior for others out of respect and consideration.

How about this: rather than insist we use a one size-fits-all approach, that’s logically reversible and balanced like a chemistry equation, let’s embrace the chaos of life. Let’s allow for the beautiful/messy paradoxes. “Equality” is not designed to be mathematical. That’s a misnomer. And really, the word we use does not matter. What does matter is our impulse to help others feel safe to be themselves.

This is what equality means: we do what we can to correct for our societal imbalances. We accept that we’re all different and can’t ever be mathematical equals, but we still do the work to ensure that the blessings of society are better enjoyed by all because when that happens it makes your life better.

Is the world a garden or a jungle? Well, it’s both. Depends on what you choose to see. You can tend a garden or fight a jungle. Which would you prefer?

(this article originally appeared on HumanParts)