Rule 15: Don't Let Yourself Be Used.

Sup, chumps.

I know it has been a long long time since you heard from me. Truth be told, it seemed the rage had up and left me. I just didn't have it in me to deliver the Rules to you in such a spirit that would fully communicate their importance to your dumb heads. However, it seems that a new sort of fervor has fallen upon me, and with the new year racing towards us, I feel that this particular message should be added to your resolutions:

DON'T LET YOURSELF BE USED.


As you may well remember, I have previously touched on how easy it is to be taken advantage of by those of the opposite sex, how there are types of individuals who feed off of the emotional strongholds they can achieve over a lover. I have also discussed those poor unfortunate souls who, out of desperation and ineptitude, attempt to buy affection. This rule falls somewhere in-between.

There are those among us who, though they never admit to it, are fully aware of these two phenomena and are able to balance theirselves betwixt them. These people are not so heartless as to lead someone on romantically, but they DO typically regard acquaintances as merely commodities at their disposal. Concordantly, These people also know their place within the social hierarchy and are able to use their very existence to get what they want from those "below" them.

You have this acquaintance. You know this acquaintance. This is your opposite-sex friend that you really don't see very often, or maybe haven't talked to in months or years. You probably had a mild (read: devastatingly blue-balling) crush on them at one point. You've been apart long enough for them to have all but left your thoughts entirely when BLIP! there they are again on your radar, asking how you're doing and what your plans are later, just chatting you up like a chattery chatterbird. Jackpot, right?

ARE WE PLAYING SLOTS, STUPID!?

They think they can get something from you. Maybe they've started some business venture (read: ponzi scheme) and they want YOU to be on the ground floor with them. Maybe they have a really nice (read: really derpy) friend they want to set you up with. Maybe all they really need is someone smart like you to talk to, but of course you've already learned to never ever make that mistake again, right?

This really is a travesty of our society. These people are stealing your time. Your time is just as valuable as money (if not significantly more), and yet we flit it away so easily and uncaringly...

Fortunately, if you're paying attention, these cats are pretty easy to spot. Like I said, if they start talking to you out of the blue, all that's happened is their circumstances have changed. You're nothing to them. A hole has opened up, and they think you might be able to fill it, but trust me, they don't need you. They can get it filled anywhere, with anyone.

*snicker*

Also, HEY! Does this person already have a bf/gf, or are they openly interested in someone other than you? If so, then why are they asking YOU for help, and why are YOU giving it to them!?

Don't be a dummy. Happy New Year.

THE 4TH NATURAL LAW: LOVE

You don’t know Jack Crap. That’s why I’m here.

I want you to think of the worst couple you know personally. You know, the couple that constantly fights in public. The couple in which one of the members cuts the other one off from all of their friends and refuses to share them with anyone. The couple in which the guy abuses the girl, talks down to her, or walks all over her, and the girl rolls over and takes it.

Did you think of them? Can you see them in your mind? Of course you can, because you see them WAY more than you ever want to. You have to suffer through their horrible life choices on a regular basis, and you’re always wondering how anyone could be so lame or stupid.

Now I want you to think of the person you’ve had that crush on for-freaking-ever. Why do you like them? Do you even KNOW anymore!? Why can’t you figure out how to quit them!?

This is a disease to which no one is immune. It is a disease of the soul, a handicap of the heart.

4TH NATURAL LAW: OUR LOVE IS BROKEN.

ksc,sncWe all have needs. It always starts innocently enough. Maybe one of us has a strong desire to take care of someone. Maybe one of us wants to date someone with a strong, passionate personality. Maybe one of us wants to feel intimacy at a level they’ve never before been able to achieve. There’s really nothing wrong with wanting these things. It takes all kinds of personalities to make the world go ‘round, and that’s totally beautiful and stuff, but these folks end up finding people with the most extreme examples of these qualities, and that’s when they become enablers, or whipped/battered, or teen-pregnant, respectively.

And the worst part of our brokenness is that there’s nothing you can do to help your friends who are suffering through it. They’ll never listen to you. They LOVE that awful person, and they’ll keep dating that awful person because that person’s behavior so perfectly fills a need, like an overdose of medicine. The only way anyone can hope to break free is from within. They have to realize how unhealthy the relationship is on their own, and that usually only happens after a tragic or traumatizing life event (i.e.: The person cheats; Someone dies).

So, if YOU have a friend who’s always cleaning their abusive or manipulative significant other’s apartment, don’t try to tell them they’re living their life in the worst possible way. Just pray something terrible happens to them. Because you’re a good friend.

Or maybe the rapture will happen and we won't have to deal with it anymore! YAY, RAPTURE!!!

RULE 14: KNOW THYSELF (And Everyone Else)

Tonight’s rule comes from my third favorite character in “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” (right behind George Carlin and Napoleon): Socrates. Although he was not of noble blood and had no handicap preventing him from working, this humble Grecian spent the majority of his time basically putzing around Athens and talking to people. What made him awesome and not a bum was his innate ability to call B.S. on people. His favorite target was a league of debaters called Sophists who taught people how to win arguments through rhetoric rather than through actually being right. Socrates thought this was dumb. He set out to make every Sophist in Greece look like a total tool by debating with them until they exposed their core beliefs (which were usually pretty Weak Sauce). He was so dang good at this that the Sophists eventually put him on trial for “corrupting young people’s minds”. When found guilty and forced to choose between death and exilation, he chose death.

Why? ‘Cause this cat was REAL.

Which brings me to you. Are you real with yourself? Are you able to really recognize who you are?

Look at this picture:

This is a graphical interpretation of the social hierarchy of the typical modern American high school. The “Light” category represents the prettiest and most popular kids at school. The “Dark” category represents the counterculture, those who have been (or have felt) rejected by the mainstream world and now do their best to avoid looking anything like it. The “Left” and “Right” categories are crude representations of people’s artistic (“right-brained”) or analytical (“left-brained”) tendencies.

Now, try to put yourself on that chart. Where do you fall? Do you consider yourself popular or outcast? Are you moved by the world’s beauty all around you, or are you drawn to the nuts and bolts therein?

Now, ask yourself what your friends would put you.

Most of us find it very hard to put ourselves in boxes, and in truth, we’re such complex creatures that it’s not fair to do so. But now, consider your closest friends. Think of the people you CHOOSE to hang out with the most. If that group of people was ONE person with ONE personality, where would it go on the graph?

Above is a more elaborate version of the chart, intended to expound upon the personality types of different groups. (The theorems behind it all are rudimentary at best, but you get the idea.) The personality of a GROUP of people can be generalized very easy, because as the number of a group of people increase, the more our survival instincts will tell us to act like each other, and the strongest personalities will always lead the way.

NOW, think of the girls you’re always trying to date. Put them somewhere on the chart. Are they anywhere near you and your friends? If you’re honest with yourself, the answer is probably NO, because you want to date someone better or more interesting than you. Well, guess what? We all do. We just can’t. The sooner you accept that fact, the better off you’ll be.

If you answered YES, but you still can’t get a girlfriend, than one of two things is happening:
1) You’re wrong because you’re stupid.
2) You’re missing something important about yourself, since after all, no one can analyze theirselves unbiasedly. Maybe you’re not that popular or good-looking. Maybe you talk too much. Maybe you have anger issues that scare people away. Maybe you bring people down because you dwell on your life problems rather than allowing yourself to grow from them. MAYBE you’re wasting your life away pursuing certain kinds of women for all the wrong reasons, namely, to become something contrary to your core self.

So really, this is kind of like a meta-rule that encompasses a lot of the other rules.

What I want you to do now is go to your closest, truest, and most loving friends and ask them about yourself. Ask them what they like and don’t like about you. Ask them what kind of friendship they need from you. Tell them to be brutal, and don’t let your feelings get hurt. You need to get to know yourself and accept where you fit within the social structure. If you fight it, you’ll never find contentment.

Rule 13: Avoid the Succubus

I prepared this one a while ago, then removed it until I could find a way to make it less depressing.

I could not.

Rule 13: AVOID THE SUCCUBUS.



Ancient myths tell of a woman named Lilith, Adam’s first wife before Eve. Everything was going just swimmingly for these two, until Lilith refused to be subservient to Adam. For this, she was cast out of Eden. She then had sex with the archangel Samael and became the world’s first succubus, a female demon-creature that lives off the life-breath of the men she has sex with.



Some of you readers might consider a myth like this to be misogynistic. “Why should a woman be considered evil just because she wants a little control?” you ask aloud, startling all the people that are sitting around you at Starbucks.

Because she’s doing it wrong! Women and men already have an equal balance of control over each other! Men control women EXtrinsically (“Make me a sandwich.”), and women control men INtrinsically (“Nothing’s wrong. I’m FINE!”). Lilith openly refused to submit to Adam, unlike a normal woman, who convinces a guy to do all the things she wants him to do by throwing him a bone every now and then. She wanted to dominate him inside and out, and that’s a no-no.



This character has remained archetypal in all cultures since the beginning of written word, the most modern permutation being the femme fatale (French for “deadly woman” (with probably an “au-hau-HAU!” added for good measure)). The scene is a all too familiar: A private detective in a cheap suit is working late behind the desk in his dimly-lit office overlooking a run-down city street, when in walks a gorgeous woman whose face is half-obscured by shadows and a giant hat. She asks the man to save her from a dangerous enemy with little-to-nothing to offer him in return. Like a total sap, he agrees to help her, ultimately risking his own life to stop these bad guys on the off-chance that the woman will be so grateful to him that she’ll let him touch her boobs, but GUESS WHAT HAPPENS as soon as the last criminal is shot dead or locked up? SHE RUNS OFF (most likely with someone in a rock band or biker gang) with barely a thank-you, and the man’s gloomy life returns to the status-quo.



Why has the concept of a woman completely dominating a man for personal gain using only her beauty and charm held so steadfast through the centuries? Probably because real-life examples keep popping up, like Jezebel, Cleopatra, and your 9th-Grade English teacher, to name just a few. There are succubi all around us, just waiting to pull us in, use us up, and throw us away like tissues. They can control us, and they know it.



This may just seem like an extension of the Pretty Girl of Rule 10, but I consider these to be two completely different beings. Unlike the Pretty Girl, who is ONLY pretty, the Succubus has a much deeper and multi-faceted personality. They'll seem different from all the other girls (in that they'll have both good looks and personality AND they'll be interested in you). You’ll get to know them on a personal level, and you’ll fall completely in love with them. Then one day, if you’re lucky, a piece of her disguise will chip off, and you’ll slowly peel the rest of it away to reveal who she really is: a user. Your attention is her sustenance; she really couldn’t care less about you.



Please don’t hate these women; it’s the only way they know how to live. And please don’t hate yourself for falling for one of them; there’s no way you could’ve known. The worst part about succubi is that by the time you realize who they are, it’s too late. You've wasted a chunk of your life chasing after her affection with no reward to speak of. As you look back, you’ll realize all the promises and confessions and compromises were made by you. She had the control all along. All you can do now is make yourself walk away and never look back.



Wow, ok, so this post is not very helpful or comforting at all...



:D