“When I ask my younger friends why they want to buy a house, they stare at me blankly. ‘They’re a good investment,’ they reply like brainless automatons who are at risk of being smacked by me.” – Ramit Sethi

Disclaimer #1: I’m looking at real estate from a financial standpoint. I won’t take into account the investment you’re making in your family, or the feeling of security you get from owning your own home, or the freedom to paint the walls whatever color you want. I’m only looking at monetary returns.

Disclaimer #2: I’m not a finance blogger. This post is merely an aggregation of what I’ve learned in simple terms. If you want to read the experts, see my long list of sources at the bottom of this post.

Like most Americans, I bought into the myth that owning property was a money-making endeavor. It was only recently, at the age of 30, that I came across the wealth of information out there showing how it’s not.

It all started when I read Alice Schroeder’s Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life. This was the authorized, all-access, 900+ page biography covering Buffett’s personal life as well as his career. I was shocked halfway through when it describes his first fight with his wife. What was the fight over? Buying a house. The wife wanted one, but Buffett refused because it was such a “waste of money.” This is modern history’s most successful investor refusing to buy a house.

Soon after finishing that book I met another gringo in Bogota, Geoff, who worked as a financial consultant. His parents bought a house in San Diego at a seemingly low price and now it’s worth an astronomical figure. Being financially astute, he ran the figures on the investment and showed them how and why the house’s value had only kept up with inflation. No more.

Here’s the key to understanding why real estate is NOT a good investment. The price of the house is not the only money invested in owning. To truly measure the return, you must factor in ALL costs of owning:

1. Taxes – personal property taxes.
2. Interest – the interest on your massive loan from the bank (you can deduct the ~20 – 25% of this you’ll save on income tax if applicable).
3. Maintenance – every time you fix the roof, replace a window, or do anything a renter wouldn’t have to.
4. Insurance – fire, earthquake, homeowner’s, flood, etc.

When factoring in these additional costs of owning a home, and the fact that the real estate agent who sells it at the end will take 5 – 6% of your selling price, the return rarely proves to yield more than 1 – 2% on your investment. About the same as a savings account. This doesn’t take into account volatility in the real estate market or the view of many economists that the recent housing bubble lasted 20+ years, and that prices won’t return to previous peaks for many more.

The stock market, given all its ups and downs, historically averages an 8% return. So a “good” investment (and much less risky) would be to rent a comparable house in the same neighborhood. Take the difference between the mortgage payment (plus all additional costs of ownership) and the rent payment, and invest that amount in a diverse index fund. If you invest via a Roth IRA or 401K, much of that money won’t be taxed.

With this option (renting and investing the difference in an index fund), you don’t face the risk of having all your money in one investment (a house). This is a central tenet in wise investing – diversifying your holdings. And you’ll see a significantly higher return while incurring less risk.

The only way I see a real estate investment matching or beating the general stock market is if the property was purchased under extreme conditions. People privy to inside information (from corrupt government officials about future development in the area, for example) have beaten the market by investing in real estate. Another example comes from a guy I met in Buenos Aires who bought his San Telmo apartment in early 2002, just after Argentina defaulted on its debt payments in the midst of its financial crisis. Buying property dirt cheap in economic disaster nations may prove profitable (in Venezuela whenever they get rid of Hugo Chavez, for example), but the risk involved is much greater than investing in the general market.

Again, this was a simplified overview of why real estate isn’t a good investment. If you’d like to read more, check out these resources:

The ultimate post summing up all reasons why real estate is not a good investment

Ramit Sethi’s real estate tag (author of I Will Teach You to Be Rich)

5 myths about home sweet homeownership (Washington Post)

A House is a Home, Not an Investment (NY Times blog)

Your Home Isn’t the Nest Egg That You May Think It Is (Wall Street Journal)

Is Your Home a Good Investment? (Wall Street Journal)

Home Not-So-Sweet Home (by NY Times columnist and Nobel Economics laureate Paul Krugman)

In the Long Run, Invest in the Stock Market and Sleep at Home (New York Times)

Here’s an article complaining about Americans still believing home ownership is a good investment

Hilarious blog post why the $8000 tax credit shouldn’t affect your decision

I’ve was turned on to stoicism by Ryan Holiday and Tim Ferriss. Here’s their summary piece on the philosophy.

I’m coming to believe the key to happiness lies in perfecting your personal morals and structure of honor, as boring as that seems. Benjamin Franklin’s 13 virtues may be more convenient for brevity purposes, but the Stoics explain how to execute those virtues. Here are selected passages from Letters from a Stoic by Seneca. Jump to his thoughts on reading and learning, work, wealth and poverty, fear, sickness, solitude, conformity, materialism, anger, friendship, death, vice and desire, character and spirit, or God.

On reading and learning:

“Be careful [with] this reading of many different authors and books of every description. You should be extending your stay among writers whose genius is unquestionable … To be everywhere is to be nowhere … [The same goes for] people who never set about acquiring an intimate acquaintanceship with any one great writer, but skip from one to another, paying flying visits to them all.”

“Assume authority yourself and utter something that may be handed down to posterity. Produce something from your own resources … These people who never attain independence follow the views of their predecessors … A man who follows someone else not only does not find anything, he is not even looking.”

“To want to know more than sufficient is a form of intemperance … Virtue will not bring herself to enter the limited space we offer her; something of great size requires plenty of room. Let everything else be evicted, and your heart completely open to her.”

On work:

“Rest is sometimes far from restful. Hence our need to be stimulated into general activity and kept occupied and busy with pursuits of right nature whenever we are victims of the sort of idleness that wearies itself … People who are really busy never have enough time to become skittish. And there is nothing so certain as the fact that the harmful consequences of inactivity are dissipated by activity.”

On wealth and poverty:

“Each day, too, acquire something which will help you to face poverty, or death, and other ills as well … ‘A cheerful poverty … is an honorable state.’ What difference does it make how much there is laid away in a man’s safe … if he is always after what is another’s and only counts what he has yet to get, never what he has already?”

“We need to envisage every possibility and to strengthen the spirit to deal with the things which may conceivably come about. Rehearse them in your mind: exile, torture, war, shipwreck. Misfortune may snatch you away from your country, or your country away from you, may banish you into some wilderness … So the spirit must be trained to a realization and an acceptance of its lot.”

On fear:

“Limiting one’s desires actually helps to cure one of fear. ‘Cease to hope … and you will cease to fear.’ … Widely different [as fear and hope] are, the two of them march in unison like a prisoner and the escort he is handcuffed to. Fear keeps pace with hope … both belong to a mind in suspense, to a mind in a state of anxiety through looking into the future. Both are mainly due to projecting our thoughts far ahead of us instead of adapting ourselves to the present.”

On sickness:

“There are three upsetting things about any illness: the fear of dying, the physical suffering and the interruption of our pleasures. I have said enough about the first … Nobody can be in acute pain and feel it for long. Nature in her unlimited kindness to us has so arranged things as to make pain either bearable or brief … What in fact makes people who are morally unenlightened upset by the experience of physical distress is their failure to acquire the habit of contentment with the spirit. They have instead been preoccupied with the body … It is your body, not your mind as well, that is in the grip of ill health.”

On solitude:

“I am beginning to be my own friend … Such a person will never be alone, and you may be sure he is a friend to all.”

On conformity:

“[What is] particularly important to avoid[?] My answer is this: a mass crowd … Associating with people in large numbers is actually harmful: there is not one of them that will not make some vice or other attractive to us, or leave us carrying the imprint of it … When a mind is impressionable and has none too firm a hold on what is right, it must be rescued from the crowd: it is so easy for it to go over to the majority … an intimate who leads a pampered life gradually makes one soft and flabby; a wealthy neighbor provokes cravings in one; a companion with a malicious nature tends to rub off some of his rust even on someone of an innocent and open-hearted nature – what then do you imagine the effect on a person’s character is when the assault comes from the world at large? You must inevitably either hate or imitate the world. But the right thing is to shun both courses: you should neither become like the bad because they are many, nor be an enemy of the many because they are unlike you. Retire into yourself as much as you can. Associate with people who are likely to improve you. Welcome those whom you are capable of improving. The process is a mutual one: men learn as they teach.”

“If you shape your life according to nature, you will never be poor; if according to people’s opinions, you will never be rich.”

“Away with the world’s opinion of you – it’s always unsettled and divided.”

On materialism:

“Your food should appease your hunger, your drink quench your thirst, your clothing keep out the cold, your house be a protection against inclement weather … Spurn everything that is added on by way of decoration and display by unnecessary labor. Reflect that nothing merits admiration except the spirit, the impressiveness of which prevents it from being impressed by anything.”

“What fortune has made yours in not your own.”

“Any man … who does not think that what he has is more than ample is an unhappy man, even if he is the master of the whole world … A man is unhappy, though he reign the world over, if he does not consider himself supremely happy.”

“Set aside now and then a number of days during which you will be content with the plainest of food, and very little of it, and with rough, coarse clothing, and will ask yourself, ‘Is this what one used to dread?’ It is in times of security that the spirit should be preparing itself to deal with difficult times … If you want a man to keep his head when the crisis comes you must give him some training before it comes … We shall be easier in our minds when rich if we have come to realize how far from burdensome it is to be poor … Start cultivating a relationship with poverty … For no one is worthy of a god unless he has paid no heed to riches. I am not, mind you, against possessing them, but I want to ensure that you possess them without tremors; and this you will only achieve in one way, by convincing yourself that you can live a happy life even without them, and by always regarding them as being on the point of vanishing.”

On anger:

“‘Anger carried to excess begets madness’ … It is born of love as well as hate … The factor that counts is not the importance of the cause from which it springs but the kind of personality it lands in … The outcome of violent anger is a mental raving, and therefore anger is to be avoided not for the sake of moderation but for the sake of sanity.”

On friendship:

“The wise man … desires to have a friend if only for the purpose of practicing friendship and ensuring that those talents are not idle … Anyone thinking of his own interests and seeking out friendship with this in view is making a great mistake. Things will end as they began; he has secured a friend who is going to come to his aid if captivity threatens: at the first clank of a chain that friend will disappear … This explains the crowd of friends that clusters about successful men and the lonely atmosphere about the ruined … If there is anything in a particular friendship that attracts a man other than the friendship itself, the attraction of some reward or other will counterbalance that of the friendship … To procure a friendship only for better and not for worse is to rob it of all its dignity.”

“Choose someone whose way of life as well as words, and whose very face as mirroring the character that lies behind it, have won your approval. Be always pointing to him out to yourself either as your guardian or as your model. There is a need, in my view, for someone as a standard against which our characters can measure themselves.”

On death:

“Every day should be regulated as if it were the one that brings up the rear, the one that rounds out and completes our lives … If God adds the morrow we should accept it joyfully. The man who looks for the morrow without worrying over it knows a peaceful independence and a happiness beyond all others. Whoever has said ‘I have lived’ receives a windfall every day he gets up in the morning.”

“‘It is a very good thing to familiarize oneself with death’ … ‘Rehearse death.’ To say this is to tell a person to rehearse his freedom. A person who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave. He is above, or at any rate beyond the reach of, all political powers. What are prisons, warders, bars to him? He has an open door. There is but one chain holding us in fetters, and that is our love of life. There is no need to cast this love out altogether, but it does need to be lessened somewhat so that, in the event of circumstances ever demanding this, nothing may stand in the way of our being prepared to do at once what we must do at some time or other.”

“At either end of [life] there is a deep tranquility … Death is all that was before us … I shall not be afraid when the last hour comes – I’m already prepared, not planning as much as a day ahead. The man whom you should admire and imitate is the one who finds it a joy to live and in spite of that is not reluctant to die.”

“When one has lost a friend one’s eyes should be neither dry nor streaming. Tears, yes, there should be, but not lamentation … Would you like to know what lies behind extravagant weeping and wailing? In our tears we are trying to find means of proving that we feel the loss. We are not being governed by our grief but parading it.”

“A great thing is to die in a manner which is honorable, enlightened, and courageous … No one is so ignorant as not to know that some day he must die. Nevertheless when death draws near he turns, wailing and trembling, looking for a way out. Wouldn’t you think a man an utter fool if he burst into tears because he didn’t live a thousand years ago? A man is as much a fool for shedding tears because he isn’t going to be alive a thousand years from now.”

“Someone will say ‘But I want to live because of all the worthy activities I’m engaged in. I’m performing life’s duties conscientiously and energetically and I’m reluctant to leave them undone.’ Come now, surely you know that dying is also one of life’s duties? … As it is with a play, so it is with life – what matters is not how long the acting lasts, but how good it is. It is not important at what point you stop. Stop wherever you will – only make sure that you round it off with a good ending.”

“No one has power over us when death is within our own power.”

On vice and desire:

“Natural desires are limited; those which spring from false opinions have nowhere to stop, for falsity has no point of termination … Whenever you want to know whether the desire aroused in you by something you are pursuing is natural or quite unseeing, ask yourself whether it is capable of coming to rest at any point; if after going a long way there is always something remaining farther away, be sure it is not something natural.

“Have done with those unsettled pleasures, which cost one dear – they do one harm after they’re past and gone, not merely when they’re in prospect. Even when they’re over, pleasures of a depraved nature are apt to carry feelings of dissatisfaction, in the same way as a criminal’s anxiety doesn’t end with the commission of the crime, even if it’s undetected at the time.”

“Show me a man who isn’t a slave; one is a slave to sex, another to money, another to ambition; all are slaves to hope or fear … And there’s no state of slavery more disgraceful than one which is self-imposed.”

“Drunkenness is nothing but a state of self-induced insanity. For imagine the drunken man’s behavior extended over several days: would you hesitate to think him out of his mind? … Drunkenness inflames and lays bare every vice, removing the reserve that acts as a check on impulses to wrong behavior. For people abstain from forbidden things far more often through feelings of inhibition when it comes to doing what is wrong than through any will to good … Add to this the drunkard’s ignorance of his situation, his indistinct, uncertain speech, his inability to walk straight, his unsteady eye and swimming head, with his very home in a spinning state of motion … Pleasures, when they go beyond a certain limit, are but punishments …”

On character and spirit:

“A good character is the only guarantee of everlasting, carefree happiness.”

“‘A consciousness of wrongdoing is the first step to salvation’ … For a person who is not aware that he is doing anything wrong has no desire to be put right. You have to catch yourself doing it before you can reform … Be harsh with yourself at times.”

“No one should feel pride in anything that is not his own … Suppose he has a beautiful home and a handsome collection of servants, a lot of land under cultivation and a lot of money out at interest; not one of these things can be said to be him – they are just things around him. Praise in him what can neither be given nor snatched away … It is his spirit, and the perfection of reason in that spirit … And what is it that reason demands of him? Something very easy – that he live in accordance with his own nature.”

“Greater power and greater value reside in that which creates (in this case God) than in the matter on which God works. Well, the place which in this universe is occupied by God is in man the place of the spirit. What matter is in the universe the body is in us. Let the worse, then, serve the better. Let us meet with bravery whatever may befall us. Let us never feel a shudder at the thought of being wounded or of being made a prisoner, or of poverty or persecution. What is death? Either a transition or an end. I am not afraid of coming to an end … for I shall never be in confinement quite so cramped anywhere else as I am here.”

“Bravery is the [quality of character] which treats with contempt things ordinarily inspiring fear, despising and defying and demolishing all the things that terrify us and set chains on human freedom … Loyalty, the most sacred quality [,] never corrupted by a bribe, never driven to betray by any form of corruption … Self-control, the quality which takes command of the pleasures; some she dismisses out of hand, unable to tolerate them; others she merely regulates, ensuring that they are brought within healthy limits; never approaching pleasures for their own sake, she realizes that the ideal limit with things you desire is not the amount you would like but teh amount you ought to take. Humanity is the quality which stops one being arrogant towards one’s fellows, or being acrimonious.”

On God:

“In each and every good man ‘A god (what god we are uncertain) dwells’ … And if you come across a man who is never alarmed by dangers, never affected by cravings, happy in adversity, calm in the midst of storm, viewing mankind from a higher level and the gods from their own, is it not likely that a feeling will find its way into you of veneration for him? … Into that body there has descended a divine power. The soul that is elevated and well regulated, that passes through any experience as if it counted for comparatively little, that smiles at all the things we fear or pray for, is impelled by a force that comes from heaven.”

Buy Letters from a Stoic on Amazon.

Sin Nombre is the best film I’ve seen in a long time. It’s also the first Spanish-language movie I watched without subtitles. They weren’t available at the pirated DVD market where I bought the disc. Fortunately I had no trouble understanding.

SPOILERS DISCLAIMER – mad spoilers follow.

If you don’t need a plot summary, jump to the analysis below.

The film starts by introducing us to Casper, a member of the Mara Salvatrucha gang (MS-13), in Tapachula, Mexico. Then we meet Casper’s young friend, Smiley, who couldn’t be older than 12. Casper takes Smiley to his MS-13 initiation, a 13-second beat-down from the gang. We also meet gang leader Lil’ Mago, who it’s worthy of mention is covered with tattoos, a prominent MS drawn from above both temples all the way down to his jaw-line and chin.

Then we flash to Tegucigalpa, Honduras, to meet the beautiful Sayra. Sayra meets her father for the first time in what’s implied to be a long time or maybe ever. She’s to join him and his brother on a journey to the United States, from where the father had just been deported. He wants Sayra to join his new family in New Jersey.

Next we see Casper visit his girlfriend, Martha Marlene, at her place for a textbook example of a Latin love session. After the loving, Casper takes Smiley to the gang hideout where, under Lil’ Mago’s direction, Casper helps Smiley execute a rival gang member to complete his initiation. (Then they feed the deceased to dogs!)

The plot develops two storylines: the first being Sayra’s resentment toward the father she never knew, who she believes never would’ve returned for her if he weren’t deported; the second being Casper’s neglecting his responsibilities to the gang because he’s spending more and more time with Martha Marlene. She’s increasingly angry with him because she feels he’s hiding something from her, which he is in trying to keep her separated from his gang life. In fact, she knows him as Willy instead of his gang name, Casper.

The latter conflict culminates when Martha Marlene crashes a gang meeting in a cemetery in which Casper (Willy) is about to be disciplined for neglecting his duties. Willy tries to escort her out of there, but Lil’ Mago overrules. He insists on showing her out while Willy gets his 13-second stomping. Away from the gang, Lil’ Mago tries to have sex with Martha Marlene, citing ‘generosity’ as a crucial element of friendship. When she refuses, he tries to rape her. In the struggle, he accidentally kills her. Casper has to accept it because Lil’ Mago is the boss and devotion to Mara Salvatrucha trumps all else.

This particular MS-13 “clique” earns much of its income from the Bombilla, the train station in Tapachula which sits on the border with Guatemala. All the Central Americans migrating to the US pass through the Bombilla to jump on trains headed north to the Texas border. The local MS-13 gang robs the migrants on their way north.

Lil’ Mago had Casper and Smiley accompany him for one of these robbery trips. So the three are on top of the train, robbing each and every passenger for everything they have when Lil’ Mago comes across the beautiful Honduran, Sayra. He gropes her and forces her down in what appears to be an imminent rape. Casper, still not over the loss of his love at the hands of Lil’ Mago, and watching him unleash on another innocent girl, whacks him with his machete, cutting through half his neck.

Lil’ Mago falls from the train dead and Casper orders Smiley off. Here the main plot has developed. Sayra feels indebted and befriends Willy (he’s not ‘Casper’ anymore). Smiley goes back to the gang and tells them what happened. They order Willy killed and appoint Smiley to do it, along with everybody else in their clique plus the others all along the train route, throughout Mexico and the US.

So Willy’s been marked for death by the largest gang in the Western Hemisphere. Noting Sayra’s growing attachment to him, Willy jumps from the train as everyone’s sleeping but she awakes and jumps after him, leaving her father and uncle behind. Willy then resolves to go for life redemption by helping Sayra safely cross the border into the States. There’s action, there’s hope, there’s sadness, there’s beautiful (and ugly) Mexican culture and countryside, and there’s stimulating footage of MS-13 culture.

Just as Willy sends Sayra swimming across the Rio Grande, waiting his own turn, the gang appears and guns him down on the riverbank. Smiley scores the first shots. The final scenes show Sayra at a Texas Sam’s Club calling her dead father’s family in New Jersey (her dad died after they split up), her uncle starting a new attempt to cross the border from Guatemala into Mexico, and Smiley getting “MS” tattooed inside his lower lip.

Powerful shit!

Clichés

I’m going to start with a few petty gripes, specifically the film clichés.

I don’t know about you, but I am burnt out on the accidental death via head-hitting-the-rock-or-metal-bar-or-whatever. Martha Marlene died after Lil’ Mago kicked her in the ass, sending her head into a rock. I’m tired of that shit! I attribute that to laziness or lack of nerve on the part of the writer. If you can’t create a motivation to kill her intentionally, don’t go to the tired-ass playbook. Maybe he could’ve successfully raped her, admonished Casper (Willy) for not sharing, and then she commits suicide. Anything but the head-accidentally-hitting-the-rock bit.

Aside from the scene where he helps Smiley execute a ‘chavala’ begging for mercy, Casper’s never seen as the vicious gangster he must’ve been to have a career with MS-13. He didn’t pistol-whip anybody on the train, or rape or rob anybody for the whole film. Granted, his transformation may have started long before in his falling in love with Martha Marlene, but it was still too sympathetic in the marked contrast between his innocent white face and the viciousness of the other MS-13 gangsters.

It turns out I only have two gripes and one kudos to give regarding happy endings. American films (which this is), Hollywood, and American audiences are incredibly biased toward happy endings. When I first heard of this film, I read all about it and I could’ve sworn I read that Casper (Willy) arrives safely in the US. The sad ending made it a better film.

Mara Salvatrucha

Many may not know, but MS-13 is the largest gang in the United States. It started in a Central American section of Los Angeles to protect Salvadorans from Mexican and black gangs. It’s since exploded to also include Mexicans with chapters in the United States, Mexico, Central America, and Canada. They’re known for their tattoos. There are a dozen or so MS-13 videos on YouTube, some featuring MS-13 music. Here’s one:

Immigration & human rights

I’ve stated my support of immigration in this blog before, but the images and visualization of the reality facing migrant workers in this film re-awakened my interest in the cause. The human rights issues and violence along the US-Mexico border is horrific. Girls are forced into prostitution; gangsterism thrives. What is the fucking point???

All these people want to do is work in America, the land of opportunity. Their own countries were flawed in their design so the same opportunity doesn’t exist. Migrants’ big mistake in life was being born on the wrong side of the border, to a family in the wrong social class. I’ve known many illegal immigrants and I admire their work ethic. And I’ve known a lot of lazy and incompetent Americans who live luxurious lives in comparison simply because they were born on the other side.

Last year I read Ben Casnocha argue immigration is a solution to poverty. In that post, he mentions the idea of “free movement of people” among countries. I’m pro-immigration, but I wasn’t eager to jump on board when I first read that. Now I’m more receptive. There’s rarely reform without an extreme position underneath. If free movement of people among nations seems extreme to you, it doesn’t to me.

Why should I have free reign to move wherever I want in Latin America to reap the fruits of these countries using my gringo-ness, my native English, my height and blue eyes, my American education, etc., while Latinos born on the bottom in these countries can’t do the same in my country?

I’ll now count myself among the extreme camp of free movement of peoples among nations. I’d love for it to be a regulated process of accountability, but I’m in the camp regardless. Michael Clemens is the most outspoken advocate and dedicated researcher for this position.

Love in Latin America

Having written extensively about Love in Latin America, I’m not covering new ground here. But the film captured that aspect perfectly.

I was sad as fuck watching Sin Nombre. Despite the few clichés, the film established credibility with me in its depiction of Willy’s and Martha Marlene’s relationship. Their first scene in her bedroom goes exactly as I’ve found love to go down here. She slapped him. They made love. She accused him of cheating and threatened to cut his penis off. They cuddled and professed eternal love. Despite her getting angry with him in other scenes over ‘disowning’ her (kinda difficult to translate “desconocer”), the chemistry and time spent together made me long to be in love again.

Edgar Flores stars as Willy, and he was excellent in the role. Willy’s love for Martha Marlene was convincing and I could feel his pain when his gang killed that love – the same gang Willy defended his whole life. And just as it seemed he might have love with Sayra, they killed him. I look forward to more of Flores’ acting.

Foreshadowing and magic realism

Magic realism is prevalent in Latin film and literature, but not so much in Sin Nombre. However, Sayra always alludes to an old witch in her neighborhood who predicted she wouldn’t arrive in the States in the arms of God, but The Devil. I’d call that magic realism and also foreshadowing, which is prevalent throughout. Willy consistently warns Sayra that he’s a dead man, which proves correct. And in a great foreshadowing scene, Willy and Sayra come across MS-13 graffiti that reads something like “Lil’ Mago – don’t worry, El Casper won’t pass…”

Notes:

• Machetes – Willy killed Lil’ Mago with a machete, which was pretty bad-ass. The use of the machete in Latin America is under-represented in film.
• Mexican / Central American gangsters and face tattoos (politically-incorrect warning) – The older I get, the more I err on the side of genetics over upbringing, nature over nurture. In his autobiography, Malcolm X says whites are correct in believing blacks are born with dancing in their blood, and there are dozens of other cases like the higher per capita rate of AA meetings in Irish neighborhoods. In looking at the images of MS-13 gangsters, I couldn’t help thinking they look like the Indians in Apocalypto. Was it in the genetic DNA dating back to the Mayans and Aztecs to paint their faces up and commit bloody atrocities? Hey, I gave you the political incorrect warning.
• The film was produced by Gael Garcia Bernal (Motorcycle Diaries) and Diego Luna (Milk), who co-starred as best friends in Y Tu Mama Tambien, another kick-ass film set in Mexico.
• Sin Nombre won Sundance Film Festival awards for directing and cinematography (Director Cary Joji Fukunaga and Cinematographer Adriano Goldman). The film wasn’t nominated for any Academy Awards because the Oscars suck shit.
• The Sin Nombre soundtrack only features the score, but the songs from the film are great. Here are two:

Dick el Demasiado – Flaca de las Coloradas

Vakero – Ya No Hay Gente

Amandititita – Mecánico

Buy Sin Nombre on Amazon.

Visa Americana – EEUU United States

Greetings!

I started looking for work in Latin America on my own while completing my MBA at UMSL, to no avail. I joined AIESEC and scoured the paid internships in the organization’s database. I applied to jobs in Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Brazil, Argentina, and Chile. After two months of sending resumes, I was offered a marketing position in Arequipa, Peru. I moved there another month later. I was placed in a position in my field of study, in Latin America, in 3 months.

I was greeted at the airport by six AIESEC members from the Arequipa chapter. They threw a party for me that evening, which over forty people attended. They introduced me to their campus, the nicest in town, and set me up in an apartment before I ever saw my new office.

I went to work for Laboratorios Portugal, one of the larger health and personal care laboratories in Peru. They compete on price against American and European brands in product lines including sunblocks, skincare creams, generic pharmaceuticals, vitamins, and herbal supplements.

In my position, I was responsible for everything necessary to sell in non-Spanish speaking markets. I developed the English brand for their herbal supplements line. I translated the cosmetics copy for bilingual packaging and brought both lines’ labels into adherence with FDA guidelines. I had corporate busy work such as sourcing products in China, working local promotional events, translating, and more. I became fluent in listening, speaking, reading, and writing Spanish.

I don’t believe I’d have been offered a job in America in which I’d gain as valuable experience as I gained with AIESEC. The job didn’t pay much in US dollars, but it was enough to live on in Arequipa, Peru. After six months, the company offered me a permanent position and substantial raise. I got a big apartment with two other visiting AIESECers, who taught me a great deal about web development.

I resigned the position but still work with the firm as an independent broker, earning commission only on what I sell (Peruvian Naturals line on Amazon.com). I sell websites for the AIESEC guys I lived with, and I’ve started an English language business in my new city, Bogota, Colombia. The quality of both the experience and contacts I gained through my AIESEC experience are indispensable, especially considering how little time and energy I put into membership.

In 2007, my last year in school, UMSL was ranked among the top ten International Business schools in the nation by US News & World Report. That ranking’s not only due to UMSL curriculum and professors, but also the large international student community and the resources the university allocates toward organizations like AIESEC and International Business Club. Being involved in AIESEC is a necessity for any UMSL student looking to take full advantage of his or her business education.

¡Saludos de Chapinero, Bogotá!

Colin Post
BSBA 2003, double emphasis in Marketing & Management
MBA 2007
www.expat-chronicles.com

Franklin was an advocate of religion, but didn’t take to any particular brand with fervor. He made regular contributions to the Presbyterian Church but never attended services.

It looks like the old 12-step program isn’t going to work out for me. If not a real deal Higher Power, these virtues could serve to moderate my behavior if practiced.

1)      Temperance – Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation

2)      Silence – Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.

3)      Order – Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.

4)      Resolution – Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.

5)      Frugality – Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; waste nothing.

6)      Industry – Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.

7)      Sincerity – Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.

8)      Justice – Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.

9)      Moderation – Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.

10)   Cleanliness – Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation.

11)   Tranquility – Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.

12)   Chastity – Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.

13)   Humility – Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

I’ll be updating it regularly, whenever a book blows me away. I’d be thrilled to have some sort of discussion in the comments on any of my selections, and I’m always open to book suggestions.

Thanks again to Dennis. Follow him on Twitter.

If you haven’t, read Going Back to AA for context.

Recaida Triggers: Boredom and Control

I had a recaida a few weeks ago. I went with The Mick to Anapoima, a small resort town an hour and a half outside Bogota. The plan was to line up a place for a new English-teaching business, and to take pictures of Anapoima for the website. I’d never been there so I was relying on The Mick to help get these things done.

The town was hot and steamy, and people sit around drinking while waiting to die. This atmosphere reminded me of Girardot, the scene of my last recaida. I can’t handle the small-town pace. Pueblos with nothing going on are a trigger for me. I can’t wait to die.

The Mick couldn’t remember where places were. Night fell and we hadn’t gotten anything done. He booked us a hotel room. The lack of control was another trigger. That and the palpable boredom in this cow-town caused me to stress out. I needed to take the edge off. I started drinking. I put down several beers and a big box of aguardiente in an uneventful night before crashing. I felt like shit when I woke, more hung over than if I’d been drinking regularly.

After the hangover was gone and returned to Bogota, I got the fear.

Fear

I was reminded of one of my worst times after heavy drinking: the fear. A state of anxiety sets in, usually the first or second day after a 2- or 3-day bender. I curl up in bed, afraid. Afraid to go outside. Afraid to answer the phone. I worry about things. I think about stick-up kids coming at me with a knife. I imagine guerillas breaking into my apartment and kidnapping me. I see cars jumping the curb and hitting me. I visualize my death. I stay home under all circumstances.

I’ve jumped out of an airplane. I’ve gotten into a ring to fight other men of the same weight and training. I’ve moved to Peru and Colombia without knowing anyone. I’ve given public speeches for up to 150 people. I’ve walked through lived in all-black neighborhoods. Generally, I’m not afraid of things. But sometimes after drinking, I’m afraid to open my apartment door or even peek out the window.

Not fun.

Self-Improvement

I learned early that AA is a spiritual program. Acceptance of a Higher Power is a central tenet. Once turning your life over to a God, you begin working on your character defects. This is the intriguing part of the program.

Are you a self-improvement junkie? I am, along with a few close friends. We read the latest on economics and business trends in an effort to keep our minds sharp. Other friends run marathons in short times, or reach milestones in powerlifting. One buddy sent me a video of himself deadlifting 500 lbs.

If you’re in the self-improvement club, you’ll find your biggest challenge in a twelve-step program. Keeping the mind sharp or pursuing physical achievements entails mostly work. Of course a positive attitude is required, but you can work through it.

You drink to compensate for your character defects and emotions. For me, dealing with boredom is difficult. Lacking control is difficult. Initiating romantic relationships with women is difficult. Try to correct those without drinking. That’s the real challenge.

Geoff, the guy who got me into AA here in Colombia, has been dry for 8 years. He told me he talks to members differently depending on how much time they have sober. He talks to a guy with 20 years differently than he talks to me. He was recently hanging out with another guy with about eight years. The guy told Geoff a story how he was trying to get this girl he was hanging out with to suck his dick. I assume they talk like that to reinforce their growing confidence and self-improvement.

Now plenty of us can make those proposals after a few drinks, but imagine what it takes to do that sober. Geoff tells me there are plenty of AA guys – members with years under their belts – who pick up women in bars. I don’t even start talking to women without a drink, much less ask for the sale. Once I’ve cemented the relationship with a girl, I can do or say anything. But I can’t go through every step of the process sober. My confidence isn’t there. I’m self-conscious.

This is the real self-improvement challenge. Hard work alone won’t through this one. This takes attitude readjustment, rearranging of the innards. A core personality overhaul.

Geoff says that when you quit drinking, that’s when you really “start living.” When you drop that crutch, life gets interesting. This is where I want to lead my life. I don’t want a crutch. I want to start living.

The God Factor

The third step proved difficult to pass, to turn my life over to God as I understand Him. My sticking point is The God Factor. I’m not Atheist because it requires just as much faith as believing in a God, and I don’t have any faith. I don’t believe anything. Who really knows? I’m agnostic. There’s probably something, but I don’t know.

The Big Book prominently features a chapter for people like me, the fourth chapter titled “We Agnostics.” I read through it and it did nothing for me.

In his post “Like an Addict,” Ryan Holiday ponders whether religion simply provides humility not present in addicts. Self-centered alcoholics need “prudential values” to exercise restraint. Humility answers two of my triggers: boredom and control. However, I disagree that’s why God’s in the recipe for recovery. An AA meeting makes you the center of attention for ten minutes to talk about whatever’s bothering you. Most speakers bore me to sleep. How’s that a lesson in humility?

One of Ryan’s readers commented that we drink to “turn off unpleasant feelings. Recovery is about learning how to survive your feelings.” This is right on the money. Think about the situations when somebody says, “I need a drink.” We do it to numb something. Alcoholics get addicted to the numb. Maybe God is needed to help us deal with our emotions. Everything will be OK because God’s taking care of me. I just need to make it another 24.

Ryan’s post struck a nerve because of his final thought: “I don’t think you need to find this in religion.” Regardless of what “this” refers to, he asks if religion is really necessary to the equation. This is the main controversy of AA. If you Google “AA criticism,” one of the top websites is PositiveAtheism.org.

Is religion necessary for recovery? I don’t know, but what secular methodologies have enjoyed the same success? In other words, until science gives us something better, we’re stuck with the Higher Power.

Moral Inventory

Maybe I subconsciously created the God problem given my reluctance to take on the fourth step: to conduct a searching and fearless moral inventory of myself. I have to write down everything that’s wrong with me (my absent “prudential values”), including but surely not limited to lacking the confidence to flirt with girls without a drink. That’s not something people are eager to jump into, but it’s necessary to address the character defects.

For now, I’ll accept a generic Higher Power (no logo) just to move on to the self-improvement process.

Powerless over Alcohol

The second major criticism of AA is its teaching that alcoholics are powerless over alcohol, hence the need for God. This criticism doesn’t stem from the need for God, but the teaching that alcoholics’ will alone is not strong enough to drink in moderation. Critics contend that heavy drinkers leave AA and become worse, binge drinking worse than ever, if they truly feel powerless.

The Big Book illustrates story after story of inexplicable cases of alcoholics with absolutely no control. This is a difficult idea to accept – that you can’t overcome your desire with will power.

On its face, it may seem absurd, but it makes sense to me. I’m powerless in the sense that I can’t drink normally, like other people. I can’t have a few glasses of wine with dinner. If I have any, I’ll have a few bottles. I can’t have a few beers, I’ll have ten. And if I have that first drink, I won’t stop until I go to sleep. If you’re in the club, you understand.

This story from the Big Book struck a nerve with me more than any of the others.

A man of thirty was doing a great deal of spree drinking. He was very nervous in the morning after these bouts and quieted himself with more liquor. He was ambitious to succeed in business, but saw that he would get nowhere if he drank at all. Once he started, he had no control whatever. He made up his mind that until he had been successful in business and had retired, he would not touch another drop. And exceptional man, he remained bone dry for twenty-five years and retired at the age of fifty-five, after a successful and happy business career. Then he fell victim to a belief which practically every alcoholic has – that his long period of sobriety and self-discipline had qualified him to drink as other men. Out came his carpet slippers and a bottle. In two months he was in a hospital, puzzled and humiliated. He tried to regulate his drinking for a while, making several trips to the hospital in the meantime. Then, after gathering all his forces, he attempted to stop altogether and found he could not. Every means of solving his problem which money could buy was at his disposal. Every attempt failed. Though a robust man at retirement, he went to pieces quickly and was dead within four years.

This case contains a powerful lesson. Most of us have believed that if we remained sober for a long stretch, we could thereafter drink normally. But here is a man who at fifty-five years found he was just where he left off at thirty. We have seen the truth demonstrated again and again: “Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic.” Commencing to drink after a period of sobriety, we are in a short time as bad as ever. If we are planning to stop drinking, there must be no reservation of any kind, nor any lurking notion that someday we will be immune to alcohol.

One Day at a Time

Or as we say in Colombia, solo por hoy.

This seems simple to an outsider, but you’ll be surprised how often we get away from it. It’s rational to think past today. I’ll see my family at Christmas. How am I not going to get drunk around them? How will I go my whole life without drinking?

During the honeymoon phase, it’s easy to imagine a life of good, clean fun. I’ll take salsa classes, hang out at coffee shops, climb mountains, or whatever. After the honeymoon, I started wondering if this is viable.

Owning Mahowny is a little-known but excellent film / true story about a gambling addict who embezzled millions from his bank to fund his habit. At the end of the film, Philip Seymour Hoffman (the gambler) has this exchange with his psychologist:

Psychologist: How would you rate the thrill you got from gambling, on a scale of one to 100?
Dan Mahowny: Um… hundred.
Psychologist: And what about the biggest thrill you’ve ever had outside of gambling?
Dan Mahowny: Twenty.

The psychologist asks Mahowny if he can live with twenty, and Mahowny replies he can.

This is how I feel sometimes. Jumping out of that airplane, getting in a boxing ring, moving to South America – I wouldn’t rate any of those as thrilling as my wildest benders. The night George and I broke out in a fistfight and left the girls at the bar to keep drinking together (bleeding and all), the nights of promiscuous sex, and all the nights getting in trouble are my most exciting memories.

All the clean fun in the world seems great, but only a 20 / 100. When I visit my pal in China, of course I want to paint the town red and bang a ton of Asian chicks. And when I finally go to Ireland, how the hell will I hang out without drinking?

When I think about all the trouble I’ve gotten into, I think it’s not enough. I can’t be done yet. I don’t want any right now, but I can’t be finished. Can I?

For the record, Geoff said my thrill analogy goes away. He said I still can’t imagine a life without alcohol and that will change. I hope he’s right.

Action Plans

1. Move past the God requirement without too much detail and continue with the steps.
2. I’ve started a salsa class. Hopefully, I’ll be able to hit one of these discotecas solo and start meeting women.

Below are the Serenity Prayer and 12 Steps if you haven’t seen them. I’ve found that actually saying (pronouncing) the words of the Serenity Prayer helps.

Serenity Prayer

God grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change;
Courage to change the things I can;
And wisdom to know the difference.

Concédeme la serenidad para aceptar las cosas que no puedo cambiar,
El Valor para cambiar las que sí puedo,
Y la Sabiduría para reconocer la diferencia.

The Steps

1. We admitted that we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Blognigger has written an excellent piece on the Henry Louis Gates story and how to handle police, here.

His common sense advice:

ALWAYS SUCK THE POLICE’S BALLS AS HARD AS YOU CAN.

Use yes sir, no sir, thank you sir because the police can do whatever they want at all times.

This approach has served me well in a number of different run-ins with the police – whether I was writing graffiti which was illegal, or Driving While Black which wasn’t.

This is so simple it’s ridiculous that he has to say it, and it’s even worse that there’s a huge debate in his commentage.

One night I was driving my friend Tez home after playing basketball. Tez is black and lived in an all-black part of St. Louis. We got pulled over for what I call Driving While White (DWW).

While Driving While Black (DWB) is illegal in more parts of the country and a more serious offense in most cops’ eyes, DWW is also a crime in some parts of the country – black cities. I’ll explain. Driving While White Male may be a better term because police often give white girls a pass if they assume the girl has a boyfriend in the neighborhood. But if police see a white guy driving through an all-black part of town, they’ll often pull him over on the assumption he’s there to buy drugs. Or to tell him to get out of there. I’ve lived in lower-middle-class black neighborhoods where DWW wasn’t a crime, but it’s a crime in most bad black neighborhoods.

Tez lived in a bad neighborhood and we got pulled over. After I slipped a few ‘sirs’ into the conversation, I politely asked why we were pulled over. The officer answered that the car wasn’t registered to an address in the neighborhood. I nodded in complete understanding.

Now, this wasn’t the first time I’d been cornered with a black person by police, and it certainly wasn’t the first time I’d seen some black ghetto attitude, but it was the first time I saw the two meet. Tez started arguing that driving in a different neighborhood wasn’t a crime and this wasn’t necessary. He kept telling the cops to do “only what’s necessary.” That word “necessary” over and over again.

I thought the only thing necessary was for Tez to SHUT THE FUCK UP! These are COPS you dumb-ass! Tez took the hint, or maybe dropped the battle because he had absolutely no backup from me.

We were wearing basketball clothes and stankin’. It wasn’t too late at night and, besides my tattoo, I didn’t have any douchebaggy red flags like a pencil-line beard or a big, heavy chain. After searching my car, the cops let us go. But I still believe that if I hadn’t been in Blognigger’s common-sense camp, Tez (and maybe me too) would have gone to jail.

My excellent “ball-sucking” saved the day by appeasing the cops and discouraging Tez.

I’ve been locked up for no reason (in fascist South Carolina). I know just as well as the next guy that some cops are insufferable assholes. But I’ve also had a lot of cop friends and most of them are relatively normal.

There’s one thing that cops are not: pensive, open-minded liberals. You’re not going to win an argument with one and you sure as shit aren’t going to intimidate one or shout him down. If you try, you may get your ass kicked or locked up, or both.

We have Blognigger’s testimony that sucking balls works. I’ve heard my good buddy Carlos’ testimony as well. Carlos is an exchange student from Jamaica. Now, you dumb-asses thinking of weed and rastas should know that the majority of Jamaicans don’t smoke weed or have long hair. Carlos is clean-cut and he barely drinks.

We talked about DWB once and he admitted that he gets pulled over a lot. But he added that almost as soon as the cop hears him talk, they let him go. He’s been in St. Louis six years and he’s never been to jail! Carlos is a good-natured guy with an ear-to-ear grin. And having grown up in Kingston, he has none of the black ghetto attitude common in Americans.

I am no apologist for racism in America, and I don’t deny it. I don’t deny the racism deep inside me. I know racism and I know racists. But still, when confronted with a guy like Carlos, even the biggest asshole of cops will let him go. I can see ‘em thinking, “This is just a good kid; I’d be a monster to take him in.”

Black people, white people, all people: that is the effect you want to induce in cops.

I agree with Obama’s original statement that the cop in the Gates case “acted stupidly.” However, I also identify with the sentiment of most white people according to opinion polls.

Black readers, this is what white people thought about the case: Well, what did Gates do? What did he say? Oh, he was yelling and calling the cop racist? Well, that’s stupid.

We white people aren’t thinking about the societal injustice context of every news story. We think about what sensible people should do in the situation. OK, so a neighbor saw a couple guys forcing their way in the back door of the house. The neighbor called the police, as most white people feel they should have. To the contrary of rampant speculation, the neighbor did not mention race in the 911 call.

We white people think of the officer on duty responding to the call as merely doing his job. We feel sorry for him that he got yelled at and insulted while merely doing his job. Couldn’t Gates be reasonable and understand that the police had been called for a burglary to his address? Couldn’t he just show his ID without the big production?

Now, I think the officer acted stupidly but many white people don’t go that far because of how stupidly Gates acted. If you have two assholes being assholes to each other, the one with more power is going to win. Plain and simple.

It’s really not surprising that a Harvard professor should need a lesson in common sense. Thanks, Blognigger!

Let’s break down some stupid comments from BN’s readers.

The first is from “Learn Your Rights (or be a lazy ball-sucker)”:

If you are NOT breaking any laws, sucking dick is only giving the cops and their horrible system positive reinforcement. You should stop being so lazy and learn YOUR RIGHTS so that you can handle police officers tactfully and legally. You don’t have to become a lawyer to avoid sucking cop dick. They want to keep their jobs and not look like an idiot to their boss when they bring you in for nothing (even though they can and still might). There are simple scripts to follow that will get you out of most encounters. The last thing that cop wants to do is show up in front of a judge when you take them to court!!!

You people just want to take the easy way out because it takes work and sacrifice to fight the system. FUCK YOU! If you pay taxes, cops are your employees. You’re making it worse for everyone by being lazy and uneducated cock-suckers. People died for your rights, now “We gotta take the power back!”

Here are 3 obvious assumptions about this dumb-ass:

1. He is white
2. He has never been to jail
3. He is from a low-crime city

If those three assumptions don’t apply to you, don’t take his advice. I heard this line of shit once and tried it when I was about 18. I tried to tell a cop he couldn’t search my car. Then I was handcuffed for “acting suspicious” while he searched my car. If I hadn’t tried that shit, he probably wouldn’t have given me the minor-in-possession ticket for the bottle of gin I had under the driver’s seat.

Here’s “Ty”:

Good for him for NOT BEING A FUCKING PUSSY anymore. He didn’t do shit wrong and everybody knows it else charges would not have been dropped. Period … Fuck it. I’m going to be Skip Gates. I’m already ready for the beating … “Why do you need to see my ID, officer? In fact, what brings YOU to MY neighborhood? May I please have your name and badge number?”

OK, this isn’t assumption. This is fact: Ty will spend time in jail again. If he is black and if he acts like that, he will spend a night in jail in the future. You just can’t beat those odds. If he were white and acted like that he’d see the inside of a cell, but being black simply increases the number of opportunities / run-ins with police he’ll have. Can’t beat those odds.

I don’t know what Ty does for a living or how much his time is worth to him. But apparently it isn’t worth more than “NOT BEING A FUCKING PUSSY” to cops. Real smart.

We white people don’t want open-minded liberals for cops. They wouldn’t work out. The job is inherently violent. We white people have a deep respect for cops, which isn’t reciprocated in the black community.

Are you going to change the system or make a difference on your own? No. But you can make a difference whether you go to jail or not. Don’t be stupid. Suck balls.

Buy American Pastoral on Amazon.

American Pastoral by Philip Roth is an all-American tale.

Seymour Levov grew up in a Jewish section of 1940s Newark, New Jersey. Nicknamed “The Swede” for his blond hair and huge stature, The Swede was the star of his baseball, basketball, and football teams, often leading the school to city and state finals. The Swede was the envy of his high school and a legend throughout greater Newark.

The context of The Swede’s fame is important to the story. In Roth’s own words:

“Let’s remember the energy. Americans were governing not only themselves but some two hundred million people in Italy, Austria, Germany, and Japan … Atomic power was ours alone … And playing Sunday morning softball on the Chancellor Avenue field and pickup basketball on the asphalt courts behind the school were all the boys who had come back alive, neighbors, cousins, older brothers, their pockets full of separation pay, the GI Bill inviting them to break out in ways they could not have imagined possible before the war. Our class started high school six months after the unconditional surrender of the Japanese, during the greatest moment of collective inebriation in American history. And the upsurge of energy was contagious … Sacrifice and constraint were over. The Depression had disappeared. Everything was in motion …”

Tom Wolfe described America’s golden days in Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test:

“cruising in the neon glories of the new American night … with all this Straight-8 and V-8 power underneath and all this neon glamour overhead, which somehow tied in with the technological superheroics of the jet, TV, atomic subs, ultrasonics–Postwar American suburbs–glorious world! … ”

Kick-ass Detroit cars, Hollywood movies, huge houses in the burbs with yards and fences. The American Dream. Happy days. Granted, the Soviet Union was a superpower as well, but we had Chevrolets and John Wayne and blue jeans and cheeseburgers and rock-n-roll. We were the center of the universe. We beat the Nazis and the Japs at the same time. We won that war. It’s our world, bitches.

Also important to the context is The Swede’s all-Jewish neighborhood of Newark. He’s the grandson of immigrants. The third-generation often identifies more with the new country. This was not only true with The Swede, but his classmates and the entire neighborhood. His community was on the verge of assimilation and wanted in on this American glory, their own place in the American Dream.

The Swede embodied their dreams and aspirations. He was big and blond and dominating all these American sports – a Jew beating the natives at baseball, basketball, and football. Fittingly, The Swede’s best sport was baseball, America’s past-time. Jewish South Newark was melting into the pot and The Swede was leading the way.

The Swede was a humble man. A conformist, he wanted to do the right thing, to play by the rules, to get ahead through hard work and perserverance. He wanted everybody to be happy. He approached life with a win-win mentality. The American way.

The Swede got an offer to play ball with a farm team for the Giants, but his father wanted him to take over the family business. The Swede obliged. The one time The Swede stood up to his father was in marrying an Irish Catholic girl – Dawn Dwyer from Elizabeth, New Jersey – who was the 1949 Miss New Jersey. Could there be a more all-American union? The all-state athlete / US Marine / 3rd generation Jew married Miss New Jersey / 3rd generation Irish girl. God bless America!

According to The Swede’s unsympathetic brother Jerry:

“He was very stoical. He was a very nice, simple, stoical guy … Just a sweetheart … In one way he could be conceived as completely banal and conventional. An absence of negative values and nothing more. Bred to be dumb, built for convention, and so on. That ordinary decent life that they all want to live, and that’s it.”

The Swede’s family is an inspiring, upwardly-mobile immigrant story. His grandfather, a working man, came to the States and worked in a leather tannery making gloves. Lou Levov, The Swede’s father, dropped out of school at 13 to work in the tanneries as well. Lou Levov, a tough old man, built a respectable glove business called Newark Maid. The Swede took over the business and ran with it, growing ever more and ascending into the bona fide upper-middle class.

For their American Dream, Seymour “The Swede” Levov and 1949 Miss New Jersey Dawn Dwyer Levov moved out to Old Rimrock, New Jersey, a fictional town in rural, Republican New Jersey. In portraying its American-ness, Roth places Old Rimrock near Morristown, New Jersey, which was General George Washington’s choice of a strategic camp during the Revolutionary War. The Swede’s favorite American hero was Johnny Appleseed, and imagined himself as Johnny Appleseed conquering the countryside.

The happy couple had a daughter named Merry – a daughter not as beautiful as her Miss New Jersey mother or all-state athlete father, but they managed to love her anyway. Merry had a stutter that they tried like hell to remedy. Then she got fat. Then, during the turbulent 60s and Vietnam War, Merry adopted a radical ideology known at the time as the New Left. Fervently anti-war, anti-capitalism, anti-bourgeois, anti-Johnson, and every other kind of anti- those people are. Then “she went out one day and blew up the post office, destroying right along with it Dr. Fred Conlon and the village’s general store …”

16 year-old Merry detonated a bomb in the town’s general store that killed a well-regarded local. She went into hiding forever. The Swede’s American Dream was shattered. His daugher was a murderer. He and Dawn were known as the parents of the hometown murderer. The rest of the novel details The Swede’s trainwreck life, and how it all stems from his terrorist daughter.

1949 Miss New Jersey Dawn Levov went into depression. She was in a mental hospital for a short time. When she got out, The Swede bought her a facelift. Then she started having an affair with Bill Orcutt, Old Rimrock’s super-WASP all-American of Ivy League heritage going back to the Revolutionary War. We learn there was a divorce. In a second marriage, The Swede had three athletic sons, all assumed not to be terrorists.

“Pastoral, as an adjective, refers to the lifestyle of shepherds and pastoralists, moving livestock around larger areas of land according to seasons and availability of water and food. ‘Pastoral’ also describes literature, art and music which depicts the life of shepherds, often in a highly idealised manner.” — Wikipedia definition

This argument could be supported by various passages from the book. Here’s the unsympathetic brother Jerry:

“You wanted Miss America? Well, you’ve got her, with a vengeance – she’s your daughter! You wanted to be a real American jock, a real American marine, a real American hotshot with a beautiful Gentile babe on your arm? You longed to belong like everybody else in the United States of America? … The reality of this place is right up in your kisser now. With the help of your daughter you’re as deep in the shit as a man can get, the real American crazy shit. America amok!”

The Swede’s father may be the main assimilation character in the book, and he’s stabbed in the eye with a fork by the ‘Gentile’ wife of Bill Orcutt, the Gentile neighbor who is banging The Swede’s wife.

However, Roth doesn’t talk much about Jewishness in the book. Who would be the Jewish ideal to follow? The brother Jerry? The guy becomes a leading heart surgeon in Miami, taking a half dozen wives and having a dozen or so kids. And nobody likes him much.

Plus, Roth’s denunciation of the Newark race riots (through The Swede’s old man) seems much too sincere to be arguing against the good old American way. If assimilation were the point of the book, Roth would have created more contrast between Jewishness and American-ness.

No, this book isn’t a rebuke of assimilation or a warning to those not keepin’ it real. Rather, it’s a rebuke of the American Dream. The American Dream isn’t all rosy. The Swede did everything he was supposed to and did it well. And he got shit on. America may shit on you too. That’s the message.

The high that America felt in the 40s and 50s – the time when Roth grew up – was an illusion. The wake-up call came in the 60s. The big hangover from the big high – that’s the story Roth is telling. It’s a clarification of history. Merry wasn’t rebelling against Gentilism, she was rebelling against The Swede’s Happy Days idea of America.

I think Roth wrote this book to set the record straight on the 60s. I grew up in the 90s, when the book was written and published. It was a time when the 60s were cool again. Grateful Dead was one of the most popular bands and white kids wore those hideous tie-dye t-shirts. Some corporate ass-clowns put on a second Woodstock festival in 1997. The 60s were remembered as peace, love, long hair, good music, drugs, etc. I think Roth saw the 60s being remembered like that and wrote a book to set the record straight. The 60s were not how we Gen-Xers and -Yers imagined them.

I was one of about a dozen people to read Tom Daschle’s book, Like No Other Time. I’ll never forget a sentence he wrote in explaining the 60s. He said that if you weren’t there, you just don’t understand how unsure the country was that we’d get through the times. Not sure they’d get through? He’s right, I didn’t understand.

The country wasn’t sure they’d survive people like The Swede’s daughter Merry. The Weathermen. The Black Panther Party. The 60s were not all peace and love. “Are you down with the revolution?” wasn’t a cheesy pickup line. It was for real.

When it came to light during the 2008 presidential election that Barack Obama had ties to Weathermen founder Bill Ayers, most dumb-asses like you and me thought, “Who the hell are the Weathermen?” The Weather Underground Organization (WUO) was a radical socialist organization that aimed to overthrow the government of the United States. To overthrow the government of the United States. In the words of Weathermen co-founder John Jacobs: “We’re against everything that is good and decent in honky America. We will burn and loot and destroy. We are the incubation of your mothers’ nightmares.”

Here’s a picture of John Jacobs at the 1969 Weathermen-organized Chicago protests / riots, Days of Rage (the slogan for the protest-riot was “Bring the War Home”). Your eyes don’t deceive you; he is wearing a football helmet. Others in his crowd are also wearing helmets. This was not peace and love.

The Weathermen carried out bombings across the country. Merry’s bombing of the general store wasn’t the brainchild of Roth’s creative genius – it was from the daily news. Her going into hiding wasn’t his imagination either – most of the Weathermen went into hiding in the 70s. Bill Ayers was one of those who re-emerged and got involved in Chicago politics. He is now an esteemed professor at the University of Illinois – Chicago.

Aside from the Vietnam War, race relations were hot. The Civil Rights Act had recently passed, and blacks were realizing how shitty of a hand they had. Race riots broke out in Newark, Detroit, and Los Angeles. The Black Panther party and other black power organizations sprang up.

Ever seen the movie, Dead Presidents? In that movie, black veterans rob a Brinks armored truck. That wasn’t creative fiction either. Many leaders of the black power movement went on to rob armored trucks or kill police officers, or both. Briefly mentioned in the book is Angela Davis, an radical activist who was tried and acquitted for the murder of a California judge. She went on to be an esteemed professor at the University of California.

Sidenote: do prestigious universities compete for these ambiguously criminal revolutionaries? Like top high school athletes?

Roth set the record straight on the 60s. It was an ugly time. And much of the American Dream is illusion. You can play by all the rules and do the right thing, like the Swede, and still get shit on by America.

The other story in this book is the parenting angle.

The Swede raised Merry with all the progressive sensibilities of the day. In his unsympathetic brother’s words:

“He understood that something was going wrong, but he was no Ho-Chi-Minhite like his darling fat girl. Just a liberal sweetheart of a father. The philosopher-king of ordinary life. Brought her up with all the modern ideas of being rational with your children. Everything permissable, everything forgivable, and she hated it. People don’t admit how much they resent other people’s children, but this kid made it easy for you. She was miserable, self-righteous – little shit was no good from the time she was born … But it’s one thing to let your hair grow long, it’s one thing to listen to rock-and-roll music too loud, but it’s another to jump the line and throw the bomb. That crime could never be made right. There was no way back for my brother from that bomb. That bomb detonated his life. His perfect life was over. Just what she had in mind.”

Merry enjoyed a happy childhood, and she was always closer to her father. There was always the stutter, and then the fatness. And then she adopted the radical ideology. She became scathingly critical of not just the war. She criticized her parents’ American Dream as being bougeois and selfish. Dawn sometimes couldn’t be around Merry because of the things she said. Dawn’s words:

“’The Democratic Republic of Vietnam’ – if I hear that from her one more time, Seymour, I swear, I’ll go out of my mind!”

At first The Swede considered it a phase. Merry’s ideas would eventually moderate. However, he started to lightly engage her when she posted the Weathermen’s motto on her wall (one more time for effect): “We’re against everything that is good and decent in honky America. We will burn and loot and destroy. We are the incubation of your mothers’ nightmares.”

The Swede emphasized to her that he was also against the war, that everybody in the family was against the war. He argued that the proper course of action is to contact their representatives and express their opinion respectfully. She would rebut his arguments with vile condemnations of the political process, New Jersey, and their bougeois life.

The Swede tried to learn about her mysterious friends in New York. These were the people who gave her the disturbing literature he found in the house. The Swede tried to curb her visits to New York by making deals and reasoning with her in a saga of conversations.

In “Conversation #67 about New York,” The Swede finally restricted his daughter from going to the city. He told her to make a difference at home in Old Rimrock, New Jersey, so she bombed the general store and post office, killing Dr. Fred Conlon.

Some critics believe Roth is condemning The Swede’s progressive parenting style – another claim with ample support. The Swede’s unsympathetic brother:

“You’re the one who always comes off looking good. And look where it’s got you. Refusing to give offense. Blaming yourself. Tolerant respect for every position. Sure, it’s ‘liberal’ – I know, a liberal father … And look where the fuck it’s got you! … No, you didn’t make the war. You made the angriest kid in America. Ever since she was a kid, every word she spoke was a bomb.”

Also:

“Look, are you going to break with appearances and pit your will against your daughter’s or aren’t you? … for Christ’s sake go in there and get her. I’ll go in and get her … I’ll clear out the office and get on a plane and I’ll come. And I’ll go in there, and, I assure you, I’ll get her off the McCarter Highway, the little shit, the selfish little fucking shit, playing her fucking games with you! She won’t play them with me, I assure you … ”

Regardless of Roth’s intent on this point, I’ve known good and bad kids that were raised by both old-school and modern parental methods. I’m not sure it makes a difference. What I took away from this book is that, no matter how much you plan the perfect upbringing, it could go horribly wrong.

I was raised in relatively old-school fashion. Lots of rules. I got spanked, slapped, etc. Nothing too bad, but definitely not a liberal upbringing. And I turned out a mess. The worst thing a son can turn into is a drug-addict or -dealer – and for a while in high school, it seemed probable that I’d be at least one of the two.

What happens when you just can’t control your kid? What happens when you do all the right things and the shit still hits the fan? The book hammers home a feeling of no control, of helplessness.

I want to raise my kid in a more progressive fashion (my old man says this will change when I actually have kids). I’ll spank and slap him, but I’m going to be honest about things most parents don’t talk about. It wasn’t until after most of my troubles that I learned my old man was wild in high school too. Drugs, jail, the works. And he never told me. Maybe if I’m honest with my kids, they’ll steer clear of all that. I’ll tell them how fat and ugly all the smokers and hard-partiers are now. And of course they’ll know what jail’s like.

But what if your plan doesn’t work? The kid still goes rotten. Does the plan even matter? I was bad from the beginning. I was always the worst kid in all my classes – starting with pre-school and kindergarten. My old man tells his friends something like this: ‘You know how they tell you about peer pressure? They tell you to keep your kid away from bad influences? One day I realized, there’s no bad kid that’s going to corrupt my kid. Because my kid is that bad kid! It’s my kid! They don’t tell you what to do when it’s your kid.’

By that point, there wasn’t anything anybody could have said to me. I wasn’t listening. Any plan would / parental strategy would have been futile.

This book scared me a little regarding children. I think it’s a good idea to aim for quantity, because quality is a long shot.

American Pastoral by Philip Roth won the Pulitzer Prize in 1998 and was listed by TIME Magazine as one of the 100 greatest novels of all time.

Some studio is supposed to be making a film of American Pastoral, there it is(n’t) on IMBD.

A documentary on the Weather Underground (a puff piece in my opinion).

Buy American Pastoral on Amazon.

Jimi Hendrix playing the national anthem at Woodstock:

Intro

“Fitness is a journey, not a destination.”

I started working out in 1998. I’ve experimented with many different workouts. Whole body workouts, push-pull, 1 body part / day, plyometrics for speed and vertical jump, BFS, HST, negative reps, forced reps, and even weird stuff like isometric holds.

I want to share what I’ve learned with beginners, interested parties, and anyone looking to get started. The following principles are the best practices I’ve learned in the last ten years.

Functionality in Fitness

“Modern fitness is defined by appearance rather than actual horsepower.” – Gym Jones

Everything I advocate is biased toward performance – not muscle size or having a good-looking body. I’m motivated in achieving power / strength, speed / explosiveness, and stamina / endurance – to be stronger, faster, and longer-lasting than others. I like to show up to any sport – even one I don’t know how to play – and be one of the better players from sheer athleticism.

If you achieve above-average strength / speed / stamina, you’ll have an attractive physique (but not necessarily for the magazines). Your priorities will determine how you exercise.  Competitive strongmen and powerlifters don’t do bodybuilding shows. And professional bodybuilders only pose.

Compound Movements

“Keep it simple, stupid.” – KISS Principle

I only do bread-and-butter weightlifting exercises. Compound means that the movement recruits muscle fibers in more than one body part. For example, the squat uses quadriceps, glutes, hamstrings, back, and core muscles. Bench press recruits chest, triceps, and shoulders.

The opposite of compound movements are isolation exercises, which I don’t do. Isolation movements include arm exercises, flyes, shrugs, anything with the word ‘curl’ in it, etc.

Compound movements are more conducive to my functional fitness philosophy. These exercises train the body for strength you’ll actually use. Conversely, isolation exercises train for strength that will rarely if ever be used.

I don’t do arm exercises. I’ve found that the bicep and tricep muscles are sufficiently worked during compound movements. If you hold 250+ pounds in your hands for four sets of deadlifts, your biceps will get strong. And if you follow those deadlifts with rows or pullups, your biceps won’t need any further work. Isolation exercises have little use in functional fitness. And that’s why football players don’t do them.

Below is a list of my compound movements.

Squats – the most important exercise. Legs primarily, but also back and abs.
Bench – key upper-body strength indicator. Chest, triceps, shoulders.
Deadlifts – back, hamstrings, glutes, biceps, forearms.
Overhead Press – shoulders, triceps. Do it standing.
Rows – back, biceps, forearms. I prefer barbell, but dumbbells are good.
Dips – chest, triceps, shoulders.
Pull-ups – lats (back width), biceps, forearms.

That’s it. That’s all you need! Do these exercises hard and heavy for strength and big muscles.

Honorable mention:
Upright Rows – another shoulder workout, pulling instead of pushing.
Power Cleans – bad-ass.

Free Weights

I only use free weights – bars, dumbbells, and my body weight. I don’t do anything with the word “cable” in it, or anything on a machine. There is certainly a benefit in those exercises, but less bang for the buck. I spend all my energy doing only the most profitable exercises.

I’ve heard free-weight squats and the bench press recruit stabilizing muscle fibers – fibers that aren’t used in exercises like leg press or Nautilus bench press. However, I’ve also heard an expert weightlifter testify that the machines nowadays are so well-designed that they force you to complete the repetitions with perfect form.

I’m not sure which argument has more merit, but I do know that free weights are more conducive to my philosophy of functional fitness. Free weights are already more convenient than any situation life will present. The bars fit nicely in your hands, and the plates allow for even loading on each side. It’s already easy enough. There’s no need for machines, cables, etc.

Heavy Weight

“Everybody wanna be a bodybuilder but don’t nobody wanna lift this HEAVY-ASS WEIGHT!” – Ronnie Coleman

I’ve found that when lifting weights, they’re supposed to be heavy. Very heavy. I aim for a weight I can only lift five times (5 reps). Nothing’s wrong with sets of 6 – 8 reps. But I think that once you can do 10, you’re not training for strength so much as endurance. You can train for muscular endurance with calisthenics at home.

I think heavy weight is mandatory for muscle growth in body types like mine – the ectomorph. I must lift very heavy weight or I quickly slim down. Mesomorphs may take issue with this principle of mine.

I often hear women protest against the heavy weight principle. They say they don’t want to get buff. Ladies, you should lift heavy weight too. You’re not going to get buff. It’s not in your biology. I suggest you try to get big and buff – it won’t happen. Men spend blood, sweat, and tears to get buff – and some still don’t. It’s not something that’s going to happen accidentally or inadvertently.

Lift heavy weight.

Whole-Body Workouts

This is a principle I always thought was specific to my ectomorph genes. However, I’ve recently read that whole-body workouts “elicit the maximal hormonal response” (credit Tim Ferriss), so everybody should do them.

I feel that, in the extreme example of 1 body-part / day workouts, my muscles shrink in the 4 – 6 days in between workouts. I prefer to hit all my muscles often – every other day. (Obviously, put at least 48 hours between whole-body workouts)

Note: this principle may not apply to guys using anabolic steroids. If you’re using steroids, you don’t need a maximal hormonal response because you’re hormones are at a super-human level already.

Keep Workouts Less Than 1 Hour

The body goes into a catabolic state after about an hour of resistance training. That is, the body starts burning muscle to fuel those extra sets. I wish I’d have known this for the first several years of my fitness career. Like most people would, I thought harder work led to better results. My good buddy Craig and I used to work so hard for so long, thinking that hard work and supplements led to the best results.

To the contrary, I’ve learned less is more. Work smart, not hard.

I actually finish my workouts in 30 – 40 minutes. I watch the clock and try to complete my work quickly. I spend about 2 hours a week in the gym. A lot of guys give me funny looks when they see me leaving long before them when I arrived after they did. But are they bigger or stronger than me? Rarely. I spend much more time training for speed and stamina than strength. And I’m pretty strong.

Note: this principle also may not apply to guys on anabolic steroids. I understand that, on steroids, recovery times are improved so they may not revert to a catabolic phase as quickly. By definition, anabolic is the opposite of catabolic.

Muscle Confusion

The muscles get accustomed to regular workouts. After a while, they don’t work as hard to complete the workouts. Therefore, they’re not breaking down or rebuilding bigger than before. This is why it’s important to keep the muscles confused.

When switching to a different workout, you’ll feel it the next day. I’ve noticed a difference when merely doing the same workout at a different gym with different equipment. It doesn’t take much to confuse, but it’s especially important in workouts like mine where there isn’t much variety. Below are a few ways to trick the muscles:

Abs / Core

“Abs are built in the kitchen” – Unknown

I’ve only had very ripped abs once in my life – while boxing. I burned ~1000 calories every workout. I was also hitting weights and dieting – regularly eating laxative in an attempt to get down to 168 lbs. The key to magazine-cover abs is cardio and a super-strict diet. A lot of people insist on low-weight, high-rep crunches or low-rep, weighted situps. I don’t have a strong opinion either way.

But I do know that, if you can’t see your abs naturally, you’ll only see them if you get Nazi-strict about what you put into your mouth.

Turkish Get Ups are the most gangsta ab workout ever. Here’s a dude doing 135lbs for 1 rep:

Tools

Gloves – If you care about keeping soft hands, use them. I never had soft hands to begin with so I don’t care.
Wrist-wraps – These assist in holding weight that is too heavy for the hands to hold. When I first learned how to use wraps, I thought they were a godsend. Now I view them as a mixed bag. The negative effect of wrist-wraps is that your forearms don’t get worked. Holding 250 pounds in your hands or holding your body weight from a pullup bar strengthens the forearms. At the same time, if your deadlift progress is being stunted because your hands can’t hold the weight, your glutes and hamstrings will suffer. Those muscles can grow faster than the forearms. Still, my grip strength is so far behind that I’ve thrown away my wrist-wraps.
Belt – Worn for squats and deadlifts. I’ve thrown my back out a handful of times and it’s the worst. One time was so bad I wasn’t in the gym for months. However, I no longer believe the belt is as important as keeping super-strict form. I’ve actually stopped using the belt because I feel it’s a crutch to not keeping strict form. I’ll use it if maxing out (doing the heaviest weight I can for 1 rep), but not for working sets.
Supplements – I’ve tried creatine, NO2, glutamine, tribulus, fat-burners, and more. Some show results and some don’t. The ones that work only work while you’re using them. So I don’t use any except protein powder, which I always have in the house. I don’t even consider whey a supplement so much as food – a convenient way of ingesting protein. But since the benefits of the other supplements eventually vanish, my attitude is ‘Why bother?’

Diet

There’s a lot of literature on diet that you can read. I’m not going to add anything new. I’m actually a bad example as I’m prone to overeating greasy fatness. I love to eat. But these are some common sense bullet-points to take away.

• If lifting weights, you need a lot of protein. 1 gram / pound of body weight is the industry standard. I’ve also read 1.5 – 2.0 grams / lb body weight for gaining muscle. The key is: A LOT. However, you can’t eat six chicken breasts for breakfast and consider yourself set for the day. The body can only digest so much in one sitting. Spread the protein infusions throughout the day.
• Eat breakfast every day.
• Eat fruits and vegetables.
• Drink lots of water.
• Alcohol is the most overlooked source of excess calories.

Sample Workout

UPDATE: I removed the workout I had here in favor of StrongLift’s 5×5 for Beginners and Intermediate.

Day 1

Squat 5 x 5
Bench 5 x 5
Inverted Rows 3 x failure (bodyweight)
Pushups 3 x failure (bodyweight)
Reverse Crunches

Day 2

Squat 5 x 5
Overhead Press 5 x 5
Deadlift 1 x 5
Pullups 3 x failure (bodyweight)
Prone Bridges 3 x 30 sec

3 days / week, at least 48 hours between workouts. Increase weight every workout (by 5 pounds is ideal).

Note

I’m not interested in arguing about the best way to build strength / mass / power / etc. This is a suggested workout for beginners and busy people who want to be big and strong. Not people competing in Strongman competitions or trying to be the buffest body on the beach.

But nice comments are welcome, of course.