Fat Lester: The Novel

I received a spam email from Ebay the other day announcing some contest in which a participant (presumably the winner) could have a character in an upcoming novel named after him or her.

I deleted the email, as it did not interest me in the least. However, it did get me thinking. It's about time someone wrote an entire book about me. Yes, you read that correctly.

It is my humble opinion that an entire book should be written about me. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if opportunistic author were to publish an account of my unusually interesting life, it would constitute a grave travesty and a great disservice to the world.

Imagine if you were to combine Ferris Buhler's Day Off with Forrest Gump, substituting a remarkably good looking guy with a freakishly high IQ in place of Tom Hanks, that would in effect be the story of my (now close to 30 years of) life.

A country boy, son of an Irish immigrant who came to America having taken a vow of poverty as a Catholic priest, who got away with literally everything imaginable while in high school and college, only to rub shoulders with the likes of world leaders, professional athletes, embattled politicians and a list of other famous people way too long to list here - achieving great success and miserable failure all in a span of a couple of years.

Well, that's what would be written on the back of the book cover anyway.

From a financial standpoint, I'm quite poor, and my family came from literally nothing. I live in a remote, rural area that almost no one in the public eye (save for John Goodman, who has a house about 20 miles away) has even heard of - much less had any reason to visit. Also, there's not much about me that really stands out or makes me any more important than any other average Joe (hence the Forrest Gump comparison).

Despite my handsome appearance, women don't seem to be particularly fond of me (I guess I come across as weird --- working on a computer for 14 hours a day will do that to you). Despite the fact that I work 80 hours a week, I'm still pennyless. That said, I have had a couple of near-misses, any one of which would have made me a multi-millionaire had God, nature, the Devil and/or bad luck not intervened.

For example, I was due to sign a contract with the Planet Beach corporation, a worldwide tanning salon franchise corporation, that would have guaranteed me almost two million dollars for about six months worth of work, on August 29, 2005. That wouldn't have been a big deal had both myself and Planet Beach been based out of New Orleans, LA. August 29, 2005 was the day the levees broke, flooding the warehouse that contained all of the $4 million of merchandise the company was going to allow me to sell at a 50-50 split. To add insult to injury, the lady with whom I had negotiated the contract did not return to work after the storm.

Less than a year later, I had built an online empire selling medical equipment via an Ebay Store, had achieved the #1 overall ranking in all of the major search engines for my primary and dozens of secondary keyword targets, and was poised to seize control of the online retail market for the medical equipment industry, only to watch the business fall apart after selling WAY more than the company for whom I was employed was able to handle, both infrastructurally speaking as well as from a personnel standpoint. Once again, I had to postpone my target age for retirement from 25 to 30 - a number that in less than two months I will again have to adjust, this time probably to 35. If I'm not a multimillionaire by then, there's a good chance I'll just give up and try to reinvent myself as a 21st century John Galt.

That is why when looking back on it, I find it so remarkable that I've literally met hundreds of people, any one of whom most folks would consider themselves lucky to shake hands with. I don't particularly relish these opportunities as would most, and I certainly do not go out of my way in the slightest in order to facilitate these meetings. Yet, nonetheless they happen, and with an inexplicable degree of frequency.

In any case, if anyone reading this happens to know any author(s) who'd like to make a novel out of a true story of a normal dude who has lived more in 30 years than most people would in several lifetimes, please put them in touch with me.

My story is just too good not to be told and preserved for all to see long after my time here has ended.

The #1 Drawback to Working with Internet Technology

I recently came across a fantastic post on a blog called Get Girls Not Game entitled: "The 7 Deadly Sins of Approaching a Woman That Will Turn Her Off Instantly."

Well, according to this list of the seven deadly sins, sin #2 is the one that keeps me from reaching paradise. It reads:

2. Not Understanding How To Tactfully Move Things Forward

Now I’m going to blow you away with a little insider dating secret… A woman is expecting you to move an interaction forward… and actually will get turned off if you fail to do so. Let me say this again: If you don’t move an interaction toward intimacy and get physical with her, women will actually LOSE their attraction to you.
I know, it might be hard to believe. But for example, if you’re talking to a girl for more than a couple minutes, she’s probably already thinking, “Okay, when is going to ask for my number?” or even, “Okay, so when is he going to kiss me?” And if you don’t do it—or fail to do it smoothly—then she’ll actually “cool off” and start thinking of ways to dismiss you: “I think we’re better off just being friends…”
And this goes for ALL aspects of women and dating… Confidently approaching a woman, going for the number, asking her out, kissing her, getting sexual… everything. If you hesitate or don’t know what to do in each situation, you will end up losing EVERYTHING. And you know it.
It is crucial that you understand how to tactfully move from one step to the next with a woman… from the approach, all the way to the bedroom.

In my younger years I never had to do anything. ANYTHING. They (countless gorgeous twenty-somethings) would initiate the conversation, chat me up and move things forward until I had rounded the bases and tipped my cap for the fans.

Well, one day it all just stopped. I remember what day it was and what activity it was that started my unfortunate reversal of fortune. In my mid-20's I started selling stuff on Ebay to help pay for my rent while I was finishing up with college. It turned into a career in web development, trading premium aftermarket domain names, social media marketing, SEO and so forth. In other words, for all intents and purposes I became a geek.

I'm still the same guy all the ladies were fawning over in high school and college. I'm still just as fit as I was when I was the star player on my college rugby team (and multiple sports teams in high school). It matters not. I have an uphill battle to fight.

Yes, the same guy who exerted zero effort in landing a babe that years later moved to Los Angeles to become an actress and model and at one point dated Shia Labeouf has to work for every base hit these days.

My personality hasn't really changed either. They (mid-20's single women - my target demographic... I'm almost 30 fwiw) seem to be programmed to be averse to guys who spend a lot of time around computers. Even successful guys whose careers involve lots of computer and in particular internet work.

For all you younger fellows that have yet to make up your mind about what you'd like to do for a living, if you decide upon internet work, make sure you sew your wild oats before embarking on your career, and if you have any desire to be married, you may want to find the lucky lady first as well. The alternative is to lie about what you do.

In any case, it's certainly something to consider as one of the major drawbacks of an otherwise exciting, mentally stimulating and very enjoyable line of work.

Author's Note: The other drawbacks include having to work insane hours, having to constantly learn new technologies - even after you've reached an age where you don't want to learn anymore, and bidding a permanent farewell to the feeling of being well-rested.

Fun Zappers Hand-Held Bug Zappers Make Killing Insects Fun

I moved into a new apartment a little over a month ago. The apartment is a dream-come-true, however that is not to say it is not without its own share of problematic issues.

Before I get to the drawbacks of living here, I'd like to state a few of the positives in order to put everything into perspective. First, the building is basically a one-room apartment that was converted from a boat house into a livable space. Two rooms if you count the bathroom. It literally overlooks a tributary of the Tchefuncte River near Covington, Louisiana.

The balcony (and the majority of the apartment) was literally built out over the water. What used to be a boat house was built on top of a garage with slightly over half of the building hovering over a boat slip (a human-dug extension of the river/canal on private property that exists for the purpose of parking a resident boat). The part that is out over the water is supported by reinforced wooden pilings.

The problem is that with all of this wood (specifically the shed, the bottom-side of the floor of the apartment overlooking the boat slip, and the inside of the apartment above the ceiling), wasps and hornets have found the place to be a haven of sorts, with an ideal environment for them to build their nests. With all of the wood that is sheltered from the weather but technically not inside the living area of the apartment, the building is capable of supporting several dozen wasp and hornet nests simultaneously.

With the river below (and in particular its banks), the wasps have an ample food supply to support as many colonies as they decide to found.

Needless to say, I wasn't just going to sit back and allow these pesky insects to dominate my domicile. No, regardless of where I choose to reside, I am the master of my domain, and I refuse to allow a pack of stinging flies to take that away from me. Before they had even had a chance to sting me, I had already committed to fighting back and attempting to reclaim what was now my property.

While I was committed to winning this war by any means necessary, if I could achieve my objectives without the use of toxic chemicals and poisons such as wasp and hornet killer, which inevitably are inhaled by the person spraying them more often than I was comfortable with.

A traditional bug zapper wouldn't work, because these were some smart insects I was dealing with, and I just couldn't envision wasps and hornets flying into a hanging bug zapper in such numbers that they were eventually eradicated from the property. I needed a more personalized approach.

Luckily for me (not so much so for the wasps), I came upon a device known as a Fun Zapper. Fun Zappers are battery-powered, electronic tennis racquet bug zappers that can be swung like a tennis racquet in the pursuit of killing bugs. Within moments of laying eyes upon the device, I knew the Fun Zapper was the solution to my wasp problem.

One lazy Saturday I made it a point to kill as many of the flying, stinging insects as I possible could. Between myself and a friend who was there assisting, we killed at least 44 hornets and wasps, and largely rid the place of the pesky flies. Now, my apartment is peaceful again.

I can finally step outside on my balcony without being greeted by angry wasps who get up in my face and demand to know who I am and what my business is inside of their territory. My apartment is now my territory, and I owe it all to this convenient and fun electric tennis racquet bug zapper.

Atlas Shrugged the Movie (Part 1) Now Playing in Theaters

Part one of the Atlas Shrugged movie is now playing in theaters across the country.  I've been waiting a decade (since I first picked up the book) for this movie to debut.  And what do you know, but the timing of this movie's release couldn't have been any better.  Atlas Shrugged is the closest thing to an official Tea Party charter as exists, and with a looter government in Washington rapidly confiscating wealth by way of inflation (and taxes), but especially inflation, it almost seems as if this movie was more than a half century in the making by design.

In any case, I this will be the first movie I've gone to see at a theater since April of 2005.

The official movie trailer can be seen below.

For the Record: Jennifer Rexford Confirmed to be Fraud

In case you missed it:  I told this Jennifer Rexford character that I'd retract my first two posts and issue and apology, see to it personally that her story gets mainstream publicity and establish a charitable fund in her name to help with medical bills and immediately make a $150 donation towards it IF (and it turned out to be every big as bit of an if as it looked) she could provide independently verifiable information that substantiated her litany of claims.

She could not provide one single detail such as for whom she worked, the name of her supervisor, any officials within the agency, the name of the alleged doctor or nurse nor any other independently verifiable data.

FOR THE RECORD: I generally don't go around attacking sickly women who claim to have been victimized and are dying unless I'm pretty certain reality is far different than they would have you believe it is.

The kind of shit she's pulling is causing families to lose their homes, children to go hungry and an economy to take a critical and unnecessary blow. The Gulf South's economy is centered around 1) Energy; 2) Seafood; 3) Tourism.

Drilling has been completely shut down putting close to 100,000 people out of work. Tourism and seafood are down more than 100% as people around the country and world continue to harbor completely false paranoid suspicions about the Gulf of Mexico. I saw a poll of college students that showed that more than 25% thought the Gulf of Mexico is largely dead and contaminated and more than 15% believed the beaches are black with oil and tar.

Thanks to this idiot, that group of students went to Lake Tahoe instead of Pensacola or Navarre Beach, the family in Michigan stayed away from the shrimp and oysters at the restaurant for fear they were poisoned. In return, the restaurant owner stopped buying the shrimp harvested in the waters surrounding Venice, LA and 42 hotel employees were laid off. Six months down the road with sales still down and bills piling up, the shrimper and his family of six are forced into foreclosure. Their shrimp just weren't selling and when they were they weren't getting enough money for them to support their families. BP did NOT fulfill its promise to make those who make their living from Gulf Seafood whole (additional resources below), and eventually something must give. For families with mortgages, it's usually the house.

Thanks to this idiot, people are still in delusion about the impact of shutting down drilling in the gulf, allowing the government to get away with starving 80,000 workers and their families out of their homes, jobs and livelihoods.

Tens of thousands of people have viewed this scoundrel's videos and to date no one has previously bothered to point out the fact that HER WHOLE ACT IS BULLSHIT!

I might post an online poll at the blog where all this has transpired asking if "rexford" should be adopted by society as a new synonym for the word "bullshit". Who knows, maybe it will catch on.

Someone had to put her in her place and expose not only skepticism of her claims but also the reasons none of what she said made any sense, as well as put on public display the fact then when confronted she cannot provide a shred of independently verifiable evidence about her story.

nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2011/04/longtime_oil_industry_champion.html

nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2011/04/longtime_oil_industry_champion.html

nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2011/04/bp_says_its_not_responsible_fo.html

Deterioration of Children's Television and the Moral Decline of American Youth

Growing up with Pokemon, Power Rangers and MTV instead of Mr. Rogers, Captain Kangaroo, Reading Rainbow and Sesame Street is hard for me to even imagine.

I regret that if I ever have kids of my own that they won't be able to get to know Mr. Rogers the way I did.  The same goes for Mr. Greenjeans, Oscar the Grouch, Cookie Monster and the Count as well.  I was never too fond of Big Bird, Elmo, Grover, Ernie or Bert, although my phlegmatic attitude towards them has nothing to do with the fact that Bert and Ernie are a same-sex couple and Big Bird, Elmo and Grover are so effeminate it makes one wonder if Sesame Street is located in San Francisco. No, I never cared for any of those characters because they simply aren't interesting enough to captivate me.


Moving on, four and five year old children now days watch violent animated cartoons with poor graphics, no plot to speak of and nothing whatsoever about the programming that would qualify as even being within the same ballpark as the word "wholesome".  The stuff that by today's standards is considered wholesome is so bizarre and creepy (that's right, I'm talking about you SpongeBob, Teletubbies and especially Pokemon) I'd have to sit down and put some serious thought into whether or not I'd even allow my hypothetical child to watch such downright weird and freakish characters.

I certainly wouldn't want my hypothetical child to start to identify with those creepy fictional characters that undoubtedly originated as the products of either a very sick mind or a very intoxicated mind, and I ain't talking about a couple of beers or even your more common hard drugs.  No, whoever is responsible for unleashing SpongeBob and Pokemon on society must've been dropping acid like AT&T drops calls.

Even if we had cell phones at 13 years old the way kids do now (I got my first one at age 19 my sophomore year of college), I seriously doubt my generation would have had these issues with "sexting" and "cyber-bullying" the way kids today do.  For one thing, the girls would make us "go out" with them for months before we'd even get to second base.  Sex was rare, and even then usually only for the handful of the most popular students in school.  I'd like to think it was because the girls back then had self-respect, but I learned that was definitely not the case once they got to college.

"Sexting" would never have taken off among my generation even if we had the technology.  The last thing any of us would have ever wanted was naked pictures of ourselves or our romantic interests being distributed to the entire school and God-knows who else.

In my estimation, the technology itself is not to blame for the ways in which children are using/abusing it.  Part of the problem is that parents are leaving it up to the schools (and to television) to instill values, morals and the explanations for why these concepts are eventually embraced by virtually all functional members of society.  That is not to say teachers don't care or make no effort to teach these things.  However, it is the parent's duty to teach those matters to children --- and not just the bottom line of right/wrong, acceptable/unacceptable behavior --- but also the "why" behind it.

Children are far more likely to be obedient and well-behaved if they understand why their parents want them to behave in a certain way.

The other part of the problem is that children today are growing up watching Pokemon and a host of other programs about which the term "mindless entertainment" would be far too generous a description.  Twenty-five years ago, children grew up watching Mr. Rogers, Sesame St, Captain Kangaroo, the Smurfs, the Transformers, Looney Toons and other cartoons that were entertaining, had storylines and didn't make fight-to-the-death combat the focal point of the programming.  Compared to what they're seeing today, I worry about how the generation of Americans that are young children now will turn out as adults given the radical shifts in the nature of children's programming combined with (in many cases) the declining role of parents in establishing moral and ethical boundaries with their children while placing extra emphasis on the explanation of "why".

Robert Johnson's Infamous Crossroads Deal with the Devil

Is the Devil real?  And did the late blues guitarist Robert Johnson really sell his soul to the Dark Prince at "The Crossroads" sometime in the early-mid part of the last century?

In this post, we will take a look at the legendary tale of Johnson's supposed deal with the Devil, while enjoying the songs allegedly written by Johnson while under the Devil's not so divine influence.  We will also take a brief look at some of the other famous musicians that have been inspired by Johnson's work, including Led Zepplin and Eric Clapton.

We know that Robert Johnson famously claimed to have encountered him at these mysterious crossroads.  While the exact location is a matter for debate, it is generally believed that is was somewhere in Southeast Louisiana (east of New Orleans) or Southwest Mississippi.  The alleged meeting is said to have yielded a deal in which Johnson sold his soul to the Prince of Darkness in exchange for becoming the most influential blues guitarist in the world's history.

As is typically the case when one bargains with Satan, the Devil is in the details.  Johnson died a few short years later and did not live to enjoy his new found success.  He recorded an album or two in a dingy, one-room studio and went on his way trying to stay a step ahead of the Hell Hounds on his trail.

On the album were a couple songs that forever changed music in America and have served as inspiration to most if not all of the great American and British musicians of the past 75 years.  Most famous among them is the song "Crossroad Blues," in which Johnson recants his meeting with the Devil in bittersweet terms.

Robert Johnson: "Crossroad Blues"



That song ("Crossroad Blues") has been incorporated into songs from dozens if not hundreds of Rock and Roll musicians including Eric Clapton and Led Zepplin.

Eric Clapton: "Crossroads"



Led Zepplin: "Crossroads"

"Crossroads" does not began until about seven minutes and twenty seconds into the video. I would recommend skipping ahead until about the 7:20 mark of the video and letting it play from there.



According to some of the rumors that have circulated in the time since Johnson died, that meeting and that song started the modern trend of celebrities from the music and film industries selling their souls to the Devil in exchange for success.  Some people believe many if not most of them have made such a pact, others are a bit more skeptical. Others doubt the theory entirely.

The Devil Legend (Compliments of Wikipedia)

According to legend, as a young man living on a plantation in rural Mississippi, Robert Johnson was branded with a burning desire to become a great blues musician. He was "instructed" to take his guitar to a crossroad near Dockery Plantation at midnight. There he was met by a large black man (the Devil) who took the guitar and tuned it. The "Devil" played a few songs and then returned the guitar to Johnson, giving him mastery of the instrument. This was, in effect, a deal with the Devil mirroring the legend of Faust. In exchange for his soul, Robert Johnson was able to create the blues for which he became famous.

Various accounts

This legend was developed over time, and has been chronicled by Gayle Dean Wardlow,[31] Edward Komara[32] and Elijah Wald, who sees the legend as largely dating from Johnson's rediscovery by white fans more than two decades after his death.[33] Son House once told the story to Pete Welding as an explanation of Johnson's astonishingly rapid mastery of the guitar. Welding reported it as a serious belief in a widely read article in Down Beat in 1966.[34] Other interviewers failed to elicit any confirmation from House and there were fully two years between House's observation of Johnson as first a novice and then a master.

Further details were absorbed from the imaginative retellings by Greil Marcus[35] and Robert Palmer.[36] Most significantly, the detail was added that Johnson received his gift from a large black man at a crossroads. There is dispute as to how and when the crossroads detail was attached to the Robert Johnson story. All the published evidence, including a full chapter on the subject in the biography Crossroads by Tom Graves, suggests an origin in the story of Tommy Johnson. This story was collected from his musical associate Ishman Bracey and his elder brother Ledell in the 1960s.[37] One version of Ledell Johnson's account was published in 1971 David Evans's[disambiguation needed] biography of Tommy,[38] and was repeated in print in 1982 alongside Son House's story in the widely read Searching for Robert Johnson.[39]

In another version, Ledell placed the meeting not at a crossroads but in a graveyard. This resembles the story told to Steve LaVere that Ike Zinnerman of Hazelhurst, Mississippi learned to play the guitar at midnight while sitting on tombstones. Zinnerman is believed to have influenced the playing of the young Robert Johnson.[40] Recent research by blues scholar Bruce Conforth uncovered Ike Zinnerman's daughter and the story becomes much clearer, including the fact that Johnson and Zinnerman did practice in a graveyard at night (because it was quiet and no one would disturb them) but that it was not the Hazlehurst cemetery as had been believed. Johnson spent about a year living with, and learning from, Zinnerman, who ultimately accompanied Johnson back up to the Delta to look after him. Conforth's article in Living Blues magazine goes into much greater detail.[41]
The legendary "Crossroads" at Clarksdale, Mississippi.

The film O Brother Where Art Thou? by the Coen Brothers incorporates the crossroads legend and a young African American blues guitarist named Tommy Johnson, with no other biographical similarity to the real Tommy Johnson or to Robert Johnson. There are now tourist attractions claiming to be "The Crossroads" at Clarksdale and in Memphis.[42]
[edit] His own account

Johnson seems to have claimed occasionally that he had sold his soul to the Devil, but it is not clear that he meant it seriously, and these claims are strongly disputed in Tom Graves' biography of Johnson, Crossroads: The Life and Afterlife of Blues Legend Robert Johnson, published in 2008. The crossroads detail was widely believed to come from Johnson himself, as it would explain his high emotions and religious fervor in "Cross Road Blues" when simply hitchhiking at night; the myth offers a literal explanation.

In "Me And The Devil" he began, "Early this morning when you knocked upon my door/Early this morning, umb, when you knocked upon my door/And I said, 'Hello, Satan, I believe it's time to go,'" before leading into "You may bury my body down by the highway side/You may bury my body, uumh, down by the highway side/So my old evil spirit can catch a Greyhound bus and ride."

The song "Crossroads" by British psychedelic blues rock band Cream is a cover version of Johnson's "Cross Road Blues", about the legend of Johnson selling his soul to the Devil at the crossroads, although Johnson's original lyrics ("Standin' at the crossroads, tried to flag a ride") suggest he was merely hitchhiking rather than signing away his soul to Lucifer in exchange for being a great blues musician.
[edit] Interpretations

The Devil in these songs may not solely refer to the Christian model of Satan, but equally to the African trickster god, Legba, himself associated with crossroads—though author Tom Graves deems the connection to African deities tenuous.[43] As folklorist Harry M. Hyatt discovered during his research in the South from 1935–1939, when African-Americans born in the 19th or early-20th century said they or anyone else had "sold their soul to the devil at the crossroads," they had a different meaning in mind. Ample evidence indicates African religious retentions surrounding Legba and the making of a "deal" (not selling the soul in the same sense as in the Faustian tradition cited by Graves) with this so-called "devil" at the crossroads.[44]

Folk tales of bargains with the Devil have long existed in African American and European traditions, and were adapted into literature by, amongst others, Washington Irving in "The Devil and Tom Walker" in 1824, and by Stephen Vincent Benet in "The Devil and Daniel Webster" in 1936. In the 1930s, Hyatt recorded many tales of banjo players, fiddlers, card sharks, and dice sharks selling their souls at crossroads, along with guitarists and one accordionist. Another folklorist, Alan Lomax, considered that every African American secular musician was "in the opinion of both himself and his peers, a child of the Devil, a consequence of the black view of the European dance embrace as sinful in the extreme".[45]
SOURCE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Johnson_%28musician%29#Devil_legend

In closing, whether you believe the legend about Robert Johnson and the Devil or not, most can agree that his musical accomplishments were unprecedented and have had a lasting impact on those who came after him.

I hope you've enjoyed this article and the accompanying music videos. On that note, I will leave you with two final songs by Robert Johnson that expand upon the mystique surrounding his alleged meeting with the Devil himself.

Robert Johnson: "Hellhound On My Trail"



This post would not be complete without the inclusion of the following song.

Robert Johnson: "Me And The Devil Blues"



For Robert Johnson, Eric Clapton, Led Zepplin and Satan, I'm Fat Lester signing off.