A Complete and Total Loser Rule - 7

Waste no time feeling bad about not enjoying this, your one life. Happiness is not a natural state. You can spend money on any thing or experience, you can study and meditate, you can kill or create life, you can build or destroy. You can do any number of these things or none of them and still be miserable.

A Complete and Total Loser Rule - 6

Stay unattached to simple things as much as possible. The Loser loves the banana chips he buys at Trader Joe's, for example, but in his last two visits, the shelf where they were has been empty. Chances are good that they've been discontinued. The Loser will miss them, but he'll move on; he's lost far more important things in recent years. Like his parents.

A Complete and Total Loser Rule - 5

If someone in the hall at work says hi, say hi back. When animals meet, they worry only about being attacked or courted (and for many animals the two are nearly indistinguishable). A great thing about being human is that we can simply acknowledge each other's existence with no fears or expectations. So do that.

A Complete and Total Loser Rule - 4

Write out this simple sentence: 
I am ________ years old.
Read it. Accept it. Act it.

A Complete and Total Loser Rule - 3

Minimize perfume, jewelry and other adornment. Try to be visually and olfactorily neutral. Let your words and actions be what counts.

The Girls of Lands' End

You young people wouldn't remember this, but before the Internet people actually looked closely at the pictures printed in magazines, newspapers and mail order catalogs. In fact, for the Complete and Total Loser, the women in such images were the only ones he ever saw, given that he's too ugly to go to beaches and has no friends, let alone girlfriends.

His favorite catalog was the one from Lands' End, the clothing company that knows more about clothes than, by its own admission, punctuation. The Loser looked at the men's items, of course, and even bought them sometimes. But the women in Lands' End catalogs were special then and remain so today for one simple reason: They smile. None of that haughty model crap for them. They're pretty, of course. A healthy weight, which puts them far below average these days, but they're not rail thin like the runway models you see in Vogue. And again: They smile. It's almost like they're real people the Loser would see in person, if he weren't a pathetic recluse, determined to die alone and unloved. 
Which he is.

A Complete and Total Loser Rule - 2

Get some of your news by reading news printed on paper. Here, the Loser's father reads a newspaper one month before his death.

However low your opinion may be of the press, you can learn one thing from good reporters: If you want to learn something about a person or learn what that person knows, ask him a question and remain silent until they stop talking for at least ten seconds.

The Loser's Letter from the Vatican

Secretariat of State
First Section * General Affairs

From the Vatican 12 February 2013

Dear Applicant,

Last week, we received your cover letter and résumé expressing your interest in filling the position as Pope. As you can no doubt imagine, many thousands throughout the world have expressed interest in becoming the next Holy Father, and so it has taken us some time to get back back to you.
Unfortunately, the way this position is filled differs from the ways of other jobs. To start with, it is something more of a calling than an ordinary job. 
Please allow me to answer with specificity the reasons we will not consider you further at this time as a candidate for Pope, and answer other questions at the same time. By so doing, I hope I can save you from continuing the numerous series of follow-up phone calls to our already overworked administrative personnel. (Honestly, this whole thing has taken us by great surprise. As you probably know, Pope Benedict XVI's resignation is the first since 1415. It is far easier when popes age and die in office, but don't tell anyone I said that; it sounds cold.)

• You are not a practicing Catholic. The fact that you were confirmed in the Episcopal church at age 14 is in your favor, but your atheism knocks you down, though we appreciate your candor. To answer one of your questions, the Catholic Church is not at this time considering becoming a secular institution. 
• While I am sure that Pennsylvania is a beautiful state and that there is much affordable, open space there, the overwhelming number of the Church's 1.2 billion members wants Stato della Città del Vaticano (better known to most Americans as Vatican City) to remain in Rome, where it has been since 1929. While its population is only 800 souls, the logistics of having them move to Pennsylvania would require a huge amount of paperwork and, in several cases, language instruction. In fact, one title the Pope is known by is the Bishop of Rome!
• Yes, the rule about not marrying is a "hard and fast" one. And while I personally admire your interest in using the position to meet women, I can't recommend it. You see, not only is the Pope not to wed, he is to remain celibate. I've enclosed a pamphlet that I hope will clarify this and other things for you.
• No, as Pope, you not receive discounts on a Maserati, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Alfa Romeo or a Lancia (which I'm surprised you had heard of). The city has a budget and its fleet of vehicles and automobile purchases are included in its transportation expenses. 
• Payment for the Pope is substantial but as you are not under consideration, allow me to decline specifics. Your question about a retirement plan is a good one and one we're asking ourselves at the moment.
• The Church gives a great deal of money each year to a wide variety of charities. Do you really think it would look good if we were to maintain your Netflix account by using expensive overnight express deliveries to the United States? It may be time for you to consider the streaming option. We do want a Pope who is up to date on current events, of course, and the next pontiff will have access to a variety of channels on cable and satellite television to do so. Adult channels are blocked.
• Pope is not a position one "works his way up to," and while there are other paid positions, including custodial, at the Vatican for which you are qualified, the necessary visas and language skills would omit you from further consideration.

Upon you and your family the Holy Father cordially invokes joy and peace in our Lord Jesus Christ. As a pledge of divine graces he imparts to you his Apostolic Blessing. 
I am herewith enclosing for you a rosary which His Holiness has blessed. Please give me your word that I will not see this on eBay.

Sincerely yours,
Monsignor Pedro Lopez Quintano

 

A Complete and Total Loser Rule - 1

Volunteer work is not supposed to be pleasant, rewarding, or satisfying in any way. Whether it is or it isn’t, don’t talk about it. Don’t even tell anyone you do it, unless you absolutely must.

Interesting Story

CHELYABINSK, Russia (Reuters) - Doctors here changed an earlier report that one of the approximately 1,000 injured as a result of Friday's meteorite over central Russia had died. The man, who Russian officials declined to name but said he was a 37-year-old factory worker, was originally pronounced dead late Friday, but medical workers later said they had erred. The victim was near a location where a fragment of the meteorite fell. Officials said he apparently suffered an as yet undiagnosed brain injury and was incapable of speech. He was agitated and bit a female nurse. She was treated for her injury and sent home to be with her family, officials said.
No further details about the man were released.

That Time of Year

Actually, it's usually early March when the Complete and Total Loser's East Coast city has that crazy weather range in which you have snow like this at 7:30 in the morning:

And then see a girl on the train platform less than twelve hours later dressed in shorts and a short-sleeved shirt, making the Loser feel like an overdressed crazy man in his heavy coat and hat.

Yes, it's usually in-like-a-lion-out-like-a-lamb March when you have this duality. But it seems the seasons have shifted by a month or so in the Loser's lifetime, so maybe what was March is February now.

Women Who Loved the Loser

For Valentine's Day, the pseudo-holiday for smug couples, a complete count of all the women (well, they're women now) who have ever fallen for the Complete and Total Loser, in chronological order.
There haven't been many.

Remember passion? The Loser doesn't.

1. Diana, aka, Tinkerbell; 1963 - 1967. Neighbors, the two rode tricycles together in the Loser's driveway, which was flat, unlike hers. They also rode early skateboards. The first mass-produced skateboards were lethal things with steel wheels that slid out from under you. (An older neighbor named Ricky fell from one when his family lived in California and Ricky was never the same again.) This didn't matter to the Loser and Tinkerbell; they rode them on their stomachs, going down the hill of their road. They wore out the toes of their sneakers by dragging them to regulate their speed. The Loser got old enough in a few years to be able to cut through three backyards to visit his friend Steve. Tinkerbell would rather he played with her instead. Once, when both were eight, the Loser, poised on his bicycle, a two-wheeler, said to her, "Want to play a game?" She said yes and asked which one. "Run away from Tinkerbell!" he said. Struck dumb with rage, Tinkerbell reached and pushed the Loser, who fell hard on the street. He deserved worse than that. It was cruel of him. The Loser moved a mile away, if that, when the Loser was ten. It may as well have been across the country. Diana wrote a nice letter to the Loser in 1978, when he was a college sophomore, suggesting they get together to "see how they turned out." The Loser didn't respond. Now Diana manages a convenience store near where the Loser lives. She's divorced and has a son. The Loser's been to the store many times, but has seen Diana only once, a few months ago. She didn't recognize him and he said nothing. She looks well.

Kids can be great, and not just when they're sleeping. The Loser will never have kids.

2. Peggy, 1966 - 1969. They met in an elementary school that went only to third grade. The Loser was vaguely aware that Peggy would stare at him, her big, brown eyes unfocussed, as if in a dream. After they'd left the little school for single-sex schools, the Loser encountered her just once, on the commuter train home. Again, Peggy stared at him as if in a trance. The Loser pretended not to notice, focusing on a book. Enraptured, Peggy missed her stop. The stops were just a mile or so apart, but at that age it's cause for panic. Peggy screamed and jumped up on her chair, where she reached for and pulled the cord that ran the length of the train car and was for the conductor's use only. Every kid thought that if you pulled that cord the train's wheels would lock, flinging passengers against hard objects, making sparks fly from the undercarriage, making the train stop two feet before a washed-out bridge, like in movies. No such luck for Peggy. All it did was signal the conductor, who ignored it. Bigger girls wearing white blouses and pleated skirts, probably sixth graders, came to Peggy's aid, consoling her and promising that their mothers would help Peggy get home after she disembarked with one of them at the next station. The Loser and Peggy exchanged no words and he never saw her again. In 1983, the Loser's mother, who knew of the relationship between the two, though the Loser never knew how, sent the Loser, two years out of college and living in Minneapolis, Peggy's wedding announcement from a local paper. She was, of course, a raven-haired beauty by now with big, pretty eyes. 
3. Annie Johnson, summer, 1970, Massachusetts. The Loser and his family spent two months each summer on the coast of Massachusetts, near the Rhode Island border. Annie was a native New Englander, a year younger than the loser, then twelve. Annie was short for her age and had long hair. They danced at the country club. During the slow dance, the Loser saw his mother and other adults looking at them adoringly. Embarrassing. He bent his legs so the height discrepancy wouldn't be so great, thinking that would be the polite thing to do. "What are you doing?" Annie said, annoyed. She put her hands on the Loser's waist and pushed upward until he stood up straight. They promised to write. The Loser got a letter sometime in the fall, October perhaps, in which Annie declared her love for him. She said she had some dollars and that she would send them to him. The Loser discussed this with his mother, who advised telling Annie to keep her dollars. He agreed, and did. By the next summer, Annie's crush had abated and her circle of summer friends no longer included the Loser.

4. Susan, 1997 - 2002. They met in Japan in the mid 1980s, where both taught English to Japanese factory workers and executives. Susan was from Wales. She had an abusive boyfriend she stayed with despite the abuse for much longer than you'd think a woman as smart as she was would. Years after it ended, the Loser asked her why. "Because," she said, "he was just so good looking." The Loser had seen him a few times and couldn't disagree. They kept in touch sporadically despite the distance. She visited him in 1991 and they kept it platonic. She was nice looking but overweight and, sadly, the Loser has never been able to get the initial oomph in a relationship with heavy women, so his friendships with them have never gone beyond that. Susan got in touch with the Loser in 1997 and asked to visit again. She said that she had designs beyond friendship for him. He didn't shut the idea out completely. She wasn't, after all, morbidly obese or anything, and she spoke frequently of her vigorous exercise regimen. And he genuinely liked her. Susan came and stayed for a week. The sparks didn't fly on the Loser's end and he felt terrible about this. They drank enough that the Loser did become able to be physically intimate with her, twice, and she left with things in limbo. It had been fifteen years since the Loser had had sex. She was the fourth woman he'd had sex with. He was her thirty-second man. Years of expensive phone calls followed (she didn't like email), many of them ending with the Loser saying something mean "by accident," and Susan hanging up in tears. After yet another "last" call, the Loser didn't hear from her for four months. Finally, she called and told him she'd been seriously ill with something no one could diagnose. Her brain had shut down so much she was unable to communicate. She recovered fully. During her illness, she dropped a lot of weight and talked about how surprised she was by how many men hit on her now that she was thin, albeit for an unhealthy reason. They began to email on a regular basis. Later, she got ill again. A friend of hers who knew her emailed the Loser saying a call to her hospital bed would cheer her immeasurably. He did and it did. The other women on the ward, Susan reported, were "dead impressed" at her getting a get-well phone call from America. She recovered and went back to her job as a high school teacher. They talked of her visiting again. In August of 2002, a week or so went by with no word from Susan. On a Sunday night, the Loser took a break from playing solitaire on his computer to check his email. He opened an email from a friend of Susan's. She had died earlier that day. (The Loser has not played a game on a computer since that night.) He flew to Wales and attended her funeral. Advice if you ever go to a funeral in England and you're a man: bring a black tie. It's the only color acceptable at a funeral. Really, you're better off not wearing a tie at all than a tie that isn't a solid, jet black. The Loser bought one when he came back even though there's no reason he'd ever go to England again, especially to a funeral. She was forty when she died, and she'd died in King's Hospital, which is an excellent hospital in London. There's been no one since. 

This is of the Loser's mother visiting the Loser's father on Christmas Eve of 2010. Both were dead within a year, neither died alone. The Loser will.

The Loser isn't Racist, but ...

The Complete and Total Loser isn't racist if you go by the best definition of racism he's read, which is assuming someone can't do something as well as someone else due to his or her race. 
But.
If you equate stereotyping with racism, give the Loser a white sheet to wear. 
Is stereotyping so bad, though? We all do it. You meet a guy who dresses a certain way and drives a certain car and you can often assume what political party he belongs to, and you'll judge him by that, to an extent, as surely as you would someone dressed as a priest, nun or doctor. The Asian in a saffron robe will be wise and speak in meaningful riddles. The bespectacled woman in the crisp suit with her hair pulled back and carrying a briefcase will be businesslike. 
The problem the Loser has with people who shame others for stereotyping is that they have no problem doing it themselves if the stereotype is a good one, even though it's the negative stereotypes make sense. We've evolved to fear animals with fangs or sharp horns, and that's to our credit. It helped us survive. 
The man in this picture? Most likely, he's a decent guy on a cold day, just heading for a warm place. Nothing wrong with that. But if you were about to head down a dark alley and you saw him halfway up it heading your way, the Loser would bet that you'd forgo the shortcut and walk to a busy intersection. 
The Loser likes to think he knows the important thing about stereotypes, which is that they should be abandoned immediately when you get evidence they don't apply.

Yakuza

Years ago when he lived in Japan the Complete and Total Loser read about a community upset that a local apartment building had been taken over by yakuza, i.e., organized criminals. During a protest outside the buildings one of the neighbors yelled to the building, "Seek an honorable life!" 
This was twenty-five years ago and the Loser still can't think of a better thing to say to the nefarious ones among us. It includes people who would dig through drug store trashcans in search of medical information, whether they're addicts or identity thieves. 
Seek honorable lives, you.

A sticker on a trashcan warns people to think before they toss.

Language Change

Maybe one day I'll stop having to remember to add "would have been" when speaking of my late parents' birthdays, but on this second birthday after my mother's death that day hasn't arrived.
In the photo she's twelve. It's February of 1943 and the man she's looking at is her big brother who is a Marine fighter pilot during the war. Later, he would fly early jets in Korea, fighter bombers. He was an excellent pilot and taught others to fly. One he taught was so good that my uncle made him his wing man: Ted Williams, the baseball player. The two were friends for life.
My uncle died in November of 2011, just a few weeks after my mother.