Cobb

Wherefore Art Thou Mr. Swift?

This week is the week of equating MAGA hats with Nazi armbands. Apparently I'm either misremembering my time at The Well or Godwin's Law has been sunsetted and replaced by a wacky doppelganger. These days mentioning Nazis does not end the reasonableness of the conversation, it legitimizes face punching. Well, I'm all for a good punch in the nose, but it seems to me that if we were dealing with Nazis more dangerous than Jay and Silent Bob then a punch in the nose would not be advisable. Everybody knows Nazis carry Luger pistols. One wouldn't expect today's typical American Chatty Cathy to know the difference between crypto-Nazis with their citronella torchlights and actual danger. This is why we have yelling teenagers and toothless wonders representing the 'dangerous divide' in American 'debate'. You see it all depends on your attire. If you're outfitted with a red MAGA hat, then you are evil, or at least deplorable. A nice ceremonial drum on the other hand, confers sainthood, or at least the halo of cultural authenticity.

It occurs to me that we have invented another N word. Except it's like 1947 and nobody minds calling people out of their name in public.  Nazi this. Nazi that. Once the Nazi has been identified then the argument is over. The existence of Nazis is the end of moral consideration. You know, like the existence of WMD.

It has been quite a few months since I decided that to be a wry stoic and combat epistemologist, that I would mock and deny a cast of raving fools. These days it makes me perversely attracted to the moronic inferno that is Facebook and social media. So I'm probably not one to talk about how much water is wasted dousing burning crosses. After all, I have no fear of the alt-right cuck callers and 4Chan doxxers. Perhaps I have too much faith in justice or my pistols, or the triumph of reason. I keep trying to tell people who are startled and alarmed seeking to inform me about the ills of Trumpist racism that I grew up around Crips who actually murdered people on the regular. Still I persist in my mockery, and I feel rather lonely about it. As much as I truly enjoy the podcasts of Joe Rogan who is just a brainy, raunchy delight, too often I feel like the rest of the smart, civilized guys out there are trying too hard to take the burden of civilization onto the shoulders of their 38 Slim herringbone jackets. There are no great comforts for free men it seems.

Are we doomed to become irascible assholes? I mean I claim it and I don't mind, but I'm a lot more fun than that. Fun seems to be off the table. That's no good. There's got to be a better way than Deadpool. Maybe I'll see what Gerard is up to. Perhaps he's found something more fun than poetry.

A Brief History of Cobb on the Black Hand Side

Steve Fair, semi-nemesis observes the following:

Cobb since I've known him has always tried to make the case that black people are these emotional sheep who have been indoctrinated to believe that conservatives were primarily greedy selfish racists when they really are saintly paragons of freedom, liberty and free market capitalism. No matter how many times we see conservatives serve the interests of the top 1% at the expense of the average American, or increase the size of government, or engage in nation building on the other side of the world, admit to voter suppression, or demonize people of color, that's his story and he's sticking to it.

 

If I ever did that, I regret it fully. I have absolutely no interest in saying black people are anything at all. If I ever did, it may be some artifact of my upbringing in the Talented Tenth and my history of 'black leadership'. In 1986, I made it fully clear that I believed that black unity was a myth and that I would no longer support that idea. As such I acknowledged black diversity in every dimension. It was my reading of Drylongso finally in 1993 that compelled me to give up the idea of 'black leadership' itself, at which point I vowed never to second-guess black people or say 'black people should'. I do not. Nobody should ever assume that I have a plan for black people - or consequently that I really truly care who black people are or what they choose to do. My standard byline and bottom line is "Some people find it very difficult to accept that they don't own black people, that includes black people."

 

So then from that point on, all I had was my own black past, which was (and remains) very ideosyncratic. I'm from a small town called Black, and I moved out a long time ago. Nevertheless, I had retained some interest, in black anti-racist politics. So somewhere around 1997, I made that the focus of my writing, very much in league with the Race Traitor movement. So between 1993 and roughly 2001, I made it a project to develop a singular anti-racist praxis which worked along multicultural lines. Adam Serwer is at that place now. It was during that time that I played Boohab and built Boohab's Factotum and The Race Man's Home Companion.

 

The last time I paid attention to Reparations, I did so following the Harvard Law professor whose name I do not remember right now. But then I asked the question in economic terms. What happens if Reparations don't happen? I called it 'The Cost of Not'. Then 9/11 happened and everybody everywhere completely stopped talking about Reparations.

 

Somewhere around 2003, having lived comfortable in the upper middle class nearly a decade, my class prerogatives took over. While I was still interested in anti-racism, it was clear to me that the random racism of American life was a footnote in mine. All of my anti-racism was academic. So I started to think about real political power and question why more black Americans did not seek political leverage on both sides of the aisle, like ordinary rich people do year in and year out. So I became intrigued about the fate of rich and powerful black people and the possibilities of integrating the Republican Party. I started my new blog Cobb. But before that, I got together with some of the sharpest black thinkers online and put together Vision Circle. All of these remain, unedited and in my control. So there's that.

 

With Cobb, I went on a simple journey into the American Right that turned out to be quite complex. It was deeply enlightening. But blogging as a 'black Republican' grew tiresome after about 3 years. So I quit blogging altogether, and then came back with a new angle. Since I had formed The Conservative Brotherhood, and did some media stuff on NPR and TV One, Cobb the blog became famous. But it was still a persona I created for a specific purpose. That purpose was over pretty much around -- I don't know 2006?. I changed Cobb's subtitle to "curious, skeptical and analytical". And then finally to its present form "stoic observations". The end of my actual political agitation was in 2007 owing to my disgust with identity politics but I had won black blogger of the year that year.

 

I'm still most famous as Cobb, and that is what it is. What persists from the conservative conversion is an organic defense of Western Civilization from its first principles, something I started around 2005 or 06 when I got into Dan Carlin and Larry Arnn as introduced by Hugh Hewitt. At that moment in my life, history became more interesting than the present. Still I sought to understand what was happening to the liberal left I grew up in and why it seemed so wacky. I finally came to understand the difference between liberals and progressives as well as the travesty of multiculturalism's dysfunctional fueling of identity politics. So I read Orwell to understand why the Left considers itself more moral than the Right.

 

These days, especially after the crash of 2008 and the re-election of Obama I can't say what my interest in blackness is. I'm agnostic. It isn't a compelling subject for me. I think everything that group identity could possibly be with political implications, I have a good understanding of and am immune to its charm and dysfunction. So it's just something I talk about from time to time with no agenda. I don't have dogs in those fights. So I guess you could write the end of my blackness was the beginning of the Obama era, because finally America had a bigger Negro it could use for its purposes. I still retain all I ever knew, and I don't have a problem recounting it or explaining anything I ever meant by what I wrote. But my interests and agenda lie elsewhere outside of identity and outside of politics. Around that time, my interest turned back to science fiction, The Long Now and ultimately my Peasant Theory and Martial Education. But it's probably best to read all that here at Cobb and see what you get out of it, if anything. I can't say what my interest in conservatism is either. I know both blackness and conservatism have very large problems in establishing their respective orthodoxies, but there are rabid folks desperately trying to establish some. Ahh those poor, damaged children.

 

I could go on and talk about my current interest in writing, but there's not much to easily explain. I'm interested in the universality of psychology, particularly evolutionary psychology and I'm interested in how computers might assist people in reconciling their personal philosophies with the history of philosophy and religion. I'm further interested in how religion became philosophy and how politics is not philosophy. Again this is about placing the zeitgeist into a developmental historical context. I'm also interested in Taleb's Incerto and the entire business of risk management, security and decision-making under imperfect conditions. So it likely shocks people that I mock or ignore their passions, for whatever reason it is that they do. Mostly I engage in public fora as a wry stoic and epistemological combatant. I think most people don't know why they think the way they do, and as someone who has 'trangsgressed' a bunch of religions, industries, and political philosophies I'm just the kind of stubborn intransigent to get on their nerves. I mock and defy. I'm an asshole and I know it. But I am polite enough to make people understand that I am challenging their premises. Most people get that. Enough don't that they think they've got me nailed. I doubt it.

Men Haze

Men haze.

Hazing is a sophisticated socialization men do to determine if newbs deserve to stay. The more dangerous the profession, the more severe the hazing. Because if you are going to have someone in your squad who has responsibility for your life, you need to understand how they perform under pressure - the pressure of doing the right thing for the squad no matter how he feels. You don't have the luxury of deciding you don't *feel* like doing your job when your poor performance puts somebody's health or life in jeopardy. The more likely such a dangerous scenario is likely to occur, the more important that every individual passes hazing.

If you can't handle the hazing, you need to take your bitch ass home and cry. Everybody is better off without you, because you are a clutch failure just waiting to happen.

How to Run a Technical Project - International Decision Styles

This is how I usually work as a contributing manager. I have been technical lead on plenty of successful projects so my ego is not involved. The thing that matters most is that *everybody* understands what the system is supposed to do and how it’s supposed to do it. If a project gets completed and there are not at least three people who could maintain or upgrade it, that project is a long-term liability.

So here’s a longer story because I have worked most of my career in the context of management consulting implementing technical transformations. In every country there is an archetype business decision making process.

Germany: Find the most senior, advanced technical person you can find. Everybody competes for his attention and does exactly what he says. All the discussion is about the implications of his vision. Think Porsche 911. It’s the same vision after 70 years, incrementally perfected.

Japan: Get everybody to decide together in harmony so that there are no objections. Once that decision is made, NO deviations. You deliver exactly what you promised no matter what realities have changed. Your commitment is to the commonly agreed-upon decision of the group.

America: Get the smartest people you can and focus on an audacious goal. The goal is all that matters, get there by any means necessary. Adjust whenever adjustments are called for, even if you pivot to a completely new goal. People are replaceable, the goal is not. Think Apollo Program or Manhattan Project. It’s all about the Big Thing.

France: Everybody contributes an idea, everybody argues for their own idea. Every argument is a possible winner. You criticize whatever you need to to win. Personal insults are not off limits. The winner is the last one standing. The one with the most die-hard conviction. Think Napoleon. Winner take all.

England: Think back to the most classic example of this being done right. Capture the spirit of that adventure. Engage in whatever passive aggressive behavior is necessary to establish the proper esprit de corps. Be resolute against all obstacles and don’t complain. Give it your best, give it your all.

All of these management styles can be pure or in combination. Whenever I’m looking at a project and getting things done with people, I figure out what the spirit is. Every business has its own culture, and then every group of developers have their own personalities that drive a certain culture.

I am very good at a skill called ‘individuation’, which means I am good at determining people’s strengths and weaknesses, likes and dislikes, and can always get value from them. I like the French argument upfront, but then I get all English. I figure out what each person can do to contribute (or not) and make sure they get the proper assignment. It turns out that you rarely get a German-style SME that everybody agrees in the genius, but sometimes there is a specialist who is close. You want to make everybody feel like it’s a big American project, even if it’s not. And we who produce are not Japan, the customer is Japan. Give them what you promised, period.

Skill, in this context, is really ultimately only a matter of personality. Either you ‘get it’ quickly or you understand slowly. If your skill makes you impatient, then you are part of the problem because everywhere is not Germany. Everybody on the project has to understand completely. So it’s the job of a good project manager to deliver to the customer an IT service that gets built in the amount of time it takes for the delivery team to reach that understanding. Of course, Cheap, Fast, Good, pick two.

Aikido Dancing

I was just thinking about Aikido in my long journey to my martial education. I always loved it, but it was always too soft to be practical.

I started studying Aikido when LA got its first important dojo in what is now the LA Arts District. As I was fairly broke I would only come to talk to the master there. I was entranced by the idea of using your opponent’s force against them. Prior to that I had done a stupid little bit of judo as a kid, but quite a bit of street fighting. I have never in my adult life (maybe foolishly) felt the need to defend myself with martial arts. So it was always entirely the aesthetic that appealed to me.

Somewhere around 1993 I joined the dojo in Cambridge MA. I attended a few classes and got bored to death. Although there were wooden swords on the wall, the instructor made it clear nobody touches these for at least two years. Honest to god it felt like a dance class. So I decided to take capoeira instead. That instructor was all about showing off but at least it was honest dance. But he flaked showing up to his own class. In the end I bought a Body by Jake, got ripped and played basketball. Nevertheless there was a soft spot in my heart for Aikido.

Fast forward 17 years, 25 pounds, a wife and three kids later. I’m back in LA and ask myself what I have never learned all these years. I never had a true martial education. Why don’t I know what paramedics, cops and soldiers know? So I go to night classes and learn a bunch. One of the things I also study is firearms. I learn to shoot and all of this new knowledge changes my life. In addition I’m getting back into shape. I lose the 25 pounds doing circuit training and diet. During this time, I look for and find a couple Aikido studios, and I audit. Once again, I am less than impressed. But what could it hurt since I just want to learn the art? Well, I cannot forget the lesson I’ve learned in pistol training. You fight like you train and you train like you fight . I could clearly see these instructors would be wasting my time. It’s not fighting, it’s dancing.

One day as I’m attending a class for a ham radio license I see this dude warming up in the park. He’s doing moves like I’ve never seen. Instantly I know he’s a warrior. I speak to him and he says its Hapkido. But he doesn’t teach adults because most are fools. OK. Fair enough. So I start looking for schools that teach Hapkido. Very few. But do find one that is primarily TKD with some Hapkido thrown in.

Since I’ve lost most of the weight I wanted to and my circuit training is ridiculously expensive, I switch to TKD at the new studio. I love the instructors. But I had spent a lot of time thinking about BJJ and Krav Maga. I really wanted Hapkido. Long story short, TKD to me was more dancing. I could not remember the choreography, but whenever we grappled with the Hapkido moves, I was all over it. My natural fighting instincts go back to my judo as a kid, wrestling and street fighting.

Most recently I have done some training in ‘Kali Tudo’ under one of the instructors of the Dog Brothers . This is the most realistic martial thinking I have ever studied. It makes sense in the context of the street fighting I know, the pistol training I know, the combative tactics of police, and my desire, ultimately to train for an unfair fight as a man approaching 60 years old.

I never felt any need to be a badass, but then neither would I want to fight half-ass. I understand, because I felt for half of my life, the appeal of Aikido, but I’ve never met an instructor or practitioner who, like a cop, needs to submit violent people with prejudice and talked about his skills in those terms.

Quite honestly, I hope that the Supreme Court overrules the crap law in California so I can CCW. All this martial arts dancing is good for your ego and your posture, but I want more literal bang for my buck. In the meantime I can run fast and far enough to get clear of 99% of trouble, but if you follow me to my car…

Bottom line, let Aikido be Aikido. It’s appeal is not to badassery or unhinged fighting. It doesn’t need to be re-invented. It is what it is.

A Thought about Promises Between Men and Women

Women listen to men all the time, deeply. They want nothing more than for a man to be 100% consistent all the time. That's why bad boys get more run - they never have to lie. The second a man lies, it's over. The second a man breaks a promise, over. And a woman hates herself when she accepts her weakness for a man who lies.

 

What men mean to women audibly, women mean to men visually. When she looks hot, she must always look hot. The man wants the hotness and attention of the hot girl. He is forever after that image and then has to deal with the reality of the woman underneath all that beauty. He still visualizes her at her hottest - that is the unspoken promise. That she looks that hot all the time for him. When he finds that it is an elaborate construction, he is defeated. And a man hates himself when he accepts his weakness for a woman whose beauty is fake.

 

Every word a man says to a woman is an audible promise. Every smile a woman gives to a man is a visual promise. We are mutually distrustful of those promises (according to our self-confidence) and deconstruct them and test them all the time.

A Thought about Critical Theory

I think most critical theory generates praxis that cannot be organic, by definition. It can only work in an upscale bourgeios context, because it's essentially shopping research for ethical lifestyle choices. And still people don't know if red wine is good for you, waiting for the next round of PhD theses.

This is rather astounding given the (fake?) admiration for 'authentic' indigenous cultures who are operating on ancient wisdom and traditions of the sort rarely subjected to critical theory.

I think critical theory is an intellectual neutron bomb aimed at the modern metropolis. Then again, I'm sure some critical theorist might tell me I don't know what I'm talking about.

Talking My Way Forward

This year I'm going to try to do some ridiculously ambitious things. I'm not ready to sit down and shutup. It's going to cause trouble, and I reckon it's about time.

What I'm going to do is start talking about what I want to happen with the expectation that talking enough about it will gather people towards whatever center of gravity I can generate. In the plan I thought I perfected in my mind about 8 years ago, I figured I would be wealthy enough by now. But I've been riding somebody else's camel and it's time for me to start getting my own feet used to the burning sands. So let me put it out there.

Firstly, some hotshot at Google found my profile and we talked. We didn't talk long enough for me to impress him the way he wanted to be impressed, but with all of the crap going on in my life dealing X, Y and Z, I found this a reminder of what I could be doing. Specifically, what I'm not doing, which is getting paid to think and getting paid to lead. I'm getting paid to work, which is a great privilege at any time in history. I'm getting generously paid for honest work for which I am grateful. But to the extent that I can be ungrateful for all I have, it does mean that I think I could be doing better at something else. It's up to me to prove it. So I'll take the risk. It's a kind of sorry charade, according to Epictetus, to feel liberated by exchanging one master for another. On the one hand you can say - Hey I'm doing X for Google, how cool is that? On the other hand, it's still Google's vision, not mine. At least considering that I was not hired for presenting my vision of Google, that's the case.

So what is it that I want to do? I want to revolutionize social media. In fact, I actually want to create something that I would call academic media, or scientific media, or probably best yet, philosophical media. I want all of the stuff that I write and that people write online to be subject to a different set of criteria than popularity. I want people who prefer to not express themselves in emoticons to know that what they write and say and portray online is absorbed in its long form with all of its implications. I want something that immediately connotes that 140 characters was never going to be enough. Maybe I can call it Heavy Media. Something that makes us want to append artifacts to statements like a giant Katamari Damacy of truth.

Everything I've done in my entire life can be considered in this unity going forward. I'm ready to leap. I'm ready to leave everything else behind. So I'm talking myself into it. Maybe I'll have a collaborator. Maybe I'm just a crazy wallfacer.

So I have decided that I'll start here. Cobb gets more traffic than Cubegeek and it doesn't make sense to start a new domain from scratch until that's paid for by collaborators. People who bother to read me here will be who they are, and speak up if they must.

The first thing I need to talk about is Privacy Perfection or Security Perfection through Identity Brokerage. I'm following some of the ideas of Vinay Gupta. I had a bit of this conversation the other day and I'm convinced that we have enough to be dangerous and that we will be perfecting it for the rest of time. So there's no point in waiting, and after all people will waste money on the imperfection everywhere until there is actual perfection somewhere. Somehow I'll figure out how to make a working document work - that will probably be at Github. Hmm. Sounds like a plan.

The next thing I'll want to talk about is the Circle Protocol. We'll give it a fancy name later. I've already started to describe it here. Time to make it work.

Some References by Allan Bloom

The civil rights movement provides a good example of this change in thought. In its early days almost all the significant leaders, in spite of tactical and temperamental differences, relied on the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. They could charge whites not only with the most monstrous injustices but also with contradicting their own most sacred principles. The blacks were the true Americans in demanding the equality that belongs to them as human beings by natural and political right. This stance implied a firm conviction of the truth of the principles of natural right and of their fundamental efficacy within the Constitutional tradition, which, although tarnished, tends in the long run toward fulfilling those principles. They therefore worked through Congress, the Presidency, and, above all, the Judiciary. By contrast, the Black Power movement that supplanted the older civil rights movement—leaving aside both its excesses and its very understandable emphasis on self-respect and refusal to beg for acceptance—had at its core the view that the Constitutional tradition was always corrupt and was constructed as a defense of slavery. Its demand was for black identity, not universal rights. Not rights but power counted. It insisted on respect for blacks as blacks, not as human beings simply.

Yet the Constitution does not promise respect for blacks, whites, yellows, Catholics, Protestants, or Jews. It guarantees the protection of the rights of individual human beings. This has not proved to be enough, however, to what is perhaps by now a majority of Americans.

The upshot of all this for the education of young Americans is that they know much less about American history and those who were held to be its heroes. This was one of the few things that they used to come to college with that had something to do with their lives. Nothing has taken its place except a smattering of facts learned about other nations or cultures and a few social science formulas. None of this means much, partly because little attention has been paid to what is required in order truly to convey the spirit of other places and other times to young people, or for that matter to anyone, partly because the students see no relevance in any of it to the lives they are going to lead or to their prevailing passions. It is the rarest of occurrences to find a youngster who has been infused by this education with a longing to know all about China or the Romans or the Jews.

All to the contrary. There is an indifference to such things, for relativism has extinguished the real motive of education, the search for a good life. Young Americans have less and less knowledge of and interest in foreign places. In the past there were many students who actually knew something about and loved England, France, Germany, or Italy, for they dreamed of living there or thought their lives would be made more interesting by assimilating their languages and literatures. Such students have almost disappeared, replaced at most by students who are interested in the political problems of Third World countries and in helping them to modernize, with due respect to their old cultures, of course. This is not learning from others but condescension and a disguised form of a new imperialism. It is the Peace Corps mentality, which is not a spur to learning but to a secularized version of doing good works.

Bloom, Allan. Closing of the American Mind (pp. 33-34). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

Actually openness results in American conformism—out there in the rest of the world is a drab diversity that teaches only that values are relative, whereas here we can create all the life-styles we want. Our openness means we do not need others. Thus what is advertised as a great opening is a great closing. No longer is there a hope that there are great wise men in other places and times who can reveal the truth about life—except for the few remaining young people who look for a quick fix from a guru. Gone is the real historical sense of a Machiavelli who wrested a few hours from each busy day in which “to don regal and courtly garments, enter the courts of the ancients and speak with them.”

None of this concerns those who promote the new curriculum. The point is to propagandize acceptance of different ways, and indifference to their real content is as good a means as any. It was not necessarily the best of times in America when Catholics and Protestants were suspicious of and hated one another; but at least they were taking their beliefs seriously, and the more or less satisfactory accommodations they worked out were not simply the result of apathy about the state of their souls. Practically all that young Americans have today is an insubstantial awareness that there are many cultures, accompanied by a saccharine moral drawn from that awareness: We should all get along. Why fight? In 1980, during the crisis with Iran, the mother of one of the hostages expressed our current educational principles very well. She went to Iran to beg for her son’s release, against the express wishes of the government of her country, the very week a rescue of the hostages was attempted. She justified her conduct by explaining that a mother has a right to try to save her son and also to learn a new culture. These are two basic rights, and her trip enabled her to kill two birds with one stone.

Actually the problem of cultural difference could have been faced more easily here in America forty years ago. When I was in college, a young Mississippian was lodged in my dormitory room for a few days during a visit of the University of Virginia debating team, of which he was a member. It was my first meeting with an intelligent, educated Southerner. He explained the inferiority of blacks to me, the reasons for Jim Crow, and how all that was a part of a unique way of life. He was an attractive, lively, amiable, healthy youngster. I, however, was horrified by him because I was still ethnocentric. I took my Northern beliefs to be universal. The “different strokes for different folks” philosophy had not yet taken full hold. Fortunately the homogenization of American culture that has occurred since that enables us to avoid such nasty confrontations. Only obviously pathological lower-class types now hold the racist views of my young visitor. Southerners helped to fashion our theoretical view of culture, but the Southern culture they intended to defend disappeared.

Bloom, Allan. Closing of the American Mind (pp. 34-35). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

 

 

Curse of the Haole

This year I'm not going to use the term 'white' if I can help it. It turns out that there are any number of specific things to call so-called white people if I have reason to identify something stereotypical about one's character. So I will expand that vocabulary and imbue with more meaning the following labels.

Now the thing that led me to this matter is that at several memorable occasions over the past several years, certain friends and associates have made some persistently self-conscious remarks while eating spicy or unfamiliar ethnic food. I was embarrassed for them and for myself in their company.

So for the fellow who acts all meat and potatoes when confronted with and confounded by spicy Mexican food or chopsticks, the term is 'gringo'.

For the doofus who is perfectly uncool, has no rhythm and cannot dance to save his life, but is not an actual spaz, the term is 'honky', and I am thinking of Tom from the Jeffersons.

For the uptight, bookish, pale and censorious prig who refuses to hang loose, the term is 'haole'.

For the rude, indecorous, filter-less lout, who is not actually an asshole but would embarrass my grandmother, the term is 'gaijin'. c.f. Donald J.

Rednecks we know and the term is not necessarily pejorative and sometimes endearing. For the pejorative we use 'cracker'. Peckerwood is deprecated. Wasps are few but still often need to be stung. I will also continue to mock snowflakes who may not necessarily be Caucasian, but I think haole will be much more often used. The absurdly PC are all haoles.

I am probably going to desist using the term 'beardy boys' although I will think it. I'm actually preferring that men wear beards (not neckbeards) even if they're not real men. But hipsters and douchebags will still be identified as such.

Here in Facebook if I think you need to be confronted with the import of something that should be relatively obvious, I will preface my comment with 'Dude'. If I call you a dumbass, then it's my bad.

Why? Because it's not racial.

The Cars

My first car was a 68 VW Karmann Ghia. I drove it until it died. Had the engine rebuilt for 700 bucks. Drove it until it died a second time, gave it to my little sister. Probably the most unsafe vehicle ever. I know what it's like to grind disk brakes until they're almost useless.

 

After that I was a BMW dude. First a 1976 2002 which was great until the fuel system went kaput, then sat in my front yard for a year. Then I finally bought a 1984 325i. Perfect. I moved to the east coast and needed no cars for several years. But during the 80s, the perfect car for me would have been a Celica Supra. I hated American cars during the 80s; the one exception was the 1988 Ford Escort GT. When I moved to Atlanta in 1995, I needed a small family car. I got an Alitma. It was surprisingly fast and reliable. I wanted a Camry but they were selling for more than sticker and took over as the most popular car in America.

 

For a while I delayed the inevitable minivan and entertained all of the large American four doors, including the Impala SS, Chrysler Concord and Buick New Yorker. In the end I sold the Altima and got the minivan. Loaded it up and moved back to LA as a family of 5. After some time, I saved up enough to get back into BMW territory. I bought a 535i. It too was a freaking lemon. I had to replace the head gasket and it cost somewhere around 1500 bucks. Then I could always smell gasoline. I finally gave up on it and for the first time leased a brand new car. It was a 2000 VW Beetle Turbo. Most fun car I ever had, cooler than anything. People would stop and talk to me about it all the time. It ate up brakes though. I drove it from LA to Georgia and back twice. It never gave me any problems.

 

Then for a time I was broke, I ended up driving a $750 car -  a super old Mercury Sable Wagon. The kids liked it. Right about that time, I really wanted a new BMW 540. It was my ultimate dream. I test drove one and it blew me away. Unfortunately, my wife talked me into getting the larger 750iL. It turned out to be super nice. It served its purpose for about 5 years with no problems until the rear windows seized up. (Except it was rolled down.). It would have cost me $900 to fix it. Then the second one went bad. Finally, it threw a timing belt. It was just after 2008 and I found that I didn't want to be driving a luxury auto any longer. So I had been thinking about a Hummer H3, a GMC Denali or a Toyota FJ Cruiser. I went for the FJ, fully loaded. Best decision ever.

 

Meanwhile the family car was a new Chevy Impala, and later after the FJ, I bought my wife a Mazda 3 with all the gadgets. I have 115,000 miles on the FJ and it's pretty much exactly the same as when I bought it with 24,000. I've never been impressed with purchasing new vehicles or leasing. The one exception was the Beetle. Right now I'm looking to get a Porsche while keeping the FJ. I've pretty much decided on a 2014-16 Cayman GTS if I can get a good price, but I'm in no hurry right now. Depending upon how much cash I can save up, I might even go with an older model and have it custom built. The only other thing that appeals to me is to build a track car, but a convertible Carerra or Targa has its appeal too. Still, I just want a Porsche.